Ordie
08-27-2009, 01:26 AM
The Bosnian Prism
William Perry was secretary of defense from early 1994 to early 1997, and deputy secretary just before that. Years earlier, he had been undersecretary of defense for research and engineering, and before and between spins of Washington’s revolving door he headed electronics ventures and worked in venture capital—and at Stanford. When he is not speaking or troubleshooting around the planet, Perry, ’49, MS ’50, still carries enough campus job titles at 81 to drive a sign painter to tears: the short list includes senior fellow at the Hoover Institution; Michael and Barbara Berberian Professor (a joint appointment in the School of Engineering and the Freeman-Spogli Institute); and co-director of the Preventive Defense Project, a joint Stanford-Harvard initiative aimed at averting threats to global security through personal interaction with world political and military leaders.
The former defense chief considers Iraq and Afghanistan from the perspective of the 1992-1995 Bosnian War, and from there the lessons are clear. First, “It helps a lot if you have been invited in, instead of pushing your way in. In Bosnia they weren’t happy about it, but at least there was nominal acceptance of it. We did not have that in either Iraq or Afghanistan.”
Lesson 2: “It’s a big help to have international sanction for what you’re doing. In Bosnia, we had a U.N. mandate and a NATO authorization to send a full force in,” he says. “Among other things, it allowed us to rally people who would have difficulty supporting it.” The United States went into Iraq without that. Afghanistan? “We ended up with a NATO team, but we didn’t start out that way. In fact, we started out turning down outside assistance.”
http://www.stanfordalumni.org/news/magazine/2009/mayjun/features/images/WAR-BOSNIA_QG_opt.jpeg BROKEN CITY: Sarajevo in 1994.
Chris Rainier/Corbis
Lesson 3: Go in with all the force you need, and more. That was his approach to Bosnia, and he remembers being criticized for it. But the strategy delivered results unlike those in Iraq: “No group in the country tried to contend with that force.” And although some predicted significant U.S. casualties, “there were virtually none.”
Lesson 4: “If you cannot put up a sufficiently sized and equipped force to do the job, then you should bring in allies to help with the job—and, of course, all that depends on having the international sanctions in the first place,” he says. “We had that in spades in Bosnia; we did not have it in Afghanistan, not originally, and we never had that in Iraq.”
Lesson 5: “If you’re trying to fight an insurgency, you really have to have a strategy for getting the population with you.” Bosnia comprised combative Muslims and Bosnian Serbs, but by maintaining mixed patrols of Russian and Western troops, the former favored by Slavs, the latter by Muslims, “we went a long way to minimizing opposition,” Perry says. In Iraq, the people supported the insurgents who lived among them, “so they had all the advantage of intelligence and we had [none].”
Perry remembers another lesson, which might be summarized as look before you leap. He contends that only people who hadn’t studied the situation could fail to see civil war breaking out in Iraq. “It was willful ignorance on the part of the planners to miss that.”
Perry and Sandra Day O’Connor, ’50, JD ’52, were among 10 prominent Americans recruited for the bipartisan Iraq Study Group commissioned by Congress in March 2006. Chaired by former Secretary of State James Baker (a Republican) and former Indiana Rep. Lee Hamilton (a Democrat), it recommended engaging Iraq’s neighbors to help stabilize the country and a staged reduction of U.S. troops, coupled with expanded training of Iraqi forces to do the heavy lifting.
‘No group in Bosnia tried to contend with U.S. forces, and there were virtually no U.S. casualties.’
Securing White House agreement was a long shot, given that the ISG was Congress’s idea. “There was an outside chance it would have been accepted because it was bipartisan and it was headed by Jim Baker who was well thought of by the president,” Perry says. He remembers Baker talking him down from some positions: “We had a much more explicit statement about how to go about troop withdrawals and we moderated that quite a bit to give the president a little bit of maneuvering room,” he says. “It wasn’t a Democrat-Republican thing—Baker was trying to find a report the president might be willing to accept.”
There was reason to hope he might. “The first briefing was to the president and he seemed very positive. Then we briefed the Congress and they seemed very positive.”
But then: “About two days later the president rejected it and set off on a different path.” There was no back and forth after that. The group disbanded and never met again.
Perry consigns past projects to columns of winners and losers. He calls the ISG effort “a loser,” but then pauses. “There was one perceptible effect even though the recommendations were not accepted,” he begins. “The first half of the report laid out in exquisite and honest detail what the situation was and from that point on, there was no more happy talk about how things were not as bad as they seemed.”
How projects fared often depended on whether Perry was in or out of office. In 1998, back at Stanford, Perry was asked to lead negotiations aimed at getting North Korea to stop nuclear arms development. Japan, South Korea and the United States had agreed on a formula. “And it was about to be accepted by the North Koreans,” he says. “But then there was a change of administrations and the agreement was never followed up on—so that’s a ‘might have been.’”
Disarmament efforts on Perry’s watch had made a promising start. The United States had convinced Belarus, Ukraine and Kazakhstan to destroy their nuclear arsenals. The nukes in Ukraine’s quiver alone added up to more than those of Britain, France and China combined.
Since then, India and Pakistan joined the nuclear club, but Asia had produced some wins. China and Taiwan were talking again, opening the way for today’s direct sea and air links. Perry had helped end a dangerous standoff that had lasted years.
