The implosion of Yugoslavia into a morass of secessionist confl icts in the early 1990s corresponded with the closing phase of the Bush Administration.
In the run-up to presidential elections, the Administration was reluctant to respond to such intra-state confl ict. Instead the UN and the EU sought
to settle contending claims through the use of diplomatic pressure. These efforts, however, were undermined by their inability to speak with one voice in their diplomatic dialogue. Germany’s decision in late 1991 to recognize claims to independent statehood by the constituent republics damaged the EU’s ability to infl uence the concerned parties. Additionally, Mitterrand’s 1992 trip to persuade the Bosnian Serbs to lift their siege of Sarajevo was a unilateral move that unquestionably undermined claims of a commonality in European foreign policy. Thus despite the labour of the EU, not least its Hague Peace Conference of September–December 1991, its ‘soft’ power proved insuffi cient when ‘the confl ict grew too complex and dangerous for civilian diplomacy to remain effective in the absence of the involvement of any other credible international authority’ (Ginsberg, 2001, p. 75). The EU scrambled to present some sort of unity, however superfi cial, when it announced that it would recognize the independence of Slovenia and Croatia on 15 January 1992, despite an earlier warning by Lord Carrington and Cyrus Vance that such a move would ‘trigger a chain reaction culminating in war in Bosnia’ (taken from Holbrooke, 1999, p. 31).
The coming to offi ce of the Clinton Administration did not occasion a change in US policy towards the Balkans, despite Clinton’s campaign emphasis on the importance of the Bosnian question and support for the use for a ‘lift-and-strike’ policy – to lift the arms embargo on the Bosnian Muslims and the use of air strikes to break the siege of Sarajevo. Once he was in offi ce, support for the use of military force abated. The cautionary tale of the US experience in Somalia weighed heavily. The initial US military deployment by Bush in December 1992 was aimed at creating a stable environment for food delivery and distribution. This sort of mission appeared tailor-made for a Democratic administration that ‘believed in the use of military force to advance humanitarian aims’ (Schulzinger, 2002, p. 359), and Clinton initially supported its continuance while allowing the UN to assume greater responsibility for relief provision. The operation was dogged with diffi culties, not least concerning command-and-control matters between the USA and the UN and reached its nadir with the downing of a US ‘Black Hawk’ helicopter, the deaths of 18 US marines and the dragging of a dead marine through the streets of Mogadishu – shown to American viewers courtesy of CNN. The ‘CNN factor’ among other things led to Clinton’s withdrawal of American troops by the end of 1993. This experience militated against involvement in the Balkans, and a policy of inaction held until July 1995 and an attack by the Serbs on the Bosnian Muslim enclave of Srebrenica. Despite its status as a UN ‘safe area’, the Bosnian Serbs took over this town, killing anywhere between 4000 and 7000 Bosnian Muslim men and boys. Inaction no longer seemed viable in what Vulliamy has termed the West’s ‘fi nal chance to rescue a battered credibility
in Bosnia’ (1994, p. 262). In August, the US Congress voted to end the arms embargo on Bosnian Muslims and NATO launched air strikes on Serbia.
All the deliberation and delay had sorely affected the Atlantic Alliance, with then US Secretary of State Christopher Warren expressing his despair at the ‘indifference, timidity, self-delusion and hypocrisy’ among the European Allies (taken from Vulliamy, 1994, p. 284). Even the attainment of Serbian, Croatian and Bosnian signatures on the Dayton Accords at the end of the year could not eradicate the fact that ‘lack of strategy and political will to settle on a common course of action in Bosnia infl icted a serious blow on European–American relations and established a pattern of mutual suspicion in crisis-management’ (Stevanova, 2001, p. 85). The negotiations and contents of the Dayton Accords were an exclusively American exercise, thereby reinforcing ‘in Europe the worst apprehensions of the unilateral way of crisis management’ (ibid., p. 86).
Europe was not the only omission. The Accords’ failure to address the nascent confl ict between Albanian and Serb Kosovars spurred its exacerbation and militarization. The Serbs in Kosovo sought to reverse what they perceived to be the ‘Albanization’ of Kosovo through a raft of discriminatory legislation. This radicalized Albanian opinion helped fuel demands for political independence from Yugoslavia rather than greater autonomy within the federation. This shift in sentiment was mirrored in the growing signifi cance of the Kosovo Liberation Army and the onset of clashes between it and both Serb militias and the JNA (Thomas, 1999;
Judah, 1999; 2000). In the wake of the other Balkan wars, Milosevic played the ‘Kosovo card’ to demonstrate his nationalist credentials and so shore up his domestic political position. The confl ict became increasingly overt and by the winter of 1998/99 commanded global media attention. The distressing tales of ethnic cleansing, accompanied by pictures of mass graves and the mass migration of displaced persons, led to popular pressure on the governments of the West to ‘do something’. As diplomatic pressure alone proved unable to secure a Serb withdrawal from the province, the decision was taken to authorize NATO air strikes. ‘Operation Allied Storm’ that began in March 1999 highlighted splits within the international community and within the European Union. This was NATO’s fi rst intervention into the affairs of a sovereign nation-state without a prior request for involvement by an indigenous party. Foreshadowing later developments over the Gulf, the legality of NATO action was contested due to the lack of a UN mandate.
Russia and China had both stated their intention to veto the operation should it come before the UN Security Council. Within the EU, there were high levels of domestic opposition to the operation, especially within Greece, Italy and Germany. Whilst the capitulation of Milosevic and the eventual signing of the Rambouillet Accords ended the military action, concern
about the legality of the operation persisted. In the actual fi ghting the USA played the central role with the Allied contribution having ‘primarily a political effect’ (Duke, 2003, p. 5), while in the post-confl ict reconstruction efforts it is the EU’s ‘soft power’ that is at the fore.