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The World and Yugoslavia's Wars, Edited by Richard H. Ullman
David C. Gompert
Contrary to a widely held view, the Bush administration was well aware of the potential of a violent dissolution of Yugoslavia. It simply knew of no way to prevent this from occurring. National Security Adviser Brent Scowcroft and Deputy Secretary of State Lawrence Eagleburger, among others, had served in Yugoslavia and understood its volcanic nature. The top floors of the State Department and the West Wing of the White House saw clearly a year before the fighting began that Yugoslavia was being led toward the abyss by a few demagogic politicians. There was no American "intelligence failure," no inattention due to preoccupation with the collapse of communism or Iraq's invasion of Kuwait. Rather, despite considerable deliberation and diplomatic activity, no good option emerged to arrest the accelerating, awful logic of breakup and war.
From Warning to War
From the mid–1980s onward, Serbs were usurping power in Belgrade, upsetting the delicate balances of Tito's Yugoslav federation; Slovenes were determined to be independent from the usurpers; Croats were bound to follow the Slovenes; Serbs, in turn, would kill and die before accepting the fate of becoming a minority in an independent Croatia; and the Bosnian powder keg was set to explode if the fuse was lit in Croatia. The basic choices were clear to the Bush administration early on: either Serbian leaders would have to be induced to embrace constitutional democracy and eschew domination of Yugoslavia, or else the Slovenes would have to be persuaded to abandon their hopes and stay in an undemocratic Yugoslavia dominated by the Serbs.
Tall orders, both. Only a credible threat of force by the West would have been likely to halt Serbian power–grabbing, while nothing short of outright Western opposition would have tempered the Slovenes' wish to get free of the Serbs. Neither policy was politically feasible for the Bush administration, at home or with its European allies. More fundamental still, those American officials who knew the Balkans best believed that no external power, not even the sole superpower, could prevent Yugoslavs from killing each other and destroying their country, much less impose a fair and lasting peaceful solution.
If Washington was pessimistic by late 1990, it was not paralyzed. The United States declared its sympathy for the teetering Yugoslav federal government of Ante Markovic, who was committed to democracy, a civil society, and a market economy. But the prime minister wanted debt relief and a public signal of unreserved American political backing—commitments that seemed unwarranted in view of his government's apparent terminal condition.
The belief that the Markovic government was beyond help only partly explains why the Bush administration could not justify putting the dying Yugoslav federal authority on life–support systems. The capacity to take on such a daunting challenge was lacking. At the time, the United States was confronted with no less than a world political revolution (of which the disintegration of Yugoslavia was a manifestation) whose future course and consequences were far from clear. Communism and Soviet control were being vanquished from eastern Europe. The Soviet Union itself was hurtling toward turmoil and transfiguration. A new European power, unified Germany, was being created. West Europeans were crafting plans to transform their community into an economic and political colossus. In the volatile Middle East, a former Soviet client invaded Kuwait and threatened Saudi Arabia.
Neither Carrots nor Sticks
This swirling revolution, while full of opportunity, also placed heavy burdens on the United States in terms of defense commitments, foreign aid and debt relief, crises to be managed, and actual and possible force deployments. The difficulty in building and holding congressional and public support to meet these growing demands merely underlined the administration's perception that it was strapped. The entire annual U.S. assistance program for Europe's new democracies was but a few hundred million dollars—a minute fraction (in real terms) of what the United States had injected into Europe after World War II. An American economic commitment to Yugoslavia would have had to come out of this paltry east European account. Because Washington did not view even a violent breakup of Yugoslavia as likely to lead to a Europe–wide war or to threaten the democratic revolutions elsewhere in eastern Europe, a major program to shore up Belgrade's last federal government was no more seriously contemplated than was preemptive military action. 1
Washington did step up its diplomacy in Yugoslavia. The Bush administration knew that the person chiefly responsible for turning up tensions, Serbian strongman Slobodan Milosevic, was also the only figure with the power to avert a violent outcome. It repeatedly directed U.S. Ambassador Warren Zimmermann to demand that Milosevic cease his oppression of the Albanian majority in Kosovo province as well as his illegal seizure of Yugoslav federal assets and authority. While the latter more directly fueled Slovenian secessionism, Washington stressed the former in response to flagrant Serbian abuse of human rights in Kosovo and heavy pressure from several members of Congress with vocal Albanian–American constituents. Milosevic was right if he perceived that the United States was more offended by his policies toward Kosovo than toward Slovenia. In any case, since the Bush administration was not prepared to take military action, it chose not to issue any explicit warnings, even though nothing less would have changed Serbian policy. 2 Milosevic could see by 1990 that he was safe to ignore American pressure, since no concrete threats, much less actions, accompanied Washington's stern demarches.
At the same time, the United States urged the Slovenes and Croats to consider new arrangements short of dissolution. While the identity of the archvillain—Milosevic—was never in doubt, the Bush administration had scant sympathy for Slovene and Croat separatists. The former seemed willing to trigger a Yugoslav war so long as they could escape both Yugoslavia and the war. The Croatian regime of Franjo Tudjman, which was hardly democratic, adopted policies regarding minorities that stoked the fears of Serbs living in Croatia of a revival of the infamous Ustashe fascist organization that had butchered their fathers and uncles during World War II. So American policymakers saw cynicism behind the declared "right" of Slovene and Croat nationalists to be free, democratic, and part of the (Roman Catholic) West, even though they knew that Milosevic was the main force propelling Yugoslavia toward a violent end.
The Bush administration's lack of enthusiasm for Slovene and Croat separatism has been wrongly ascribed to an attachment to an artificial single state, forsaking freedom in the interest of stability. 3 In fact, U.S. policy prior to the outbreak of hostilities was not motivated by a preference for a unified Yugoslavia but by a judgment, which proved all too correct, that a peaceful dissolution was infeasible. American interest in the integrity of Yugoslavia per se ended with the collapse of the Soviet threat to Europe. Indeed, the strategic importance of Yugoslavia was waning at the very moment the federation was coming unglued. If the end of Tito's communism made Yugoslavia's breakup certain, the end of Soviet communism made such a development seem less threatening to international peace and U.S. vital interests. Had peaceful dissolution been deemed a realistic possibility, the Bush administration would have favored it or at least accepted it, as it did the orderly breakup of Czechoslovakia on January 1, 1993.
