Phase One: The Army’s 18th Airborne Corps, reinforced with additional firepower, tanks and Marines, attacks from Albania. A mixed NATO corps goes in from Macedonia. Campaign plan: sweep through Kosovo on two axes, closing a pincers to trap and destroy Serb forces.
Penetrating Serb border defenses is one of the toughest challenges. The mountainous terrain on the Albania-Kosovo border is infantry country. Because NATO needs two to three months to assemble an invasion force, the Serbs will have had time to dig in. The roads are few and poor, so our armored forces move slowly, and resupply is a problem. Worse, backcountry bridges can’t support heavy U.S. Army tanks.
In the initial assault, U.S. forces maneuver behind air and artillery strikes, aided by special-ops forces and Kosovar Albanians active behind Serb lines. Instead of attacking into prepared defenses, helicopters leapfrog troops behind Serb positions. With the Serbs immobilized and forced to fight in multiple directions, conventional infantry and armored units–supported by combat engineers–breach minefields to open attack corridors. Air and ground firepower devastates enemy strong points. Resistance crumbles.
Phase Two: Once through the border defenses, combat units move swiftly, using helicopter mobility to turn the terrain against the groundbound Serbs. U.S. forces avoid getting bogged down by local resistance, sweeping around trouble spots whenever possible and isolating them–but tough fights occur where settlements or mountain passes block the roads and there’s no choice but to slug it out. Ground forces destroy Serb air defenses, giving pilots a free hand. In turn, air power paves the way for further ground advances. The Serbs–poorly trained conscripts who rely on old equipment–start to panic. White flags and streams of Serb POWs appear.
House to House: The most brutal fighting occurs in the villages and cities where diehard Serb forces hole up–those units with the most innocent blood on their hands. House-to-house combat is not required citywide, but key pockets of resistance must be eliminated. That takes infantrymen with rifles, bayonets and grenades going in through doors, windows and blown-out walls. Fortunately, the Marines have been training for exactly this kind of assault. Still, our forces suffer most of their casualties in urban combat–from enemy units and paramilitary goon squads, but also from booby traps, terrorist attacks and snipers. The “Yuppie war” that began with high-tech hopes of bloodless conflict ends with shoot-outs in darkened cellars, hand-to-hand combat in high-rises and war criminals shooting over the shoulders of human shields–captive women and children.
The Kosovo campaign lasts 30 to 60 days, although broad resistance could collapse much sooner. A few irreconcilables carry on a terror campaign until they are hunted down. Criminals and gunmen on both the Serb and the Kosovar Albanian sides are disarmed to give the rule of law a chance and the returning refugees a fresh start.
We have the troops and technology to defeat the Serbs. What we lack is the political will to do it right–no more halfhearted war-making, as in the air campaign. A timid ground operation begs for casualties and courts failure. We’re in a fight, so let’s fight to win.
