OTuathail 2002
OTuathail 2002
www.politicalgeography.com
Abstract
Keywords: Critical geopolitical theory; Practical geopolitics; Discourse analysis; Foreign policy analysis;
Bosnia; ‘Humanitarian nightmare’
1994). Jacques Poos, speaking as Chair of the EC Foreign Affairs Council of Foreign
Ministers, had famously declared that “this is the hour of Europe, not the hour of
the Americans.” The United States, retreating from world affairs after the Gulf War,
was happy to go along with this arrangement (Gow, 1997; Owen, 1995). However,
the European Community, in the process of becoming the European Union, was
neither unified nor capable of responding to the crisis militarily. The result was a
series of diplomatic initiatives that failed to halt the fighting . American foreign
policy leaders became more critical but did not alter the basic Europeanization strat-
egy. Meanwhile, war engulfed Bosnia; Sarajevo, a city that had hosted the Winter
Olympic Games in 1984, was besieged by Serbian ethno-nationalist forces.
In Washington, spurred by the picture on the front page of the Washington Post,
Secretary Baker instructed U.S. diplomats at the U.N. to push for a tough and
immediate response. This involved convincing the Europeans to abandon their earlier
two-phase proposal for sanctions against Yugoslavia in favor of immediate and com-
prehensive sanctions. The U.S. leadership initiative worked and on 30 May 1992 the
U.N. Security Council passed comprehensive sanctions against Yugoslavia, including
an oil embargo. An international crisis had been recognized and described – Bosnia
as a ‘humanitarian nightmare’ – and a collective international response formulated –
comprehensive sanctions against Yugoslavia. But the nightmare would not disappear.
Bosnia’s horrific violence would splatter across the West’s media for years to come
and periodically unsettle its conscience. The reason was simple: Bosnia was always
much more than a ‘humanitarian nightmare.’
Why was the war in Bosnia a ‘humanitarian nightmare’ and not something else?
What made the invasion of Bosnia, for example, different from the invasion of
Kuwait? With Bosnia, there was no presidential declaration that “vicious aggression”
by “international outlaws and renegades” “will not stand” as George Bush declared
on 5 August 1990 after the invasion of Kuwait (Bush, 1990). Other policies were
considered appropriate – moral condemnation, delivering ‘humanitarian aid,’ passing
sanctions against ‘aggressors’ – but not military intervention. Bosnia was a ‘humani-
tarian nightmare in the heart of Europe’, described as a regional humanitarian chal-
lenge and not a global geostrategic one like Kuwait. Why? Answering these questions
requires examining the process of practical geopolitical reasoning, how foreign pol-
icy decision-makers make sense of international crises, how they construct stories to
explain these crises, how they develop strategies for handling these crises as political
challenges, and how they conceptualize ‘solutions’ to these crises.
For more than a decade ‘critical geopolitics’ has sought to deconstruct the ways
in which ‘geopolitical knowledge’ is created around international crises, actors and
events. There is now a considerable critical geopolitical literature examining formal
geopolitics or the study of the writings of canonical figures in the geopolitical tra-
dition (Dodds & Atkinson, 2000; Ó Tuathail & Dalby, 1998). Major studies of popu-
lar geopolitics, the production and circulation of geopolitical discourse in popular
604 G. ÓTuathail / Political Geography 21 (2002) 601–628
culture and the mass media, have also been published in recent years (Dijkink, 1996;
Sharp, 2000). Yet, by contrast, there are very few detailed studies of practical geo-
politics within political geography ((Dodds, 1997; Taylor, 1990) are partial
exceptions). Termed ‘foreign policy analysis’ within International Relations (IR),
this domain of research has a rich literature and great variety of perspectives. These
can be reduced to four active IR traditions of research on how leaders think and
states act:
The study of discourse has become extremely popular over the last decase in
political geography and elsewhere. Discourse can be defined as a set of capabilities
that allow us to organize and give meaning to the world and our actions and practices
within it. This definition is exceedingly broad as are the methodologies that pass as
“discourse analysis.” Indeed, ‘discourse analysis’ is a misnomer for there is no agreed
and paradigmatic ‘discourse analysis’ but a heterogeneous mix of approaches, per-
spectives and strategies (Macdonell, 1986; Torfing, 1999). Discursive approaches
reject scientism and its instrumental conception of language as a mere telegraphing
tool of communication. Meanings issue from language and do not pre-exist it
(Saussure, 1990). Meaning is a function of language operating as a system of differ-
ence. There is never any one-to-one correspondence of signified to signifier. Rather,
the social context of language use, the ‘language game,’ is crucial in approximating
meaning (Wittgenstein, 1998). Furthermore, meaning can never be fully stabilized
and grasped for it is perpetually in a play of difference and deferment (Derrida,
606 G. ÓTuathail / Political Geography 21 (2002) 601–628
1981). Finally, discursive approaches tend to stress that subjects are never prior to
the language games or discursive fields they utilize. Rather than sovereign subjects
having discourses, discourses constrain and enable subject-positionings (Harré &
Langenhove, 1999).
