The World and Yugoslavia's Wars, Edited by Richard H. Ullman

1. The Wars in Yugoslavia and the International System after the Cold War

Richard H. Ullman

DURING the first half of the 1990s, the admixture of lands and peoples once known as Yugoslavia gave grim evidence that some of Europe's fondest hopes were only illusions. One such hope—the one from which all the others flowed—was that Europe would be a zone of peace. The last decade of the Cold War had seen the maturation of a number of institutions designed to bring about the peaceful resolution of European conflicts; with the end of the Cold War, it was confidently assumed, these institutions would come into their own.

Yugoslavia was a living laboratory for experiments in conflict resolution. Indeed, the Yugoslav state itself was built upon a hypothesis: that not only could its eight main ethnic groups coexist within the federal structure forged by Josip Broz Tito at the end of World War II but that, with the passage of time, they would increasingly submerge their differences in a common Yugoslav identity. The hypothesis was one of Europe's central hopes–turned–illusion: the experiment failed.

As it turned out, the hope at the core of the experiment depended to a remarkable degree on Tito himself—on both his moral authority and his authoritarian mode of governance. After his death in 1980, control gradually shifted into the hands of provincial demagogues who styled themselves as democrats and who quickly discovered that beating the drum of ethnic nationalism was the surest way to accumulate more personal power.

The old multicultural order did not merely collapse, however. In 1991–92 it shattered amid warfare of the most brutal kind. Outsiders looked on in disbelief that a relatively modern, organized, peaceful polity, fully part of Europe, could sink so far into the abyss that the most bestial and arbitrary violence against members of other ethnic groups not only became routine but in many instances was sanctioned by whatever passed for governmental authority. (More desirable, even, than killing an adult was killing a child, especially a male child, for that would kill the future.) The extraordinary thing was how effective the demagogues were, and how weak and ineffective were the efforts of the moderates who made up the bulk of the population and who presumably ordinarily would have called for a halt to the insanity. Anecdotal accounts are overwhelming in their quotidian horror. Families that had lived for decades as friendly and cooperative neighbors suddenly faced one another—some moved by fear, others by greed—as murderous enemies. The tidal wave of bloodshed swept right over those who labeled it madness. ₁

Nothing exemplified this conflation of hope and illusion more than the city of Sarajevo, whose skyline had become so familiar worldwide to television viewers of the 1984 Winter Olympic Games: for centuries its mosques, churches, and synagogues had coexisted peacefully side by side, a proud symbol of tolerance and cultural harmony among the diverse peoples of the republic of Bosnia and Herzegovina. There, more than anywhere, people took pride in identifying themselves simply as Yugoslavs. But as so often occurs, under war's influence tolerance and trust gave way to suspicion and hatred. In 1992 Bosnian Serbs, seeking to secede from the republic while taking most of its territory with them, placed Sarajevo under almost constant siege. With each harsh passing year of war, the ruling Muslim faction of the republic's leadership and the city made Sarajevo an ever stronger symbol of its own increasingly militant Islamic sectarianism.

Another hope that proved to be illusory was that the Yugoslav People's Army (YPA), formed from the partisan brigades and the National Liberation Army of World War II, would remain the embodiment of Tito's multicultural ideal. When Yugoslavia's crisis came, however, the YPA was well on its way to becoming an instrument of the nationalism of the most numerous ethnic group within the old federation, the Serbs. On June 27, 1991, when the YPA went into battle for the first time, it trained its guns not on invading Soviet forces seeking to force Yugoslavia to return to communist orthodoxy—the contingency that for so long had guided its planning and its exercises—but on Slovene fellow citizens of the Yugoslav federation. The Slovenes had committed the unpardonable sin of seceding from the increasingly Serb–dominated federation and declaring their republic a separate, fully sovereign state.

For those who still live within what once was Yugoslavia, and who survive its wars, these illusions and many others like them will be costly. As chapter 8, by Abram and Antonia Chayes, makes clear, the process of healing the wounds of war and restoring some semblance of economic prosperity will be lengthy and arduous. The conflict already has imposed significant costs not only on the neighbors of the former Yugoslavia but on the wider international community.

Yugoslavia's Wars and International Anarchy

For many analysts, Yugoslavia's wars have become a metaphor for the international system itself, a system that is more turbulent and anarchic today than it was at any time during the last several centuries, and that is likely to become more so. That is not to say that the international system of the Cold War was not anarchic, in the sense that it lacked an overarching supranational authority able to assure order either in the interactions of states or in the relations of groups and individuals within them. Yet it was also a relatively organized system in which order was maintained by each of the two superpowers taking on the role of disciplinarian within its own bloc.

The techniques the superpowers employed for keeping errants and dissidents in line differed according to the ideological precepts and accepted practices of East and West. Within each bloc, the patron superpower employed combinations of carrots and sticks to assure that there was relative order rather than anarchy. The result was that the international system of the Cold War years was in important respects clearly more stable than today's. However, one should not forget that there were very few days during the four–plus decades of Cold War when a fairly robust hot war (often more than one) was not going on somewhere—always in the Third World, mostly in Asia, and usually costly in terms of lives.

Might the dissolution of Yugoslavia have occurred in the international system of the early 1980s or, indeed, at any other period of tension between the two Cold War blocs? Such a question raises two others. The first views a hypothetical Yugoslav crisis from the outside in: Would the Cold War blocs have regarded the breakup of Yugoslavia as sufficiently unthreatening to their larger interests so that either or both might have been able to forgo intervention, even if it appeared that the other bloc was intervening? The second question looks from the inside out: When Cold War tensions ebbed, as they did during the period of dÈtente between Washington and Moscow during the early 1970s, might the leaders of Slovenia and Croatia ever have felt that they could get away with a unilateral push for independence without precipitating outside intervention?

Obviously there can never be definitive answers to such counterfactual questions. But the likelihood of a wider and more dangerous conflagration arising from a crisis in Yugoslavia surely must be judged to have been quite high, at least through the 1960s, and not negligible later, especially when that judgment is reinforced by the experience of two world wars. The breakup of post–Tito Yugoslavia was a staple ingredient in Western war game scenarios. Searching for a plausible train of events to trigger a hypothetical war between East and West, scenario writers in the Pentagon or at the War Colleges could always safely posit a Yugoslav crisis. They frequently did so. No doubt mirror images of the same scenarios figured in Soviet and Warsaw Pact war games. Western scenarios usually began with the death of Tito. However, in 1980, when Tito died, there was no conflagration. In fact, the breakup and then the crisis that the scenarios assumed really did occur, but in slow motion rather than as a cataclysm. Indeed, so slow was the motion that many observers missed it. The 1980s, they thought, would bring rising prosperity to a united Yugoslavia. Real life, of course, was not so kind: the 1980s saw the opening of cleavages among the nations that made up Yugoslavia and an economic downturn that made the cleavages irreparable. ₂

War games inform policy; they do not govern it. But they may create expectations. And they shape war plans. The two great alliances, the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) and the Warsaw Treaty Organization, never came close to hot war. So the plans remained on the shelves. Had real war ever appeared likely, leaders of both alliances would have found that their standard military repertoires included responses to the contingency of the breakup of Yugoslavia either caused or followed by the intervention of the other alliance. In an escalating crisis, large, complex organizations do not like to improvise; they prefer to follow standard, well–rehearsed routines. If one side had intervened in a Cold War Yugoslav crisis, competitive intervention by the other side is as easy to imagine as abstention.

During the Cold War, when both sides knew that such risks were ever present, along with knowledge came caution. When potential costs are high, far less than certainty of having to incur them is sufficient to deter. Thus, it seems unlikely that the leaders of either Slovenia or Croatia would have made a break for independence had they thought that one consequence of their doing so could well have been East–West war. Similarly, the Muslim leadership of Bosnia and Herzegovina has consistently reiterated that it would not have chosen independence had the earlier departure of Slovenia and Croatia not given Serbia even more disproportionate weight in the rump Yugoslavia in which the Bosnians would have found themselves. ₃ Thus, the international politics of the Cold War contributed significantly to holding Yugoslavia together.

Before 1989 another factor had the same effect—the declining but still lingering prestige of Titoist ideology. Tito's vision of a multinational, socialist Yugoslavia still retained some of its power. By 1989 that power had largely dissipated, owing first to the campaign by Serbia to alter to its advantage the federation's delicate system of internal balances and, second, to the discrediting of communist socialism that was occurring all over eastern Europe and even within the Soviet Union. ₄

Thus far we have been dealing with speculations—indeed, with speculations about the past: What would have happened if... ? What we know happened is that in the climate of 1989–91 the leaders of Slovenia and Croatia believed (the Croats with less confidence) that they could break free of the bonds of the federation without serious penalty. The Slovenes—ordinary citizens as well as the leaders—correctly perceived that the price for their unilateral declaration would be paid by others, not themselves. But most Croats accurately saw the danger that awaited them and therefore wanted the Slovenes to back down, lest Croatia's president, Franjo Tudjman, and the militant nationalists whom he led felt forced into complete secession rather than some variant of autonomy. ₅

In the case of Croatia, Tudjman and his colleagues felt strong enough to give to the Serb minority in the Krajina only the flimsiest of guarantees of their civil and political rights—guarantees that the Croats proceeded to violate. And the Serbs, in their turn, felt able to resort to measures of hideous violence against civilian populations, measures not dissimilar to those employed by the Nazis in wartime occupied Europe—or to those of the Croatian movement known as the Ustashi, Germany's allies, during the same period. ₆

Some of these speculations were built on the assumption of a continuation of some form of bipolarity and of the Cold War. Their purpose was to emphasize that by the time of the Slovene and Croatian secession, the bipolar world was gone, scarcely likely to return. There is another set of speculations worth making, however, ones that are future–oriented and focused on post–Cold War institutions. How might the threat of secession and war in Yugoslavia have been handled by a European Union (EU) whose members were more clearly of one mind than they are today and more able to pursue their oft–stated goal of a "common foreign and security policy," or by an Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE) with more developed aptitudes for conflict resolution and enforcement of settlements? And what roles might NATO have played?

