Vanjska politika SAD-a prema Zapadnom Balkanu početkom 1990-ih / US Foreign Policy towards the Western Balkans in the Early 1990s

Abstract

US foreign policy towards the Western Balkans from the early 1990s has been characterised by uncertainty, indecisiveness, contradiction, and controversy. The war in BiH broke out at the time when America was in the quest of mission in the world without the Soviet Union and the role in the post-Cold War world. In the circumstances lacking vital national interest as well as clear American strategy in the Western Balkans, in early nineteen nineties, George W. Bush Administration decided not to get involved in the war in BiH as, in their opinion, potential Vietnam and Balkan civil war in a strategic marginal region. Likewise, appeals for humanitarian action in Kosovo were met with equal critics both in the Pentagon and the US Congress. The decision of the US officials to use military force, in order to end the war in BiH, was made only after dramatic changes in the political position of the Clinton Administration, and the change of the military situation on the ground. Even though the US intervention stopped ethnic cleansing of Albanians in Kosovo, and although American intervention in BiH was the biggest international humanitarian intervention ever conducted, the US involvement was still something more than mere altruism, due to the fact that the problems in BiH were also observed in the context of the American national security as well as the financial interests.