Only war-thugs, warlords, and architects of the idea of a "pure ethnic state" behaved triumphantly and acted with self-confidence in that mess. It is not difficult to argue that the United Nations had been ridiculed on a large scale (from the worthless signatures of the "peace process" protagonists, to each single check-point on the muddy roads); and that the governments of the major world powers remained unmoved and impotent while watching the destruction of multi-ethnic communities in Bosnia and Herzegovina by nationalists, self-styled ethnic leaders and war criminals. And finally, the "world peace movement" and human rights activists have acted without the necessary spark and enthusiasm that were so powerful in the Sixties and Seventies.
Whatever happens to the region of former Yugoslavia is of crucial importance for the future of the existing international order and its institutions. It is common knowledge today that the war in Yugoslavia, and in Bosnia-Herzegovina in particular, has been a test of credibility and future durability of the idea of "European unity," as well as a test of the Organisation for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE) and of NATO. The two major world political organizations, the OUN and the EU, have been exposed by and involved in the Yugoslav crisis from the very beginning, and their record has been controversial, to say the least. In order to be able to recover and rehabilitate itself after the Yugoslav experience, the world community will have to evaluate its policy and address a couple of very direct questions' "why" and "when" this case went so terribly wrong, and "what" should be done in the future to save the world from another "ethnically cleansed peace process."
Part of the answer could be that major world governments, at the eve of the break-up of the former Yugoslavia, refused to "read" nationalism as another form of totalitarianism, now replacing the failed communist/socialist regime. The short-sighted policy of the West accepted nationalism as a tool for bringing communism to its knees all over Eastern and Central Europe, without questioning its negative aspects towards individual freedoms and minority rights, and general animosity towards "others." Encouraged by this blank "go-ahead," nationalism in Yugoslavia exposed fascist methods in no time: massive expulsions of people from their homes in the campaign of ethnic cleansing, detention camps, ethno-political obedience as a condition of employment and for civil rights in general and so on. In this context, it is still unclear why the democratic part of the world refused to identify and support the anti-nationalist forces in the region. Those who had consistently encouraged and financially helped anticommunist dissent for 40 years have stayed silent when they should have been aiding the anti-fascists and anti-war activists in the region.
The debate on the issue of intervention or not in Bosnia was reduced to the option of "sending our boys to the Bosnian mountains" and easily dismissed. Intervention by an organised international community is much more complex than that, and in the case of Bosnia could have had a decisive effect, provided it was undertaken at the early stage of the "blitzkrieg" which had been planned by the Serbian Democratic Party (Radovan Karadzic) and was carried out by the JNA (Yugoslav Army) and a number of paramilitary Serbian groups. To take just one example, the three year siege of Sarajevo would have never happened if air strikes had been ordered against the two dozens artillery posts around the city in the first days of the shelling. The UNPROFOR officials were sitting in the city, counting shells and mortars, and praising themselves for being "neutral and impartial in the peacekeeping operation." Just a superficial reading of the Additional Protocol II to the Geneva Conventions of Humanitarian Law would have suggested to the experienced army officers and civil affairs chiefs of the UN that they were actually witnessing the commission of war crimes and crimes against humanity (see, recent ICTY indictments against M. Krajisnik and General Galic).
