Kosovo and Bosnia show why war resists control

Wars cannot be planned as controllable sequences because each side adapts to the other's moves. The Kosovo example challenges confidence in precision air campaigns: Serbian forces used empty buildings and decoys, then withdrew with more equipment than Western estimates had predicted. Earlier air operations in Bosnia had given Serbian forces experience of the methods used against them, so the failure went beyond any weakness in guided weapons alone. Civil-war narratives also need caution because internal wars tend to produce brutality across factions even when responsibility is not morally equal. The action-and-reaction argument explains why a naval treaty could not safely assume that planners would choose either the date or the course of the next war.