Ted Galen Carpenter

MEDITERRANEAN QUARTERLY, Volume 5 Number 4 Fall 1994, pp. 17-29

Published by Duke University Press under the editorial direction of Mediterranean Affairs, Inc.

- Ted Galen Carpenter is director of foreign policy studies at the Cato Institute and author of A Search for Enemies: America's Alliances after the Cold War.-

It has become a cliche in the debate about U.S. policy on the Balkan crisis for interventionists to compare Serbia to Nazi Germany, with Serbian president Slobodan Milosevic playing the role of the "new Hitler." According to that logic, the conflict ravaging the former Yugoslavia is the strategic and moral equivalent of the crisis in the 1930s.

Proponents of U.S. military action in the Balkans contend that the United States risks a rerun of the tragic events of the late 1930s, culminating in a larger war, if it fails to lead a collective effort of the Western democracies to stifle aggression in its early stages. Various political luminaries, including Margaret Thatcher, George Shultz, Jeanne Kirkpatrick, and Zbigniew Brzezinski, express that reasoning in a well-publicized open letter to President Clinton. "If we do not act immediately and decisively," they warn, "history will record that in the last decade of this century the democracies failed to heed its most unforgiving lesson: that unopposed aggression will be enlarged and repeated."(l) Journalist Roy Gutman is equally stark in stressing the importance of stopping Serb aggression: "The choice before the West is whether to let aggression against Croatia and Bosnia stand, ushering in a return to the darkest period of modern history, or to restore some sort of order similar to the relative calm of the Cold War's waning years."(2) On another occasion, Gutman stated bluntly that "it is folly to think that stability in Central Europe is not in the United States' strategic interest, recalling the origins of the two World Wars."(3) Angelo Codevilla, a senior fellow at the Hoover Institution, employs even greater hyperbole, warning that "Serbia's amassing of an evil little empire in the heart of Europe may well hasten the day when the American people will have to decide whether to go to war to defend Europe ."(4)

When pressed, most interventionists grudgingly concede that Serbia poses a less dire threat to European security than did Nazi Germany, but they nevertheless contend that Belgrade's expansionism must be halted and reversed.(5) Otherwise, proponents of intervention warn, Serb aggression will at the very least eventually spread southward from Bosnia, entangling Greece, Turkey, and other countries. Former State Department official Stephen W. Walker expresses that view succinctly, contending that the Former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia, where the United States already has troops deployed as part of a UN peacekeeping force, "will be drawn into the next Balkan bonfire. Greece and Bulgaria will not be able to resist the temptation to intervene, and Greece is a NATO country. The cost of U.S. intervention at that point will be staggering."(6)

Serbia's Meager Threat Potential

Those who contend that the current turmoil in the former Yugoslavia is comparable to the earlier wave of Fascist aggression adopt a simplistic, rote interpretation of history. There are several crucial differences between the two situations, all of which cast doubt on the argument that it is essential for the United States to exert political and military leadership to end the conflict and thwart Serb territorial ambitions.(7)

The crisis in the 1930s involved one of the world's great powers-with the second-largest economy and a large, well-trained military force-embarking on a frightening and highly destabilizing expansionist binge. Serbia, on the other hand, has a population of 9.8 million (about the same as Belgium's) and a gross domestic product less than one-fifth of Denmark's. Indeed, even before the UN economic sanctions began to bite, Serbia's 1991 gross domestic product of $18.75 billion was only modestly greater than Luxembourg's.(8) Belgrade's military forces, while not insignificant, consist largely of remnants of the old Yugoslavian federal army (augmented by the Serb militias in Bosnia and Croatia). The effects of the war and the UN arms embargo-despite some leakage-have combined to degrade the readiness of those forces. Although Serb military units might well be capable of mounting a ferocious resistance to an intervening army in Serbia itself, or in Serb-controlled portions of Bosnia and Croatia, they could not launch credible offensive operations against even midsize states in the immediate region, much less against the major industrial powers of Europe. We are not likely to see Serb armored divisions advancing on Paris or Serb invaders conquering Ukraine as part of a quest for Lebensraum.

In the late 1930s Germany was capable of creating a massive disruption of the international system; in the 1990s Serbia is capable only of modestly strengthening its position at the expense of its ethnic rivals within the boundaries of the former Yugoslavia. Not only does Belgrade not have territorial ambitions outside those borders, it lacks the economic and military power to pursue them.

