NATO in the Bosnian War - Coursework Example

NATO in the Bosnian War Introduction As trans-national armed conflict, the Bosnian War lasted between 1992 and 1995 and resulted in the deaths of approximately 100,000 people majority of who were Bosniaks. NATO’s Implementation Force was deployed to Bosnia in late 1995 with the main goal of implementing and overseeing the General Framework Agreement for Peace, particularly its military aspect. The UNSC in February 1992 passed Resolution 743, which led to the creation of the UN Protection Force whose mandate was to deliver humanitarian aid and protect the population in Bosnia till the conflict abated (Zagorcheva, 2012: p22). However, after popular pressure from European and American quarters, the UN asked NATO to intervene following war crime allegations against civilians. This was NATO’s first major operation in crisis response, comprising of several actions undertaken to establish and preserve peace. While initially beginning as a symbolic, political intervention, NATO’s operations expanded gradually to include large scale manpower and air attack interventions until the Dayton Peace Agreement was signed and implemented (Hurd, 2011: p33). This paper will explore the role NATO played in the Bosnian War, the obstacles it faced, its successes and failures, and how NATO could have improved its operations at the time. The Role of NATO during the Bosnian War The role that NATO played in the Bosnian War was made up of various actions undertaken both during and after the War to establish and then preserve peace, through the NATO-stabilisation and NATO-Implementation Forces respectively. The organisation’s first involvement in the conflict was in 1992, during which the alliance issued statements to the effect that belligerents in the Bosnian conflict should allow the deployment of peacekeepers from the UN.NATO foreign ministers initially agreed in 1992 in Helsinki to aid the UN in ensuring that sanctions by the UNSC were monitored and complied with (Woodward, 2013: p1176). As a result, the ministers commenced Operation Maritime Monitor in coordination with the Western EU-led Operation Sharp Vigilance. This was expanded to also include Operation Sky Monitoring after the UNSC established a no-fly zone in Bosnia, which was to ensure unauthorized flights, did not occur over Bosnia during the war. Operation Maritime Monitor was then deactivated in November 1992 and Operation Maritime Guard was initiated, which was more of an enforcement mission than monitoring mission. In addition, the NATO in 1993 also deactivated Operation Sky Monitoring with Operation Deny Flight, which involved the use of fighter aircraft to enforce, rather than monitor, the no-fly zone (Allin, 2014: p34). NATO’s role in the Bosnian War grew gradually throughout 1993 with Operation Deny Flight’s aircraft power supporting the UN Protection Force, while Operation Sharp Guard replaced Operation Maritime Guard after being joined up with the Western EU naval activities to enhance enforcement capabilities (Aybet & Bieber, 2011: p1918). Operation Deny Flight played a key role in the Bosnian War, with the Banja Luka air battle and the Goražde ground bombings in 1994 marking a turning-point in the conflict and affirming NATO as post-Cold War power. Operation Deny Flight played an important role in preventing any side of the conflict from using significant airpower during the War. The air operations continued into early 1995 and after an American fighter pilot was shot down during Operation Deny Flight, there were increased calls for more aggressive actions by NATO to degrade the Serb Army’s anti-aircraft capacity. However, NATO’s consequent actions were forced by the Srebrenica massacre in mid-1995, during which Bosnian Serbs killed approximately 8,000 people. During the London Conference, the UN gave NATO the authority to launch large-scale airstrikes as a response to future Serb acts of aggression without having to consult civilian UN officials (Aybet & Bieber, 2011: p1919). Following the Srebrenica massacre and the subsequent declarations at the London Conference, a new and aggressive air campaign was launched by NATO against the Army of the Bosnian Serbs. More specifically, following the bombings in a Sarajevo marketplace in August 1995 after Serb forces launched shell attacks that killed close to 40 people, Operation Deliberate Force was launched by NATO in retaliation (Trenta, 2014: p77). In September, NATO