Archive-Name: gov/us/fed/congress/record/1999/nov/05/1999CRS14078A
[Congressional Record: November 5, 1999 (Senate)]
[Page S14078-S14080]
From the Congressional Record Online via GPO Access [wais.access.gpo.gov]
[DOCID:cr05no99-110]
TESTIMONY OF GENERAL KLAUS NAUMANN
Mr. LEVIN. Mr. President, yesterday the Armed Services Committee
received testimony from recently-retired German General Klaus Naumann,
the former Chairman of NATO's Military Committee. In that capacity,
General Naumann was NATO's highest ranking military officer and headed
the NATO organization which consists of the Chiefs of Defense, i.e. the
Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff General Hugh Shelton and his
counterparts, of all 19 NATO countries and to which NATO's Supreme
Allied Commander, Europe, General Wesley Clark, and Supreme Allied
Commander, Atlantic, Admiral Harold Gehman, report.
The topic for the hearing was lessons learned from NATO's Operation
Allied Force, the air campaign against the Federal Republic of
Yugoslavia.
Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that a copy of General
Naumann's opening statement be printed in the Record immediately
following my remarks.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.
(See Exhibit 1.)
Mr. LEVIN. I hope that my colleagues will read General Naumann's
thoughtful, straight-forward, and insightful statement. But, I want to
highlight a few of General Naumann's conclusions--conclusions with
which I agree and whose implications I believe merit careful
consideration by us all.
First and most importantly, General Naumann concluded that ``it was
the cohesion of our 19 nations which brought about success.'' In the
course of the hearing, he pointed out that this cohesion was maintained
despite the fact that, for example, polls indicated that some 95
percent of Greek citizens opposed the operation.
General Naumann also concluded that ``it will be virtually impossible
to use the devastating power of modern military forces in coalition
operations to the fullest extent'' but that this disadvantage ``is
partly compensated by the much stronger political impact a coalition
operation has as compared to the operation of a single nation.'' In
that regard, I asked General Naumann for his reaction to a lesson that,
I believe, applies. The lesson is not that we ought to use less than
decisive force but that if that is not an option, then the judgment
that must be made is whether or not the risk in utilizing what I call
``maximum achievable force,'' i.e. the maximum force that is
politically achievable and which is less than decisive force, whether
the risk involved outweighs the value of proceeding. General Naumann,
as General Clark did in a prior hearing, agreed that it was a lesson
learned from NATO's air campaign and that the question or balancing
test that I posed was the proper one.
General Naumann had a number of other lessons and sage advice for us,
such as that the United States should fully support the European
Security and Defense Identity (ESDI) within the Alliance and that ESDI
can strengthen the transatlantic link. Once again, I strongly urge my
colleagues to read General Naumann's statement.
Exhibit 1
Statement of General (ret) Klaus Naumann, German Army, Former Chairman
NATO, MC
(Senate Armed Services Committee Hearing on Kosovo After-Action Review,
November 3, 1999)
Mr. Chairman, Senator Levin, Distinguished Senators, it is
my honour and indeed a privilege to testify in the Senate
Armed Forces Committee on the lessons learnt from Kosovo. I
would like to congratulate you, Mr. Chairman, and your
colleagues on your effort to review the operation. I feel
this is wise and farsighted since the next crisis will come,
for sure, although I am unable to predict when and where.
I will discuss first the lessons learnt during the crisis
management phase, then the air campaign until the day on
which I left NATO, i.e., May 6, 1999 and end with a few
conclusions.
With your indulgence I would like to start with a brief
remark on the Military Committee (MC) which seems to be a
largely unknown animal in the United States of America.
The MC consists of the Chiefs of Defense (CHOD) of all NATO
countries and an Icelandic Representative of equivalent rank.
The Strategic Commanders (SC), i.e. SACEUR and SACLANT,
participate in the MC meetings. The meetings are chaired by
an elected chairman who has served as CHOD of a NATO country
and who is NATO's highest ranking military officer.
