When Nato last looked seriously at the issue they concluded they needed 200000 troops to invade all of Yugoslavia

When Nato last looked seriously at the issue, they concluded they needed 200,000 troops to invade all of Yugoslavia and occupy Belgrade. A relatively easy option is to sink the Serb navy, if only to enhance the chances of rivalries among the Serbian military.The main boldness will have to come in the form of deploying ground troops. A bolder Blair will now call for serious consideration of a range of military strategies that will take the initiative from President Milosevic. Prime Minister Blair, who quietly welcomes the comparison of his leadership skills to that of Mrs Thatcher, will know that it was the Iron Lady who famously told George Bush not “to go wobbly” during Saddam Hussein’s invasion of Kuwait.So far no Western leader has publicly articulated the need to find a more forceful military option in Kosovo.

Britain is second in Nato in its capacity to deploy forces abroad and it remains remarkably un-squeamish about sustaining casualties. In fact, Blair is so clearly the leader, that a failure to rise to the occasion would leave Britain especially shamed by a failure to defeat the Serbs.This scenario is not merely another example of the British delusion about their capacity to “box above their weight” in international affairs. Prime Minister Blair would also need to demonstrate the virtues of his special personal ties to President Clinton, because any large Nato ground force would require substantial US forces. At St Malo last year, he swore a new determination to work with France to create a serious European fighting force.

Blair claims a unique relationship with the new German Chancellor, and with a determination to rope Germany into building a credible European defence capability, the Kosovo crisis gives him a golden opportunity to show Euro-leadership. Here is a politician who has not shirked tough political battles and who proclaims a New Labour commitment to hard-headed defence policy. His 1998 Defence Review promised us an active use of UK forces beyond Europe. This honest leader will admit that in any such operation there is risk in the fact that some of our allies, such as the KLA, are an unsavoury lot.Where will we find such a Western leader? There seems to be only one candidate, Tony Blair, but he is a long shot.

Our leader will admit that a major ground operation will take time to organise, just as it did in the Gulf in 1990-91, but the aggressor can be rolled back. As our leader would point out, fighting the good fight will be bloody, but we have professional armed forces with the latest kit precisely so they can be as efficient as possible in waging war. This real leader would have to add quickly that nevertheless, the cause remains just – an alliance of democracies cannot allow unspeakable horrors to take place in its backyard. A real leader of Nato would have to begin by honestly admitting that the one-hand-tied-behind-your-back strategy is a failure. The Serbs also know that Nato has some deep fissures, with Italy and Greece leading the chorus against the deployment of ground forces.But all may not be truly lost, for leaders are sometimes made by their times. Clinton is by-and- large despised by the American top brass for his evasion of the draft, and, presumably, the Monica Lewinsky affair has made it harder for the President to make a moral appeal to his people.