officially set Operation Deliberate Force by conducting large-scale air bombings against Serb installations and targets. These bombings occurred during the entire month of September and targeted at least 338 Serb Army targets. The main role of Operation Deliberate Force, which was conducted in collaboration with the UN Protection Force, was to degrade and undermine the Bosnian Serb Army’s military capabilities. This was particularly needed after attacks during the Markale and Srebrenica massacres, which attacked safe areas designated by the UN. Operation Deliberate Force involved 5,000 NATO personnel and 400 aircraft, in which over 1,000 bombs were dropped on Bosnian Serb targets (Trenta, 2014: p78). NATO’s Operation Deliberate Force also played an important role in aiding military offensives by the Croatian Defence Council, the Army of the Bosnia and Herzegovina Republic, and the Croatian Army in Western Bosnia. Operation Deliberate Force was largely responsible for battlefield changes as the Croatian and Bosnian/Herzegovina Republic Armies made substantial gains, with Bosnian Serb military capabilities were severely undermined (Cain et al., 2006: p48). This led to different sides in the Bosnian War meeting in Dayton, Ohio and signing a peace treaty; the Dayton Accords in November of 1995. NATO, which was the major mediator during the peace agreement negotiations, agreed to provide at least 60,000 peacekeeping personnel in Bosnia and the Balkans as part of the NATO-led Implementation Force that was to monitor the peace treaty. These forces were deployed by NATO under the new Operation Joint Endeavour, which was the first time that U.S. and Russian soldiers were sharing a common mission since WII. These forces stayed in Bosnia until December 1996, after which the operation’s remaining soldiers were transferred to the NATO Stabilisation Force. The main role of NATO under Operation Joint Endeavour and the Stabilisation Force was to establish a central government in Bosnia, end hostilities, capture individuals suspected of war crimes, and authorise civilian and military programs under the Dayton Peace Accords (Cain et al., 2006: p49). The NATO Stabilisation Force ended its operations in Bosnia in 2004. Obstacles facing NATO in the Bosnian War NATO faced its biggest obstacle during the Bosnian War in relation to recurrent quarrels between its American and European partners, as well as with the Russian Federation, which led to delayed actions that caused the deaths of thousands of Bosniaks. Generally, the European NATO members felt that more inclined to intervene in Bosnia and had sent the bulk of peacekeeping forces under the UN Protection Force, while also acting as the sponsors of initial negotiations (Surovell, 2012: p297). However, the NTO European partners had only started debating their common security and foreign policy, which meant that they neither had the required decision-making institutional mechanisms nor the means. As such, European NATO partners did not have the willingness or capabilities to pursue peace enforcement alone. On the other hand, the US did not have any troops stationed in the area, which meant that they were freer to demand more idealistic and higher standards for conflict settlement without that allowed for the Muslim-dominated government in Sarajevo to become militarized with additional air support from the US (Surovell, 2012: p297). However, this was resented by its European NATO partners since it blocked any attempts to reach a negotiated agreement. When the US and European NATO partners finally came to an agreement on how to confront the warring parties in a unified manner that envisaged forceful retaliation if hostilities continued, there were serious attempts by Russia to block NATO’s involvement (Flockhart, 2011: p270). This was because the Russians had to appease critics in the domestic arena, who sought to acquire influence in the Balkans by reinvigorating their historic orthodox and Slavic connections to Serbia and the Serbs in Bosnia. However, the low profile of NATO partners in relation to their commitment in ending the Bosnian War was a more significant obstacle than high profile disagreements. Whereas most European NATO members wanted a share of the stability that NATO brought, none was willing to pay the costs initially; hoping that the US would step in for the public good. As a result, although the diplomatic divisions in NATO proposed workable settlements that