Any problem can be "solved" with verbal formulations that gloss over the very aspects that make it intractable. One can imagine, for example, a European Union armed with a combination of sticks and (mostly) carrots that might have made it more likely that the Yugoslav federation would have held together in some form or another, or at least have dissolved in a manner that largely precluded resort to violence. Such a combination might have included extensive credits at favorable rates, assured entry into the EU, immediate trade concessions and perhaps investment credits to fill the gap in the interim, and a variety of similar measures all designed to persuade Yugoslav voters that moderate politicians, rather than nationalist demagogues, could deliver a better future.

Thus, if the EU had been able to speak with one voice in dealing with nonmember states, if the goal of a common foreign and security policy had become reality, and above all if that policy were one that diverted large quantities of resources into an economic program for Yugoslavia, dissolution and disaster might have been averted. Even if it were not averted, however, its flames might have been contained and then snuffed out had the leading Western powers, operating through the Western European Union (WEU) if the Americans declined or through NATO if Washington agreed, intervened in August and September 1991 with sufficient strength to prevent the Serb–controlled YPA from leveling the Croatian city of Vukovar. In effect, that would have meant the West's drawing a line in the sand and being clearly willing to prevent the Serbs from crossing it.

To assume such behavior on the part of the west Europeans or the Americans is to underline just how improbable anything like it would have been. This is especially true regarding measures that might have averted the disintegration of the Yugoslav federation. Given all the other demands on the separate European governments and publics, and on the common institutions of the European Community (EC)—as it then was—why should they have made significant concessions to Yugoslavia? The EC had a long line of would–be members. What justification could there possibly have been for moving Yugoslavia from the rear of the line to the front? Or for voting in international financial institutions for credits for Yugoslavia large enough (and that would have been very large) to make a difference? ₇

There was, of course, one justification: to prevent not merely one calamitous war but several. Yet not until the wars were raging was the scenario sufficiently plausible to justify extraordinary measures. Even then, calamity induced inaction and indecision. Here was a paradigmatic illustration of Hegel's adage that Minerva's owl flies at dusk. We achieve wisdom only when it is too late for effective action. ₈ In hindsight, just about any price would have been worth paying to avert the Balkan tragedy. If only we had known then what we know now: thus runs the lament. But to what sphere of human activity does it not apply?

Confronted first by the Slovene and Croat secession from the Yugoslav federation, then by the siege and systematic destruction by the Serbs of the Croatian city of Vukovar and the attempted siege of Dubrovnik, and next by the brutal effort of the Bosnian Serbs to "cleanse" much of Bosnia and Herzegovina of its Muslim population, the governments of the major powers could agree on only a minimalist program of using small, lightly armed contingents of military forces under U.N. auspices to protect agencies providing humanitarian assistance. The United Nations Protection Force (UNPROFOR) would adhere to a position of formal neutrality among the contending parties. As chapters later in this volume make clear, not for four years could the major powers and the international organizations that substantially reflected their policies—the United Nations, the EC, and NATO—summon the political will to take action remotely adequate to stop the slaughter and ethnic cleansing of which all parties were guilty (the Serbs, however, most of all) or to roll back the concomitant Serb efforts to redraw by force the boundaries of Yugoslavia's successor republics. Only with the intensive but limited bombing campaign of late August and September 1995 did Western powers intervene with anything like sufficient force to coerce the Bosnian Serbs to agree to a territorial settlement, even one that gave the Serbs considerably more land than would be commensurate with their numerical weight in the Bosnia of Tito's time.

It is easy to conclude from this record of near impotence on the part of the international community that the post–Cold War world is one safe for aggressors and that crimes against humanity as repugnant as ethnic cleansing will go unpunished. ₉ Sometimes—alas, it goes without saying—that will be the case. What determines whether the international community is moved to take decisive action, however, is less the magnitude of the crimes than the identity of the victims and the victims' friends. Help is much more likely if the victims have behind them a powerful protector state prepared to act because it sees its own security interests affected, such as the United States in the instance of Iraq's invasion of Kuwait, or a regional organization with whose populations they share ethnic or religious roots. Although the Bosnian Muslims have aroused much sympathy and not insubstantial support, they have not found a powerful patron unambiguously committed to their cause. Nor did the coincidence of shared Islam prove sufficient. It brought the Muslims arms in discrete but growing quantities from Iran, Saudi Arabia, and other Middle Eastern states, and some of these, it is said, "volunteer" military personnel as well. ₁₀

Two events in rapid succession turned the tide for the Muslims, however. First was the sudden, dramatic, and total victory of the Croatians over the Krajina Serbs in early August 1995. In this campaign the Croats were the beneficiaries of an extensive buildup of arms, mostly surplus equipment from former Warsaw Pact countries, imported in violation of the U.N.–mandated arms embargo, almost certainly with the help of Western intelligence agencies. Along with the arms came training supervised by 15 retired senior American officers operating as a private company, Military Professional Resources, Inc., who clearly enjoyed a close, continuing relationship with the Pentagon. ₁₁ The second event was the American–led NATO bombing campaign of August–September 1995. Although Bosnian Serb military forces were not targeted as such, their ammunition depots and communications facilities were, and the Muslim–Croat alliance (a fragile structure based on what was, at best, only a partial coincidence of interests) was quick to take advantage of the disarray among its enemies. Western diplomats found themselves facing a new task: reining in the Muslims and the Croats to prevent them from trying to take the Bosnian Serb stronghold of Banja Luka, an event that seemed likely to lead to an escalation of the conflict through overt and large–scale intervention of YPA forces from Serbia itself. ₁₂

Yugoslavia's Wars and Western Stakes

In the weeks leading up to the outbreak of World War II, newspaper billboards and kiosks in Paris bore the legend Mourir pour Danzig? (To die for Danzig?). On more than a few occasions during the long siege of Bosnia's capital there were echoes (Mourir pour Sarajevo?) of that question from 1939. Not surprisingly, very few outsiders—even from Islamic states—were willing to take mortal risks to bring about any particular outcome in the former Yugoslavia. That proved especially true of Western governments; none concluded that its interests were commensurate with such risks, not even Germany, the major power that once had been most deeply involved in southeastern Europe. Before both world wars, Germany sought and achieved economic domination over the region. In the middle and late 1930s, Nazi strategists preparing for aggressive war used German capital to develop assured supplies of cheap raw materials, foodstuffs, and some industrial goods. Neither the United Kingdom nor France made a serious effort to counter this spread of German hegemony. ₁₃

In the autumn and winter of 1991–92 the coalition government led by Chancellor Helmut Kohl and Foreign Minister Hans Dietrich Genscher relentlessly lobbied Bonn's European Community partners to recognize the secessionist regimes in Slovenia and Croatia. This dÈmarche raised questions about German motives: Was the Bonn government seeking to recapture the leading role its predecessors once had? For the government and, indeed, for all except perhaps some fringe elements in German society, the answer is negative. The nature of Germany's interest in the Balkans today contrasts sharply with that of the past. "Preventive recognition," as the Germans called it, would make a conflict that many still saw as a civil war into an unambiguously international war, thereby creating a legal basis for outside powers to come to the aid of victims of aggression. As Bonn saw it, Serbia would then have no alternative but to obey the rulings of international authority or become an international outlaw. ₁₄

Kohl and Genscher were successful in promoting widespread recognition of the Yugoslav succession states, but recognition does not seem to have been the silver bullet, solving all problems, that its advocates forecast. Since early 1992 Germany has maintained the lowest of profiles regarding the former Yugoslavia. With some embarrassment, Foreign Ministry officials in Bonn—who almost uniformly opposed their chiefs' policies—have explained the absence of German military personnel in UNPROFOR by pointing to what, until the Federal Republic's constitutional court ruled otherwise in July 1994, was commonly held to be a binding prohibition against the use of German troops outside the traditional NATO area. To any mention of this formal prohibition they usually add the observation that, after the atrocious behavior of Nazi forces in the Balkans during World War II, any presence on the ground today of uniformed Germans would be anathema. ₁₅

Only in mid–1995 did these strictures begin to bend. At that time Bonn announced that it would contribute transport and strike/reconnaissance aircraft to U.N. and NATO operations in Bosnia, and staff and medical personnel to U.N. headquarters in Croatia. And in late August and September 1995, when NATO mounted its large–scale bombing raids on Bosnian Serb military installations, the 270 aircraft from nine countries that took part included 14 German Tornado fighter bombers armed with antiradar missiles. Perhaps in deference to lingering German sensibilities, NATO commanders used the German Tornados for reconnaissance missions in which the aircraft and their crews were themselves in harm's way but did not directly inflict harm. ₁₆

Even more than in other countries, in Germany the politics of Yugoslavia has been primarily a politics of gesture, aimed at seeming to "do the right thing" for the Croatians and Slovenians (many of them former "guest workers")—and, incidentally, at satisfying the country's ample population of Croatian immigrants and the German Catholic hierarchy—rather than at maximizing any German national interest. The most persuasive argument in German politics seems to have been that, since the reunification of Germany had come about through the international community's willingness to take seriously the principle of national self–determination, the breakaway Yugoslav republics should enjoy no less an opportunity. That argument, however, is an expression of a principle, not of an interest.

