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

3. Collective Spinelessness: U.N. Actions in the Former Yugoslavia _*

Thomas G. Weiss

Long before the presidents of Serbia, Croatia, and Bosnia initialed a peace settlement culminating three weeks of roller–coaster negotiations at Wright–Patterson Air Force Base, the United Nations was at the center of ongoing controversy in the former Yugoslavia. Throughout four years of fratricide, the world organization was embroiled among competing ethnic groups and confronted thorny questions about sovereignty, human rights, and the use of force to sustain international norms. This chapter details the painful dithering and ineffectiveness of U.N. actions from the beginning of the end of Yugoslavia on June 25, 1991, until the agreement on November 21, 1995, that partitioned Bosnia–Herzegovina into a Muslim–Croat federation and a Bosnian Serb entity while preserving the fiction of a central government of a multiethnic state with its seat in Sarajevo.

The record of the United Nations in the former Yugoslavia since early 1992–epitomized by the debacles in Bihac in late 1994 and throughout Bosnia in mid–1995, when Serbs repeatedly ran roughshod over international directives, took hundreds of U.N. soldiers hostage, and humiliated some of them as human shields–makes the organization's limitations clear. Time and again, U.N. actions in the Balkans were far too little and came far too late. This has been true since the first televised images of emaciated prisoners behind the barbed wire of concentration camps and reports of widespread Serbian and Croatian war crimes began to filter out of the region, conjuring up images of Europe's fascist past and provoking a general public outcry. And it was true of both of the "two United Nations"–the first, where governments meet and make decisions, and the second, comprising the various secretariats, officials, and soldiers who implement these decisions. ₁

In the absence of effective military engagement by the member states of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) in support of Security Council resolutions, U.N. humanitarian efforts became a substitute for an overall strategy for bringing the war in the former Yugoslavia to an end. Despite lip service to the concept of collective security since the end of the Cold War, the international response can best be described as collective spinelessness. That peace appears plausible after face–to–face negotiations in Dayton and three and a half years of carnage, which followed closely upon NATO's willingness to use air power in late summer 1995, underlines rather than contradicts this argument. Significant Western military force was applied only after Croatia's rout of the Serbs in the Krajina and after blue helmets had retreated from the front lines.

Furthermore, the response of the "second United Nations" has been inadequate–even though at its peak in late summer, before the Dayton talks, U.N. forces in the former Yugoslavia were significant: approximately 50,000 soldiers and police officers from 36 countries (with almost 35,000 in Bosnia–Herzegovina after the addition of the rapid reaction force), as well as 3,000 civilian personnel, at an annual cost of some $2 billion. ₂ In order to provide assistance for the million–plus refugees who fled across borders and another three million displaced persons who did not, the office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) was spending $500 million in the region annually, and various other governmental agencies, intergovernmental bodies, and nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) another $1 billion. These efforts added up to the most expensive, dangerous failure of any operation undertaken by the international community to date.

As the Cold War drew to a close, many believed that the role of the United Nations as a regional conflict manager would be limited to the Third World. Yet the organization is now a factor in security politics in the heart of Europe–in fact, at the end of 1995, European operations accounted for more than half of the U.N. soldiers and more than half of the world organization's military budget worldwide. The Republic of Yugoslavia was suspended in 1991 from membership in the Organization for (formerly, Conference on) Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE) for having started the war, but four years later there were shooting wars in eight of the 52 remaining member states. Even outside involvement in the former Soviet Union–which seemed improbable, if not inconceivable, a few short years ago–now appears likely in view of the ongoing crises there. ₃

In such circumstances, what lessons may be learned from the world's responses to the military, diplomatic, and humanitarian crises resulting from Yugoslavia's wars?

Military Force and Diplomacy in Support of Humane Values?

Since the beginning of Yugoslavia's wars, the international community has repeatedly weighed the costs and benefits of deploying military force in support of humanitarian objectives. However, the disparities between its rhetoric and its willingness to act have caused great confusion on the ground in Bosnia–Herzegovina and in what were the so–called U.N. protected areas (UNPAs) of the Serb–controlled Krajina within Croatia. When the international community switched its rhetorical response to the crisis in Bosnia from the pacific settlement of the dispute (based on chapter VI of the U.N. Charter) to physical enforcement (chapter VII), albeit with the purpose of protecting international military and humanitarian personnel rather than civilians, it did so without the will to commit the necessary military means to implement its mandates. U.N. credibility was thereby undermined, and U.N. soldiers condemned to "wander in the void" between peacekeeping and coercion. ₄ Rhetoric and operational reality also diverged in the protected areas, where traditional peacekeeping activities assumed cooperation on the part of Serbs and Croats. The U.N. secretary–general subsequently has argued that "the organization has come to realize that a mix of peace–keeping and enforcement is not the answer to a lack of consent and cooperation by the parties to the conflict." ₅

Governments, NGOs, and the United Nations are now hesitating at a fork in the road. One route leads back toward the use of minimum force as a last resort and only in self–defense in support of narrow mandates. The other leads toward the application of superior military force in support of more ambitious international objectives, including the enforcement of humane values. ₆

Two main groups resist taking the latter fork toward "military humanitarianism." ₇ The first consists of many developing countries, whose reticence or outright hostility toward U.N. intervention is based on four arguments: first, that state sovereignty does not permit outside intervention; second, that state sovereignty provides an element of protection against the bullying of major powers; third, that intervention is messy; and fourth, that the Security Council's definition of what constitutes a "threat" to international peace and security is far too broad.

Whatever one's views may be about the evolution of what the French government and its highly visible former minister of humanitarian affairs, Bernard Kouchner, have championed as the devoir or even droit d'ingErence (literally, the duty, or even the right, to interfere), or about the possible existence of a de jure right of intervention on humanitarian or human rights grounds, there does exist a de facto right of intervention when the Security Council decides that certain events constitute aggression or are a threat to international peace and security. ₈ The restrictive claims of domestic jurisdiction of Third World naysayers have little relevance once the Security Council weighs in, since in ratifying the charter, member states agreed to acquiesce in the Council's own interpretation of its functions. Threats to international peace and security effectively constitute what Stanley Hoffmann has called an "all–purpose parachute."

It is inevitable that the major powers will flex their muscles in pursuit of their interests. What is not inevitable is that they will subject themselves to international oversight and law. For the foreseeable future, the Security Council's decision to intervene or not to intervene in a particular conflict will reflect not internationally agreed–upon objective criteria, but the domestic imperatives of the major powers. Its directives will reflect what the international political traffic will bear at a particular moment. Although efforts to refine the criteria for intervention are laudable, pleas against selective intervention amount to arguing that the United Nations should not intervene anywhere unless it can intervene everywhere in analogous circumstances. This is a case of the best being the enemy of the good.

However imperfect the U.N. system, the dangers of big–power abuse actually are reduced by relying on intervention under the Security Council's auspices. Beginning with the April 1991 decision creating havens for Kurds in northern Iraq, access to civilians has become a recognized basis for intervention, building logically on precedents established by the actions of developing countries themselves against white minority governments in Rhodesia and South Africa, where violations of human rights were considered not just an affront to civilization but also a threat to international peace and security. The logic has been extended subsequently in Haiti to intervene to restore a democratically elected government.

The other group of dissenters with respect to military humanitarianism is led mainly by civilians–not only analysts but some field staff as well–who believe that the terms "humanitarian intervention" and, worse yet, "humanitarian war" are oxymorons. ₉ Their reluctance goes beyond eschewing violence on religious or philosophical grounds. They argue that humanitarian initiatives are by nature strictly consensual and necessitate independence and impartiality. Political authorities in armed conflicts must be persuaded to allow access to civilians, who are protected by the international law of armed conflict, of which the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) is the custodian. Intervention, the dissenters argue, not only raises the levels of violence in the short run but also makes reconciliation more difficult in the longer run.

These humanitarians have found unlikely allies in those American military officers who have yet to recover from the failed interventions in Vietnam and, more recently, Somalia, as well as among critics who see U.S. dominance of multilateral military efforts as akin to an earlier hegemony that rarely, if ever, produced salutary results. A further objection to humanitarian intervention comes from those for whom the sine qua non of emergency relief is strengthening civilian institutions within countries experiencing war. In their view, outside military forces make the task of an affected country's own civilian authorities more problematic, with intervention leading to further instability and weakened democratic institutions.

Although humanitarian intervention may be uncomfortable for some, and is arguably counterproductive for the long–range task of democratization, with one in every 115 of the world's people forced into flight from war, sometimes it may be the only means of halting genocide, massive abuses of human rights, and mass starvation. ₁₀ For this reason, others (this author included) are receptive to intervention by outside military forces to assist civilians trapped in the throes of war. When consent cannot be extracted from either local governments or insurgents, economic and military sanctions can be justified on operational and ethical grounds to create and sustain access to civilians. When the cause of starvation is war and there is sufficient political will, an effective humanitarian response may include military backup that goes far beyond the minimal use of force in self–defense permitted U.N. peacekeepers. Rather than suspending relief and withdrawing from an active war zone, the international community should be able to use force to guarantee access to civilians, protect aid workers, and disarm recalcitrant belligerents. Kofi Annan, once again the U.N. under–secretary–general for peacekeeping operations after a short period as special representative of the secretary–general in the former Yugoslavia, had earlier acknowledged, "The reality is there are situations when you cannot assist people unless you are prepared to take certain [military] measures." ₁₁

The international community's unwillingness to react militarily in the former Yugoslavia, until August 1995, however, provides a case study of what not to do in a humanitarian crisis. In the words of analyst Rosalyn Higgins, "We have chosen to respond to major unlawful violence not by stopping that violence, but by trying to provide relief to the suffering. But our choice of policy allows the suffering to continue." ₁₂ This inaction has left many of the inhabitants of the region mistrustful of the United Nations and has lent a new and disgraceful connotation to the word "peacekeeping." Bound by the traditional rules of engagement (fire only in self–defense, and only after being fired upon), U.N. troops never fought a single battle with any of the factions in Bosnia that routinely disrupted relief convoys. The rules of engagement led to the appeasement of local forces rather than to the enforcement of U.N. mandates. Among the most unsafe locations in the Balkans, indeed in the world, were the so–called safe areas.

U.N. peacekeepers in Croatia were unable to implement their mandate because they received no cooperation from the Croats or Krajina Serbs. In Bosnia, the situation was even more problematic. The U.N. force there was present under chapter VII and was constantly challenged, but it lacked the capability to apply coercive force across a wide front. Under such conditions, observed Major Richard Barrons, chief of staff of British forces, at their headquarters in Split, "Day One success can turn into Day Two failure, unless you are prepared to conduct full–scale conventional war in support of humanitarian objectives." Even those U.N. soldiers who might be prepared to challenge Serbian troops would require "a completely different package of forces." ₁₃

Unable to create the conditions for its own success, the United Nations Protection Force (UNPROFOR) was not militarily credible. Shortly before resigning in January 1994 from a soldier's nightmare as U.N. commander in Bosnia–Herzegovina, Lieutenant General Francis Briquemont lamented the disparity between rhetoric and reality: "There is a fantastic gap between the resolutions of the Security Council, the will to execute those resolutions, and the means available to commanders in the field." ₁₄

The provisions for economic and military sanctions in the U.N. Charter were designed to back up international decisions to counteract aggression and to halt atrocities in such situations as the one in Bosnia. What actually happened was somewhat different.

