Informal Defense Ministerial Toronto, Canada 21 Sept. 1999

Background Briefing by a Senior US Official STAFF: [in progress] who are senior U.S. officials. And I thought it would be useful just to run through what was discussed this morning--it was a very meaty discussion, still going on--and then take your questions on the topics from this morning or other topics as well. So we will start out with you all know who this is… A: This was an important meeting. Because it's an informal meeting, it didn't take any decision-it didn't and won't take any formal decisions-but it does provide an opportunity for the ministers to give a direction to the national delegations and to military authorities and it is the first opportunity that the ministers as a group have had to get together since the Kosovo conflict ended and KFOR went in. The topics as I think you know, were to review the situation in Bosnia and Kosovo and the Balkans generally, to outline the plans for the immediate future, and perhaps most important, to discuss the implications of the lessons learned in the Kosovo operation, both in the air campaign and in the subsequent deployment of KFOR-for what these tell us about requirements to improve the Alliance's military capability. On the Balkans, Admiral Venturoni, the chairman of the Military Committee, gave the overall assessment that the situation is stable but we have to continue to maintain security to build political and economic institutions and to be ready-not so to speak, to rest on our laurels about the relatively good security situation-but to be prepared to possible challenges. With respect to Bosnia specifically, the ministers discussed the proposals that have been made by the military authorities to restructure the force there, which would involve a significant cut in the numbers and somewhat different concepts of operation. As I say, there was no decision made on this, they will be formally considered by the NAC in the future. But the concept is to implement these reductions, which will carry on the pattern which we've seen over a number of years, of steady restructuring of the force as the situation improves in general. With respect to KFOR, first of all obviously there was a fair amount of discussion of the agreement which was reached yesterday in Pristina between the UCK and the UN and the KFOR leaders on the one hand. And in general, I think it is fair to say that the Allies are pleased with this result. This marks not only the completion of the demilitarization required under the agreement with the UCK and the undertakings taken right after the bombing stopped, but the beginning of a process of transforming the UCK from essentially a gorilla army out of being that and into a number of other roles- importantly including providing, at least probably, the majority of the people who will be in this new Kosovo protection corps. That force will operate as a civilian organization to do things like disaster assistance, providing for humanitarian assistance when necessary. It will not be either a military force or a law enforcement force as such. It will operate under the overall political authority of the United Nations mission and under the day-to-day direction of the KFOR commander. The agreement, which has been extensively reported by now, has sharp limits on the number of people who will be involved and particularly on the issue of their access to weapons. Symbolically, it's very important that the organization, in addition to having a new name, will have new uniforms with a new patch. And it represents the determination of the Alliance and the United Nations authorities in Kosovo to work with the UCK and other elements that are objectively important factors in the community there. But to work with them in ways that are consistent with transforming Kosovo into a place which is under democratic and representative rule and is a safe place for all the people who want to stay in Kosovo, both people who are ethnically Albanian and people who are not. The force will be recruited individually and is to be broadly represented by the ethnic composition of the province. Then there was also discussion of the immediate situation. It was agreed that it is too early to discuss changes in the force composition overall in KFOR-that is something for the future when we are more confident that the present, quite good, security situation will be maintained. There obviously are challenges to that-localized violence-but in general the situation is improving. And then there was a detailed discussion of the military lessons to which both the Chairman of the Military Committee and General Clark as SACEUR briefed and reviewed essentially the strengths of the Alliance and the weaknesses of the Alliance and there were both. I think it is fair to say that there were no great surprises in where we have found problems-there are areas which we've known about for a long time. There are also areas where we know there have been successes-the ability of the Alliance to maintain its solidarity during the campaign, the fact that the campaign was carried out at a very high level of professionalism and skill so that a decisive military result was achieved within a relatively short period of time-certainly long for the people doing it and living through it, but short on an absolute scale. That the command arrangements where 19 countries had to agree to support an operation and indeed where importantly where partner countries who were not members of the Alliance had to support [this operation]. The shortcomings are in areas that we have known about. The strategic lift, fueling arrangements, logistic support, engineers, command and control--including secure communications. The very heavy pressure that was put on intelligence and surveillance and reconnaissance assets and the very high importance of precision guided munitions so that we were able to strike the targets we wanted to strike and deal with the difficulties of conducting operations in adverse weather conditions and where the adversary was practicing a variety of deception and denial techniques, including such things as putting military targets in immediate proximity to civilian targets. These shortcomings link very directly to the Defense Capabilities Initiative, which will be the main topic of discussion this afternoon where the five areas of principal focus are mobility, sustainability, effective engagement of command and control and survivability. So that's an overview of what was discussed in the meeting this morning and subject to any observations that my colleague here wants to make, I would