Gravitas

Both the Bosnian muslims and the Kosovo ALbanians are trying to use blackmail to get what they want. Threatening violence is all they have.

"The stress on our military and the continuing quagmire there guarantees that we are unable to even contemplate any additional sort of ground war elsewhere."

This reference to the Iraq War is 100% correct. The American military works well in acheiving its objectives when it uses its overwhelming technological superiority through non-direct combat means, such as via airstrikes or missles launched from battleships. When this strategy is combined with the arming of a local ally who is willing to die for a cause and act as the U.S's ground forces.

The Balkans were great for this formula, first in Bosnia and Croatia and later and more prominently in Kosovo, because the U.S. could target area with fairly small Serbian minorities (Bosnia, Croatia, and Kosovo together had 2.2 million Serbs in the 1990s wars) while local Croat, Bosniak, and Albanian armies could fight on the ground for U.S. objectives.

The truth is the U.S. never squared off with the Serbian army- and if they had tried to occupy all of Serbia in 1999 it would have been worse for them than Iraq is now. Estimates for NATO troop requirements for a total occupation were generally at 300,000 for the natuion of 10 million- about twice the size of Iraq coalition forces in a country of 30 million in the Middle East. The current U.S. casualty level of 3,500 in Iraq would also have been seen as a relative picnic.

American soldiers simply don't want to die for U.S. imperialitic goals. It is too rich and spoiled of a country to tolerate such large self-sacrifices.

President Silajdzic?, who made him president? was is the state department?

I think the real problem is Hubris, not Gravitas. And it started somewhere in that glorious time of Holbrooke.

It is an attitude that no longer believes in the great principles of international law and that instead tries to micro-manage other countries.

The real problem of the US is not that it doesn't succeed anymore in imposing its ideas on Bosnia. It is that it keeps trying to impose new ideas.

After Dayton the US should have restricted itself to watching over the outcome. Instead it chose to keep pressuring for more changes.

An important problem thereby is that the end goal is unclear. First we had the police reform and a largely symbolic constitutional reform. But it is well known that two more constitutional reforms were scheduled to follow and they would change the balance of power in Bosnia to a more centralized country. Unfortunately nobody seems to wonder where this is supposed to end. Anyone who knows the racistic attitude of Silajdzic towards Serbs can only conclude that at the moment Bosnia is not ripe for too much centralisation.

America's, might is right policy, is not working anymore in world affairs because it does not carry that might anymore. I for one, even an a US citizen, is happy to see a greater balance of power developing in the world. The days of forcing democracy down people's throats, for our benefit by the way, are hopefully coming to an end.

Mr Montgomery, did you steal the idea for this article from the breathtakingly arrogant article written in 2004 by David Limbaugh? You know, the one in which this conservative mainstay told us all about the "gravitas," of Bush?

The comment about hubris is spot on in this regard. Continually telling us all how clever you are/were and how you have never made a mistake has worn thin, Mr Montgomery.

Actually Your Excellency, former US Ambassador to Kuwait April Glaspie's exact words to Iraq's ambassador were that if Iraq invaded Kuwait to settle differences about Kuwaiti slant drilling into Iraqi oil fields that the US would consider it "an internal matter of Iraq." Similarly, a British diplomat in Belgrade in 1995 told the late Bosnian Serb politician Nikolai Koljevic that before peace could be acheived in Bosnia, that the "territorial issue of Srebrenica must be settled on the ground." Robert Gelbhards affirmation that "The KLA is a terrorist organization" acheived a similar bait-and-switch effect with the target nation: give them the green light, then blame them for aggression. Nice try, Mr. Ambassador.

Both the Bosnian muslims and the Kosovo ALbanians are trying to use blackmail to get what they want. Threatening violence is all they have.

"The stress on our military and the continuing quagmire there guarantees that we are unable to even contemplate any additional sort of ground war elsewhere."

This reference to the Iraq War is 100% correct. The American military works well in acheiving its objectives when it uses its overwhelming technological superiority through non-direct combat means, such as via airstrikes or missles launched from battleships. When this strategy is combined with the arming of a local ally who is willing to die for a cause and act as the U.S's ground forces.

The Balkans were great for this formula, first in Bosnia and Croatia and later and more prominently in Kosovo, because the U.S. could target area with fairly small Serbian minorities (Bosnia, Croatia, and Kosovo together had 2.2 million Serbs in the 1990s wars) while local Croat, Bosniak, and Albanian armies could fight on the ground for U.S. objectives.

The truth is the U.S. never squared off with the Serbian army- and if they had tried to occupy all of Serbia in 1999 it would have been worse for them than Iraq is now. Estimates for NATO troop requirements for a total occupation were generally at 300,000 for the natuion of 10 million- about twice the size of Iraq coalition forces in a country of 30 million in the Middle East. The current U.S. casualty level of 3,500 in Iraq would also have been seen as a relative picnic.

American soldiers simply don't want to die for U.S. imperialitic goals. It is too rich and spoiled of a country to tolerate such large self-sacrifices.

President Silajdzic?, who made him president? was is the state department?

I think the real problem is Hubris, not Gravitas. And it started somewhere in that glorious time of Holbrooke.

It is an attitude that no longer believes in the great principles of international law and that instead tries to micro-manage other countries.

The real problem of the US is not that it doesn't succeed anymore in imposing its ideas on Bosnia. It is that it keeps trying to impose new ideas.

After Dayton the US should have restricted itself to watching over the outcome. Instead it chose to keep pressuring for more changes.

An important problem thereby is that the end goal is unclear. First we had the police reform and a largely symbolic constitutional reform. But it is well known that two more constitutional reforms were scheduled to follow and they would change the balance of power in Bosnia to a more centralized country. Unfortunately nobody seems to wonder where this is supposed to end. Anyone who knows the racistic attitude of Silajdzic towards Serbs can only conclude that at the moment Bosnia is not ripe for too much centralisation.

America's, might is right policy, is not working anymore in world affairs because it does not carry that might anymore. I for one, even an a US citizen, is happy to see a greater balance of power developing in the world. The days of forcing democracy down people's throats, for our benefit by the way, are hopefully coming to an end.

Mr Montgomery, did you steal the idea for this article from the breathtakingly arrogant article written in 2004 by David Limbaugh? You know, the one in which this conservative mainstay told us all about the "gravitas," of Bush?

The comment about hubris is spot on in this regard. Continually telling us all how clever you are/were and how you have never made a mistake has worn thin, Mr Montgomery.

Actually Your Excellency, former US Ambassador to Kuwait April Glaspie's exact words to Iraq's ambassador were that if Iraq invaded Kuwait to settle differences about Kuwaiti slant drilling into Iraqi oil fields that the US would consider it "an internal matter of Iraq." Similarly, a British diplomat in Belgrade in 1995 told the late Bosnian Serb politician Nikolai Koljevic that before peace could be acheived in Bosnia, that the "territorial issue of Srebrenica must be settled on the ground." Robert Gelbhards affirmation that "The KLA is a terrorist organization" acheived a similar bait-and-switch effect with the target nation: give them the green light, then blame them for aggression. Nice try, Mr. Ambassador.