War over kosovo in comparison to Keegan's book: a history of warfare - Essay Example

Other books will also be put into consideration. The war over Kosovo was a one sided affair. From March 29 to June 9, 1999, the NATO alliance, led by the world's only superpower, waged war on a lone republic in an already conflict-ridden region. The combined population of NATO's 19 countries exceeded Serbia's 11 million people by a factor of 65. NATO's annual defence budget was 25 times larger than Serbia's entire economy. Its armed forces outnumbered Serbia's by a factor of 35. The big news: NATO won.

(Biddle, 1) The NATO air strikes against Yugoslavia beginning on March 24, 1999 did not occur in a vacuum but rather followed ten years of regional conflict and aggression inspired and orchestrated by Yugoslav President Slobodan Milosevic (Ruga and Mertus, 1). One of NATO’s main strategies was to gain and maintain air superiority, put pressure on the Serb leadership by attacking those fielded forces in Kosovo as well as other leadership and high priority targets throughout the country, and then to degrade the Serb military capabilities to conduct offensive operations (Cohen, 6).

The first major issue discussed by Cohen in his book ‘War over Kosovo’ is the dispute of Army General Wesley Clark and Air Force Lieutenant General Michael over targets that should be bombed first. The choice was between the Yugoslav forces or the other targets in the Belgrade area. The second major issue was Cohen convincingly arguing that the circumstances of the post-Cold War era, including casualty phobia among American political and military elites and the emergence of failed states as the primary threat to international stability, have conspired to render obsolete the traditional American way of war based on extreme aggressiveness, the quest for decisive battle, and antipathy toward political ambiguity and interference (Record, 1).

Cohen discusses and answers these issues in an amazing way. The first dispute stemmed in part from the monstrous mismatch between Allied Force's overriding political objective of halting Serbian ethnic cleansing on the ground and the selection of "safe"-altitude air power as the means to achieve that objective (Record, 1). Cohen mentioned that the NATO forces reasoned out that it would not be wise to open the war with a desert storm-style all-out air assault on Belgrade. So they chose to enter the war progressively and strategically, step by step.

The second issue took into effect that Americans traditional way of war was at risk of being extinct. This being so because the Americans wanted to avoid losing casualties, which an extremely aggressive style of war would surely bring. Cohen responds to this issue by noting that the main reason they chose to avoid the aggressive method, is not because they were afraid of losing casualties, but rather, they were concerned with the Yugoslavian people. They wanted to avoid a blood-bath. This is the reason why we could see that, civilian casualties in the opening days of the war were in-fact kept extremely low (Cohen, 12).

Keegan does a good job of relating that war through the centuries has gone through a series of transition. A transition that benefits the people that favour war, but it does not benefit the common civilian who knows very well that he will be the recipient of whatever merciless the weapons of the future will be. Keegan agrees with Cohen’s notion that the style of war is determined by the leaders of the powers that fight the war. The common soldier may want to fight in a certain way, but