be glad to take questions. Q: Was there no discussion of DCI this morning? A: There was discussion in the sense that many people made the point that there was a link to the DCI from the lessons learned, but the topic as such will be discussed this afternoon. I think there is a recognition that after the initiative was launched, there has in fact been a lot of very detailed work. And one reason that the gentleman about four rows back is here, if some of you want to ask highly specific technical questions, there are answers to those, but he is the one who knows them. And those issues will be discussed this afternoon. In particular, what we are trying to do, is to tee up a series of very concrete decisions to be made, to be ready to be made, in December that will set precise targets for what needs to be done. Q: Have any ministers raised questions or raised warnings that perhaps their leaders back home at the political level, their legislatures, are not ready to spend this money? A: Well, you have raised an important issue. This is not fundamental. This is not the days of Bob Komer and 3%, for some of you with very long memories. This is not about trying to get large-scale increases in defense spending. I do think it is the case that it's going to be very hard to do the kind of changes that need to be done in a context of sharply reduced defense budgets. The conclusion the United States has come to-and I think ought to be the conclusion across the board for the Alliance, always subject to specific factors and specific problems-is that the time, which ran almost a decade, when it was appropriate to reduce overall defense spending in the downsizing and the winding down from the cold war period, that time is over now. We need at a very minimum to maintain real defense spending levels and probably in some areas to make increases. But the whole focus of the [Defense] Capabilities Initiative is spending money smarter and more focused on things that are most relevant to the tasks the Alliance is going to have in the future. People have different exact numbers here. But the Italian prime minister, I think, is the one who pointed out that the European allies collectively spend something like 60 or 70% as much money on defense as the United States. It's hard to argue that they get 60 or 70% usable military capability out of that investment. This is not something the United States is imposing on our allies. The theme of all of the big defense reviews that have been conducted in Britain, in France, in several of the smaller allies and now underway in Germany, is precisely on this issue-they need to transform their militaries from essentially territorial defense forces aimed at what was the highest priority, the right place to emphasize, the highest priority during the cold war, which was to resist a direct attack on national territory, and towards the kinds of problems they're likely to face in the future, which Kosovo very much exemplifies. And the fundamental point is that Kosovo was a high intensity military operation. This is not an issue of preparing for peacekeeping or other kinds of low-end activities. It involved a sustained air campaign; it in fact involved a substantial deployment, happily without resistance, but a substantial deployment of ground forces over a relatively short period of time. And it could have involved ground combat operations, even before or after the cease-fire. Q: Given the 58 items that the DCI has identified, and the fact that a number of the larger European states seem to be deciding to pay for their Kosovo deployments out of their procurement budgets, although I know they haven't made the decision yet… A: Some have, some haven't. Q: No… A: …One of the things I've learned in this job is not to inquire to closely into the budgeting practices of foreign countries. I find it hard enough to understand our own. Q: Do you think they're going to be able to make the investments over the next three to five years to actually meet the DCI benchmarks? A: I suppose, as with most things in life, we won't be entirely successful on every front. But I think there is a very strong commitment to do what needs to be done, to make the changes in allocation and priorities, that will be entailed. So I think the will is there. As I say, there are specific countries that have-I guess all countries have fiscal problems, there are some that have more urgent ones than others-but I think, there is a strong sense that the Alliance needs to do this because the national interests of the countries involved require that it be done. A: There's an added factor here that's hopefully going to provide an additional motivation to the Europeans, which is their own self-declared ambitions to develop a stronger European defense identity in the wake of the Amsterdam treaty to give the European Union more of a defense dimension. Encouragingly, at least so far, there is an increasing accent in their own debates on capabilities, the British and the French, and the Italians now as well--there was an Anglo-Italian initiative a few months ago-are all putting the accent on providing the capabilities to give some real credibility to this concept, and not dwell exclusively on institutions. So we hope that this is not short-lived. Minister Robertson this morning pointed out another one of these good anecdotal pieces of evidence to hopefully motivate them when he said that in Kosovo and Bosnia together they have about 2% of the total ground forces that they have on paper; yet it's 98% of what they have that's deployable. So he said 'what are we spending on the other 98% of the forces, and shouldn't we be doing better with the money we have to get more deployable forces for our money.' Q: To go back to these lessons that weren't very surprising to you that General Clark talked about in Kosovo-could you review them for us, what were these military lessons that you learned from Kosovo? A: I tried to at least [inaudible]. First of all, there are some affirmative lessons. There are things that actually worked well. The Alliance held together; the command structure, although cumbersome, worked and was able to produce rapid decisions when they needed to be made, which were necessary for the political consensus of the Alliance to continue to support the operation. And the operation was, in fact, successful. Nobody at the beginning had any expectation at all we could complete this operation without losing a single person in the Alliance military forces to enemy action. It's simply not true that we expected that this would be, from the point of view of the NATO military, a