General Wes Clarks Decision Making Style: The Case of the Pristina Airfield By Brent M.

Eastwood, PhD (2003)

The Pristina Airfield crisis at the conclusion of the Serbian withdrawal from Kosovo in 1999 shows General Wesley Clark at the height of his decision-making and leadership ability. In rightly predicting the Moscow intention of declaring a Russian sector in the north of Kosovo, Clark was ahead of his peers and ahead of his superiors in Washington. Clark quickly saw the danger of the Russian gaining a toehold in the north at the beginning of the crisis. With Russian intervention, Kosovo would become partitioned and NATO would lose its command and control of the mission (Clark, 2001). As a commander, Clark believed that steady, unrelenting pressure from the theater was a necessary tonic to the competing priorities and interests in Washington (Clark, 2001, 455). From the signs of the first Russian troop movements, Clark acted swiftly. He called the Vice Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staffs and requested a military plan of action. General Ralston agreed that Clark should proceed. Clark then issued a warning orderthe second step of the Troop Leading Proceduresto NATO ground commander Lt. General Michael Jackson. As a result, Jackson was better able to prepare his subordinate commands for further action. Clark then called his NATO boss, Javier Solano, to clarify that he had overall command in case the balloon went up against the

Russians. This call signified Clarks ability to recognize the importance of political backing in this type of crisis. Clark knew how easy it was for NATO countries to pull support of troop movement, even though they had already pledged it. This political process of various countries withdrawing support for NATO military operations became known as redcarding and he did not want to happen to him if he got into an altercation with the Russians. He knew this call to Solano would be important down the road. We see early in the crisis how Clark discerns the political ramifications and strategic implications of his decisions. These skills will serve him well throughout the crisis. We also see Clarks desire for a formalistic, orderly and analytical decisionmaking climate. He contrasts this ideal to the chaotic scene of the opening hours, the phone lines were jammed with incoming calls, information and guidance was cutting back and forth across command lines and skipping echelons. The top people were spending too much time talking, and not enough planning and thinking (Clark, 2001, 381). Clark is able to constantly analyze the situation while he is in the middle of the crisis. He also makes a very subtle and astute observation-- his decision set is limited because the Allies do not war and they do not a confrontationthis further constrains his responses. Russia, unlike the Allies, has everything to gain from a confrontation. Clark is able to make all of these conclusions in the heat of the crisis, when time is definitely not on his side. These are the types of mental processes that characterize his judgment. Clark not only had personal decision-making challenges, he also had to deal with political and diplomatic hurdles as well. He had to depend on others to make military plans because US troops were not the most populous troops in the region. He had to keep

the alliance together, and that meant keeping the various nations behind the alliance. Clark was aware of the diplomatic failure with Russia. He felt that the Russians never liked NATO control of the mission and that the diplomacy should have reflected that. Instead, the language of the agreement forced the Russian hand and encouraged them to take their own train, which ultimately lead to this crisis. Clark also did not forget basic military command principles. He recognized his military planners had no time for a detailed back-brief and a rehearsal. Normally, this type of blocking operation would have a detailed terrain model of the airfield built to scale. These models are sometimes big enough to be built in a gymnasium. Each subordinate commander would then walk-through his role and tell the commander what his units mission, task, and purpose was. This planning segment is called the back-brief. Moreover, a rehearsal would consist of a crawl, walk, and run. The crawl would be a half-speed walk-through of the mission. The walk would be a full-speed mission with blanks. The run would be a full-speed mission with live ammunition. The Pristina plan had none of these and Clark knew that this was a potential weakness. Despite these constraints, the strengths of Clarks leadership ability lay in his strategic gut feelings and his ability to articulate those gut feelings into the best geopolitical course of action. And he was able to convince superiors and subordinates that his vision was correct. In a conversation with Gen. Ralston, he again tried to forge his beliefs about the Russians, My instinct is that something bad is going to happenThe Russians are in a domestic position where it makes sense for them to push a confrontation. The US is in a domestic position to avoid a confrontation. But, Joe, if

we let the Russians have their own sector, this kind of problem will be replayed a hundred times on every issue (Clark, 2001, 388). Clark almost always approaches problems in a detached, unemotional way. He is often surprised when others do not take the same approach. His confrontation with Mike Jackson became a personal exchange in which Jackson ultimately refused to engage his forces beyond the parameters of his peacekeeping mission. Clark believed NATO must stop the Russians from reinforcing the troops they had in Kosovo. Clark told Jackson to block the runways or he would replace him. Jackson said he did not want to start World War III. Alarmist words, to be sure, but to Clark, the issue was bigger than a grudge match of authority or ego between the two Generals, it was about the future of NATO. I saw the problem in strategic terms. This could be a defining moment for the future of NATO. Would we or would we not be able to conduct our own peacekeeping missions? Would Russia be co-equal with NATO in this operation? Would Russia get its way by deception and bluff or by negotiation and compromise? Would we have an effective operation or another weak UN-type force? (Clark, 2001, 395). Clark has been criticized for having a free-wheeling command philosophy, but he denies this in his memoirs. He seems to be more collaborative when working with higher commands intent. He believes in engaging with higher command and practicing give and take (Clark, 2001). His views on diplomacy lean toward hawk engagement. Clark calls this coercive diplomacywhere diplomacy gives way to military threat, then diplomacy is backed by force, then finally force is backed up by diplomacy. In the Pristina case, Clark saw that diplomacy with the Russians needed to be backed by force, and then the National Command Authority was able to take over. Clinton, Albright,

Cohen, Shelton did their jobs and backed up the force with diplomacy. The Russians backed off and NATO averted what could have been a disastrous showdown. Gen. Wesley Clark is a cool and aloof leader. He would have never been mistaken for a soldiers soldier. He was more of a god commander, meaning that soldiers looked up to him as a leader that was echelons above reality or a water walker. But soldiers will often go to war for someone they think is a god. He was often unemotional and unromantic about war. His recollections of getting shot in Vietnam almost have an eerie quality of someone who has totally repressed a trauma. This disconnection may have kept him from empathizing with the lowly soldier in combat. It may not have been the best thing to have a commander with such a callous view of war. I do not recollect him spending too much time in his memoirs reflecting about his fears of losing troops. Despite these criticisms, I would have loved to have served under Clark. I would have had unlimited confidence in his abilities and I would have had no doubt that he was the right man for the job. However, I would not have wanted to be his superior. Wesley Clark can be a real pain. He continually pushed the line between a subordinate taking initiative and a subordinate operating beyond his guidance from higher. His AllAmerican innocence and lack of humility would have made it even more difficult to explain to him what exactly he had done wrong. For all his political adroitness on major strategic issues, he could be politically tone deaf when it came to simple courtesies to his boss. The Pristina Airfield incident is a good case study into the workings behind Wes Clarks leadership style. He is ahead of the curve on strategic thinking, but sometimes

behind when dealing with people on human terms, as in the case during his showdown with Mike Jackson. He is a visionary on diplomacy, but sometimes a cold and unemotional leader. He believes that there should be a give and take with superiors but sometimes he takes too much and ends up frustrating his bosses. His All-American innocence keeps him from learning from his mistakes. Clark often does not have the humility to realize that he is wrong. But in all, Wesley Clark is a leadership personality who has much potential for further study. His strengths certainly outweigh his weaknesses and his command style may be one to be emulated.

Work Cited

Wesley Clark. 2001. Waging Modern War, New York: Public Affairs.