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The Oxford Companion to Politics of the World Oxford University Press, 2001 [pp. 79-81]
Srdja
Trifkovic, Foreign Affairs Editor, Chronicles: A Magazine of
American Culture, and Director, International Studies Program, The
Rockford Institute BOSNIAN WAR. The war in Bosnia-Herzegovina (1992-1995) was the
most destructive segment of the War of Yugoslav Dissolution that began
when the Yugoslav republics of *Slovenia and *Croatia seceded in the
summer of 1991. Because there was no ethnic majority within its
boundaries and no “Bosnian” nation, of all six republics of the old
Yugoslav federation the Republic of Bosnia-Herzegovina (hereafter
“Bosnia”) had most to fear from violent secession. A majority of its
citizens would have preferred the then-existing Yugoslav framework to
political experiments that could risk *war. But once reunited Germany
was committed to the recognition of Croatia and Slovenia, the Muslim
leadership in Sarajevo knew both that the old *Yugoslavia was impossible
and that historic opportunities beckoned. Of the three constituent peoples
of Bosnia-Herzegovina, as defined by earlier Yugoslav constitutions, the
Muslims were the most numerous (43 percent). Most of them were prepared
to accept a compromise that would fall short of full independence –
especially if full independence risked war – but they nevertheless
nervously followed their leaders in the Party of Democratic Action (Stranka
demokratske akcije, SDA) who demanded a leap in the dark. The Croats (17percent%) were the least numerous, but
– especially in their stronghold of western Herzegovina - they were
the most determined to get Bosnia out of Yugoslavia, and then to break
away from Bosnia with the support of Croatia. Their party (Hrvatska
demokratska zajednica, HDZ BH) was prepared to enter a tactical alliance
with the Muslims to get the independence vote, but most Bosnian Croats
were not prepared to see their long-term future in a sovereign Bosnia.
Their leader, Mate Boban, did not believe in any permanent alliances,
but clearly saw the interests of his people and their statelet (“Herceg-Bosna”)
in an extended Croatia. The Serbs of Bosnia,
overwhelmingly, refused to be ejected from Yugoslavia, especially as the
Bosnian referendum on “sovereignty” (February 1992) was held in
violation of the constitutional right of each of Bosnia’s three
peoples to veto any decision unacceptable to its vital interests. That
they would have liked a “Greater Serbia” is certain. That they would
have gone to war to get it is unlikely. Indeed, the Serbian Democratic
Party (Srpska demokratska stranka, SDS) was willing to settle - before
the war began - for a regional autonomy far less substantial than what
the Serbs were subsequently offered in Geneva in 1993 and at Dayton in
1995. In the
aftermath of the first post-communist election in Bosnia (fall 1990)
those three main ethnic political parties were included in a coalition
government of anti-communist nationalists. The breakup of that coalition
clearly reflected external pressure as Serbia tried to frighten Alija
Izetbegovic, the Muslim leader, into passivity and Croatia, with German
support, tried to win him for secession. There was never any prospect
that Bosnia could be taken out of Yugoslavia, that is, detached from
Serbia, without a war. President
Slobodan Milosevic of Serbia, however, played the Bosnian crisis
primarily as a means of consolidating his power in Serbia proper and
extending his influence without committing himself to any clearly
defined strategic objective, such as the “Greater Serbian” project.
A cynical apparatchik devoid of convictions rather than a “Serbian
nationalist,” he withdrew the Yugoslav National Army (JNA) from Bosnia
(April 1992) and sent in his paramilitaries, who triggered ethnic
cleansing. Ever the short-term manipulator, he imposed his control on
the Bosnian Serbs, whom he managed to divide between a civilian faction
in Pale (Radovan Karadzic, Momcilo Krajisnik) and the military HQ at Han
Pijesak (General Ratko Mladic). Milosevic
in Serbia and President Franjo Tudjman in Croatia were both busy
establishing a quasi-dictatorial post-communist regime, and they needed
vulgar nationalism - for a time – to outbid the most vulgar
nationalists. Tudjman, however, did not shed Marxist crocodile tears at
the passing of the old Titoist certainties. Their respective struggles
to impose themselves on their own republics may explain more about the
war in Bosnia than the confused and variable goals of any of the Bosnian
leaders. When
the Bosnian Serbs took control of the Serb-majority areas, they were
well equipped and officered. But the numerical advantage lay with the
Muslims, who hoped to win in the end with international help. The
crucial military issue was whether the Serbs could bottle up superior
Muslim forces by keeping an armed ring around Sarajevo. Consequently,
cease-fires tended to favor the Serbs and to be broken by the Muslims.
The Serb ring round Sarajevo held from first to last. In
addition the Serbs severely damaged the patience of western states by
their mistreatment of prisoners in 1992 and by their expulsion of
non-Serb civilians. Similar atrocities by Croats and Muslims were less
conspicuous. The Western media chose their sympathies at the start and
kept up an agitation in favor of military intervention against the
Serbs. Of
several peace plans offered or mediated by the EC/EU from 1991 to 1993
the Serbs rejected the Vance-Owen Plan (May 1993) that would have
divided Bosnia into ten “cantons,” and Muslims rejected the Owen-Stoltenberg
Plan that provided for a confederal model of three sovereign national
entities (December 1993). A territorial plan that did not include a
constitutional blueprint, presented by the “Contact Group” in 1994,
was refused by the Serbs because it was non-negotiable. It was quietly
discarded in 1995. The
media call for intervention made the war the subject of international
debate to an extent unknown since Vietnam. Many Europeans were inclined
to support a compromise peace and a federalized Bosnia, supported no
side, and wanted a real arms embargo; whereas the United States disliked
European peace plans, broke the arms embargo from at least 1994, and
overtly supported the Muslims. In
1992-1993 the Serbs sat on their advantages and hoped that he world
would recognize their apparent victory. But the war changed when the
U.S. sponsored a Croat-Muslim alliance and the Europeans realized that
there would be no settlement unless the EU surrendered political
leadership to Washington. This was followed by a crisis in 1994 when a
mortar shell fell on the crowded Markale market in Sarajevo.
