American Foreign Policy

American Foreign Policy

Introduction

On that grey evening of March 24 1999, hundreds of military jets flew over the Balkans. It was a day that would change millions of lives, shake the foundations of the existing international system, question the concept of sovereignty and elevate the cause of Human Rights. Eighteen European nations joined the United States of America in conducting air strikes against Serbian military targets. For the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO), this was the first and largest military operation ever conducted against a country since its creation in 1949. The objective of this U.S. led coalition was to halt the ethnic cleansing in Kosovo by the Serbian army and irregular forces. Five days earlier, the Rambouillet peace conference between Serbia and the Kosovar Albanians had collapsed. Serbian representatives had refused to sign the peace treaty known as 'The Rambouillet Accords'. [1] Consequently, the peace process itself between Serbia and Kosovo had stalled, despite the U.S. efforts to save it.

Discussion

The history of the conflict between Serbs and Albanians is a broad and immensely exhausting subject to cover here. Instead, this paper will only discuss major developments of the conflict in relation to the American foreign policy toward the Balkans in the post-Cold War era. Also, much attention will be given to the actions of NATO and the European Union. The argument that is presented here, however, reflects the belief that the American foreign policy in the Balkans, especially toward former-Yugoslavia has always been spontaneous and reactive rather than long-term strategic, be it political, economic or ideological. The reason why former-Yugoslavia is taken as a case study in U.S. foreign policy toward the region is straightforward: No country in the Balkans played a more important role than former-Yugoslavia in the American focus during the Cold War and afterward. After the spectacular American-British failure to overthrow the Albanian communist regime in Albania in a 1948 secret operation, the U.S. turned its attention to the political developments in Yugoslavia . In the same year, the then communist president of Yugoslavia, Josip Broz Tito broke his ties with Josef Stalin. [1] The Truman administration regarded Yugoslavia as a quiet battleground to halt the progress of communism in Western Europe and applauded the Yugoslav president when he divorced his country from the Soviet network.

Thus, the relation between Yugoslavia and the United States, following the end of World War II, came as a direct result of Yugoslav actions towards the Soviet Union rather than American involvement in the Balkans. Nine American presidents, beginning with Harry Truman, followed the same policy in the region, yet none of them saw Yugoslavia as a threat to European democracy [2]. The implications of the Yugoslav rejections of the Warsaw Pact in 1954 had a striking effect on western perception of Yugoslav affairs. The United States along with its Western European allies understood the significance of Yugoslavia's geopolitical position and therefore used it as a buffer zone between the Soviets and ...