U.S. Participation in Multinational Conflict Management Forces

Introduction: A Shrinking World and the Case for Intervention

High-speed travel, instantaneous communication, and multinational corporations have made the world a much smaller place. What an individual or group does on one continent may produce profound consequences on another. Nations no longer operate in a vacuum, as the sole agents and recipients of their insular policies. The Earth is becoming a single community, and it is with good reason that America's political leaders concern themselves with the problems and potential conflicts of other countries and regions.

Trouble spots are monitored as ancient animosities erupt into open violence. Perennial feuds expand into larger conflicts. Movements begin in distant places that soon pose serious difficulties for people in America, Europe, and beyond. The United States and its NATO allies intervened in the Balkans during the 1990s as a result of Serbia's campaign of ethnic cleansing against the Bosnian Muslims. The media worked overtime to convince a skeptical public of the necessity of a war based largely on humanitarian grounds. Though many objected — Republican officials most prominently — the argument worked, and American forces remained in Kosovo for years thereafter. Yet the campaign raises its own questions, namely in regard to the truth of the various propositions presented. Not all agreed that the United States was right to intervene. Not all agreed that the actual events merited a military response. Not all believed the most common accounts of those events. There are many sides to any argument, and all must be considered — especially when one of the alternative solutions is war. A clear framework must exist for determining the rightness of any future American participation in multinational conflict management forces.

As noted above, it was primarily for humanitarian reasons that the United States and its allies intervened in Bosnia — or at least that was the justification that eventually stuck with the public. Countries may become involved in multinational conflict management forces for a variety of reasons founded on varying political philosophies. Humanitarianism is one, while realism might be a more traditional rationale. Governments have frequently resorted to the argument of "national interest" as a reason for becoming involved in conflicts that do not appear, on the surface, to concern them directly. The United States and its European partners had an abiding interest in European stability, and the conflict in the Balkans was a potential threat to that wider stability.

Realpolitik and National Interest in the Balkans

With the threat to core interests in Bosnia becoming commensurate with the powers' continuing paramount interests, the international community reconfigured and redeployed the peacekeeping mission and reversed a previous decision not to intervene on the side of the Muslims. That neutrality was no longer an option represented an obvious case of realpolitik, particularly as the alignment with a Muslim people against the Christian Serbs seemed an apparent conflict with other European and American interests. America had long faced difficulties with predominantly Muslim nations, such as Iran and Iraq, but in this instance it was deemed better to side with the Muslims rather than against them. By the same token, the Bosnian Muslim beneficiaries of American military intervention were also forced to accept a realpolitik definition of the mission's goals — the creation of a secular state that would subsume under its control both Christian and Muslim citizens.

Essentially, the Clinton Administration made the case that ending the conflict between Christians and Muslims was in the geopolitical interests of the United States. As one critical analysis concluded, "As a consequence [of intervention], Washington secures a new client regime, major military bases and strategic geopolitical advantages while undermining an enemy to its uni-polar pretensions."

From this perspective, the "rescue" of the Kosovars was part of a larger game in which the United States was fighting against its real rivals — those geopolitical competitors that might have taken Serbia's side in an attempt to expand their own influence in the Balkans. This rival was essentially Russia; the Clinton Administration's reaction to Slobodan Milošević's depredations was, in part, an attempt to counter a revival of traditional Russian self-perception as leader and protector of fellow Slavic peoples. Thus, Washington's moves countered Moscow's.

Works Cited

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