Beyond these arguments there are a great variety of elaborations and perspectives.
Milliken (1999) is correct in suggesting that scant attention has been given to an
examination of appropriate methods and criteria for discourse study in IR, an argu-
ment also true of political geography. While some suspicion of the dangers of formal
methods is justified given that discursive approaches emphasize human creativity
and the capacity for play in social life, discussion of how to formally undertake a
discourse analysis of geopolitical reasoning and foreign policy practice is long over-
due.
One means of making sense of the great varieties of ‘discourse analysis’ is to
organize them into macro, meso and micro-level perspectives. The distinctions have
a certain heuristic value, though they are crude and do not capture the range and
complexity of some theorists. Foucault’s oeuvre, for example, ranges from detailed
engagement with particular texts and practices to consideration of the most abstracted
philosophical epistemes (Dreyfus & Rabinow, 1993). Because of both its philosophi-
cal ambition and wide historical sweep, Foucault’s work, from his early studies of
madness and the human sciences through his work on penology to his later consider-
ations of sexuality, is best characterized as macro-level discourse analysis. He is
interested in genealogies of knowledge, the development of institutionalized disci-
plines of knowledge, and the functioning of powerful discourses of subjectification
and social positioning as regimes of truth and technologies of power (Hoy, 1986).
Meso-level discourse analysis is less ambitious in historical range and philosophi-
cal depth, focusing more on the everyday working of discourse in public policy
and social debate. It employs notions from Foucault, like a concern with discursive
formations and discursive productivity or how discourse helps produce ‘common
sense’ understandings and pragmatic ‘storylines’ that condition and enable routine
policy practices. It is associated with the ‘argumentative turn’ in public policy and
planning (Fischer & Forester, 1993).
Micro-level discourse analysis is generally associated with Linguistics and Psy-
chology and is characterized by finely focused studies of conversation and the build-
ing blocks of making sense (Brown & Yule, 1983). Such approaches, with excep-
tions, rarely address questions of power and identity (Fairclough, 1992; Tannen,
1999). Micro-level discourse analysis is what is required to construct out of the
density of the historical record ‘grammars of state action’ (Milliken, 2001).
In studying practical geopolitical reasoning, the meso-level argumentative
approach has much to recommend it. This argumentative approach uses the rhetorical
tradition to understand public policy making. ‘New rhetoric’ studies (Perelman &
Olbrechts-Tyteca, 1969) emphasize how rhetoric is more than a collection of ‘pretty
tropes’ and stylistic devices. They focus on what Aristotle called ‘the art of inven-
tion,’ or what Michael Billig dubs ‘witcraft’ (Billig, 1987). This argumentative
approach proceeds from several philosophical assumptions. The first is that thinking
is an irrepressibly social process. There are no private languages (Wittgenstein,
G. ÓTuathail / Political Geography 21 (2002) 601–628 607
1998). Humans do not converse because they have inner thoughts to express; rather
they acquire ‘thoughts’ because they are able to converse publicly using a shared
ensemble of interpretative resources called a ‘language.’ Second, thinking is a cre-
ative dialogical process, proceeding from socialization to a set of interpretative
resources, the active processes of categorization and particularization of positions,
and the assemblage of higher-level sense-making into apparently coherent and con-
sistent storylines. Criticism and justification are involved at every level, as we form
positions and hold views, within social contexts of argumentation and debate. We
constantly update our views as events and arguments change. While actors actively
form ‘positions’, they are also entangled within the webs of meaning that dominant
storylines permit and are ‘positioned’ by the images, metaphors, analogies and
reasoning that these narratives allow.
