1999 Nato invades Kosovo?

Sure if NATO went in seriously, as in 1983. Fulda Gap seriously (and as brutally), or as previously mentioned Wermacht did in '41. they would have won without any doubts. First, that would have required deploying a significant number of divisions, not just a couple of fast strike brigades. Second, that scenario would have seen hundreds of thousands of Serbian military dead and maybe up to tens of thousands of dead civilians. Could have Yeltsin showed it all under the carpet and stayed in power? Maybe, maybe not.

Our best hope was that in such scenario Russia and China would react somehow in our defense, at least diplomatically. We believed that world's hypocrisy would have to come to a end when a "humanitarian intervention" turns a entire country into scorched earth and leads to death a a few percent of adult male population. To repeat myself. If there was any real ground intervention it would have had to be preceded by vast and comprehensive bombing campaign of entire Serbia (and army forces in Montenegro), and main attack would simply have to be trough Panonian planes from Croatia and Hungary to Belgrade.
Both military and political officials, both supporters and haters of Milosevic were sure in one thing. NATO getting trough Kosovo quick and easy, not going to happen.

In any other scenario, that is NATO troops actually advancing and fighting, and not just claiming ground burnt by artillery and "Linebacker" style and scale bombing raids, people and military were confident we could inflict enough casualties to NATO to force them to disengage.

Remember, this isn't 2001 Iraq that is being attacked in a last ditch attempt to prevent WMD terrorist attacks that will claim hundreds of thousands of American lives. This is a full scale ground invasion on a country that hadn't done anything directly against any NATO country or ally.
We were confident there wasn't a will present in NATO populations to support war that would give them several thousand casualties in first week or two.

And as for worst case scenarios. People had believed NATO was willing to completely destroy our country and decimate us as a people. No one would have been surprised on new of NATO using nukes, we would have been shocked and terrified, but not very surprised. Pro Milosevic people listened to state media reporting of anti Serb propaganda in Western media and of demonization of our nation. People against Milosevic listened to Radio Free Europe and Voice of America emitted in Serbian language and those tried to paint a picture that would make us not want to fight and welcome a end to war. People who had access to Internet or simply had cable or satellite TV that showed CNN and others for (your) domestic use, were horrified to witness that demonization and anti Serb media campaigns were real.
Clinton himself was throwing around completely baseless figures of “500,000 Albanians/Kosovars missing presumed dead”. We were certain that if NATO or just American public fully believed those figures, they wouldn’t be against nuclear strikes if the call came.

Back to original thread. If NATO went full on with bombing in preparation of a massive (as no other would have worked) ground campaign, I fear some factors in Serbia politics were prepared to sacrifice the country to make themselves right and humiliate/hurt USA.

Hypothetical scenario. Chemical weapons are hurriedly improvised in time NATO gathers forces and are used against NATO troops when attack starts. Their effectiveness is mute point, purpose of attack would be to provoke USA to use nuclear weapons in retaliation (per doctrine and official policy) and thereby provoke Russia and China to do something, anything. We were praying that something like that would have caused Yeltsin to be ousted from power. Yes, it would have likely lead to nuclear WWIII. This is the people that celebrates its greatest sacrifices losses and defeats we are talking about. “Choosing kingdom of heaven before that of the earth”.
 

MacCaulay

Banned

I'll be damned...I knew about the attack out of the Rumallah oil fields...and the 73 Easting battle? I didn't know the Iraqis got artillery in on that battle. From what I knew of it, the thing was over and done with in like 20 minutes and Task Force Eagle had walloped the Iraqi brigade before they could get effective resistance up.
That was always a big WI for me. That Iraqi brigade at Rumallah could have done a lot more damage had it been a bit more...well put together. They attacked fairly piecemeal and still held up the entire Marine and Arab Corps attack for a day. (Into the Storm, Clancy)
 

Giladis

Banned
And that's why it took German Army in 1941 grand total of nine days to work over entire Yugoslavia, in situation where German advantages in doctrine, training and equipment were much smaller than NATO advantages over VJ. Remember, VJ has been perhaps the only army in the world to lose four wars within eight years (Slovenia, Croatia, Bosnia, Kosovo).

