The confrontation between Yugoslavia and NATO is entering its third week. Ostensibly, nothing has changed: the alliance will continue the air campaign until President Milosevic accepts its conditions. In practice, however, the aims of the war have been in a constant state of flux and the coming week will witness the biggest battle so far, at least on the diplomatic front.
NATO claims that its strategy is working, and that Mr Milosevic's war machine is bleeding under its repeated blows. There is considerable evidence that the Yugoslav military is now running short of fuel because most of the refineries have been damaged. The destruction of four bridges over the Danube has also created a logistical nightmare for the government in Belgrade.
But almost all the other indications suggest that Yugoslavia will be able to withstand air strikes for quite some time yet, and the weather above the Balkans will get worse in the days to come. In short, NATO's military strategy cannot be translated into a political outcome. And Mr Milosevic, always the resourceful leader, has muddied the waters even more in the last few days.
It is now clear that NATO went into the war hobbled by three major assumptions, all of which have been proven wrong. The alliance believed that the Yugoslav military would never risk a confrontation with the West and that Mr Milosevic will back down at the very last moment. The result of this assumption was that NATO hyped up its threats but curiously did not undertake the necessary preparations for carrying them through.
Secondly, there was the vaguely racist belief that the "little people" in the Balkans were no match for NATO air power: drop a few bombs on these "natives" in Yugoslavia and they would sue for peace. The idea that Mr Milosevic would simply refuse to compromise and absorb the air strikes was not seriously considered.
Finally, NATO was addressing two audiences at the same time. While threatening Mr Milosevic with a military Armageddon, the same alliance commanders were reassuring public opinion in the West that their operation would be "surgical" and limited in scope. The outcome was that the Yugoslav dictator knew from the start the risks he was undertaking and concluded that they were worth taking. The story of the last two weeks is, essentially, one of NATO trying to disentangle the knots of its own making.
The alliance planned on three distinct phases in the air campaigns, gingerly tailored to the political circumstances. The first phase entailed the destruction of Yugoslavia's air defences, to be followed by strikes on Serb forces in Kosovo and, finally, by a more generalised bombardment of military targets throughout the country. The plan looked good on paper but was basically irrelevant.
Contrary to the calculations of Western planners Mr Milosevic did not activate his air defence systems, thereby depriving NATO of its ability to target radar and missile installations. Meanwhile he not only refused to negotiate, but actually unleashed his biggest offensive in Kosovo. As a consequence, the three phases of the air campaign were quickly merged; a strategy which was meant to allow for a careful escalation of pressure on Yugoslavia in order to produce a peace settlement became an aim in itself.
In the process, the list of targets was progressively enlarged and the distinction between civilian and military objectives increasingly blurred. Bridges and oil refineries joined airports and ammunition dumps. And the temptation to enlarge the military objectives even further grows every day.
Meanwhile, Western politicians scrambled to adjust their political aims to these shifting targets. The operation was originally justified as an attempt to prevent a humanitarian disaster in Europe. When precisely this disaster took place NATO feigned surprise (despite the fact that all the military intelligence agencies predicted this outcome months ago), and committed itself to the return of the Albanian refugees. In other words, the purpose of the operation shifted from one of preventing a disaster to one of reversing its consequences.
The alliance remained committed to the original peace plan offered earlier this year, which promised the Albanians a mere autonomy within Yugoslavia. It knew that once the fighting started this plan was dead, but NATO still cannot commit itself to outright independence for Kosovo, since this will annoy other Balkan countries.
So the West is stuck somewhere in the middle: Kosovo will not necessarily be independent, but it will have something more than just an autonomy. Furthermore, it quickly became clear that air power alone would not dislodge Yugoslav forces from Kosovo. But no Western country is yet willing to commit forces for a ground offensive.
Yet again, the alliance fudged the issue: it is now bolstering its ground forces under the guise of protecting refugees in the neighbouring states. Two weeks after the "precise" and "surgical" air operation began we see a war which is partly on the ground and partly in the air, conducted by an alliance which is complaining when Mr Milosevic evicts his people but is also complaining when he prevents the departure of refugees.
Nevertheless, the fog of war will be dispelled in the coming week, for the main confrontation is now switching yet again to the diplomatic front. President Milosevic has basically achieved his most immediate aims. The KLA is destroyed, and a quarter of the local Albanian population has been ejected.
His tactic now is to remove the justification for continuing air attacks without having to attend any peace conference. The closure of the frontiers, coupled with the unilateral ceasefire and the offer to return the captured US soldiers are all part of this charm offensive. Mr Milosevic knows that if NATO stops the air strikes these will not be restarted: the alliance will never achieve the same level of consensus in the future, and the issue will have to be debated in the United Nations Security Council where Russia and China are guaranteed to use their veto powers.
For the moment, NATO is continuing its operations unabated. But Western governments know that this is not a long-term solution either, because Mr Milosevic still has a few tricks up his sleeve. The hundreds of thousands of internally displaced Albanians require food and assistance.
Public pressure will soon mount to introduce aid workers into the province to render this assistance. Mr Milosevic will be very happy to accept these humanitarian workers, in the sure knowledge that the West will be faced with a horrible dilemma of either ignoring the plight of the Albanians, or stopping the bombing, probably permanently. There is still the remote possibility that President Milosevic's regime will collapse from within. But, one way or another, next week will witness the start of a very different situation, one in which NATO either moves to an all-out war against the Yugoslav state, or tacitly accepts that it was checkmated, yet again, by the Balkan arch-manipulator.
All wars begin with clear intentions, carefully-planned strategies and wide public support. All end with quite different outcomes.
Jonathan Eyal is Director of Studies at the Royal United Services Institute in London