were ambitious in their timelines and outcomes, NATO did not have the physical means required to stop the Bosnian War in its initial, volatile stages (Flockhart, 2011: p270). NATO and the UN were entrusted with operations and missions that they did not have the capability to undertake initially, especially in absence of clear commitments from NATO members. In the absence of a rational strategy and a clear political direction that could appropriately gauge the intervention means and ends, NATO and the UN reverted to their primary philosophies; which were war fighting and peacekeeping respectively (Schofield, 2012: p226). This risked provoking a conflict between the UN and NATO. Indeed, the UN that was supporting troops on the ground resisted the involvement of NATO in air raids as these put their troops at risk of collateral damage. NATO, on the other hand, maintained its tough attitude towards peace enforcement, rather than peacekeeping, increasing tensions with the UN. These tensions came to a head when 150 UN personnel were taken hostage by Bosnian Serbs as a result of uncoordinated airstrikes by NATO in 1994. In fact, Gheciu and Paris (2011: p77) note that institutional involvement in what was a less than ideal situation initially led to counterproductive outcomes and consequences that were only mitigated by the wisdom and professionalism of UN and NATO officials on the ground and at their headquarters. NATO, therefore, was beset by several obstacles prior to and during its involvement in the Bosnian War. To begin with, the fact that most NATO countries, especially in Europe, sought to free-ride on NATO’s strength spurred adverse substitution where these states were less inclined to propose and assign resources for the Bosnian War because there were already other institutions like the UN dealing with the conflict (Radin, 2014: p60). In addition, involvement of the UN and Russian belligerence at the time meant that the opposing sides were less willing to negotiate as they expected rescue from outside, thus lengthening the war and forcing NATO’s hand. Moreover, the reliance of NATO and the UN on abstract principles and their deliberation through a process of difficult building of consensus among NATO members led to rigid common positions that hindered rapidly evolving and complex negotiations and initial operations (Radin, 2014: p61). Successes and Failures of NATO’s Intervention in Bosnia NATO’s involvement in the Bosnian War was mainly considered a success because it led to cessation of hostilities between Bosnian Serbs and the Muslim-dominated government in Sarajevo. Indeed, since the brutal 3-year conflict was ended by the NATO-negotiated Dayton Peace Accords, the fighting has not erupted on a concerning scale again. Moreover, despite predictions that the NATO soldiers who stayed behind as part of the NATO Implementation Force would be caught up in a quagmire came to naught as the forces departed gradually between 2004 and 2006 without the loss of any NATO soldier as a result of hostile fire (Flockhart, 2012: p83). One of the lessons that emerged from this success was the fact that timing was essential to intervening in international conflict with the effective and early intervention reducing the duration of fighting and easing the process of post-war peace. Furthermore, the international war-crimes tribunals, which were initiated by NATO, which captured most of the war criminals, have created a historically detailed record of the Bosnian War’s atrocities (Flockhart, 2012: p83). Another lesson from this success was the importance of local allies in the implementation of peace accords and reforms. NATO was also successful in achieving an integrated national army that followed massive training by NATO allies and the US in particular. In addition, some well-staffed NATO-led judicial reform and police training programs were successful, while NATO also led the establishment of a new currency in Bosnia during and after the war that provided for initial economic stability to ensure sustenance of the peace accords (McCourt, 2013: p251). Moreover, NATO was able to implement the use of car plates that did not indicate the residence of Bosnian citizens, which increased movement freedom across the country and set the foundations for future reconciliation. The sustained use of air power by NATO played a significant role in altering the political and military equations that governed the war in Bosnia, which was perhaps