Even the notion that Serbia has committed acts of aggression in the same way that the expansionist Fascist powers did in the 1930s is inaccurate. Advocates of intervention have, of course, routinely accused Serbia of aggression against its neighbors. Margaret Thatcher's reasoning about the war in Bosnia is typical: "A sovereign state, recognized by the international community, is under attack from forces encouraged and supplied by another power. This is not a civil war but a war of aggression, planned and launched from outside Bosnia though using the Serbian minority."(9)

As Thatcher's comments indicate, the concept of aggression implies an armed attack by one sovereign state on another; aggression in the context of a civil war is a contradiction in terms. The conclusion that aggression has occurred in the former Yugoslavia is based entirely on the decision of the United States, the members of the European Union (EU), and the United Nations to recognize the independence of Croatia and Bosnia over Belgrade's vehement objections. By declaring the Yugoslav state defunct and disregarding Serbia's desires to keep the federation intact, the United States and its European allies arbitrarily redefined a civil war-which had been under way since June 1991-as one of external aggression. Robert W. Tucker and David C. Hendrickson note that under international law a better case could be made that the recognition of Croatia's and Bosnia's independence "constituted an illegal intervention in Yugoslavia's internal affairs, to which Belgrade had every right to object."(10)

Washington and the EU states insisted on regarding the boundaries of Croatia and Bosnia as thenceforth sacrosanct international boundaries. But those boundaries were purely artificial creations, imposed by Communist dictator Josef Broz Tito shortly after he consolidated his power at the end of World War II. They were meant to be internal (virtually the equivalent of provincial) lines of political and administrative demarcation within Yugoslavia, not the boundaries of independent, sovereign states. Those jurisdictions also had extremely weak historical roots and made little sense from the standpoint of ethnic distribution or economic relations. In particular, Tito's creation of such "republics" left large Serb minorities in both Croatia and Bosnia-a deliberate move to dilute Serb political influence.

When Croatia and Bosnia declared independence, those Serb communities, fearing that they would be the targets of discrimination or even outright persecution, launched secessionist bids of their own. Howard University professor Nikolaos A. Stavrou contends that ill-considered action on the part of the United States and its European allies exacerbated an already dangerous situation. "With amazing haste, administrative and geographic borders had been converted to international ones without much concern for the ethnic makeup of these new entities," he writes. "No serious consideration was given to the implications of recognizing new states prior to legally securing autonomy for ethnic groups within these states."(11)

For Washington to insist that the Bosnian conflict is not a civil war but a case of international aggression-therefore warranting a NATO military response-because Bosnia became a recognized member of the international community in 1992 is reminiscent of a logical flaw that Abraham Lincoln exposed with his renowned caustic wit. "If you call a dog's tail a leg," Lincoln reportedly asked a political colleague, "how many legs would a dog have?" His colleague replied that it would then have five. "No," Lincoln responded, "calling a dog's tail a leg doesn't make it a leg." Calling the Bosnian struggle a case of cross-border aggression rather than a civil war does not make it one.

Moreover, even if one accepted the questionable premise that the West's action in recognizing the independence of Croatia and Bosnia without changes in their presecession boundaries was legitimate, the conflicts in those two countries would still be hybrid internecine and cross-border wars. Although there is certainly extensive "interference" by an "outside power" (Serbia), most of the Serbs who are engaged in the fighting do not come from Serbia. The vast majority of the insurgents in Croatia are inhabitants of the predominantly Serb region of Krajina, and there are significant differences between their political agenda and that of the Milosevic regime in Belgrade. (Serbia is more amenable, for example, to a peace agreement that accords the Krajina Serbs autonomy rather than full independence.)

Similarly, most of the Serb forces that have challenged the authority of the Muslim-dominated government in Sarajevo come from Bosnia, not Serbia. Belgrade assuredly influences their actions and provides its allies with significant logistical support, but it is an exaggeration to suggest that the Milosevic government tightly controls their actions. As in the case of the relationship between Serbia and the Krajina Serbs, there are noticeable policy differences. Belgrade has repeatedly stated that it would be willing to endorse a peace settlement that would require Bosnian Serb forces to give up some of the territory they had conquered.(12) Needless to say, Radovan Karadzic and other Bosnian Serb leaders are less than enthusiastic about that proposal. Contrary to the simplistic conclusion of interventionists such as columnist William Safire, the Bosnian Serbs are hardly Belgrade's "puppet forces."(13)

