“America’s economic strength is linked to Europe’s security.” General Wesley Clark speaks

The White House is pressing Ukraine to stop targeting Russian refineries. Russian jet-powered drones are pounding Kyiv as air defences thin out. And the US war against Iran, launched with the promise of a swift campaign, has turned into a test of endurance that is drawing on US stocks of interceptors, against a medium-sized adversary.

Few people have experienced American military involvement at such close quarters and first-hand as retired four-star General Wesley Clark. In the spring of 1999, as NATO’s Supreme Allied Commander Europe, he led Operation Allied Force, the 78-day air campaign that forced Slobodan Milosevic’s forces to withdraw from Kosovo – one of the largest combat operations in the Alliance’s history.

That war continues to influence the way Clark views the conflicts of our time. “We isolated Serbia,” he recalls in an interview with Il Foglio. Serbia’s neighbours closed their borders and Belgrade lost its links with Moscow. “Milosevic realised he was trapped. He would receive no support by land from Russia. And that was one of the factors that helped us bring the conflict to an end.”

Clark commanded NATO forces in Europe from 1997 to 2000. He had previously fought in Vietnam, then served in Germany during the Cold War and commanded the US Army’s 1st Cavalry Division in Texas. His career spanned the US war in South-East Asia, the confrontation with the USSR and the conflicts that followed the collapse of communism. In Iran, he argues, Washington has left that door ajar: “One of the problems we face today is that I don’t believe we have sufficiently isolated Iran from Chinese and Russian support.” Behind Tehran and Moscow lies the same industrial base – “a huge manufacturing and logistics complex in China” – and its influence in both wars is difficult to overestimate. American planners had hoped to achieve air superiority and, through that air power, dictate the outcome on the ground. But whilst Washington can unleash enormous destructive force, more is needed to force an adversary to surrender. “We have always believed that, given American military dominance, we could strike hard and bring a war against a conventional adversary to a swift conclusion. It might not have been quick on the ground, but precision strikes would have allowed the air force to dominate. We would have used precision strikes to take out defences and achieve first air superiority and then air supremacy. And, at the same time, after the initial strikes, we would have paralysed the Iranians’ ability to react,” he explains. “But we underestimated the resilience of the Iranian army,” he admits.

The Chinese factories supplying Tehran are also keeping Moscow’s war machine running, and for Clark, the two conflicts are two fronts of a single challenge. The stakes, however, are higher in Ukraine. Vladimir Putin, says Clark, wants ‘the whole of Ukraine’ and, beyond that, control over the European space once dominated by the Soviet Union. “He also wants a fragmented and disunited NATO and the American presence eliminated,” he observes. The general believes that Donald Trump genuinely wants peace, but considers it unlikely that any proposed deal could prevail over the ambitions driving Moscow. “Trump hopes that, by presenting an opportunity as if it were real, people on both sides will say: ‘All right’,” says Clark. “But President Putin wants what he wants.” The White House risks repeating the mistakes of past decades, when, following the collapse of the Soviet Union, Washington believed that “a Russian military resurgence could be averted through diplomatic openness and economic interdependence”. As for the possibility that Trump might change course and offer greater support to Ukraine, Clark remains cautious: “Right now, the focus is on the mid-term elections and the consequences for him, for the Republican Party, for the Democratic Party, and for the American people. And it’s hard to see beyond November.”

As winter approaches, Moscow has stepped up its campaign of terror against Ukraine, but Clark sees no reason to believe that Putin can force the Ukrainians to submit through the use of bombs. “The Ukrainians may have to do without their 20th-floor flat in Kyiv for a while, when there is neither a lift nor electricity,” he says. “But this strengthens Ukrainian resolve; it does not destroy it. After all, Hitler himself learnt this the hard way when he tried to bomb London during the Blitz in 1940.” But if Moscow were to get what it wants – not on the battlefield but through negotiations – Clark argues that this would strengthen Putin’s ability to exert pressure deeper into Europe: “If Ukraine were to fall under Russian influence, Putin would be in a much stronger position to move on to the next countries on the list.” To Americans wondering why this should concern them, the answer is: their own well-being. “America’s economic strength is linked to Europe’s security,” says the general: “We are united by culture, historical experience, the rule of law and trillions of dollars’ worth of assets. Taking Europe for granted was a mistake.”