War Criminals and International Political Will

There was a lot of press about your meetings with Justice Goldstone and about the inability for there to be a resolution in the arrest of the war criminals who had been identified, especially the leader Karadzic and the Serbian general Mladic. So the question turns on one of the hats that you're wearing: you're the sheriff. And the moral community, both international and national, is saying, "Hey we've identified these people, it's very important to at least bring them to trial, to gather the evidence, to have a proceeding, so a decision can be made." Tell us a little about that dilemma and how you answer the critics of the American military, that they chose not to find the criminals where they might have.

And I'm glad you brought this up. I mean, it's one of the most difficult issues I've ever had to deal with in my life. Nothing would have made me happier than to see Karadzic, Mladic and their ilk in the ground somewhere. I mean, those people do not deserve to remain on the face of this earth based on what I'm absolutely certain they were doing. But you said it was the international community and the media that was exercised about the fact that we didn't go in. Let me tell you who needs to get exercised in order to make that happen, that's the politicians.

The American politicians?

No, international politicians. Western militaries are controlled by civilians, take their orders from civilians, and do precisely what they're told to do. Now granted, there is an interchange and a dialog there and they ask me, what do you think? And I said I think it would be crazy. It would be crazy to try to turn army into police. They do not make good policemen. I was in Stockholm, Sweden, I was getting beat up by one of the media about this very same issue. I said, "Let's go down to Bosnia and take any company from any nation -- Egypt, Bulgaria, Hungry, Poland, French, British, US, you name it -- we'll bring a company up here in Stockholm and we'll put them on your streets tomorrow and they will become your police force. And they will be responsible for the safety and security of this city and your family." Now what I didn't say and what I should have said was, "and by the way, let's take those Stockholm policemen that they replace and we'll put them down in Bosnia and they become combat soldiers replacing the people we just got." Well obviously they didn't take me up on this, but the point here is that you don't put people into a situation for which they are not trained. You simply do not do that.

Now the other part of this is, as a military man I'm obligated to tell people what I think. I said, "Look, if you want me to go get those war criminals, give me the mission, but there's a price to pay and you need to understand what that price is. That price is going to be casualties. That price is going to be a disruption of the process, I can guarantee it. And my personal recommendation is that we don't get involved in that." There are a lot of other peripheral reasons but those are the principal ones. On this issue I feel very strongly and I will tell you also that every other responsible, professional military man that I have talked to feels precisely the same way, to include the chiefs of defense staff of the many of the nations whose forces I was commanding. The media criticized us for being honest with our politicians in saying do not give us this mission, it will cause a problem, it will create casualties. And we were criticized for that honesty. Those same media were criticizing our predecessors in Vietnam for not being honest with the politicians. If the politicians want us to go get war criminals, give us the mission and understand the consequences.

Now that raises an interesting question which is that these missions seemed to have worked most, Cambodia comes to mind, where there is a real political solution. There the great powers decided, at the end of the Cold War, that enough is enough and we aren't going support these various factions in that struggle. So I would argue that there has not been a political solution in Bosnia over the long term.

You're exactly right. I'll tell you what bothers me a lot. IFOR did precisely what they were asked to do and a lot more, a lot more than most people will ever realize. We were prohibited from nation-building. I mean, nation-building is a very difficult term to describe. But we did a lot of things. We built miles and miles of road. We built and/or repaired 60-plus bridges while I was there. We opened four airports. We opened the rail system from central Bosnia down to the coast to Ploca and up to Zagreb in Croatia. We opened bridges across the river to allow that country to have access outside of itself. There were a lot of things that soldier power accomplished in Bosnia.

One other thing we accomplished was that we established an environment in which the humanitarian organizations and the private, volunteer, nongovernmental organizations, including the World Bank, could do the kind of work that we always said -- at the very outset we said that the civilian part of this equation is much more difficult, much more complex than the military. It will take them longer. And it will be tougher. But the military established that environment. And I think the civilian agencies worked very hard to try to make things happen, but I saw no political will on the part of Izetbegovic or Milosevic or Tudjman for that matter, to create conditions where there could be political compromise (read: somebody's going to have to give up some power, somebody's going to have to do something that's unpopular). That political will did not exist while I was there, and it does not exist today. And until it does exist, we're not going to see peace in Bosnia. It's just that simple. I told Izetbegovic in a one-on-one conversation with him, and I saw him frequently, I said, "Mr. President, you have got to invite the Serbs into Sarajevo. You must tell your police, you must tell your army, and you must tell your people that Sarajevo is to be an integrated city and you must invite the Serbs to come back." And he said, "Admiral, that would be political suicide." And I said, "You think it will be political suicide; if you don't do it, it will be suicide for this peace agreement."

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