The problem set the West by the Yugoslav wars between 1991 and 1995
was at bottom a simple one: whether to intervene on the ground to
defeat the Serb forces in Croatia and Bosnia, and then keep
substantial forces there for a long period to hold down the Serbs and
maintain a united Bosnia. The answer was an equally simple one:
refusal, because it was assumed--probably correctly--that Western
electorates would support neither the loss of life among their own
troops nor the permanent commitment of men and money required. In the
end, the war was terminated (or suspended, we don't know yet) by the
victory of one of the warring nations, the Croats, armed by the
United States and supported to a limited degree by NATO airpower. In
consequence, naturally enough, the Croats have dictated the contours
of the peace settlement on the ground. An accident of geography, and
the imperatives of political ambition, led to this Croat victory
entering the history books under the curious name of the "Dayton
Peace Accord"--the culminative example of the misuse of language that
has characterized so much of the debate on Bosnia in the West.
It is not my purpose in this essay to rehearse this melancholy
history and turn over yet again the bones of Bosnia's dead. Instead,
I want to focus on one key aspect of the intervention controversy in
the West, and on a scholarly debate that provided the intellectual
underpinning for some of the positions adopted: the question of the
origins and nature of nationalism and national conflicts. The
connection between the scholarly debate and contemporary developments
is made explicit in the introduction to a recent collection of essays
on nationalism, edited by Geoff Eley and Ronald Suny:
