| Interview Lawrence Korb
July 2, 1999
ADM's Glenn Baker interviews
Former Assistant Secretary of Defense, for "Casualty Phobia"
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Ask the Expert: Interview Transcripts
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MR. BAKER: As a military strategy, what did you think of the decision to rely solely on air power in Kosovo?
MR. KORB: Well, I think, from a military point of view, it was a terrible strategy because, by relying only on air power from a very high altitude, you did not stop the ethnic cleansing of the Albanians in Kosovo, and that was one of your purposes of the war. And, because you relied only on air power, some million people were either displaced or had to leave the country.
BAKER: And, some have claimed that this was a moral war that was fought immorally. The principle of non-combatant immunity of just war was kind of reversed to combatant immunity. Do you agree?
KORB: Well, I think it's immoral not to risk casualties on your side when you have a chance. By taking that risk, to prevent innocent civilians from being killed. And, I think that is immoral. You're basically arguing that the life of a person who is on your side is worth so much more than innocent civilians.
BAKER: Why are military people concerned about the precedent set by the Kosovo war with regard to U.S. casualties?
KORB: Well, I think military people are rightly concerned that they set such a high standard from now on that Americans are going to expect every time there's any type of combat situation, there will be no casualties and even a single casualty will be an indication that the mission has failed.
BAKER: Do you think the bar truly has been raised, as they say, and that political pressure for zero casualties will loom over every future mission?
KORB: I don't think the bar has been raised unless we let it be raised. I think American people are willing to bear casualties if they understand the purpose of it. And, I think it's incumbent on our political leadership, particularly the President of the United States, to make sure before he sends men and women in battle that he clearly articulates for the American people the purpose of it, why it's necessary. And, I'm confident that, if the President does that, America will be willing to bear the cost, whether they're financial or whether they're humans. But, if you don't, and then you use military force, Americans will tolerate it as long as the cost, either human or financial, don't get too high.
BAKER: I understand that the Apache helicopter crews were pretty upset by the decision to not use them for fear of losses. What impact is there on the mindset or the ethic of troops, when they're told that their first mission is no casualties?
KORB: I think the idea that American men and women can't risk their lives in combat goes against everything that the military stands for. The men and women who volunteer for the military understand that, in order to achieve a greater good, they must place their lives at risk. And, when you are not willing to do that, that goes against everything that they stand for.
We've had two incidents very, very recently where it showed that people wanted to be involved in combat. One was the Apaches who were sent over there. They knew that the risks were great, given the terrain and given the disposition of the Serbian forces. But, they wanted to play their part in stopping their ethnic cleansing.
Similarly, back before Desert Fox, a carrier was withdrawn so the crew could get back into the United States on time, and the pilots were very frustrated because they had been there waiting for the combat to start, and when they had been taken away, they felt that they were not permitted to do their jobs.
So, the problem is not with the men and women of the American military. They're willing to risk their lives in order to accomplish a greater good and that's why they joined the military. The problem is only in the mind of politicians who are afraid to bear the political cost of trying to convince the American people of why it's necessary to use force.
BAKER: Do you think there's a corrosive on, particularly ground forces, when their ethic is turned on its head like that?
KORB: I think, if you tell Americans fighting, and whether it's air, land, or sea, that we're not willing to suffer any casualties and, therefore, we're not going to fight this war in the most military effective way, that that is corrosive to the military ethic and everything that the military stands for. Don't forget, on average, every day during the Cold War, three military people lost their lives in training accidents or trying to maintain the state of readiness that was necessary to convince the Soviet empire that we would not allow them to expand. We have hundreds of helicopter pilots die a year in training operations. And, so, therefore, the fact that a couple of Apache pilots died in training for Kosovo or might have died if you had used them is not something that would have bothered them.
BAKER: Another concern that's been expressed by military officers is that casualties have become the U.S. military's Achilles heal. And, that adversaries will think that they can win if they can just spill some American blood. Do you agree?
KORB: There's no doubt about the fact that leaders, particularly of rogue or outlaw states around the world, think that the United States does worry excessively about the casualties. We know that one of the reasons that Saddam Hussein allowed the Persian Gulf War to start was he thought that the United States would not be able to take a great number of casualties, and there would be a great number of casualties if we had to attack his ground forces. He based that on what happened in Vietnam and Lebanon. We do know that Milosovic thought that we wouldn't send ground forces in because we couldn't stand the casualties and he could withstand the air campaign.
So, if your adversary thinks you can't bear casualties then, in fact, he is probably liable to act much differently than if he thinks if you have a goal, you're willing to do what's necessary to achieve it.
BAKER: That gets me to polls, and you've indicated, I think correctly to me, that the polls have shown that the American public is far more tolerant of U.S. combat casualties than policy elites believe. And, as long as they're convinced of the justification of the mission and also that everything is done, to make sure it results in success, do you think policy makers are overly cautious on the casualty and are unnecessarily handcuffing military strategy?
KORB: I think that policy makers are over cautious on casualty because, over the past decade, the policy makers have not been willing to take their case to the American people. And, that's why they're over cautious. George Bush spent an awful lot of time prior to the Persian Gulf War convincing Americans why it was necessary to evict Saddam from Kuwait. He had a very specific goal, the liberation of Kuwait.
We have not seen President Clinton do that, whether it's been Haiti, Bosnia, or Kosovo. And, because of that, when they haven't convinced the American people, the only way they can conduct this mission is with low casualties, because the American people, and their elected representatives, are quite like, have the right to ask, 'well, why are you doing this, why are you sacrificing our men and women?" So, they're only afraid to risk casualties because they know in their own mind they haven't been able or willing to make the case to the American people.
BAKER: Was that why we left Somalia so quickly after the eighteen rangers died?
KORB: We left Somalia after the eighteen rangers died because the President of the United States had not told the American people that the mission had expanded from the original mission, which was to go in and feed the Somalis, to actually go and institute a change of government by going after Hadid. Because he hadn't told them, they hadn't been paying attention, and they were dumbfounded when this had happened. In fact, the President compounded it because he had held a welcoming home ceremony for the Marines the previous spring, and, for all Americans knew, our mission was over. There was never any discussion about the expansion of that mission.
BAKER: Do you see a connection between waging a successful high technology war and a desire to justify increased military spending?
KORB: I think that the United States should get as much technology as necessary to carry out its missions. But, you're at a point now where, for doubling the technological prowess, you're not going to change the casualty ratio very much at all. The United States has weapons that are so technologically superior to the rest of the world, as was shown in the war in Kosovo, where you bomb for 78 days with literally no casualties, that it doesn't need to keep pushing that technology, pushing it into production. It needs to keep working on it. But, unless the world situation changes dramatically, it doesn't need to go full into production as it did during the Cold War.
BAKER: Many ads in promotional literature such as this for a new fighter aircraft play up the risk of casualties if the aircraft isn't procured. Are defense contractors, and the Air Force, in this case, exploiting public fear of casualties to sell the country new weapons?
KORB: Defense contractors and military people trying to get new weapons are always using the casualty argument. This is not new. It's gained greater emphasis since the end of the Cold War and the whole question of why do we have a military and what it's mission is. But, this goes way back to the whole Cold War period because every time you would want a new weapons system and the civilian ___ and the executive, the legislative will say, well, gee, this would have to be that expensive. You would always be accused of not wanting the best for our men and women and putting lives unnecessarily at risk. And, since we Vietnam, where casualties became an issue as that war dragged on, that argument has been pushed more and more.
BAKER: I had a question about Vietnam, now that you mention it. It's often cited as sort of part of this trend toward limiting casualties. And, do you think the military learned the right lesson out of Vietnam about American public support for war and television and casualties?
KORB: Well, the military learned the lesson that, if we did not have clear objectives and if we did not have the support of the American people, it would be difficult to maintain support for a war that went on for a long time and involved a significant number of casualties. But, the lesson is not just avoiding casualties. The lesson is the political leadership needs to convince the country why the military operation is necessary, and be very honest and up front about what the costs are going to be. Now, that's not something the military can make happen. It's really not up to the military to decide what it is and our national interests if we have to use military force for. But, I think the military has the right to ask the policy makers, what are your objectives, and are you willing to use the force that is necessary to accomplish those objectives.
BAKER: Looking again at Kosovo, in some ways, it seems too good to be true. The United States, a super power, can bring overwhelming force to bear when it chooses, without using ground troops, and, therefore, there's a low risk of casualties. Is there anything wrong with that?
KORB: There's nothing wrong with trying to minimize casualties and using force to accomplish objectives. The problem in Kosovo was that you changed your objectives to conform to the amount of military force that you are prepared to use. After all, if you go back and look at what our objectives were at the beginning of that war, it was to prevent the ethnic cleansing of Kosovo, to protect the innocent civilians. And, since we were not prepared to use ground troops, the ethnic cleansing took place, thousands of people were killed while we were prosecuting this air campaign.
So, you are not prepared to use the force that was necessary to conform to your objectives. What you did was that you modified your objectives as the war went on to conform to the amount of military force that you were willing to use. And, even then, you've got to keep in mind that, eventually, you did get ground troops, they were just not ground troops of NATO. They were ground troops of the Kosovo Liberation Army. And, once they started engaging the Serbian military in battles, then air power was able to play a more effective role.
BAKER: Do you think that this overwhelming capability without paying the price in blood is likely to make the U.S. too prone to resort to military action because they won't have to pay the traditional price in blood?
KORB: I don't think Americans will be too willing to use military force because there still is a very strong concern in this country about using force inappropriately because of what happened in Vietnam and Lebanon and Somalia. And, that's not going to go away anytime soon. There is also, I think, a quite healthy concern among the part of the American people, even for a volunteer military, that men and women do not die for no good reason. And, because of that, I don't think you will see policy makers become trigger happy or think that they can use military force without clear objectives.
BAKER: There's a lot of excitement now among proponents of the revolution in military affairs with SMART bombs and information technology and UAV's coming to the forefront, is there a psychological danger in moving towards a detached antiseptic conception of war?
