The Balkan Air War

摘要

It was 10 years ago this month that Slobodan Milosevic, the strongman of Serbia, rejected peace talks and launched a massive, brutal attack on the ethnic Albanian population of Kosovo. This amounted to a direct challenge to NATO, which responded with Operation Allied Force, the air war designed to compel Belgrade to halt its bloody operations.rnAllied Force was poorly planned, launched with a false expectation of quick success, constrained by artificial political limitations, and aimed at a ruthless and despotic leader who was only too determined to absorb the air attacks and fracture the Western alliance with his intransigence. In short, it seemed doomed to fail.