The Chomsky Documentation Project

[Seth Ackerman]

Brad DeLong wrote:

> 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