Versary of the Dayton Peace Agreement, This Article Assesses Western Contribu- Tions to the Peace Process in Bosnia
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1 onthe second anni- versary of the Dayton peace agreement, this article assesses western contribu- tions to the peace process in Bosnia. The main argument advanced here is that the western powers’-particularly the United States, Britain, and France- were negligent in not preventing and then not quickly ending the wars in former Yugoslavia because they refused to use force to support important principles of international law.2 In their efforts to negotiate an end to the war, and in the subsequent implementation of the settlement brokered by the United States in Dayton, Ohio, in November 1995, the western powers have tended to appease the aggressors at the expense of the war‘s victims. Unless this tendency is reversed and the international guarantors of the Dayton accords seek a just peace, the current fragile peace could be shattered-and with it the prospects for a stable pan-European security system based on a more open NATO with a new mission to stabilize Europe beyond its traditional borders. The western governments’ condoning of the bombing of the Croatian cities of Dubrovnik and Vukovar in the second half of 1991 gave President Slobodan Milogevie a green light to pursue his ambition of creating an ethnically pure Greater Serbia; and by denying Bosnian President Alija IzetbegoviFs many requests for preventive troop deployments in late 1991, the west missed an opportunity to prevent the war from spreading to Bosnia. Then in 1992, by defining a deliberate policy of genocide as ”ethnic cleansing,” and a war of Jane M.O. Sharp directs the Defence and Security Programme at the Institute for Public Policy Research and is a Senior Research Fellow at the Centre for Defence Studies at King’s College in London. The author thanks the editors of International Security and two anonymous reviewers for useful comments on an earlier draft. This article stems from a project at the Centre for Defence Studies, which monitors the implementation of the Dayton agreement. The author thanks the Swedish Foreign Ministry for its financial support. 1. The term “western powers” in this article refers to the members of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) and the European Union (EU) that make up the western security community. The term “donor community” refers to the main aid donors to Bosnia, including the United States, the EU, Japan, the World Bank, the Organization of Islamic States, and about three hundred nongovernmental organizations. 2. For a similar view, see Michael Steiner, ”Don’t Fool Around with Principles,” Transition, Vol. 4, No. 5 (August 1993, pp. 34-40. Steiner, a senior German diplomat, served on the Contact Group in 1994-95 and was deputy to Carl Bildt in the Office of the High Representative in Sarajevo in 1996-97. 3. h4iloSevit became president of the Serb republic in 1987 and remained in that office until 1996. He is now president of the Former Republic of Yugoslavia, which comprises Serbia and Monte- negro. International Security, Vol. 22, No. 3 (Winter 1997/98),pp. 101-137 0 1997 by the President and Fellows of Harvard College and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. 101 Downloaded from http://www.mitpressjournals.org/doi/pdf/10.1162/isec.22.3.101 by guest on 24 September 2021 International Security 22:3 I 102 aggression as a humanitarian crisis, the western democracies rationalized the deployment of inappropriate and ill-equipped peacekeeping forces into a war situation. Only after almost four years of war, more than 200,000 dead, and 2 million displaced did the United States exert leadership and, together with France and Britain, take the kind of military action that could have prevented war in the first place. The Dayton peace agreement codified an October 1995 cease-fire and pre- vented new fighting, but has not yet generated a sustainable peace. Consistent with a general tendency toward western appeasement throughout the war, the agreement rewards the aggressors and leaves the nationalist leaders in power. These leaders obstruct reconciliation and integration, and discourage repatria- tion of refugees and displaced persons. In addition, the agreement suffers from four structural problems. First, it is geared to an unrealistically short-term schedule, especially with respect to the stabilizing presence of NATO imple- mentation forces. Second and third, it embraces two sets of contradictory goals: partitioning Bosnia into two political entities with separate armies while seek- ing a single integrated state with central institutions; and imposing arms limits on both entities despite arming and training only one. Fourth, the military and civilian aspects of the agreement are not well coordinated, making for a dangerous law enforcement gap and a fragmented aid program, and leaving little opportunity to exert economic leverage on recalcitrant local parties. Four policy recommendations for the western guarantors of the Dayton accords flow from this analysis. First, donors need to