Volume 48, Number 12 · July 19, 2001
Chains of Command
By Michael Ignatieff
Waging Modern War: Bosnia, Kosovo, and the Future of Combat
by Wesley K. Clark
Public Affairs, 479 pp., $30.00
When the general who fought the Kosovo war is fired six weeks after winning it, it's a safe bet to assume that the Pentagon and the American military establishment never wanted to fight it in the first place. The end came for Wesley Clark when he was having dinner with the Lithuanian president in Vilnius, on a victory lap tour of European capitals in late July 1999. General Hugh Shelton, chairman of the US Joint Chiefs, reached Clark on his cell phone and told him that William S. Cohen, secretary of defense, had decided to replace him with Joe Ralston, a top Air Force general on Shelton's staff. Clark writes that he 'stood there, stunned.... I returned to the restaurant for dessert with President Adamkus. I had my game face on, but it was a dark moment.'
Review, 3303 words
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