Germany did have one particular interest at stake in Yugoslavia's wars: stemming the flow of persons fleeing them. The refugees were victims of ethnic cleansing or simply of the general upheaval. For them the Federal Republic, with its robust economy and the presence already of communities of most of the former Yugoslavia's ethnic groups, was a powerful magnet. Their eagerness for refuge in Germany, however, was matched by Bonn's desire to bar the door. The refugee problem meant that Bonn's interest in peace was both generalized and stronger than its interest in any particular outcome to the Yugoslav conflict. All things being equal, Helmut Kohl's government would like to see a strong Croatia emerge from the ruins. But Bonn would gladly settle for a stable peace. What matters most is the region's future stability, for instability creates refugees. Yet—and here is the conundrum—at least equally important is the need to keep German casualties to an absolute minimum, preferably to none at all. Faced with a choice between instability and stability purchased at a significant cost in German lives, Bonn would unhesitatingly choose instability. ₁₇

What is true of Germany today is true of the other major powers of the West, and of Russia too. No government has behaved as if it had vital interests at stake in the former Yugoslavia. Indeed, it is quite apparent that the absence of any perceptions of substantial interests (other than preventing the conflict from escalating into a much wider war) has made it so difficult for outside actors to frame effective policies. Policymaking was especially difficult for governments with troops on the ground as members of UNPROFOR. That is because, almost invariably, the safety of these troops soon became far more important in the domestic politics of the sending country than any possible outcome in the former Yugoslavia itself. ₁₈

In the summer of 1995, as part of NATO's response to the Bosnian Serbs' refusal to respect the status of Sarajevo and five smaller cities as U.N.–protected "safe areas," Britain and France deployed to Sarajevo their newly created joint mobile rapid reaction force (RRF), with 12,000 men and much more potent armaments (heavier guns, tanks, and at–tack helicopters) than those of their UNPROFOR detachments. The two European powers were already the largest troop contributors to UNPROFOR, with nearly 4,000 troops each, and their contingents had suffered the most casualties. While sufficient in number for traditional peacekeeping missions, UNPROFOR was obviously undermanned and underarmed for more aggressive peace enforcement ("robust peace maintenance," in the new argot of the trade) or the still more aggressive "peacemaking" that would characterize any really serious attempt to pursue national objectives on Yugoslav territory. ₁₉ Even the addition of the RRF would not have been sufficient to change this condition.

Nearly all of the national elements of UNPROFOR sustained casualties. All the troop–supplying governments, but especially the Western ones, have found—in Bosnia and elsewhere—that even a few casualties are difficult to justify before parliaments at home unless there is something approaching societal consensus that the interests at stake are vital. Such consensus is deeper than mere approval. Thus, the prospect of a small number of casualties often is enough to cause a government to draw back from participating in a military operation whose purpose would otherwise receive widespread approval from government and society alike.

Moreover, it seems to have made no difference that UNPROFOR soldiers were nearly all volunteer, professional "regulars," not conscripts. The proposition that men and women who freely enlist in armed forces do so with the knowledge that they are electing to place themselves in harm's way from time to time seems to make no impact upon democratic electorates. ₂₀ Public attitudes are significantly influenced by mass media that graphically play up the circumstances surrounding each casualty. That has been particularly the case with operations such as those in Bosnia, where the troop–sending states failed to identify in any persuasive way the national interests that their operations served. Thus, just when the end of the Cold War has made it relatively easy to secure a consensus within the U.N. Security Council, the perceived domestic political costs of loss of life among a nation's armed forces have made it difficult—often prohibitively so—to mount even a peacekeeping operation to monitor compliance with a settlement to which the contending parties have agreed, let alone a peacemaking operation in which outside forces are called upon to impose a cease–fire through coercion.

Because of this sensitivity to casualties, not only London and Paris but nearly all the troop–supplying governments repeatedly threatened to withdraw their personnel in the event of any developments that would notably increase the danger to which they are exposed. Among these possible developments, two were mentioned most often. One was a NATO air attack that would cause one or another of the parties to the conflict to strike out against the peacekeepers, as the Bosnian Serbs did when they took peacekeepers hostage in May 1995. Another was the lifting of the embargo, whose main effect has been to prevent the Bosnian government from acquiring heavy weapons matching those of its enemies. The supposition was that, if the embargo were lifted, Serb forces might retaliate, long before new arms could reach the Muslims, by attacking U.N. peacekeepers.

The involvement of one or more great powers in a regional conflict may sometimes result in a wider war. Yet in other circumstances it may keep a war from spreading. That no government of a major outside power thinks that its vital interests will be either substantially enhanced or diminished by just about any reasonably plausible outcome of the Yugoslav wars does not mean that warfare will be confined to the territorial space of the republics carved from the former Yugoslavia. Both in the former Yugoslav republic of Macedonia, which also had opted for independence, and in the Kosovo region of Serbia there are large areas inhabited mostly by ethnic Albanians. Indeed, 90 percent of the population of Kosovo is Albanian. In both regions, but especially in Kosovo, tensions between Albanians and Serbs have been high for years, and there is a real danger of violent conflicts, particularly if militant Serb nationalists—perhaps even operating without the approval of the Milosevic regime in Belgrade—attempt to expel any part of Kosovo's Albanian population. ₂₁

Wider Wars: The Balkans as Tinderbox

Any pogrom–like attack by Serbs on Albanians would, of course, inflame Albania itself and open the door to a still–wider conflict. There are Greek communities in both Macedonia and Albania, and Bulgarians in Macedonia. Both Greece and Bulgaria, but especially Greece, might be drawn in by the political need to be seen at home to be protecting ethnic brethren. From there, the holding of a plebescite in the affected borderlands, followed by their actual annexation, is but a relatively short step.

It is conceivable, although barely likely, that Turkey might be drawn into the maelstrom, especially if Greece should become involved and attempt to seize territory now part of Macedonia or of Albania itself. It should be noted, however, that Turkey was a major troop contributor to UNPROFOR; in late May 1995 its contingent numbered 1,474. ₂₂ Even if Turkey's Islamic parties were to win a more decisive victory than they did in the parliamentary elections of December 1995, they would be unlikely to embark upon a large–scale intervention that would be both logistically difficult and potentially quite costly. That would especially be the case if Turkey were still embroiled in its seemingly endless war against Kurdish separatists.

Any government in Ankara would feel some pressure from public opinion to get involved. But it would be likely to do its best to resist pressures to do much more than take a strong pro–Muslim rhetorical stand on a new Balkan war. Moreover, the fact that Turkey is still an applicant for membership in the EU might cause even moderate Islamists in Ankara to be wary of placing too much emphasis on Islam as a focus of Turkey's identity. In the unlikely event that militant Islamists were to take over the reins of government, incentives for greater involvement in the Balkans would undoubtedly be higher. So too, however, would be the resistance of other states, including the Western powers, to any leading role for Turkey. ₂₃

Turkey is not a great power today. At best it is a power to be reckoned with within its region. The other states mentioned here are not even that, although the YPA, in the days when it was more than merely a Serbian force, might have made a Soviet invasion prohibitively costly. A wider Balkan war today would be a true catastrophe, for it would likely be fought with the barbarous ferocity, fueled by ethnic hatreds, that has characterized all the fighting in the former Yugoslavia until now and, indeed, that characterized previous Balkan wars. Whether such a war would amount to more than a local catastrophe, however, depends on the extent to which the great powers became involved and on the regional effects of their involvement.

Thus far, with the exception of a few incidents, such as the dropping of bombs from YPA aircraft on Hungarian territory, the direct impact of the wars in the Balkans has not been felt beyond the territory of the former Yugoslavia. Of course, the war's economic impact, particularly in the form of disrupted trade and forgone investments, and its human impact in the form of massive flows of refugees, has been felt throughout the region and beyond. Yet, despite all the attention the war has received in national capitals, at the United Nations, by NATO, and by the organs of the EU, the actual involvement of the great powers was minimal up to the bombing campaign of August–September 1995 and the subsequent successful effort by the United States to force the contending factions to negotiate an end to the fighting. Even then, as Secretary of State Warren Christopher, chief negotiator Richard Holbrooke, and the other American officials who staged and managed the marathon–like Dayton negotiations made clear, they always were prepared to walk away if the parties could not reach agreement. That was, of course, a negotiating tactic. But it was also more: for them and for their European counterparts, being seen by their own publics at last to be working on forging a peace that would bring an end to the bloodletting—and yet not putting many of their own military personnel at serious risk—was at least as important as the peace agreement itself. ₂₄

That the major powers do not see vital interests at stake now is an indication of how much European international politics in the post–Cold War era differ from those of previous eras. For much of the present century, any change in the alignment of one of the Balkan nations—especially Yugoslavia (or, before Yugoslavia existed, Serbia)—was regarded as the potential cause of a larger European war. During most of the Cold War, however, it often seemed that Yugoslavia mattered not so much for economic or geopolitical reasons but for the abstract reason of which camp it was in. The shaping event came in 1948, when Stalin expelled Yugoslavia from the Cominform (and therefore from the Socialist camp) under the mistaken assumption that the move would bring about Tito's downfall and his replacement by a more pliable regime willing to follow Moscow's lead. Instead, Tito emerged more secure in his power than ever, and even though Stalin's successors worked hard to erase the damage that his hard–line tactics had done, Western influence was never again eclipsed by that of the Soviet Union. ₂₅

Yugoslavia's Wars and International Institutions: What Roles for NATO?

