> And I still want to know what the "cynical reasons" were supposed to
> be?
After the Berlin Wall fell, it became very popular for Europeans to talk about building a post-Cold War security architecture outside of NATO, independent of US leadership. "This is the hour of Europe, not the hour of the Americans," it was said. That deeply worried both Bush and Clinton.
Bush officials quickly came to see the Bosnian war as "a defining moment on what kind of European security system we are going to have" (quoting my 5/92 NYT article). For 50 years, the US had the final say on any important European security issue. Now the Europeans were trying to exclude Washington from the decision-making by setting up the EC-UN International Conference on the former Yugoslavia.
Clinton officials saw the ICFY as a test case of Europe's pretensions to an "independent" security system. Therefore, they wanted it to fail.
Clinton's director of policy planning at the Pentagon, Paul Gebhard, wrote: "The EC claimed the lead in setting Western policy at the start of the Yugoslav crisis...The West Europeans were trying to develop 'a European Security and Defence Identity in the WEU outside NATO. US criticism of European institutions, however, can only be credible **** if European policies are unsuccessful.*****'"
The US supported the Bosnian Muslims so that they could resist European peace initiatives and thus cause them to fail. That is the "cynical reason." And it was very cynical. But it worked. In 1992, the Bosnians reluctantly signed onto the EC's Lisbon peace plan. But the US ambassador, William Zimmerman, persuaded them to unsign, promising that the US would help them get a better deal. In 1993, the Muslims came very close to signing on to the ICFY's Vance-Owen plan. But they again backed out when the US told them it would support them if they held out.
Gebhard explains: "Vance and Owen argued that the deal.....was the best that could be crafted (implying that US participation would not have produced a better deal for the Muslims)...Without its participation, the Clinton administration was not committed politically to the plan....."
He concludes: "Because of the situation in Bosnia, the EC was unable to set the agenda for European security without the full participation of the United States....The political influence and military power of the US remain essential to security arrangements in Europe."
The problem was that between 1992 and 1995, the US was straddling two untenable policies. It opposed all "European" peace initiatives, but in the meantime it didn't have the stomach to put forward any peace initiatives of its own (along with the requisite peacekeepers, airstrikes, money, etc.). This is the "failure of will" Pugliese keeps talking about. It produced three years of progressively worsening relations with the Europeans. It was not a sustainable policy. The US could not go on forever sabotaging European plans and never coming up with its own plan.
So Clinton finally swallowed his fears and put forward his own plan, which resulted in Dayton. Yes, it was risky for him to intervene in a bloody ethnic war in a country with zero inherent strategic value, but the alternatives were worse: Giving up on a US-led NATO by acquiescing in a European-imposed settlement, or poisoning transatlantic relations by forever sabotaging European efforts without coming up with a constructive policy of his own.
Seth