yugoslavias implosion

318
ChApter 5
Serbia—which had been an ally of theirs in World War I and which
they tended to see as having the right to dominate Yugoslavia—until
the nato intervention was launched in 1999. 533 The eu did not reach
consensus until the Thessalonica Summit in 2003, when the decision
was taken to offer all the Balkan countries eu membership.
The lack of a common interpretation of the Yugoslav crisis
influenced the nature of concrete international involvement in the
crisis. Instead of pressing for a peace enforcement mission, Western
Europe and the United States supported un missions with mandates
so limited that they almost became observer missions, especially in
Bosnia until the Srebrenica massacre in 1995. This amounted to a policy
of appeasement toward Serbia; instead of Belgrade’s aggression
being confronted head on, it was allowed to continue.
Inconsistency was also fueled by a dearth of political will to
incur the costs of intervening effectively. For instance, the ec was
happy to tell the government of Bosnia and Herzegovina how to prepare
for independence, but the ec promptly walked away from the
scene once the Serb forces (the ypa and paramilitaries from Serbia
and Montenegro) attacked the newly recognized country. In spite
of ample evidence of violations of human rights and war crimes, the
international community did not try to stop the genocide in Bosnia,
which started as early as 1992 but which some states opted to
describe as “ethnic cleansing” rather than “genocide” so that they
would not be obliged by the terms of the Geneva Convention to
intervene to halt the bloodletting. Although globally respected activists
such as Simon Wiesenthal were characterizing Serbian actions
as “genocide,” such statements prompted no reaction from the u.s.
533 See Carole Hodges, Britain and Balkans, 1991 until Present, (London and New York:
Routledge Taylor and Francis Group, 2006); Brendan Simms, Unfinest Hour:Britain and the
Destruction in Bosnia (London: Allen Lane, 2001); Jane Sharp, Honest Broker or Pefidious
Albion? British Policy in Former Yugoslavia, Institute of Public Policy Research, London,
1997; James Gow, Triumph of the Lack of Will: International Diplomacy and the Yugoslav War,
(London: C .Hurst,1997); Norman Cigar, “Croatia’s War of Independence: The Parameters
of War Termination” Journal of Slavic Military Studies 10, no . 2, (June 1997): 34–70 .