With the United States supplying the bulk of the bombers,
  support aircraft and precision-guided weapons, General
  Mike Short believed that the ideal solution would have
  been to gather all the Nato members behind closed doors
  before a bomb had been dropped to be told that the US,
  not the alliance as a whole, was to be in charge of
  strategy.

  However, this was not to be and General Short and the
  other senior American commanders had to put up with the
  whims and wishes of individual members of the alliance,
  who had the power to stop certain raids, even when the
  bombers were on their way. France is known to have
  vetoed some of the planned attacks.

  In a revealing interview to be broadcast during a
  three-part Channel 4 documentary on the Kosovo
  campaign, War in Europe, starting this Sunday, the US
  Air Force commander says: "It's my evaluation that Nato
  cannot go to war in the air against a competent enemy
  without the United States. If that's the case, and we're
  going to provide 70 per cent of the effort . . . then we
  need to have more than one of 19 votes."

  He said that the US should have told alliance members:
  "We will take the alliance to war and we will win this thing
  for you, but the price to be paid is we call the tune." If any
  nations disapproved, they would have the right to pull their
  forces out of the fight on any particular night or for a series
  of nights, but no one Nato member would be able "to stop
  the effort".

  General Short has made it clear already that he wanted to
  conduct a "classic air campaign", hitting strategic targets,
  such as military headquarters, ministry buildings in
  Belgrade and key bridges, from the first night. He was
  prevented from doing so by alliance countries that were
  convinced that a little light bombing for a few days would
  be enough to persuade President Milosevic to give up.
  "There was a reluctance to really grab him [Milosevic] by
  the throat and shake him," he said.

  After the mistaken attack on the Chinese Embassy in
  Belgrade, a "five-mile circle" was drawn around the centre
  of the capital, "within which we couldn't hit anymore".