Thirdly, this approach understands political leaders and foreign policy officials as
professionally skilled rhetoricians whose job is to construct arguments that resonate
with popular common sense and to create social consensus through persuasion,
enabling policy decision-making and action. In this process, the coherence and con-
sistency of certain positions is contextually dependent. At the lower levels of categor-
ization and particularization, knowledge can be fragmentary and incoherent. As it is
assembled into regularized and routinized storylines, it gains greater coherence, clar-
ity and consistency, though the public policy process does not necessarily value this.
As Hajer (1995, 46) notes, coherence is dependent upon the institutional environment
and cannot be assumed. Indeed, it is often the case that “the political power of a
text is not derived from its consistency (although that may enhance its credibility)
but comes from its multi-interpretability” (1995, 61).
What follows is a theoretical framework for the study of practical geopolitical
reasoning or the ‘witcraft’ of geopolitical discourse. Geopolitical discourse, it should
be remembered, is an inter-discursive field that is much more than geostrategic dis-
course. Geopolitical discourse encompasses all the languages of statecraft, is drawn
upon and used by officials and leaders to constitute and represent world affairs —
its constituent locations, defining dramas and leading protagonists — and their own
role and strategies in these dramas. Geostrategic discourse is merely one type of
geopolitical discourse.
While the metaphor has definite limits (see Billig 1987, 42–47), it is helpful in
understanding how statespersons reason about the daily dramas they face. Kenneth
Burke developed a dramaturgical analysis to create a ‘grammar of motives’ (Burke,
1945), where “any complete statement about motives will offer some kind of answer
to these five questions: what was done (act), when or where it was done (scene),
who did it (agent), how he did it (agency), and why (purpose)” (1945, xvii). Mod-
ifying these questions, I have identified five questions to approach the ‘grammar’ of
geopolitical reasoning as a dramaturgical phenomenon (see Figure 2). These were
questions needing answers from the Bush administration as it faced the eruption of
Bosnia in the spring and summer of 1992. Let us consider each of these questions.
Local
The Bosnian war could have been read in local terms but was not, as American
and European policymakers were largely ignorant of the country and its geopoliti-
cally contested position (Mahmutcehajic, 2000). Two general sets of Yugoslav geo-
political philosophies vied to determine Bosnia’s fate:
Bosnia in and of itself was largely a blank object for most US policy-makers in
1992. It gradually acquired contested meanings. For some (usually but not exclus-
ively liberals), it came to be seen as a mirror of America’s self-image and national
myth, a multi-cultural and multi-ethnic community par excellence. This was Bosnia
as a mini-America, a Western Self (Hansen, 1998). For others, usually cultural con-
servatives, Bosnia demonstrated the limits of the liberal imagination and the realities
of power politics; they emphasized that it had never been an independent state and
that it was best left to the local nation-states to establish order there.
Regional
앫 Bosnia as Balkan.
앫 Bosnia as European.
Todorova (1997) has argued that “the Balkans” is an historical geographical con-
struct revealing as much about the geopolitical consciousness of ‘the West’ as about
the region it purports to describe. Once a synonym for the mountain Haemus, the
signifier ‘Balkan’ became a designator of the vast region between the Bay of Venice
G. ÓTuathail / Political Geography 21 (2002) 601–628 611
and the Black Sea in the construction ‘Balkan peninsula,’ first used by the German
geographer August Zeune in 1808 (Todorova, 1997, 25). The transition of “the Bal-
kan peninsula” to “the Balkans” and the remarkable emergence of the geographical
category as a verb (“balkanize”) was a consequence of the slow decline of the Otto-
man Empire in the region and the violence of the Balkan wars and World War I.
