Q: Is a continued stay of U.S. troops in Bosnia in the national interest? 
No. U.S. military readiness is being weakened by efforts to support a fictional nation.
By Gary Dempsey, © CATO Today's Commentary, 03/02/99
"That's not to say that Dayton hasn't led to any success. The fighting has stopped, and so far more than 3,600 pieces of heavy weaponry have been removed. But those few successes reveal Dayton for what it really is: a complicated cease-fire, not a solution to Bosnia's long-term problems. The country still is deeply fractured, divided into two semiautonomous 'entities' separated by a monstrosity called the Inter-Entity Boundary Line. One entity, the Serb Republic, now almost is entirely Serb. The other, the Muslim-Croat Federation, is made up of rival enclaves that maintain a tense coexistence. Nearly 90 percent of the Serbs who lived in the Muslim-Croat Federation before 1992 were expelled or have left. 
The prospect for ethnic reintegration is not promising. By the end of 1997, only 19 percent of Bosnia's 2.3 million refugees and displaced persons had returned home. Moreover, the total number of returnees in 1998 is expected to be only 11 percent of that of 1997. Even more telling, during the last three years only 55,000 Bosnians have returned to areas where they would be in the minority. At the same time, 80,000 Bosnians have moved from areas where they were in the minority to areas where they would be in the majority. That means there are 25,000 fewer Bosnians living in integrated communities today than when Dayton was signed three years ago. Moreover, 85 percent of Bosnians recently polled still say they will not vote for a candidate from another ethnic group."
http://www.cato.org/dailys/03-02-99.html
See also: http://www.cato.org/pubs/pas/pa-327es.html

Imposing Perverted Democracy in Bosnia, By Ted Galen Carpenter, 
© CATO Today's Commentary, 03/13/99
"Rather than admit failure, the would-be nation builders, led by 'High Representative' Carlos Westendorp, are now resorting to tactics that make a mockery of any reasonable concept of democracy. The latest outrage was Westendorp's removal of Nikola Poplasen as president of the Bosnian Serb republic – one of the two subnational political entities that make up the convoluted Bosnian state. Last September voters dared to elect the radical nationalist Poplasen over the candidate preferred by the Western powers, even though it meant spurning offers of lucrative financial aid for the hard-pressed Serb republic. The offense that led to Poplasen's dismissal was his refusal to reappoint the incumbent prime minister, Milorad Dodik, favored by Westendorp and the Western governments." 

A European "New Deal" For The Balkans, By Benn Steil and Susan L. Woodward, © Foreign Affairs, Nov/Dec 1998.
"Peace in the Balkans depends on economic stability and prosperity for all. To overcome the legacies of failed economic reforms and ethnic strife, southeastern Europe needs nothing short of a European 'New Deal.' Sound money and free trade can take root in the Balkans only if the EU expands the euro and its trade arrangements to the region promptly, with no strings attached. But the EU's current approach, which attaches conditions to membership in its elite clubs, falls far short."
http://www.foreignaffairs.org/index/issues/journals/facontents/11-12-99.html

Making Peace with the Guilty, By Charles G. Boyd, © Foreign Affairs, Sept/Oct 1995.
"The difference between the factions in Bosnia is not morality, as the Bosnian Muslims and Western press insist, but power and opportunity. All have the same goal: to avoid living as a minority. All have committed crimes against other ethnic groups. Despite its claims of neutrality and preaching against military solutions, the United States has favored the Bosnian Muslims, keeping silent as they launched offensives from U.N.-guarded safe areas. Since air strikes cannot resolve the conflict, the United States must discourage violence by all sides and let Russia-the one country Serbs trust-take the lead in negotiations."
http://www.foreignaffairs.org/index/issues/journals/facontents/9-10-95.html

Bosnia's Foreign Elections Unwise and Dangerous, By Jan Oberg, 
© TFF PressInfo 25, 09/10/97.
"Symbolic or shallow democracy will be the only outcome when foreigners impose elections under extremely adverse circumstances as is the case in Dayton-Bosnia. They could even be dangerous in their consequences because some local results are likely to be implemented by force. One increasingly wonders whether the international community is in Bosnia for the sake of the people living there or to uphold an illusory image of itself as effective post-Cold War conflict-'managers' – says TFF's director, Jan Oberg who has followed the situation since February 1992 as head of the foundation's conflict-mitigation team to all parts of former Yugoslavia."
http://www.transnational.org/pressinf/pf25.html