By the end of 1990, the overriding concern among American officials was averting a Balkan war. They feared the worst: the disintegration of Yugoslavia was bound to be violent because Serbs would sooner fight than be abducted by an independent Croatia; the fighting would then engulf much of Yugoslavia, because the urge of each republic to secede would grow as others seceded; and the human toll would be terrible, because Yugoslavia was bristling with weapons and seething with old hatreds and fears. (The grisly particulars—detention camps, ethnic cleansing, mass rapes, shelling of civilian populations—were not predicted, though perhaps they could have been.) The ingredients needed for a peaceful dissolution were not at hand. Those who criticize the Bush administration for contributing to the outbreak of hostilities by favoring a unified state have yet to explain how favoring disunity would have prevented the conflict.
Washington's Principles
While increasingly gloomy, Washington advanced a set of principles that, if embraced by all parties, might have yielded a peaceful resolution: Yugoslavia should become democratic throughout; Yugoslavs should decide its future democratically; borders, external and internal alike, should be altered only by mutual consent, not unilaterally or by force; Yugoslavia should not be held together by force; members of minority groups throughout Yugoslavia should have the same rights as all other individuals. 4 That every one of these principles was thoroughly trashed within a year underscores the scale of the U.S. failure, but it does not invalidate the norms on which they were based. It is worth noting that essentially these same principles were observed in the breakup of Czechoslovakia, where not a shot was fired.
Of course, Czechs and Slovaks split by mutual consent, whereas Slovenes and Croats did not seek, and certainly could not have gotten, Serbian consent for their independence. Nonetheless, until 1991 the United States clung to the position that it could accept any outcome arrived at consensually by the republics of Yugoslavia. Then, knowing that disintegration meant a savage war, the Bush administration came to favor transforming Yugoslavia into a confederation of quasi–sovereign states, the details of which were to be left to the Yugoslavs. A specific proposal for such an arrangement was made in early 1991 by the leaders of Macedonia and Bosnia–Herzegovina, who saw great peril for their people in complete dissolution. Washington hoped that such a loose structure might satisfy the aspirations of most Slovenes (and thus Croats) and that the Serbs would see that it was the only way to hold Yugoslavia together. Many moderate Slovenes and Croats also favored such an outcome and welcomed the American stance, knowing as they did that secession would lead to bloodshed.
The administration's strategy, which culminated in Secretary of State James Baker's June 1991 visit to Yugoslavia, sought to persuade the Slovenes to postpone unilateral separation, while warning Milosevic and the leadership of the Serb–dominated Yugoslav People's Army (YPA) not to use force to hold Yugoslavia together. 5 But not even Baker the poker player could disguise the fact that the warning to the Serbs was not backed by the threat of force. Nor could the persuasive Baker give pause to the Slovenian separatists.
The Slovenes proved to be indifferent to the fatal consequences for others of their unilateral secession. Unfortunately, signals from western underscores the scale of the U.S. faEurope did not consistently reinforce Washington's plea for restraint and negotiations. "Unofficial" Austrian and German encouragement spoke louder than American caution to Slovene nationalists, who hoped to see their Alpine nation soon tucked safely into a close economic and political relationship with Germany, en route to membership in the European Community (EC). So the Slovenes seceded—and pulled the Croats with them . Even hesitant Croats understood the dangers of remaining in a Yugoslavia ruled by Serbs once Slovenia bolted. When Slovenia seized control of its borders, the YPA declared itself obligated to act in defense of federal assets and of the union itself. The war began modestly—if any war can be modest—in Slovenia, whose separation Belgrade did not seriously contest because no Serbs lived there. Hostilities then spread quickly to and throughout those regions of Croatia inhabited by Serbs. Within weeks of Slovenia's decision to secede, Serbs and Croats were fighting as viciously as they had a half century earlier.
The Baker mission failed, but—contrary to the opinion of many analysts—the secretary had not given the Serbs a "green light" to use force to preserve Yugoslav unity. 6 Indeed, he had told Milosevic that the American people, if forced to choose, would come down on the side of freedom over unity. But since the United States was prepared neither to intervene militarily to protect the seceding republics nor to make empty threats, it is unclear just what U.S. policy at that point could have prevented or stopped the war. Indeed, had the United States championed Slovenian and Croatian secession instead of urging restraint, the results would hardly have been better.
Deferring to the Allies
Until blood began to flow, Europeans seemed to discount the mounting dangers, deluding themselves that Europe's peoples had progressed beyond outright war, even in the Balkans. The outbreak of fighting in Slovenia and Croatia in mid–1991 was therefore as shocking to west Europeans as it was predictable to American policymakers. (Later, disillusioned, some west Europeans rationalized that the Balkans were not part of the new Europe.) Caught unprepared for the war, Europe's leading governments proved purposeless, divided, and vulnerable to shifts in public emotion—just when the United States turned to them to take charge of managing the crisis.
America's decision to rely on its European partners to take the lead in Yugoslavia proved to be a grave mistake that compounded the West's failure. Before the fighting began, Washington had urged the EC to accept leadership responsibility out of the reasonable belief that the allies had more economic and political leverage in Yugoslavia than the United States did. American attempts in late fall 1990 to get the Europeans to face the peril were brushed aside: an American proposal to consult within the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) was declined, with the French accusing the United States of "overdramatizing" the problem. Not until spring 1991 was the EC seized with the risks of Serbian policies and Slovenian secession. The $4 billion aid carrot the EC then produced might have avoided war, had it not been dangled in front of the Yugoslavs at least a year too late.
At the highest levels and at every turn, the United States encouraged the allies to engage and offered its support. The Europeans favored EC leadership because Yugoslavia was viewed as an opportune foreign policy challenge at the very moment Helmut Kohl, François Mitterrand, and others wished to display the EC's ability to act effectively and cohesively. 7 Luxembourg's foreign minister, speaking for the EC's troika of emissaries, proclaimed it "the hour of Europe," a quote whose painful echo is a reminder of how badly the Europeans misjudged the dogs of this Balkan war.