The MC meets three times a year and in its permanent
session in which the CHODs/Commanders are represented by a
permanent representative of three or two star rank once a
week as a minimum. SACEUR and SACLANT report to the MC and
through it to the Secretary General and the North Atlantic
Council (NAC).
The MC is the source of ultimate military advice for the
NAC and it has to translate the Council's guidance into
strategic directives for the two SCs.
The MC played a crucial role during the Kosovo Crisis in
keeping the NATO nations together. It was in the MC where the
OPLANs were discussed and finalized in such a way that a
smooth passage in the NAC was guaranteed and during the war
the MC acted as the filter which helped to stay clear of
micromanagement of military operations. It is my firm belief
that this helped to avoid potentially divisive debates and it
allowed SACEUR to concentrate on his superbly executed task
to conduct the operation.
The Kosovo War itself deserves careful analysis for a
couple of reasons.
It was after all the first coalition war fought in Europe
in the information age, fought and won by a coalition of 19
democratic nations who did neither have a clearly defined
common interest in Kosovo nor did they perceive the events in
Kosovo as a clear and present danger to anyone of them. They
fought eventually for a principle that is dear to all of
them, the principles that Human Rights ought to be respected.
They thus demonstrated that this is more important for them
than the principle of territorial integrity which has
governed International Law since the Westphalian Peace of
1648. This coalition fought without a clear cut mandate by
the UNSC in a situation which was not a case of self defense
and it stayed together and on course throughout the 78 days
of the air campaign. It was the first war ever which at the
first glance was brought to an end by the use of airpower
alone. But it would be premature and indeed wrong to conclude
from that that future conflicts could be fought and won from
the distance by the use of airpower. One could say that
only if we had clear evidence that it were the results of
the campaign which made Milosevic eventually blink. That,
however cannot be said by anyone on our side.
In my view the war proved once again the seasoned
experience that we military will do best if we plan and fight
joint operations and that it would be a deadly illusion to
believe that the Revolution in Military Affairs will allow us
to fight a war without any casualties.
What lessons did we learn during the Crisis Management
Phase of the conflict?
Allow me to start with the rather straightforward statement
that we could have done better in crisis management since we
simply did not achieve what has to remain the ultimate
objective of crisis management, namely to avoid an armed
conflict. I do not know whether we ever had a fair chance to
achieve it since Milosevic wanted to solve the
[[Page S14079]]
Kosovo problem once and for all in spring 1999. He saw
presumably no alternative but force and violence after the
Kosovars took advantage of the Serb withdrawal which General
Clark and I had negotiated on October 25, 1998. Nobody knows
when he took his decision but I have reasons to believe that
it was in November 1998 and it was most probably a decision
to not only annihilate the KLA but also to expell the bulk of
the Kosovars in order to restore an ethnic superiority of the
Serbs. One point has to be made with utmost clarity in order
to destroy one of the myths the Serbs are about to create: It
was not NATO's air campaign which started the expulsion of
the Kosovars. It began well before the first bomb was dropped
and it might have been the result of a carefully premeditated
plan.
NATO began to be seized with the situation in Kosovo in
early 1998. Again the background of the fighting in Kosovo in
spring 1998 NATO ministers expressed their concern at their
meetings in Luxembourg and Brussels and began to threaten the
use of force in an attempt to stop violence and to bring the
two sides to the negotiation table. NATO Defense Ministers
decided in June to underpin that threat by a demonstrative
air exercise although the NATO military had advised ministers
that NATO as such was not ready to act and that any use of
military instruments made only sense if there were the
preparedness to see it through and to escalate if necessary.
Milosevic who was never unaware of NATO deliberations
rightly concluded that the NATO threat was a bluff at this
time and finished his summer offensive which led to a clear
defeat of the KLA. My first lesson learnt for future crisis
management is therefore that one should not threaten the use
of force if one is not ready to act the next day. To achieve
this is difficult in a coalition in which the slowest ship
determines the speed of the convoy.
