The Balkan Traces of a Bulldozer

Richard Hollbrooke came up with a dark scenario, in which Macedonia falls apart and Bulgaria bites a piece out of it with a great appetite. This statement triggered a storm: the Bulgarian diplomacy asked the Department of State for a formal apology and the Prime Minister at the time, Ivan Kostov, explained the American diplomat’s prediction with the idea that “he was a good friend of Milosevic.”

This moment was full of tension, since the situation in Kosovo was already creating conflicts that would cause the division of the Serbian enclave ten years later. According to predictions, the war was going to spread all the way to Macedonia – something that did indeed happen later. The reaction in Sofia, however, was hysterical. Thus with just one shot, the troubleshooter in American diplomacy brought to the surface all the Bulgarian complexes resulting from years of historical dissatisfaction, insecurity, and extreme alertness to the statements of foreign authors.

At the Balkans, conspiracy theories are never out of fashion. Richard Hollbrooke’s shuttle during the 90s caused many conspiracy theories. Mohamed Sacirbey, Bosnian ambassador at the UN between 1992 and 2000, was the first to officially claim that in 1996 the USA had promised Radovan Karadzic informal immunity at the cost of his withdrawal from politics. After he was arrested in July 2008, Karadzic himself, together with his former councellor Kosta Cavoski , began talking about such negotiations with Hollbrooke that were conducted in Slobodan Milosevic’s presence. Of course, Hollbrooke denied these accusations and qualified them as absurd and ugly. What is more, he was pointing at Holland, Great Britain, and France and was blaming them for having negotiated in 1995 with the commander of Bosnian Serb military force (Ratko Mladic) to prevent NATO’s air strike until the Dutch blue helmets withdrew from Srebrenica. Who know if one day WikiLeaks won’t have the final word on that?

After the failure of the peace-building strategy “Vance-Owen” in May 1993, the USA finally decided to interfere in the Bosnian drama. On February 28, 1994 American air forces, carrying out a mission within NATO’s Operation Deny Flight, took down six of the Bosnian Serb army’s aircraft above Banja Luka. In July, the new Assistant Secretary of State Holbrooke came into power. He had the same role in the administration of Jimmy Carter. He immediately started dealing with the Bosnian crisis. Ironically, Holbrooke continued the task of his predecessor and former mentor, Cyrus Vance. The two were together at the negotiations with Northern Vietnam, held in Paris in 1969, negotiations that did not lead the military actions to an end.

Hollbrooke was definitely the person for the task. The US Secretary of State at the time, Warren Christopher, was famous for eating chocolate sweets with a knife and fork. Hollbrooke, on the other side, can drink alchohol for hours. Although he talked in an inflated manner, he knew that diplomacy had its limits and that it was rather hard to set overly ambitious goals; as a young analyst he wrote the first volume of the Pentagon’s documents that described how the U.S. is failing in the war with Vietnam.

The interference in Bosnia and Herzegovina followed both humanitarian and practical objectives, ending the gross abuse of human rights but also establishing a stable political order dependent upon the existing political interests and realms. In simpler words, forcing Milosevic and the Bosnian Serbs to sit and start negotiations was accomplished through the method of diplomacy and through the ‘stick’ method (NATO’s military strikes and a direct military help for Bosnians and Croats). Other means included turning a blind eye to the authoritarian regimes of Franjo Tudjman (Washington’s informal supporter) and Slobo (the Balkan version of Machiavelli who was ready to become associates with anyone who would help him preserve his power). The Dayton accord is a mere reflection of this approach. Even today Bosnian politicians like Haris Siladzic blame the West (Hollbrooke in particular) for making The Republic of Serbia possible. Others are unhappy about the decentralization in the government’s structure resulting from the Dayton accord.

Facts, however, speak for themselves. For better or for worse, Dayton put an end to the war. Without any doubt, that remained the greatest achievement in Holbrooke’s professional career.

All experienced diplomats know that seeking to accomplish the maximum often leads to failure. In the name of pragmatism and for the sake of the Balkan Realpolitik, the Dayton negotiations ignored Kosovo. Three years later, in 1998, it became clear that the idea of balance was just ephemeral. The conflicts between the Army’s efforts to free Kosovo and the Serbian military forces escalated and brought up the idea of a new intervention by the West. As Clinton’s special delegate in the Balkans, Holbrooke was once again a frequent visitor to Belgrade, but his efforts to achieve a compromise were futile. It was he that gave Milosevic the NATO ultimatum on March 24, 1999 that started the intervention of the Alliance. The rest is already history.

Today, the so-called West Balkans have turned their backs on the conflicts of the nineties. Without the considerable involvement of the West, represented by NATO and the EU, permanent peace would still be out of the question. This involvement has its roots in the actions of Clinton’s administration. The bulldozer’s traces will be visible in the region for a long time.