Washington accommodated not only the Europeans' wish to lead but also their insistence that transatlantic cooperation take place within EC–U.S. channels, rather than in NATO's North Atlantic Council. While this meant awkward arm's–length coordination, in contrast to the possibility of fashioning a common European–American approach in NATO, the Bush administration chose not to object. Key European allies, already disappointed with Washington's cool reception to the idea of an EC–based common defense policy, would have considered unfriendly any attempt by the United States to frustrate their wish to treat Yugoslavia as a matter of EC common foreign policy. Difficult as it was for the United States to deal with the EC's ponderous, inflexible, and opaque policymaking, Washington went along. With the consent of the Bush administration, NATO was kept out of the crisis until 1993, when it became clear that the Bosnian conflict exceeded the capacities of all other international institutions.
Broadly speaking, the U.S. government's handling of the Yugoslav crisis from 1990 through 1992 contradicted and undermined its declaratory policy regarding the centrality and purpose of NATO in post–Cold War Europe. During that period, the Bush administration insisted that America's role in European security would be maintained despite the disappearance of the Soviet threat and that NATO was the keystone of European security and the proper venue for crisis management. The administration informed Congress that a residual American presence in Europe on the order of 150,000 troops was needed to preserve European stability and peace. The Rome summit at the end of 1991 endorsed NATO's new role as guardian of European stability and revised alliance military strategy to emphasize force projection over territorial defense. This new stance implied NATO responsibility to respond to precisely the sort of conflict by then raging in the Balkans. 8
Despite this, the Bush administration did not press for the use of NATO to set and manage Western strategy, much less to intervene militarily in Yugoslavia, not simply because of the EC's desire to lead but also out of a concern that NATO involvement would shift responsibility to the United States and imply that the West was prepared to take military action to stop the bloodshed. The administration wanted the EC to succeed, but the clearer it became that it could not, the less eager Washington was to see the alliance, and thus itself, saddled with a "no–win" problem. (Speculation that Washington really wanted the EC to fail and thus display its impotence is without foundation.) Predictably, the attempt to hold the Yugoslavia crisis at arm's length did not spare the United States the effects of, or responsibility for, the failure that followed.
Military Options
The shelling of Dubrovnik and the destruction of Vukovar by the Serbs toward the end of 1991 prompted some U.S. officials to raise the issue of whether military intervention was warranted. The most readily available option was a show of force by the Sixth Fleet to save Dubrovnik. While it may have been possible to chase Serb gunners away from this romantic walled city on the Adriatic (to the joy of west European café intellectuals), it is less clear that such a limited action would have deterred Serbs from their more determined military operations elsewhere in Croatia. A more robust Western military option, by far, would have involved the accelerated assembling and deployment of the newly approved NATO "rapid reaction corps" to stop the fighting in Croatia. However, the Defense Department, its standing within the government enhanced by the victory in Kuwait, opposed any use of force by the United States. And the president was not about to overrule the Pentagon and launch the nation into another, possibly major war after just finishing one.
Having excluded the option most likely to stop the conflict—decisive military intervention—the U.S. government took the position, by default, that it was better to let the EC continue to take the lead than to adopt ineffective half measures or to seize the helm with no compass. As well, paralyzing interagency differences began to surface during the fighting in Croatia, differences that would dog U.S. policymaking and discourage initiative throughout Yugoslavia's wars. From late 1991 on, consensus proved elusive not only inside Washington but between the United States and its European allies and among the Europeans.
As hostilities worsened in Croatia, the United States resisted growing German and domestic pressures promptly to recognize the two breakaway republics. This hesitation stemmed from the conviction that premature recognition would scuttle the effort of U.N. Special Envoy Cyrus Vance to achieve a cease–fire and get a peacekeeping force deployed in Croatia—a conviction shared by Vance himself. George Bush declined to recognize Croatia despite intense pressure from the influential Croatian–American community, which as a result deserted him in the election of 1992. Washington was also reluctant to recognize Croatia and Slovenia before recognizing Bosnia–Herzegovina, lest it be implied that the latter was condemned by the West to live under the heel of Serbian nationalism in a rump Yugoslavia.
Both the U.S. government and the EC's Arbitration Commission, formed to search for a solution, held that recognition of Bosnia should await the outcome of a referendum there. Even though it was known that Bosnia's Serbs would resist separation from Serbia proper, the United States could not oppose a straight popular vote, which effectively denied the Serbs a veto. When two thirds of the Bosnians voted for independence (the Bosnian Serbs boycotted the referendum), the United States persuaded the EC to recognize Bosnia in return for U.S. recognition of Slovenia and Croatia. Washington was eager for the Europeans to join in recognizing Bosnia, both to bolster its prospects for survival and to avoid leaving the United States with sole responsibility for a new state that might soon descend into civil war.
Western recognition of Bosnia did not precipitate the use of force there by the Bosnian Serbs any more than it deterred it. Very simply, Bosnian Muslims would not have stayed in a rump Yugoslavia dominated by Serbia, and Bosnian Serbs would not have stayed in a separate Bosnia dominated by Muslims. Thus, the logic of the war was complete without Western recognition. In any case, the United States had no legal basis for recognizing Croatia but not Bosnia–Herzegovina.
The West was divided and immobilized between the time of the EC's recognition of Slovenia and Croatia in December 1991 and the European–American agreement in March 1992 that Slovenia, Croatia, and Bosnia–Herzegovina should all be recognized. This transatlantic quarrel over recognition, which came during a critical pause between the Croatian and Bosnian wars, was the product of German irresponsibility. Bowing to right–wing Bavarian and Croat expatriate pressure, German leaders muscled their EC colleagues into recognizing Slovenia and Croatia against the better judgment of the United States, the United Nations, and for that matter most EC foreign ministries. In doing so, Bonn precipitated Bosnian secession, which triggered a war from which Germany, due to its history and its consequent constitutional restraints, could remain aloof while its partners faced risk and sacrifice.