In February 1994 NATO outrage over violations of the 12–mile artillery "exclusion zone" around Sarajevo boiled over, and the subsequent downing of four Serbian military aircraft temporarily reversed two years of empty saber rattling. But just as NATO, the United Nations, and the Clinton administration began to hope that these modest military actions would end the siege of Sarajevo and facilitate a diplomatic solution, the Serbs began new ethnic cleansing activities in Prejidor and Banja Luka and attacked the so–called safe area for Muslim refugees in Gorazde. Two American F–16s carried out another NATO "first" in April, bombing Serbian ground positions outside Gorazde. Although the stated purpose of these strikes was to protect the handful of U.N. observers and relief workers in Gorazde, the real target was, at long last, the Serbs.

The attacks enraged the Bosnian Serbs, who responded by killing a British soldier, shooting down a British Harrier aircraft, detaining 200 U.N. personnel, and taking over Gorazde. The Serbs had called NATO's bluff, not for the first nor the last time. And, as before, the Western alliance proved unwilling to confront the Serbian aggression for fear of all–out war between the 100,000–strong Serbian rebel forces and the significantly outnumbered U.N. forces. The Serbs subsequently withdrew many of their troops and weapons to beyond a 20–mile radius of Gorazde. Then, in a continuation of their usual cat–and–mouse game, they fortified their positions just outside the exclusion zone and increased the number of "policemen" within it. In April NATO had empowered the U.N. commander in Bosnia to set up exclusion zones like the one around Sarajevo around four other safe areas (Tuzla, Zepa, Srebrenica, and Bihac) in the event of attack or the infiltration of heavy artillery. However, when Admiral Leighton W. Smith, Jr., the U.S. commander of NATO's air cover for U.N. operations in Bosnia, subsequently proposed using force to menace the Serbs who were shelling Tuzla, UNPROFOR's force commander, General Bertrand de Lapresle, refused.

In July 1994 the "contact group"–which had been formed earlier that year and was made up of representatives of the United States, France, Germany, Britain, and Russia–offered the warring parties in Bosnia a take–it–or–leave–it partition of the country into two more or less equal parts. It was thought that a combination of carrots (easing economic sanctions against Belgrade) and sticks (the threat of NATO military action and the lifting of the arms embargo against the Bosnian Muslims) would prompt the Serbs–of Bosnia, Croatia, and Serbia–to accept only 49 percent of Bosnian territory instead of the more than 70 percent that they controlled. (This was after the first Vance–Owen plan had been judged a year earlier as morally and politically unacceptable in the West, although it had proposed even less territory as a prize for the aggressor Serbs.) The Bosnian government accepted the plan unconditionally, but the Bosnian Serbs attached so many conditions to their acceptance that their response amounted to a rejection. In a referendum the following month, 96 percent of the Bosnian Serbs who voted flatly rejected the plan.

Again, verbal rebukes rather than action emanated from the contact group, and there was a tepid call for more sanctions. Despite two symbolic attacks in August and September–against an antitank gun and an abandoned tank–it soon became clear once again that the international community was unprepared to employ significant air power against the Serbs or to arm the Muslims. In a curious mixture of wishful thinking and self–deception, the contact group instead took up a Russian proposal to ease sanctions against Belgrade. The Serbian government agreed to permit the deployment along the Yugoslav–Bosnian border of 135 civilian observers under the supervision of retired Swedish general Bo Pellnas to monitor its compliance with its announced decision to stop supplying the Bosnian Serbs with war matEriel. In exchange, the contact group decided in late September to reward Serbian president Slobodan Milosevic with a temporary (100–day) easing of certain sanctions related to commercial travel and participation in international sporting and cultural events. At the same time, the contact group, in its wisdom, refused the promised lifting of the arms embargo that would have allowed the Bosnian Muslims to arm themselves more adequately.

November witnessed a new twist in the violence. After an unexpected string of victories in the Bihac pocket by the Bosnian army, nationalist Serbs counterattacked with artillery, tanks, and, finally, aerial bombing. This was especially embarrassing for the United Nations in that the attacks were staged from the Udbina airfield inside the Serbian–controlled Krajina, an area of Croatia supposedly patrolled by U.N. troops. The folly of the international efforts up to that point was encapsulated by the scene of cluster bombs and napalm dropping into a so–called safe area from planes based in a UNPA, and the attacks by Serbian soldiers supplied with weapons and fuel from Serbia in violation of Belgrade's agreement with the contact group.

The Security Council authorized NATO to attack Serbian ground targets as well as Serbian aircraft over Bosnian airspace. The sixth NATO attack–by 39 U.S., British, French, and Dutch aircraft–damaged the Udbina runway and the airfield's antiaircraft defenses but left aircraft untouched. Shortly thereafter, some 50 NATO aircraft attacked three Serbian missile sites–two in Bosnia and one in the Krajina–after attacks on two British planes on routine patrol.

Optimists heralded these gestures as a possible sign of a new commitment by the West to use force, but the air strikes amounted to little more than bluster. The United Nations, afraid that continued action would provoke retaliation against its troops and international aid workers, asked that the bombing be stopped. U.N. inspectors on the Bosnian border raised no objections as fuel and, no doubt, weapons shipments from Serbia passed through Serb–held parts of Bosnia en route to the Krajina. The remains of a pilot whose jet fighter crashed near Bihac were identified as those of a member of the Yugoslav (Serbian) air force. Moreover, the abrupt appearance of surface–to–air missiles in both the Krajina and Serbian–occupied Bosnia–also linked to Belgrade–now posed a threat to NATO aircraft, and permitted Serbs to advance with impunity and to recoup lost territory. ₁₅

When several hundred of their soldiers were detained by the Serbs in central Bosnia in December, U.N. forces demonstrated that they were unable to protect themselves, let alone Muslim civilians. The French and British governments refused to utter the word "hostage" because to have done so would have necessitated action. The United Nations and foreign governments tried to downplay the fact that the detained troops were Serbian pawns. Lieutenant General Sir Michael Rose, the commander of U.N. forces in Bosnia, euphemistically called them "life insurance" against bombing raids. The fate of UNPROFOR and of some four million people dependent on the United Nations for their daily survival hung in the balance as governments scampered to save face. Secretary–General Boutros Boutros–Ghali discussed openly a U.N. withdrawal, and 2,000 U.S. Marines were deployed in the Adriatic Sea in case they were needed. President Clinton announced that the United States would commit up to 25,000 soldiers to a force two or three times that size to evacuate what at the time were 24,000 U.N. troops in Bosnia.

The Clinton administration soon joined the French and British in appeasing the Serbs. Flights of NATO warplanes over Bosnia were halted in the hope that the Serbs would free the U.N. hostages and accept reformulated peace terms. In mid–December 1994 former U.S. President Jimmy Carter arrived in Bosnia to mediate–that is, to solidify Serbian gains in exchange for a renewable four–month cease–fire and a cessation–of–hostilities agreement that might permit UNPROFOR to interpose itself eventually between the hostile parties. The agreement held as winter set in, and the belligerents began yet another series of negotiations. As the cease–fire (by some accounts, the thirtieth to have been negotiated in the preceding three years) went into effect on New Year's Day, Bosnian President Alija Izetbegovic spoke to his compatriots over the radio: "We will negotiate where we can and make war where we have to. If the enemy does not show readiness for reasonable political solutions within the next four months, the cease–fire will not be extended." ₁₆

Later that month Croatian President Franjo Tudjman announced that he would not allow UNPROFOR to remain in the Krajina when its mandate expired at the end of March. Although he had made similar threats before, this time he appeared to mean what he said. He had come to the conclusion that the Serbs would never give up the quarter of Croatia that they occupied so long as U.N. soldiers shielded them. The West resisted, understanding that withdrawal of these troops could open up the possibility of a renewed Serbo–Croatian war.

In mid–March 1995 Tudjman admitted that his demand that UNPROFOR leave Croatia was, for the moment at least, the latest in a series of bluffs. He had wished to emphasize the dangers inherent in a permanently divided Croatia. As a result, however, it was agreed that the number of U.N. troops (about 14,000) in Croatia's protected areas was to be reduced substantially (to 8,750). Those remaining were to be redeployed to monitor the international borders with Serbia instead of only the cease–fire lines in the Krajina, and its name was to be altered: the U.N. Confidence Restoration Operation (UNCRO). The objective was to show that the Serb–occupied Krajina was still part of Croatia; to impede arms shipments from Serbia to Serb rebels; and to permit the U.N. soldiers to continue holding the lid on the Bosnian cauldron. As we shall see, the U.N.'s actual downsizing and withdrawal would await a Croatian military offensive a few months later.

Following a continual unraveling of the cease–fire in early spring, the United Nations finally called in NATO bombers for two successive days in late May 1995. Prodded by the Clinton administration, Rose's successor as commander of U.N. forces in Bosnia, Lieutenant General Rupert Smith, agreed from the U.N. side to target the Serbian arms depot in Pale. In what could be described as "Bihac revisited," the Serbs responded as they had earlier after milder air strikes. They held over 300 U.N. soldiers hostage–chaining several to potential targets as human shields–recovered heavy arms from the U.N.–controlled collection sites, and fired the deadliest shell of the war into the safe area of Tuzla.

On the basis of an accurate extrapolation of past reactions, including backing down in the face of comparable Serbian tactics in Bihac, the Serbs were unconvinced that NATO would press its assault. They were correct. U.N. blue helmets eventually were released; but their release appeared a quid pro quo for an agreement by the United Nations to abide strictly by the principles of traditional peacekeeping–a clear translation for no more NATO air strikes, the demand made by Bosnian Serb General Ratko Mladic and President Radovan Karadzic.

On paper, nonetheless, the military reaction appeared more muscular. In June NATO defense ministers, joined on the occasion by those from Sweden and Finland, established two separate rapid reaction forces. The Security Council approved the addition of 12,500 heavily armed soldiers for Bosnia–an increase of over 50 percent–from the British 24th Airmobile Brigade in central Bosnia and the joint English, French, and Dutch one in Croatia. For the first time in August 1995–two months being "rapid" for a U.N.–related rapid deployment force–the United Nations had artillery, light tanks, and battlefield–support helicopters. NATO also argued that there would be no "dual key," meaning that the force would no longer be subject to a veto by the cautious civilian head of the U.N. operation, Yasushi Akashi, then special representative of the secretary–general. In addition to other problems, the approval of the new force provided an ideal occasion for the Republicans in Congress to continue the larger battle to scale back U.S. contributions to the United Nations and to embarrass the president.

