To End a War

Naval War College Review,  Autumn, 2000  by Patrick C. Sweeney

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Holbrooke, Richard. To End a War. New York: Random House, 1998. 410pp. $15.95

To End a War is an interesting visit to the inner workings of the art of international negotiations. The reader accompanies Ambassador Holbrooke on his journey in search of an end to the war in Bosnia-Herzegovina. The path he takes is winding and laced with harrowing twists, switchbacks, and a few dead ends. He writes in a clear and forthright manner that keeps the reader's attention throughout the book even though the outcome is known.

Holbrooke opens with a review of his trip over Mount Igman in August 1995, in which three of his colleagues were killed in a tragic military vehicle accident. This loss is still deeply felt by the author; however, he often points out how little it meant to others outside his circle when placed in perspective of the tens of thousands who had already died.

The remainder of the book is divided into four sections. The first, "Bosnia at War," covers Holbrooke's introduction to the conflict and introduces the key players. He gives a candid and bleak description of the situation at the time that the United States was still considering its options and the UN was already deep in the morass of the Balkans. The Clinton administration, still smarting after the Somalia debacle, had little appetite for another adventure into a seemingly endless civil war. Europe and the UN were simply not achieving their aims, and conditions were only getting worse.

"The Shuttle," the second section, is perhaps the most interesting. Holbrooke details how he and his team patched together a shaky consensus among a diverse group of international leaders and power brokers in the Balkans, Europe, and America. The negotiations leading up to the Dayton accord were filled with intrigue, plots, and subplots. Since many of the parties involved were the same ones we later see in the Kosovo crisis, the insights provided are absorbing. The description of Slobodan Milosevic leaves one with a deep appreciation for his considerable abilities but with the impression that Holbrooke feels that given the tools, he (Holbrooke) could outmaneuver him. General Wesley Clark serves as Holbrooke's military right hand, and he undoubtedly gets his own impression of how to deal later with their shrewd adversary.

Holbrooke is harsh in his assessment of the military, and in particular of Admiral Leighton Smith, who at the time was the commander of Allied Forces South (AFSOUTH). Admiral Smith was the joint force commander for the Nato air operation DELIBERATE FORCE, which began on 30 August 1995. Holbrooke viewed the bombing of the Bosnian Serbs as his greatest leverage toward an agreement. He casts Smith as an obstruction to this design, for his refusing to support a more ambitious and consistent bombing campaign. The author seems to ignore the fact that Smith was not an independent commander but a subordinate to General George Joulwan, Supreme Allied Commander, Europe for Nato, and of the SACEUR bureaucracy. Holbrooke argues that a lack of Nato-approved targets threatened to interrupt the bombing at a time when he needed to maintain pressure on the Serbs. He recognizes that Nato nations would never approve additional targets and that the only option remaining for the military was to restrike previous targets, at incre ased risk to the Nato pilots. He is quite clear that in his view the military operations were not synchronized with the political objectives, thus diluting their benefit.

The next section details the historic gathering at Dayton, Ohio, in search of an agreement. The day-to-day give-and-take of negotiations is exposed to the reader, along with a further examination of the human dimension of the process. Holbrooke's experience as a participant in the Vietnam War settlement negotiations in Paris alerted him to the potential pitfalls at Dayton. During the deliberations, other elements of Holbrooke's negotiating advantage come into evidence; the success of the Croatian offensive, the economic embargo on the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia, and the war-weariness of the parties all contributed to his bargaining power. The real-life drama of the near failure of the talks and the last-moment changes in positions reads like a contrived Hollywood movie script.

The final segment briefly addresses the implementation of the agreement, which is probably why the book was named To End a War instead of To Find a Peace. Once again, Holbrooke brands the military as an unwilling supporter of the greater good. He outlines the failures of Nato's Implementation Force (IFOR), labeling it a flawed operation. Its inability to accept policing responsibilities (or allow a strong international police force), an aversion to "mission creep," and a stated position that it would not arrest war criminals relegated Nato to a weak position that was soon exploited.

Much of the blame is again passed to Admiral Smith, who now wore a second hat as the commander of IFOR. Holbrooke spends little time addressing the failures of the civil mission in Bosnia-Herzegovina. He appears unaware of the significant contribution of IFOR to salvaging the first election, in which Holbrooke was head of the Presidential Observer Mission.