I am sure someone has a good reference on how the questions about Afghanistan asked in the FT article were answered about the Balkans soon after NATO put forces on the ground. I would be particularly interested in what were the projections as to how long NATO forces would remain there and what was the “exit strategy”.

If I remember correctly former Pres Clinton said the US would not be in the Balkans for a very long period of time. In fact, it seems to have been an open ended commitment with US forces still there.

Thanks

I am not suggesting anything. I would like to know how NATO efforts in the Balkans compare to those in Afghanistan as far as commitment, timelines, identification of goals and objectives, measures of success, redeployment, etc. There are actually two aspects to this question, a military one and a political one.

I realize these two NATO efforts are quite different. One, the Balkans, was more a show of force as compared to Afghanistan which is the actually conduct of ground combat operations. Needless to say because of these differences an entire new spectrum of issues has raised which were never addressed during the Balkans operations.

Christoph Bertram in his RIGA essay for the MF, referenced in another thread, made the following observation about war fighting and stability operations.

Stability operations . . .”These will only be met if NATO governments are willing to contribute significant numbers forces of their own, both in the UN and the NATO context. It is a task for which NATO is well-suited, while it is no longer suited to fighting traditional wars. Given the absence of any old-fashioned military threat to NATO territory, the wars that can occur will be those of choice, not necessity. Inevitably, not all of NATO’s members will want to make that choice and the consensus which is at the heart of NATO’s cohesion will not materialize. “

“Some may argue that the Kosovo campaign of 1999 suggests otherwise. After all, Serbia then posed no direct threat to the territory of any NATO member state. But, there were exceptional circumstances at play then. For one, NATO forces were engaged more in a demonstration of force than a proper war, conducted entirely from the air. For another, Kosovo is part of the Balkans, where NATO had invested heavily to promote a stability which now seemed threatened. Even then, consensus was brittle and would probably have collapsed if NATO had decided to launch a ground attack, in
other words, to fight a proper conventional war against Serbia’s army. Thus the Kosovo experience would seem to confirm rather than dispute the rule that wars of choice
overtax NATO’s cohesion.”

By NATO’s on definition stability operations includes the providing of security and to establish, reestablish or support a foreign government’s ability to assure rule of law and internal security.

http://www.act.nato.int/organization/transformation/cde04presentations/4novstabilityopsbo/kearly.pdf

This means there will be combat operations in a counter insurgency environment. It means there will be both fighting and dying. So the deployed forces with alternate between being peacekeepers and peacemakers.

Had the US lead air campaign failed and NATO would have had to conduct ground combat operations the issues now confronting NATO would have had to be addressed. I say this was a US lead air campaign because the US flew 67% of all sorties and almost all the hot missions. This compares to say Germany’s 1.7% of all sorties and none of the hot missions.

Based on what we are seeing in Afghanistan, it can be assumed those nations engaged in ground combat operations there would be the same nations which would have conducted ground combat operations in the Balkans.

The US has slightly less than 2,000 soldiers deployed to the Balkans. About 1,600 of these are part of Task Force Falcon. The remainder are in support of NATO command and control elements. The current US forces are due to begin their rotation back to the US. They will be replaced for the 8th rotation during the first part of 2007.

The US would like to obtain relief from this commitment so these soldiers can be used to support operations in Afghanistan and Iraq. What was interesting is the local population opposes this reduction. They want US forces to remain. This was reported by the M$M earlier in 2006. Unfortunately I did not keep a link.

DOD does not keep a single site displaying the deployment status of US forces. Part of this is for operational security and part of this is both the complexity and ever changing nature of these deployments. Currently the US has military forces conducting operations of one type or another in over 119 nations.

This link gives an overview of the scope of some of the current deployments.

http://deploymentlink.osd.mil/deploy/info/index.shtml