&gt; There were totally competent to do whatever they wanted.<p>Since WWII, IIRC, most NATO militaries have been structured (in part originally with US support and in some cases insistence, though the US preference has changed on this, especially since the end of the Cold War) to be dependent on the US as the core of any major operations (this was, IIRC, a substantial issue for the UK, particularly as to the structure of its naval forces, in the Falklands.)<p>&gt; As for the intervention, the US decision makers and military could not care less about stopping the genocide. It was about establishing Kosovo as another protectorate in Eastern Europe.<p>Kosovo was the tail end of the breakup of Yugoslavia; it certainly wasn&#x27;t the motivation for the US intervention in Bosnia-Hercegovina, which substantially predate the crisis in Kosovo, unless you are suggesting some kind of long conspiracy that even the harshest critics of US policy in the region have never suggested before.