1995
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At Dayton, though, the Americans found him to be engaging, accessible, flexible, and savvy. He effectively sidelined the Bosnian Serb representatives and treated them with contempt. They lurked at the fringes of the talks, suspicious of what was going on but kept in the dark, and mostly ignored.114 In the decisive moments at Dayton, it was Milošević who made the concessions.
On the eighteenth day of the talks, Milošević unexpectedly capitulated and conceded control of Sarajevo to the Muslim-Croat Federation. He rejected a partitioned city or a federalized solution, à la Washington, D.C. “Izetbegovic has earned Sarajevo by not abandoning it,” Milošević told the Americans. “He’s one tough guy. It’s his.”115 It was a major and surprising concession. Taking Sarajevo had been a major objective of the Bosnian Serbs since the war began, and now, astoundingly, Milošević was giving it away. He subsequently agreed to give up the Serb-controlled suburbs of Sarajevo as well.116
Ironically, the concessions on Sarajevo and on the land corridor to Goražde had complicated the task of establishing the 51/49 territorial split. Milošević’s concessions on Sarajevo and the Goražde corridor had altered the ratio to 55/45. To achieve the 51/49 split, the Muslims and Croats would have to cede territory to the Bosnian Serbs.117 The prospect was not an agreeable one.
Matters looked bleak indeed as the midnight deadline approached on November 19, and Holbrooke asked for a look at the so-called “failure statement” that the Americans had prepared as a contingency and would release should the talks break down. Holbrooke looked it over and found it too tepid. It is not “final” enough, he said, tossing the statement into the air. As the pages fluttered down in the Americans’ conference room, the chief U.S. negotiator began dictating a blunt and more downbeat statement to the State Department speechwriter, Tom Malinowski. This remarkable, late-night scene was recounted by Chollet in The Road to the Dayton Accords:
Standing over a computer, a visibly tired and agitated (and some thought crazed) Holbrooke dictated the language to Malinowski while the other Americans looked on in astonishment. His redraft reflected the frustration of the moment. “To put it simply,” his statement concluded, “we gave it our best shot. By their failure to agree, the parties have made it very clear that further U.S. efforts to negotiate a settlement would be fruitless. Accordingly, today marks the end of this initiative . . . the special role we have played in recent months is over. The leaders here today must live with the consequences of their failure.”118
The high-tide, low-tide dynamic that Kerrick had noted a few days earlier soon reasserted itself. As Holbrooke reworked the draft failure statement, Milošević and Silajdžić were meeting to discuss ways of achieving the 51/49 territorial split. They landed on an idea of ceding an egg-shaped swath of thinly populated, mountainous territory in western Bosnia to the Serbs. It would be enough to reach the 51/49 division. They went to the American conference room to describe their handiwork. It was about 4 a.m. and, suddenly, resolution of the major obstacle of the negotiation seemed at hand. Christopher, who had returned to Dayton for the end of the talks, took a bottle of California white chardonnay wine from his private reserve and opened it to toast the apparent breakthrough.119
Izetbegović was summoned, and the Bosnian president arrived wearing a coat over his nightshirt. He seemed cool to the tentative deal. The Croat foreign minister, Mate Granić, also was awakened and called to the conference room. He immediately asked to see the map showing the territorial division that Milošević and Silajdžić were proposing. Granić scanned it and exploded. “Impossible, impossible,” he shouted. “Zero point zero zero percent chance my president [Tuđman] will accept this!”120 Silajdžić had proposed to give away land that the Croat military had won in the summer offensive, and Croat officials would have none of that. Izetbegović spoke up, saying he would side with his nominal Croat allies and oppose the compromise that Silajdžić, his country’s prime minister, had developed with Milošević. Silajdžić glared at Izetbegović and stormed from the conference room, shouting, “I can’t take this anymore.”121 The deal had lasted all of thirty-seven minutes.