For the international community, the greatest impact of Yugoslavia's wars may stem from another hope they have proved to be illusory: that the web of international security institutions constructed during the last half century would function as a safety net and would not permit European peoples to descend into barbarism. In particular, that was the assumption widely shared in Europe and North America about NATO, primary among those institutions, symbol of and vehicle for the commitment of Western governments—North American and European—to pursue common security goals though common policies. Yugoslavia's wars saw the first shots ever fired in anger by the alliance. But they also occasioned NATO's most serious division since the Suez crisis of 1956. That division and its resulting restraints on any but the most limited military action demonstrated that NATO's supposed power was highly contingent upon circumstances and that the alliance could seem—indeed, for many months was—largely impotent.

The targets of NATO's first shots were not Warsaw Pact armies flooding into the north German plain, the scenario that dominated the alliance's planning and training throughout four and a half decades of the Cold War, but four overage YPA warplanes that, like many others previously, had flagrantly violated the U.N. Security Council resolution prohibiting Yugoslav belligerents from using aircraft within a stipulated exclusion zone. In a second action a month later, in February 1994, local U.N. authorities, to whom NATO commanders were subordinated, permitted the destruction only of an empty, rusted, and obsolete YPA tank. In November 1994 NATO aircraft struck once more, damaging the runways of an airport in the Krajina from which Croatian Serbs had been flying in support of the Bosnian Serbs. But because Lieutenant General Bertrand de Lapresle, the French commander of UNPROFOR in the former Yugoslavia, feared that the Serbs would retaliate against his peacekeepers, he insisted that air strikes should avoid hitting 15 parked Bosnian Serb warplanes.

Then, in late May 1995, came the events that most starkly underlined the absurdity of NATO's situation. Responding to a series of local offensives by the Bosnian government, Bosnian Serb forces fired hundreds of artillery and mortar rounds into Sarajevo and other towns where Muslims were concentrated, towns previously declared "safe areas" by the U.N. Security Council. Many civilians were killed or wounded. This time the U.N. civilian and military commanders in the field decided that a more robust reaction was justified. At their request, NATO fighter–bombers destroyed an ammunition depot adjacent to the Bosnian Serb headquarters at Pale.

The Bosnian Serbs' response seemed to catch the alliance by surprise. It should have surprised no one. They made hostages of all the UNPROFOR soldiers they could reach, some 350 in all. Many they chained to structures thought to be likely targets of future NATO attacks, correctly assuming that NATO governments, constrained by public opinion in their own countries, would cease the air attacks rather than risk the hostages' lives.

Now, however, the Bosnian Serb leaders erred. They seem to have assumed that NATO would not be able to cobble together the two agreements necessary to pose a serious threat: an internal agreement among its member governments and then an external agreement with the U.N. secretary–general and his representatives in the field, each permitting the use of much larger quantums of violence. And, in particular, the Bosnian Serbs seem not to have calculated that their own behavior might be so grossly offensive as to cause NATO to ratchet up its response by much more than an order of magnitude. Yet just that train of escalation was set in motion on August 28, 1995, when a 120–mm mortar round, fired from territory controlled by the Bosnian Serbs, exploded in the midst of Sarajevo's main market, killing 37 civilians and seriously injuring 85 others. ₂₆

A year and a half earlier, on February 5, 1994, another shell exploding in the same market had killed 68 persons and injured 200 others. Images of maimed bodies had filled television screens around the world. NATO's response then was to demand that the Serbs hand over to UNPROFOR their heavy weapons—large–caliber guns and tanks—but then to take no other retaliatory action. (The same demand was made of the Muslims, who readily complied: they possessed far fewer such weapons and they welcomed the prospect of a more level playing field.) However, Serb compliance was short–lived. Within months—as soon as they realized that the West would do little to stop them—they forcibly entered the various UNPROFOR depots where the weapons were stored and demanded their return. Outgunned, the U.N. forces had no alternative but to comply. These and many other past humiliations were cumulative. The August 1995 massacre brought even more gruesome television images, which, in turn, still further amplified the mood among Western electorates that, this time, something must be done.

NATO's response was a minutely planned NATO bombing campaign aimed at military targets, especially ammunition stocks, weapons, and communications nodes. The campaign began August 30 and ran, with some pauses, until September 17. By then NATO warplanes had flown 3,515 sorties—roughly one good flying day in the Gulf War. Alliance planners were determined to avoid targets where there might be even a small chance of "collateral damage" to nearby civilians. That goal was achieved. So were the larger objectives of the air campaign: the Bosnian Serbs agreed to pull back their heavy weapons. Even more important, they agreed to take part with the Bosnian Muslims and Croats in peace talks that, from the outset, were premised upon the condition that they would emerge with only 49 percent of Bosnian territory, not the 70 percent that only weeks before had been in their grasp. ₂₇

For NATO, these moves into the Balkan quagmire were, in General Omar Bradley's memorable phrase about the Korean War, "the wrong war, at the wrong place, at the wrong time." ₂₈ Indeed, the Yugoslav case was the hardest that Europe could offer. Nowhere else on the continent can there be found the multifold ethnic antagonisms within a relatively small geographic space that were all too apparent in the Yugoslavia of the late 1980s. Moreover, during these early post–Cold War years, NATO was faced with the problem of redefining itself. The great enemy that had provided its raison d'Ítre had suddenly ceased to exist. Flushed with success, NATO suddenly faced becoming irrelevant. The understandable reaction of national governments and Brussels bureaucrats alike was to use rhetoric to stake out new territory. Meeting in Rome in November 1991, less than five months after Slovenia and Croatia declared independence and five months before the start of the war in Bosnia, the alliance's heads of state and government adopted what they called NATO's "new strategic concept." The danger the alliance faced was no longer "calculated aggression" from Moscow but "instabilities that may arise from the serious economic, social and political difficulties, including ethnic rivalries and territorial disputes, which are faced by many countries in central and eastern Europe." ₂₉

The final communiquÈs for this meeting and the Oslo meeting of NATO foreign ministers the following June asserted that the new role of the alliance was to assure the stability of Europe. It would perform European crisis management and peacekeeping, and do so in collaboration with other regional institutions—the Conference on (now renamed "Organization for") Security and Cooperation in Europe (CSCE/OSCE), the European Community (now Union) and the expression of its military identity, the Western European Union, and the Council of Europe. Effectively deployed, the representatives and resources of these institutions might have a moderating effect on future conflicts like those that sundered Yugoslavia. ₃₀

Optimists might apologize for what appears to have been three years of opportunity wasted by observing that the trial came too early: NATO's and Europe's facilities for conflict resolution were still in their infancy during the years of Yugoslavia's breakup. Pessimists would not reach for excuses. Nor would they emphasize the singularity of the Yugoslav example. Far from being characteristic merely of one state, they would say, Yugoslavia's traumas carry obvious implications for states everywhere whose existence depends on the likely viability of multicultural politics. Such states are all too vulnerable to the disruptive efforts of demagogic politicians skilled in the uses of modern means of mass communication. And as for the likelihood of a prompt and effective response by the "international community" even when there is a relatively well defined aggressor, Kuwait was the exception: states in trouble would be advised to have other remedies at hand.

The Fruits of Dayton

The chapters in this volume offer few grounds for optimism that the agreement initialed at Dayton on November 21, 1995, and signed at Paris on December 14, will bring lasting peace to Bosnia and Herzegovina. That does not mean there will be renewed war in the near future. In the four and a half years since Slovenia and Croatia declared their independence, there have been a number of cease–fires and even formal truce agreements. Some seemed quite promising precursors of peace. But with the exception of general recognition of the independence of Slovenia and Macedonia (although Greek opposition complicated the case of the latter), they all have been premised on exhaustion with war, not on satisfaction with the particular peace terms on offer at the moment. And they always have broken down as one party or another reached the conclusion that conditions were such that it could gain more through renewed fighting than through talking.

The Dayton agreement brings together a trio of antagonistic odd couples. First are the Muslims and the Bosnian Serbs. It is difficult to imagine a political settlement that would sufficiently satisfy them both, over a decade or so, to the extent that even relatively minor frictions between them would not lead to new outbursts of violence. The same is true of the second couple, the Muslims and the Herzegovina Croats, partners in a jerry–built federation called an "entity" in the Dayton agreement—a second entity being the so–called Bosnian Serb Republic. A firefight between Croat and Muslim patrols in the city of Mostar early in 1996 was damped by EU observers before lives were lost, but the event was scarcely reassuring about the federation's future. Finally, it is difficult to imagine a lasting accord between Croatia and Serbia, the third odd couple. The 170,000 or so Serbs who fled from the enclave of the Krajina in early August 1995, driven out by Croatia's unexpectedly powerful offensive, are not likely to allow any leadership in Belgrade to forget their plight or to accept with equanimity the results of this new round of ethnic cleansing.