make a long-term com- mitment to the postwar reconstruction of Bosnia, not least to provide an international military presence (with a broad mandate to guarantee freedom of movement and provide public order) until the peace process has stabilized. Second, the western powers should arrest indicted war criminals, not only to bring them to justice but also to remove them from positions of power and influence in their communities. Third, the International Police Task Force (IPTF) established by the Dayton accords must either be replaced or be given adequate resources to carry out its mandate to train the local police to provide for public safety and individual security; an interim police force should be created and maintained until that training is completed. Fourth, the interna- tional community of donors must appoint a High Representative who has the standing and authority to coordinate the military and civilian aspects of the agreement and can exert economic leverage over recalcitrant local powers. This article is divided into seven sections. It begins with an overview of western responses to the different phases of the Yugoslav wars of dissolution- Downloaded from http://www.mitpressjournals.org/doi/pdf/10.1162/isec.22.3.101 by guest on 24 September 2021 Dayton Report Card I 103 essentially a catalogue of missed opportunities to prevent, then to halt, the war in Bosnia. The next section explores the Dayton agreement’s structural prob- lems. The third looks at the implications of the law enforcement gap, in terms of both maintaining public order and bringing war criminals to justice. The fourth looks at the western contribution to the process of repatriating refugees and displaced persons. The fifth addresses the problems caused by lack of coordination among the various international aid and reconstruction pro- grams. The sixth section assesses the prospects for a recommitment to the peace process by both the local parties and the western guarantors, and offers some policy recommendations. A concluding section emphasizes the impor- tance of U.S. leadership to the success of the peace process in Bosnia. Western Responses to the Yugoslav Wars of Dissolution The Yugoslav wars of dissolution can be seen in five phases. The first phase from 1987 to 1991-when Slobodan MiloSeviC: demonstrated his ambitions to transform Yugoslavia into a Greater Serbia-triggered independence move- ments in Slovenia and Croatia but did not engage the western powers. In the second phase, Slovenia’s relatively nonviolent secession in 1991 prompted diplomatic intervention and the creation of a monitoring mission by the Euro- pean Community (EC), which was anxious to make its mark as a foreign and security policy actor. Phase three covers Croatia’s more violent secession in 1991-92, which first engaged UN peacekeepers and triggered reluctant decla- rations of independence from Bosnia-Herzegovina. The fourth, most violent, phase spans the 1992-95 wars, in which Serbia and Croatia (and their proxies in Bosnia) sought to divide Bosnia between them. Diplomatic interventions- mostly under EC and UN auspices--continued in this phase, but had little effect until the summer of 1995 when diplomacy was finally backed by U.S. military force. Only then could the warring parties be persuaded to sign a peace settlement. The fifth phase covers the implementation of the 1995 Dayton peace agreement which, according to its main architect, former U.S. Assistant Secretary of State for European Affairs Richard C. Holbrooke, is designed to knit a divided Bosnia back together. PHASE I: FAILURE TO CURB MILOSEVIC: Western failure to prevent the violent breakup of Yugoslavia did not result from an intelligence failure. Two senior officials in the Bush administration, Assistant Secretary of State for European Affairs Lawrence Eagleburger and Downloaded from http://www.mitpressjournals.org/doi/pdf/10.1162/isec.22.3.101 by guest on 24 September 2021 International Security 22:3 I 104 National Security Adviser Brent Scowcroft, had both served in Belgrade, speak Serbo-Croatian, know MiloSevii. well, and would have kept Washington policymakers apprised of MiloSevit‘s ambitions for a Greater Serbia in the late 1980s. In October 1990 the U.S. Central Intelligence Agency shared with EC governments a report predicting civil war in Yugoslavia within twelve months! From Belgrade, then-U.S. Ambassador Warren Zimmermann warned that MiloSevii. constantly stirred up ethnic hatreds and took actions that trou- bled the other five republics. Zimmermann was particularly alarmed by the way MiloSevii. and President Franjo Tudjman of Croatia conspired against advocates of a united Yugoslavia (including President Izetbegovii.) and spoke openly about their decision in March 1991 to carve up Bosnia between a Greater Serbia and a Greater Croatia? As the Cold War drew to a close, Yugoslavia ceased to be an important pawn in the East-West competition. Nevertheless, the overwhelming preference of all western governments in the early 1990s was to keep Yugoslavia intact, primarily because dissolution would be an ominous precedent for the collapse of the Soviet Union.