Germans have consistently favored standing up to the Serbs, even though the responsibility for doing so would fall to others. Like the Slovenes with whom they sympathized, the Germans have been able—without admitted remorse—to escape the harmful consequences of policies in Yugoslavia that have served their special purposes. Germany, the champion of self–determination for Slovenia and Croatia, abetted a unilateral alteration of international borders along ethnic lines and made no effort to use its ample influence in the seceding republics to find an alternative to a step that was bound to lead to war. A proponent of strong European leadership in responding to the crisis, Germany had no intention itself of meeting the demands of such leadership. The most important and powerful country in Europe did little to prevent and has risked little to end Yugoslavia's wars.
Watching Bosnia Die
Consumed by their dispute over recognition, the Western powers failed utterly to prepare for a conflict in Bosnia they had every reason to anticipate. They failed even to demand the prompt departure of the YPA from the newly recognized country. Worse, the opportunity was lost to dispatch a peacekeeping force to Bosnia to discourage the outbreak of violence. Because the United Nations Protection Force (UNPROFOR) in Croatia was already shaping up as a major burden, there was no enthusiasm in the West or in the United Nations for a significant new commitment. The EC was inert and would remain so. Even on the eve of disaster, European governments did not seem to grasp the huge danger in Bosnia. At the same time, the Bush administration, which did understand the danger, was hardening its resolve to keep American troops out of Yugoslavia altogether. So the West simply watched as Bosnia slid into unspeakable violence.
The Bosnian Serbs and their YPA allies were ready to fight and quick to take the offensive. They embarked on a strategy of conquest and ethnic cleansing from which they did not stray. Their aim was as simple as it was monstrous: they wanted all Serbs, but only Serbs, on the land on which they meant to build Greater Serbia. This goal dictated that the Bosnian Serb army gain control and then "purify" 70 percent of the territory of Bosnia (although Serbs accounted for just 30 percent of the Bosnian population). By its essence, this strategy was bound—indeed, it was intended—to create massive human suffering. The atrocities perpetrated against civilians, the attacks on population centers, and the uprooting of two million Bosnians were all "necessary" to the successful execution of their strategy. Moreover, the abundant weapons stockpiles, indigenous military production facilities, and no–holds–barred tactics that were the legacy of Yugoslavia's experience in World War II and its preparations for resisting a Warsaw Pact invasion ensured that the Bosnian war would be highly destructive. These same factors also would make Western intervention difficult—too difficult, in the eyes of Western governments. Thus, in Europe (of all places!), weak and innocent people would be driven off, or killed off, to make room for a stronger group with a different god.
George Bush's decision not to allow American ground forces to play any role under any circumstances in Bosnia effectively precluded decisive Western military intervention. The president and his advisers knew that Western military intervention in Bosnia really meant American military intervention with token allied participation, owing to the allies' lack of serious intervention capabilities. After all, the Europeans had mustered a mere five percent of the coalition force that had just defeated Iraq. While such asymmetry could be excused—barely—in liberating Kuwait and protecting Persian Gulf oil, it could not be excused in a war in the middle of Europe.
The administration also feared that any involvement of U.S. ground forces, even to escort humanitarian relief convoys, would lead to a creeping, eventually massive U.S. engagement, since only the United States was both able to escalate and vulnerable to pressure to do so to ensure success. Intervention in Bosnia was viewed as more akin to the Vietnam experience (high casualties, lengthy stay, poor prospects) than to Desert Storm (few casualties, short stay, good prospects). Notwithstanding the public outcry over televised Bosnian horrors, the Bush administration was convinced that the American public, seeing no vital interests at stake, would not support the level of commitment and casualties that might be required for an intervention to succeed. The events of 1993 in Somalia suggest that this was an accurate political reading.
The selective use of force—for example, against the Serbian artillery being used against population centers, as requested in mid–1992 by Bosnian President Alija Izetbegovic—was rejected by the United States as likely to be ineffective militarily and the first step on the proverbial slippery slope to large–scale intervention. The Bush administration, no rookie when it came to using force, was not prepared to threaten force unless it was willing and able to execute not only the specific threat but whatever further steps might be needed to prevail. Panama and Kuwait were held up as evidence of the merits of acting only with "decisive force"; even administration hawks understood that Bosnia could prove to be a much harder proposition, both militarily and politically.
Nor was the administration inclined to gamble that the Serbs would lose their nerve when confronted with American might, as critics of the administration claimed they would. The likely Serb reactions to limited U.S. military action were pure guesswork, and the Bush national security team believed the consequences of guessing wrong were prohibitive. Unlike its successor, the Bush administration considered it essential that the United States never be forced to back down or be caught in a bluff. Thus, once committed, even in the absence of a vital interest and firm public support, the United States would have to use all necessary force to avoid failure.
Op–ed page advocacy of the selective use of force was treated by those with policy responsibility as uninformed and emotional. After all, columnists and analysts would not have to answer for the consequences of the acts of war they so cleverly devised and boldly urged. It is worth noting that not only the U.S. government but all the governments actually faced with the decision of whether to order the use of force in Bosnia—let alone the military commanders who would have to execute such orders—have been far less daring than those who have opined from the sidelines.
However sound the Bush administration's decision was not to become involved militarily in Bosnia, it belied the president's own assertion at the mid–1992 summit meeting of the Conference on Security and Cooperation in Europe (CSCE) that humanitarian relief would be delivered to Bosnian noncombatants, "no matter what it takes." These words, as well as subsequent American–inspired U.N. Security Council resolutions authorizing "all necessary force" to get relief supplies to those in need, were robbed of their credibility when Serbian interference with convoys went unchallenged. The Serbs quickly discovered that they could safely block U.N. relief deliveries. They learned as well that even explicit warnings from the United Nations could be ignored.
