Abstract
The fall of the Berlin Wall and the subsequent demise of communism have done very little to promote world-wide peace, let alone any semblance of stability in key areas across the globe. Winning the Cold War accomplished even less for the United States as it appears that the position it once held, that of a superpower, may be in jeopardy. As regional crises arise, the US struggles with efforts to determine not only whether or not to reply, but, specifically, in what manner, and, alone or in conjunction with others. More importanly, even determining vital US interests in the post-Cold War era appear to have assumed a vagueness not present during the days of bipolarity. From the struggle of democratization in Russia, to the debacles in Somalia and Bosnia, to strained relations with China and North Korea, the problem with policy formulation has, and remains evident for the US. Solving and/or diffusing these crises in and of itself is not the answer. The damage they have inflicted on to American leadership represents a much more fundamental problem — the inability of the US foreign policy establishment to fashion a policy for the US in the decades to come. In the short term, this failure has served to undermine US leadership and credibility in capitals around the world. US Senate majority leader Bob Dole (R-Kan) perhaps best expressed this frustration by stating:
Unfortunately, our image and position abroad is on the same downward spiral as during the Carter years, when the United States was feared by none, respected by few and ignored by many. The bottom line is that America, under the Clinton administration, is abdicating American leadership at the United Nations, at NATO and around the globe.1
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Notes
S. Stark, ‘The First Post Modern Presidency’, The Atlantic, Vol. 271, No. 4 (April 1993), p. 27.
J.M. O. Sharp, ‘Intervention in Bosnia — the case for’, The World Today, Vol. 49, No. 2 (February 1993), p. 30.
Ibid., and for the belief that the West feared recognition would set a bad precedent, see Glenny (1992), op. cit., p. 178 and Almond, op. cit., p. 40.
Malcolm (1994), op. cit., pp. 239–40, and M. Mandelbaum, ‘The Bush Foreign Policy’, Foreign Affairs, Vol. 70, No. 1 (Winter 1991), p. 6.
Magas, op. cit., p. 356.
Glenny (1992), op. cit., pp. 97–100 and Zametica, op. cit., p. 59.
Magas, op. cit., p. 318 and W. Pfaff, ‘Serbs Can Reverse a Destructive Course’, The International Herald Tribune (17 December 1992) and Z. Khalilzad, ‘Stop Negotiating with Serbia’, The New York Times (7 January 1993).
Glenny (1992), op. cit., p. 143 and idem (1993), op. cit., pp. 254–5.
Glenny (1992), op. cit., p. 97 and W. Pfaff, ‘Invitation to War’, Foreign Affairs, Vol. 72, No. 3 (Summer 1993), p. 104.
R. Boyes, ‘Why the Serbian Generals do not want a Wider War’, The Times (31 December 1992) and P. Moore, ‘A Return of the Serbian-Croatian Conflict?’, RFE/RL, Vol. 2, No. 42 (22 October 1993), p. 19.
J.F. Dunn, ‘Yugoslavia’, in Post-Communist Europe Instabilities 1994 (Conflict Studies Research Centre: Carmichael and Sweet Ltd., Portsmouth, 1994), pp. 13–4.
‘The Ruins of Yugoslavia and a New Balkans’, RUSI Newsbrief, Vol. 12, No. 6 (June 1992), p. 41.
Glenny (1992), op. cit., p. 129, Malcolm (1994), op. cit., p. 218 and Ramet (1992), op. cit., pp. 259–60.
Malcolm (1994), op. cit., p. 219.
Ramet (1992), op. cit., pp. 259–61, Malcolm (1994), op. cit., p. 222 and Glenny (1994), op. cit., p. 129.
Malcolm (1994), op. cit., p. 219.
Ramet (1992), op. cit., p. 203 and Magas, op. cit., p. 125. Paraga was one of the student leaders during the Croatian crisis. See Ramet (1992), op. cit., pp. 203–4.
