West and Serbia in Bosnia might force President
Yeltsin to defend Serbia and so lead to a wider
war. Actually it was absurd to suppose that
Yeltsin, depending as he did on Western eco-
nomic help to resolve his problems at home,
would have risked a war with the West for the
sake of Serbia. What was left? Eventually a NATO
ultimatum was sent to the Serbs demanding that
they withdraw their heavy weapons from the
vicinity of Sarajevo. The Serbs complied only after
Russian troops had agreed to occupy the vacated
Serb positions. The public in the West again drew
the wrong conclusion; the siege of Sarajevo was
by no means over – it was merely enforced from
a wider Serb-held perimeter.
The Yugoslav wars were finally brought to an
end through active American diplomacy and inter-
vention. Decrying the policy followed by the
European Community, but still unwilling to risk
US lives, the Clinton administration devised a new
strategy in 1993. It hinged on Croatia, whose
army was being rebuilt, and on secret supplies
to the Bosnian Muslims. Tudjman was encour-
aged to recover all the Croat lands lost to the
Serbs and to form an alliance with the Bosnian
Muslims against Serbia. The US promised to assist
Croatia’s desire to integrate with the West; if it did
not comply, however, Croatia would also be iso-
lated and would face Serbia alone. In February
1994 the US brought about an agreement in
Washington between Tudjman and Izetbegovic to
form a Croatian–Bosnian federation. The UN and
NATO remained as ineffectual as ever, but when
in April 1994 the ‘safe area’ of Gorazde was
threatened by the Serbs, NATO at last agreed to a
token strike from the air. The bombing persuaded
the Serbs not to press their attack and the enclave
of Gorazde remained in Muslim control. In
August the Bosnian Serbs were facing increasing
isolation when they blocked yet another peace
plan; Milosˇevic ́, having lost control over the
Bosnian Serbs, now broke with them publicly,
although he could not afford to see them suffer
military defeat. Then, finally, during the spring
and summer of 1995 came the turning points that
were to bring the fighting to an end.
In May 1995 the Croatians attacked and
rapidly overran western Slavonia, defeating the922 GLOBAL CHANGE: FROM THE 20th TO THE 21st CENTURY
The UN in a non-combatant role. © Antoine Gyori/Corbis Sygma