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[http://www-personal.umich.edu/~rtanter/F95PS472_Papers/Faust.Derek.Bosnia
The War in Bosnia: Deterrable, or Not?
Derek Faust December 6, 1995
Political Science 472, Professor Tanter
I. Introduction
What is civil war? It is simply a war between opposing groups of citizens of the same country. Now, let's say a civil war has an ethnic or religious basis. Is it deterrable? That is the question right now involving the Republic of Bosnia-Herzegovina.
In the spring of 1992, the elected government of Bosnia-Herzegovina found itself faced with an impossible choice. The prospect of remaining part of a cockeyed Yugoslavia, dominated by Slobodan Milosevic and his extreme Serb nationalist agenda, was clearly unacceptable to the majority of Bosnia's population, while Bosnian independence was resented by Serb nationalists both within Bosnia and in Serbia.
On April 5, 1992, following the declaration of independence by Bosnia's pariliament, Yugoslav National Army (JNA) snipers and Serb nationalist militants hidden on surrounding rooftops opened fire on a crowd of citizens of Sarajevo, Serbs, Croats, and Muslims, holding a demonstration calling for peace among Bosnia's three major communities.
This initiated the civil war in Bosnia-Herzegovina between Serbs and Bosnian Muslims and Croats, which continued for nearly three and a half years until they finally were able to sit down at the bargaining table this past fall of 1995.
Throughout these three and a half years, the United Nations, the United States, and the European Union have proven to be ineffective in their efforts to broker peace in Bosnia-Herzegovina. Due to the lack of compliance in Bosnia-Herzegovina, this raises two pertinent questions:
Why did it take so long for the Serbs to come to the bargaining table? And regardless of the signing of the Dayton Peace Agreement, is this war actually deterrable?
II. The Motivation behind a Greater Serbia
For 45 years, Yugoslavia only knew one government, a Communist government. It was a government with political elites such as Slobodan Milosevic. But as Communism began its collapse in 1989, Milosevic jumped off the horse. He mounted nationalism in fear of losing his influence within the country. Leaders were pinned against each other trying to secure leadership positions as elections became prevalent.
Despite being elected President of the Republic of Serbia three separate times since the fall of Communism (Inferno, 1994.) he certainly did not feel secure.
He operated using progaganda as a means of creating a radical nationalism.
While Milosevic had been elected into power three times since 1989, he still felt insecure due to the collapse of Communism and began looking more at his losses than at his gains as prospect theory would explain. With Bosnia-Herzegovina declaring its independence, it was power that Milosevic had lost.
The bounded rationality made by Milosevic was to regain whatever power he had lost by maximizing absolute gain in Bosnia-Herzegovina. His logic behind it was a Greater Serbia in which he would use Radovan Karadzic as his puppet, who would head up the Bosnian Serbs.
But as the war progressed, it tended to seem as if Milosevic was in the basement of fear searching desperately for a window of opportunity, as he was indicted with war crimes and crimes against humanity.
III. The ethnoracial aspect
The large religious communitities played a diverse role during the pre-Communist, the Communist, and the post-Communist periods. It was said that Yugoslavia was the juncture of three great religions: Eastern Orthodoxy, Roman Catholicism, and Islam. This is not much different than Israel in the Middle East.
Shortly before the Serbian aggression began back in the spring of 1992, Bosnia-Herzegovina was comprised of approximately 44 percent Muslims, 33 percent Serbs, and 19 percent Croats. (O'Ballance, 1995.)
The leaders of each religious community tend to justify their enthusiastic and uncritical support of rising nationalism among their people. At the same time they condemn rival religious leaders for an "unholy" support of nationalism, they which they believe contributed to the outbreak of the war.
The percentage of ethnic divisions have changed drastically through the war. Serbs now comprise an estimated 40 percent of the population up seven percent. The Muslim population declined nearly 6 percent as the Croat population increased approximately 3 percent. (CIA, 1995)
Within the first months of the war, nearly 70 percent of the country fell under Serbia occupation. (Itzetbegovic, Sept. 27, 1995)
The Serbs began an ethnic cleansing process as their solution to achieving a Greater Serbia. More than 200,000 civilians had been killed while over one-fourth of the Bosnian population had been taken from their homes as had been destroyed and burnt.
Evidence started to amount of mass killings and the possible attempted genocide of the Bosnian Muslims.
With such a disregard for those of other backgrounds, ethnic cleansing would therefore be an ethnocentric form of biopolicy in which a group feels they are superior to others, (Stein, 1988) in this case it would be the Bosnian Serbs, who sit atop an hierarchy with subservient groups beneath them, which in this scenario, would be the Bosnian Muslims.
