Abstract
The conflict in Bosnia and Herzegovina differed in two major ways from the Somali and Haitian strife for American foreign policy mandarins. First, Bosnia lay within the heart of Europe and, second, it sprung from the political disintegration of a whole nation-state. Lying close to the boundaries of America’s foremost alliance, the North Atlantic Treaty Organization, the Yugoslavian violence demanded resolution or it threatened to engulf southeastern Europe. The crisis became the central international issue of President Clinton’s first term.
The purpose of all wars is peace.
St. Augustine
The foundations of empire are often occasions of woe; their dismemberment, always.
Evelyn Waugh
You can always count on the Americans to do the right thing after they have exhausted all other possibilities.
Winston Churchill
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Notes
Noel Malcolm, Bosnia: A Short History (New York: New York University Press, 1994), page 20.
James A. Baker III with Thomas M. DeFrank, The Politics of Diplomacy: Revolution, War, and Peace, 1989–1992 (New York: G. P. Putnam’s Sons, 1995), page 636.
At least one observer concluded that Baker, in fact, gave Belgrade a green light to use force to stop the secessionist republics. Tim Judah, Kosovo: War and Revenge (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2002), page 138.
Timothy Garton Ash, History of the Present: Essays, Sketches, and Dispatches from Europe in the 1990s (New York: Random House, 1999), page 161.
For an account of European diplomatic endeavors, see Stanley Hoffman, “Yugoslavia: Implications for Europe and European Institutions,” in The World and Yugoslavia’s Wars, ed. Richard H. Ullman (New York: Council on Foreign Relations, 1996), pages 97–121.
Richard Holbrooke, To End a War (New York: Random House, 1998), page 23.
For a discussion of the Vance-Owen plan, see Laura Silber and Allan Little, Yugoslavia: Death of a Nation (New York: Penguin Books, 1995), pages 276–290.
Elizabeth Drew, On the Edge: The Clinton Presidency (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1994), page 153.
Colin Powell with Joseph E. Persico, My American Journey (New York: Random House, 1995), page 576.
Bill Clinton, My Life (New York: Alfred Knopf, 2004), page 666.
P. W Singer, Corporate Warriors: The Rise of the Privatized Military Industry (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2003), pages 127–129.
Robert C. Owen, ed., Deliberate Force: A Case Study in Effective Air Campaign (Montgomery, AL: Air University Press, 2000), pages 506–515.
Strobe Talbott, The Russian Hand: A Memoir of Presidential Diplomacy (New York: Random House, 2002), page 186.
Richard Holbrooke, “America, a European Power,” Foreign Affairs, Volume 74, Issue 2 (March/April 1995), page 40.
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© 2007 Thomas H. Henriksen
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Henriksen, T.H. (2007). Bosnia: War and Intervention. In: American Power after the Berlin Wall. Palgrave Macmillan, New York. https://doi.org/10.1057/9780230606920_6
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1057/9780230606920_6
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