In Waging Modern War General Wesley K Clark (ret) writes about his early experiences in the US Army in Vietnam and his later experiences rising through the ranks, but mostly this book is about his experience as Supreme Allied Commander, Europe (i.e. head of NATO's Allied Command, in charge of all the military troops) and in particular how he had to handle NATO's air campaign against Serbia during the Kosovo War.

As SACEUR Clark had to oversee the air campaign, get the allied nations to commit military resources, keep those same allied nations informed, and handle the same on USA side -- the last complicated by the fact that SACEUR, who represents the NATO allies, is also EUCOM and therefore top military commander of US forces in Europe. Therefore under the command of NATO on one hand and under the command of the USA on the other hand.

The book is about the planning and politics of the air campaign. The USA and Europe had different approaches to the problem and different solutions. Europeans were more for diplomacy and stop-and-go operations (hit Serbia, stop and negotiate, hit Serbia again if they continue) whereas the USA was more for hit them hard and do a ground invasion (and yet the USA didn't want to commit their ground troops but were willing to contribute with logistics and air assets).

There was lots of diplomacy going on. Different people talking to the Serbians and promising slightly different things. Clark, who knew Serbian president Slobodan Milošević fairly well (well, at the time of the Kosovo War it was Yugoslavia which was Serbia and Montenegro but the latter is really small so it was really Serbia doing the dirty and the book reflects that), was mostly in the middle though leaning to the USA's POV.

Clark wanted the air campaign to be continuous since stopping to see if Serbia blinked would mean it'd be hard to get NATO countries to approve restarting it. He wanted planning for a ground campaign because even if you don't intend to do it the planning and getting the forces together takes so long it needed to be done otherwise by the time you want a ground option it's winter. But he wanted a limited ground campaign to protect Kosovo whereas the USA was more into "let's take the Serbian capital and depose Milošević".

Clark also writes about various misunderstandings he had with people in the USA and NATO, though mostly USA. Clark was headquartered in Europe so he had more contact with European politicians and military at normal hours whereas with the USA it was mostly telephone, teleconference, video conference at odder hours. Also since Clark is more familiar with US Army and armed forces politics he had a better idea of why he was getting friction from the USA.

Ultimately NATO was able to get Serbia to agree to pull out of Kosovo, though there was a last minute crisis when Russia tried to do an end round to establish an independent demilitarized zone -- based on what Russia did in Bosnia their zone would have allowed Serbia to do whatever they wanted. But it was handled and afterwards, perhaps due to miscommunications with the US and misunderstandings that he couldn't quite decipher, Clark was replaced as SACEUR.

The final chapter is Clark's thoughts on warfare today. Coalition warfare where there is lots of news coverage and lots of real-time intelligence so a commander has in effect lots of people looking over his shoulder and nitpicking every mistake. Military leaders need to see that as a challenge to embrace otherwise you're not going to get anything done.

Overall I liked the book. It is one person's perspective and it's talking about personal history from his POV so there might be unreliable narrator problems. But taken at face value it's well written, interesting story, doesn't try to throw anyone under the bus, and at times tries to be self-critical. It's a book I'll keep in my library.