High Command
Jackson attained general officer status with promotion to acting major general in May 1992, after holding only one post as a brigadier; in peacetime, senior officers are normally expected to have held two posts before promotion. He was appointed Director General Personal Services (Army) at the Ministry of Defence, reporting to the Adjutant General. He was granted the substantive rank of major general in June 1992, with his promotion backdated to October 1991. After two years at the MoD, Jackson took command of the 3rd Mechanised Division in April 1994. During the Yugoslav Wars in 1995, Jackson had been due to succeed Rupert Smith as commander of the United Nations Protection Force (UNPROFOR), which would have entailed early promotion to lieutenant general (three-star rank) and a blue beret, signifying UN command. As a result of the Dayton Agreement, however, UNPROFOR became the NATO-led Implementation Force (IFOR), and Jackson remained a major general (two-star rank), commanding the 3rd Division and troops from several other countries who made up Multinational Division South-West. Jackson retained command of the 3rd Division until July 1996 and went on to serve briefly in a staff post as the Army's Director General of Development and Doctrine. He was appointed Companion of the Order of the Bath (CB) in November 1996.
After he was appointed Commander of NATO's Allied Rapid Reaction Corps (ARRC), Jackson was promoted to acting lieutenant general in January 1997, a rank he was granted substantively in April 1997. Jackson served in the NATO chain of command, reporting to the Supreme Allied Commander Europe, American four-star General Wesley Clark. Under Jackson's command, the ARRC deployed to Bosnia and Herzegovina in March 1999, where Jackson served his second tour of duty in the Balkans, commanding KFOR, NATO's multi-national peacekeeping force established at the end of the Kosovo War. He gained significant media attention in June 1999 after a confrontation with Clark in which he refused to block the runways of the Russian-occupied Pristina Airport and isolate the Russian troops there, thus preventing them from flying in reinforcements, after the order was queried by Captain James Blount. In one heated discussion with Clark, Jackson reputedly told him "I'm not going to start the Third World War for you". He later told the BBC he believed that obeying the order would have led to the possibility of an armed confrontation with Russian troops, which he felt was not "the right way to start off a relationship with Russians". The point became moot when the US government prevailed upon neighbouring countries, including Hungary and Romania, to prevent Russian use of their airspace to fly in reinforcements. Jackson was criticised for his actions by American military officers and politicians, including General Hugh Shelton, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, who called the incident "troubling", and Senator John Warner, who accused Jackson of insubordination.
As a result of the incident at Pristina Airport, Jackson was dubbed "Macho Jacko" by the British press. Among his troops, Jackson was christened "Darth Vader" and "Prince of Darkness", owing to his temper and gravelly voice. Following the confrontation with Clark, Jackson went out to the airport to meet Viktor Zavarzin, the Russian general leading the detachment, and established a working relationship with him. Jackson, who is fond of whisky and cigars, discovered that the Russian troops were apprehensive about being attacked by the Kosovo Liberation Army, and promised to protect the Russians by sending a detachment of British soldiers commanded by his son Mark —along with a bottle of whisky. Jackson was knighted when he was appointed Knight Commander of the Order of the Bath (KCB) in 1998, and was awarded the Distinguished Service Order (DSO) in 1999 for his leadership in Kosovo.
Upon his return to the British chain of command in early 2000, he assumed the position of Commander-in-Chief, Land Command, the second-highest position in the British Army, and a post which entailed promotion to full general and membership of the Army Board. As Commander-in-Chief, Jackson was responsible for assembling forces for the 2000 British intervention in Sierra Leone, which included Brigadier David Richards—later Chief of the Defence Staff—and Jackson's son Mark. He also handled requests from the civilian authorities for assistance with the foot-and-mouth disease crisis, floods and strikes by firefighters and fuel-tanker drivers. While still Commander-in-Chief, he stood in for the Chief of the General Staff, marching behind the coffin at the state funeral of Queen Elizabeth The Queen Mother, in 2002. At the time of the 11 September 2001 attacks, Jackson was on a visit to the British training facility in Alberta, Canada. He managed to return to the UK the next day aboard a casualty evacuation aircraft and had overall responsibility for force generation for the British Army's contribution to the subsequent wars in Afghanistan and Iraq.
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