The Americans’ midnight deadline had long since passed, and Holbrooke and Christopher agreed to give the talks one more day. Progress had been made on many other issues, and they asked Clinton to weigh in on the 51/49 conundrum. The president telephoned Tuđman, encouraging him to cede the territory needed to reach the 51/49 split. Tuđman was willing, but the Bosnians also would have to give up some territory for a deal to be struck. The Bosnians seemed reluctant. Finally, late on November 20, Christopher presented Izetbegović with an ultimatum: accept the revisions for the 51/49 split as well as the other agreements reached at Dayton, or the talks would be over. Raising his voice as he seldom did, Christopher told Izetbegović that almost everything the Bosnians had sought had been achieved in the talks.122 He gave Izetbegović an hour to decide.
Shortly before midnight, Izetbegović sent word that the Bosnians would yield enough territory to the Serbs to close the deal—provided that Brčko, a strategic town in northeast Bosnia, be included in the Muslim-Croat Federation.123 This was a new and thoroughly unwelcome eleventh-hour demand. The town stood astride a narrow corridor that connected the western and eastern segments of the Serb republic in Bosnia. Brčko’s fate, as far as the Americans were concerned, had already been decided: the Serbs were to have it.124 The demand for Brčko, Christopher thought, was at last the deal-breaker: he suspected Milošević would never accept Izetbegović’s demand and further suspected the Bosnians wanted “to avoid coming to grips with the end game” at Dayton.125 In other words, they were not opposed to the talks ending in collapse.
In the early hours of November 21, Christopher went to bed thinking the talks were on the brink of failure.126 The failure statement—revised and toned down from Holbrooke’s draft of twenty-four hours earlier—was distributed to the Bosnians, Croats, and Serbs.127 Milošević was incredulous, telling the American representatives who delivered the statement: “You’re the United States. You can’t let the Bosnians push you around this way. Just tell them what to do.”128 No, they told him, it is up to you to bring the others around.129
Not long after sunrise on the snowy morning of November 21, Milošević went to see Tuđman, suggesting the Serbs and Croats sign a peace agreement at Dayton while allowing the Bosnians to sign later. Such a tactic, Milošević figured, would exert great pressure on Izetbegović and the Bosnian team. Milošević went to the U.S. quarters to present the idea. He arrived just as Holbrooke had convened what was to be the delegation’s close-out meeting. He and Christopher broke away from the meeting to speak privately with Milošević. An agreement without endorsement of all parties was impossible, they told him. If a three-way deal agreement could not be concluded, the talks would be shut down.130 In any case, Christopher said, a two-sided deal would not be legally binding.131
Milošević had a final card to play: he proposed sending the question of Brčko’s sovereignty to international arbitration. Once again, Milošević had yielded. In doing so, he cleared away the last obstacle to a deal. Holbrooke and Christopher took the arbitration proposal to Tuđman, who backed it, saying, “Get peace. Get peace now! Make Izetbegovic agree.”132 The Americans went to the Bosnians’ quarters, outlined Milošević’s offer, and demanded an immediate answer. After a lengthy pause, Izetbegović spoke, saying it was not a just peace “but my people need peace.” Which meant he had at last agreed.133 Fearing that the Bosnians might again raise fresh demands, Holbrooke whispered to Christopher, “Let’s get out of here fast.”134 They called Clinton with the news of a deal, and shortly before noon on November 21, the president stepped into the Rose Garden to announce the agreement. “American Exceptionalism” infused his remarks, especially those devoted to the deployment of 20,000 American troops as part of the international peacekeeping force to go to Bosnia. Clinton declared:
Now that the parties to the war have made a serious commitment to peace, we must help th
em to make it work. All the parties have asked for a strong international force to supervise the separation of forces and to give them confidence that each side will live up to their agreements. Only NATO can do that job. And the United States as NATO’s leader must play an essential role in this mission. Without us, the hard-won peace would be lost, the war would resume, the slaughter of innocents would begin again, and the conflict that already has claimed so many people could spread like poison throughout the entire region. We are at a decisive moment. The parties have chosen peace. America must choose peace as well.135
The Dayton accords—known formally as the “General Framework Agreement for Peace in Bosnia and Herzegovina”—covered 165 pages and included 12 annexes and 102 maps. It was comprehensive, or nearly so, embracing the 51/49 territorial split between the Muslim-Croat Federation and Republika Srpska.136 It also affirmed Bosnia’s international borders, set forth a constitution for the country, and specified that people displaced by the war could return to their homes. It established a central bank and single currency, and it obliged the parties to abide by the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia, which had been established at The Hague in 1993. The agreement would be enforced by an Implementation Force (or IFOR), consisting of 60,000 NATO-led troops, one-third of whom would be American.
