ABSTRACT

NATO’s war over Kosovo in 1999 was a classic example of how the initiators of an action failed accurately to anticipate the range of possible outcomes. What was expected to amount to several days of bombing stretched out into a seventyeight-day operation that tested the alliance’s cohesion. While NATO persevered, the outcome was far from certain. The alliance’s strategy relied on coercive bombing, and given that such strategies depend on a collapse of the enemy’s will to fight in order to achieve success, the outcome is hard to predict.