For over four years following the breakup of Yugoslavia and the onset of war, first in Croatia and then in Bosnia, the United States refused to take the lead in trying to end the violence and conflict. While many have written eloquently and passionately to explain Washington’s—and the West&# Contact online >>
For over four years following the breakup of Yugoslavia and the onset of war, first in Croatia and then in Bosnia, the United States refused to take the lead in trying to end the violence and conflict. While many have written eloquently and passionately to explain Washington’s—and the West’s—failure to stop the ethnic cleansing, the concentration camps, and the massacres of hundreds of thousands of civilians, few have examined why, in the summer of 1995, the United States finally did take on a leadership role to end the war in Bosnia.
One notable exception is Richard Holbrooke, who recounts his own crucial contribution to the negotiation of the Dayton Peace Accords in his book To End a War. But Holbrooke’s account leaves unclear what, in addition to his own brokering role, accounts for the turnaround in U.S. policy, including the critical decision to take a leadership role in trying to end the war. It was on the basis of that decision that Holbrooke subsequently undertook his negotiating effort.
What, then, explains the Clinton administration’s decision in August 1995 at long last to intervene decisively in Bosnia? Why, when numerous previous attempts to get involved in Bosnia were half-hearted in execution and ended in failure? The answer is complex, involving explanations at two different levels. First, at the policy level, the day-to-day crisis management approach that had characterized the Clinton administration’s Bosnia strategy had lost virtually all credibility. It was clear that events on the ground and decisions in allied capitals as well as on the Capitol Hill were forcing the administration to seek an alternative to muddling through.
Second, at the level of the policy-making process, the president encouraged his national security adviser and staff to develop a far-reaching and integrated strategy for Bosni a that abandoned the incremental approach of past efforts. This process produced agreement on a bold new strategy designed to bring the Bosnia issue to a head in 1995, before presidential election politics would have a chance to intervene and instill a tendency to avoid the kind of risk-taking behavior necessary to resolve the Bosnia issue.
Betrayal in SrebrenicaAs the Bosnian Serb strategy unfolded through the spring and into summer, the 20,000-strong U.N. Protection Force in Bosnia confronted a fateful dilemma. UNPROFOR could actively oppose the Bosnian Serb effort and side with the Muslim victims of the war. But this would entail sacrificing the evenhandedness that is the hallmark of U.N. peacekeeping. Alternatively, UNPROFOR could preserve its much-vaunted neutrality and limit its role to protecting humanitarian relief supplies and agencies. But this would effectively leave the Muslims to face the Bosnian Serb assault virtually unprotected.
Yet, the Clinton administration had been here before. In early 1993 it rejected the Vance-Owen Peace Plan; in May 1993 it tried to sell a policy to lift the arms embargo and conduct air strikes while the Muslims were being armed; and in 1994 it had sought repeatedly to convince the allies to support strategic air strikes. Each time, the new policy was rejected or shelved, and an incremental, crisis management approach was once again substituted for a viable approach to end the war.
It was a way out that the president demanded from his foreign policy team in June 1995. Spearheaded by the National Security Council staff and strongly supported by Madeleine Albright (then the U.S. ambassador to the United Nations), America’s first coherent Bosnia strategy was developed. This strategy for the first time matched force and diplomacy in a way that would break the policy impasse that had strangled Washington for so long. It was debate by the president and his senior advisers over the course of three days in August and, when accepted by Clinton, became the basis for the diplomatic triumph in Dayton three months later.
Lake Pushes the Process Given the worsening atrocities in Bosnia and the growing discontent with U.S. policy, how did the administration move from its paralysis of 1994 to its constructive role in late 1995? In May ’95, Tony Lake first began to consider how U.S. policy toward Bosnia might be changed in a more productive direction. He began to meet informally with key people on his NSC staff (including his deputy, Sandy Berger, and his chief Bosnia aides Sandy Vershbow and Nelson Drew) to consider how the United States could help to change the tide of war.
It had long been clear that progress toward a negotiated settlement was possible only if the Bosnian Serbs understood that not achieving a diplomatic solution would cost them dearly. For nearly a year, the United States and its Contact Group partners (Britain, France, Germany, and Russia) had sought to pressure the Bosnian Serb leadership headquartered in Pale into agreeing to commence serious negotiations by convincing Milosevic to cut off economic and, especially, military assistance to the Bosnian Serbs. Despite being offered various incentives (including direct negotiations with the United States and the suspension of U.N. economic sanctions), Milosevic never followed through.
The Endgame StrategyGiven the State and Defense Departments’ position on this issue, Anthony Lake faced a critical choice. He could accept that there was no consensus for anything beyond continuing a policy of muddling through, or he could forge a new strategy and get the president to support a concerted effort seriously to tackle the Bosnia issue once and for all. Having for over two years accepted the need for consensus as the basis of policy and, as a consequence, failed to move the ball forward, Lake now decided that the time had come to forge his own policy initiative. He was strengthened in this determination by the president’s evident desire for a new direction.
