AMERICAN REALISTS AND THE WAR IN BOSNIA 1992-1995.
AMERICAN REALISTS AND THE WAR IN BOSNIA 1992-1995.

Summary/Abstract: While there is a significant body of literature on U.S. policy towards Bosnia in the early 1990s, the role and policy recommendations of American realists have been largely overlooked. Realism is a school of thought in international relations which holds that states are the key actors motivated by interests which seek to maximize their power and security in an anarchic world. Adherents of this worldview emphasize the pursuit of national interests and the importance of power and force in achieving it. Realists are generally opposed to military interventions where a vital national interest is not at stake. The purpose of this article is to fill this gap by analysing both realist policymakers and academics and how they responded to the war in Bosnia from 1992 to 1995. Several top officials of the George H. W. Bush Administration including the President, Secretary of State James Baker and National Security Adviser Brent Scowcroft were realists and this worldview shaped the US response to the outbreak of the war in Bosnia. Focused on a host of other foreign policy issues at the time, the Bush Administration was adamant not to get involved militarily in Bosnia. James Baker’s statement „We don't have a dog in that fight“ came to define the Bush Administration's Bosnia policy. Its realist outlook combined with the presidential campaign priorities in 1992 to ensure that the Western response to the war in Bosnia was handed over to the Europeans. With realist policymakers in power from the outbreak of the war in spring 1992 through early 1993, many Bosnians hoping for a Western military intervention at the time would later come to realise how far-fetched those hopes were. In addition to realist policymakers, several prominent realists in the American academia also weighed in on how the US should respond to the war in this part of Southeast Europe in the early 1990s. Academic realists published their opinions and recommended policy options in leading media outlets throughout the three-and-a-half year war. Though their worldview was not shared by the first Bill Clinton Administration, academic realists continued offering policy recommendations on Bosnia.

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