Bombs away? (Letters).

The hawks in Washington should pay more attention to Gen. Wesley Clark's understanding of the reality of America's position in the world--and to his practical experience waging war in the Balkans--before they decide to "bomb Saddam." As an American who has lived in Germany for the past 25 years, I believe Gen. Clark did a great job in holding the coalition together, giving moral legitimacy to the Allies' military effort to restore order in that part of Europe. We must engage our friends around the world in the peace-keeping process, not shut them out.

MARYAN HERR via email

As a Republican, I am grateful that dissenting voices of reason, such as those of Gen. Wesley Clark and Brent Scowcroft, are being heard. But is President Bush listening? Somehow I don't believe he will reverse himself, as politicians' egos seem to be more important to them than reason. I will note that the elder President Bush would have never isolated the United States from NATO as his son has. In this respect our current president has truly let all Americans down.

PETER S. GRIMM Bloomfield, N.J.

Having endured a hard slog through Gen. Wesley Clark's Waging Modern War and having relied quite heavily on it in forming my own thinking about fighting wars through coalitions, I was a bit taken aback by Clark's article ("An Army of One," September) for two reasons. First, I thought the lesson taught by his book was that conducting a war through a coalition is so difficult that it should not be done unless there is strong agreement among the coalition members as to why and how the war was to be fought. Therefore, I was surprised to see Clark take the position that the lesson of the Kosovo campaign was not that NATO was an obstacle to victory but that it was the reason for the victory--and to conclude that action in Iraq should be done through NATO.

But I was most taken aback by the inaccuracy of Clark's assertion that U.N. Security Council Resolution 1199 authorized the use of force in Kosovo and therefore gave the military intervention "international legal and moral authority." In fact, it was the absence in Res. 1199 of the magic words authorizing "all necessary means" found in other Security Council resolutions authorizing the use of force, such as 678 (Iraq) and 940 (Haiti), that sent international lawyers scampering for an international legal justification for the use of force in Kosovo. The US. State Department's legal adviser never rendered an opinion on the legal justification for the use of force, so one wonders where Clark got his legal advice.

Similar questions were raised as to the source of NATO's authority to intervene in Kosovo, because the treaty creating NATO authorizes the use of force only in the exercise of self-defense as contemplated by Article 51 of the UN. Charter.

EDWIN D. WILLIAMSON Washington, D.C.

(The writer is a partner at Sullivan & Cromwell and served as the State Department's legal adviser during the presidency of George H. W. Bush.)

Gen. Clark responds: Thanks for reading my article and book. But let me underscore the key lesson: Fight multilaterally-preferably with NATO, at least with a coalition--if at all possible. The overall advantages outweigh the disadvantages. Yes, it is difficult and frustrating to work with others whose interests will almost never precisely align with our earn, and there will always be different views on strategy and tactics. But we can almost always afford the delays required by consultation and the compromises required to keep our allies aboard. We're simply so much more capable than any adversary right now. And waging war inside an alliance reduces conflicts with other policy priorities and distributes the burdens of diplomacy and post-conflict operations. Why shouldn't we seek such support if we can gain it? Recent events underscore the wisdom of this approach. After a period of attempting to "go it alone," the president went before the United Nations in September and gained much wider support for confronting Saddam. His administration is also now trying to win NATO backing for its Iraq policy and is admitting that it made a mistake not utilizing NATO in Afghanistan.

See pp 422-426 in the hardcover edition of my book for a fuller discussion.

Regarding Kosovo, we tried but couldn't get a specific U.N. resolution authorizing the use of force. We did, however, get resolution 1199, following upon 1160. Both invoked Chapter VII of the U.N. Charter, which relates to action with "respect to threats to the Peace, Breaches of the Peace, and Acts of Aggression" and which is the basis for the authority to "use all necessary means." As I said in the article, this "helped," though it was not all we sought.

Finally, I would note that the principle of out-of-area actions was established by NATO in the early 1990s after much discussion and debate and has been accepted by all NATO governments. It does not contravene the NATO treaty. Indeed, Article IV of the treaty is frequently cited as the authority for such actions.