Europe was humiliated, divided and powerless. Įurope - like the UN or the OSCE - did not emerge edified from this situation only NATO had been up to the task, more or less and belatedly, with effective air support campaigns, and then robust peace making and peacekeeping forces ( IFOR with 55 000 troops). In the American camp, Richard Holbrooke had pulled the strings and decided everything, by ruthlessly relegating the European leaders, including Carl Bildt, Jacques Blot and Pauline Neville-Jones. The Dayton Peace Agreement, which only France calls 'the Dayton-Paris agreement' (a formal concession by Bill Clinton to Jacques Chirac) was largely a Pax Americana. The British and French were in the field this time round, but not the Germans. We had experienced the humiliations inflicted on a UN force (UNPROFOR) that had a timid mandate and overly restrictive rules of engagement. Strategic prescience! Four years later, we had witnessed the bombing of civilians, the siege of Sarajevo, broken ceasefires, failed mediations and Srebreniça. In response, some Europeans 'held back' and feared an unfavourable division of tasks: 'noble' collective defence missions reserved for NATO and peacekeeping missions, considered 'subordinate', for Europe. America's 'pet project' at the time was not yet Asia, but rather the management of the decay of the Soviet world, without much interest in the Western Balkans. The context seemed favourable: an initially peripheral crisis, a relative lack of interest on the part of Russia, a green light from the United States which was even encouraging invention by the Western European Union ( WEU), the majority of whose activities were taken over by the European Security and Defence Policy (ESDP), and later by the Common Security and Defence Policy (CSDP).

' Europe's hour has come', said a Luxembourg minister in 1991 at the beginning of the Yugoslav wars.

The sword will disappear, but the stars will remain.' Suffering, torment, blood and pestilence. Vladimir is not scary.Įverything will pass.

Passeport diplomatique by Gérard Araud