In 1991 and 1992 as Yugoslavia was beginning to rise in importance as a topic of conversation, there was great optimism on the Continent about what the European nations would now be able to do to control their own destiny. For the Cold War was over and they no longer needed, as they had for some forty-six years, the security umbrella offered by the Americans. The European Union was about to come to an end, to be replaced by the far stronger European Community. To many that signaled more than the arrival of Europe as an economic unit; it would be a political and military entity as well, one with great potential for the future of the region’s collective security. The divisions that had haunted the Continent for so long and created so many mass graves would be a thing of the past. All the energy that had been used so destructively could now be used in common cause to strengthen each other economically, socially, and, if need be, militarily. It was a heady vision. If that was true, and the Europeans seemed to think it was, then Yugoslavia could be a test case, a European issue, one handled on the Continent by people who were believed to know both the players and the territory. The great, muscular giant across the Atlantic, ever protective but equally clumsy and, often, it was believed (particularly by the French), appallingly insensitive to local nuance, the United States, need not be summoned.
Stationed in Brussels at that time, one of the more interested spectators was a senior American army officer named John Shalikashvili, an army four-star, a man who because of his unique boyhood was all too familiar with the ashes of postwar Europe. “We forget this now,” he said a few years later, “but everywhere you went in Europe in 1991 and 1992 there was this enormous optimism about what the new Europe could do, and this idealistic belief in the possibilities for the new positive forces about to be unleashed. The Europeans would handle this one, they were saying, and the Americans, who had just finished the Gulf War and were playing out their role as the overseer in the end of the Soviet empire, were only too glad to accommodate them.”
The sequence of events at this time was quite important for all parties concerned. The Berlin Wall had come down in November 1989, setting loose powerful forces that had not merely changed the map of Europe, but given it a great psychic lift about the future. Then the Gulf War had taken place, and it had been primarily an American show. The Western forces had quickly and easily triumphed, but it had not been an entirely positive experience for some of the European participants. In fact, for some it had been downright depressing. The Americans had called most of the important shots, and the role of the NATO allies had been, though they did not like to admit it publicly, somewhat marginalized. In the end, the Gulf War had brought home to many of the European nations a sense once again of their impotence on any larger security issue. They were frustrated by one more reminder of the limits of their power outside their continent when the stakes were high and the big boys—that is, the Americans and whomever their adversary was—came to play. But they were also excited about what was taking place on the Continent now that the Russian satellite regimes were falling, and Warsaw, Prague, Budapest, and East Berlin were free to be European again. If the Russians were departing, would not the Americans be far behind? Would they ever again need the Americans that badly?
Probably not, and that led to the heightened awareness of what the Europeans could do for themselves. Perhaps they did not have the muscle or the reach for the big-time stuff, a huge multinational force aimed at an outlaw nation in some distant part of the world, but now the consensus was that they could come together, on their own continent, and be a dominating force. Europe would be theirs once again. They would be, as they had not been since before World War II when they were all bitter rivals, their own guardians. They would deal with the growing crisis in the Balkans, an idea with which the Americans eagerly agreed. The American attitude was oddly passive, something that we would later regret. We signed on in advance to a policy we did not shape, in effect telling the Europeans to let us know what their policy was and we would accept it as ours. We did not try to formulate a course of action that would be palatable to everyone involved, and which would cover the darker possibilities of a breakup in Yugoslavia. What ensued therefore was quite tragic: diplomatic hopes not backed up by military muscle.
The policy was not done through NATO, or at least in conjunction with NATO, which would have brought to any agreement—or even a vision of Europe—considerable American military strength. At the time, Will Taft, technically William H. Taft IV, descendant of a long line of Republican luminaries, was the American ambassador to NATO, and he felt that NATO should be involved in any peacekeeping process in the Balkans. He understood Washington’s reluctance to take on any additional military responsibilities, but he also felt that we had played too small a role in what was subsequently decided on. We had effectively given the Europeans carte blanche to write the terms themselves, rather than trying to help shape them as a quiet partner and to come up with something with more muscle. But Washington was adamant about not getting involved. It was exhausted and overloaded by other events. If the Europeans wanted to handle this one, let them have it, and we would sign on to their decision.