"Genocide" and Other Exaggerations

Another comparison to the 1930s frequently made by proponents of U.S. and NATO intervention is also flawed. The Serbs are like the Nazis, interventionists contend, because of the rabid nationalism and ethnic hatred exhibited by the Milosevic regime and its followers. America and its allies cannot stand by, the argument goes, while "ethnic cleansing" takes place in Bosnia and Croatia, or the Western nations will again be passive accomplices to genocide. Some of the more feverish interventionists even make explicit comparisons with the Holocaust. Patrick Glynn, a resident scholar at the American Enterprise Institute, typified that tendency when he charged, "At a time when a museum to Holocaust victims was opening in Washington to great fanfare, history will record that two administrations refrained, in the face of overwhelming evidence, from countering a blatant program of genocide in Bosnia whose scope and nature they fully understood" (14)

Although the argument that Serb nationalists are the moral equivalent of the Nazis is more plausible than the notion of the Serbs as a serious strategic threat, it is still an exaggeration. Both the Belgrade government and Serb forces in Croatia and Bosnia have undoubtedly committed reprehensible acts-as have all parties to the conflict. Nevertheless, that conduct must be viewed in perspective.

The "ethnic cleansing" label, which is routinely used to describe Serb actions, is misleading as well as inflammatory. U.S. officials, aided by large portions of the Western news media, have sought to equate it with genocide. But as skeptics point out, what is going on in Bosnia cannot accurately be termed genocide. Daryl G. Press, a political scientist at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, notes that genocide has a very specific meaning: "the systematic annihilation of a racial, political or cultural group Instead of exterminating members of other ethnic groups, the Serb objective has generally been to expel them from certain territories as part of an effort to create a "Greater Serbia." Although that is certainly a loathsome practice-and is sometimes accompanied by acts of murder, rape, and other human rights violations-it does not constitute genocide. Press is correct when he concludes that "the goal of the combatants in the former Yugoslavia is to drive the enemy from the land, not to capture and kill every man, woman and child."(15)

Indeed, events in such places as Sudan and Rwanda more closely fit the definition of genocide. Nearly 1 million black Sudanese have perished at the hands of the Arab government in Khartoum during the past decade. Strife between Hutus and Tutsis in Rwanda in spring 1994 claimed the lives of more than 200,000-and perhaps as many as 500,000-people, the overwhelming majority of them Tutsi civilians, over a period of eight weeks.(16) Estimates of fatalities-including those of military personnel-in Bosnia range from 115,000 to 200,000 in more than two years of warfare.

Yet few of the individuals who demand that the United States use military force to stop "genocide" in Bosnia contend that there is a comparable moral obligation to intervene in Sudan or Rwanda. The U.S. Department of State, which has repeatedly accused the Serbs of genocide, declined to apply that label to the situation in Rwanda. Department spokeswoman Christine Shelly told reporters that while "acts of genocide have occurred in Rwanda," it was not clear that the situation met the standards of the 1948 UN Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide. When one puzzled news correspondent asked Shelly how many acts of genocide it took to constitute genocide, she replied, "That's just not a question that I'm in a position to answer."(17) If the slaughter in Rwanda fails to reach the threshold for genocide, the conflict in Bosnia does not even come close.

Contrary to the impression fostered by supporters of an American-led military intervention, ethnic cleansing itself is hardly a unique practice.(18) American leaders and pundits should be especially circumspect about denouncing other countries for "cleansing" territories of indigenous inhabitants. It was not that many decades ago that the U.S. government expelled the various American Indian tribes from lands that political leaders and their constituents coveted-often in violation of solemn treaties.

But one does not have to go back to the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries-a period that apparently constitutes "ancient history" in the minds of many Americans and, therefore, has no applicability to the Bosnian situation-to find pertinent examples of ethnic cleansing. One such incident occurred when the British colony of India was partitioned and granted independence in 1947. Millions of Hindus were expelled from the new Islamic nation of Pakistan, while millions of Muslims had to flee predominantly Hindu India. Nearly 250,000 people perished in the bloodshed that accompanied the partition.(19) >From the standpoint of U.S. culpability, an even more odious episode took place at the end of World War II, when nearly 16 million ethnic Germans were expelled from Poland, Czechoslovakia, and other Eastern European countries solely because of their ethnicity. Not only did the United States fail to take any action to prevent that forced exodus, President Harry S. Truman openly endorsed the step at the Potsdam Conference, with the sole proviso that the process be "humane."(20)

More recently, some two hundred thousand Greek Cypriots were driven from the northern portion of Cyprus when Turkish forces invaded and occupied nearly half of the island in 1974. Again, it is instructive to compare NATO's passive response to Ankara's actions with the alliance's periodic bouts of saber rattling about Serb policy in Croatia and Bosnia. There has never been the slightest consideration given to using military action against Turkey to restore the Greek Cypriots to their homes. The Serbs have a point when they contend that the United States and its allies employ a blatant double standard.

