The Bush Administration: From Status Quo to Immobility

Abstract

It has been charged that the US leadership prior to the break up of Yugoslavia underestimated the seriousness of the situation, underestimated US interests in Yugoslavia and did not take adequate action to avoid a crisis.¹ It is true that analysts had long predicted the demise of Yugoslavia after Tito’s death, and there was plenty of evidence that that time was rapidly approaching.² According to David Gompert, a former Bush administration of official working on the issue, the US did urge the European Community to provide leadership in dealing with the crisis in Croatia, in the belief that the allies had more leverage then the United States to head off a catastrophe. American attempts in 1990 to get the European involved were brushed aside. An American proposal for consultations in NATO was declined, with the French accusing the United States of overdramatizing the problem. Ultimately, the US deferred to the Europeans’s desire that the crisis be handled by the EC rather than by NATO. The alliance was thus kept out of the crisis until the Bosnia conflict had grown beyond the capacities of non-military organizations.³