Two other factors serve to undermine the chances that the Dayton agreement will bring peace to Yugoslavia. One is the year's limit placed by President Clinton on the participation of the 20,000–strong U.S. contingent in the 60,000–person force sent to Bosnia to implement the agreement (hence its NATO acronym, IFOR, or Implementation Force). It is possible that substantial numbers of allied troops will remain, even if the Americans leave. But it is more likely that the congressional pressures that caused Clinton to agree to a time limit will generate similar domestic pressures on the governments of other major troop–contributing states, especially if they suffer significant numbers of casualties early in their stay. The one–year limit establishes parameters for wrecking the peace. One can hear those who want to rekindle the war saying, "Keep cool until the Yanks leave."

The second problematic factor is the contrast between IFOR's well–financed and robust peacekeeping operation and the fund–starved civil program that was also part of the Dayton agreement. In the words of two specialists, the civil program is "arguably the most ambitious multidimensional peace operation ever undertaken." ₃₁ It provides for the return and resettlement of refugees, adjudication of property claims, guarantees for human rights, formation of an international civilian police force, reconstruction of highways and other civil infrastructure, and (thorniest of all issues, as Abram and Antonia Chayes make clear in chapter 8) the arrest and trial of war criminals. All these and many more concerns are to be met within the framework of a new Bosnian constitution, on which the negotiators at Dayton also agreed. But the civil arrangements read more like a wish list than an agenda for action. In particular, their implementation assumes—and depends on—the active participation of a dozen international organizations, from the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees to the OSCE to the European Court of Human Rights. Even the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) is given a role—the preservation of "national monuments." Yet all of these agencies are short of funds. All of them have their own agendas, on which Bosnia may well not have primacy of place. The documents initialed at Dayton are silent regarding how the needed resources might be obtained. ₃₂

All these worries may be premature. Although a year is not a long time for peacekeeping operations, nevertheless it may be long enough for new political structures to grow. Yugoslavia descended into tribal warfare because the moderate politicians who might have prevented it could not prevail against the militant demagogues. But four and a half years of war have produced few clear winners and many obvious losers. Much of the economy of all the former republics but Slovenia is moribund. Now that the horrors of war are so familiar, playing soldier in the mountains as a change from everyday life may not have the same appeal for young men, not to mention their fathers, as it did in 1991 and 1992. In short, rather than a failure, Dayton may prove a success, what was needed to wake the peoples of the former Yugoslavia from a bad dream, and a framework for reconstruction. That may indeed be the case. But what we know about the Dayton agreement and the military and civilian resources needed to make it more than paper promises do not logically support an optimistic conclusion.

Serbia and the Russian Connection

The perception on the part of the great powers that they have no vital interests at stake in the Balkans is a product of the momentous changes in international relations that were partly a cause but mainly a consequence of the end of the Cold War. In particular, these were changes in the value that the major powers placed on geopolitical alignments within the international system. Especially during periods of great tension, but even during periods of dÈtente, American and Soviet leaders tended to assess any changes in the political alignment of territorial units as either strengthening or weakening the alliances they led—a calculation augmented by their sense that their personal political standing often rose or fell likewise. The climactic events that began with the (mostly) peaceful east European revolutions of 1989 marked the sharp decline of the utility—indeed, the credibility—of zero–sum thinking about international alignments. ₃₃

The tide that washed away Russia's Soviet empire did not, of course, stop with the liberation of Moscow's post–1945 satellites in central and eastern Europe; it went on to dissolve the Soviet Union itself. Where once all ethnic Russians were included within the Soviet Union, there were now fragments of a Russian community in nearly all of the newly independent states formed on the territory of the old Soviet Union. The largest of these states, the Russian Republic, is very unlikely to seek the full reunification of the Russian people. As contrasted with the situation of Germany, where the ethnicity of the German Democratic Republic was monolithically German, making merger with the Federal Republic an easy matter, ethnic Russians are far from constituting a majority even in those former Soviet republics where they are present in large numbers. However, their status and the rights they enjoy as a minority are of obvious concern within Russia, where, as chapter 7 by Paul Goble points out, their complaints of mistreatment are amplified by the media and by nationalist politicians.

The parallel with events in the former Yugoslav Federation is striking. Serbia also faced a situation in which the dissolution of the old federal structure left hundreds of thousands of Serbs living either in Croatia, where the Croats were the dominant ethnic group, or in Bosnia and Herzegovina, where the Muslims and the Croats would have been able to combine to outvote the Serbs. To Serb leaders these were untenable situations that could be put right only by the use of force. The wars that have raged since Croatia declared its independence in mid–1991 were thus the product of Serb fear and Serb greed—fear of living in a polity in which other ethnic groups could prevail by the weight of numbers and greed to acquire some of the land owned by members of those other groups, perhaps adjacent to land owned by Serbs or to Serbia itself. The fear expressed itself immediately; the greed grew as Serb strategists and fighters began to realize the full extent of the opportunities for aggrandizement opening before them.

If the parallels between the situations of Serbia and Russia are striking, so are the differences. The role that Russia seems to be seeking in relation to the other former Soviet republics differs significantly from the role that Serbia sought in relation to the fragments of the former Yugoslavia. By virtue of its geographic expanse, the size of its population, the relatively advanced state of its economy, and even its imperial status during the era preceding the revolutions of 1917, Russia could plausibly aspire to something like a hegemonic role in what was once its undisputed domain. Serbia could not. Its claims to hegemony among the republics of the former Yugoslavia were never accepted. Nor would they have been accepted had the federation not disintegrated: Serbia lacked the advantages of size and of undisputed past hegemony that Russia enjoyed as the legal successor to the Soviet Union. To achieve their aims—initially to hold the Yugoslav federation together, later to assert a claim for leadership among the fragments—Serb leaders, in Belgrade and beyond Serbia's borders in Croatia and Bosnia–Herzegovina, had to resort to arms because persuasion and conciliation were not in their repertoire.

Thus, Belgrade's ambitions and methods made the Serbs, wherever they were, into pariahs, the subject of stringent U.N.–mandated economic sanctions that were lifted only with the Dayton agreement. By contrast, the "international community," in the form of the U.N. Security Council, has gone a long way toward recognizing Moscow's claim to something like a hegemonial role among the members of the so–called Commonwealth of Independent States (CIS). ₃₄ In good measure, this seems to be the result of expediency. No other power has been prepared to play even a peacekeeping role, much less one of peace enforcement, in the vast reaches that once were the Soviet Union. Although Western publics were deeply disturbed by the crude, harsh methods employed by Russia's armed forces in putting down Chechnya's bid for independence in December 1994 and January 1995, Western governments are well aware that those same publics will not support any operations on the territory of the former Soviet Union that will place their own military personnel in jeopardy. If "peace operations" (to use the U.N. term) are to be carried out in the "near abroad," Russia's armed forces are almost certain to be the dominant—probably the only—participants.

The same Western governments and publics that still seem willing to allow Russia substantial leeway within the territory of the former Soviet Union are likely to be less complacent should Russia begin to play a much more assertive role in support of Serbia in the Yugoslav cauldron. There is little likelihood that it will do so, however. Russian diplomacy in the Balkan crisis has been extremely prudent. American journalistic reporting tends to play up instances when Russia has cast a vote in the U.N. Security Council opposed to actions or policies that Washington prefers. Yet in every such instance but one (and that one a relatively unimportant instance), the United Kingdom and France have been on the same side as Russia. ₃₅

Moscow's motivation in staying close to the British and French positions may be a desire not to jeopardize the financial assistance it receives from the United States. (Washington would not retaliate against London or Paris; therefore, it could not do so against Moscow.) However, an equally persuasive explanation is that Russia—like the United States or the other major Western powers—has no vital interests at stake in the former Yugoslavia. While the Russian government may sympathize with the Serbs as being unfairly singled out to bear the bulk of the blame for the Yugoslav debacle, and while that sympathy may have its roots in a common Slavic, Orthodox heritage, it is easy to overestimate the strength of any bonds created by that sympathy. Neither Kosovo, the site of the the fourteenth–century battle that even today is so important in Serb mythology, nor Kosovo, the scene in recent years of an intense struggle between Serbs and Albanians, has any resonances in Moscow. The vast majority of Russians would feel revulsion if the Serbs were to move to push out the Albanians in order to seize more land for themselves.

Indeed, in its involvement with Yugoslavia, Russia has behaved less like a state seeking primacy than like one that wants to be seen to be consulted, a member of the innermost circle. Thus, Russia was eager for a seat along with the United States, Britain, France, and Germany on the self–styled "contact group" of mediators aiming to negotiate an end to the war in Bosnia and Herzegovina. Indeed, on several occasions senior Russian diplomats attempted through bilateral talks with Belgrade to cut through the impasse between Serbia and the Western allies. Deputy Foreign Minister Vitaly Churkin achieved something of a breakthrough in February 1994 when he reached an eleventh–hour agreement with the Bosnian Serbs that helped to lift the siege of Sarajevo and averted planned NATO air strikes. ₃₆ In this and in other instances, the Russians acted unilaterally; yet, while their negotiating tactics differed from those of the Western allies, and while they clearly sought to steal some flattering limelight for themselves, there is no indication that they were seeking to undermine Western positions or policies. ₃₇

Russia was also an early contributor to the ranks of UNPROFOR, sending a battalion of peacekeeping troops while the war was still confined to Croatian territory and later allowing the U.N. command to shift them to Bosnia. By all reports, however, neither their training nor their equipment was that of first–line troops—in contrast with the quality of the more numerous British and French detachments contributed to UNPROFOR. Russian parents have made clear by widespread demonstrations that they will accept casualties from military adventures no more readily than their counterparts in the West. As with membership in the "contact group," however, the government of Boris Yeltsin in Moscow seemed to want at least some Russian military presence in the former Yugoslavia not because it had its own well–defined Balkan agenda but simply for the purpose of "being there."

