So before the air war against Serbia began, Javier Solana, the bubbly Spaniard whom Mr Robertson will replace, was authorised to turn the key for bombing.

ECONOMIST: George Robertson, the new man for NATO

While the book also touches on the crises in Haiti and Somalia, and crams the air war against Serbia over Kosovo into three of its 44 chapters, it is essentially about American policy towards Bosnia.

ECONOMIST: Washington chronicle

In Kosovo, where Americans and Europeans co-operated closely and successfully, both diplomatically and militarily, the Europeans were plain embarrassed at how little they could contribute to the air campaign against Serbia and just how few troops they could muster quickly enough to police the cease-fire.

ECONOMIST: More useful work for Europeans. But will they do it right?

Instead, the Clintonites are hoping that air power will break Serbia's defiance, and they are prepared to bomb for weeks in order to be proved right.

ECONOMIST: Troops or no troops?

Three months after the air strikes began, Serbia surrendered.

NEWYORKER: Bring Up the Bodies

NATO's doves have been persuaded to renew their support for the air campaign, that must in part reflect their cautious hope that Serbia can be persuaded, with Russian help, to sue for peace on acceptable terms in the next few weeks.

ECONOMIST: NATO piles it on

But does this mean that America's next air war will be constrained by British political influence, as the war against Serbia was restrained by France?

ECONOMIST: The war in Afghanistan

Pavkovic commanded the Yugoslav army in southern Serbia, including the mainly ethnic Albanian province of Kosovo, during the 1999 NATO air strikes which eventually forced Yugoslav forces to withdraw from the region.

CNN: Feud over Kosovo war crimes mounts

NATO's opening position is that it must lead and dominate a post-war occupation force in Kosovo, while Serbia (and its Russian friends) insist, for a start, that those who ran the air war would be the least suitable keepers of Kosovo's peace.

ECONOMIST: No end in sight