A-10s over Kosovo (illustrations removed)

Following the Gulf War, the USAF remained deployed in Southwest Asia, maintained two no-fly zones over Iraq, and responded to sporadic infringements by Saddam Hussein’s remaining forces. Elsewhere, the dissolution of Yugoslavia and the Bosnian Serbs’ ethnic cleansing of Muslims in April of 1992 led to the US military’s involvement with the UN peacekeeping force in Bosnia. Meanwhile famine in war-torn Somalia brought a US military presence to Mogadishu from December 1992 until its hasty withdrawal in May of 1994. In September of 1995, US airpower was again needed. This time Operation Deliberate Force, an 11-day campaign, helped force Serbia to accept the Dayton Peace Accords.[27] By the late ’90s, NATO was convinced that airpower was an effective tool to coerce Slobodan Milosevic, the Serbian president, and that it might be needed to solve the growing unrest in Kosovo. 

Kosovo: Direct Attack of the Serbian Third Army

 Tensions between Belgrade and Kosovo increased during the late 1980s. Slobodan Milosevic used protests by minority Serbs residing in the ethnically Albanian-dominated province as the foundation for his Serbian nationalist platform and his subsequent rise to the Serbian presidency in 1987.[28] By 1989, Belgrade had revoked Kosovo’s status as an autonomous region and placed restrictions on land ownership and government jobs for Kosovo Albanians.

[29] During the 1990s, Kosovar dissension spawned a series of both violent and nonviolent protest.[30] Opposition became violent in 1997 with the formation of a small group of lightly armed guerrilla fighters known as the KLA. In response to KLA ambushes of Serbian police in early 1998, Serbian forces conducted brutal retaliatory attacks against suspected KLA positions.[31] KLA support swelled within Kosovo and led to an escalation of KLA activity. In July of 1998, Serbian forces conducted a village-by-village search for KLA members, displacing over 200,000 Kosovars in the process.[32]

The magnitude of the humanitarian crisis captured the attention of the international community.

In response to the KLA and Serbian exchanges, the UN Security Council passed Resolution 1160 in March 1998 and Resolution 1199 in September 1998. The resolutions condemned Serbia’s excessive use of force, established an arms embargo, and called for an immediate cease-fire and the introduction of international monitors.[33] The latter demand was met in the cease-fire negotiated between US envoys and Belgrade in October 1998.[34]

However, the massacre of 45 Kosovar Albanians at Racak on 19 January 1999 quickly brought the cease-fire to an end.[35] Under threat of NATO air strikes, Serbian and Kosovar representatives were summoned to Rambouillet, France, to negotiate a peace agreement.

[36] The compromise included the key items of a NATO-led implementation force; the recognition of the international borders of the Former Republic of Yugoslavia, made up of Serbia, Montenegro, and Kosovo; and an interim three-year agreement, after which a final settlement of Kosovo could be arranged.[37] The Kosovar delegation initially refused to agree unless reference was made to a future referendum to decide the fate of Kosovo. Under the threat of the withdrawal of international support, including financial and military aid to the KLA, the Kosovar delegates reluctantly signed on 18 March 1999.[38] The Serbs, unwilling to accept a NATO-led military force within Kosovo, remained recalcitrant. In the face of diplomatic impasse, NATO air strikes were ordered to commence on 24 March.

Initial planning for NATO air strikes against Serbia began as early as June of 1998.[39]

Targeting for the strikes focused on fixed command and control and military facilities in Kosovo, Montenegro, and Serbia. These targets were selected for a variety of reasons, one being the low risk of collateral damage.[40] The strikes were intended as the punishment portion of NATO’s coercive carrot-and-stick strategy. The air plan in no way resembled a decisive air campaign, with the initial target list including only 100 targets.[41] Of these, only 50 were eventually approved, sufficient for only two or three nights of strikes.[42] Additionally, the desire to maintain consensus among the 19 NATO countries was reflected in the constrained nature of the strikes.