Although humanitarian motives figured prominently in justifications for the U.N. mission, concern about the safety of peacekeepers always had been the primary reason for the reluctance to respond vigorously–no matter how outrageous the Serbian provocation. For some time Bosnians had commented with derision that the word "self" should have been inserted before "protection" in UNPROFOR's title. As if to prove the point, before leaving his command in Bosnia, General Rose had coined the expression "Mogadishu line" to indicate that strict impartiality by U.N. soldiers was a necessity to avoid their becoming participants in the war. Consolidating positions, rather than remaining scattered in locations around Bosnia, and beefing up military capacities for self–protection made perfectly clear that U.N. soldiers were more concerned with protecting themselves than with any humanitarian mission, which necessarily would have involved crossing the line and taking sides on behalf of victims.

In July the Serbs moved to recover safe areas in eastern Bosnia. The symbolism was perfect. As Dutch peacekeepers retreated and widespread massacres of Muslims took place, the first safe area to be eliminated was Srebrenica, where the vacuous policy of safe areas actually had originated in March–April 1993. There French Lieutenant General Philippe Morillon, then the commander of U.N. troops in Bosnia, made a brave personal stand, which prevented the town from being overrun by rampaging Bosnian Serbs and resulted in the Security Council's designating Srebrenica and five other locales as "safe areas." The next to fall was Zepa, where Ukrainian peacekeepers were unable to resist Serbian advances. Gorazde was the next obvious target because the Serbs sought, as they had since 1992, an uninterrupted and purged swath of territory in eastern Bosnia bordering on Serbia itself.

The Bosnian Serbs' greed pushed NATO to announce after the fall of Srebrenica and Zepa their decision to use air power to deter further attacks. The latest in a series of lines drawn in continually shifting sands was around Gorazde. However, the most important result was that it catalyzed Croatia. The Tudjman government immediately mobilized soldiers to recover the Krajina and eventually other areas as well in western Bosnia. In spite of the arms embargo, Croatia's long coastline and cooperation by Hungary had permitted the government to procure heavy weapons for its 100,000–man army and 180,000 reserves, who also had been receiving technical assistance and training from a number of sources, including a Virginia–based company formed by retired American officers and called Military Professional Resources, Inc.

In only a few days, the Croatian army overran Knin, the capital of the self–styled breakaway republic, and recovered most of the Krajina that had been occupied for four years. The West talked, but Croatia acted. NATO's bluster had at least served to tie down the Bosnian Serbs–whose leaders, Karadzic and Mladic, had just been indicted by the War Crimes Tribunal and were busy infighting over civilian and military prerogatives–so they could not come to the aid of their Croatian counterparts, who were quickly routed. At the same time, Slobodan Milosevic had decided to steer clear in the hopes of getting sanctions lifted from Serbia itself. In an ironic twist, the largest refugee flow of the war–indeed the largest in Europe since the Soviet crushing of the Hungarian uprising in 1956–resulted from a successful Croatian military campaign. This time the estimated 125,000 to 150,000 refugees and 50,000 soldiers were all of Serbian origin. They fled into Serbia itself and toward Serbian–dominated Bosnia, especially Banja Luka.

In late August 1995 Serbian shells killed 38 people in the same Sarajevo market where twice as many deaths had catalyzed the first NATO air strikes in February 1994. The Western response this time was swifter and firmer than in the past. The effort to make Sarajevo safe involved both artillery from the rapid reaction force and NATO warplanes. The explanation for the largest military action since the founding of the Western alliance in 1949 was twofold: Serbs were on the defensive and leadership in disarray after the Croatian trouncing in the Krajina; and U.N. soldiers had withdrawn completely from the exposed areas in eastern Bosnia, thereby removing the contradiction that blue helmets were potentially endangered by Western air power.

The number of Serbian refugees continued to grow when Croatian forces (both from the Croatian Government Army and from Bosnia) and the Bosnian Government Army occupied land in western and central Bosnia that had been cleansed earlier by the Serbs. Aided by the NATO bombing that worsened long–standing supply problems, the rout of the Serbs continued. Bosnia and Croatia sought to strengthen their negotiating hands as they themselves took over the territory that had been slated to be returned to them as part of the negotiated 51–49 division. Western pressure to have the offensive come to a halt was motivated by a desire to facilitate face–to–face negotiations and to keep Serbia itself from intervening.

From the beginning of the war, the West's vacillation over the use of military force led to comparisons between the United Nations and its toothless predecessor. Jamasheed K.A. Manker, about to retire in late 1994 after two years as Pakistan's chief representative to the Security Council, stated: "This is not the League of Nations. That would be an exaggeration." But he also noted the similarities between the international community's performance in the 1930s and its response to the current clash "between a weak multiethnic democracy and a militarily strong fascist regime prepared to use force ruthlessly." ₁₇ Milosevic clearly understood that the West had a high tolerance for the worst atrocities in Europe since the Nazi era and would only reluctantly force him or his proxies to abandon the ethnically pure areas created as a basis for a Greater Serbia. Fred Cuny, a veteran of many humanitarian tragedies who lost his life on a humanitarian mission in Chechnya in 1995, earlier had commented to this author bitterly about the international community's impotence and misplaced neutrality from his perspective in Sarajevo: "If the U.N. had been around in 1939, we would all be speaking German."

Military Choices

The United States seems to be pursuing a zero–casualty foreign policy. Ironically, the only country to project military power worldwide is timid while lesser powers with considerably less capacity are far more willing to sustain the deaths and casualties that are often concomitants of the present generation of U.N. peacekeeping. In Washington there is considerable political resistance to resort to military means alongside a growing need to employ military might to quell ethnic violence, create humanitarian space, and protect fundamental human rights. In such a world, the conflict in the former Yugoslavia illuminates the stark choices that confront policymakers considering the use of force in support of humanitarian objectives. ₁₈

When and Where?

Even when Western publics, legislatures, and governments wish to avoid external commitments, media coverage of egregious human rights abuses, widespread violence, and starvation sometimes elicits halfway measures: the "CNN factor" often can provoke action, but it also encourages wishful thinking and an underestimation of the costs of action. The media coverage of conflicts injects additional uncertainty into the policymaking process, and its effect is magnified considerably by the essentially formless agenda of the post–Cold War era. ₁₉ Governments frequently react to crises in a random fashion without a well–articulated rationale and subsequently are buffeted by successive shifts in public opinion.

In Bosnia the media spotlight may well have pushed policymakers to substitute humanitarian gestures for an overall strategy to end the war. ₂₀ The Brookings Institution's John Steinbruner notes that in such periods of ideological flux, governments are "particularly prone to crisis induced reactions chosen for their symbolic value and ease of execution rather than their decisive effect." ₂₁ Such visceral reactions lead either to "quick fixes" or to ad hoc policies based on the hope that the warring parties will somehow come to their senses. The analysis of the conflict in the former Yugoslavia provides compelling evidence that neither reaction is the basis for a workable policy and that both are potentially counterproductive.

The history of European and American efforts to address the breakup of the former Yugoslavia is rife with examples of wishful thinking and piecemeal action. The 14,000 U.N. blue helmets initially authorized in early 1992 to act as a buffer between the Croats and the Serbs in the newly independent Croatia never achieved the two most critical objectives of their mandate: they neither collected heavy arms from the Serbs in the Krajina nor facilitated the return of the Croatian refugees who had been "cleansed" from this area. The Serbs' use of the Krajina as a staging area for attacks against the Bihac pocket in November 1994 was the most dramatic illustration of the utter failure of U.N. forces. It should have come as no surprise that the Croatian army took matters into its own hands in August 1995.

This initial deployment of U.N. troops in Croatia had been accompanied by a token presence in Sarajevo. But symbols have been of limited value in staving off atrocities in Bosnia–Herzegovina. Some 1,000 soldiers were sent to Bosnia initially, followed by a steadily growing number of additional troops, mainly from NATO countries; no–fly zones were imposed but not enforced; other forms of saber rattling, including low–altitude sorties over Serbian positions and warnings about possible retaliatory air strikes, were tried; the Security Council passed what The Economist called "the confetti of paper resolutions"; and a seemingly endless number of cease–fires were negotiated. As Lawrence Freedman observed, the Security Council had "experimented with almost every available form of coercion short of war." ₂₂

But the West's token half measures under U.N. auspices did nothing to halt Serbian irredentism in either Croatia or Bosnia, nor did they prevent the initial expansion of Croatian claims to Bosnia territory. The arms embargo instituted in September 1991 primarily benefited the Serbs, who controlled the bulk of the military hardware of the former Yugoslav People's Army (YPA). Given traditional U.N. operating procedures and constraints–not to mention U.N. forces' small numbers and inadequate equipment–U.N. soldiers were powerless to deter the Serbs. But their presence impeded more assertive intervention by the international community because these troops, along with aid workers, were vulnerable targets and potential hostages until August 1995, when they regrouped and consolidated themselves in central Bosnia.

It is ironic that as the withdrawal of UNPROFOR was discussed more openly following the debacle in Bihac, little attention was devoted to the effects of such a pullout on humanitarian activities. The protection of relief workers had been the rationale for committing troops to Bosnia in the first place, and the fear of reprisals against troops and aid personnel had deterred the application of greater military force against the Serbs all along. Moreover, as war engulfed Bosnia, civilian efforts were restricted, and beginning in late 1993 U.N. troops had replaced aid agencies as the major humanitarian actor in Sarajevo and in many parts of Bosnia. The exit of U.N. troops would therefore have created a vacuum.

After the assault on Bihac had made a virtual dead letter of the idea of safe areas, the overall ineffectiveness of UNPROFOR and the temporary abandonment of air support for relief missions led to a Serbian ban on armored–vehicle escorts for food convoys in eastern Bosnia, even if this move backfired. Still, it is inaccurate to argue that nothing had been accomplished. Assistance to refugees relieved suffering; air drops of food salved consciences–and saved lives. All the while, however, human rights abuses continued virtually unabated, and the endless round of negotiations conferred legitimacy on the perpetrators of war crimes.

Whither Command and Control?

The second problem confronting policymakers with respect to the use of military force in support of humanitarian objectives is in deciding whether to place military command and control in the hands of the U.N. secretary–general. This is no longer a question in Washington, but it is still being asked in the capitals of some troop–contributing countries. In the former Yugoslavia, as elsewhere, U.N. military operations have been hampered by a low level of professionalism. The capacity to plan, support, and command peacekeeping operations, let alone peace–enforcement missions, is scarcely greater now that it was during the Cold War. As Michael Mandelbaum notes, "The U.N. itself can no more conduct military operations on a large scale on its own than a trade association of hospitals can conduct heart surgery." ₂₃

After holding steady at about 10,000 in the early post–Cold War period, the number of U.N. troops began to increase rapidly, rising to between 70,000 and 80,000 in the mid–1990s. The annual U.N. "military" (peacekeeping) budget approached $4 billion in 1995. These statistics only hint at the magnitude of overstretch. With accumulated arrears hovering around $3.5 billion in 1995, the world organization's financial juggling act had become a considerable feat–three times its annual budget or the annual tab for peacekeeping. Fortunately, the NATO force was not in the world organization's budget because, as the secretary–general lamented, "the difficult financial situation...is increasingly proving to be the most serious obstacle to the effective management of the organization." ₂₄ Dismantling the U.N. military presence in Bosnia and Croatia by the end of January 1996 would alleviate this problem but cause another in that the peacekeeping budget had permitted the United Nations greater flexibility in meeting cash flow problems.