the most successful aspect of NATO’s intervention in the war. By blunting the Serb offensive, especially on areas designated as ‘safe’ by the UN, worked to make Bosnia safer and eventually led to the forced withdrawal of heavy artillery positioned around Sarajevo by Bosnian Serbs (McCourt, 2013: p252). Furthermore, NATO succeeded in greatly reducing and degrading the Bosnian Serb military capabilities. Indeed, NATO was able to significantly damage the war-waging ability of the aggressive Bosnian Serb Army, which was not the aim of the UN. This greatly degraded the Bosnian Serb superiority that had prevented any negotiations from taking place to end the conflict. These losses by the Bosnian Serb Army came from NATO’s ability to reduce their mobility sharply, along with the destruction of their artillery and ammunition positions in and around Sarajevo (Gürcan, 2013: p161). The Bosnian Serbs were able to move their infantry forces effectively and quickly prior to NATO’s intervention in the War, which allowed them to control over 70% of the country. NATO’s intervention allowed the Croat and Bosnia and Herzegovina Armies to make major gains on the Bosnian Serbs, forcing them to eventually negotiate for peace. In fact, the Bosnian Serb Army lost about 10% of its territory to Croatian and Bosnian forces virtually unchallenged after NATO’s Operation Deliberate Force. Although Mazhar et al. (2012: p264) claim that this might have been a tactical retreat by the Bosnian Serbs in Western Bosnia, Hansen (2013: p38) argues this was the result of reduced mobility. However, NATO’s role in the Bosnian War also had several failures, one of which was that they were unable to achieve reconciliation between different ethnicities in Bosnia during and after the war, despite maintaining a huge presence with the NATO Implementation Force (Zarkov, 2014: p62). Indeed, Muslim, Croat, and Serb nationalists continue to view themselves as victims, all rejecting any responsibility for the war and its atrocities. NATO also failed to promote moderate political parties after ending the war, with nationalist Muslim, Croat, and Serb parties winning local elections and consolidating power in different regions, thus resisting any reforms. This situation has been referred to as ‘war by other means’, where NATO succeeded on a military level but failed to end political hostilities (Harper, 2012: p51). This has seen the rise of hard-line leaders in Bosnia that threatens reconciliation and weakens the central government. Another failure was in the reconstruction efforts after the war, in which NATO attempted to create new aspects of a new state in Bosnia too quickly in terms of an education system, infrastructure, economy police force and army (Larsdotter, 2012: p72). To begin with, the civilian aid effort was too broad, while it was overly-focused on immediate results. Foreign aid programs, whole predictable, also followed a perverse pattern where donors required immediate and quick results. Moreover, aid officials designed projects that met the political needs of senior NATO members, rather than the needs of Bosnians on the ground. There were proposals for NATO to implement aid programs by selecting a number of critical projects, while also establishing limited objectives and goals, and funding them consistently for long periods (Larsdotter, 2012: p73). This would have been more effective than the scattershot, rushed manner in which NATO pursued development in Bosnia. Suggestions for Improvements Overall, NATO’s role in the Bosnian War was a partial success. While it was not the abject failure that was suggested by American isolationists, it was also not the unqualified success that was hoped by those backing humanitarian interventions; although imperfect peace is better than the war witnessed by Bosnia (Harsch, 2015: p28). One of the alternatives to the strategy used by NATO in the Bosnian War was to deploy enough resources from the start of hostilities, specifically to achieve a just peace with a decisive and massive intervention aimed at disarming Bosnian Serb, Croat, and Bosnian and Herzegovinian combatants. Indeed, this would have led to less force than was used when NATO finally fully entered the Bosnian War in 1995 with Operation Deliberate Force. By undertaking a more proactive approach at the beginning of the Bosnian War, NATO would have induced a ceasefire by also using economic sanctions to induce the warring sides to negotiate for