The London Conference of August 1992, attended by all key Yugoslav parties and external powers, was a lost opportunity, a turning point, and a sorry chapter in the West's mishandling of the conflict. At the conference, an accommodating Californian, Milan Panic, serving a brief stint as premier of the new "Yugoslavia," agreed to a package of concrete steps including a cease–fire, a military flight ban, support for relief operations, and restrictions on heavy weapons. If honored, these agreements would have curtailed the fighting, ended atrocities, reduced human suffering, and set the stage for political negotiations. In the days and weeks that followed, however, the Serbs willfully ignored every accord reached and commitment made. This drew no response from the West or the U.N. Security Council. The United States was disinclined to use force, even air power, to enforce the various London agreements, in part because of the perceived risk of being drawn into the conflict and in part because of the particular difficulty of policing restrictions on artillery from the air. The British reinforced American hesitation by insisting that they would participate in UNPROFOR convoy protection only if the United States did not introduce air power, lest it provoke the Serbs.
The Serbs Get the Message
Western inaction after London told the Serbs in unmistakable terms that there would be no intervention. The Serbs were emboldened further as it became clear that the British and French regarded their UNPROFOR contingents as virtual hostages and therefore sought to avoid provocation. Concerned about the dangerous precedent of bowing to threats against the U.N. blue helmets, the United States offered in late 1992 to use air power punitively against the Serbs if they harmed U.N. personnel. Britain declined the offer. London's repeated public display of concern for the safety of its UNPROFOR contingent invited the Serbs to threaten openly the U.N. forces as a means of derailing any Western attempts to interfere with their ethnic cleansing of the Bosnian Muslims. Had the West shown early on that harming UNPROFOR personnel was intolerable and would be punished, subsequent taking of blue–helmeted hostages by the Serbs might well have been deterred. Instead, it was invited.
The Europeans were also adamant about the need to maintain the arms embargo on the Bosnian Muslims. Until its final days, the Bush administration shared this reluctance to arm the Bosnian Muslims, despite the Serbs' failure to abide by the London accords. Its analysis showed that lifting the embargo would result in increased Muslim casualties, increased suffering of innocents, impaired humanitarian relief, and resulted in no change in the military fortunes of the parties. The fear of fueling the conflict to no good end outweighed the view that only the government in Sarajevo had the right to decide whether to accept the risks inherent in defending the Bosnian state and its people. When the Bush administration, responding to strong pressure from its Arab friends, reversed its position on the arms embargo before leaving office, London and Paris blocked any change in the policy. The presence of Europeans (and the absence of Americans) in UNPROFOR gave the allies a veto over U.S. action in this instance, just as it has given the Serbs a veto over Western action.
Even with most of the country under their control by late 1992, the Serbs pressed their attacks on Sarajevo and Muslim population centers in eastern, northern, and northwestern Bosnia in order to ensure land access to all Serbs in the former Yugoslavia and to complete the cleansing of what would be Greater Serbia. Not long after the London Conference, the Serbs could plainly see that the West was not going to intervene, not going to allow the Bosnian government to arm its forces, and not going to use all necessary force to deliver relief supplies.
In Washington, the Bush national security team that performed so well in other crises was divided and stumped. A proposal surfaced to make what was left of Bosnia a U.N. protectorate, where displaced Muslims could settle in safety behind a large peacekeeping force backed by U.S. air power. However, this idea was defeated by a combination of the Pentagon's aversion to military involvement and the State Department's distaste for what might appear to be an abandonment of the right of uprooted Muslims to return to their original homes in Serb–controlled areas.
The United States also considered pressing for an immediate "humanitarian truce" to get both displaced and entrapped Bosnian Muslims through the winter of 1992–93. This idea also was dropped out of concern that it might freeze the status quo and thus appear to accept the results of aggression and ethnic cleansing. The EC mediator, Lord Owen, reached the same conclusion on the grounds that the effort he had undertaken with Cyrus Vance to negotiate a comprehensive political solution would be undermined by a Western call for a simple truce. Owen was especially concerned that if the Serbs could obtain an unconditional cease–fire while holding 70 percent of Bosnia, they would have no incentive to accept a final settlement requiring territorial concessions on their part.
Thus, the United States, its allies, and U.N. authorities were willing neither to press for a truce nor to let the Bosnian government obtain the arms it needed for a fair fight. They wanted no part in condoning aggression, but they permitted it by embargoing arms for the Muslims. Of course, this gave the Serbs the strongest of all possible negotiating hands: they could hold out for a settlement codifying their conquests, knowing that if the conflict continued their military advantage would be preserved by the arms embargo and by the absence of Western intervention.
U.S. policy on Bosnia by late 1992 was driven not by a resolve to defeat aggression but by a desire to bring humanitarian relief to aggression's victims. The U.S. intelligence community and U.N. relief authorities estimated that over 100,000 Bosnians would perish in the winter of 1992–93 unless deliveries of food, fuel, and shelter materials were expanded. While in–country convoy escort duties were left to others, the United States played a major role in the "wholesale" end of the relief effort, which included staging operations through Zagreb and even through Belgrade. The Sarajevo airlift and the airdrops to remote Muslim enclaves would not have been possible without U.S. initiative, aircraft, and expertise. While the prewinter estimates of Bosnians "at risk" proved to be high, there is little doubt that the international relief effort saved tens of thousands of innocent lives. What it did not do, of course, was stop the ethnic cleansing and the atrocities that were generating refugees faster than the international community could feed and shelter them.
As the American presidential election approached, hawkish sentiments on Capitol Hill—whipped up by hauntingly familiar footage of detention camp inmates—was sidetracked into a farcical debate over a marginally useful Bosnian "no–fly" zone. The British at first argued that the Serbs' violations of the military flight ban they agreed to at the London Conference had little practical significance and should be tolerated, lest enforcement endanger U.N. blue helmets and humanitarian relief operations. Predictably, the Serbs were quick to exploit this anxiety, threatening dire consequences for U.N. personnel and operations if the flight ban (to which they had agreed) was enforced. Eventually, the United States convinced its allies to go along with enforcement of the ban, pointing out that the very credibility and effectiveness of the U.N. Security Council would be demolished if threats against U.N. personnel deterred the Council from implementing its own decisions.
