The validity of this widespread consensus rests primarily on the fact
that Bosnia and Herzegovina gained recognition as an independent
state in early April 1992, and that all subsequent support which
Belgrade provided to the Bosnian Serbs constituted an illegal
intervention in Bosnia's internal affairs. Yet the manner in which
independence was achieved and manner in which recognition was
accorded were themselves highly questionable. In holding a referendum
on March 1, 1992, in which a majority voted to secede from
Yugoslavia, Bosnia satisfied part of the criteria laid down by the
European Community and the United States for achieving recognition
(with the West also exacting from the Sarajevo government a declared
respect for minority rights), but the referendum, boycotted by the
Serbs, was itself a violation of the 1974 Yugoslav Constitution.
That constitution, like its predecessors, had conferred a right of
secession but made it dependent on the mutual agreement of the
nations composing Yugoslavia. It was based, that is to say, on the
notion of a concurrent majority of the constituent nations, not on
simple majoritarianism; to move to secession without the consent of
the Serbs was a plain violation of its terms.

If the act of secession was illegal within the terms of the Yugoslav
constitution, was it nevertheless legal from the standpoint of
international law? Is it now, in other words, an accepted principle
of international law that a majority of the population within a well
defined province or constituent republic, if it so wishes, has a
right to secede from an existing state? There is little to conclude
that there is. No charter, treaty, or convention confers such a
right, and for the reason that a great many states (and nearly all
those of a multi-ethnic or -religious kind) would be incapable of
maintaining themselves if such a right existed. References to the
right of self-determination in documents such as the International
Covenant on Civil and Political Rights have not been understood as
conferring a right of secession. Were the case otherwise, we would
have the inexplicable phenomenon that a large number of states had
entered a suicide pact when they signed the covenant, and no known
rule of legal interpretation would allow such an absurd construction.

These considerations establish that the recognition of Bosnia's
independence itself constituted an illegal intervention in
Yugoslavia's internal affairs, to which Belgrade had every right to
object. The contrary view may only be asserted on the debased view
that international law is whatever the United States and the Security
Council says it is and that we are free, like an Alice in the grip of
deconstructionism, to have words mean anything we like. These
considerations do not establish that Bosnia's Muslims had no justification for
their secession, but rather that the justification, if
it existed, must be based on grounds other than those of law (whether
municipal or international). Appeal must be made, in other words, to
the natural right of revolution. But as Jefferson wrote in the
Declaration of Independence, this right is not an unqualified one:
only a "long train of abuses & usurpations" can justify a decision to
throw off established government.

Ironically, it has been the advocates of large-scale intervention,
and indeed the Izetbegovic government itself, that have provided the
most persuasive evidence that Jefferson's threshold was not met in
the Bosnian case. For the picture that advocates of intervention have
drawn of the almost idyllic relations that prevailed among Serbs,
Croats, and Muslims before the war severely undercuts the view that
the Muslims had suffered the degree of oppression necessary to
justify the natural right of revolution. It would be more accurate to
say that the Muslims had a reasonable anticipation that they would
suffer such oppression if they remained within the rump Yugoslavia;
they acted, that is to say, against "tyranny anticipated" rather than
"tyranny inflicted" (just as, in fact, the American colonists had
done). That anticipation could not but appear as utterly compelling
to the majority of the Muslims; all that has happened since the war
broke out confirms it. What should draw objection, however, is the
assumption that whereas the Muslims had every reason to fear living
in a state dominated by the Serbs, the Serbs had no reason to fear
living in a state dominated by the Muslims. That assumption is
fundamentally implausible; it is, nevertheless, the unspoken
assumption of the American government's position and of the dominant
consensus in the United States regarding the origins of the war.

Shifts and Reversals

Before considering the consequences this American interpretation of
the origins of the war had on the course of events in Bosnia,
attention may first be drawn to the extremely awkward, and yet almost
entirely unremarked, position in which it placed U.S. diplomacy. By
the spring of 1992, our diplomacy was clearly directed toward the
breakup of Yugoslavian territorial integrity on the basis of
plebiscitary majorities in each of its constituent republics. Having
previously taken the position, as James Baker did in Belgrade in the
summer of 1991, that the United States favored the preservation of
Yugoslavia's territorial integrity, American diplomacy did a sharp
turn and pronounced itself in favor of Yugoslavia's partition. Once
this partition had taken place, however, we once again insisted that
the territorial integrity of the new states was something sacred and
inviolable. Having defiled the principle of territorial integrity,
the American government immediately rediscovered it in all its
purity. Thereafter, any suggestion that these new boundaries be
changed was subsequently met by the insistence, in the exasperated
voice of outraged virtue, that to do so challenged the very basis of
world order.