Germans ran kingdom of Yugoslavia down because it was at that point a state that was not functioning properly. When Germans invaded, most of the units on the western front, made predominantly by Croats and Slovenians chose not to fight and saw Germans as liberators. The units made predominantly by Serbs were also in a rather bad shape, there was a recent coup and clear new lines of command have not yet been fully implemented, and people were not sure who to trust, also the flight of the supreme command rather early on didn't help the situation.

If you want to see what WW II was in the Yugoslavia you should not look at the April war, as it was the final gust of wind that brought an already collapsing house to the ground, but at the fighting that took from June 22nd 1941 to May 15th 1945. That was the real WW II in "Yugoslavia".


What grdja83 said, the Serbs where in a state of mind in 1999 that they were ready to die than accept foreign occupation, should the ground forces moved in. I agree that the Serbian military would have been defeated quite easily but once the official army would be defeated and broken than the real problem for NATO would start, through gerrila paramilitaries and these guys don't make suicide bombers, they sneak around, sharpshoot, lay mines and when opportunity presents itself rush nightcamps and have a little knifeplay.

Also at that time Yugoslavian army still had reserves of Sarin and Mustard gas.

So a direct military ground confrontation would go rather well (should Yugoslavia decide not to use gas) until NATO commanders would declare the Military defeated, then all hell would break lose.
 
Russia moves in to protect Serbia? World War 3?

Yeah, Ukraine, Hungary and Romania (at the very least) will be ever so happy to allow Russian armies taking a help-yourself stroll through their countries... :rolleyes: WWIII because of the 1999 Kosovo conflict ? I say ASB...
 
Possible POD- English troops attack russian troops, occupying Saltina Airbase on 12June 1999

Why would they?
Staring at one another is one thing, starting to shoot at an army unit is quite another. Do you believe the English or the Russians are dumb?
A possibility would be a shot accidentally going off, but modern weapons have precautions against that kind of things.
 
So a direct military ground confrontation would go rather well (should Yugoslavia decide not to use gas) until NATO commanders would declare the Military defeated, then all hell would break lose.

If Serbs really were ready to rather die than to give up the dear province of Kosovo, why didn't that happen in OTL?

Kosovo was not Iraq. Historically the province was occupied by some 50 000 troops right after end of the conflict, even though the reinforcement for the ground invasion wasn't even yet transferred to the region. Albanian (ie. majority) support for NATO mission was overwhelming. Any insurrection would have had a very lean support base of some 250 000 max. Serbian population, that is, five Serbs to every NATO soldier, or some 40 people to every NATO soldier. In comparison to Iraq this troop ratio would require some 750 000 occupying soldiers, a troop strength which would, most likely, made any attempt of insurrection dead at the cradle.

In case of any insurrection the most difficult task for NATO would have been (as in OTL) protection of Serbian civilians against Albanian extremists.
 
Sure if NATO went in seriously, as in 1983. Fulda Gap seriously (and as brutally), or as previously mentioned Wermacht did in '41. they would have won without any doubts. First, that would have required deploying a significant number of divisions, not just a couple of fast strike brigades. Second, that scenario would have seen hundreds of thousands of Serbian military dead and maybe up to tens of thousands of dead civilians. Could have Yeltsin showed it all under the carpet and stayed in power? Maybe, maybe not.

Serbian Third Army had the Pristina Corps in Kosovo with some seven brigades, some of them with really old equipment (I've seen pictures of M-36 Jacksons being deployed). VJ wasn't top notch army, it had not had proper funding for years and it's ability in modern warfare might be well questioned after string of failures in Slovenia, Croatia and Bosnia. NATO air strikes did not cause much casualties for the Pristina Corps as it could hide. Any ground invasion would have meant that Pristina Corps would have to react and move it's troops, making them fairly easy targets for NATO air power.

As for the number of casualties, you're widely off mark.
 
OK one major flaw in argument. Serbs haven't lost any of those wars on field of battle. Slovenia was a non wanted conflict by all sides, obsolescent Yugoslav leadership send some troops in a half arsed attempt to prevent breakup. Slobo had no need for Slovenia.

Rest of those were lost politically. Both in Croatia and Bosnia West kept pressuring Milosevic to give less and less support to local Serb forces (and they were ones who run the show, YNA and later VJ disengaged completely (officially) from Croatia and Bosnia by '92. Yes troop formations switched their official allegiance to provisory Serb governments in Croatia and Bosnia and stayed to fight.
Trough sanctions and other pressures from West Slobo gave less and less support to Serb forces in Croatia and Bosnia, in '95. Croats finally managed strength to overrun Serb positions and situation in Bosnia was really deteriorating and Milosevic finally convinced local Serb leaders to authorize him to negotiate final peace settlements.
 

