Following our current intervention in Libya, a polarised argument has developed between those who favour intervention by the major powers in local and intra-state conflicts and those who argue that the consequences of such interventions are rarely beneficial.

One of the examples of a successful intervention frequently posited by those on the first side of the argument is the UN intervention in the Balkans. However a couple of developments in the last week have refocussed attention on what has become a somewhat tarnished narrative. Firstly, there was the beginning of the war crimes trial of Ratko Mladić and this was then followed by the decision of a Dutch court that their own state was responsible for the deaths of Bosnian Muslims in Srebrenica.

The UN tactics in Bosnia were to intervene with as light a touch as possible. When the Bosnian Muslims began to flee the onslaught of the Serb army, the appalling initial humanitarian response of the neighbouring EU Countries was…… to close their borders. At the time Sadako Ogata, UN High Commissioner for Refugees, pointed out to them that “if you take these people, you are an accomplice to ethnic cleansing. If you don’t, you are an accomplice to murder”.

The “solution” to this conundrum was to establish six “safe havens” within Bosnia- areas in which the UN guaranteed the Muslims would be secure. A few troops with blue helmets were put on the ground and the hope was that the Serbian army would decide that there was no need to pick a fight with the UN, who had superior air power, and would pass by the enclaves.

That hope was dashed in Srebrenica.

The Commander of UN troops, General Bernard Janvier had been openly hostile to the enclaves policy and there is strong suspicion that he personally decided to allow Srebrenica to be overrun in order to make his case. He repeatedly denied requests from the Dutchbat commander Thom Karremans for air strikes against the advancing Serb forces. Unbelievably, on one occasion, the request was denied because it had been submitted on the “wrong form”. When the Serbs arrived in Srebrenica around 15,000 Bosnian Muslims fled through the mountains but many stayed, assured by the UN statements that they were safe, and more than 20,000 refugees fled to the main Dutch base at Potocari.

When Mladić arrived at Potocari he was accompanied by Serb camera crews. He summoned Colonel Karremans to a meeting at which he delivered an ultimatum that the Muslims must hand over their weapons to guarantee their lives. The Dutch peacekeepers were subsequently ordered to hand over all the Potocari refugees and the beatings began even before they had all cleared the compound. In return, the Serbs released fourteen UN troops they had previously taken hostage and Mladić sent leaving gifts to Karremans. The women and children were bussed to Muslim territory and the killings of all males over twelve years of age began.

Mladić is clearly a criminal but he is now joined in the dock by the Dutch state and there is an argument that the United Nations, itself, should be there too. Because the massacre at Srebrenica was both the foreseeable consequence of a mass of geopolitical factors and a demonstration of cowardly and unprincipled behaviour by the individuals involved.

So my point is that the Balkan conflict was not, as has been alleged, a great advertisement for interventionism and the notion that there is a moral high ground to justify such action is disingenuous. Like individuals, nation states tend to act in their own economic and security interests, so let’s be honest with ourselves – Mladić is only in the Hague because Serbia wants to join the EU and we are currently bombing Libya for our own purposes.

And the dead of Srebrenica should continue to haunt the consciences of us all.

Ken Ferguson

Livewire
July 10, 2011 at 17:48

An excellent article, with a lot of detail to support the view.
I had thought, naively, that Iraq would have made it more difficult for post-Blair regimes
to try and act as the world’s 2nd policeman (with gendarmes currently), but I underestimated governments’ capacities to repeat the same actions over and over while expecting a different result.

Cascadian
July 10, 2011 at 19:02

An excellent article, asking an obvious but ignored question.

Most “action” (don’t mention a war, as Basil Fawlty famously stated) carried out by multinational forces seem to dissolve in their own internal inconsistencies, particularly when euro forces start posturing. The plain fact is that europe existed under US protection for far too long during the cold war, and after the cold war immediately set about spending the “peace dividend” by dismantling the forces and spending on new unaffordable social programmes. Euro ability to fight is negligible, and most populations are OK with that, but their ability to police or defend their borders are also neglible .

I am not a particularly warlike person, but I do believe one of the primary requirements of a government is to be able to defend its borders, most countries have abdicated that responsibility and cut military budgets far too severely.

For that reason alone I am enjoying what is (not) happening in Libya, seeing NATO in all its glory huffing and puffing, giving the world a one day fireworks display and then admitting they can do very little more except sit around and say how very bad Ghaddafi is, and how he should do as they say. They are so badly organized they cannot communicate amongst themselves, they have the wrong aircraft for ground assaults, they have no chain of command, they do not have even a consistent political narrative. A third rate African nation can fight NATO to a standstill in one week, you may wish to think about that.

What NATO has achieved is to make the hated GW Bush look in comparison a genius who ably got approval for the attack on Iraq through the UN and achieved total military victory in a month. I don’t think that was their intention.

J
July 10, 2011 at 19:17

The funny thing is that the invididuals responsible for this will get away with it but the taxpayers will pay the penalty.

Patrick Harris
July 10, 2011 at 19:46

Apparently the UN mandate permitted actions that “protected” Lybian civilians, not all Lybian civilians, just the ones that dislike Gaddafi, the Lybian civilians that quite like Gaddafi can be blown to shite from a safe and comfortable 30,000ft or from a safe distance out at sea – NATO heroes, my arse.

Ancient & Tattered Airman
July 10, 2011 at 19:46

John Gay wrote in 1727:

Those who in quarrels interpose,
Must often wipe a bloody nose.

And here we are interposing and interfering with every nation smaller than ourselves. Funny old world, really.

Gildas the Monk
July 11, 2011 at 09:35

The Dutch hardly covered themselves in glory, as I understand it

fake
July 11, 2011 at 10:33

**A third rate African nation can fight NATO to a standstill in one week, you may wish to think about that.**

Hardly fair.

We have the fire power to level the whole country, the issue is no clear mandate, I.E what to shoot at.

What we should have done, as a country, is make a decision. We should have chosen whether to intervene, and if so to just go all out for daffy duck, and blow up any building we think he might be in, and tank that might be his, AND ACCEPT THAT WE WOULD KILL CIVILIANS.

Instead we go the “official” route through the UN (because of a weak leader and a military made weak by him), and as soon as we did that, it was always going to end up in a confused mess with no real goal.

gladiolys
July 11, 2011 at 11:14

How can we accept that we would kill civilians when our stated aim for interfering is that we are protecting them?

Either we should have said we are going for regime change by force (which as I understand it, is illegal under international law), or we should have stayed out. So that leaves only one choice then…

Oh, then there’s lying…

Cascadian
July 11, 2011 at 17:47

There is a clear mandate, it is the one Clinton, Sarkozy and Camoron sought from the UN, and that mandate could be achieved only IF the USA stayed in the fight. However for once Obama made a decision and stuck with it, exposing NATO as another talking shop woefully undersupplied with weaponry and a complete lack of cohesion.

You (NATO) do not have the ability to level the whole country or more importantly the mandate or will to do so. Meanwhile a very expensive assemblage of air and sea power quite unsuitable for the job at hand is sitting around the Meditteranean doing next to nothing. So I think that my previous statement that “NATO has been fought to a standstill by a third rate African nation” stands. Further I might have commented that the assembled military command of Nato has been outwitted and out manouevred by a someone described as a madman.

Add to the fact that NATO seem to be enabling a Muslim takeover of Libya, one wonders what the aims of this useless war are except to make all the participants look stupid, and make life in Libya a hell for its inhabitants.