These Serbs feel an obligation to purify or rid the land that they feel they deserve of any impurities which would include Muslims. It can be said that it is almost a form of Darwin's natural selection, as the objective is for an individual to preserve its own genes.(Campbell, 1994)
The cultural evolution to such a theory dates back to 1854 and the ideas of Count Arthur de Gobineau's The Inequality of Human Races. It has horizontally evolved between individuals over time and is even prevelent in chapter 4 of volume 1 of Adolf Hitler's Mein Kampf, where he discusses "the relationship between politics and natural selection as the basis for a successful German national policy." (Stein, 1988)
IV. Involvement of the West
There has been much criticism of the United Nations and the United States for their ineffectiveness to bring about peace in a timely
fashion. The problem was not their lack of involvement, as the United Nations implemented sanctions against the former Yugoslav Republics and proposed peace repeatedly.
Before the independence of Bosnia-Herzegovina, the United Nations imposed an arms embargo on Yugoslavia in September 1991 based on Resolution 713 in an attempt to contain the fighting prior to Bosnian independence. Since Bosnia's recognition as an independent country, enforcement of this embargo against the government of Bosnia is a violation of the inherent right of self-defense, a right acknowledged in Article 51 of the U.N. Charter.
It says, "Nothing in the present Charter shall impair the inherent right of individuals or collective self-defense if an armed attack occurs against a Member of the United Nations, until the Security Council has taken measures necessary to maintain international peace and security."
While the General Assembly has made attempts to lift the embargo, the Security Council has maintained Resolution 713.
As war broke out in Bosnia, the Bosnian Army was clearly outmatched as arms were a scarcity. The Army of the so-called "Federal Republic of Yugoslavia" and the Bosnian Serb Army were very aware of the mismatch and took advantage. The deterrence by denial was preventing the Bosnian Muslims and Bosnian Croats from defending themselves.
The U.N. and the European Union (formerly the European Community) preferred to rely on negotiations as that third alternative instead of lifting the arms ban or even sending in troops. As they strived towards keeping Bosnia a single country, they presented the Vance-Owen Plan, which would have kept Bosnia-Herzegovina as one individual nation with ten semi-autonomous, ethnically-based provinces.
The plan came under scrutiny despite preserving the concept of a single federal presence withing the prewar borders of Bosnia-Herzegovina. Criticism was strong from the White House and the Clinton Administration in January 1993 "for rewarding the 'ethnic cleansing' carried out by Serbian forces as part of their territorial conquests." (Convoy, 1994) As far as strategy is concerned, the first step is to assure the adversary, in this case they were "rewarding" the Serbs by offering them "ethnic cleansed" territory.
It was beginning to become apparent that there was dissention on how to handle the the situation in Bosnia. Resolution 713 had pinned the General Assembly against the Security Council in the United Nations as the General Assembly attempted to get the arms ban lifted with no avail.
The Vance-Owen Plan brought strong criticism from the White House as the Clinton Administration disagreed with the reinforcing message it sent to the Serbs.
The only way Radovan Karadzic and the Bosnian Serbs could have viewed Western involvement was ununified. There was no resolve communicated on the part of the United Nations, United States, or even the European Union for that matter to use force, so therefore there was no reason for Karadzic to accept the Vance-Owen Plan even though Bosnian Croat leaders and the Bosnian government had accepted the plan.
Dissention is why the next step of strategy failed.
With the rejection of the Vance-Owen plan by the Bosnian Serbs, the United States threatened to lift the international arms embargo against Bosnia-Herzegovina and use NATO air strikes to stop Serbian onslaughts. Finally, the United States communicated their resolve to enforcing peace in Bosnia and Karadzic complied and accepted the plan.
But once again, there was dissention amongst the ranks as Secretary of State Warren Christopher failed to gain support from NATO allies on a "lift and strike" initiative. This resulted in the Bosnian Serbs turning and rejecting the plan which eventually died in July 1993.
In the eyes of Karadzic, the United States did not have much threat credibility. Their threat of air strikes was not supported by NATO and lifting the arms embargo would be a blatent disregard for the wishes of the Security Council. Karadzic, as well as Milosevic, learned they could very well manipulate the United States and NATO. This was evident with the consideration of the Owen-Stoltenberg Plan later that summer. Serbian President Milosevic had presented a new plan for the ethnic partition of Bosnia that was quickly accepted as the new basis for negotiations.
However, as United States and NATO threats to use air strikes faded in the in early fall 1993, the Bosnian government rejected the plan, declaring taht it would leave them with an ecomically unviable and militarily indefensible state. Serbs turned on the plan and eventually rejected it. Any kind of Serbian interest in negotiating a peace plan would loosen any stranglehold the United States and NATO may have had.
The Serbs were playing the game known affectionately as the Prisoner's Dilemma.
They would lay out the interest in negotiating peace. In essence, they were saying that they would work on a peace plan if the United States and NATO would relax their pressure. As the United States and NATO would cooperate, Karadzic and the Bosnian Serbs would defect and collect the "sucker's pay-off." They could then continue business as normal. The Bosnian Serbs could almost predict how the response was going to be which almost provides a third wave explanation as Schelling would put it.