The Exit Strategy Delusion, By Gideon Rose, © Foreign Affairs, Jan/Feb 1998. 
"Despite disagreements over troops in Bosnia, all sides want an exit strategy. That concept, however, dating back only to the ignominious U.S. withdrawal from Somalia, has nothing to do with military requirements and everything to do with post-Cold War politics. Exit strategies harm a mission's chances of success, and had they been required the United States would not have defended the armistice after the Korean War, kept the peace on the Sinai Peninsula after Camp David, or undertaken NATO. The real question is not when American troops will be out, but why they are going in."
http://www.foreignaffairs.org/index/issues/journals/facontents/1-2-98.html

Holbrooke Horror: The U.S. Peace Plan for Bosnia, By Ted Galen Carpenter, © Cato Foreign Policy Briefing No. 37 October 27, 1995
"The terms of the emerging peace accord to end the war in Bosnia are a blueprint for disaster. Washington foolishly insists on maintaining the fiction of a united Bosnian state while accepting a de facto partition. Renewed fighting is highly probable when the Serb self-governing "entity" attempts to secede and merge with Serbia and the Muslim-dominated government tries to assert Bosnia's sovereignty. Indeed, a clash between Muslim and Croat forces is also possible, since any Muslim-Croat cooperation has been a matter of expediency. To enforce such an inherently unworkable settlement would be to recklessly put American treasure and lives at risk."
http://www.cato.org/pubs/fpbriefs/fpb-037.html

The Balkan Thicket, Prepared by Jonathan G. Clarke, © The Cato Institute
"The most regrettable aspect of the Bosnian tragedy was that it was to a great extent avoidable. Despite historical and ethnic complexity, the essential elements of the Bosnian conflict were not hard to understand. They reflected a wish on the parts of the peoples of the constituent republics of the former Yugoslavia to form new states in which Slovenes, Croats, Serbs, Muslims, and Macedonians, respectively, would dominate the organs of government."
http://www.cato.org/pubs/handbook/hb105-44.html

The Troubled History of Partition, By Radha Kumar, © Foreign Affairs, Jan/Feb 1997. 
"The Dayton accord reached in November 1995 was something historically familiar: a partition agreement. As in Bosnia today, partition has usually arisen not as a means of national self-determination but as a way for great powers to 'divide and quit.' Often described as the only workable solution to ethnic feuding, partitions have in fact generally fomented violence and required further international intervention. Similar conditions ensure that Bosnia will turn into a policy of divide and be forced to stay. Had outside powers worked from the beginning to reintegrate the fractured country, Bosnia, the Balkans, and Europe might have had a more durable resolution. The Dayton agreement should evoke memories not of Munich but of Cyprus."
http://www.foreignaffairs.org/index/issues/journals/facontents/1-2-97.html

In Bosnia, 'Peacekeeping' Forces Will Be 'Peacemakers'; Diplomacy: Bosnia has never been a nation and has no specific cultural identity. Why are we intent on preserving this Balkan no man's land? By Henry A. Kissinger, Opinion Page, © The Times, 5/16/1993.
"Rarely has a President been faced with decisions involving the Hobson's choice presented to Bill Clinton over Bosnia. If the Bosnian Serbs reject the Vance-Owen plan, he is being urged to bring them into line by military action, probably bombing. If they accept the plan, he seems committed to contributing 20,000 U.S. troops to a peacekeeping force of more than 60,000. And he may well wind up being obliged to take both steps."
Search the Los Angeles Times Archives: http://www.latimes.com/archives/
ID: 0930050991 

Did U.S. Concern for Bosnia Justify Iran Arms Pipeline? © Los Angeles Times, Opinion, 4/7/1996.
"For four long years the war in Bosnia defied Big Power fiddling, arm-twisting and diplomatic initiatives, finally collapsing last fall because the combatants simply ran out of gas. Had the Americans and Europeans been able to foresee that outcome, some considerable missteps might not have been made, including the Clinton administration's decision to wink at Iranian arms shipments to the Muslim-led Bosnian government despite a U.N. arms embargo."
Search the Los Angeles Times Archives: http://www.latimes.com/archives/
ID: 0960030874 

The domino Theory Reborn: Clinton's Bosnia Intervention and the "wider war" thesis, By Ted Galen Carpenter, © Cato Foreign Policy Briefing No. 42 , 08/15/96
"President Clinton's assertion that the U.S.-led NATO mission in Bosnia is essential to prevent a wider European war is erroneous. Two of the wider war scenarios – Serbia as a runaway expansionist power like Nazi Germany and the prospect that the Bosnian conflict could ignite a continental conflagration just as a Balkan incident sparked World War I – are so far-fetched that they should be dismissed out of hand...The wider war thesis is merely a refurbished domino theory. Not every armed conflict in Europe is destined to lead to a massive war that would affect important American security interests."
http://www.cato.org/pubs/fpbriefs/fpb-042.html

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