Russia's tortuous behavior over its participation in the multinational force that will enforce the peace in Bosnia graphically reflects the complex impulses that motivate Moscow's diplomacy. IFOR owes its existence and international legitimacy to a vote of the U.N. Security Council. But to avoid the conflicts that surrounded and often paralyzed UNPROFOR, it falls entirely under, and is responsive only to, NATO command. For domestic political reasons, however, the Yeltsin government decided that Russian troops cannot be permitted to obey the commands of what many Russians still perceive to be a Cold War institution. Yet American command was somehow acceptable. Ever since NATO's founding nearly half a century ago, its supreme allied commander in Europe (SACEUR) has been an American who has simultaneously been commander in chief of U.S. forces in Europe (CINCEUR). So it was arranged that Russian troops in Bosnia would be under the command of General George Joulwan in his capacity as CINCEUR while the troops of all the other participating states (including American troops) will be under General Joulwan as SACEUR. Again, the motivation seems to be a desire for "being there." With a polity in disarray, an economy riddled by inefficiency, a population made fearful by burgeoning crime, an army in disgrace after Chechnya, Russia draws some reassurance from the fact that it may nevertheless still claim a seat at the table alongside the world's other principal powers. ₃₈

The United States, Bosnia, and the Leadership of the West

By contrast, the "other superpower" (in fact, the only superpower) cannot escape from the table even when it tries to relinquish its seat. America's absence from international collective action unbalances the scales, and there is no state or combination of states that can be an effective substitute. Chapter 5 by David Gompert makes clear just how reluctant the Bush administration was to get involved in any way in Yugoslavia's wars. That reluctance had far–reaching consequences. It meant that U.N. forces were present in far smaller numbers than those initially proposed. ₃₉ UNPROFOR was never large enough or heavily enough armed to undertake offensive operations such as, for example, inserting a blocking force between the city of Vukovar and the YPA (in fact, Serb) divisions that besieged and destroyed it, or retaliating for the bombardment of Dubrovnik. Such an active role might have profoundly changed the course of events: there is considerable evidence suggesting that the Serbs were extremely worried about international action against them and that early intervention in Croatia by a sufficiently capable force would have led them to moderate their behavior. ₄₀ Without a substantial American military presence, however, real pressure on the Serbs was most unlikely to be brought to bear.

Moreover, the United States was consistently inconsistent in its policies and actions. The problem was not merely that the Bush administration had decided to leave to the Europeans what it saw as almost certain to be a Yugoslav quagmire—a posture tacitly confirmed by the Clinton administration when it came to office in 1993. Rather, the problem was that for two and a half years, until the summer of 1995, when it concluded that the United States should take over leadership of what might be called both the military and the negotiating tracks, the Clinton administration kept altering its position.

Previous to this assertion of primacy, the administration limited itself for much of the time to urging on its allies what came to be called "lift and strike." Lift referred to the U.N.–mandated embargo on supplying arms to the warring parties; Washington assumed that the Muslims would benefit more than the others from its removal. Strike meant robust measures by NATO air forces against Bosnian Serb military forces and their logistical bases. The administration always had to make clear, mainly in deference to strongly negative congressional opinion, that it would contribute no American ground forces to UNPROFOR. Yet everyone knew it would be ground forces that would take the brunt of any Serb retaliation for air strikes. Other than participation in a true peacekeeping force whose presence was agreed to by all the belligerents, the only circumstance in which the United States would depart from that prohibition would be if the troop–providing governments were to decide to withdraw their forces. U.S. ground force units might be available, as President Clinton put it in June 1995, "if our allies decide they can no longer continue the U.N. mission and decide to withdraw, but they cannot withdraw in safety. We should help them to get out." ₄₁

By the early summer of 1995, withdrawal of U.N. forces seemed a distinct possibility. The Bosnian Serbs' humiliation of the would–be peacekeepers in May and June had made it amply apparent that, under the prevailing rules of engagement, the mission of the U.N. contingents had become untenable. With some 350 of their number held hostage, the U.N. commanders tacitly agreed to call off NATO air strikes on Bosnian Serb targets and ordered their troops not to resist when the Serbs simply walked into scattered depots throughout Bosnia and "liberated" the heavy weapons (tanks and artillery pieces) they had deposited there, in response to NATO's threat of bombing, in February 1994.

It was in these unpromising circumstances that the German government altered its posture toward Yugoslavia's wars. As we have seen, in late June 1995, after three years of the most intense reluctance to permit more than a handful of German military personnel to carry out missions anywhere near the former Yugoslavia, Bonn seemed to change its mind: for the first time, a government spokesman announced, Germany would send armed forces to the Balkans to support U.N. peacekeepers. There would be no ground troops—sensitivities in the region were still too raw for that—but units sent would include strike and transport aircraft and headquarters and medical personnel. Asked to explain this policy change, a senior official of the Foreign Office responded with a revealing comment: "The Americans are clearly standing on the sidelines of developments. The decisive initiative is coming from the French and the English. If our most important European partners judge the situation in Yugoslavia this way, then Germany must show its solidarity." ₄₂

"My alliance right or wrong"—or so the German official seemed to be saying. Bonn's assessment of the policies that Paris and London had been pursuing in Bosnia was not the issue. Nurturing Bonn's relations with the other two governments was. Their contribution of large contingents of ground forces to UNPROFOR involved substantial political risk, and each had sustained losses. They had paid a human and political price that Germany had not. Chancellor Helmut Kohl and his colleagues were especially sensitive to such concerns: they knew that, as the most powerful state in Europe, with a problematic past, Germany was not fully trusted, and they feared a downward spiral of mistrust unless the Europeans tied themselves together in a way that made it increasingly costly to go separate ways. Therefore the importance of harmonizing policies with Paris and London.

The partnership in question was not NATO, however, but the European Union, with its own security organization, the WEU and its stated goal of a common foreign and security policy. The most salient characteristic of the WEU is a negative one: its membership does not include the United States. For that reason, successive French governments have tried to make of the WEU a favored instrument. In nearly every instance, however, reality has intruded in the form of general acknowledgment—now including the government of French President Jacques Chirac—that NATO was much more capable of managing integrated military forces. ₄₃

Just as the German government had concluded that providing tangible military support for its principal EU partners was more important than Bonn's assessment of the relative wisdom of their policies, so there were voices urging a comparable priority on the Clinton administration in Washington. Preserving NATO as an effective organization and as a vehicle for intimate collaboration between the United States and its European allies was of paramount value, according to this argument: European leaders and publics would in the future find it much more difficult to follow the U.S. lead if it did not share the risks involved in having troops on the ground with UNPROFOR or, at minimum, if it did not share the financial burden of supporting U.N. operations in the former Yugoslavia. Yet neither sending U.S. ground forces nor helping the allies pay the costs of their own forces had any appeal for the Republican majority in Congress, most of whose members were unmoved as well by arguments based on the assumption that preserving the unity of the alliance was a uniquely important value in itself.

The result was a dilemma. As Financial Times columnist Ian Davidson put it, "Washington has been prepared to get into an open conflict with Europe over Bosnia because it does not really feel concerned by this civil war." However, he continued, "if the Europeans are forced to fight their way out of Bosnia, and the United States leaves them to it, the Atlantic alliance will suffer a blow from which it may not easily recover." ₄₄ Many assessments were even more dire, asserting that the alliance's failure for four years to frame a coherent policy and then take concerted measures in response to the wars in Yugoslavia had grievously undermined its credibility, a deficit made up only partially by the bombing campaign of August and September 1995 and the replacement three months later of UNPROFOR by the much more formidable IFOR.

These changes—the technical virtuosity of the bombing campaign in which the United States flew two thirds of the sorties, the robust nature of IFOR and its permissive, shoot–to–kill rules of engagement, and above all the negotiating hothouse at Dayton, Ohio, which resulted in the agreement of November 21, 1995—were all the products of forceful American leadership. Two crucial facts remain, however. First is that President Clinton's assertion of leadership enjoys only the most precarious support of the isolationist Republican–controlled Congress that was elected in November 1994. What little support he has could evaporate quickly if the Yugoslav settlement begins to unravel. Second is that American leadership was a long time coming, four and one half years. Just as the Bosnian Serbs during those years were so often able to call NATO's bluff, not to mention that of the United Nations, so other international bullies may be tempted to try the same. Thus a principal pillar of a new world order based on the rule of law has been tested by the Yugoslav debacle and found wanting.

The Many Scripts of World Order

This argument has obvious validity, but it is also somewhat beside the point. The ongoing drama that we call world order draws on a number of scripts. One script has been followed in Yugoslavia, another in the Gulf in response to Iraq's invasion of Kuwait, yet another in Somalia, and still another in Chechnya. Moreover, these labels scarcely exhaust the list. Rwanda, Haiti, Cambodia, Nagorno Karabakh, and many others could be added. Each connotes a particular combination of persons wanting more power over a given geographic space (often, but not always, exclusive power) and others who resist them; either or both are prepared to act violently, if only to catch the attention of the world outside. When one examines these episodes of violence and response, it is striking how different the various scripts seem to be. It is also striking that while each episode had about it some of the conditions that make for international war, all except Iraq's invasion of Kuwait are examples, primarily, of communal conflict internal to a recognized sovereign state.