Malcolm (1994), op. cit., p. 225, FBIS/Eastern Europe (11 July 1991) and J. Hooper, ‘The Balkan Conundrum’, Conflict International, Vol. 8, No. 1 (January 1993), pp. 1–2.
Thompson, op. cit., p. 189.
Magas, op. cit., p. xv.
Ramet (1992), op. cit., pp. 260–1 and idem (Fall 1992), op. cit., p. 84.
Harris, op. cit., Appendix I.
Malcolm (1994), op. cit., p. 231.
Magas, op. cit., p. xviii.
Malcolm (1994), op. cit., p. 232.
J. Pilger, ‘The West is Guilty in Bosnia’, New Statesman and Society (7 May 1993), pp. 14–15 and P. Moore, RFE/RL (2 April 1993), p. 29.
Harris, op. cit., Appendix I.
Malcolm (1994), op. cit., pp. 235–6 and Glenny (1992), op. cit., pp. 61 and 122.
R. Falk, ‘In Search of a New World Model’, Current History, Vol. 92, No. 573 (April 1993), p. 148.
J. Schlesinger, ‘Hands Across the Sea, Less Firmly Clasped’, in H. Brandon (ed.), In Search of a New World Order: The Future of U.S.-European Relations (Washington, DC: Brookings, 1992), p. 146.
M. Klare, ‘The New Challenges to Global Security’, Current History (April 1993), p. 157.
T. Carpenter, A Search for Enemies: American Alliances after the Cold War (Washington, DC: CATO Institute, 1992), p. 151. For the alternate US position and NATO, see J.A. Thompson, ‘The Problem for United States Foreign Policy’, in D. Armstrong and E. Goldstein (eds), The End of the Cold War (London: Frank Cass, 1990) who believes that the European cries of ‘Yankee go home’ are unlikely, at pp. 67–8.
McInnes, op. cit., pp. 39–40.
Armstrong, op. cit., p. 11. ‘The lessons of the past provide at least a key to some of the potential problems to be faced by the post-cold war world …’
J. F. Brown, Nationalism, Democracy and Security in the Balkans (Dartmouth: RAND, 1992), pp. 186–7, Stavrou (1993), op. cit., p. 39.
J. Muravchik, Exporting Democracy: Fulfilling America’s Destiny (Washington, DC: American Enterprise Institute, 1992), pp. 33–4.
Z. Brzezinski, Out of Control: Global Turmoil on the Eve of the 21st Century (New York: Charles Scribner and Sons, 1993), p. x.
McInnes, op. cit., p. 153.
Paul Shoup, ‘The United States and Southeastern Europe in the 1990s’, in Shoup, op. cit., p. 264.
Armstrong, op. cit., p. 77.
Brzezinski (1993), op. cit., p. 94.
Carpenter (1992), op. cit., p. 146. Carpenter believes that such policy by the Bush administration was a ‘reflexive policy typical of a status quo power’.
F. Fukuyama, The End of History and the Last Man (London: Penguin, 1992), p. 283.
Nixon (1992), op. cit., pp. 35–6.
Brzezinski (1993), op. cit., who believes that Europe’s failure was symptomatic and demonstrates the ‘socioeconomic and geopolitical turbulence’ that Europe will likely face in the future, at pp. 139–40, and p. 145.
McInnes, op. cit., p. 4.
Brzezinski (1993), op. cit., p. 134.
‘Reassuring an Insecure Europe’, The New York Times (4 December 1994), Z. Brzezinski, ‘The Way Forward for an Inspired NATO’, The International Herald Tribune (2 December 1993) and Warren Christopher: ‘The United States has an enduring political, military, economic, and cultural link to Europe that must be preserved. The European Community is our largest single trading partner, and we have a powerful stake in the collective security guaranteed by NATO. This alliance of democracies — the most successful in history — can lay the foundation of an undivided continent rooted in the principles of political liberty and economic freedom. To meet the new challenges in Europe, the Alliance must embrace innovation or risk irrelevance’, speech before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee [4 November 1993], in ‘American Foreign Policy: The Strategic Priorities’, Vital Speeches of the Day, Vol. 60, No. 6 (1 January 1994), p. 164.