Neil Craig

Banned
he problem with setting several divisions of troops against the Yugoslavs is, apart from obvious ones like having them & people back home being willing, is (1) that to deploy them in Albania would have taken many months, bearing in mind Tirana harbour is hardly modern & the rest of the infrastructure less so (2) there was no road leading through the mountains into Kosovo - the idea of deploying & supplying several advancing divisions woithout road logisitical support is risible. (3) getting those tanks over 5,000 ft mountains (4) that the ugoslavs were competent troops (5) that the NATO powers couldn't have taken thousands of casualties without their parents & friends stringing up politicians.

As to why the Yugoslavs gave up Kosovo in the end - they didn't. Despite the threat of even more massive cililian bombing they only signed a deal by which NATO would occupy Kosovo for a short while, restore peace, disarm their openly genocidal KLA employees, respect Yugoslav sovereignty & in due course leave.

It may have been niave of them to believe that NATO would not break the agreement as soon as they had occupied, provide "police" uniforms to the KLA & send them out to murder, rape, ethnicly cleanse, sexaully enslave children & dissect people while still alive to provide their body organs to western hospitals. Why should the Serbs have believed that every single western leader was an obscene wholly corrupt, lying Nazi willing to exceed Hitler? Obviously not a mistake any other country will make again.
 
Why would they?
Staring at one another is one thing, starting to shoot at an army unit is quite another. Do you believe the English or the Russians are dumb?
A possibility would be a shot accidentally going off, but modern weapons have precautions against that kind of things.
It could become by mistake. I've heard, that Clinton wa furious and ordered to send here American special forces to defeat russians
 

Ian the Admin

Administrator
Donor
he problem with setting several divisions of troops against the Yugoslavs is, apart from obvious ones like having them & people back home being willing, is (1) that to deploy them in Albania would have taken many months, bearing in mind Tirana harbour is hardly modern & the rest of the infrastructure less so (2) there was no road leading through the mountains into Kosovo - the idea of deploying & supplying several advancing divisions woithout road logisitical support is risible. (3) getting those tanks over 5,000 ft mountains (4) that the ugoslavs were competent troops (5) that the NATO powers couldn't have taken thousands of casualties without their parents & friends stringing up politicians.

As to why the Yugoslavs gave up Kosovo in the end - they didn't. Despite the threat of even more massive cililian bombing they only signed a deal by which NATO would occupy Kosovo for a short while, restore peace, disarm their openly genocidal KLA employees, respect Yugoslav sovereignty & in due course leave.

It may have been niave of them to believe that NATO would not break the agreement as soon as they had occupied, provide "police" uniforms to the KLA & send them out to murder, rape, ethnicly cleanse, sexaully enslave children & dissect people while still alive to provide their body organs to western hospitals. Why should the Serbs have believed that every single western leader was an obscene wholly corrupt, lying Nazi willing to exceed Hitler? Obviously not a mistake any other country will make again.

Banned .
 
Excuse me but why has he been banned? Kosovo Albanian "revanchism" has been pushed under carpet and downscaled, but no one was able to completely deny it. It is a fact that several hundred non Albanian's "disappeared" after Kosovo was liberated, and a significant number openly murdered.

And story about organ harvesting operation hasn't been pushed by Serbs or Russians but by former cheif perescutor of ICTY.
 
slsll

Tirana harbour? what? get a map.
Nato didn't need to invade Kovoso, the air war was working just fine.
KLM could have provided enough ground troops to do the job is supported from the air by NATO.
 

Giladis

Banned
Excuse me but why has he been banned? Kosovo Albanian "revanchism" has been pushed under carpet and downscaled, but no one was able to completely deny it. It is a fact that several hundred non Albanian's "disappeared" after Kosovo was liberated, and a significant number openly murdered.

And story about organ harvesting operation hasn't been pushed by Serbs or Russians but by former cheif perescutor of ICTY.

I don't think it was because of KLA revanchism but because of this -

every single western leader was an obscene wholly corrupt, lying Nazi willing to exceed Hitler
 
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