Lake asked Vershbow to draft a strategy paper on the basis of this discussion. The national security adviser also told the president about the direction of his thinking. He specifically asked Clinton whether he should proceed along this path with the knowledge that in a presidential election year the United States would have to commit significant military force either to enforce an agreement or to bring about a change in the military balance of power on the ground. Clinton told Lake to go ahead, indicating that the status quo was no longer acceptable.
The Road to Dayton Despite considerable opposition to the endgame strategy from the State Department (with Secretary of State Warren Christopher worrying that neither Congress nor the allies would accept the military track) and the Pentagon (where many officials believed that Bosnia’s partition would prove the only viable solution), the president decided in early August to support the NSC’s position. He sent his national security adviser to persuade key European allies as well as Moscow that the new U.S. strategy was their best bet to resolve the Bosnian imbroglio. The president told Lake to make clear to the allies that he was committed to this course of action—including the military track—even if the United States was forced to implement it on its own.
Lake’s message was well received in allied capitals. For the first time, the United States had demonstrated leadership on this issue, and while many had their doubts about the wisdom of the military track, all supported the strategy in its totality as the last best hope to bring the war in Bosnia to an end.
Lessons for Kosovo?When the crisis in the Serb province of Kosovo erupted in early 1998, senior U.S. officials from Madeleine Albright and Richard Holbrooke on down looked to the success in Bosnia for lessons on how to deal with this new problem. Arguing that the mistakes of Bosnia would not be repeated, they called for an early response by the international community to the latest atrocities in the Balkans, vigorous U.S. leadership from the get-go, and a credible threat to back up diplomatic efforts to resolve the crisis. Each of these were important elements in finally helping to resolve the Bosnian conundrum in the summer of 1995.
But as the case of Kosovo demonstrated, they were not sufficient. For apart from concerted U.S. leadership and linking force and diplomacy in mutually supportive ways, success in Bosnia required a clear sense of how the conflict would have to be resolved as well as a willingness to impose this vision on the parties. The endgame strategy provided the vision; Holbrooke’s diplomatic efforts produced an agreement based on that strategy.
Here is where Kosovo differs from Bosnia. While U.S. leadership and the threat of significant force have marked international efforts to resolve this conflict, there has been no clear vision of how the conflict could be ended nor any willingness to impose that vision if necessary. For months, U.S. diplomats have sought to develop an interim agreement for the province’s future status, one that would grant substantial autonomy to Kosovo but would postpone a decision on its final status for three years. In essence, this kicks the fundamental issue of Kosovo’s possible independence down the road.
Moreover, Washington has given no indication that it is willing to impose its preferred solution nor that it would ensure that any agreement that might emerge from negotiations would be implemented by deploying the necessary NATO firepower on the ground. Without a clear plan for Kosovo’s future status and a visible willingness to make it stick, policy toward Kosovo is likely to be little more than the muddling-through approach that characterized America’s Bosnia policy in its least effective period.
Demonstrators have taken to the streets in protests across Europe and in the United States to demand an end to Bosnia and Herzegovina''s biggest political and security crisis since the 1990s, as Bosnian Serbs threaten to secede and fears grow about a slide towards renewed conflict.
Protests were held in 35 cities across 14 countries on Monday – including in Sarajevo, Podgorica, Rome, Brussels, London, New York, and Washington, DC – demanding the international community to act to stop the break-up of the country.
The protests, some of which gathered hundreds of people, were spurred by Bosnian Serb leader Milorad Dodik''s moves towards secession.
Last month, the parliament of Republika Srpska passed a series of laws enabling the entity to form its own parastatal institutions and its own army by May.
Many Bosnians are alarmed as the Bosnian Serb army committed war crimes against the non-Serb population during the war in Bosnia with the aim of achieving a Greater Serbia.
Dodik''s moves, which High Representative for Bosnia and Herzegovina Christian Schmidt said were "tantamount to secession", violate the Dayton Peace Agreement signed in December 1995 that divided the country into two entities – a Serb-led Republika Srpska entity and a Bosniak-Croat dominated federation.
"The survivors of the 1992-1995 war, who were expelled or tortured by the Bosnian Serb army in the concentration camps as well as many survivors of the Srebrenica genocide are extremely upset," Platform BIH, the umbrella group based in the Netherlands organising the protests, said in a statement on Monday.
"The secession of Republika Srpska would be a reward to the Serbs for ethnic cleansing and genocide against Bosniaks. Many fear the country is slipping back into divisions and conflicts.
"[Protesters] want to send a simple message to world officials that divisions and conflicts must not happen again. They want the EU and the USA to act in time, preventively, not reactively like in the 1990s," it said.
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