bloodless operation. That it was was a remarkable accomplishment. And it was also highly effective. It was highly effective both the strategic and at the tactical level in that it produced very heavy damage to both the deployed forces and to strategic targets, things like power systems. And it was successful at the strategic level in that it produced an agreement that was strictly and rapidly implemented by the Serbs to pull entirely out of Kosovo. So in that sense, it was successful. Many of the things worked well. For example, in the past-during the second World War, it was better than average if the bombs from the airplane fell within a mile of the target. During this war, it was better than average-a better than average chance that the weapons would actually hit the targets at which they were aimed. The hit rate was in the 50% range. And that's an extraordinary accomplishment, and it shows the effectiveness of the precision guided munitions and of the application of intelligence to that [inaudible]. Now, as to some of the areas where there were shortfalls: There's no question that strategic lift-both air and sea lift-remains a problem. Some important logistics issues-field provision, supply of a multinational force across substantial distances where you've got different country's forces with different logistics requirements. There are particular areas of engineers for example, where there were shortfalls where more was required. It is clear-and this is something which I think showed up very dramatically-in any military operation, there's an infinite demand for intelligence. You can never have enough and timely enough information about where the enemy is, what the situation on the ground is. But it is clear that the so called ISR resources-Intelligence, Surveillance and Reconnaissance-were very heavily stressed, and that they come overwhelmingly from the United States. I made the point about the effectiveness of PGMs. Obviously the PGMs are only effective to the extent that countries have PGMs to use. We found ourselves that the demand for certain weapons was very high. We didn't' significantly deplete our stocks except in two areas. One was CALCMS, where there are only a limited number made. And one was JDAMS, where they were just coming in to the inventory, and we tripled production rate during the course of the war to basically stay even, and that inventory is building up rapidly. But one of the things we learned is that in a conflict like this, it's not politically sustainable in the long run for one ally to have to bear as much of the burden of actually delivering the ordinances. A lot of Allied aircraft flew, a lot of Allied air crew and pilots were at just as much at risk as the American air crew and pilots because they were in the area, they were subject to being shot at and were frequently shot at-unsuccessfully, thankfully. But in terms of effectiveness [inaudible], it is not sustainable, it's not right that such a high percentage of the ordinance actually dropped came from the United States. I think that summarizes the main areas that General Clark identified. STAFF: Any more questions? Yes, in back, Jim? Q: On the Kosovo protection force…the Russians and the Serbs have both complained that in spite of the limits on weapons and access to weapons and limits on the number of people, that this force will remain a threat to Serbs. What reassurances can you give to the skeptical Serbs and Russians on this issue? A: I think there are a number of reassurances. Obviously, as with anything else, implementation and actual conduct is critical. But in terms of what the unit is set up to do, first of all it's not authorized-it can't do anything without the approval at an oversight level of the UN authorities and at the tactical day to day operational level of the KFOR authorities. Second, its mission not only is not military, but it's not even law enforcement. There will be in parallel a Kosovo police force which is being trained and recruited. And that will have law enforcement duties, but this force will not have law enforcement responsibilities at all. Third, on the issue which is understandably sensitive about access to arms-the arms will be maintained in KFOR secured facilities; the people running the Kosovo protection corps will have access to them in the sense that they can physically go in and check them and maintain them. But they will only be issued pursuant to the permission of the KFOR commanders, and only 200 will be issued apart from things like decommisioned bold action rifles for ceremonial guards and weapons for body guards and that kind of stuff. The arms will only be issued to 200 people out of the force depending how you count. Well, 3,000 active and 2,000 reserve. So the agreement which has been accepted by the people who are UCK commanders and who will be subject to good behavior, but commanders of this force-the agreement provides very strict limitations on what the unit can do and how it can do it. In addition to the proposition, it is not to be an exclusive Albanian ethnic force. It will be recruited individually. It should be representative, and Serbs will be free to participate. And the expectation is that the force will be representative of ethnic [makeup] of the population. Q: I know you want to get out of here, if I could just ask briefly what you meant as far as politically sustainable as far as one country dropping most of the ordinances. I guess what you meant by that would be politically sustainable in the U.S.? The Europeans are perfectly happy… A: I don't think that's right. If I were a European, I would be troubled by the fact. It's not a question of risk taking. European aircraft were up there, every night, in very large numbers. Broadly, about half the strike sorties were American and half were European. If I were European, I would be just as troubled that I had us putting pilots at risk and spending a lot of taxpayers money to maintain these aircraft in the force, and yet they were not as effective as the intelligent application of technology would allow them to be. That's obviously a problem from the American point of view too, but I don't think it's just an American point, that the other senior official made, about the European interest in the European capability. It is easy, even as an American, I think, to see why as a European you would want to say this is an operation which was big and difficult but not the second or third world war-that Europe needs to have the capacity to do an operation, at least to make a big significant contribution to such an operation. Staff: Thank you very much.