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Thursday, September 18, 2003


Does Clark candidacy make the Brits nervous?
The prospect of a president named Wesley Clark may be making some British military and civilian officials break out in a cold sweat.

A British general in Kosovo in 2000 accused Clark, then the NATO commander, of risking the start of World War III by ordering combat attacks against Russian troops at Pristina airport.

NATO troops were supposed to occupy the airport, but the Russians did so first. Clark meant to occupy it even it meant actively fighting the Russians who were already there.

But General Clark's plan was blocked by General Sir Mike Jackson, K-For's British commander.

"I'm not going to start the Third World War for you," he reportedly told General Clark during one heated exchange.
Clark may have thought that the Russians could be bluffed away, but,
A senior Russian officer, General Leonid Ivashev, tells the BBC how the Russians had plans to fly in thousands of troops.

''Let's just say that we had several airbases ready. We had battalions of paratroopers ready to leave within two hours,'' he said.
The British government put the kabosh on Clark’s unilateralist approach to warfare. (Hat tip, Thief’s Den, who has some other relevant Clark links.)

Update: Retired Army officer Ralph Peters, who once worked for Clark, says Clark is undeniably brilliant, "but I also learned to worry about his instincts."
. . . Clark appears imprisoned by obsolete theories of international relations he learned in the 1960s. His taste for multilateralism is elitist, outdated and Euro-centric, ill-matched to the global ferocity of our times.
That's pretty much what I said back in March, where I also pointed out that Clark almost completely misunderstood American war aims against Iraq. Peters points, out, "He knows a great deal, but understands too little."

by Donald Sensing, 9/18/2003 04:16:07 PM. Permalink |  





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