These conflicts crystallized a thoroughly negative image of the region. “The Balkans”
became an abstract symbol of the violence and instability that supposedly result from
the heterogeneity of nationalities in one region. Various discourses, such as “ancient
hatreds” and “propensity for violence”, offered historical, sociological, and civiliz-
ational explanations for the ferocity and brutality. These circulated widely as did
geographically determinist notions about the ‘blood feuds’ of mountainous peoples.
In balkanist discourse, the region was a homeland of essential and immature national-
ist passion, a fracture zone where European civilization ended and a non-European
‘East’ began.
This discourse was extremely important in constituting the meaning of the Bosnian
war in 1992. But, the Bosnian war was also persistently represented as a European
war; its violence was inside the European and Western sphere of belonging and
universe of obligation. The historical significance of Sarajevo as the site of the
assassination that started World War I was widely noted. Journalistic dispatches from
the region stressed the surprise of many that such violence could occur in late twenti-
eth century Europe. It was frequently described as the worst violence in Europe since
the Second World War and frequent reference was made to Sarajevo in the historical
context of European history and as the site of the 1984 Olympics.
That American foreign policy-makers consciously adopted a Europeanization pol-
icy towards the Yugoslavian crisis underscores the dominance of the regional scale
in their early approach. But when violence persisted and propelled its way onto the
front pages of international newspapers, the conflict acquired an occasional global
significance.
Global
American foreign policy makers tried to resist categorization of the Bosnian war
in global terms but as the conflict persisted this inevitably happened. Two poles of
classification emerged:
Situation descriptions refer to how foreign policy actors classify the drama under
consideration and construct scenarios and analogies to render it meaningful. The two
competing situation descriptions of the 1992 Bosnian war were that the conflict was
a case of:
From these descriptions follow several dueling analogies. To those who saw inter-
national aggression, like the Bosnian government, the crisis was a repeat of the
invasion of Kuwait, and in the ‘new world order’, the proper international response
was international intervention to stop the aggression. For those who saw civil war,
the analogies were of other intractable civil wars. Bosnia was ‘Europe’s Lebanon’
or ‘Northern Ireland with mountains’ (Kinsley & Sunnunu, 1992).
From the outset, the Bush administration found it difficult to refute the categoriz-
ation of Bosnia as similar to Kuwait. The comparison caused rhetorical difficulties
for officials, such as an exchange at a press briefing on May 12, 1992 between a
reporter and Margaret Tutwiler, the State Department spokesperson and a top aide
to Secretary of State Baker. This took place a week after more than 700,000 people
had been displaced and over a thousand had died in Bosnia.
Q Margaret, can you explain what are the options at this point? With the situation
that you’ve just described of this indiscriminate violence against civilians — and
what is basically happening here is that Bosnia is being carved up between Serbia
and Croatia and probably won’t exist if this goes on much longer — how is that
different from what Iraq did to Kuwait when we decided that use of force was
necessary in a case where a state that was a recognized state and that had not
been an aggressor has been overrun by another state and trampled? That’s exactly
what’s happening to Bosnia. So why are the options limited to economic and
diplomatic options?
MS. TUTWILER: As I recall the situation concerning Kuwait, the President, when
announcing and enunciating the decisions he had made, I believe I’m correct, said
it was in the national security interest of the United States. I have also believed
that, I recall, concerning — one, I don’t do comparisons, as you know — this
situation, we have, when asked, which I believe is one form of your question, of
is the United States considering or why aren’t you sending force, we have also
answered that honestly and said, no, that we — that that is not an option, that is
not something that the United States is considering doing. And I don’t think that
the two situations, to be quite honest with you, are exactly identical, and that’s
why we don’t do comparisons. I understand very well some of the things that
G. ÓTuathail / Political Geography 21 (2002) 601–628 613
you are expressing, but it doesn’t alter the fact that they are not exactly ident-
ical situations.
Q Are you saying that the main difference is national security, that we don’t have
a national security interest here?
MS. TUTWILER: I didn’t — I said that when you said that these are basically
identical situations, and what I recall of a situation that you would like me to do
a comparison with, at the time, the United States expressed that it was in our
national security interest. And I believe that that was further elaborated numerous
times by the President or the Secretary of State, et cetera, of what exactly we
meant by that.
