Jon_Lincicum at stream.com wrote: > >Military action, at some fundamental point, involves an infantry unit that >stands on a given spot and says "This is mine unless you can come take it >away from me." > >Until this happens, the war isn't ever really won. > > > And *that* argument has been made for Verra knows how long as well. >An interesting thing happened in 1998 in Kosovo, when the US airforce >forced a surrender without any ground troops being involved. This is, to >my knowledge, the first and to date *only* time this has ever happened, >but the surrender was still essentially meaningless until the ground >forces moved in to occupy the country. The logistics of this ground forces >takeover was basically an unprecedented situation. > > > > Not quite, although I'm sure it appeared that way at the time. What actually happened is that the Serbian army had dispersed--more or less successfully--to avoid attrition & destruction from the air during the bombing campaign. NATO made it clear that ground troops would be unlikely to follow on any time soon, so this was a viable strategy to use while playing for time & fraying the very thin sensibilities of the Western world; no penalty would befall a Serbian army thus spread out. But when the Albanian guerilla forces--recovered from previous rough handling at the hands of the Serbs--began to move out and engage the Serbs & when they began to coordinate with NATO air activity, it became immediately clear to the Serbs that this was a losing strategy, and one that would lose in days, not months & perhaps not even weeks. So they sued for peace. I agree, the turnabout was very rapid & did not involve formed units of conventional troops invading Kosovo. But it came about only from the imminent & actual pressure of ground troops, combined with a few forward observers who could call in air strikes. Snarkhunter