The Serbo-Croatian War: A Failure of the Principles of War

Abstract

The Serbo-Croatian war was the first in a series of wars that the Serbs would fight following the break-up of Yugoslavia. Analyzing the conflict using the Principles of War provides military planners valuable insight to the structure and capability of an opponent that NATO could face today. This paper will argue that the inability of the Yugoslav Peoples Army (JNA) to develop and execute operational objectives from national strategy resulted in their failure in the 1991 Serbo-Croatian War, even though faced with an inferior Croatian force. It will further argue that the JNA's operational plan violated nearly every Principle of War, but in the process, set the stage for future operations because of a failure to realize the political objective. Finally, it will compare the Serbo-Croatian War to the NATO conflict in Kosovo today and conclude with some operational lessons learned.

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Document Details

Document Type
Technical Report
Publication Date
May 17, 1999
Accession Number
ADA370638

Entities

People

  • Raymond F. Hoffmann

Organizations

  • Naval War College

Tags

Communities of Interest

  • Energy and Power Technologies
  • Human Systems
  • Materials and Manufacturing Processes
  • Weapons Technologies

DTIC Thesaurus Topics

  • Abstracts
  • Air Force
  • Command And Control
  • Doctrine
  • Governments
  • Lessons Learned
  • Military Operations
  • Military Organizations
  • National Governments
  • National Security
  • Paramilitary Forces
  • Second World War
  • Security
  • United Nations
  • Universities
  • War Colleges
  • Warfare

Readers

  • International Relations and Conflict Resolution
  • Systems Analysis and Design