------- Forwarded Message Follows ------- Date sent: Tue, 11 May 1999 12:04:22 -0700 To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] From: Sid Shniad <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Subject: MISTAKES OF THE BLITZ ARE BEING REPEATED The Daily Telegraph Tuesday 11 May 1999 MISTAKES OF THE BLITZ ARE BEING REPEATED By John Keegan, Defence Editor The Defence Secretary, George Robertson, was right to reprove me for suggesting that Nato's Supreme Allied Commander should be replaced. A political leader must stand by his military men. Nevertheless, the word is that Gen Wesley Clark is not up to the job. He certainly gives no impression of leadership, as Gen Norman Schwarzkopf so strikingly did during the Gulf war. Meanwhile, President Milosevic's stature grows by the day. Given the way Nato has decided to run this war, that is not surprising. Unsuccessful air wars make the target country and its leader look good, while making whoever is launching the bombs look bumbling, if not bullying. That was certainly the effect of Germany's bombing campaign against Britain in 1940, with which analogies can increasingly be drawn. History does sometimes repeat itself, if the same factors apply. The factor of geographical inaccessibility was as important to Mr Churchill's survival in 1940 as it is to Milosevic's today. The Battle of Britain rightly remains a national epic. It was, moreover, a genuine victory, in which the RAF defeated the Luftwaffe, so successfully defending this country against German invasion. It is important, however, to remember what the RAF was defending. Its own airfields, of course, and the fighting power of the Royal Navy. Yet in the last resort it was defending the English Channel. As long as the RAF's fighters flew over the Channel, the Germans dared not launch their enormous army on to the waves. The more the Germans bombed, moreover, the worse they made themselves look in the eyes of neutrals, particularly in American eyes, and the better - because braver - they made the British look. The better they made Mr Churchill look also. He was not, in 1940, a world figure, merely a recently appointed Prime Minister in a precarious position. It was his magnificent articulation of Britain's determination to resist the Luftwaffe's bombing which both inspired his own people to do so and won him moral superiority over his much stronger political opponent. Yet it was in Britain's inaccessibility that his real superiority lay. Milosevic also enjoys geographical inaccessibility. It is provided not by the sea, for Serbia is landlocked, but by the Balkan mountains. Yet, by Nato's analysis, the mountains are equivalent to a sea: a sea of ambush places, natural anti-tank obstacles, fire traps and every other sort of terrain favourable to Serb defence and unfavourable to Nato attack. So Nato, in its understandable anxiety to check Serb aggression against Kosovo's Albanians, decided to bomb. It is still bombing and still insisting that bombing will break the will of Milosevic and the Serbs, without the necessity to commit ground troops. This seems, again by analogy with 1940, a faulty analysis. The English Channel was only an obstacle to the German army as long as it was defended by the RAF. Had the RAF been beaten, the military problem would have become equivalent to no more than "a large river crossing", as the plan for Operation Sealion put it. Whatever Nato's warplanes do, however, the Balkan mountains will remain a formidable obstacle to any invader who shrinks from incurring casualties. So, in a sense, Milosevic and the Serbs have to do nothing. They are in an even stronger position than the British in 1940. They do not have to maintain an active defence, as the RAF did. Their mountains are an instrument of effective passive defence and will remain so as long as Nato prepares no ground offensive. What makes everything more lamentable is that a thoroughly bad man is being transformed, in public view, into a symbol of stern, even admirable national resistance, by the exercise of the very means that was supposed to topple him from power. Should Nato's air war drag indecisively on, and more of its bombs go astray, a time will come when phrases like "We can take it", "We shall fight them in the hills" and perhaps even "We shall never surrender" will begin to issue from Belgrade. They will sound fine to the Serbs, and perhaps to a wider audience. Who on Nato's side can speak up with a voice of real leadership?
[PEN-L:6697] (Fwd) MISTAKES OF THE BLITZ ARE BEING REPEATED
ts99u-1.cc.umanitoba.ca [130.179.154.224] Tue, 11 May 1999 22:22:44 -0500