Carpenter (1992), op. cit., p. 149.
There appears to be some justification for this premise. Goertz and Diehl have stated that: ‘…a state with a warring neighbour was three to five times as likely to be at war as one that did not have a bordering state at war …’ op. cit., p. 9.
Nixon (1992), op. cit., p. 278.
The previous belief is held by US Marine Corps General AM. Gray who believes that the gap between rich and poor will provide the foundation for insurgencies which, in their struggle for limited resources, have the potential to threaten regional stability and, concur-rently, threaten US access to vital resources it may have in these particular regions. Quoted in N. Chomsky, Deterring Democracy (London: Vintage Press, 1991), p. 31.
Almond, op. cit., p. 45.
D. Franklin, ‘How about a foreign policy?’, The Economist World in 1995 (London: Economist Intelligence Unit, December, 1994), p. 61.
McInnes, op. cit., p. 59.
An alternative view comes from E. J. Hobsbawm. See Hobsbawm (1990), op. cit., p. 167. For a view that concurs with the premise, see V. Syme and P. Payton, ‘Eastern Europe: economic transition and ethnic tension’, in M.C. Pugh (ed.), European Security Towards 2000 (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1992), p. 101.
Poulton (1993), op. cit., p. 209.
Brzezinski (1993), op. cit., p. 142. As to the defensive and offensive varieties of nationalism, Vincent Cable believes that regardless of their nature [in places like the Balkans], they do have a common thread which binds them: ‘all reflect attempts to express a sense of threatened cultural identity in political form, a new politics of identity’. Cable, op. cit., pp. 3–4.
Ramet (1992), op. cit., p. 80.
Nixon (1992), op. cit., p. 55 and Ramet (Fall 1992), op. cit., p. 80.
S. Economides quoted in S.W. Griffiths, ‘Nationalism and Ethnic Conflict’, sipri Research Report, No. 5 (Oxford University Press, 1993), p. 35.
James Chace believes that it is unlikely that the civil war in Yugoslavia would provoke a larger conflagration in Europe, yet feels the Lebanon type scenario is a distinct possibility. See J. Chace, The Consequences of Peace: The New Internationalism and American Foreign Policy (New York: Oxford University Press, 1992), p. 46.
Poulton (1993), op. cit., pp. 11–12.
Carpenter (1992), op. cit., p. 6, and at p. 2.
D. Perry, RFE/RL Newsbriefs (31 March 1994), p. 17.
D. Hall, Albania and the Albanians (London: Pinter Press, 1994), p. 47.
Hobsbawm (1990), op. cit., p. 155.
W. Christopher, ‘Speech to NATO’, February, 1993 in US Foreign Policy Bulletin, Vol. 3, No. 6 (May/June 1993), p. 54.
G. Smith, ‘What Role for America?’, Current History, Vol. 92, No. 573 (April 1993), p. 152.
Nixon (1992), op. cit., p. 248.
McInnes, op. cit., p. 73.
Point reiterated by Warren Christopher: ‘The West missed too many opportunities to prevent or contain this suffering, bloodshed, and destruction when the conflict was in its infancy. The lesson to be learned from this tragedy is the importance of an early and decisive engagement against ethnic persecution and aggressive nationalism.’ Christopher (May/June 1993), op. cit., p. 56.
R.W. Tucker and D.C. Hendrickson, The Imperial Temptation: The New World Order and America’s Purpose (New York: Council on Foreign Relations Press, 1992), pp. 207–8.
Nixon (1992), op. cit., pp. 134–5.
As to the latter, see Poulton (1993), op. cit., p. 82.
Fukuyama, op. cit., p. 272.
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© 1996 Gazmen Xhudo
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Xhudo, G. (1996). From Policy to Practice. In: Diplomacy and Crisis Management in the Balkans. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-349-24947-3_5
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