The responsibility for crisis management did not rest with
NATO throughout the crisis. NATO began but then the US took
the lead and introduced Ambassador Holbrook to be followed by
the OSCE and eventually the Contact Group. When the Contact
Group, not surprisingly, failed at Rambouillet and Paris NATO
was given back the baton but there was no peaceful solution
left. My second lesson learnt is that one should never change
horses midstream in crisis management. Whenever possible the
responsibility should remain in one hand, preferably in the
hands of those who have the means to act. As a minimum one
has to make sure that those who have the lead in crisis
management efforts of a coalition share the objectives the
coalition is committed to.
Another time seasoned experience gained during our
successful efforts to prevent a war during the days of the
Cold War is that one of the keys to success is to preserve
uncertainty in our opponent's mind on the consequences he
might face in the case of his rejection of peaceful
solutions. NATO nations did not pay heed to that experience
during the Kosovo Crisis. It became most obvious when NATO
began to prepare for military options but some NATO nations
began to rule out simultaneously options such as the use of
ground forces and did so, without any need, in public. This
allowed Milosevic to calculate his risk and to speculate that
there might be a chance for him to ride the threat out and to
hope that NATO would either be unable to act at all or that
the cohesion of the Alliance would melt away under the public
impression of punishing airstrikes. My third lesson learnt is
therefore that we need to preserve uncertainty as one of the
most powerful instruments of crisis management which does not
mean to agree to an escalation ladder without limits and
without rigid political control but which means not to speak
in public about these limits. To keep publicly all options
under consideration and to allow the military to go ahead
with planning for joint operations would allow for
uncertainty without the hands of politicians being tied.
During the air campaign we had to learn some lessons as
well.
First we learnt that even a tiny ambiguity in the
formulation of political objectives could have adverse
effects on military operations.
The OPLANs for Operation Allied Force had been developed in
fall 1998. Both ingredients, the Limited Air Response and the
Phased Air Operation had been designed to meet the objective
to bring Milosevic back to the negotiation table. When we
began the air strikes, however, we faced an opponent who had
accepted war whereas the NATO nations had accepted an
operation. Consequently it seems advisable to set a political
objective such as ``To impose our will on the opponent and to
force him to comply with our political demands''. This would
allow, first, to use all the elements of power not just the
military means to secure our objectives and, secondly, to
move as rapidly as possible to the decisive use of force
within the political constraints which drive a coalition war.
Translated into military operations this would not change
phases 0 and 1 of Operation Allied Force but it would lead to
a phase 2 which focuses more and earlier on those targets
which hurt a ruler such as Milosevic and which constitute the
pillars on which his power rests, namely the police, the
state controlled media and those industries whose barons
provide the money which allows Milosevic to stay in power.
Secondly, we had to learn how to conduct coalition
operations which is of particular interest since most if not
all of our future operations will most likely be coalition
operations. Coalition operations mean to accept that the pace
and the intensity of military operations will be determined
by the lowest common denominator and that there will be
restrictions due to differing national legislation which
could affect air operations in particular. Consequently it
will be virtually impossible to use the devastating power of
modern military forces in coalition operations to the fullest
extent. This is a lasting disadvantage which is on the other
hand partly compensated by the much stronger political impact
a coalition operation has as compared to the operation of an
individual nation.
Looking at Operation Allied Force it is fair to say that
the politicians of all NATO nations met most of our military
demands and most of them did not embark on micromanagement of
military operations. In this context I have to state that the
NAC never imposed a limitation which ruled out to bomb any
target in Montenegro. On the contrary, the NAC explicitly
accepted that we could strike targets on Montenegrin soil if
they posed a risk to our forces. I also have to say that the
gradualism of the air campaign was much more caused by the
political objective which soon saw revision against the
background of the dynamically unfolding situation than it was
influenced by politically motivated interference.