Later, looking back on the events of 1991 and 1992, Dick Holbrooke, who would become a principal Clinton negotiator in the area, thought that had been the fateful error—not including NATO as the determining organization from the start, and not having the United States, in some active way, as a military guarantor of whatever decisions were made about the Balkans. The Americans, he believed, had just played a critical part in helping to create and strengthen the new post–Cold War Europe, most notably with the unification of a Germany that had remained in NATO. But now on virtually the first important question about the future of the Continent, we had decided to stand aside, to abdicate our responsibilities. Instead the critical decisions were made on the Continent by a new group, still in its infancy, which knew neither its strengths nor, far more important, its weaknesses. John Shalikashvili largely agreed. “What took place at that moment was what I would call a holiday from leadership,” he said years later, referring to the attitude of both sides—on the Continent and in America—as the crisis in Yugoslavia grew. “The Europeans were not yet up to it, and the Americans were for a variety of reasons taking time off.”1
Moreover, not everyone in Europe was on the same page. A significant difference of opinion existed about which way Yugoslavia should go, a difference of vision that was never resolved. The British and the French were pro-Serb and pro-Belgrade, with a desire to sustain, in lieu of any other attractive possibilities, the existing Yugoslav union, which was, of course, Serb-dominated. But others had a very different view of what should happen. The Germans, who were now emerging as an important force, united for the first time since 1945, sympathized with the Croats and the Slovenes, their old allies from World War II, and favored their independence. As that question was being discussed, the most important figure to emerge among the major European powers was Hans Dietrich Genscher, the German foreign minister. He was a powerful influence, not just more senior than the other foreign ministers, but “a man who seemed,” in the words of Will Taft, “to have been foreign minister back when some of the rest of them had been born.” Genscher, a formidable personality, was not a man to disagree with when he really wanted something.
The Germans were formidable players in those critical days and were determined to push for Croatian and Slovenian independence—something that most assuredly did not displease the Serb nationalists, waiting in the wings. Thereafter, having helped set these catastrophic forces in play, the Germans essentially departed the game. So be it. Cyrus Vance, the former American secretary of state, already operating in one of the many peace-seeking missions in the Balkans, had warned that independence would trigger a chain of events that would make war in Bosnia inevitable. Washington, led by Larry Eagleburger, argued vigorously with Genscher, trying to slow down the process. But the Germans had moved ahead and accelerated the timetable, yet were restrained by their own constitution from using their military in what was to come.
Why they pushed so hard at that moment was a question that puzzled their colleagues both then and later. Part of the answer was the same history that tied the French and the British to the Serbs, for the Slovenes and the Croats had been Germany’s allies twice in the great wars of the past. Another part, as Helmut Kohl, the German head of state, told the French leaders, was pressure from the large number of Croatian workers who lived in Germany and had become a strong indigenous political force. A third part was the excitement and idealism of the new Europe, something the Germans themselves had just become the beneficiary of, the belief that this chance for greater national independence and personal freedom should be shared by all. Germany itself was now being reconstituted and becoming whole, and arbitrary borders inflicted on it by conquering foreigners were being erased. Therefore, went the reasoning, why should not the same thing happen for these smaller friendly nations—historically and militarily their proxies—who had shared cultural values? To the Germans, Croatia and Slovenia were seen as legitimate countries that had a right to long-awaited independence.
The truth was, of course, that most of the Europeans, like the Americans, were quite ill-prepared for the events to come. They did not really know Yugoslavia. They knew the illusion that Tito had created, and like the Americans they had quite eagerly accepted it. As Tony Judt, the distinguished European historian, pointed out, the Tito model was unusually popular across a broad political spectrum in both Europe and America. The left liked it because Yugoslavia was as close to a success as the communist world had been able to produce in Europe, and it seemed to put a relatively humane face on European communism. If it was not exactly an economic success, it was not an obvious total failure like the rest of Eastern Europe and the Soviet system. And the political right always had a certain sympathy for Yugoslavia because Tito had broken with Moscow and negotiated a path of substantial independence.2
As events in Yugoslavia speeded up, two truths about the European Community’s attitude toward those events and the people involved would be revealed. First, the Europeans were greatly overestimating their military muscle and their ability to handle a crisis that was going to be brutal and therefore primarily military. They had been cutting back on their defense budgets as a percentage of their GNP ever since the Korean War, always content to let the United States carry the burden financially. They had been getting a cut-rate defense ride for a long time, did not realize it, and had an inflated sense of their accomplishments and abilities. As Tony Judt said, “They did not know their political-military thinking 101—that your political policy must have genuine defense underpinnings. As events in Yugoslavia deteriorated, as the crisis mounted, the Europeans had the troops and in some cases, like the British and the French, the willingness to put them in harm’s way. But they lacked the means to deliver them, the helicopters and the air cover and the other instruments of support.”3
The second truth would soon have echoes in American policy. As the Europeans became more and more aware of their lack of power in this most difficult, complicated, and treacherous area, the two most important countries, Britain and France, were at the very least Serbo-centric, and in the case of the French, particularly under François Mitterrand, Serbo-philiac. These loyalties had spanned most of the century and were the result of the French and British fear of the rise of a modern, ever more aggressive Germany. Once sworn enemies, England and France now looked fondly on each other and also wanted Russia and its Slavic friends as allies as a counterweight to the German threat.
