Diplomats v. intelligence analysts

It will take me more time and energy than I can spare from the Middle East these days to plow through all the 300 documents the Clinton library has decided to publish on “Bosnia, Intelligence and the Clinton Presidency.”  I gather that the spin that accompanies this material is how effective the CIA Balkans Task Force was.  I’m in no position to give an overall evaluation of that proposition, but let me take a hard look at its November 22, 1994 memo on the Bosnian Federation.

The gist of the memo is this:

Even with large-scale international help, prospects are minimal for building the federation from the bottom-up and overcoming–in the near-to-mid-term–mutual distrust.

Creation of new political institutions, difficult under any circumstances, is especially so in this case in light of the year long warfare between the two sides and the different perspective about the goals in the ongoing war with the Bosnian Serbs.  Consequently, efforts to create federation institutions have bogged down, and the level of verbal finger-pointing has been gradually increasing.

This pessimistic assessment was in part for my edification, as I had been appointed Special Envoy for the Bosnian Federation a month earlier.  My colleagues at the Agency thought getting the Federation up and running would be a futile effort.

The assessment wasn’t entirely wrong.  Like most half-decent intelligence assessments, it got the current situation right.  Things were not sweetness and light between Bosniaks and Croats in the Federation in the fall of 1994.  There were mutual recriminations and distrust abounded.  Something like 150,000 Croats had been displaced during their year-long war with the Bosnian Army, as well as 50,000 Bosniaks, if I am remembering the numbers correctly.

The hard part of course is to predict the future.  Within a year and a half, the political institutions of the Federation not only existed but were functioning, after a fashion.  These included not only a presidency, but also a government, several ministries, a parliament, many municipalities and some of the cantons.  A joint command and staff had begun to function, less effectively on purely military questions and more on those that concerned civilians:  displaced people and humanitarian relief.

Things were still rough.  As Serb forces in western Bosnia started to collapse in the late summer and early fall of 1995 as a consequence of NATO bombing, the Croat Defense Council (HVO), backed by the Croatian Army, and the Bosnian Army competed in taking territory.  Bosnian Army commander Delic was scathing in his denunciations of Croatian Army General Gotovina, but he also knew that success required continuing cooperation with him.

German diplomat Michael Steiner, American military advisor to the Federation John Sewall and I worked hard to shore up the Federation in preparation for the Dayton talks.  Steiner and I were still hard at it 10 days into Dayton, when we produced the first agreement signed there.  And I was still hard at it for weeks into 1996, shuttling between the offices (across the hall from each other) of the Croat defense minister of the Federation and his Bosniak deputy to get them to agree on how to handle the post-war military forces.

The point is this:  intelligence analysts are paid to tell you all the things that can go wrong.  Diplomats are paid to make them go right.  We all try to do what we are paid to do.  I took the main CIA analyst on the Federation on a visit there to show him how things were really working, as he had never been there previously.  We did the same with US military intelligence analysts, who were convinced the Federation would never be able to turn back the Serbs.  They became less pessimistic.  I gained from their insights into the obstacles the Federation faced.

Most diplomatic triumphs come in situations that the intelligence analysts regard as hopeless.  Syria, Iran and Israel/Palestine all merit being looked at from that point of view.  So too does present-day Bosnia, which remains mired in the constitutional muck that we created for it at Dayton.  All it takes is a few diplomats willing to ignore the best advice of the intelligence analysts.