Return of the Domino Theory

Finally, advocates of U.S. intervention in Bosnia also contend that even if Serbia did not pose a great strategic threat and Serb practices were not uniquely odious from a moral standpoint, the conflict nonetheless would have crucial symbolic importance. Other aggressors around the world are watching how the West responds to Serb expansionism, interventionists insist. The editors of the Wall Street Journal express that argument emphatically.

Bosnia is about more than Bosnia. Slobodan Milosevic is merely the irredentist of the moment. All over the world are pirates masquerading as national leaders, eager to invade and kill the people next to them under the guise of historic grievances. Saddam was the first post-Cold War irredentist. China has been ceded Hong Kong: it wants the Spratleys. We know about Kim 11-Sung, Assad, Saddam (still), the bitter losers of the Russian empire, Aidid.(21)

Former deputy undersecretary of defense Dov Zakheim offers a similar interpretation: "Only active intervention on the side of the Muslims can assure that Saddam, and other aggressors, will not conclude that his timing on Kuwait was simply off by a few years ... and that the rewards of aggression are there for the taking."(22) Margaret Thatcher asserts bluntly that "would-be aggressors are waiting to see how we deal with the Serbs."(23)

According to that thesis, a strong U.S.-led response in Bosnia will deter other potential aggressors. Bombing Serbia, the Journal insists, "makes sense, not because it will 'stop the fighting.' but as an act of deterrence." In the post-Cold War era, strategic thinkers must confront a dangerous world "in which the model of deterrence is no longer always a Clausewitzian war, a la Vietnam, but instead a tough but discriminate 'shot across the bow' of the sort used against the Barbary Pirates and the Bey of Algiers."(24)

Even if one accepts the simplistic view that the fighting in Croatia and Bosnia is a case of aggression by an irredentist "pirate," the policy prescription is fallacious, for it rests on the dubious notion of deterrence by example. Such "indirect" deterrence is much more problematic than "direct" deterrence: confronting a specific expansionist power with superior force and a declaratory policy that the force will be used if certain acts are committed. Christopher Layne and Benjamin Schwarz present a compelling case against deterrence by example. They note that arguments asserting the need for indirect deterrence assume that aggression, even in intrinsically unimportant areas such as the Balkans, must be resisted, or disorder will spread to regions that are important to the United States. Such reasoning, they point out, bears a strong resemblance to the Cold War era's domino theory, and therein lies the problem.

The domino theory ... has never reflected the real dynamics of international politics. Unlike the chain reactions posited by physics, in the world of statecraft crises are usually discrete happenings-not tightly linked events. The outcome of events in potential hotspots like Nagorno Karabakh, Moldova, the Baltics, Ukraine, Transylvania, and Slovakia will be decided by local conditions, not by what the United States does or does not do in the Balkans.(25)

Several developments in recent history support that thesis and raise serious doubts about whether deterrence by example has any validity as an international relations concept. As Layne and Schwarz remind us, "Slobodan Milosevic was not deterred by U.S. action against Iraq; Saddam Hussein was not deterred by U.S. action in Panama; Manuel Antonio Noriega was not deterred by U.S. action in Grenada, Lebanon, or Vietnam; Ho Chi Minh was not deterred by U.S. action against North Korea; and Kim 11-Sung and Joseph Stalin were not deterred by U.S. action against Adolf Hitler."(26) Fareed Zakaria, managing editor of Foreign Affairs, makes a similar point. "The theory has to explain an embarrassingly large problem," he writes. "If a demonstration of American force in one country chills the blood of would-be aggressors in another, why did the Persian Gulf War not deter the Serbians, Azeris, Sudanese, Georgians and Somalis?"(27)

In light of the dismal record, those who contend that a strong NATO military response against Serb "aggression" will deter expansionist powers or factions elsewhere in the world have a difficult time making their case. Indeed, there is scant evidence that deterrence by example works even against recalcitrant regimes in the same region. If the theory were true, Noriega certainly should have gone to great lengths to avoid provoking the United States, given Washington's long-standing record of using force against small nations in Central America and the Caribbean. The invasion of the Dominican Republic in 1965 and the invasion of Grenada in 1983 served notice that it was dangerous to antagonize the United States. Nevertheless, for personal and domestic political reasons, the Panamanian dictator continued a confrontational course right up to the moment U.S. troops launched their assault in December 1989.