peace (Koops, 2012: p168). Another alternative strategy would have been recognition that there needed to be compromises on the ground, specifically since the three communities involved preferred to settle their differences violently, rather than live together. In this case, NATO could have abandoned the London Conference for the time being, especially its commitment to achieve a pre-war Bosnian Republic; concentrating instead on achieving a cessation of violent conflict as soon as possible (Hodge, 2013: p359). In fact, the Srebrenica massacre happened towards the end of the conflict and, if NATO had managed to achieve a rapid ceasefire, this would have been avoided. In any case, once the united Yugoslavia principle was abandoned, NATO had no reason to continue insisting on a rigid united Bosnia notion once the Serb minority radically opposed the idea. Finally, NATO should have postponed the idea of a multi-ethnic Bosnia and used other long-term options like economic sanctions and diplomatic isolation to achieve this idea after tensions had declined (Kay & Petersson, 2014: p290). References Allin, D. H. (2014). NATOs Balkan interventions. London: Routledge Aybet, G., & Bieber, F. (2011). From Dayton to Brussels: the impact of EU and NATO conditionality on state building in Bosnia & Hercegovina. Europe-Asia Studies, 63(10), 1911-1937 Cain, K., Postlewait, H., Thomson, A., & United Nations. (2006). Emergency sex: And other desperate measures, true stories from a war zone. London: Ebury Press Flockhart, T. (2011). ‘Me Tarzan–you Jane’: The EU and NATO and the reversal of roles. Perspectives on European Politics and Society, 12(3), 263-282 Flockhart, T. (2012). Towards a strong NATO narrative: From a ‘practice of talking’ to a ‘practice of doing’. International Politics, 49(1), 78-97 Gheciu, A., & Paris, R. (2011). NATO and the Challenge of Sustainable Peace-building. Global Governance: A Review of Multilateralism and International Organizations, 17(1), 75-79 Gürcan, E. C. (2013). NATOs “Globalized” Atlanticism and the Eurasian Alternative. Socialism and Democracy, 27(2), 154-167 Hansen, L. (2013). Security as practice: discourse analysis and the Bosnian war. London: Routledge Harper, S. (2012). History is screaming at us: Humanitarian interventionism and the popular geopolitics of the Bosnian war in Leigh Jackson and Peter Kosminskys Warriors. Journal of European Popular Culture, 2(1), 43-63 Harsch, M. F. (2015). The Power of Dependence: NATO-UN Cooperation in Crisis Management. Oxford: Oxford University Press Hodge, C. C. (2013). Full circle: two decades of NATO intervention. Journal of Transatlantic Studies, 11(4), 350-367 Hurd, I. (2011). International organizations: Politics, law, practice. Cambridge, U.K: Cambridge University Press Kay, S., & Petersson, M. (2014). NATO’s Transformation and Global Security. NATO’s Post-Cold War Politics: the Changing Provision of Security, 3(1), 289-291 Koops, J. A. (2012). NATO’s Influence on the Evolution of the European Union as a Security Actor. The influence of international institutions on the EU. When Multilateralism hits Brussels, 4(1), 155-179 Larsdotter, K. (2012). The Development of a NATO Strategy in Bosnia-Herzegovina. Pursuing strategy—NATO Operations from the Gulf War to Gaddafi, 14(2), 60-81 Mazhar, M. S., Khan, S. U., & Goraya, N. S. (2012). NATO expansion. Interdisciplinary Journal of Contemporary Research in Business, 4(5), 264 McCourt, D. (2013). Embracing humanitarian intervention: Atlanticism and the UK interventions in Bosnia and Kosovo. The British Journal of Politics & International Relations, 15(2), 246-262 Radin, A. (2014). The Misunderstood Lessons of Bosnia for Syria. The Washington Quarterly, 37(4), 55-69 Schofield, J. (2012). Why NATO Endures. Canadian Journal of Political Science, 45(01), 225-226 Surovell, J. (2012). The Grand Deception: Post-Soviet Russia and the Wars in the Former Yugoslavia. The Journal of Slavic Military Studies, 25(3), 284-301 Trenta, L. (2014). Clinton and Bosnia: a candidates freebie, a presidents nightmare. Journal of Transatlantic Studies, 12(1), 62-89 Woodward, S. L. (2013). The long intervention: continuity in the Balkan theatre. Review of International Studies, 39(05), 1169-1187 Zagorcheva, D. (2012). NATO Enlargement and Security in the Balkans. Journal of Regional Security, 21(1), 7-31 Zarkov, D. (2014). Warriors: Cinematic ontologies of the Bosnian war. European Journal of Womens Studies, 13(5), 50-68 Read More