The West has flunked its first post-cold-war test. The unraveling of Yugoslavia was a situation demanding novel political solutions: some republics, eager to be free of Serbian dominance, had ethnic minorities who, in turn, feared being oppressed. But the West fell back on outmoded diplomacy, insisting that Yugoslavia stay together. When it didn’t, the United States and most of the European Community acted like an anesthetized patient, tuning in and out of the Balkan conflict. Sometimes the West focused on Serbian culpability. Other times, it viewed the Balkans as a hopeless muddle of ethnic feuds too intractable to be helped from the outside. With the East/West conflict over, Yugoslavia held little strategic importance. Few anticipated that wars in Croatia and Bosnia would create 2 million refugees in Europe-its greatest social and economic headache in nearly 50 years.
At least four opportunities for action, none involving ground troops, might have prevented or stopped the slaughter:
James Baker’s trip to Belgrade. After meeting with Yugoslav leaders, the secretary of state publicly worried “about history repeating itself,” an allusion to the 1914 assassination of Archduke Ferdinand, which kindled World War I. But Baker misread current events: he warned Slovenia and Croatia not to secede or expect U.S. recognition at a time when the republics were yearning to be free of Belgrade, which had its eye on a Greater Serbia. Baker’s warning didn’t prevent secession; it effectively told Serbia and the Yugoslav Army (JNA) they could use any means to hold the country together-without fear of Western intervention. On the pretext of protecting ethnic Serbs, the JNA attacked Croatia. Early recognition of the republics, tied to guaranteed minority rights, might have forestalled the conflict, which foreshadowed Serbia’s war against Bosnia. Acting Secretary of State Lawrence Eagleburger now laments the lack of “unanimity in the West” and “foresight about what would happen.”
Cyrus Vance’s peace plan. The former secretary of state, acting as a U.N. special envoy, called for 10,000 U.N. peacekeepers in combat areas to end six months of war in Croatia, which had claimed 10,000 lives and made more than 600,000 homeless. At this moment, with a pause in the fighting, it was clear that Bosnia was the next target of the Serbs, who had seized one third of Croatia. Belgrade had declared the impossibility of Serbian nationalists living “in a Muslim state.” It ordered Bosnian Serbs to boycott an upcoming EC-mandated referendum on independence. Drawing from recent lessons in Croatia, the West could have warned Serbia not to interfere in Bosnia–or risk diplomatic and economic isolation. Today, Vance is negotiating with all three groups to bring peace to Bosnia.
A plea for U.N. peacekeepers. Soon after the referendum, Serbian irregulars barricaded Sarajevo and approved a renegade “Serb Republic” of Bosnia allied to Belgrade. The Muslim-led government’s request for U.N. military observers was denied. But a small force might have discouraged Serb hostilities and deterred the siege of the capital, which began after the West recognized Bosnia in early April. At this time, the Security Council could have lifted the arms embargo against Sarajevo and imposed tougher sanctions on Belgrade.
Francois Mitterrand’s visit to Sarajevo. The French president’s trip galvanized humanitarian relief efforts in Sarajevo. Until the visit, Western leadership had been in a stupor: NATO declined a large role; the EC, riven by dissent and discouraged by its inability to make a cease-fire stick, more or less gave up; the United States talked tough but refused to act unilaterally. Suddenly, the world focused on Bosnia. George Bush hinted he might support the use of force to protect Sarajevo’s airport. This could have been the moment to threaten Serbia with a no-fly zone over Bosnia. Mitterrand, once slow to criticize Belgrade, now defined the moral high ground: “The symbolism I hope for … is to seize the world’s conscience toward helping endangered people.”
“Symbolism” was about all the effort generated. Over the summer, the revelation of Serb atrocities-“ethnic cleansing,” detention camps, mass executions of civilians-provoked only rhetoric. The Security Council voted to set up a war-crimes commission, but neglected to provide for actual trials. Its resolution for a no-fly zone gave no authority to shoot down violators; Serbs responded by bombing northern Bosnian towns.
With the cold war over, it’s now possible to take sides and redraw borders without fear of a U.S.-Soviet confrontation-though the risk of quagmire remains. As “the sole remaining superpower,” George Bush said in the first presidential debate, “we have a certain disproportionate responsibility.” Shouldn’t that include treating new political diseases with imaginative remedies?