Believers in indirect deterrence seem to be relying on faith rather than on a rational theory supported by meaningful historical evidence. In an unguarded moment, Thatcher unwittingly underscored the dubious nature of the doctrine: "I thought we'd taught the world that we'd stopped the aggressor in the Falklands and we stopped the aggressor in Iraq into Kuwait."(28) Evidently, the world was not paying attention.

The Parochial Balkan Struggle

The 1930s analogy to the contrary, the fighting that has ravaged Croatia and Bosnia is a parochial, albeit an ugly, conflict with little importance outside the immediate region. It is a mundane struggle over the territorial spoils of the fractured Yugoslav federation. Although it may be an especially acrimonious political divorce, it need not and should not have wider strategic or moral significance. Even the worst-case scenario-the spread of the conflict to Kosovo and the Former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia, with subsequent intervention by such outside powers as Albania, Greece, Bulgaria, and Turkey-would not fundamentally alter that reality. Unless the United States recklessly puts its prestige on the line, and its military forces in harm's way, there is little intrinsic reason why a third Balkan war would threaten vital American interests any more than did the Balkan wars of 1912 and 1913 (which involved many of the same parties).

A conflict that has only regional relevance should be dealt with by the principal powers in the affected region. America should view itself as the balancer of last resort, not the intervenor of first resort, in the international system.(29) The United States should become involved militarily only if a conflict threatens to produce a would-be hegemonic power that could pose a credible threat to the security and well-being of the American people. The careless, promiscuous use of the 1930s analogy blurs that important distinction and would have the United States intervening in a murky civil war that has only the most tenuous connection to American interests.

Member states of the European Union may understandably be concerned about instability on the perimeter of their region, and a prompt resolution of the conflict in the former Yugoslavia would undoubtedly be in their best interests. If they conclude that a continuation of the turmoil is unacceptable, they have ample resources to deal with the problem. The EU members can field more than 2.2 million active-duty military personnel, and their defense establishments boast sophisticated weaponry that the Serbs could not hope to match.

It is by no means self-evident, however, that an armed EU intervention would be wise. Although the Western European powers have interests at stake, they could reasonably conclude that the costs and risks of becoming bogged down in a Balkan quagmire outweigh any prospective benefits. Moreover, an armed intervention directed against Serbia would raise the possibility of a collision with Russia, which also has some long-standing interests in the region and significant political and religious ties to the Serbs. It might be more prudent for the major European powers to adopt an explicit policy of mutual nonintervention than to take the chance that Russia and the European Union would end up on opposite sides, supporting rival Balkan clients. Those are all properly matters for the European states to decide for themselves.

American policymakers should not even regard the decision about intervention as a close call. America has, at most, peripheral interests at stake in the Balkan conflict. The fighting does not represent a serious threat to America's security, despite the apocalyptic rhetoric of most advocates of intervention. The current turmoil in the Balkans, tragic as it may be, is not the strategic or moral equivalent of the calamitous events of the late 1930s, warranting a U.S.-led military response to prevent a massive disruption of the global balance of power. For the United States to become involved in the struggle convulsing the former Yugoslavia would not only constitute gratuitous meddling, it would be an unparalleled act of folly.

Notes:

1. "What the West Must Do in Bosnia," Wall Street Journal, 9 September 1993.

2. Roy Gutman, "U.S. Indifference Crippled Bosnia," Newsday, 16 September 1993.

3. Roy Gutman, A Witness to Genocide (New York: Macmillan, 1993), 176.

4. Angelo Codevilla, "U.S. Leads Operation Wrong Target," Wall Street Journal, 7 January 1993.

5. See, for example, George Soros, Bosnia (New York: Soros Foundation, 1993), 6.

6. Stephen W. Walker, "Clinton Still Has Time to Act in Bosnia," Christian Science Monitor, 14 September 1993.

7. Military intervention is especially unjustified, but other coercive measures are also ill advised. Those would include the proposal for a "cold war" strategy of economic sanctions directed against Serbia, lasting years or decades, as suggested in David Gompert, "How to Defeat Serbia," Foreign Affairs 73 (July-August 1994): 30-47.