Deficiencies in U.N. command and control in general stem from three sources. First, multiple languages, different procedures, and incompatible equipment make communications difficult, and this problem is exacerbated by the absence of common training. Second, operations suffer as a result of multiple chains of command within theaters and between the military and civilian sides of the U.N. Secretariat. Third, the normal tendency for contingents to seek guidance from their own capitals intensifies operational complexity and danger.

The U.N. operations in the former Yugoslavia were hampered, in addition, by an unusually dispersed military structure for what in fact constituted three distinct operations. ₂₅ The Security Council formally split UNPROFOR into three units on March 31, 1995. The headquarters for the Bosnia–Herzegovina command was at Kiseljak, near Sarajevo, which retained the UNPROFOR label. The majority of its 35,000 troops were from France, Britain, and seven other Western countries, with NATO providing air support and air drops. Until Croatia regained most of the Krajina, the four sectors of the UNPAs had reported separately to Zagreb, which always had served as the headquarters for the entire U.N. operation and as of April 1995 was labeled the United Nations Peace Forces Headquarters, or UNPF–HQ. The Macedonia command's headquarters is in Skopje. This dispersed structure for control over U.N. troops in the former Yugoslavia exacerbated the usual tendency for the different national contingents to emphasize their own narrow modi operandi, as opposed to a general U.N. one, which ultimately detracted further from military cohesion and effectiveness.

There has been some conceptual progress with respect to multilateral military undertakings–as evidenced by Secretary–General Boutros–Ghali's An Agenda for Peace, the products of the veritable cottage industry on peacekeeping, and the revised thinking in many staff colleges and defense ministries. ₂₆ Yet there have been few operational improvements within the United Nations, and certainly not enough to make the militaries of major or even most middle powers feel at ease about placing the United Nations in charge of combat missions. ₂₇

In the mid–1990s the United Nations was bogged down in multifaceted operations in a myriad of civil wars–a circumstance hardly imagined by the framers of the U.N. Charter and certainly not an area in which success has been commonplace in the past. There arose increasing political, economic, and military pressures on Washington and other Western capitals to avoid engagement. ₂₈ The May 1994 Presidential Decision Directive (PDD) 25, limiting U.S. participation in multinational operations, reflected this reticence on Washington's part and represented yet another 180–degree policy reversal by President Clinton, away from the "assertive multilateralism" trumpeted at the outset of his administration. The transformation of American attitudes toward the United Nations and the meandering of the administration's foreign policy was dramatic. Only three years separate the bullish optimism that accompanied guaranteeing the survival of the Kurds in northern Iraq and the utter cynicism in ignoring Rwanda's tragedy. Over the same period and beyond, Washington's approach to the former Yugoslavia was characterized by Iraq–like rhetorical firmness and Rwanda–like operational timidity.

Yet American leadership is still the sine qua non of meaningful U.N. initiatives, especially those involving combat forces. As Thomas Friedman of the New York Times points out, "There is no multilateralism without unilateralism." ₂₉ But the Clinton administration gradually had abandoned the pro–U.N. stance of candidate Clinton. Symptomatic of this shift was the contentious debate in Washington that began in mid–1993 about the wisdom of placing U.S. combat troops under U.N. command, as recommended for some purposes in a draft presidential decision directive, portions of which were leaked to the media. These tensions surfaced again in September 1993 in the minority report of the U.S. Commission on Improving the Effectiveness of the United Nations, which was issued in the same month as President Clinton delivered his maiden speech before the General Assembly and a few weeks before heavy American casualties were sustained in Mogadishu. ₃₀ The Defense Department's "Bottom–Up Review" questioned the feasibility of multilateral military efforts in general and the wisdom of sending American troops as part of a U.N. effort to restore elected government in Port–au–Prince in particular.

After a year of fierce interagency feuding, ill–fated military operations in Somalia and Haiti, and dithering over the former Yugoslavia, President Clinton signed PDD 25. This directive reveals the extent to which Washington had abandoned the mantle of leadership. It spells out strict guidelines for determining whether U.S. troops can be sent abroad, based on such considerations as American interests, the availability of troops and funds, the necessity for U.S. participation, congressional approval, a set date for the withdrawal of U.S. forces, and command and control arrangements. The directive made it clear, moreover, that Washington would not approve any new U.N. operation, whether U.S. soldiers were involved or not, unless other restrictive criteria were satisfied. A crisis must represent a threat to international peace and security (such threats include lack of access to starving civilians), involve gross abuses of human rights, or have resulted from the violent overthrow of a democratically elected government. American approval also will depend on clearly stated objectives, the availability of troops and funding, and, most important, the consent of the parties to the conflict as well as a realistic exit strategy.

These criteria will rarely, if ever, be met. And as the subsequent mobilization for the deployment by NATO demonstrated, only strong presidential leadership could overcome the significant stumbling block for U.N. operations, which in fact had been placed by the administration. Experiences in Somalia most influenced the content of the directive. While the residue was felt in the former Yugoslavia, the first real test of the new policy came in Rwanda. As one senior State Department official put it during an off–the–record discussion, "It was almost as if the Hutus had read it [PDD 25]." Three months later–with perhaps as much as ten percent of Rwanda's population dead and at least half of those who remained alive displaced by grisly violence–Washington finally decided to send U.S. troops to neighboring Zaire as part of a belated humanitarian response.

It was in the midst of the chaos in East Africa that Secretary–General Boutros–Ghali originally had suggested that the Security Council should seriously consider withdrawing U.N. forces from Bosnia in the event that the Bosnian Serbs agreed to the so–called peace proposal from the contact group. In a Clintonesque reversal, Boutros–Ghali began to argue that only the major powers would be able to enforce the peace. After the change in military balance in August, NATO's bombing in September, and the continued rout of the Serbs by both Croatian and Bosnian forces, the secretary–general recommended to the Security Council that the U.N. role be replaced by a "multinational" one modeled on earlier efforts in the Gulf War and Haiti.

As could have been predicted, American contingents in the new international force will remain under U.S. and NATO command and control. The exact role for the troops from 14 non–NATO members remains to be worked out in the field, but a face–saving formula seems to have been found for Russian troops. U.S. Defense Secretary William J. Perry and Russian Defense Minister Pavel S. Grachev agreed that a Russian brigade of two or three infantry battalions (that is, about 1,500 combat soldiers) would take part in the NATO force by being part of an American division. The commander of the Russian force, Colonel General Leonti P. Shevstov, will take orders from Major General William Nash of the First Armored Division, who takes order from General George A. Joulwan. This arrangement was reached in the corridors at Dayton and superseded an earlier agreement for a noncombat role for Russian troops. Both approaches indicated that the Russians were willing to use the fiction that orders would emanate from Joulwan not in his role as supreme NATO commander but rather as the top soldier of American forces in Europe.

The Republican–dominated Congress used its constitutional power to declare war and control spending to question the president's ability to commit U.S. troops to the peacekeeping effort in the Balkans. But short of a constitutional crisis, which could develop should things turn sour on the ground, American and other forces new to the region will continue to serve along with the troops from NATO and other countries already in UNPROFOR and UNCRO in an integrated NATO structure. As elsewhere in the world, the Pentagon will cede command and control to the U.N. secretary–general only for safer and smaller operations such as the one in Macedonia, and then only when no bullets are flying. This is neither surprising nor regrettable.

Regional versus Universal Institutions

The third choice facing policymakers is whether to make use of regional organizations as alternatives to the United Nations. Some believe regional institutions are the more attractive alternative because they supposedly have greater incentives and qualifications to act than does a global institution. Since the member states of these institutions suffer the most from the destabilizing consequences of war in their locales, it is argued, they have a greater stake in the management and resolution of regional conflicts. Regional actors are also more likely than outsiders to understand the dynamics of a particular conflict and the influence of local cultures on it, and are thus in a better position to mediate. Finally, issues relating to local conflicts are more likely to be given full and urgent consideration in regional forums than in global forums, where there are broader agendas, competing priorities, and other distractions.

These advantages exist more in theory than in practice, however. ₃₁ Most regional institutions have virtually no military experience or resources. They normally also include among their numbers powers seeking regional hegemony whose presence makes non–self–interested intervention problematic. Regional groupings of small countries–as, for example, the Contadora Group or the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN)–are less threatening and sometimes can be helpful on the diplomatic front. In military terms, however, the interests of geopolitically important neighbors normally disqualify them from objective mediation and enforcement. Syria's occupation of Lebanon under the auspices of the Arab League or Nigeria's of Liberia under the auspices of the Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS) illustrate the more general reality. Similarly, Russia's overtures, beginning in 1993, to obtain the blessing of the United Nations and U.N. financing to arbitrate disputes in the former Soviet Union appear to have been little more than traditional Russian hegemony dressed up in the guise of Commonwealth of Independent States (CIS) peacekeeping. ₃₂

Between late June and late July 1994, the Security Council approved Moscow's scheme to deploy Russian troops in Georgia to end the three–year–old civil war there; France's intervention in Rwanda to help stanch three months of bloodletting by a government that it had armed, trained, and supported economically; and the U.S. plan to spearhead a military force to reverse the military coup in Haiti. These decisions demonstrated a growing acquiescence on the part of the Security Council in major–power intervention in regional disputes. The Clinton administration's "benign realpolitik" straightforwardly recognizes this reality, which amounts to a revival of spheres of influence, albeit with U.N. oversight. ₃₃ Foreign Policy editor Charles William Maynes, who coined this phrase, later dubbed the concept "benign spheres of accountability," but whatever the policy is called, it is not so much regional institutions that count but regional powers. In granting the requests of Russia, France, and the United States to take matters into their own hands, the Security Council seems to be experimenting with a new form of the great–power politics that the United Nations was founded to end.

The conflict in the former Yugoslavia provided what social scientists might deem the "best case" for relying on regional institutions, yet even Europe's well–endowed regional organizations failed the test. The European Community (now Union) and the Conference on (now Organization for) Security and Cooperation in Europe were unable to develop a common policy for recognizing independence with guarantees for minorities; NATO and the Western European Union (WEU) dithered continually over taking action.

A robust military response by NATO before autumn 1995 to counter either Serbia's initial cross–border aggression or the various civil wars would hardly have been an "out–of–area" operation. In fact, this phrase has fallen into disuse as a result of the efforts of NATO's late secretary–general, Manfred W^rner, who helped to convert NATO into a mechanism that could respond to U.N. requests for help in the former Yugoslavia. The lack of resolve that characterized European and American diplomacy until the second half of 1995 was complicated by the existence of two decision–making centers. Thus, Brussels slowed and sometimes impeded meaningful reactions from the Security Council in New York.

