Ambassador Holbrooke, the author of the Dayton settlement, perhaps understood best how ill-suited America was to change the underlying political structure reconfirmed by the Bosnian war. The United States and its European allies, principally the British and French, had very unwisely put NATO's prestige at risk through a half-hearted military intervention. But the price was to detach the military from the stated political objective, namely, to recreate the mythical Bosnia of yore, with every group dressed in its special costume, only with empty bandoliers or, at least, only the desire to fire into the air in celebration. This will never be, and two years on, even the wishful man in the White House has figured it out. Meanwhile, Mr. Holbrooke has wisely departed the scene.
T here are but three futures ahead for the West's involvement in the Balkans.
The first is to continue, laden with pious hope, costly expenditure, and mounting frustration. Ultimately, we will get shot and then probably get out. The second is brutal pacification of the kind practiced by the great empires in their martial phases. No modern army, especially one under NATO control in the full glare of the media's klieg lights, can be bent to this task, nor should it be. That leaves a third policy, the only one that can work for any length of time and that will not get us shot up too often or force us to shoot up the Serbs, Croats, or Muslims.