It should come as no surprise that, among these episodes, the largest scale and, by many standards, most successful international action took place in 1990–91 in response to the Iraqi invasion of Kuwait. The script that was followed—deploying superior military force to stop and then reverse border–crossing aggression—was the one best known. As it happens, in none of the other episodes was anything resembling this script followed, but the absence of implementation cannot be attributed to any failure by governments and publics to reflect on the benefits and costs of responding in a given instance with military force. Rather, it is due to the fact that only in the instance of the Gulf crisis was there a perception within the governments of at least some major powers that they had vital interests at stake that only a forceful response could safeguard. ₄₅ Fortunately for those who favored using force, the ranks of those governments included the British, French, and Saudi as well as the American. Notably, they included neither the Japanese nor the German governments, the latter then still in thrall to the widespread assumption that the Federal Republic's "Basic Law" forbade the deployment of German forces outside the NATO area.

In an era in which there no longer exists a large, powerful, obvious enemy, such as the one the Soviet Union provided for the West over so many years, it requires only a relatively small number of military casualties to induce doubts among the publics of modern democracies regarding the importance of any situation in which their governments have intervened. Somalia, like Lebanon in 1983, was such a case. Regarding the former Yugoslavia, two administrations in Washington have been quite clear in saying that, much as they would like to see an end to the warfare that has racked the country with such devastating effect for so long, the United States did not have at stake there anything that could be labeled "vital interests."

When governments speak in such terms, it is scarcely surprising that publics tend to agree: publics need constant persuasion that affecting a set of circumstances beyond their borders is worth the lives of their sons or daughters. In the case of Bosnia, moreover, another phenomenon has been at work: as the war goes on from year to year and shocking atrocity follows shocking atrocity, outsiders become numb to, and then bored with, the seemingly endless flow of accounts of violence and death. And as the military capabilities of the Bosnian Muslims grew, and with it the stridency of their demands, outsiders found it increasingly difficult to draw a clear distinction between the supposed aggressors and the supposedly aggressed–upon.

There is no question but that NATO has been damaged by the Yugoslav tragedy: would–be aggressors and local bullies everywhere are likely to assume that an effective Western response to their actions would come only slowly, perhaps (probably, some would say) not at all. As President Clinton put it, with both NATO and the United Nations in mind, "You can't go about the world saying you're going to do something and then not do it." ₄₆

It can be argued, however, that the view of NATO as a classical collective security organization, moving with near automaticity under its constitution (the 1949 Treaty of Washington) to take action in response to a challenge to the security of one or more of its members, is a theoretical construct that has never existed. Reality—even during the Cold War and certainly after—has been quite different. NATO will not act unless its members are in agreement that either very large stakes or very low risks are involved. As Saddam Hussein learned to his surprise, if a bully is not only nasty but potentially fearsome enough, he would be imprudent to base his planning on the assumption that NATO, either as an alliance or as a "coalition of the willing" (as the allies dubbed themselves in the Gulf War), will not react with effective force. A Russia that threatened to use military force against an eastern European neighbor would surely set off more alarms in the West and rouse a more robust and coordinated response from Western governments than the Bosnian Serbs did. So, in all probability, would those in the successor republics of the Soviet Union, or in eastern Europe, who choose to use force to press ethnic claims.

Moreover, any critique must take into account the fact that the dissolution of Yugoslavia occurred at the worst time possible. The dawning of the brave new world of world–order rhetoric took place before the nations that would have leading roles in the complex structure of post–Cold War European security had learned their parts—indeed, some would argue, before their actual lines had been written. That process of exploration and development is still going on, much affected by the experience of Yugoslavia's wars.

For the peoples and governments of Europe and North America, that experience has been searing. In the future they will undoubtedly give higher priority to preventive diplomacy (whether high enough really to affect outcomes, however, is an open question). They may even find the will and the means to offer contending parties substantial economic inducements to resolve their differences peacefully. However, only an optimist unencumbered by any knowledge of history would predict that when another Vukovar is being laid waste or a Srebrenica is about to fall, "the United Nations," "the West," or "Europe" will interpose a military force to prevent it. That is because, as I have argued elsewhere, Europe's peace is a divisible peace. ₄₇ Violent conflicts will be sufficiently confined so that they will be very unlikely to escalate across the threshold of war among the major powers. As in the case of street crimes in today's cities, bystanders hesitate to get involved. That may be taken as good news for most of us: our noninvolvement will result in inconvenience for us in the form of enormous disruptions to economic processes and vast movements of refugees who would not have fled had the conflict been ended early enough, but at least we will be relatively safe in our homes and communities. It bodes much less well for those unfortunate enough to find themselves in the Vukovars and Srebrenicas of tomorrow.

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Endnotes

Note 1: For an authoritative account of the dissolution of the Yugoslav state, see Susan L. Woodward, Balkan Tragedy: Chaos and Dissolution after the Cold War (Washington, D.C.: Brookings Institution, 1995). Back.

Note 2: For these processes, see Susan L. Woodward, Socialist Unemployment: The Political Economy of Yugoslavia 1945–1990 (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1995). Back.

Note 3: See Woodward, Balkan Tragedy, pp. 172–73. Back.

Note 4: The Titoist vision continued to command strong support as late as May–June 1990, when a survey of more than 4,000 respondents asked whether their personal attachment was strongest to their immediate region, to the republic in which they lived, or to Yugoslavia. Large majorities of Muslims (84 percent), Montenegrins (80 percent), Serbs (71 percent), and Macedonians (68 percent) all said Yugoslavia; the proportion was lower for Croats (48 percent) and Albanians (49 percent). Only Slovenes strongly rejected the Yugoslav label (26 percent). See Misha Glenny, "Yugoslavia: The Great Fall," New York Review of Books, March 23, 1995, p. 58. These results were not surprising: those who voted in greater numbers for Yugoslavia were those who materially gained the most from the federation. Back.

Note 5: See Woodward, Balkan Tragedy, pp. 162–73. Back.

Note 6: Ibid., pp. 181–82, 189–92. Back.

Note 7: For a lucid discussion of the Yugoslav debt crisis and the efforts of the international financial institutions, see Harold James's history of the International Monetary Fund, International Monetary Cooperations since Bretton Woods (Washington, DC: International Monetary Fund and Oxford University Press, 1996), pp. 556–58. Back.

Note 8: From the introduction to The Philosophy of Right, translated and edited by T.N. Knox (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1942), p. 13. Back.

Note 9: See, for example, the article considered the foundation stone of this genre: John J. Mearsheimer, "Back to the Future: Instability in Europe after the Cold War," International Security, vol. 15, no. 1 (Summer 1990), pp. 5–56. Back.

Note 10: According to a report ("Islamic Money Helps Muslims in Bosnia, but Not Enough to Win") from Sarajevo in The Christian Science Monitor, January 26, 1995, p. 1, U.N. officials said that while small quantities of smuggled arms had reached the Muslims, they had been insufficient to affect battle outcomes. Many Islamic countries sent cash—the most easily transportable and concealable item of assistance—which the Bosnian government used to buy industrial equipment, commodities of all sorts, and some weapons. All such efforts, it should be noted, were violations of the U.N.–mandated arms embargo, which remained in legal effect regardless of the fact that, although banning traffic to all of the former Yugoslavia, its actual effect was to penalize almost exclusively the Bosnian Muslims. The bulk of the Islamic volunteer forces was composed of some 3,000 to 4,000 mujahedeen, veterans of the war in Afghanistan, who became a source of concern for the NATO peacekeepers who deployed to Bosnia under the Dayton agreement. See Chris Hedges, "Foreign Islamic Fighters in Bosnia Pose a Potential Threat for G.I.'s," New York Times, December 3, 1995, p.1. Back.

Note 11: See Alan Cowell, "U.S. Builds Influence in Croatia," New York Times, August 1, 1995, p. A6; and "Croat Army Takes Rebel Stronghold in Rapid Advance: Serbs Routed in 2 Days," New York Times, August 1, 1995, p. 1. Back.

Note 12: See Stephen Kinzer, "Bosnia Vows Not to Attack SerbTown," New York Times, September 20, 1995, p. A14. Back.

Note 13: For a masterful account of these events, see Antonin Basch, The Danube Basin and the German Economic Sphere (London: Kegan Paul, 1944). See also David E. Kaiser, Economic Diplomacy and the Origins of the Second World War: Germany, Britain, France, and Eastern Europe 1930–1939 (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1980). Back.

Note 14: See Hanns W. Maull, "Germany in the Yugoslav Crisis," Survival, vol. 37, no. 4 (Winter 1995–96), esp. pp. 101–5. See also Woodward, Balkan Tragedy, pp. 183–89. Back.

Note 15: Interviews in Bonn, December 1993. For the effort by Serb propagandists to link today's Germany with the Nazi past, see also the editorial, "Bosnian Skies," Financial Times, June 29, 1995, p. 11. For the constitutional court's ruling, see Lothar Gutjahr, "Stability, Integration, and Global Responsibility: Germany's Changing Perspectives on National Interests," Review of International Studies, vol. 21, no. 3 (July 1995), pp. 311–12. See also Maull, "Germany in the Yugoslav Crisis," pp. 112–13. Back.