Moreover, even after the Security Council decided to use chapter VII language, some Western governments continued their foot–dragging within NATO. This was particularly true of Britain and France. Although they provided the core of forces in Bosnia, and especially of the rapid reaction force, they obstructed and objected to decisions within NATO that would have given military meaning to the palaver emanating from New York. This hypocritical behavior put London and Paris on a collision course with Washington until blue helmets abandoned outlying safe areas and the Croatian offensive put the Serbs in disarray. As one analyst noted: "The conflicting agendas of the three Permanent Members of the Security Council, who are also major actors in NATO, emphasize that without consensus neither organization can work effectively, let alone in tandem." ₃₄

The result of Western disunity was the continued resistance to lifting the arms embargo–and the European threat of the withdrawal of their ground troops in the event that it was lifted unilaterally, as repeatedly proposed by the U.S. Congress–and the postponement of meaningful military engagement. The February 1994 ultimatum with respect to the Serbs' heavy weapons around Sarajevo, the subsequent downing of four Bosnian Serb aircraft, and the bombing raids against Serbian positions around Gorazde momentarily restored NATO's tattered credibility. However, the West's unwillingness to respond after the Serbs' rejection of the contact group's August ultimatum, and the timidity of the responses both to renewed Serbian onslaughts against Bihac in November and December as well as to their overrunning two safe areas and taking 300 blue helmets hostage in May and June 1995, and others again in July, exposed the disarray within NATO and the United Nations. The disconnect between the diplomatic decisions taken by governments in New York and the operational ones taken in Brussels was a constant.

"It is unfair to blame NATO for the war in Bosnia," Manfred W^rner used to say with some frequency. But it is certainly not unfair to ask why the Western alliance was unable to stop the war sooner rather than later. Europe's regional institutions compare favorably with the United Nations, which is not a compliment. Disparities in viewpoint between the United States and Europe meant that neither the military nor the diplomatic means were sufficient to make a difference until Croatia took matters into its own hands and changed the balance of military forces on the ground. With the Serbs on the defensive, the West's primary collective defense organization was embrazened sufficiently to act.

Another Military Choice?

What emerges from the history of the world's military floundering in Yugoslavia's wars is the international community's desperate need for a new guiding concept: the prevention of both interstate and intrastate war. As he was leaving office in 1993, the U.N. under–secretary–general for administration, Dick Thornburgh, characterized the continuing overextension of U.N. military activities as a "financial bungee jump." ₃₅ Apart from saving money, however, preventing violence is preferable to picking up the pieces of war or humanitarian intervention. If the consequences of civil war are becoming more dire, and if such wars are developing faster than the international community's ability to respond to them, would it not be more reasonable to act earlier and head them off?

Preventive diplomacy is the latest conceptual fashion, "an idea in search of a strategy." ₃₆ Such preventive actions as the symbolic deployment of a detachment of U.N. soldiers to Macedonia and the expanded use of fact–finding missions, human rights monitors, and early–warning systems are beginning to be implemented. And although ultimately an emphasis will have to be on economic and social development as a necessary if insufficient buffer against war, effective prevention today and tomorrow necessarily also will entail the deployment of troops. If they are to be an effective deterrent, however, such troops must be provided with contingency plans and reserve firepower for immediate retaliation against aggressors. This would amount to extending advance authorization for chapter VII action in the event a preventive force was challenged. Although such backup firepower would be no easy matter to assemble–and acknowledging that the combined forces of the Yugoslav People's Army, or YPA, and the Bosnian Serbs would have been hard to intimidate–it is absolutely essential. Otherwise, the currency of U.N. preventive action will be devalued to such an extent that it should not be attempted in the first instance.

The rub is that prevention is cost–effective in the long run but cost–intensive in the short run. In the former Yugoslavia the "long run" lasted over three years, whereas in Rwanda it was reduced to a matter of weeks. The argument that an earlier use of force would have been more economical in the former Yugoslavia runs up against the theoretical inability of governments to look very far into the future and of their consequent tendency to magnify the disadvantages of immediate expenditures and to discount those of future expenditures. In Rwanda, the costs of at least 500,000 dead, four million displaced persons, and a ruined economy were soon borne by the same governments that had refused to respond militarily only a few weeks earlier. The United States and the European Union ended up providing at least $1.5 billion in emergency aid in 1994 alone. If cost savings are important enough and the West is unable to ignore massive human tragedies, perhaps prevention will become more plausible and prevalent.

Humanitarian Choices

The human toll from Yugoslavia's wars has been overwhelming–something like a quarter of a million dead and four million displaced. Moreover, the future likely holds more displacement and international operational problems associated with humanitarian help as the peace settlement is designed to bring refugees and displaced persons back to their prewar homes to claim property that has been destroyed or occupied by voluntary or involuntary migrants from other parts of the former Yugoslavia. It will take some time to straighten out the chain of illegal property transfers that accompanied ethnic cleansing. As so much housing and infrastructure have been destroyed, it is unclear to what extent returnees and the resulting displaced (that is, the illegal occupants who themselves often were chased from their own property) can be accommodated. Preliminary estimates from the UNHCR suggest that repatriation, if all goes well, will involve over the next two years some 2.7 million people in three phases. ₃₇ The first will concentrate on 1.3 million displaced persons within Bosnia living in temporary quarters. The second will involve both refugees and displaced persons from Croatia (463,000) and Serbia (330,000), most of whom will wish to return to Bosnia. And the final phase will involve some 700,000 refugees settled in other European countries, about half located in Germany.

It might be assumed that it would be easier in the humanitarian than in the military arena for the United Nations to reconcile first principles with political and operational realities, and hence to mount coherent and effective programs of action. Yet, in the former Yugoslavia, the international community has begged ethical and operational questions in three important ways, with distinctly negative consequences for the shape and impact of U.N. operations.

Human Rights Trade–offs

The United Nations–member states and also, less justifiably, the political, humanitarian, and military leadership of international secretariats–has been too timid in confronting the perpetrators of human rights abuses and war crimes. Secretary–General Boutros–Ghali has set the tone by reaffirming in his writings a fairly conventional interpretation of sovereignty when this principle clashes with other international norms. Upon his return from a visit to Somalia in October 1993, the secretary–general announced: "The United Nations cannot impose peace; the role of the United Nations is to maintain the peace." ₃₈ Thus, in spite of mandates overriding sovereignty in Iraq, Somalia, Haiti, and the former Yugoslavia, the head of the United Nations was already backtracking from the earlier bullishness spelled out in his 1992 An Agenda for Peace; that the United Nations was no longer in the peace–enforcement business became official policy in the 1995 Supplement to an Agenda for Peace. ₃₉

If there are now square brackets around chapter VII as there were during the Cold War–that is, if warring parties must consent to U.N. humanitarian as well as military efforts–then this policy shift should reduce considerably the world organization's overstretch. But the United Nations henceforth would have a minor role at best in confronting the moral and operational challenges that are clearly the dominant challenges of our turbulent times. ₄₀

Operational implications arise from sustaining the shibboleth of Charter article 2(7), with its emphasis on nonintervention in "matters which are essentially within the domestic jurisdiction of any state." Some U.N. practices themselves have been antihumanitarian, including the decisions to prevent civilians from leaving Sarajevo and other besieged areas in Bosnia and from entering or leaving protected areas. Moreover, the conscious restriction of activities has precluded U.N. staff from confronting political authorities about human rights abuses as a routine part of their missions.

The need to reinforce the neutrality of the United Nations provides the most sanguine explanation for such behavior. The world organization's leadership wished to sidestep confrontations with states, move ahead with negotiations, and be seen as an impartial partner once cease–fires were in effect. However, the promotion of human rights is a victim of such misplaced evenhandedness. In the former Yugoslavia, U.N. personnel acted as if the most, and sometimes only, essential undertaking was the delivery of relief goods. They downplayed such tasks as protecting fundamental rights, gathering information about war crimes, and assertively and routinely investigating alleged abuses.

Dealing mainly with the products of war rather than with its causes, the United Nations has ignored opportunities for at least documenting and publicly denouncing some of the causes. The main exception has been the UNHCR, whose staff has fairly consistently, and sometimes openly, exposed abuse. The treatment of human rights as a nonessential luxury rather than as a central element in U.N. operations has led Human Rights Watch to point to the "lost agenda" that has "led to a squandering of the U.N.'s unique capacity on the global stage to articulate fundamental human rights values and to legitimize their enforcement." ₄₁ challenges of our turbulent times. ₄₂ Among these innovations were a first–ever emergency session by the U.N. Commission on Human Rights after the discovery of concentration camps in western Bosnia; the appointment of a commission of experts to report on breaches of the Geneva Conventions; the deployment of field monitors by the U.N. Human Rights Center and the assignment of human rights responsibilities to the UNHCR protection officers; and, most significant, the convening of an ad hoc international war crimes tribunal. In relationship to the last of these, one observer has summarized: "Lacking the political will to act decisively to curtail abuses of prisoners and civilians, they endorsed or went along with the creation of the tribunal," a lamentable charade that constituted a "black eye." ₄₃ The lack of resources and leadership undermines the utility of these initiatives, with repercussions not only for today's victims in the former Yugoslavia but also for the victims of tomorrow's armed conflicts. Their value–not simply as moral statements but also as effective deterrents–should not be minimized.

Many senior officials, both in the field and in Geneva, have said that the UNHCR should never again become involved in providing emergency relief in an active civil war, a task that they believe is better left to the ICRC. According to this logic, the UNHCR's preoccupation with the nuts and bolts of delivering massive emergency aid in the former Yugoslavia detracted from its ability to fulfill its central protection role. The protection of refugees and internally displaced persons is most problematic when a state not only is a host country for refugees from other states but also produces refugees and internally displaced persons of its own. Such has been the case in all three major theaters of conflict in the former Yugoslavia, where protection problems should have received the undivided attention of the UNHCR.

A crucial shortcoming of the U.N. system is a lack of specialization–the failure to ascertain who does what best. More effective international responses to humanitarian crises require a clear division of labor among humanitarians. Unfortunately, although everyone is for coordination, no one wishes to be coordinated. It would be wrong to denigrate the courage and dedication of individuals–or the efforts of the UNHCR and other humanitarian agencies–in the former Yugoslavia. At the same time, it cannot be ignored that while emergency delivery has been marred by duplication and competition, human rights have been ignored.

In December 1991, in response to the numerous operational problems that had been encountered in the Persian Gulf crisis, the General Assembly authorized the secretary–general to appoint a humanitarian coordinator and create the Department of Humanitarian Affairs (DHA). ₄₄ However, DHA has made no appreciable difference in the former Yugoslavia, in terms of enhancing either overall leadership or the coverage and performance of the various U.N. and other humanitarian agencies present–not surprising when the coordinator has no real budgetary authority and does not outrank the heads of the agencies that he is supposed to coordinate.

Tough Calculations

The United Nations also must confront the need to allocate limited resources in a more cost–effective manner. Humanitarian assistance in the former Yugoslavia, especially in Bosnia–Herzegovina, often has been a double–edged sword–meaning that the "age of innocence" for humanitarians is now over. ₄₅ Assistance to refugees no doubt decreased their suffering, but it also fostered ethnic cleansing by facilitating the movement of unwanted populations–one of the central war aims of the Serbs. It has been reported that in some instances up to two thirds of the shipments of food and medicine intended for civilians were diverted to soldiers. While such reports are virtually impossible to verify, there is no doubt that too many concessions have been made to belligerents. A more principled approach with fewer "deals" might have led to less extortion.