South Balkan Dangers
In the last months of the Bush administration, American domestic politics did not have a major effect on U.S. policy in Bosnia. Domestic politics did, however, have a decidedly perverse effect on American policy toward Macedonia, the ethnically mixed, quasi–democratic, unstable southern republic that had seceded from Yugoslavia only when it was clear that the Serbs would completely dominate the successor state. Having shown restraint and conducted a popular referendum on independence, Macedonia had at least as much right to international recognition as Slovenia, Croatia, and Bosnia. But neighboring Greece voiced the specious objection that Macedonia wanted to seize Greek territory and that even using the name "Macedonia" was threatening, because it applied historically to northern Greece. Although most Greek officials and politicians knew that tiny, poor, weak Macedonia posed no threat to Greece, a member of NATO and the European Community, they could not summon the political courage to resist frenzied popular sentiment against Macedonia.
Similarly, while Western governments all thought the Greek position was without merit, none could defy it. Greece threatened to veto any European Community move to recognize Macedonia. It also handcuffed the Bush administration, which was put on notice by the powerful Greek–American lobby that it would work against the president's reelection if the United States recognized Macedonia. The leverage and determination of this lobby are all the more evident in the fact that neither Bush after losing to Clinton nor Clinton after defeating Bush was prepared to recognize Macedonia, even though international law and the strong U.S. interest in containing the Balkan war argued for such a step. Fortunately, restraint on the part of both the Macedonian leadership and the country's large Albanian minority prevented a repetition there of the violence that wracked Bosnia. But Macedonia remained a crisis–in–waiting.
Greek policy in general toward the former Yugoslavia was problematic for the West, whether under the moderate Constantine Mitsotakis before 1993 or the mercurial Andreas Papandreou subsequently. Greece exhibited a tilt toward coreligionist Serbia. It consistently violated the trade embargo. And Greece generally was suspected of seeking a chance to divide and share Macedonia with the Serbs. While the strategic importance of Greece to the West has declined with the disappearance of the Soviet Mediterranean presence, its ability to exert leverage by blocking Western consensus remained unabated. No Greek politician appreciated that more than Papandreou.
The chief American strategic concern during the Bush administration and later under Clinton was to keep the Yugoslav conflict from spreading southward, where its flames could leap into the Atlantic alliance. Therefore, while the Bush administration was not convinced of the need to intervene in Bosnia, it took a markedly different attitude toward Kosovo. Washington feared that a Serbian assault against the Albanian Kosovars would consume the entire southern Balkan region in a conflagration that would pit one NATO ally against another. Hostilities in Kosovo would probably spill into Albania proper. This in turn could incite the large Albanian minority in Macedonia and lead to Serbian or Greek intervention there. Bulgaria and Turkey would then feel pressure to act in order to prevent Greek control of Macedonia. Whereas the Bosnian war could be contained, conflict in Kosovo most likely could not.
Concerned that Belgrade might think that the example of U.S. restraint in Bosnia would apply as well in Kosovo, Bush sent Milosevic a terse warning on Christmas Day 1992: Serbia itself would face attack if the Serbs used force in Kosovo. Washington was so certain that this threat was necessary that it made it despite misgivings among its U.N. Security Council partners. The warning worked: indications of a Serbian offensive against the Kosovars faded. Of course, the subliminal message, embedded in the very fact that such an explicit threat was necessary, was that Bosnia, unlike Kosovo, was fair game for the Serbs. As its last act in the Yugoslav conflict, the Bush administration found it necessary to assert through this focus on Kosovo and Macedonia that its failure to stop aggression in Bosnia should not be misinterpreted.
Clinton Temporizes
The Clinton administration's "lift and strike" initiative of February 1993 accentuated transatlantic discord, highlighted defects in the Vance–Owen plan that could not be remedied, demonstrated the inability of the United States to lead, raised the hopes of the Bosnian Muslims that the West would intervene after all, and committed the United States to join in the enforcement of a dubious peace agreement. It also signaled to the Serbs that a large NATO force would be inserted in Bosnia not if the fighting continued, but only if it stopped! Not surprisingly, the new administration hastily retreated into the same public posture that its predecessor had employed when stymied, portraying the Bosnian conflict, inaccurately, as a hopelessly complicated civil war in which all parties were at fault and in which no American interests were at stake.
While the chief beneficiaries of the failure of the new American policy were the Serbs, the collapse of "lift and strike" also gratified the west European allies, whose unspoken aim it was to deprive the Bosnian Muslims of any reasonable hope of rescue so that they would accept defeat and agree to a settlement. The efforts of U.S. officials, in turn, to pin the blame for the failure of their initiative on America's closest allies suggest that they wrongly believed that this transparent tactic might somehow reduce the damage to American prestige and interests.
In trying to fulfill his campaign promise to stand up to the Serbs, the new president strayed from two of his predecessor's basic rules: do not make the United States responsible for a problem it cannot solve and make no threat that the United States cannot execute. (It must be said that George Bush's more cautious stewardship of the nation's credibility in the Yugoslav conflict—keeping his distance as his "new world order" perished in Bosnia—was hardly a success.) Now the United States was on the hook both to join in the quest for a peace agreement that would unavoidably codify Serbian conquests and to send American ground troops to enforce it.
There U.S. policy rested, uneasily, until February 1994, when a Serbian mortar shell hit Sarajevo's marketplace on market day—an obscene act, but no worse than other atrocities committed routinely in Bosnia. Public reaction to the gruesome television footage prompted Washington to insist on a NATO ultimatum threatening air strikes if the Serbs failed to pull their heavy weapons out of range of Sarajevo. When the threat worked, American advocates of air strikes proclaimed that they had been right all along to refute the view that hitting the Serbs would simply get their backs up and endanger U.N. peacekeepers on the ground. But within a few weeks, defiant Serbs were shelling the "safe" city of Gorazde, firing on NATO aircraft, and detaining U.N. peacekeepers, thus casting doubt on the theory that if NATO even bared its teeth, the Serbs would turn tail.