Q Are you saying that we don’t have a national security interest here? Are you
saying that? Or should I rephrase it and say, “Do we have a national security
interest here?”
me make this clear: We will not recognize the annexation of territories by force.
Aggression cannot be rewarded.” Though there is a considerable difference between
Tutwiler’s dialogical press briefing to articulate and clarify policy and Bush’s cel-
ebratory election monologue, Bush’s speech raised questions of classification and
meaning. Would the administration recognize “aggression” in Bosnia and, if so, how
would it “not be rewarded”?
앫 an equivalency strategy; or
앫 an aggressors and victims strategy.
Attribution refers to ways in which actors construct causal relations and expla-
nations of events and imputation is a form of attribution referring to how certain
intentions, psychological states and motivations are imputed to the protagonists
G. ÓTuathail / Political Geography 21 (2002) 601–628 615
(Moscovici, 1981). Both categorization processes are dense and complex. Grossly
simplified, they assign ‘blame.’ Unraveling ‘blame strategies’ requires close empiri-
cal analysis. Crudely, two dominant poles of causality construction in the US Bosnia
debate can be argued, the first in broad and diffuse structural terms, the second in
more direct instrumental and individualist terms. There was:
앫 the ‘ethnic hatred’ causality categorization with weak and diffuse central causality.
No one is directly to blame. The wars of the breakup of Yugoslavia are seen as
‘bottom up’ wars, a ‘return of the repressed.’ In contrast, there was:
앫 the ‘Communist elite’ causality categorization with strong central causality which
sees a ‘direct hand’ and ‘media manipulation’ as the key causes of ethnic tensions.
This contextualizes the wars as instances of a failed or arrested transition from
Communism to democracy. They are ‘top down’ wars orchestrated from Belgrade,
the key focus of blame. Nationalism is merely a means to an end for the elite —
their self-preservation.
The diffuse ‘ethnic war’ blame strategies undermined the moral clarity needed for
a direct response to the violence. It was, for example, frequently asserted that the
causes of the fighting in Bosnia were ‘complex’ and ‘historical,’ banalities to obscure
the war. The ‘Communist elites’ strategies, focusing on personalities such as Milo-
sevic and Tudjman over-personalized the conflict and attributed ‘evil’ and Machia-
vellian deceit to leading figures. This form of classification and particularization was
adopted by the New York Times editorial page, among others, rendering Milosevic
‘the butcher of the Balkans’ (Times, 1992b).
Two instances of debate over attribution and intentionality in May 1992 are worth
noting. The first is a New York Times editorial on 6 May 1992, condemning the
Bush administration for hiding behind a self-perpetuated veil of confusion and com-
plexity about the fighting in Bosnia. It is significant for its critique of the general
attribution strategy tacitly adopted by the Bush administration towards the Bosn-
ian war:
Later that month as the shelling of Sarajevo continued unabated and warfare
wracked the country, the administration adopted the position advocated by the New
York Times. Returning from Belgrade, US Ambassador to Yugoslavia gave a State
Department briefing in which he described the fighting in Bosnia as an “ethnic war,”
while nonetheless focusing on the key role of Milosevic and his drive for a Greater
616 G. ÓTuathail / Political Geography 21 (2002) 601–628
Serbia. Milosevic and the problem of Yugoslavia, he concluded, “is a generic result
of the breakdown of communism in Eastern Europe and the Soviet Union. What we
are getting instead of communism is a particularly virulent brand of nationalism”
(Zimmerman, 1992). On CNN at the end of May, he was even more explicit. “I
think it is the Serbian government under the leadership of President Milosevic work-
ing through its Serbian proxies in Bosnia that started this war, that committed this
aggression, that is trying to take two-thirds of Bosnian territory.” Both Zimmermann
and fellow guest, Jeane Kirkpatrick, agreed that the conflict was a clear “act of
international aggression.” For Kirkpatrick “the issue is really quite simple”
(Zimmermann & Kirkpatrick, 1992). In imposing sanctions, it became so for the
administration, but once imposed it became ‘complicated’ again as calls for US mili-
tary intervention were raised.