In February 1993 the U.N. high commissioner for refugees, Sadako Ogata, called a temporary halt to the UNHCR's activities in Bosnia in protest against the failure of the warring parties to honor their agreements and guarantee access to civilians, only to be overruled by the secretary–general. Organizations that are entrusted with mounting humanitarian efforts in a war zone should have the authority to suspend their efforts when political and military authorities make a mockery of international norms–or to withdraw completely under certain extreme circumstances. The latter is anathema to many in the United Nations and in other humanitarian organizations, but such a visceral rejection should be reexamined. The ICRC considers it to be an acceptable and honorable practice in extreme circumstances, as, for example, when its delegate, Frederic Maurice, was assassinated in Sarajevo in May 1992.

There is also a growing disparity between available resources and the skyrocketing demand for military intervention and humanitarian action. In the view of many humanitarians and development specialists, "compassion fatigue" and "donor distraction" are too often facile and unacceptable excuses for avoiding responsibility. ₄₆ But domestic recessionary and budgetary problems in the West are eroding the public's willingness to help out in the world's increasing number of crises. In the words of retired U.S. Marine Corps General Bernard Trainor: "One would like to use the doctrine of limited tears. We can't cry for everyone, so we should have some sort of measure that helps us decide where and when to get involved." ₄₇

Since the United Nations is a global organization with a universal mandate as well as a worldwide operational network, there is no crisis that is not on the U.N. agenda. However, as High Commissioner Ogata–who, on occasion, has referred to herself as the "desk officer" for the former Yugoslavia–realizes: "The time has come for a major dialogue on the hard choices that will have to be made in the face of finite humanitarian resources and almost infinite humanitarian demands." ₄₈ If the United Nations is to remain a force for maintaining world order, policymakers and citizens can no longer avoid painful choices. Like the surgeon on the battlefield, the international community must increasingly confront the stark and morally repugnant task of triage and decide who needs no help, who cannot be helped, and who can and must be helped.

In this regard, humanitarian practitioners estimate that 10 to 20 times more could be accomplished with the same limited resources by attacking what the United Nations Children's Fund (UNICEF) has called poverty's "silent" emergencies, rather than the "loud" emergencies caused by warfare. ₄₉ Each day, for example, 35,000 to 40,000 children worldwide perish from poverty and preventable diseases. What claim should they have on the resources that now finance soldiers and humanitarians in war zones?

A New Institutional Capacity

As in Iraq and Haiti, the efforts of U.N. humanitarian organizations in the former Yugoslavia have taken on political connotations by association with military and economic sanctions. ₅₀ The ineffectiveness of U.N. forces deployed in the former Yugoslavia and of economic sanctions imposed on the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia (Serbia and Montenegro) have created hardships that, ironically, the UNHCR, UNICEF, and the World Food Programme (WFP) have been called upon to alleviate.

The United Nations is supposed to be both "tough cop" and "good cop," at one moment applying pressure and in the next cushioning the plight of the vulnerable. Aid workers point out that sanctions cause the most suffering among the most vulnerable members of society. The sanctions against Serbia led several U.N. agencies, along with many NGOs, to lobby actively for lifting sanctions once they began to exert significant pressure on Belgrade. These groups were groping for what the former president of the U.S. United Nations Association, Edward Luck, has wryly labeled "painless sanctions with bite." ₅₁ Along with the experience in South Africa, Milosevic's failure to assist the rebel Serbs in both Croatia and Bosnia in August and September 1995 and his subsequent twisting of their arms in Dayton in exchange for a gradual lifting of sanctions seems to provide evidence that economic sanctions can be an important factor influencing a regime's calculations.

As Shashi Tharoor, the leading U.N. official in New York centrally involved with the former Yugoslavia, quipped: "It is extremely difficult to make war and peace with the same people on the same territory at the same time." ₅₂ Dealing with this institutional schizophrenia requires overcoming the inherent contradictions between the politico–military and humanitarian spheres within the United Nations. It is true, for example, that the review process for economic sanctions often mocks humanitarian values and the provisions of the Geneva Conventions. The Sanctions Committee of the Security Council has on numerous occasions held up or barred the delivery of such items as seeds, tools, fertilizer, and medicine. In 1992 and 1993, delays of two months in granting permission even for shipments of basic foodstuffs and medicine to the former Yugoslavia were common. Consequently, U.N. organizations were identified with the anti–Serbian stance of the Security Council and with the political agendas of the Western countries supporting sanctions.

In order to assess beforehand the likely impact of U.N. coercive action on vulnerable groups, the Security Council and the secretary–general should consult U.N. humanitarian organizations as a matter of course prior to deciding to impose sanctions. In deciding to take such action, the Security Council also should commit the U.N. system to dealing with the consequences. Therefore, in addition to taking into consideration the financial implications of enforcement by the United Nations, member governments should consider the costs of emergency aid and the medium–term reconstruction needs that may flow from punitive economic and military sanctions once the stated objectives of such sanctions have been realized.

Such modifications could help mitigate the tensions between the "good" (humanitarian) and the "bad" (politico–military) United Nations, but a dramatic new mode of operation also is required for delivering emergency aid to active war zones under chapter VII or military sanctions. ₅₃ This would involve the creation of a cadre of volunteers able to function in the midst of armed conflict. ₅₄ These volunteers would not be part of the ordinary U.N. staff system because they would have to be appropriately insured and compensated for the danger that they would face. An international agreement to treat attacks against such humanitarian personnel as an international crime would build on precedents set in dealing with terrorists and airplane hijackers, whose effective prosecution is no longer subject to the vagaries of national legislation or the extraditional whims of host countries. Resources and capable relief specialists could be siphoned from existing humanitarian agencies with distinguished records in armed conflicts–such as UNICEF, the UNHCR, and the WFP. Under such an arrangement, U.N. humanitarian agencies would not be present as long as chapter VII was in effect. They would have to withdraw whenever a peacekeeping mission turned into an enforcement mission.

Like the military forces deployed in a humanitarian intervention, this new civilian delivery unit would form part of a unified command that would report directly to the Security Council, not to the secretary–general. The troops authorized by the Security Council to deal with a particular crisis and the staff from the new humanitarian unit would together comprise a cadre of soldiers and civilians in possession of both humanitarian expertise and combat readiness–a "HUMPROFOR," or Humanitarian Protection Force. There would have to be ground rules for mounting and suspending deliveries of humanitarian aid. Troop contributors would have to agree that their forces would be bound by the Geneva Conventions and Additional Protocols and held accountable for their actions.

Assistance would go to refugees and internally displaced persons without regard for their juridical status. It might be a good idea for the new humanitarian unit to be dominated by retired military personnel, who would be less likely to reject out of hand the necessity of subordinating themselves to and working side by side with military protection forces within a hierarchical structure. Members of such a unit should in any case be experienced in working with military personnel and able to bridge the military–civilian cultural divide that often leads to ineffectiveness. The advantage of such an arrangement is that responsibility will be clearly defined. In the present, decentralized U.N. structure, everyone, and hence no one, is responsible, and buck passing is the norm.

Removing this unit from the control of the secretary–general and attaching it directly to the Security Council would insulate the office of the U.N. chief executive from decisions for the use of force, thus preserving its impartiality and its ability to take on other tasks, including the critically important one of administering "collapsed" or "failed" states. ₅₅ Recent calls for the recolonization of countries that "are just not fit to govern themselves" ₅₆ are implausible, not least of all because former imperial powers are not interested. The United Nations will therefore no doubt be called upon to pick up the pieces after certain humanitarian interventions and perhaps to assume temporary trusteeship in some cases.

The difficulties of nation–building should not be underestimated. And although local populations themselves ultimately must take responsibility for the reconstitution of viable civil societies, they will require buffers and breathing space following periods of prolonged violence. This is where U.N. peacekeepers and modified trusteeship or conservancy will be valuable–after the warring parties are exhausted or humanitarian intervention has helped to stabilize a violent situation. The genuine vision and independence required for nation–building would be best served by distancing and insulating the U.N. secretary–general and the U.N. humanitarian network from the use of force. There is a precedent for this in the appointment of Rolf Ekeus as executive chairman of the Special Commission on Disarmament and Arms Control in Iraq. Ekeus was appointed by and reports to the Security Council. As part of the chapter VII enforcement mechanism governing the terms of the cease–fire in the Gulf War, he is clearly the Security Council's emissary. Thus Secretary–General Boutros–Ghali has been able to maintain his distance, thereby remaining a potential interlocutor for the pariah regime in Iraq or its successor.

Learning from the Former Yugoslavia

When confronted with the crisis caused by Yugoslavia's dissolution, the West used the United Nations to pursue a course of shameless diplomatic compromise mixed with inadequate military responses and well–intentioned but counterproductive humanitarianism. Combined with halfhearted sanctions and a well–orchestrated negotiating charade on the part of Belgrade and the nationalist Serbs, U.N. action thus constituted a powerful diversion and served as a substitute for more creative Western diplomatic pressure, more vigorous military action, or arming the Bosnian Muslims to defend themselves.

Fecklessness in Bihac at the end of 1994 and across Bosnia in mid–1995 after the Serbian takeover of safe areas, abuse of civilians, and use of U.N. soldiers as human shields was a microcosm of U.N. actions in the former Yugoslavia–which Boutros–Ghali called "mission impossible." ₅₇ With the Serbs taking over territory as they liked and making a mockery of international norms and of Security Council resolutions, U.N. forces were helpless even to free their own comrades held hostage. U.N. troops inhibited one thing, an effective multilateral military response.

Until the renewed and brutal shelling of Sarajevo in August 1995 goaded the West to act, the sum of the international community's ad hoc and inappropriate operational decisions in the former Yugoslavia had added up to an intervention–but one that worked in favor of Bosnian and Croatian Serbs and their patrons in Belgrade. The idea of limited and impartial intervention is, as Richard Betts has pointed out, a delusion, and "the West's attempt at limited but impartial involvement abetted slow–motion savagery." ₅₈

The moral of the international community's actions in the former Yugoslavia is that halfhearted or symbolic action is worse than no action at all. This is not to minimize the serious difficulties of intervening in ethnonational conflicts generally or of working around the perennial obstacles to U.N. action. Nor is it to deny the value of traditional peacekeepers in contexts where consent is present, which is no doubt what the United Nations will concentrate on once again in the near future. In the former Yugoslavia, however, earlier and more robust military intervention should have taken place, or the warring parties should have been left to settle their disputes among themselves. Instead, appeasement produced the worst possible outcome: large expenditures, unspeakable suffering, and diminished NATO and U.N. credibility.

The West was so anxious to stop the fighting in the Balkans that the options brokered by the contact group were devoid of principle. Although partition is now all that is possible, it should at least be presented honestly. What could be a more massive case of self–deception than the West's efforts to persuade itself that Milosevic has been compelled to accept its conception of international norms and fairness? We have accepted his.