It took the NATO bombing campaign of August–September 1995 to demonstrate what was required to produce more than pallid results in Bosnia. Clearly, force impressed the Serbs more than other forms of coercion, such as economic sanctions. But doses of force too small to alter military outcomes did not lead them to alter their behavior strategically. The belief of some in 1992–94 that once hurt, the Serbs would become reasonable overlooked the fact that the Serbs had been given to understand that the selective use of force was not a prelude to, but rather a substitute for, significant intervention. Indeed, the failure until 1995 of the United States and its allies to use air power in a truly punishing way, combined with the advertised fears of U.N. authorities that force would endanger relief personnel and operations, created a classic situation of "escalation dominance" favoring the (objectively weaker) Serbs.
The Promise of Bombing
The dramatic results of the NATO bombing campaign of August–September 1995 begs the question as to whether robust air strikes earlier might have altered fundamentally the course of the Bosnian conflict. Several good opportunities were missed in 1993–94
to test the physical and psychological effects of bombing. Had the United States and its allies chosen not to give the Serbs the benefit of the doubt when the latter failed to comply completely with NATO demands to pull back from the safe haven of Gorazde, they might have attacked Serbian forces on a scale large enough to change the military situation on the ground, if not the strategic calculus of the Serbs. But until August 1995 the allies did not choose this path. So eager were they to avoid escalation that they settled for partial and temporary results, thus reinforcing the Serbs' belief that they would see no worse than "patty–cake" bombing. Thus U.S. air power, as constrained by the allies and the United Nations, was having precisely the opposite of its intended effect.
Serious, unhesitating air strikes like those of August–September 1995—the earlier the better—might have deterred the Serbs from attacking other Muslim safe havens. They might even have caused Milosevic to intensify pressure on the Bosnian Serbs to negotiate more flexibly in order to reach an overall political statement. But by 1994 nothing less than strategic bombing—heavy, wide–ranging, relentless, and targeted on infrastructure, including that within Serbia proper—would have caused the Serbs to give back most of the land they had already taken from the Muslims. Only massive use of air power could have undone the results of two years of Serbian aggression and Western inaction.
Ironically, the time when limited air strikes might have caused the Serbs to stop their aggression coincided with the incumbency of an American administration that took a dim view of military action short of the use of "decisive force." In view of its well–earned credibility, the Bush administration might have caused the Serbs to rethink their entire strategy if it had confronted them early on with even limited use of U.S. military power; but the risk of having to escalate to large–scale intervention was deemed too high. In contrast, President Clinton decided to conduct selective air strikes after it was too late for such limited means to change fundamentally the results of successful Serbian aggression. But in attempting to demonstrate the will to use force, the Clinton administration demonstrated instead how sharply limited any use of force would be, which is why the Serbs merely licked their wounds and went on with their basic strategy after Gorazde and other instances of selective use of Western air power.
Thus, the cumulative effect of four years of failed policies was that the West found itself working toward the same outcome as Milosevic himself: carve up Bosnia and stop the fighting. The NATO allies, particularly the Europeans, were willing to partition Bosnia and relax economic sanctions in order to end the violence. Flawed Western policy from 1992 to mid–1995 virtually guaranteed that continued war would not rectify the situation in Bosnia nor lay the groundwork for a decent peace agreement. U.N. peacekeepers in fact became the hostages that London and Paris feared, largely because these governments openly admitted to having such fears.
What Went Wrong?
While the violent breakup of Yugoslavia may have been unavoidable, irrespective of Western policy, it took bad policy—on top of bad policy—to bring us to such a tragic juncture.
Stronger and more consistent American leadership might have made a difference. When the United States did exhibit leadership, the results were usually positive, if limited or transitory. For example, economic sanctions were imposed on Serbia in 1992 and subsequently strengthened as a result of U.S. initiative and insistence. The inspiration for and implementation of the humanitarian relief effort came largely from the United States, as did enforcement of the flight ban, protection of safe havens, and stationing of monitors to contain the conflict. The occasional presence of U.S. leadership has been enough to demonstrate what might have been possible if it had been steady and strong.
Why was such leadership not forthcoming from the seasoned, interventionist, Atlanticist, Bush administration—from the same people who built the coalition and sent the force that crushed Iraq? This was not a case of a breakdown in the ability of the U.S. government to read and act on the warning signs, for no such breakdown occurred. Rather, George Bush and his lieutenants studied the facts and concluded that such leadership in this particular crisis would have major drawbacks for the United States. So soon after the Gulf War, it would mean that the United States was assuming the role of international policeman, that it would take responsibility even in an area of more immediate importance to America's rich European partners. With its military preponderance, this would have established that the United States was prepared to confront aggression even where it had no vital interests. That the United States under Bush did not seize the lead, rally the West, and take strong action to stop the Serbs in Croatia in 1991 or Bosnia in 1992 is proof (for those who need it) that the liberation of Kuwait was not about international law and order but about oil.
Of course, unlike the Iraqi invasion of Kuwait, the breakup of Yugoslavia was a problem with no good, feasible solutions. Only massive Western intervention would have been sure to stop and reverse Serbian aggression. The larger the military task, the greater the American role, the greater the American burden and casualties, and the greater the need for resolute public support. Desert Storm had taught the American people, wrongly, that vital interests could be defended with a handful of casualties in a video–game war. Whatever popular backing for the use of force in Yugoslavia there might have been at the outset would have quickly evaporated, even though a commitment lasting years could be needed. Lacking solutions, the Bush administration had no incentive to wrest leadership from the willing if not eager Europeans.
The contrast between the American reaction to Iraq's invasion of Kuwait and its reaction a short time later to Serbian aggression in Bosnia illuminates an acute dilemma of post–Cold War American foreign policy. The end of the bipolar world has placed new and heavy burdens on the United States. Its military capabilities are unrivaled, and its ideals have triumphed. This combination of physical and moral weight together imply responsibilities and prerogatives resembling a Pax Americana. While no serious American leader—least of all the prudent Bush—advocated such a role, neither was it explicitly rejected. Indeed, international expectations of the United States were at a peak just as war erupted in Yugoslavia. The new order, it seemed, required a guardian—an obvious role for the only world power, whose own values (not coincidentally) matched those of the order to be guarded.