My lesson learnt from that is that coalition operations
will by definition see some gradualism and possibly some
delays in striking sensitive targets. The likelihood that
this could happen will be the more restricted the clearer the
political objectives will be formulated. Coalition operations
do, however, not mean that nations can block or veto any
operation which is conducted in execution of a NAC approved
and authorized Oplan. The only option open to a nation in
such a case is to instruct its national contingent not to
participate in the respective activity unless the nation
would wish to formally withdraw its agreement to the Oplan.
It is also noteworthy to state in this context that there are
no NATO procedures which could be called a red card rule.
Kosovo taught also and again that NATO's force structure is
in contrast to NATO's Integrated Command Structure no longer
flexible and responsive enough to react quickly and
decisively to unforeseen events. That we saw when Milosevic
accelerated his expulsion of the Kosovars in an obvious
attempt to counter NATO in an assymetric response and to
deprive NATO of its theoretical launching pad for ground
forces operations through a destabilization of FYROM and
Albania. Luckily we still had the Extraction Force in FYROM
and were thus able to react immediately. Without it, it would
have taken NATO weeks to deploy and assemble an appropriate
force. The lesson learnt is that we have increasingly to be
prepared for assymetric response, the more so the stronger
and hence invincible NATO is. To cope with these threats will
be necessary and hence it is critical for NATO's future
successes to enhance mobility, flexibility and deployability
of its forces which are inadequate at this time.
The NATO Summit drew the right conclusion and agreed the
DCI and the European allies did the same when they decided in
Cologne that the EU has to improve defense. My next lesson
learnt is that there is a totally unacceptable imbalance
of military capabilities between the US and its allies,
notably the Europeans. With no corrective action taken as
a matter of urgency there will be increasing difficulties
to ensure interoperability of allied forces and
operational security could be compromised. Moreover, it
cannot be tolerated that one ally has to carry on an
average some 70%, in some areas to 95% of the burden. This
imbalance needs to be redressed and therefore ESDI which
is after all an attempt to improve European efforts within
NATO deserves the full support of the US and should be
used to encourage those allies who are reluctant to
implement to live up to their commitments.
What conclusions can be drawn? (1) The integrated Command
Structure worked well. What needs to be improved are
procedures to achieve unity of command to be exercised by
NATO there where parallel existing national and NATO command
arrangements are unavoidable. (2) There is a need to think
through how crisis management can be improved. Simulation
technics may be a helpful tool to be considered. (3) There is
an urgent need to close the two gaps which exist today
between the US and the European/Canadian allies. The
technological gap in the field of C 41 and the capability gap
caused by the lack of investment in modern equipment. The DCI
is designed to provide some remedy. It should be speedily
implemented and the European/Canadian allies should be
strongly encouraged to take appropriate action. (4) There is
a need to study how NATO can perform better in the field of
Information Operations to include better information of the
public both in NATO countries and in the adversary's country.
(5) Most importantly, it can and it should be said that
Operation Allied Force was a success since it contributed
substantially to achieve the political aims set by the
Washington Summit.
It would be desirable that NATO stated simultaneously that
the Alliance will act again should the necessity arise. To do
so could help to deter potential opponents and could possibly
restrain the one or the other ruler in this world to seek
protection against
[[Page S14080]]
intervention through increased efforts to acquire weapons of
mass destruction.
I would be remiss did I not close by commending the
commanders from SACEUR down the chain of command, our forces
in the theatre and those back home who supported them so
splendidly. They all performed extremely well and you have
every reason to be proud of them and your great nation's
contribution.
Allow me to close by saying that I was proud to serve this
unique Alliance as the Chairman of the Military Committee in
such a crucial time and I felt privileged to serve with a man
whose superb contribution was crucial for our common success,
Javier Solana. This brings me to my final point which we
should never forget: It was the cohesion of our 19 nations
which brought about success.
Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Alaska.
Mr. MURKOWSKI. I thank the Chair.
____________________
