Twenty years ago this Saturday, the Dayton peace agreement ended the fighting in Bosnia and resolved a series of seemingly intractable ethnic and sectarian conflicts that killed nearly 100,000 people and forced thousands more to flee. The Balkans war — the worst in Europe since World War II — threatened to undermine the leadership and credibility of the Western Alliance, much as the mayhem in the Middle East and the refugee crisis does today. Though the circumstances are demonstrably different, the very human story of how Balkans peace was finally achieved offers important lessons for those now grappling with the troubles flowing from the Middle East.
As the Balkans conflict unfolded it was widely seen by Americans as a “European problem.” It was not until a monstrous crime — the murder of 8,000 Muslim men and boys in Srebrenica in July 1995 — that the United States assumed a leadership role. “The world’s richest nation, one that presumes to great moral authority, cannot simply make worthy appeals to conscience, and call on others to carry the burden,” Richard C. Holbrooke, the American diplomat and Dayton’s chief negotiator, said at the time. Those words, the words of my late husband, hold true today.
Key to Dayton’s success was President Bill Clinton’s willingness to buck political and popular opposition. The stance of Newt Gingrich, the Republican speaker of the house at the time, was typical of those who wanted the United States to keep its distance. “There are 20 ways to solve this,” he declared, “without involving a single American.” But by the time he was speaking, some 30 European-led cease-fires and agreements had already failed.
Shortly after the Srebrenica killings President Clinton sent Richard to the Balkans. In less than three months, on Nov. 1, he succeeded in bringing the warring parties to talks at the Wright Patterson Air Force Base near Dayton, Ohio. Richard chose Dayton because he thought of it as neutral ground — remote enough from both Washington and the media, but not so far away that the occasional high official couldn’t drop in. Moreover, the barbed wire around the base provided just the right security and isolation.
Trouble began even before the first course was served at the ceremonial opening dinner. The French delegate, Jacques Blot, angrily stalked out of the hangar where we were dining, claiming his country’s honor had been insulted after being sniffed by security dogs. Richard, who refused to start the dinner without the presence of a key member, eventually soothed Blot’s sense of outrage and he returned to the table.
I was seated between the Bosnian Muslim and Serb leaders, assigned the task of getting Slobodan Milosevic and Alija Izetbegovic to talk to each other. In the beginning they hardly spoke, but perhaps the sight of the F-117 Stealth fighters and other warplanes in the hangar provided an unsubtle reminder that military force is always an option in the arsenal of diplomacy. No doubt the wine also helped. In any case, by the time the coffee was served, the two feuding chieftains were calling each other Slobodan and Alija.
But there is a middle ground between wine, soft words and thinly veiled threats of American air power. Of all the Balkan warlords, Milosevic — perhaps the one most responsible for igniting the war — had a well-deserved reputation for jut-jawed petulance and verbal aggression. More than once, my husband responded with well-rehearsed explosions of anger that brought fear to the overbearing Serbian warlord’s face.
The close quarters in the base’s Spartan barracks were uncomfortable, but they proved a useful negotiating venue — the walls were so thin and corridors so narrow that a kind of shared intimacy was almost unavoidable. The room Richard and I shared also served as a part-time conference room, a less-hectic place to exchange views and weigh options after a day poring over the highly detailed maps that delineated every inch of fiercely contested territory.
Today, when I think about Dayton, it is those maps that come to mind. Maps marked up by Richard, his fellow diplomat Christopher Hill, Gen. Wesley Clark and the others covered every surface; there were also computers featuring three-dimensional versions of the landscape, giving the negotiators a pilot’s view of the terrain. Permanently engraved in my memory are the names of Bosnian cities, towns and regions — Brcko, Doboj, Prijedor, the Posavina Corridor, Gorazde and Mostar. The maps were underlined, bickered over, moved from one side of the room to the other as the talks progressed.
Surreal moments of fake normalcy broke up the negotiators’ hard work. With so much activity in such close quarters, sleep was minimal. For all parties incarcerated behind Wright-Patterson’s barbed wire, Packy’s Sports Bar became a popular hangout. (Milsovevic took to flirting with a waitress named Vicky, or “Vaitress Wicky,” as he called her.)
At times, Richard’s role was that of in loco parentis — enforcing dormitory rules on some very badly behaved children. At one point a Bosnian official — in direct violation of air base regulations — snuck his mistress into the compound. Hearing of this, Richard turned into a stern father figure, ordering her to leave at once.
Periodically, my husband urged me to talk to Milosevic, as well as to the moody Bosnian prime minister, Haris Silajdzic. “Make them talk about their hopes for their children,” my husband instructed me. On one occasion, I accompanied Milosevic on a shopping trip to the PX, the shop for military personnel, where he bought parkas for his family, grumbling all the while about the superior shopping on New York’s Fifth Avenue.
I recall endlessly circling the base parking lot in futile conversation with men whose purpose in life had been war and whose single-minded goal was power. It was my first exposure to the truism that those who are good at revolution are rarely good at governance.
Nevertheless, 20 years on, a sometimes-tenuous peace has held, giving the success of the Dayton Accords an air of inevitability. But the reality inside the base was quite different. The last days were a roller coaster ride of close calls and premature celebrations. When one of the parties made a tiny concession, another would toughen his own stance. During the final days, when the talks hit a wall, Richard ordered his team to pack bags and place them conspicuously outside the doors. The message was clear: The Americans were leaving.
As Richard and his team discussed what they would do in light of the failure in Dayton, I spotted Milosevic standing alone in the snowy parking lot, just outside our room. It was clear from his body language that he had something on his mind. I ran out and caught him, just as he had turned to go. After I led Milosevic to the conference room, Richard asked everyone but Secretary of State Warren Christopher to leave. To salvage the negotiations, Milosevic proposed that the status of Brcko, the much-disputed city on the Croatian border, be deferred. The talks were on life support, but at least they were breathing again. On Nov. 21, 1995, three Balkan presidents signed the accords, and the bloodiest European war since 1945 was over.
Republican skeptics attacked the agreement, and only 36 percent of the American public supported sending troops to Bosnia. Yet, without 20,000 American service men and women on the ground, that troubled country would not have survived the early post-war years. In the end, not one American soldier was killed by hostile fire.
Richard had his own regrets about Dayton. One of them was allowing the Serbs to use the name Republik Srpska, giving the Serb entity of Bosnia the illusion of being its own republic. He anguished over the failure to immediately arrest the worst Bosnian Serb war criminals. Radovan Karadzic and Ratko Mladic were allowed their freedom and actively subverted the fragile new state of Bosnia and Herzegovina for many years.
Amid the turmoil that we now face it is worth remembering that the relative peace of the Balkans today would not have been possible without an American commitment to the virtues of diplomacy: courage, perseverance, the ability to hang tough, coupled with patience, empathy and a willingness to compromise — along with the backbone not to shy away from the use of force, when necessary. We cannot wish away the problems we now face, nor the reality that Europe’s stability is in our interest and partly our responsibility.
Kati Marton is a journalist and the author of nine books, including the forthcoming True Believer — Stalin’s American Spy, to be published next year.