In considering new foreign policy crises, politicians and officials inevitably engage
in rough and ready calculations of the geostrategic significance of the crisis to their
state. What is at stake for ‘us’? From the outset, the Bush administration rated the
war in Bosnia as of little material significance to the United States. Bosnia had no
oil and the US had only a general stake is the stability of Europe and ensuring
international order. As the limits of the European strategy became apparent and the
Bosnian war became a global media event, the symbolic significance of the war in
Bosnia increased, with Bosnia becoming a ‘strategic sign’ (Ó Tuathail, 1999). At its
most basic, the choice about the strategic worth of Bosnia was straightforward.
The dominant position was that:
앫 the US had no national interests in the Bosnian War, articulated crudely by the
quotation attributed to James Baker in 1999: “we’ve got no dog in this fight”
(Danner, 1997). There were dangers in getting involved in such an insignificant
place. The crisis was a potential “quagmire,” another Vietnam.
앫 there were clear US national interests at stake in the Bosnian war. The war was
a crisis in the ‘heart of Europe” that the US needed to confront and address. The
credibility of the United Nations, the European Union, NATO and the United
States were on the line. The war was a crisis for the international community as
a whole.
Tacitly, the position of the U.S. government was that no US national interests were
at stake. Nevertheless, U.S. officials were reluctant to state this starkly and openly,
for America had to be seen as a concerned member of the international community.
In addition, despite their realist rhetoric, Bush administration officials appeared genu-
inely disturbed by the violence on their television screens, as were many members
G. ÓTuathail / Political Geography 21 (2002) 601–628 617
of Congress and the U.S. media community. There was also concern about the impact
of the ongoing war upon the allies and undoubtedly also upon the fall presidential
campaign. Interestingly, as part of the passage of sanctions against Yugoslavia on
30 May, President Bush had to declare legally that there was “an unusual and extra-
ordinary threat to national security, foreign policy and economy of the United States”
(sic) posed by the actions and policies of the Governments of Serbia and Montenegro
(Bush, 1992a).
This parallel with Europe, World War II and the Holocaust became the basis for
one of the storylines creating coherent meaning around the Bosnian War. In his
regular New York Times columns Anthony Lewis helped give voice to what became
the “European genocide” storyline on the Bosnian war. He excoriated President Bush
for his weak response in Bosnia in contrast to his response to the invasion of Kuwait.
America’s hand-wringing while shells fell on Sarajevo, recalled “Nazi bombs falling
on Rotterdam.” Unlike Kuwait, when Bush remembered Munich and standing up to
aggressors, he failed to “stop the Serbian Anschluss” (Lewis, 1992). Later, Lewis
compared Bush to Neville Chamberlain yielding to Hitler at Munich, a parallel also
articulated by some members of Congress.
The Holocaust dimension became irresistible after the discovery of ‘concentration
camps’ in eastern Bosnia in August 1992 (Gutman, 1993). The picture of an
emaciated Bosnian Muslim behind barbed wire instantly revived Holocaust images
and became a media storm no politician could ignore. Many prominent conservative
politicians and lawmakers, including Margaret Thatcher and George Shultz, began
to articulate the “European genocide” storyline.
Because of the accumulating power of the European genocide storyline, those
wary of U.S. intervention in the conflict had to develop a counter-story. Due to the
horrific and relentless nature of the violence being transmitted out of Bosnia,
reporters began asking questions of US officials about US troops in early May. Sec-
retary of State Cheney was forced to issue a public statement that there were no
plans to use US troops in the region. Cheney, the Defense Department, the White
House and allies on Capitol Hill constructed their counter-story from military-cent-
ered historical parallels. The Balkans was represented as a confusing and dangerous
place. The Lebanon analogy was evoked and the region portrayed as a quagmire for
the German army during World War II. Most importantly, the ‘syndrome’ that the
Bush administration had so publicly pronounced dead only a year and a half before
was revived. ‘Vietnam’ became the master metonym of the counter-story. Together
with Balkanist discourse, it helped write a “Balkan Vietnam” interpretation of the
meaning of the Bosnian war for the United States. The storyline was forcefully
argued by one of its leading proponents, General Colin Powell (Ó Tuathail, 1996;
Powell, 1995).
