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TRIUMPH OF THE LACK OF WILL

International Diplomacy and the Yugoslav War

by James Gow

Columbia University Press

$29.50, hardcover, 343 pages, index

0-231-10916-4

Why did the United States, Britain, France and Germany fail to cope with the collapse of Yugoslavia and its decent into a savage five-year war? Why did the killing continue, even as diplomats, UN peacekeepers, and world leaders desperately negotiated agreements? In TRIUMPH OF THE LACK OF WILL Gow evaluates the range of attempts to find a workable peace, and identifies four factors that helped subvert the peace process: bad timing, bad judgment, poor cohesion, and, above all else, the absence of political will, especially concerning the use of force.

The sudden outbreak of the Yugoslav war contradicted the spirit prevailing among nations after the Berlin Wall fell in 1989. The conflict in Yugoslavia presented the post-Cold War world, and Europe in particular, with a critical challenge. In the "new world order" where international cooperation, not armies, would resolve conflicts, Yugoslavia became a litmus test. In a world searching for peaceful ways to integrate collective interests, Yugoslavia represented something that had come to be thought impossible in the late twentieth century: armed conflict in Europe.

Gow analyzes the individual perspectives and roles of major states in Europe after the Cold War—Germany, France, the United Kingdom, the Russian Federation and the United States—all of which constituted the Contact Group attempting to establish a unified international policy toward the war. He tracks the history of international involvement, including initial intervention by the European Community (EC) and the EC Conference in The Hague; the joint initiative of the EC and the UN to create a diplomatic settlement through the International Conference on the Former Yugoslavia; the failure of the Vance-Owen Plan; and UN peacekeeping operations in Croatia, Bosnia and Macedonia. Gow contends that Western governments pursued their own interests even subverting one another’s strategic and diplomatic goals—rather than uniting in a common cause.

At a time when the failure of cooperation among Western powers shatters faith in the UN, NATO, and the EC to deal with such crises, TRIUMPH OF THE LACK OF WILL provides an accessible, balanced perspective readers need to understand the world’s response to Yugoslavia’s bloody collapse.

Contents:
Preface and Acknowledgements
1. Introduction
2. The Yugoslav Problem: Crisis, Collapse, Conflict
3. Early Initiatives: From Declaration to Recognition
4. Early Initiatives: From Recognition to Reckoning
5. Military Operations: Peacekeeping in Croatia, Bosnia and Macedonia
6. Military Operations: Peace Support and Coercion
7. The Major Players: Paris, Bonn, London
8. The Major Players: Washington and Moscow
9. The Peace Plans: Vance-Owen and ICFY
10. The Peace Plans: Dayton - Accord from Contact Group
11. Conclusion: Triumph of the Lack of Will
Index

ABOUT THE AUTHOR: James Gow is lecturer in the department of war studies at King’s College, London, and author of Legitimacy and the Military: The Yugoslav Crisis.

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Last modified: August 12, 2007

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