With an attempt to implement force prior to the proposed plans, the Security Council, by Resolution 836, acting under Chapter VII of the United Nations Charter, implemented UNPROFOR II in which "all necessary means" were authorized for the delivery of humanitarian relief.
Once again, dissention hindered on the interpretation and the mission metamorphosized from one delivering humanitarian relief by all necessary means to "by all means the other parties allow us to use."
With the United Nations being very loss averse, they very well were viewed as a dog with a bark, but no bite. This begins to establish the basis for the Serb lack of cooperation to negotiate peace.
The rational decision at this point for Karadzic and Milosevic, which they had pretty much already done at this point, would be to engage in a game of chicken. The United Nations had proven they were very quick to cooperate and swerve.
The United Nations had made no progress towards bringing peace to Bosnia and resorted to coercion. For example,under Resolution 757 they imposed new sanctions on Serbia which included oil and trade embargoes, as well as other measures. They also imposed a no-fly zone under Resolution 781 which called upon all mem all member states to assist UN relief operations with "technical monitoring and other capabilities," to allow the United States to make monitoring flights over Bosnia.
Without going into every measure taken by the United Nations and the United States, what the United States and NATO needed to do was establish resolve and threat credibility. One measure took place on May 25, 1995, after an ultimatum was presented to Serb forces to surrender heavy guns and then ignored, NATO jets destroyed ammunition dumps near the nationalist Bosnian Serb stronghold of Pale in Operation DENY FLIGHT as a show of force ordered by UN peacekeepers.
Then, after the Sarajevo marketplace shelling, August 28, killing 37 Sarajevans, NATO commenced attacks under U.N. authority on Bosnian Serb military targets in Bosnia.
The attacks continued in waves throughout the beginning of September until Bosnian Serbs finally complied with U.N. demands and eventually wound up at the bargaining table in November. The result was the Dayton Peace Agreement.
By resorting to brute force, the Bosnian Serbs were presented with no other options to comply. In the process, threat credibility was established which resulted in no other option for the Bosnian Serbs than to comply. They continued to play the game of chicken despite tremendous resolve by NATO.
The Bosnian Serbs kept testing the situation by refusing to cooperate and swerve. Despite the lengthy amount of time it took to bring about compliance, in their game of chicken, the Bosnian Serbs eventually got run over.
V. Conclusion
It took nearly three and a half months for the Serbs to come to the bargaining table. Why did it take so long? The appropriate answer would be ineffective strategy.
The first step towards an effective strategy is to assure the adversary. The Serbs were assured that they would receive a percentage of the land that was part of their territorial conquest. Despite attempting to "reward" the Serbs, this measure was not successful acting alone.
The second step towards an effective strategy is to deter. Now deterence is not just the threat of military defeat, but the ability to instill fear and terror through the threat of pain, violence, and extinction. Now, while capabilities are very important, the Serbs proved it takes commitment and resolve to successfully deter. When the United States threatened to lift the international arms embargo against Bosnia and use NATO air strikes to stop Serbian offenses, Radovan Karadzic quickly accepted the Vance-Owen Plan before later rejecting it.
By communicating their resolve, they were able to successfully deter. If resolve is not communicated, the intentions and commitment can be misinterpreted such as with the case of North Korea. It was dissention between the United States, NATO, and the United Nations that caused the deterrence to be ineffective involving the Serbs. It is imperative that all parties are on the same page before any threats or sanctions are initiated.
The third step is to compel, most likely through coercion. The United Nations sent UNPROFOR II into Bosnia for humanitarian aid and to assist with peace keeping, which included the formation of safe areas and no-fly zones. The reason why Serbs still did not come to the bargaining table and continued to fight was because of the lack of threat credibility the held by the United Nations, including the United States and NATO, who would continue to back down for one reason or another from any threat.
The final step would be to induce the behavior desired through brute force. Through Operation DENY FLIGHT, the United States and NATO established threat credibility and in the process, brought all parties to the bargaining table and enabled the Dayton Peace Agreement.
Regardless of what was agreed upon in Dayton, is this ethnoreligious war deterrable? The war in Bonia-Herzegovina is deterrable but only under certain conditions. Milosevic and Karadzic have proven that the only way they will comply to sanctions, a request, or in this case, an peace agreement, is if a hegemon is looking over their shoulder. With Bill Clinton's stance on deploying 60,000 United States troops to Bosnia, they will be able to keep the Serbs from making any serious aggressions and violating the peace agreement. The United States has clearly established their resolve and their great amount of critical risk the troops will deter by denial. They are there as a lock on the door to prevent the Pandora's box from once again opening up.
Having an estimated 76 percent of Sarajevans support the Dayton accord shows there is little room for disagreement.
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