The USA refused to lift the arms embargo on Bosnia to allow it to defend itself because UK and France didn’t want a Muslim majority nation in Europe, and Clinton shrugged and said “okay”
Then Pakistan used KSA funds to covertly supply the Bosnians with ATGMs via Turkey air drops which ultimately changed the tide of the war.
Then suddenly the USA spent years harassing the UN to charge the ISI director with breaking the embargo.
The fact that they handled an ongoing genocide of which they had zero interest or risk in with such attitude is why no one takes the USA seriously when it complains about literally any foreign issue.
Clinton said U.S. allies in Europe blocked proposals to adjust or remove the embargo. They justified their opposition on plausible humanitarian grounds, arguing that more arms would only fuel the bloodshed, but privately, said the president, key allies objected that an independent Bosnia would be “unnatural” as the only Muslim nation in Europe. He said they favored the embargo precisely because it locked in Bosnia’s disadvantage. […] When I expressed shock at such cynicism, reminiscent of the blind-eye diplomacy regarding the plight of Europe’s Jews during World War II, President Clinton only shrugged. He said President François Mitterrand of France had been especially blunt in saying that Bosnia did not belong, and that British officials also spoke of a painful but realistic restoration of Christian Europe. Against Britain and France, he said, German chancellor Helmut Kohl among others had supported moves to reconsider the United Nations arms embargo, failing in part because Germany did not hold a seat on the U.N. Security Council.
I don’t think people realize how fucked up that war was. It seems to get lumped in with post-Soviet chaos rather than a separate thing that happened because world leaders made specific choices that we need to learn from.
I mean, Europe and the U.S. made awful decisions but the diplomacy to end it also required the U.S. and Europe. Almost nothing about that conflict is a simple story of good vs. evil. And it happened before most people had constant access to news so it was often unclear what was happening until later.
Edit: I’m not defending any country there. I’m just saying it was a fucking mess.
The USA refused to lift the arms embargo on Bosnia to allow it to defend itself because UK and France didn’t want a Muslim majority nation in Europe, and Clinton shrugged and said “okay”
Then Pakistan used KSA funds to covertly supply the Bosnians with ATGMs via Turkey air drops which ultimately changed the tide of the war.
Then suddenly the USA spent years harassing the UN to charge the ISI director with breaking the embargo.
The fact that they handled an ongoing genocide of which they had zero interest or risk in with such attitude is why no one takes the USA seriously when it complains about literally any foreign issue.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Inter-Services_Intelligence_activities_in_Bosnia_and_Herzegovina
I don’t think people realize how fucked up that war was. It seems to get lumped in with post-Soviet chaos rather than a separate thing that happened because world leaders made specific choices that we need to learn from.
I mean, Europe and the U.S. made awful decisions but the diplomacy to end it also required the U.S. and Europe. Almost nothing about that conflict is a simple story of good vs. evil. And it happened before most people had constant access to news so it was often unclear what was happening until later.
Edit: I’m not defending any country there. I’m just saying it was a fucking mess.