WHAT POLITICAL AND MILITARY RESPONSES WERE EMPLOYED BY SLOBODAN MILOSEVIC TO OVERCOME NATO AIR SUPERIORITY DURING THE KOSOVO CAMPAIGN?

WHAT POLITICAL AND MILITARY RESPONSES WERE EMPLOYED BY SLOBODAN MILOSEVIC TO OVERCOME NATO AIR SUPERIORITY DURING THE KOSOVO CAMPAIGN?

On 10 June 1999, Slobodan Milosevic sued for peace after 78 days of NATO bombardment from the air, and before any significant number of NATO ground troops had set foot on Kosovan or Serbian soil. In the previous March, the Serbian leader had chosen to go to war with the largest, most powerful military alliance on the planet, in the full knowledge that he would be on the wrong side of a massive mismatch in combat power in general, and air power in particular. Although very little prime source material from within Serbia is available, it is reasonable to assume that he had a strategy in mind that could have resulted in him prevailing over NATO. What were the elements of this strategy and how successfully were they employed by the Serbians? This essay seeks to use the Kosovo Campaign of 1999 as a case study to analyse the means at a combatants’ di...