KORB: There's a psychological danger in moving toward an antiseptic view of war in the sense that you don't realize that things could go much differently than you planned, mistakes can happen, you can underestimate the enemy. I see nothing wrong in exploiting the technology to enable you to accomplish your objectives with the least risk to human beings as you can. The problem is that, if you think that it will all go according to play, you'll get yourself in trouble. When you have a military operation, you have to plan for the worst and hope for the best. If you take a look at what happened in Kosovo, what we did was we not only hoped for the best, we planned for the best. And, when that didn't work, we had no fallback position. Consequently, the war went on much longer than was necessary to achieve the objectives that you did, and thousands of civilians on both sides died who did not have to.
BAKER: Many people looking at that war think, well, the traditional mix of air and ground forces no longer applies. We've reached a level of precision. Was that, in effect, in reality, a war without a ground war?
KORB: The war in Kosovo was not a war without a ground war because the event that eventually led to turning the tide against the Serbs was when the Kosovo Liberation Army, on the ground, started to engage the Serbian military in battles. And, the Serbian military had two choices. Either they came out and engaged the Kosovo Liberation Army, which would make them vulnerable to air power, or they stayed in their hiding places and ceded the territory to the Kosovo Liberation Army. In either case, they would lose. So, you really didn't have an air war in the sense of no ground component. In fact, you had a ground component. It was the Kosovo Liberation Army.
BAKER: Yesterday, I was speaking with Steve Call, the pollster in this building, who came up with what I thought was a fairly novel notion that came from the public about how troops, military personnel should have the option to chose whether or not to participate in certain missions. Do you think there's any future in a concept like that?
KORB: No, I don't think military people should have the choice. Their choice is whether or not to join the military. And, once you do, then you must follow all lawful orders and engage in any war that's decided by our political leaders. That's why we have elections.
The real answer is to make sure that, in presidential campaigns, that the candidates explain how they plan to use the military force and the threats that they see. The problem has been that, in '92 and '96, foreign policy was not an issue. We had no idea of where the candidates stood on these particular issues. In my view, the most important thing that a president does is foreign policy.
In the domestic area, he shares power, not only with the Congress, but with the states. And, he can use the bully pulpit, but he really doesn't have as great an influence as he does in foreign affairs. Because, if the President of the United States wants to use military force, he has the legal, constitutional, and political wherewithal to make that happen. And, there's very little that can be done. And, therefore, that's the issue on which presidential campaigns should be fought so that the men and women joining the military have an idea of how they plan to be used.
BAKER: One last question. On humanitarian interventions. Some of have said -- which inordinately involve ground troops. Some have said that fear of casualties has made us reluctant to undertake aggressive peace making actions that might prevent genocide, such as the one that occurred in Rwanda. Do you think that that's an inappropriate equation for us to have?
KORB: I think if you make a decision that the humanitarian situation current is so horrible that something must be done, you must be prepared to take risks to alleviate that situation. I think what you have to ask yourself is, with your military intervention, will you do more good than harm? I think if you're faced with a situation where you see a horrible humanitarian situation, but if you intervene with air or ground power, you can make the situation worse, then I think you must take a second look at it. But, the idea that you might have to spend a limited number of lives to save thousands or hundreds of thousands, I think, that's a, that's a proper calculation.
BAKER: If I could add one more thing, going back to what you said about the Kosovo Liberation Army's surrogate ground offensive. It seemed to me in watching that war unfold that, for the first sixty days or so, things weren't really progressing. And, suddenly, once the KLA began its offensive, it changed, things resolved very quickly. Without the KLA ground offensive, if it continued as solely an air campaign, how do you think it would have gone?
KORB: Well, there were two events, I think, that led to Mr. Milosovic accepting the GA proposals. And, remember the proposals with the GA, this was the economics groups that, basically, a month into the war, modified the original objectives and said Kosovo, for example, would not be getting dependents, that there could be some Serb presence in Kosovo. There were two events that led him to accept that. One was the fact that the Kosovo Liberation Army was actually out in the field and that his military had a terrible choice. Either cede ground to them, in which case they would lose, or come out and fight them and be subject to American devastating air power. The other event was the fact that the Russians sided with NATO and Milosovic realized that he couldn't rely on the Russians for any type of assistance. And, so the combination of those two events led him to accept the GA proposals seventy-some odd days into the war.
BAKER: Anything else you would like to add on this topic?
KORB: I think that, whenever you're looking at any particular military engagement, whether it goes well or does not go well, you have to be very careful about the lessons that you draw. Because, very rarely the situations repeat themselves exactly. I saw people during the Kosovo situation talk about, this is another Vietnam. Completely different from Vietnam because, in Vietnam, you had a very effective North Vietnamese military. There was tremendous support in South Vietnam for Ho Chi Min and the communists. You did not have that situation. I saw people comparing it even to Bosnia, and that was completely different because, in Bosnia, the relationship between Bosnia and Serbia was much different than the relationship between Kosovo and Serbia.
So, while you must learn lessons, I think you have to be careful not to over-learn them. Because, if you over-learn them, you're bound to re-fight the last war and that usually is not the way to go.
BAKER: Mr. Korb, thank you very much.
KORB: Thank you.
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