8. International Institute for Strategic Studies, The Military Balance, 1992-1993 (London: Brassey's, 1992), 51, 87.

9. Margaret Thatcher, "Stop the Serbs. Now. For Good," New York Times, 4 May 1994.

10. Robert W. Tucker and David C. Hendrickson, "America and Bosnia," National Interest 33 (fall 1993): 17.

11. Nikolaos A. Stavrou, "The Balkan Quagmire and the West's Response," Mediterranean Quarterly 4 (winter 1993): 36.

12. David B. Ottaway, "Yugoslavia Stands by Prior Demand That Bosnian Serbs Give Up Land," Washington Post, 29 April 1994. On other aspects of the friction, see Laura Silber, "Bosnian Serbs Test Patience of Milosevic," Financial Times, 4 May 1994.

13. William Safire, "General Shilly-Shali," New York Times, 21 April 1994.

14. Patrick Glynn, "See No Evil," New Republic, 25 October 1993, 23. Other examples include Gutman, A Witness to Genocide; Anthony Lewis, "Waiting for Clinton," New York Times, 19 April 1993; and Zbigniew Brzezinski, "Never Again-Except for Bosnia," New York Times, 22 April 1993. For criticisms of such comparisons, see Richard Cohen, "It's Not a Holocaust," Washington Post, 28 February 1993; and Erwin Knoll, "The Uses of the Holocaust," Progressive (July 1993): 15-16.

15. Daryl G. Press, "What's Happening in Bosnia Is Terrible, But It's Not Genocide," Christian Science Monitor, 26 September 1993. Ethnically motivated killings have not been confined to Serb forces. Croat and Bosnian Muslims also have committed such atrocities, although that fact has generally been lost in the barrage of stories about Serb crimes. For examples of Croat and Muslim atrocities, see John F. Burns, "In Muslim Town, Serbs Pay the Price," New York Times, 9 March 1993; John F. Burns, "Vicious 'Ethnic Cleansing' Infects Croat-Muslim Villages in Bosnia," New York Times, 21 April 1993; and James Rupert, "Muslim Forces Plunder Bosnian Croat Villages," Washington Post, 17 June 1993. 16. "Rwandan Death Toll May Exceed 200,000," Washington Post, 19 May 1994.

17. Thomas W. Lippmann, "Administration Sidesteps Genocide Label in Rwanda," Washington Post, 11 June 1994. Only after such quibbling was widely ridiculed did Secretary of State Warren Christopher finally concede that events in Rwanda constituted genocide.

18. Andrew Bell-Fialkoff, "A Brief History of Ethnic Cleansing," Foreign Affairs 72 (summer 1993): 110-21.

19. Larry Collins and Dominique Lapierre, Freedom at Midnight (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1975), 329 -98. A similar although less bloody expulsion of populations occurred following the UN mandated partition of Palestine into Arab and Jewish states. Some seven hundred thousand Palestinians ultimately fled their homes, many in response to terrorist campaigns conducted by Israeli paramilitary organizations.

20. Alfred M. de Zayas, Nemesis at Potsdam: The Anglo-Americans and the Expulsion of the Germans (London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1977).

21. "More Than Bosnia," Wall Street Journal, 28 April 1994.

22. Dov Zakheim, "A Syndrome That Was Only in Remission?" Washington Times, 3 May 1994.

23. Thatcher.

24. "More Than Bosnia."

25. Christopher Layne and Benjamin Schwarz, "American Hegemony-without an Enemy," Foreign Policy 92 (fall 1993): 16.

26. Ibid.

27. Fareed Zakaria, "Bosnia Explodes Three Myths," New York Times, 26 September 1993.

28. "Excerpts from Network Interviews with the Honorable Margaret Thatcher, 14 April 1993," press release, Center for Security Policy, Washington, D.C.

29. For a discussion of the balancer-of-last-resort concept, see Ted Galen Carpenter, A Search for Enemies: America's Alliances after the Cold War (Washington, D.C.: Cato Institute, 1992), 187-89.