[Congressional Record Volume 145, Number 155 (Friday, November 5, 1999)]
[Senate]
[Pages S14078-S14080]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                   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.

                          ____________________