Avoiding War, Inviting Defeat: The Srebrenica Crisis, July 1995

Abstract

The key contention of the article is that management of the July 1995 Srebrenica crisis (that led to the massacre of an estimated 7,000 Muslim men by Serb forces) failed because of an unwillingness by the international community to use force. As Srebrenica is in critical ways a crisis typical of peace support operations, this is a lesson that applies to such operations in general. It is also a lesson that goes against the standard crisis management literature which, having grown up under the shadow of the Cold War, saw the avoidance of the use of force as the main objective. The use of force, however, is plagued by difficulties which make contemporary crisis management more complex than in the Cold War. The number of actors involved means a far‐reaching dispersal of authority and decision‐making powers. Further complications are confused moral agendas, competing bureaucratic interests and limited national interests. One critical factor, highlighted particularly by Srebrenica, was a deep‐seated misunderstanding of the nature of contemporary conflict and the efficacy of the use of limited force.