Despite being offered various incentives (including direct negotiations with the United States and the suspension of U. economic sanctions), Milosevic never followed through. This left military pressure—the threat or actual use of force against the Bosnian Serbs—as the only real lever to convince Pale that a diplomatic solution was in its interests. Yet, more than two years of trying to convince the NATO allies of this fact had led nowhere.
When limited air strikes in late May 1995 resulted in nearly 400 peacekeepers being taken hostage, a consensus quickly emerged within the U. and among the troop-contributing countries that, however limited, NATO air strikes would do more harm than good. The United Nations force would return to “traditional peacekeeping principles”. This sent the not-so-subtle message to the Bosnian Serbs that they were now free to pursue their preferred strategy. That strategy, called “ethnic cleansing, ” involved using murder, rape, expulsion and imprisonment on a large scale to drive Muslims and Croats from territory the Bosnian Serbs wished to claim. The Bosnian Serbs implemented their strategy with horrifying results.
should take once UNPROFOR was gone. UNPROFOR as Obstacle The NSC’s conclusion that the U. force was part of the problem in Bosnia rather than part of the solution was shared by Madeleine Albright, long the Clinton administration’s chief hawk on Bosnia. In June 1995, she once again made her case, presenting Clinton with a passionately argued memorandum urging a new push for air strikes in order to get the Bosnian Serbs to the table. Albright’s memo noted that if air strikes required the withdrawal of UNPROFOR, then so be it. The president agreed with the thrust of her argument, having himself come to see UNPROFOR as posing an obstacle to a solution for Bosnia.
Second, at the level of the policy-making process, the president encouraged his national security adviser and staff to develop a far-reaching and integrated strategy for Bosni a that abandoned the incremental approach of past efforts. This process produced agreement on a bold new strategy designed to bring the Bosnia issue to a head in 1995, before presidential election politics would have a chance to intervene and instill a tendency to avoid the kind of risk-taking behavior necessary to resolve the Bosnia issue. The Breaking PointAlthough the evolution of America’s Bosnia policy, including the predicament of the Clinton administration in the summer of 1995, is relatively well known, the details of the administration’s policy-making process during this period are not.
What, then, explains the Clinton administration’s decision in August 1995 at long last to intervene decisively in Bosnia? Why, when numerous previous attempts to get involved in Bosnia were half-hearted in execution and ended in failure? The answer is complex, involving explanations at two different levels. First, at the policy level, the day-to-day crisis management approach that had characterized the Clinton administration’s Bosnia strategy had lost virtually all credibility. It was clear that events on the ground and decisions in allied capitals as well as on the Capitol Hill were forcing the administration to seek an alternative to muddling through.
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policy toward Bosnia might be changed in a more productive direction. He began to meet informally with key people on his NSC staff (including his deputy, Sandy Berger, and his chief Bosnia aides Sandy Vershbow and Nelson Drew) to consider how the United States could help to change the tide of war. It had long been clear that progress toward a negotiated settlement was possible only if the Bosnian Serbs understood that not achieving a diplomatic solution would cost them dearly. For nearly a year, the United States and its Contact Group partners (Britain, France, Germany, and Russia) had sought to pressure the Bosnian Serb leadership headquartered in Pale into agreeing to commence serious negotiations by convincing Milosevic to cut off economic and, especially, military assistance to the Bosnian Serbs.
This could be achieved either by deploying U. forces alongside European troops or forcing the withdrawal of the U. force. Since the president had consistently ruled out deploying American ground forces to Bosnia except to help enforce a peace agreement, the only way significant military pressure could be brought to bear on the Bosnian Serbs would be after UNPROFOR had been withdrawn. Lake agreed with this assessment and proposed that his staff begin to work on a “post-withdrawal” strategy—the steps that the U.
It repeatedly demanded that the U. forces either stop the latest Bosnian Serb assault or, at the very least, agree to NATO air strikes to punish the Serb forces and protect the “safe” areas. Most European allies had a different view. Unlike the United States, many Europeans had placed their troops at risks by participating in the U. operation on the understanding that their involvement would be limited to a strictly humanitarian mandate.
Based on new extensive research, including numerous interviews with key participants, it is now possible to begin filling in some of the critical details on how the administration arrived at its decision in August 1995. Though few realized it at the beginning of the year, 1995 would prove to be the decisive year for Bosnia’s future. That shift stemmed from a decision, reached by the Bosnian Serb leadership in early March, that the fourth year of the war would be its last. The Bosnian Serb objective was clear: to conclude the war before the onset of the next winter. The strategy was simple, even if its execution was brazen. First, a large-scale attack on the three eastern Muslim enclaves of Srebrenica, Zepa, and Gorazde—each an international ‘safe’ area lightly protected by a token U.
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