The agreement initialed in Dayton and signed in Paris suggests that there are prospects for tense coexistence, if not peace, because an erstwhile multiethnic fabric now has ethnically homogeneous swaths. A restored Croatia (minus for the time being the oil fields in eastern Slavonia but with control over contiguous territory in western Bosnia), an enlarged Serbia (although not as big as the proponents of "Greater Serbia" had hoped), and a rump Bosnia dominated by Muslims now correspond to ethnic and military realities.

Some 20,000 American soldiers are now enforcing a settlement that they should have earlier fought to prevent. Their presence is essential not simply to give peace a chance and shore up NATO's credibility but also to sustain American interests. Ironically, Congress and the public are asking not "Why did it take so long?" but instead "Why are we involved?" After a cursory consideration of U.S. and Western interests, debate has shifted to specifying "exit strategies" and avoiding "mission creep." The portion of Bosnia reserved for Muslims is, in fact, an economically nonviable camp whose population will depend indefinitely on Western aid and military protection.

The post–Cold War glow of multilateralism had already dimmed in Washington with PDD 25. An operational debacle in the Balkans risks sealing the fate of the United Nations, leaving it a marginal actor in the task of maintaining international peace and security. Such an eventuality appears particularly plausible with the Republican–dominated Congress displaying a visceral skepticism, even hostility, toward multilateralism.

At this juncture, it is more important than ever that the administration clearly communicate its goals to the American public with respect to the Balkans. Perhaps a realistic goal would be to try to keep the lids on the other ethnic and political cauldrons in the former Yugoslavia. If they boil over and there is no immediate and robust response–to outbreaks of ethnic violence in Kosovo or Macedonia, for example–it will be obvious just how naked the NATO emperor is. The best argument for NATO's expansion may, in fact, be to counter those forces that have exploded in the Balkans and to test the resolve of would–be members, which has become more central to the administration's position. ₅₉

A wider war in the Balkans remains a distinct possibility, and a classic constitutional crisis looms between the congressional power to declare war and control spending and the presidential prerogative to deploy troops in pursuit of foreign policy interests. ₆₀ Now U.S. soldiers constitute one third of the largest operation in NATO's history. They are not guaranteeing the Dayton agreement single–handedly, although the sole superpower is widely caricatured as Superman swinging into action. Nonetheless, NATO's success requires presidential leadership and congressional support. Growing isolationism accompanied by the administration's dithering had placed war criminals at ease in the former Yugoslavia, until autumn's Croatian offensive and Serbian disarray goaded Washington and NATO to act. Assistant Secretary of State Richard Holbrooke took the lead in reversing what he earlier had aptly labeled "the greatest collective failure of the West since the 1930s." ₆₁

Holbrooke would find it difficult to take issue with David Forsythe, a leading academic analyst of human rights, who has noted: "Some had hoped for an elementary, partial consensus on U.S. action to help guarantee at least the right to life in the form of no mass starvation and no mass murder. Events in the 1990s in both Bosnia and Rwanda indicate much remains to be done to achieve even this minimal objective." ₆₂ Moreover, as Richard Haass of the Council on Foreign Relations reminds us, "effective multilateralism is not an alternative to U.S. leadership; it will be a consequence. The question is whether the world's only superpower will choose to behave like one." ₆₃

Some 58,000 deaths in Southeast Asia contributed to the Vietnam syndrome, the axiom that American troops should only rarely be placed in harm's way. Less than two decades later, the threshold was lowered dramatically–18 dead marines in Mogadishu brought a rapid retreat and ushered in the Somalia syndrome. Today the ritual incantation of "not a single body bag" deters a thoughtful review of the national interest. There is, it seems, none worth fighting for in the Balkans, or by extension perhaps anywhere else.

There is a dangerous irony in the new international military order. Parliamentarians, the public, and pundits within the only country capable of projecting military power worldwide are timid about using such power, particularly to reinforce multilateral decisions. At the same time, major Western powers such as France and Britain as well as middle powers such as Canada and the Netherlands lack the capacity but expect their troops to participate in risky international efforts. In fact, Canadian and Dutch shortcomings in Mogadishu and Srebrenica did not produce an American–style backlash within their domestic politics, but rather a demand that their armed forces do their difficult jobs better. Fifty–four French soldiers have died and 600 more have suffered casualties in the line of duty in Bosnia. Soldiering is inherently risky, but responsible membership in the family of nations requires that risks be accepted.

In the fall of 1995 Dutch Minister of Defense Joris Voorhoeve articulated the rationale for the continued presence of Dutch troops abroad: "The pursuit of a well–ordered international society in which human rights are respected and social justice is prevalent is an important national interest." ₆₄ Does the United States have less to lose than the Netherlands from a world in which international law is violated with impunity? Do we not gain from a world in which our own fundamental values are upheld jointly by the larger community of states? Without a menacing Soviet Union, what is the justification for annual military expenditures of $260 billion, particularly in support of a zero–casualty foreign policy? Stability in Europe, the prosecution of war criminals, and the elimination of ethnic cleansing as a policy option for would–be thugs are all in the U.S. national interest.

After NATO responded vigorously against the Bosnian Serbs at the end of August 1995, Bosnian President Alija Izetbegovic stated, "the world has finally done what it should have done a long, long time ago." ₆₅ If the conduct of the world and Yugoslavia's wars reveals anything, it is that collective security remains a distant aspiration. Collective spinelessness is too often still the order of the day.

---

Endnotes

Note *: This chapter draws on "U.N. Responses in the Former Yugoslavia: Moral and Operational Choices," Ethics and International Affairs, 8 (1994), pp. 1–22. Back.

Note 1: See Thomas G. Weiss, David P. Forsythe, and Roger A. Coate, The United Nations and Changing World Politics (Boulder, CO: Westview, 1994). Back.

Note 2: Only a few hours before the expiration of the mandate of what had been known as the United Nations Protection Force (UNPROFOR) on April 1, 1995, the Security Council decided to split the operation into three separate contingents: "UNPROFOR" would henceforth apply only to the operation in Bosnia; the peacekeeping tasks in the Krajina would be handled by the U.N. Confidence Restoration Operation in Croatia; and the efforts in Macedonia would be handled by the U.N. Preventive Deployment Force. Zagreb formerly served as the headquarters for UNPROFOR but became the United Nations Peace Forces Headquarters. In this chapter, "UNPROFOR" normally refers to the U.N. operations in Bosnia, Croatia, and Macedonia, as was actually the case for most of the period under review. In October 1995, on the eve of the Dayton negotiations, the approximate numbers were as follows: 1,100 in Macedonia; 22,000 in Bosnia along with 12,500 in the rapid reaction force; and 13,000 (supposed to be 8,750 and scheduled to be reduced to 2,500 by late fall) in Croatia. On November 30 the Security Council extended the mandate for the Macedonia force for another six months, but for Croatia and for Bosnia for only 45 and 60 days, respectively. Thus, the controversial U.N. operation would begin to wind down immediately, coinciding with the arrival of the advance party from NATO and preceding the final signature of the peace treaty in Paris. Back.

Note 3: See Jonathan Dean, Ending Europe's Wars: The Continuing Search for Peace and Security (New York: Twentieth Century Fund, 1994); Jarat Chopra and Thomas G. Weiss, "Prospects for Containing Conflict in the Former Second World," Security Studies, vol. 4 (Spring 1995), pp. 552–83; Thorvald Stoltenberg, "Introducing Peacekeeping to Europe," International Peacekeeping, vol. 2, no. 2 (Summer 1995), pp. 215–23; and Shashi Tharoor, "United Nations Peacekeeping in Europe," Survival, vol. 37, no. 2 (Summer 1995), pp. 121–34. Back.

Note 4: John Gerard Ruggie, "Wandering in the Void," Foreign Affairs, vol. 72, no. 5 (November/December 1993), pp. 26–31. See also David Rieff, "The Illusions of Peacekeeping," World Policy Journal, vol. 11, no. 5 (Fall 1994), pp. 1–18. Back.

Note 5: Boutros Boutros–Ghali, Report of the Secretary–General on the Work of the Organization, August 1995, document A/50/1, para. 60. Back.

Note 6: See Adam Roberts, "The Crisis in Peacekeeping," Survival, vol. 36 (Autumn 1994), pp. 93–120. Back.

Note 7: This term was first used by Thomas G. Weiss and Kurt M. Campbell, "Military Humanitarianism," Survival, vol. 33 (September/October 1991), pp. 451–65. Back.

Note 8: See Bernard Kouchner and Mario Bettati, Le devoir d'ingErence (Paris: DenoIl, 1987); Bernard Kouchner, Le malheur des autres (Paris: Odile Jacob, 1991); Mario Bettati, Le droit d'ingErence (Paris: Odile Jacob, 1996). Back.

Note 9: Adam Roberts, "Humanitarian War: Military Intervention and Human Rights," International Affairs, vol. 69 (1993), pp. 429–49. Back.

Note 10: See U.N. High Commissioner for Refugees, The State of the World's Refugees 1995: In Search of Solutions (New York: Oxford University Press, 1995). Back.

Note 11: As quoted in Stanley Meisler, "U.N. Relief Hopes Turn to Despair," Washington Post, October 25, 1993, p. A4. Back.

Note 12: Rosalyn Higgins, "The New United Nations and Former Yugoslavia," International Affairs, vol. 69 ( July 1993), p. 469. Back.

Note 13: As quoted in Larry Minear et al., Humanitarian Action in the Former Yugoslavia: The U.N.'s Role, 1991–1993, Occasional Paper, no. 18 (Providence, RI: Watson Institute, 1994), p. 86. Back.

Note 14: "U.N. Bosnia Commander Wants More Troops, Fewer Resolutions," New York Times, December 31, 1993, p. A3. Back.

Note 15: Roger Cohen, "Despite Vow, Serbia Is Said to Supply Serbs Fighting in Bosnia," New York Times, December 12, 1994, p. A11. Back.

Note 16: Stephen Kinzer, "Cease–fire in Bosnia Starts, and Sides Meet on Details," New York Times, January 2, 1995, p. A3. Back.

Note 17: As quoted in Barbara Crossette, "At the U.N., Thoughts about Bosnia but No Action," New York Times, December 9, 1994, p. A12. Back.

Note 18: The following discussion on military lessons builds on Thomas G. Weiss, "Intervention: Whither the United Nations?" Washington Quarterly, vol. 17 (Winter 1994), pp. 109–28. Back.

Note 19: See James F. Hoge, Jr., "Media Pervasiveness," Foreign Affairs, vol. 73 (July/August 1994), pp. 136–44; Jonathan Benthall, Disasters, Relief and the Media (London: Tauris, 1993); and Robert I. Rotberg and Thomas G. Weiss, eds., From Massacres to Genocide: The Media, Public Policy, and Humanitarian Crises (Washington, DC: Brookings Institution, 1996). Back.

Note 20: Nik Gowing, Real–time Television Coverage of Armed Conflicts and Diplomatic Crises: Press, Politics, Public Policy Working Paper, no. 94–1 (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University, 1994), p. 30. See also Johanna Neuman, Lights, Camera, War (New York: St. Martin's, 1996). Back.