The three Balkan leaders initialed the accords on the afternoon of November 21 in the B-29 Super Fortress conference room where the talks had begun so awkwardly three weeks before. Clinton thought of traveling to Dayton to attend the initialing ceremony, but Holbrooke dissuaded him, saying, “You don’t want to be anywhere near these people today. They are wild and they don’t deserve a presidential visit.”137
The accords were signed in mid-December at Elysée Palace, the official residence in Paris of the French president. In a bit of Gallic pique, the French Foreign Ministry referred to the agreement as the Treaty of the Elysée and, according to Holbrooke, asked speakers at the signing ceremony “to omit any references to Dayton in their remarks.”138 As Holbrooke noted, the Dayton accords had shaken “the leadership elite of post–Cold War Europe” and “some European officials were embarrassed that American involvement had been necessary” to bring the Bosnian conflict to a close.139 Izetbegović, Milošević, and Tuđman played to form in Paris. “There were no tears of relief, no emotional scenes of reconciliation” from any of them, the New York Times reported. “They signed without saying a word, put the caps back on their fountain pens and shook hands perfunctorily.”140 The treaty, Izetbegović said, was akin to swallowing bitter medicine.141
FIGURE 18. Three Balkan presidents initialed the Dayton peace accords on the afternoon of November 21, 1995, hours after the talks were rescued from collapse. The leaders were, seated from left, Slobodan Milošević of Serbia, Alija Izetbegović of Bosnia, and Franjo Tuđman of Croatia. (Photo credit: Brian Schlumbohm)
The Dayton accords in many ways reflected the complexities, fragility, and contradictions that define the Balkans. The agreement was not without serious shortcomings; its flaws were unmistakable. It was, notably, inherently contradictory, containing elements that encouraged integration of Bosnia’s ethnicities as well as elements that served to drive them apart. The fundamental tension lay in the fact that the accords established a weak central government and two semi-autonomous entities shaped by ethnicity. Both entities—the Muslim-Croat Federation and the Republika Srpska—were granted their own governing structure, parliament, police force, and state agencies. To critics, that looked a lot like partition beneath the fig leaf of a weak unitary government.142 It hardly seemed to be a formula for developing a thriving, multiethnic state.
Moreover, the agreement rewarded Bosnian Serb aggression. Republika Srpska controlled just under half of the territory of Bosnia; before the war, the Serbs had controlled about a third of Bosnian territory. The Dayton accords also permitted the three once-warring parties in Bosnia to retain their respective armies.143 One country, two entities, three armies: these, too, were hardly the ingredients of a sturdy peace. Ted Galen Carpenter, a foreign policy expert at the Cato Institute, a libertarian think tank in Washington, D.C., wrote that the “American-inspired peace plan is one of those convoluted enterprises that habitually enchant diplomats but have no connection to reality.”144 He further wrote that a Bosnia “with two political heads may be theoretically innovative, but it is utterly impractical.”145 In fact, the Bosnian state could be said to have three political heads: a three-person presidency that included two members from the Muslim-Croat Federation and one from the Serb republic. “American diplomacy kept Bosnia whole,” said one critic, “by stitching it together like Frankenstein’s monster.”146
Nevertheless, the foremost priority of the Dayton negotiations had been to end the bloodshed in Bosnia, and in that central objective the talks were a success147—perhaps even “a remarkable achievement,” as Stephen Sestanovich has written.148 A war that claimed 100,000 lives has not flared again. A peace that seemed wobbly, even coerced, has held. That outcome can be attributed in measure to the presence of the NATO-led IFOR contingent in Bosnia. IFOR included 20,000 U.S. troops, and sending them to Bosnia represented for Americans the single most controversial element of the Dayton accords.