The reasons for this last attitude are clear. The shift in American
policy toward Yugoslavia took place immediately after the breakup of
the Soviet Union. Concerned primarily as they were with the potential
for violence that this breakup might bring, and thinking of Russia as
they considered Yugoslavia, American diplomatists searched for the
means by which that potential might be mitigated. The parallels
between the two situations, indeed, were eerily exact. Russia had her
"famous twenty nine millions" outside the mother country; Serbia had
a comparable percentage outside its borders. It seemed a sound
approach to adopt the same policy toward both. Whatever the merits of
this approach as applied to Russia, however, it was an unmitigated
disaster as applied to Yugoslavia.

The new found reverence for territorial integrity may well have
played a crucial role in triggering the conflict in Bosnia. It is
undoubtedly the case that the United States and the European
Community encouraged the Izetbegovic government to hold the
referendum on secession in the first place. It also appears to be
true that the United States encouraged Izetbegovic to reject the
cantonization formula that had been agreed upon at Lisbon, under ec
mediation, in March 1992. Izetbegovic's repudiation of this agreement
on returning to Sarajevo was the immediate trigger for the war.
Whether the Muslim leader repudiated this agreement because of
pressure from militants at home, as Glenny has said, or because he
understood America's advice to reject it as an implicit pledge of
military support, remains unclear. Given the distribution of military
power in Bosnia at the time, the only way to make sense of
Izetbegovic's decision is to assume that he did believe that the
United States would make good on his military inferiority; the
support Izetbegovic received from the United States to oppose
cantonization may well have given him the confidence to take this
fateful step. Certainly, the mournful voices coming out of Sarajevo
once the war broke out attest to a sense of deep betrayal on the part
of the Muslims.

The war may have occurred in any event. The Lisbon formula was vague
in crucial respects, and contained no agreement respecting the
boundaries of the three cantons. Extremists on all sides were certain
to raise formidable objections to it. Whatever weight its rejection
is assigned in bringing on the war, however, cannot detract from the
judgment that American diplomats acted in an extremely irresponsible
manner if, as reported, they advised Izetbegovic to reject the Lisbon
formula. If war was to be averted, an agreement respecting
cantonization was the last step at which it might have been. That the
United States both encouraged the Muslims to take the steps that led
toward war, and then subsequently abandoned them once the war broke
out, is a damning indictment of American diplomacy--and one,
moreover, that is likely to receive the assent of virtually all sides
in the debate over intervention. Either we should not have encouraged
them or we should not have abandoned them; it is difficult to think
of a plausible defense for having done both.

Once fighting started, the understanding of the war that attributed
it fundamentally to Serbian aggression had an equally bad effect on
the diplomatic posture the United States adopted towards settling it.
The passions and hatreds unleashed by the war were such that
territorial partition almost immediately became the only basis on
which a compromise settlement might be reached. Yet the United States
consistently opposed all such proposals. A compromise settlement was
ruled out by the terms of the UN resolution passed in late May 1992,
under American prompting, which called for the disarmament of all
irregular forces and the withdrawal of the Yugoslav federal army
(JNA) from Bosnian territory. Only one reading of these resolutions
was possible, and this was that they required as a condition for
lifting the sanctions imposed on Serbia the establishment of the
police power by the Sarajevo government over the whole territory of
Bosnia and Herzegovina. Thereafter, the Bush administration opposed
the interest expressed by London and Paris in a territorial partition
before the August 1992 London conference. The incoming Clinton
administration's opposition to the Vance-Owen plan was of a piece
with this policy. The American interpretation of the war as one of
Serbian aggression has made any compromise settlement vulnerable to
the charge of rewarding aggression. As such, it precluded a
negotiated settlement, and made it inevitable that the war would be
decided by sheer military power.

Essay Types: Essay