Note 21: John Steinbruner, "Memorandum: Civil Violence as an International Security Problem," reproduced in Francis M. Deng, Protecting the Dispossessed: A Challenge for the International Community (Washington, DC: Brookings Institution, 1993), annex C, p. 155. Back.

Note 22: "In Bosnia's Fog," The Economist, April 23, 1994, p. 16; and Lawrence Freedman, "Why the West Failed," Foreign Policy, no. 97 (Winter 1994–95), p. 59. Back.

Note 23: Michael Mandelbaum, "The Reluctance to Intervene," Foreign Policy, no. 95 (Summer 1994), p. 11. Back.

Note 24: Boutros–Ghali, Report of the Secretary–General, para. 22. Back.

Note 25: For a succinct depiction of the military problems of UNPROFOR, see =ge Eknes, "The U.N.'s Predicament in the Former Yugoslavia," in Thomas G. Weiss, ed., The United Nations and Civil Wars (Boulder, CO: Lynne Rienner, 1995), pp. 109–26. See also Dick A. Leurdijk, The United Nations and NATO in Former Yugoslavia (The Hague: Netherlands Atlantic Commission, 1994). Back.

Note 26: Boutros Boutros–Ghali, An Agenda for Peace (New York: United Nations, 1992). The best examples of the growing analytical literature are William J. Durch, ed., The Evolution of Peacekeeping: Case Studies and Comparative Analysis (New York: St. Martin's, 1993); Paul Diehl, International Peacekeeping (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins, 1993); Mats R. Berdal, Whither U.N. Peacekeeping? Adelphi Paper, no. 281 (London: International Institute for Strategic Studies, 1993); John Mackinlay, "Improving Multifunctional Forces," Survival, vol. 36 (Autumn 1994), pp. 149–73; A. B. Fetherstone, Towards a Theory of United Nations Peacekeeping (New York: St. Martin's, 1994); and Steven R. Ratner, The New U.N. Peacekeeping (New York: St. Martin's, 1995). Back.

Note 27: For a review of these concerns, see Frank M. Snyder, Command and Control: The Literature and Commentaries (Washington, DC: National Defense University, 1993); U.N. Peacekeeping: Lessons Learned in Recent Missions (Washington, DC: General Accounting Office, 1993); and Humanitarian Intervention: Effectiveness of U.N. Operations in Bosnia (Washington, DC: General Accounting Office, 1994). Back.

Note 28: See Thomas G. Weiss, "The United Nations and Civil Wars," Washington Quarterly, vol. 17 (Autumn 1994), pp. 139–59. Back.

Note 29: Thomas L. Friedman, "Round and Round," New York Times, April 2, 1995 p. A15. Back.

Note 30: U.S. Commission on Improving the Effectiveness of the United Nations, Defining Purpose: The U.N. and the Health of Nations (Washington, DC:Government Printing Office 1993). Back.

Note 31: See S. Neil MacFarlane and Thomas G. Weiss, "Regional Organizations and Regional Security," Security Studies, vol. 2, no. 1 (Fall/Winter 1992–93), pp. 6–37; and —–, "The United Nations, Regional Organizations, and Human Security," Third World Quarterly, vol. 15 (April 1994), pp. 277–95. Back.

Note 32: See "Moscow Counts on Itself to Stem Conflicts in CIS," Peacekeeping Monitor, vol. 1, no. 1 (May–June 1994), pp. 4–5, 12–13; and Andrei Raevsky and I. N. Vorobev, Russian Approaches to Peacekeeping Operations, Research Paper no. 28 (Geneva: U.N. Institute for Disarmament Research, 1994). Back.

Note 33: Charles William Maynes, "A Workable Clinton Doctrine," Foreign Policy, no. 93 (Winter 1993–94), pp. 3–20. Back.

Note 34: Gordon Wilson, "Arm in Arm after the Cold War? The Uneasy NATO–U.N. Relationship," International Peacekeeping, vol. 2, no. 1 (Spring 1995), p. 74. Back.

Note 35: See Dick Thornburgh, Reform and Restructuring at the United Nations: A Progress Report (Hanover, NH: Rockefeller Center, 1993). See also other cautionary notes by Charles William Maynes, "Containing Ethnic Conflict," Foreign Policy, no. 90 (Winter 1993), pp. 3–21; and Stephen John Stedman, "The New Interventionists," Foreign Affairs, vol. 72, no. 1 (Winter 1992/93), pp. 1–16. Back.

Note 36: Michael S. Lund, Preventive Diplomacy and American Foreign Policy (Washington, DC: U.S. Institute of Peace Press, 1994), p. 27. For a critical view about the political and operational infeasibility of prevention, see Stephen John Stedman, "Alchemy for a New World Order," Foreign Affairs, vol. 74, no. 3 (May/June 1995), pp. 14–20. Back.

Note 37: Christopher S. Wren, "Resettling Refugees: U.N. Facing New Burden," New York Times, November 24, 1995, p. A15. Back.

Note 38: As quoted in Julia Preston, "U.N. Officials Scale Back Peacekeeping Ambitions," Washington Post, October 28, 1993 p. A40. Back.

Note 39: Both documents have been reprinted in Boutros Boutros–Ghali, An Agenda for Peace 1995 (New York: United Nations Press, 1995). Back.

Note 40: See Michael E. Brown, ed., Ethnic Conflict and International Security (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1993); and Ted Robert Gurr and Barbara Horff, Ethnic Conflict in World Politics (Boulder, CO: Westview, 1994). Back.

Note 41: See Human Rights Watch, The Lost Agenda: Human Rights and U.N. Field Operations (New York: Human Rights Watch, 1993); and —–, Human Rights Watch World Report 1995 (New York: Human Rights Watch, 1994), p. xiv. See also Alice H. Henkin, ed., Honoring Human Rights and Keeping the Peace (Washington, DC: Aspen Institute, 1995); and Paul LaRose–Edwards, Human Rights Principles and Practice in United Nations Field Operations (Ottawa: Department of Foreign Affairs, September 1995). Back.

Note 42: See Roberta Cohen, "Strengthening International Protection for Internally Displaced Persons," in Louis Henkin and John Lawrence Hargrove, eds., Human Rights: An Agenda for the Next Century (Washington, DC: American Society of International Law, 1994), pp. 17–49. Back.

Note 43: David P. Forsythe, "Politics and the International Tribunal for the For–mer Yugoslavia," Criminal Law Forum, vol. 5, nos. 2–3 (1994), p. 403; and —–, "The U.N. and Human Rights at Fifty: An Incremental but Incomplete Revolution," Global Governance, vol. 1, no. 3 (September–December 1995), p. 314. Back.

Note 44: See Larry Minear and Thomas G. Weiss, "Groping and Coping in the Gulf Crisis: Discerning the Shape of a New Humanitarian Order," World Policy Journal, vol. 9 (Fall/Winter 1992–93), pp. 755–88. Back.

Note 45: Thomas G. Weiss, "Military–Civilian Humanitarianism: The 'Age of Innocence' Is Over," International Peacekeeping, vol. 2 (Summer 1995), pp. 157–74. Back.

Note 46: See Judith Randel and Tony German, eds., The Reality of Aid 94 (London: Actionaid, May 1994); and Ian Smillie and Henry Helmich, eds., Non–governmental Organisations and Governments: Stakeholders for Development (Paris: Organisation for Economic Co–operation and Development, 1993). Back.

Note 47: Bernard Trainor, "Going In," Boston Globe, September 18, 1994, p. 74. Back.

Note 48: "Emergency Relief and the Continuum to Rehabilitation and Development," Statement to the Economic and Social Council on Coordination of Humanitarian Assistance, Geneva, July 1, 1993, p. 4. Back.

Note 49: This argument was made most effectively by the late James P. Grant, The State of the World's Children, 1993 (New York: Oxford University Press, 1993). See also Boutros–Ghali, An Agenda for Development 1995. Back.

Note 50: This is a major theme developed in Larry Minear and Thomas G. Weiss, Mercy under Fire: War and the Global Humanitarian Community (Boulder, CO: Westview, 1995); and —–, Humanitarian Politics (New York: Foreign Policy Association, 1995). Back.

Note 51: See David Cortright and George A. Lopez, eds., Economic Sanctions: Panacea for Peacebuilding in a Post–Cold War World? (Boulder, CO: Westview, 1995). Back.

Note 52: "The Changing Face of Peace–Keeping and Peace–Enforcement," Speech of September 9, 1995, at the Annual Conference of the International Institute of Strategic Studies, p. 10. Back.

Note 53: The argument for this new institutional activity was first made in Thomas G. Weiss, "Overcoming the Somalia Syndrome–Operation Restore Hope?" Global Governance, vol. 1 (May/August 1995), pp. 171–87. Back.

Note 54: For a discussion of the inadequacy of the U.N. civilian delivery system in war zones by two practitioners, see Frederick C. Cuny, "Humanitarian Assistance in the Post–Cold War Era," and James Ingram, "The Future Architecture for International Humanitarian Assistance," in Thomas G. Weiss and Larry Minear, eds., Humanitarianism across Borders: Sustaining Civilians in Times of War (Boulder, CO: Lynne Rienner, 1993), pp. 151–93. Back.

Note 55: Gerald B. Helman and Steven R. Ratner, "Saving Failed States," Foreign Policy, no. 89 (Winter 1992–93), pp. 3–20. Back.

Note 56: See Paul Johnson, "Colonialism's Back–and Not a Moment Too Soon," New York Times Magazine, April 18, 1993, p. 22. Back.

Note 57: Press release SG/SM/5804, November 1, 1995, p. 3. Back.

Note 58: Richard K. Betts, "The Delusion of Impartial Intervention," Foreign Affairs, vol. 73, no. 6 (November/December 1994), p. 24. Back.

Note 59: See Strobe Talbott, "Why NATO Should Grow," New York Review of Books, vol. 42, August 10, 1995, pp. 27–30. Back.

Note 60: See David Rieff, "The Lessons of Bosnia: Morality and Power," World Policy Journal, vol. 12 (Spring 1995), pp. 76–88; and —–, Slaughterhouse: Bosnia and the Failure of the West (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1995). See also Susan L. Woodward, Balkan Tragedy: Chaos and Dissolution after the Cold War (Washington, DC: Brookings Institution, 1995). Back.

Note 61: As quoted by Tim Weiner, "Clinton's Balkan Envoy Finds Himself Shut Out," New York Times, August 12, 1995, p. A5. Back.

Note 62: David P. Forsythe, "Human Rights and US Foreign Policy: Two Levels, Two Worlds," Political Studies, vol. 43 (Special Issue 1995), pp. 129–30. Back.

Note 63: Richard N. Haass, "Military Force: A User's Guide," Foreign Policy, no. 96 (Fall 1994), p. 37. Back.

Note 64: Joris J.C. Voorhoeve, Speech at the Institute of Social Studies in The Hague, October 10, 1995. Back.

Note 65: Quoted by R.W. Apple, Jr., "Goal of Bombers: The Bargaining Table," New York Times, August 31, 1995, p. A1. Back.

---

The World and Yugoslavia's Wars