Word: nato
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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That was abundantly clear Saturday night as the world ogled the burning wreckage of the F-117A, a plane that more than any other symbolized the nation's technical and strategic superiority. Before the attack, Pentagon planners estimated NATO would lose 10 planes in the initial wave of strikes. President Clinton warned the nation that the conflict was not without risks. But NATO skated around those risks so effortlessly at first that it was possible to hope for a war without costs. Even amid the relief at the pilot's rescue, it was difficult to retain that illusion...
...hard to overstate how remarkable and surprising to most people this war in the name of peace is. On the eve of its 50th birthday, NATO, a defensive alliance founded to protect Western Europe from Soviet invasion, has struck hard at a sovereign state that is not a threat to the allies. Without a specific U.N. Security Council authorization, NATO is intervening in a civil war, a war of secession, to halt the cruelty with which it is being fought--especially by the Serbs. In the process, the allies run the risk that their attacks might increase the level...
...this is only the start of a three-stage campaign that could last several weeks. As allied bombs continue to fall on the Yugoslav air-defense network, NATO will increasingly go after the tanks, artillery and armored vehicles the Serbs are using to demolish villages in Kosovo. In Phase Two, the allied pilots will focus on hitting the Serb forces spreading carnage inside Kosovo and staging just north of the province...
...campaign continues into the third phase--and the allies will have to vote on that--NATO planes would attack military targets in every part of Serbia. How the adventure turns out hangs precariously on the decisions of Milosevic. Will he buckle under or hunker down? Or will he lash out with his carefully hoarded missiles and planes to fracture the still fragile NATO alliance? The bombing would stop if he were to phone in his agreement to a truce and enforceable autonomy for Kosovo. If he doesn't, no one is quite clear about how this drama will...
...satisfaction and can-do spirit coming from NATO headquarters and the Clinton Administration, there are signs that even Phase One did not go as well as the planners had hoped. The main objective in the opening round was to destroy as many as possible of Serbia's 1,000 surface-to-air missiles and almost 2,000 antiaircraft guns, making the air safer for the planes that will later go sniffing after tanks and artillery. Milosevic's air-defense system is, as NATO commanders keep insisting, "state of the art." But he and his lieutenants have not been cooperating with...