Note 16: For Bonn's decision to send units to Bosnia, see Stephen Kinzer, "Bosnian Muslim Troops Evade U.N. Force to Raid Serb Village," New York Times, June 27, 1995, p. A3; and Maull, "Germany in the Yugoslav Crisis," pp. 119–22. For the air operations of August–September 1995, see the September 15 edition of the periodic NATO briefing paper, "Operation Deny Flight," and "Press Briefing (Update) NATO Operation Deliberate Force," Allied Forces Southern Europe, Naples, Italy 1700 09 September 95. Briefer: Group Captain Trevor Murray, Chief Air Operations, and a similarly headed transcript for September 12, all available on–line from the NATO Integrated Data Service. See also New York Times, September 2, 1995, p. 2. Back.

Note 17: See Gutjahr, "Stability, Integration, and Global Responsibility," pp. 301–17; and Hanns W. Maull, "Germany's New Foreign Policy," in Hanns W. Maull and Philip H. Gordon, eds., German Foreign Policy and the German National Interest, seminar paper no. 5, American Institute for Contemporary German Studies (January 1993), pp. 11–14. Back.

Note 18: For a discussion of stakes and interests, see Philip H. Gordon, France, Germany, and the Western Alliance (Boulder, CO: Westview, 1995), pp. 53–66. Back.

Note 19: As of May 27, 1995, the day after the NATO air strikes that led to the mass hostage–taking by the Bosnian Serbs, Britain had 3,565 troops in the field, all in Bosnia, while France had 3,835 troops in Bosnia and 787 in Croatia. See the comprehensive table in Steven Greenhouse, "Quandry Over U.S. Bosnia Policy," New York Times, May 28, 1995, p. A12. Back.

Note 20: Nor does it move the personnel affected. During the winter of 1990–91, when it became clear that blockade alone would not be sufficient to cause Iraq to disgorge Kuwait and as military operations in the Persian Gulf seemed about to begin, there were many press reports of American noncommissioned men and women asserting that if they had known they would ever have to fight an actual war, they never would have enlisted. Back.

Note 21: It has been suggested that Slobodan Milosevic intends that the Serb refugees expelled by Croatia from the Krajina in August 1995 will settle in Kosovo rather than in Serbia proper. Given the explosive nature of communal relations in Kosovo, that would seem to be storing up trouble. Back.

Note 22: The Military Balance 1995–1996 (London: Oxford University Press for the International Institute for Strategic Studies, 1995), p. 64. This authoritative publication specifies force levels for all the troop–contributing states. Back.

Note 23: See John Darnton's long survey article, "Discontent Seethes in Once–Stable Turkey," New York Times, March 2, 1995, p. 1. Back.

Note 24: Among many accounts of the end–game at Dayton, see those in Financial Times, November 22, 1995, p. 1; and New York Times, November 22, 1995, p. 1. Back.

Note 25: For these events, see, for example, John C. Campbell, Tito's Separate Road: America and Yugoslavia in World Politics (New York: Harper & Row, 1967). Back.

Note 26: All newspapers on August 29, 1995, carried accounts of the event. See, for example, Roger Cohen, "Shelling Kills Dozens in Sarajevo; U.S. Urges NATO to Strike Serbs," New York Times, p. A1. Back.

Note 27: For an excellent account of Operation Deliberate Force, see Rick Atkinson's two lengthy articles, "Air Assault Set Stage for Broader Role" and "In Almost Losing Its Resolve, NATOAlliance Found Itself," in the Washington Post, November 15 and 16, 1995; both begin on p. A1. An official account, "Operation Sharp Guard," is available from NATO's Public Affairs Office and on–line from the NATO gopher. Back.

Note 28: United States Congress, 82nd Congress, 1st Session, 1951, Military Situation in the Far East, Hearings before the Joint Senate Committee on Armed Services and Foreign Relations, p. 732. Bradley went on to say "and with the wrong enemy." For NATO in 1995, of course, there was no "right enemy"; the alliance was at peace. Back.

Note 29: See North Atlantic Treaty Organization, NATO Handbook (1993), appendix II, "The Alliance's Strategic Concept Agreed by the Heads of State and Government Participating in the Meeting of the North Atlantic Council in Rome on 7th–8th November 1991." Back.

Note 30: North Atlantic Treaty Organization, "Rome Declaration on Peace and Cooperation Issued by the Heads of State and Government Participating in the Meeting of the North Atlantic Council in Rome on 7th–8th November 1991," press communiquÈ S–1 (91) p. 86; ——— "Final CommuniquÈ, Ministerial Meeting of the North Atlantic Council in Oslo, 4 June 1992." Back.

Note 31: From the detailed critique by Elizabeth Cousens and Michael Doyle, "Dayton Accord's Dangerous Dueling Missions," Christian Science Monitor, December 26, 1995, p. 23. Back.

Note 32: See, inter alia, Barbara Crossette, "Civilian Effort for Peace in Bosnia Seen Lagging," New York Times, January 3, 1996, p. A6. The text of the (Dayton) General Framework Agreement for Peace in Bosnia and Herzegovina and its 11 annexes and side letters is available on the World Wide Web by calling for http://dosfan.lib.uic.edu/www/current/bosnia/daytable.html. The constitution of Bosnia and Herzegovina is annex 4 (—dayann4.html). Back.

Note 33: For an extended discussion of these changes, see Richard H. Ullman, Securing Europe (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1991), esp. chs. 1 and 2. Back.

Note 34: See, for example, "U.N. Endorses Russian Troops for Peacekeeping in Caucasus, Reuters," New York Times, July 22, 1994, p. A2. Back.

Note 35: On December 2, 1994, when Moscow used its Security Council veto to block a resolution sponsored by Muslim states proposing measures to prevent fuel from being shipped from Serbia to Serb–held areas of Bosnia and Croatia. Alessandra Stanley "Conflict in the Balkans: The Kremlin Asserts Itself by U.N. Veto," New York Times, December 4, 1994, p. A21. Back.

Note 36: Washington Post, July 27, 1994, p. A22. Back.

Note 37: See, for example, the Washington Post's account (June 15, 1994, p. A31) of a Moscow meeting between Russian Foreign Minister Andrei Kozyrev and Bosnian Serb leader Radovan Karadzic in June 1994. Kozyrev, it said, stated bluntly that Russia found it unacceptable that the Serbs should control 70 percent of Bosnia's territory and that if the Serbs should choose to renew large–scale warfare, they could "forget about Russia's support." Back.

Note 38: "This strategy assures a certain place for Russia in the negotiating effort," Deputy Foreign Minister Vitaly Churkin told Lee Hockstader of the Washington Post ("Russia's Dapper No. 2 Diplomat Guides Crucial Policy onBosnia," July 27, 1994, p. A22). Back.

Note 39: The British government—never enthusiastic about intervention in the Yugoslav crisis—estimated in late 1991 that 50,000 troops might be required merely to keep the peace, a number confirmed by the Secretariat of the Western European Union. See James Gow and Lawrence Freedman, "Intervention in a Fragmenting State: The Case of Yugoslavia," in Nigel S. Rodney, ed., To Loose the Bonds of Wickedness: International Intervention in Defence of Human Rights (London: Brassey's, 1992), pp. 114–15. Back.

Note 40: James Gow of the Department of War Studies at King's College, London, has been particularly assiduous in gathering this evidence. See, inter alia, his "One Year of War in Bosnia and Herzegovina," RFE/RL Research Report, vol. 2, no. 23 (June 4, 1993), pp. 5–6. Back.

Note 41: From President Clinton's national radio address, June 3, 1995, as transcribed in New York Times, June 4, p. 16. Clinton first tried on May 29 to define the conditions under which U.S. ground forces might be introduced into the Bosnian conflict. See ibid., May 30, p. A1. However, only three days later, "moving [as reporter Todd S. Purdom put it] to quell a fire storm of congressional and public criticism," Clinton narrowed the list of conditions even more. See ibid., June 4, 1995, p. 1.

The ambivalence, inconsistency, and unilateralism in the official American stance was epitomized in the effusive adulation by the president, the Congress, and the media of U.S. Air Force Captain Scott F. O'Grady, whose F–16 fighter had been shot down in early June 1995 while on a routine patrol over Bosnian Serb territory. At a time when 43 U.N. peacekeepers on the ground had already been killed and hundreds more were in acute danger, Americans watching the nightly television reports from Bosnia seemed to need to know that even though none of their countrymen shared those particular risks, a few nevertheless faced threats of a different kind. For evading capture for six days while hiding in the forest awaiting his eventual rescue, the personable O'Grady was declared an "authentic national hero," an appellation that he himself found absurd. New York Times, June 11, 1995, p. 14. Back.

Note 42: Alan Cowell, "Germany to Send Forces to Balkans to Support U.N.," New York Times, June 27, 1995, A3. See also Gutjahr, "Stability, Integration, and Global Responsibility," pp. 308–12. Back.

Note 43: The WEU had played a minor role in the Yugoslav drama, one that consisted of monitoring ship traffic on the northern reaches of the Adriatic and along the Danube River to check for violations of the arms embargo. It was a role that came close to exceeding the organization's planning and coordinating capabilities, however. Back.

Note 44: Ian Davidson, "A Hollow Shell," Financial Times, June 28, 1995, p. 12. Back.

Note 45: Situations like Chechnya or Nagorno–Karabakh on the territory of the former Soviet Union present particular difficulties; in those instances, among the great powers, only Russia is likely to conclude that it has vital interests at stake. Back.

Note 46: From "Transcript of Press Conference by President Clinton and President Kim of South Korea," Washington, July 27, 1995, U.S. Newswire (on–line). Back.

Note 47: See Ullman, Securing Europe, esp. pp. 27–29, 244–46. Back.

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The World and Yugoslavia's Wars