Sir Michael Jackson
Lieutenant General Sir Michael Jackson is a British officer, former commander of KFor in Kosovo as well as UNPROFOR commander in Bosnia.
During the 1970s served in Northern Ireland and was involved in the Bloody Sunday massacre of Irish Catholics.
In the 1990s, he served in the NATO chain of command as a deputy to Supreme Allied Commander, Europe Wesley Clark. In this capacity, he is best known for refusing to block the runways of the Russian-occupied Pristina Airport, to isolate the Russian troops there. Had he complied with General Clark's order, there was a chance the British troops under his command could have come into armed conflict with the Russians; doing this without prior orders from Britain would have led to his dismissal for gross insubordination. On the other hand, defying Clark would have meant disobeying a direct order from a superior NATO officer (Clark was a four-star general; Jackson, only a three-star.) Jackson ultimately chose the latter course of action, though the point became moot when the American government prevailed upon the Hungarians, Romanians, and Bulgarians to prevent the Russians from using their airspace to fly reinforcements in.
Referenced By
Biographical Listing/J | List of people by name: J | Wes Clark | Wesley Clark | Wesley K. Clark | Wesley Kanne Clark
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