Ethical Foreign Policy?: Us Humanitarian Interventions by Chih-Hann Chang

Author:Chih-Hann Chang [Chang, Chih-Hann]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Political Science, Human Rights
ISBN: 9781317141556
Google: afQoDAAAQBAJ
Goodreads: 30203275
Publisher: Routledge
Published: 2011-06-01T00:00:00+00:00

5.1.2 Decision-making Stage 2: June 1993-April 1995

In June 1993, the administration moved to accept the partition of Bosnia into three ethnically-based states proposed by President Franjo Tudjman of Croatia and President Slobodan Milosevic of Serbia, which would allow the Serbs to keep the territory they seized by force if Bosnian Muslims and Croats agreed.62 The three-way partition plan was then promoted by EC Representative Lord Owen and UN Representative Thorvald Stoltenberg. The Owen-Stoltenberg proposal called for the division of Bosnia into the three constituent entities leaving only a loose federation as central authority. It granted the possibility for future reunification between the Bosnian Serbs and Serbia and the Bosnian Croats and Croatia. However, the Bosnian leaders opposed the plan and warned that it would reward aggression.63

In early July, the TV pictures of the deteriorating humanitarian situation in and around Sarajevo made Bosnia return to the headlines. Clinton’s foreign policy team suggested that the use of air power in the service of diplomacy would be necessary to end the siege of Sarajevo and to force the Serbs into peace negotiations and cease-fire agreements.64 At the end of the month, Clinton wrote to NATO heads of state and government, saying: “The Serbs’ efforts to strangle the city of Sarajevo – through continued artillery attacks, military offensives, and cut-offs of food, water and fuel – had reached a critical point, threatening a humanitarian disaster and undermining prospects for the negotiations.” He suggested “putting NATO air power in the service of diplomacy” that is to say, using air strikes, if necessary, “to relieve the siege of Sarajevo and to promote a peaceful settlement at the Geneva talks”. On 2 August, the North Atlantic Council (NAC) meeting confirmed the view from Washington that the situation in Bosnia was “unacceptable”.65 The Allies agreed to undertake air strikes against the Serbs and reached a “dual-key” agreement, in which the use of air strikes should be authorized by the UN Security Council and the NAC.66 In February 1994, due to the shelling of Sarajevo’s marketplace and the violation of the no-fly zone by Bosnian Serbs, NATO, with the approval of the UN, conducted a series of air strikes. It was the first military action in the 44-year history of the alliance. “We have an interest in showing that NATO, history’s greatest military alliance, remains a credible force for peace in post-cold-war Europe,” Clinton said.67

At the same time, Congress pushed for a unilateral lifting of the UN arms embargo, a move strongly backed by Dole. Despite support for lifting the embargo, most of Congress still opposed the possibility of direct US military involvement. “They wanted a ‘free lunch’: to help the Muslims militarily and to keep the United States out,” Zimmermann described.68 Clinton considered that NATO had just received the green light for air strikes, and a unilateral abandonment of the Bosnian embargo would be used as an excuse to disregard the embargoes the US supported in Haiti, Libya, and Iraq.69 Moreover, as Taylor Branch described, “’Unilateral lift’ was a euphemism for violating the embargo.

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