The two storylines that were to frame debate over Bosnia in US political culture
for the next few years were largely consolidated and in place by August 1992. Table
1 represents how the grammar of geopolitics was emplotted into regularized and
relatively coherent storylines.
Widely shared storylines are the basis for the formation of discursive coalitions.
Discursive coalitions are like ‘interpretative communities’, characterized by a shared
structure of seeing, representing and reasoning. Throughout the 1990s there
developed a distinct divide between the Pentagon, which adhered strongly to the
‘Balkan Vietnam’ storyline, and the State Department, particularly amongst the rank
and file foreign policy officers, more sympathetic to the ‘European genocide’ story.
The U.S. media were also divided but reinforced the ‘European genocide’ storyline
on the whole as the war unfolded.
G. ÓTuathail / Political Geography 21 (2002) 601–628 619
Table 1
Emergent storylines on the Bosnian war, August 1992
Where? Location Specifications The Balkans: ‘Balkan Southwest Europe; ‘the heart of
backwater.’ Europe.’
What? Situation Descriptions Complex civil war; ‘Lebanon,’ Clear international aggression.
Vietnam. Like Kuwait; World War II;
Holocaust.
Who? Protagonist Typifications They’re all the same: “there are Serbs are the clear ‘perpetrators’
no angels there” and the Muslims ‘victims.’
Why? Attributions & Imputations Ancient ethnic hatreds. Self-preservation strategy by ex-
of Causality ‘Thousand-year’ origins. Communist elite. A ‘modern’
‘Bottom-up’ war. War very war, a ‘top down’ war. Clear
complex. case of genocide.
So What? Interest Calculation The U.S. has no national Important international principles
interests in the area. The at stake. Southeast Europe is
Balkans are not strategic but geopolitically important. Never
Vietnam-like quagmire. appease dictators.
Q. Mr. President, are you going to have them send troops over to Europe? The
Balkans?
The President: We’re concerned about the situation in Yugoslavia, but there’s no
commitment on that. We are going to safeguard human life. We’re going to do
what we can in a humanitarian way. We’re working with the United Nations. But
it’s a little premature to be talking —
Q. You have to act quickly, don’t you, though, to keep those people from starving?
The President: When the United States sees people that are hungry, we help. And
again, that’s bipartisan or nonpartisan. That’s just been the hallmark of our coun-
try. So we will do what we should do. But I’m not going to go into the fact of
using U.S. troops. We’re not the world’s policeman. It’s a very complicated situ-
ation, but it’s one that we’re following very closely (Bush, 1992d).
can to encourage those who are either encouraging or have taken the law into their
own hands to please stop.” This, of course, did nothing to prohibit genocide as
a ‘solution.’ Finally, the problem closure characteristic of the script was that the
‘humanitarian nightmare’ would be solved by punishing the presumed “aggressors”
and delivering ‘humanitarian aid’ to the needy (see Table 2). Sanctions became the
presumed solution to the war. The unsustainability of this ‘problem closure’, which
left the dynamics of genocide intact, was evident as sanctions were passed on May
30th. The very first question President Bush answered in public on Bosnia, a few
days later, was in response to a reporter using the Kuwait analogy to suggest a more
vigorous response to the crisis:
Q. Sir, you say that you have a strong international leadership role. But the new
world order that you are promoting is being challenged in Yugoslavia these days.
It appears that the sanctions are not working against Serbia. When are you going
to take the lead of an international coalition to force Milosevic out of Bosnia, the
way you did with Saddam Hussein out of Kuwait?
The President: I think the sanctions -- I’m not prepared to give up on the sanctions
at all. They’ve only been in effect for a few days. As you know, first on this
question of Yugoslavia, out in front was the United Nations…The EC, which is
right there in the neighborhood, tried to have an effective role. It now appears
that a U.S. role, catalytic role, is important. Thus, we are moving forward; Sec-
retary Baker made a very strong statement on this recently, has worked closely
Table 2
The Bush Administration’s ‘Humanitarian Nightmare’ Script
Where? Location Specification The Balkans yet also ‘the heart of Europe.’
What? Situation Description ‘Heart-wrenching’ tragedy; ‘heart-rending’; ‘humanitarian crisis.’
