peacefare.net

Dayton reexamined

I wrote this piece some months ago for a Swedish publication, Axess.  They have just published it, in Swedish: 

“Dayton.” The word has come to signify the end of the seemingly intractable violence in Bosnia from 1992 to 1995. The narrative surrounding it is powerful: after everyone else had tried and failed, an American diplomat took the warring parties off to an isolated air force base in Ohio, where he bent them to his will and ended the war. Richard Holbrooke left no doubt in his book To End a War that the critical moment was when he convinced Yugoslav President Slobodan Milosevic to accept peace with the Federation (Bosniak and Croat) forces arrayed against him and the army of Republika Srpska. The story of how the Americans packed their bags and made Milosevic believe that they were getting ready to leave Dayton is classic. This was the triumph of American will, and guile.

The “Dayton” narrative is powerful but inaccurate and misleading. It has never accorded with what I actually experienced at Dayton during the first ten days of the talks, when I negotiated with German diplomat Michael Steiner the first agreement reached there. Now forgotten, it strengthened the predominantly Bosniak/Croat Federation, which at the time was winning the war in Bosnia. During my stay in Dayton, Holbrooke spent most of his time cajoling the Serbs into freeing an American journalist (David Rohde) who had gotten himself caught in Pale. He talked far more to Slobodan Milosevic than to anyone else and was clearly charmed. Captivated might be more accurate. Read more