"As early as 1961, they knew Kennedy was not going to war in Southeast Asia. Like Caesar, he is surrounded by enemies and something's underway... but it has no face. Yet everybody in the loop knows..."
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| June 20, 1999 - President Clinton, Secretary Albright and National Security Advisor Sandy Berger meet with Russian President Boris Yeltsin and members of his delegation at Cologne’s Renaissance Hotel |
On 12th June 1999, Russian and NATO forces stood poised closer to the brink of war than at any point since the Able Archer exercise of 1983 and closer to a shooting war between the forces of East and West than at any point since the Cuban Missile Crisis.
Following the relentless 11 week air war over Serbia, chiefly directed towards the peaceful civilian infrastructure of Yugoslav-Serbian society to force a withdrawl from the Serbian province of Kosovo (an action akin to a multilateral coalition carpet-bombing London in order to compel unilateral British military withdrawl and civic disengagement from Northern Ireland), NATO sent the troops in to Kosovo to "enforce the peace".
When the 30,000 KFOR personnel advanced into the province, however, they arrived to discover 200 Russian Army Special Forces occupying the airport at Pristina, having advanced forward from the East (with Serbian acquiescence) to secure the supply channels in and out during the occupation.
This plucky act of insurgency did not impress NATO commanders on the ground.
Not the American ones, at least.
Translated from the Serbian:
"Shortly after the 200 Russians from Ugljevik (without the knowledge of the Yeltsin Kremlin!) Occupied Pristina airport in 1999, a British unit led thirty thousand NATO troops received an order from the U.S. General Wesley Clark to take the airport, and if you disarm the Russians to open fire on them. "
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