In the two great wars of this century, the Serbs had been on the same side as the French and British. During World War I, Serbia, overrun by England’s enemies—the Germans, Austro-Hungarians, and Bulgarians—had been known in Britain almost generically as “gallant Little Serbia.”4 Then in the spring of 1941, at one of the darkest moments in the war, Winston Churchill had broadcast to the Yugoslavs, “Serbs, we know you. You were our allies in the last war, and your arms are covered with glory. Croats and Slovenes, we know your military history. For centuries you were the bulwark of Christianity. Your fame as warriors spread far and wide on the Continent . . .”5 His appeal had greater resonance with the Serbs than with the Croats; in World War II, as in its predecessor, the Croats had aligned themselves with the Germans. If anything, the Serbs’ relationship with France was even closer than with the British. The French had earlier in the century trained the Serb army and, through special purchasing incentives, essentially supplied it with French military equipment. To understand where the most important European powers stood in relation to the Balkans in 1992, it was only necessary to see where they had been in 1914 and 1940.
Technically, Washington also greatly preferred to keep Yugoslavia unified, albeit for slightly different reasons. To be sure, we had been allies with the Serbs in both wars, and there was a natural affinity there; most of our senior diplomats favored, almost without realizing it, Serb over Croat and Belgrade over Zagreb. They had spent much more time in Belgrade than Zagreb (more often than not, a few years in Belgrade and a few days in Zagreb), their closest friends were much more likely to be Serbs than Croats, and they tended to see any impulse toward Croatian independence or separatism as an irritant, which was much the same way the Serbs saw it. A good Croat, in the eyes of most Western embassies, was someone who backed the concept of a greater Yugoslavia. Anyone else was a troublemaker.
For many Westerners, the Croat cause, as the breakup of the country neared, was harmed by the Croatian leader, Franjo Tudjman, who was a truly loathsome figure capable of spouting some of the worst ethnic garbage since World War II. So Washington had a Serbo-centrist sympathy as well. That Croatia (and Slovenia) saw themselves as unitary countries with well-defined histories, cultures, and religions, all of which made them different from and therefore separate from Belgrade, was greatly underestimated in Washington as it was elsewhere.
One additional factor applied to Bosnia, a largely unspoken one, built into the subconscious rather than the overt attitudes of the European nations. The Bosnians were Muslims, and if a new Bosnian state emerged, the kind envisioned by Alija Izetbegovic, the leader of the Bosnian Muslims, some degree of past pluralism of the area notwithstanding, it could be Islamic. It might not be a fundamentalist one, and many of his constituents were what would be viewed in the Arab world as lapsed or assimilated Muslims, Europeanized men and women who drank alcohol and ate pork, but there was nonetheless an uneasiness about a Muslim state in southern Europe.
The other European nations might not see this as the Serbs did, just one more battle with the hated Turks in a war that had been going on for six hundred years, but any degree of freedom for the Bosnian Muslims seemed somehow alien. Alija Izetbegovic, after all, took his religion seriously, prayed five times a day, and seemed to have a mystical quality in his public pronouncements. Who knew how secular a leader he would turn out to be if Bosnia gained independence? Therefore in the grading system that the other Europeans used to determine their policy—a grading system based on a belief that first and foremost nothing good ever happened in the Balkans, that you had to be wary of all the different groups, that it was a dark, violent swamp where you could only be pulled down—the Serbs were favored, the Croats had their kinship with the Germans, and the Bosnian Muslims were essentially without sponsors.
Thus as the Americans and others in the West watched the heightening storm clouds gather over Yugoslavia, they saw no real upside. Slobodan Milosevic was obviously the most dangerous figure in the country. But Franjo Tudjman of Croatia was an equally ugly nationalist. Among the factors that limited empathy for him in the West was his steadfast sympathy for what seemed like a neo-Nazi ideology, his enthusiasm for what he called Aryan values, and his insistence that much of the history of the Holocaust was a hoax. “Thank God my wife is a not Jew or a Serb,” he had said during one memorable campaign speech in 1990.6
To Alija Izetbegovic of Bosnia, Tudjman was a Croatian Hitler and Milosevic a Serbian Stalin.7 “One of the reasons that it was hard to have a good policy there is how terrible all sides were,” said John Deutch, a high-ranking Defense Department official who later headed the CIA for a time. “To whom would you give a Thomas Jefferson Award? Not Milosevic certainly. And not Tudjman, equally certainly. Izetbegovic? Not a great candidate himself. The question of which one of them left to their own devices would kill the most people belonging to the other group is a good question. Probably Izetbegovic would kill the fewest, but perhaps only because he lacked the means. It took a long time for arms to get to the Bosnian Muslims.”
With Yugoslavia moving to the brink of dissolution and the potential for great violence, and with Europe wanting somehow to prevent it, but not really ready for the task, the role of the United States in 1990–92 would turn out to be crucial. Would Yugoslavia fragment into different countries? And would the dissolution be a peaceful one? Those were the questions that had defied easy answers when Larry Eagleburger had reluctantly made his way to Belgrade in February 1990, met with the various opposition leaders, argued bitterly with his onetime friend Milosevic, and somehow signaled to the Slovenians and the Croats that the United States would not stand in the way of their independence.