At the same time, the end of bipolarity and the collapse of communism unlocked instabilities globally. Old sores were reopened and old scores began to be settled, typically along tribal lines, making violence especially hard to prevent and harder still to stop once started. A dozen such disputes, mainly around the periphery of the former communist bloc, revealed a powerful source of insecurity and conflict in the post–Soviet world. Neither America's military might nor its moral weight provides the means to prevent, stop, or resolve such problems. The same political revolution that left the United States supreme also presented America with international problems too daunting and numerous to solve. Faced with seemingly open–ended responsibilities to keep order and right wrongs globally, the American people and their government are drawn to a much easier—intellectually and physically—line of defense: the United States should use force only when its vital interests are at stake.
Clearly, and correctly, American leaders did not see "vital" national interests imperiled by the Yugoslav conflicts. And while the Bush administration did admit to a moral responsibility to aid the innocent victims of this war, this rationale did not stir the American public to a willingness to risk American casualties. What U.S. leaders did not see—or if they did, they failed to translate their view into public support and purposeful policies—was that the Yugoslav crisis, especially the conflict in Bosnia, was setting the worst possible precedents for the new era. They did not appreciate the importance of defeating this case of malignant nationalism before it metastasized elsewhere in the former communist world.
To be clear, neither the Bush nor Clinton administration could or should have intervened militarily in defiance of a national consensus opposing such a course. The unwavering, bipartisan refusal of elected American leaders to send U.S. troops to fight in Bosnia suggests that responsibility for Yugoslav policy failure is not only presidential but national. But to recognize this is not to accept the excuse made by those same leaders that the attitudes of the American people made good policy impossible. The American people surely would have supported reasonable and helpful steps—inclusion of an American contingent in UNPROFOR, for instance—if they had been given a clear and consistent explanation of the Bosnian war and its effects on American interests.
Instead, the U.S. government under two administrations tuned its public explanations depending on its immediate predicament. When wanting to marshal public support for tough action, Washington spoke of the need to combat naked Serbian aggression, to stop atrocities, to exercise American leadership. When wanting to justify inaction—worse, to cover tracks when backing away from tough threats—U.S. spokesmen described Bosnia as a civil war with fault on all sides, a problem too complicated to understand let alone solve from the outside, and in any case a problem for Europe to solve. As a consequence, the American public was never sure which of these contradictory explanations to credit and was therefore left too ambivalent to support strong and steady policy. Confused, the American public accepted the inaccurate image of a civil war instead of the reality that a largely innocent people were overrun by the murderous soldiers of a fascist regime. The truth about Bosnia requires an admission of failure, which is painful for American leaders to offer and for the American people to accept.
Entangled with American failure is west European failure. Had the Europeans confronted the problem when Washington alerted them to the dangers of the Yugoslav crisis, had they acted more cohesively and been more willing to sacrifice, the United States could have joined them in a strategy of applying concerted Western pressure on the Slovenes, Croats, and Serbs to find a new formula for Yugoslavia peacefully. Under both the Bush and Clinton administrations, the United States was prepared to do more than was done, including the early use of massive air power. But it was not prepared to act alone or over the objections of its allies. Although many British, French, Dutch, Spanish, and other European men and women served courageously in the Yugoslav conflict, Europe itself was a failure. Each of the most powerful members of the EC had its own agenda. This not only helped ensure that the EC would fail to act but reminds us why Europeans still need American involvement in managing their continent's security.
Finally, shortsighted, wrong–minded, and even craven as Western policy has been, we should not forget that it was Yugoslavs who destroyed their multiethnic state and started the ensuing war, and who have fought it in a most heinous fashion. Slovenes seceded unilaterally without regard for what they knew would be tragic consequences for others; Croats gave ethnic Serbs every reason to fear for their safety; Milosevic injected into Serbs the venom of ethnic hatred that had been absent in modern Yugoslavia. The abundance of Balkan villains does not excuse Western failures, yet it does help explain why it has been and remains so difficult to find solutions to the conflict in the former Yugoslavia.
Endnotes
Note 1: Far from considering a massive economic infusion to save Yugoslavia by supporting its legitimate federal government, the United States, via the Nickles amendment of November 1990, cut off the tiny ($5 million) extant aid program to Yugoslavia over repression of ethnic Albanians in Kosovo. Just the opposite of what Markovic wanted, this action demonstrated the difficulty of isolating and paralyzing Serbian policies while sparing, if not nourishing, the moderate federal government. Back.
Note 2: One of the most interesting what–ifs is whether the Bush administration would have challenged Milosevic, and meant it, had the United States not been preparing for a major war in the Gulf during the critical second half of 1991. The author knows of no explicit U.S. decision to eschew engagement in Yugoslavia due to the Gulf crisis. That said, since policymakers knew that a threat against the Serbs might lead to a second simultaneous major U.S. military engagement, one can conclude that the crisis in the Gulf must have inhibited U.S. policy as Yugoslavia moved toward breakup and war. Back.
Note 3: For example, see The Economist, May 11, pp. 45–46, and June 29, 1991, pp. 41–42. Back.
Note 4: This concern about the rights of members of minority groups applied to Albanians, Hungarians, and Muslims in Serbia as well as Serbs in Croatia. Ironically, there was little concern—and little cause for concern—about the rights of Serb and Croat minorities in Bosnia, which was a model of ethnic tolerance. Another facet of the difficulty of finding formulas for addressing the minorities problem in Yugoslavia is that Europe and the United States, while equally committed to human rights, have a basic difference in philosophy and law, the former believing that minority groups have rights and the latter recognizing only individual rights. Back.
Note 5: By mid–1991 the officer corps of the once–multiethnic YPA had become almost entirely Serbian. Back.
Note 6: See The Economist, July 6, 1991, pp. 45–46. Back.
Note 7: Ironically, the one European leader with the will to stand up to the Serbs, Margaret Thatcher, was removed from her position by her own party—with no tears shed by her continental counterparts—because of her opposition to European integration and to any EC requirement to have common European policies. Back.
Note 8: Though NATO did not have in mind the possible use of its new "rapid reaction corps" in Yugoslavia, the YPA was not so sure. The Yugoslav defense minister, General Veljko Kadejevic, told the author after the Rome summit that he suspected the alliance of preparing an intervention force. Back.
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