Source:http://www.stanfordalumni.org/news/magazine/2009/mayjun/features/war.html
William Perry was secretary of defense from early 1994 to early 1997, and deputy secretary just before that. Years earlier, he had been undersecretary of defense for research and engineering, and before and between spins of Washington’s revolving door he headed electronics ventures and worked in venture capital—and at Stanford. When he is not speaking or troubleshooting around the planet, Perry, ’49, MS ’50, still carries enough campus job titles at 81 to drive a sign painter to tears: the short list includes senior fellow at the Hoover Institution; Michael and Barbara Berberian Professor (a joint appointment in the School of Engineering and the Freeman-Spogli Institute); and co-director of the Preventive Defense Project, a joint Stanford-Harvard initiative aimed at averting threats to global security through personal interaction with world political and military leaders.
The former defense chief considers Iraq and Afghanistan from the perspective of the 1992-1995 Bosnian War, and from there the lessons are clear. First, “It helps a lot if you have been invited in, instead of pushing your way in. In Bosnia they weren’t happy about it, but at least there was nominal acceptance of it. We did not have that in either Iraq or Afghanistan.”
Lesson 2: “It’s a big help to have international sanction for what you’re doing. In Bosnia, we had a U.N. mandate and a NATO authorization to send a full force in,” he says. “Among other things, it allowed us to rally people who would have difficulty supporting it.” The United States went into Iraq without that. Afghanistan? “We ended up with a NATO team, but we didn’t start out that way. In fact, we started out turning down outside assistance.”
http://www.stanfordalumni.org/news/magazine/2009/mayjun/features/images/WAR-BOSNIA_QG_opt.jpeg BROKEN CITY: Sarajevo in 1994.
Chris Rainier/Corbis
Lesson 3: Go in with all the force you need, and more. That was his approach to Bosnia, and he remembers being criticized for it. But the strategy delivered results unlike those in Iraq: “No group in the country tried to contend with that force.” And although some predicted significant U.S. casualties, “there were virtually none.”
Lesson 4: “If you cannot put up a sufficiently sized and equipped force to do the job, then you should bring in allies to help with the job—and, of course, all that depends on having the international sanctions in the first place,” he says. “We had that in spades in Bosnia; we did not have it in Afghanistan, not originally, and we never had that in Iraq.”
Lesson 5: “If you’re trying to fight an insurgency, you really have to have a strategy for getting the population with you.” Bosnia comprised combative Muslims and Bosnian Serbs, but by maintaining mixed patrols of Russian and Western troops, the former favored by Slavs, the latter by Muslims, “we went a long way to minimizing opposition,” Perry says. In Iraq, the people supported the insurgents who lived among them, “so they had all the advantage of intelligence and we had [none].”
Perry remembers another lesson, which might be summarized as look before you leap. He contends that only people who hadn’t studied the situation could fail to see civil war breaking out in Iraq. “It was willful ignorance on the part of the planners to miss that.”
Perry and Sandra Day O’Connor, ’50, JD ’52, were among 10 prominent Americans recruited for the bipartisan Iraq Study Group commissioned by Congress in March 2006. Chaired by former Secretary of State James Baker (a Republican) and former Indiana Rep. Lee Hamilton (a Democrat), it recommended engaging Iraq’s neighbors to help stabilize the country and a staged reduction of U.S. troops, coupled with expanded training of Iraqi forces to do the heavy lifting.
‘No group in Bosnia tried to contend with U.S. forces, and there were virtually no U.S. casualties.’
Securing White House agreement was a long shot, given that the ISG was Congress’s idea. “There was an outside chance it would have been accepted because it was bipartisan and it was headed by Jim Baker who was well thought of by the president,” Perry says. He remembers Baker talking him down from some positions: “We had a much more explicit statement about how to go about troop withdrawals and we moderated that quite a bit to give the president a little bit of maneuvering room,” he says. “It wasn’t a Democrat-Republican thing—Baker was trying to find a report the president might be willing to accept.”
There was reason to hope he might. “The first briefing was to the president and he seemed very positive. Then we briefed the Congress and they seemed very positive.”
But then: “About two days later the president rejected it and set off on a different path.” There was no back and forth after that. The group disbanded and never met again.
Perry consigns past projects to columns of winners and losers. He calls the ISG effort “a loser,” but then pauses. “There was one perceptible effect even though the recommendations were not accepted,” he begins. “The first half of the report laid out in exquisite and honest detail what the situation was and from that point on, there was no more happy talk about how things were not as bad as they seemed.”
How projects fared often depended on whether Perry was in or out of office. In 1998, back at Stanford, Perry was asked to lead negotiations aimed at getting North Korea to stop nuclear arms development. Japan, South Korea and the United States had agreed on a formula. “And it was about to be accepted by the North Koreans,” he says. “But then there was a change of administrations and the agreement was never followed up on—so that’s a ‘might have been.’”
Disarmament efforts on Perry’s watch had made a promising start. The United States had convinced Belarus, Ukraine and Kazakhstan to destroy their nuclear arsenals. The nukes in Ukraine’s quiver alone added up to more than those of Britain, France and China combined.
Since then, India and Pakistan joined the nuclear club, but Asia had produced some wins. China and Taiwan were talking again, opening the way for today’s direct sea and air links. Perry had helped end a dangerous standoff that had lasted years.
Source:http://www.stanfordalumni.org/news/magazine/2009/mayjun/features/war.html