The Serbs were blamed, and evidence that the shell could not have
been fired from Serbian lines became available too late to affect the
crisis caused by the massacre. The
*North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO), in loose combination with
the UN, demanded that Serbian artillery be removed from the vicinity of
Sarajevo. A NATO attack on the Bonsian Serb Army (VRS) was obviated when
the Russians agreed to send troops to help monitor the cease-fire. From
this point the war became a matter of Muslim attempts to exploit the
safe areas - in Sarajevo, Gorazde, Tuzla, Bihac, and finally Srebrenica
- which had been declared by the UN but never demilitarized by UNPROFOR
(United Nations Protection Force). In short the Muslims were allowed to
attack out of these areas but the Serbs were not allowed to pursue them
back in. This
inequitable stance was disliked by the UNPROFOR commander, General
Michael Rose, but it seemed just what the U.S. NATO commander, Admiral
Leighton Smith, needed to get his aircraft into action. The first NATO
bombs ever dropped in action fell on the VRS near Gorazde in April 1994.
General Rose managed to contain the crisis, however, as he did during
the even more alarming confrontation between the Serbs and NATO near
Bihac in November. The
pursuit of peace by international threats, intermittent military
intervention, sanctions, and sanctions-busting was extremely complicated
and accompanied by a diplomatic and ideological debate of unusual
emotional intensity. It transformed NATO from a purely defensive
alliance into an “out-of-area” enforcement agency.
The apparent success of the prointervention lobby in the media
must be seen in the context of strong support for their agitation from
parts of the U.S. administration. Post-communist
Russia was consistently reluctant to exert itself in the Balkan area.
Russian policy began with an almost ideological commitment to accepting
Western good faith, and there was severe disillusion in Russia when it
became clear that much of the West wanted a peace settlement based on
the defeat of the Serbs. By
1995 even informed Russian opinion was getting alarmed at the direction
events were taking, but it was too late, and too difficult, for the
Yeltsin presidency to devise a new policy. In
1995 London and Paris rather reluctantly agreed to allow NATO to bomb
the Serbs, while the United States accepted the sort of settlement the
Europeans had recommended in 1993. But the bombing of the VRS in August
1995, which appeared to end the war, was probably less important than
the entry of the Croatian Army in Bosnia, now trained and extensively
re-equipped at the initiative of the US. Even this Croatian intervention
was only possible because the Yugoslav army refused to intervene to save
its clients west of the Drina. The war ended because Milosevic of Serbia
wanted it to end. The
chief outcome of the war was a transformed NATO, and the renewal of
American leadership in Europe to an extent not seen since before the
*Vietnam War. It established that America wanted to lead, and to be
indispensable, in the process of European reorganization after *1989.
Bosnia itself was not much affected by international intervention. The
war took longer than it would have done, and the Serbian position is
more uncertain, but the settlement that followed Dayton is not unlike a
plausible compromise in April 1992. In the
last two centuries, *Balkan states have been employed to slow and
control the collapse of the Ottoman Empire. Balkan nations were created,
enlarged, and shrunk as the need arose. During the two world wars of the
twentieth century, Balkan territories were bargaining chips for alliance
construction and Balkan nationality and ethnicity were never taken too
seriously. The war of 1992-95 confirmed this trend. Richard Holbrooke, the chief U.S. negotiator in
1995, boasted a year later: “We are re-engaged in the world, and
Bosnia was the test.” This “we” meant the United States, not
“the West” or “the international community.” Indeed, no
nation-state started and finished the Bosnian story as a political actor
with an unchanged diplomatic personality. All the major actors were
uncertain and divided about their policies. Debate took place within and
between agencies, departments, armies, and diplomatic chancelleries.
Each great power became a forum for the global debate for and against
intervention, the debate for and against a certain kind NATO and an
associated, media-led international political process. If the old Yugoslavia was untenable and eventually
collapsed under the weight of the supposedly insurmountable differences
among its constituent nations, it is unclear how Bosnia – the Yugoslav
microcosm par excellence – can develop and sustain the dynamics
of a viable polity. The answer will become known only when the outside
powers lose their present interest in upholding the constitutional
edifice made in Dayton. (See also BOSNIA AND HERZEGOVINA; POST-COMMUNISM;
SERBIA AND MONTENEGRO.) Robert
D. Kaplan, Balkan Ghosts: A Journey Through History (New York,
1994). Susan L Woodward, Balkan Tragedy (Washington, D.C., 1995).
General Sir Michael Rose, Fighting for Peace (London, 1998).
Robert M. Hayden, Blueprints for a House Divided: The Constitutional
Logic of the Yugoslav Conflicts (Ann Arbor, Mich., 1999) SRDJA
TRIFKOVIC
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