A clear majority of Americans opposed committing U.S. forces to Bosnia as part of the IFOR peacekeeping force.149 The Pentagon was not enthusiastic about the troop deployment, either, fearing that Bosnia could turn into a bloody quagmire, akin to that of Vietnam.150 “In their hearts,” Holbrooke wrote, “American military leaders would have preferred not to send American forces to Bosnia.”151 Large numbers of body bags, Holbrooke later said, “had been prepared for the casualties that the Pentagon believed were certain to come” in Bosnia.152
In addressing the unease about troop commitments to Bosnia, Clinton turned again to “American Exceptionalism.” He did not invoke the phrase, but his meaning was clear enough. In a televised address at the end of November, Clinton dismissed arguments that the United States had no vital interests in the Balkans and promised that the U.S. troop deployment would be “limited, focused, and under the command of an American general. In fulfilling this mission,” the president said, “we will have the chance to help stop the killing of innocent civilians . . . and at the same time to bring stability to central Europe—a region of the world that is vital to our national interests. It is the right thing to do.”153 American leadership, he said, had “created a chance to secure the peace and stop the suffering” in Bosnia. “Securing peace in Bosnia will also help to build a free and stable Europe. Bosnia lies at the very heart of Europe, next door to many of its fragile new democracies and some of our closest allies.”
If U.S. troops were not deployed to help keep the peace in Bosnia, Clinton said, then NATO “will not be there. The peace will collapse, the war will reignite, the slaughter of innocents will begin again. A conflict that already has claimed so many victims, could spread like poison throughout the region, eat away at Europe’s stability and erode our partnership with our European allies. And America’s commitment to leadership will be questioned, if we refuse to participate in implementing a peace agreement we brokered right here in the United States.”154 Clinton acknowledged that the United States “can’t do everything” to keep peace in the world, “but we must do what we can. There are times and places where our leadership can mean the difference between peace and war and where we can defend our fundamental values as a people and serve our most basic strategic interests.” There are, he said, “still times when America and America alone can and should make the difference for peace. The terrible war in Bosnia is such a case. Nowhere today is the need for American leadership more stark or more immediate than in Bosnia.”155
Clinton closed by saying that the “people of Bosnia, our NATO allies and people all around the world are now looking to America for leadership. So let us lead. That is our responsibility as Americans.”156 It was not necessarily an electrifying speech, not a rousing stateme
nt of doctrine. Nor was it Kennedyesque in pledging that America would “pay any price, bear any burden, [or] meet any hardship.” But the speech was striking for its unmistakable if tacit embrace of “American Exceptionalism” and for its assertion of muscularity in U.S. foreign policy. It signaled a renewed interventionist ethos for the United States as the “indispensable nation.”157 Clinton invoked that sentiment on other prominent occasions—in accepting the Democratic Party’s nomination for a second term, for example,158 and in celebrating his reelection to the presidency.159 Madeleine Albright, who succeeded Christopher as secretary of state in Clinton’s second term, was even more assertive in her rhetoric, declaring in 1998: “We are the indispensable nation. We stand tall. We see further into the future” than other countries.160
In some respects, to assert “American Exceptionalism” in 1995 was to assert the obvious: the United States was no longer confronted by a rival superpower; the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991 had left a world in which the United States, alone, could project military might around the globe.161 Still, the memories of the quagmire of Vietnam and of the more recent disaster in Somalia placed a significant brake on U.S. interventions. Vietnam and Somalia, as Holbrooke noted, still “hung like dark clouds over the Pentagon.”162 They created what he referred to as the “Vietmalia syndrome,”163 a decided reluctance to commit U.S. forces to distant lands. U.S. casualties were a dread prospect, which served in 1995 to restrain American ambitions and interventions abroad.
U.S. forces began deploying to Bosnia at the end of 1995 as part of the IFOR contingent. The U.S. troop presence was supposed to last a year. As it turned out, the last U.S. troops did not leave Bosnia until 2004.164 During that time, there was not one U.S. fatality in hostile action in Bosnia—a wholly unanticipated outcome.165 The feared quagmire did not open in Bosnia, and that country was not again convulsed by war.