Who? Protagonist Typifications All are to blame. Serbs are the aggressors.
Why? Attribution and Imputation Ancient hatreds and Milosevic; blood feuds and Communism;
of Causality ethnic differences and evil people. Rejecting analysis: ‘Its very
complex…’
So What? Interest Calculation ‘We’ve got no dog in this fight” (Baker) yet this crisis is a ‘cancer
in the heart of Europe’ (Eagleburger). U.S has a ‘catalytic’ role to
play yet the US cannot be the world’s policeman.
Problem Definition Ethnic hatred and violence; resultant ‘humanitarian nightmare.’
Geostrategic Response Europeanization strategy; the UN and EC not NATO should lead.
‘Prudence and caution prevents military actions’ (Bush).
Geopolitical Accommodation UNPROFOR to safeguard delivery of humanitarian supplies. Work
through international Conference on the Former Yugoslavia but
‘killing won’t stop until parties agree to stop it’ (Eagleburger).
Problem Closure Get humanitarian aid to the victims. Comprehensive sanctions
against Yugoslavia. Work with allies to establish cease-fires and
facilitate delivery of relief. Do not intervene militarily. ‘No US
troops.’
624 G. ÓTuathail / Political Geography 21 (2002) 601–628
with the leaders of Europe. So we are united in this sanctions question. Let’s see
if it works. But I’m not prepared to say these sanctions will not work.
Q. Is the fact that the elections are approaching in the U.S. preventing a mili-
tary action?
The President: I think prudence and caution prevents military actions. If I decide
to change my mind on that, I will do it in an inclusive way. But at this juncture
I want to stay with these sanctions (Bush, 1992c).
As the situation deteriorated further, the administration did move beyond ‘sanc-
tions as the solution’ to contemplate limited forms of military action but only to
create the conditions for the delivery of humanitarian relief to Sarajevo (Baker 1995,
648-651). Direct military intervention to end genocide was ruled out because geno-
cide was never recognized as a problem. Meeting on July 7th, the Group of Seven
endorsed the ‘humanitarian nightmare’ script and its narrow problem definition by
supporting “other measures, “not excluding military means,” to achieve humanitarian
objectives” (Baker 1995, 650, emphasis added). In the strange scripted world of
the ‘humanitarian nightmare,’ intervening to end the genocide was not considered a
‘humanitarian objective.’
Conclusion
This paper has sought to theorize how practical geopolitical reasoning works
empirically. In the case of US foreign policy towards Bosnia in mid-1992, we are
studying the discursive strategies of an administration campaigning for re-election,
and political actors who want to appear ‘realist’ yet ‘humane,’ who wish to be seen
as ‘leaders’ but refuse to take political risks by exerting US force in the Balkans.
We are also studying the origins of consistent tensions, incoherences and contradic-
tions in US foreign policy towards the Balkans, tensions that persist to this day.
Table 3 places the categorizations and story-lines considered here in the context of
America’s Bosnia policy since then. The story-lines that emerged in 1992 came
to delimit the argumentative policy space of US thinking on Bosnia. Subsequent
administrations have developed scripts ranging across both storylines set down in
the summer of 1992. The performative challenge of articulating both at once defines
US foreign policy towards Bosnia in the 1990s.
Finally, we are also studying a microcosm of larger contradictions and tensions
running through American geopolitical culture. In Diplomacy, Henry Kissinger notes
the ambivalent nature of America’s engagement with the world:
Table 3
US Argumentative Policy Space On Bosnia, 1992-2001
nation has been more pragmatic in the day-to-day conduct of its diplomacy, or
more ideological in the pursuit of its historic moral convictions. No country has
been more reluctant to engage itself abroad even while undertaking alliances and
commitments of unprecedented reach and scope (Kissinger, 1995, 17–18).
Acknowledgements
This paper was first presented as a plenary address to the Irish Geographers Con-
ference in Cork, May 2001. I wish to thank the Irish Geographical Society for the
626 G. ÓTuathail / Political Geography 21 (2002) 601–628
invitation to address this conference and the staff of the Geography Department at
the University College Cork for their hospitality. Thanks also to those who provided
critical comments on this presentation.
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