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OTuathail 2002

This article analyzes the practical geopolitical reasoning behind the United States' response to the Bosnian war in 1992, emphasizing the internal tensions and conflicts within U.S. foreign policy discourse. It critiques the simplistic categorization of the crisis as a 'humanitarian nightmare' and explores how geopolitical narratives are constructed and understood in the context of international relations. The author advocates for a detailed discourse analysis to better understand the complexities of foreign policy decision-making and the implications of such narratives.

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0% found this document useful (0 votes)
10 views28 pages

OTuathail 2002

This article analyzes the practical geopolitical reasoning behind the United States' response to the Bosnian war in 1992, emphasizing the internal tensions and conflicts within U.S. foreign policy discourse. It critiques the simplistic categorization of the crisis as a 'humanitarian nightmare' and explores how geopolitical narratives are constructed and understood in the context of international relations. The author advocates for a detailed discourse analysis to better understand the complexities of foreign policy decision-making and the implications of such narratives.

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derreid
Copyright
© © All Rights Reserved
We take content rights seriously. If you suspect this is your content, claim it here.
Available Formats
Download as PDF, TXT or read online on Scribd
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Political Geography 21 (2002) 601–628

www.politicalgeography.com

Theorizing practical geopolitical reasoning: the


case of the United States’ response to the war
in Bosnia
Gearóid ÓTuathail
Department of Geography & School of Public and International Affairs, Virginia Tech., Northern
Virginia Center, 7054 Haycock Road, Falls Church, Virginia 22043, USA

Abstract

This article seeks to develop a discursive-argumentative perspective on practical geopolitical


reasoning, using the United States’ policy dialogue towards the Bosnian war in the early
summer of 1992 as an illustration. Foreign policy statements, press briefings and public policy
actions by the President, Secretary of State and their staff are used to document this policy
dialogue. Sources include The Public Papers of the President: George H. W. Bush, journalistic
reports from leading newspapers and transcripts of State Department press briefings, most of
which are accessible in the data archives of Lexis-Nexis. Memoirs, where they exist, are drawn
upon to provide insight into the backstage of foreign policy making. The perspective outlined
here draws upon the work of the argumentative approach in public policy, some social con-
structivist perspectives in IR, and a selection of the literature on rhetoric and meaning in social
psychology. The article outlines a heuristic theory of how practical geopolitical reasoning
works and can be studied in a critical geopolitical fashion. The emphasis is on geopolitical
reasoning not state interaction so there is no consideration of the ‘grammar’ of strategic interac-
tion and communication between the U.S., its allies and the various Balkan warring parties.
The goal is to illustrate an important feature of the United States’ Bosnian policy discourse,
namely its consistent internal tensions and conflicts. This is perhaps best expressed as the
argument that the Bush administration, and succeeding administrations, never really had a
unitary foreign policy toward Bosnia but rather had a foreign policy argumentative space. The
theoretical approach outlined in the article develops a synchronic map of this policy space
and documents empirically how it operated.  2002 Published by Elsevier Science Ltd.

Keywords: Critical geopolitical theory; Practical geopolitics; Discourse analysis; Foreign policy analysis;
Bosnia; ‘Humanitarian nightmare’

E-mail address: [email protected] (G. ÓTuathail).

0962-6298/02/$ - see front matter  2002 Published by Elsevier Science Ltd.


PII: S 0 9 6 2 - 6 2 9 8 ( 0 2 ) 0 0 0 0 9 - 4
602 G. ÓTuathail / Political Geography 21 (2002) 601–628

When Bosnia became a ‘Humanitarian Nightmare.’


On the 27th of May 1992 a volley of mortars landed on a crowded street in Sara-
jevo, ripping into a group of the city’s residents queuing for bread. The result was
carnage. At least 16 people were killed and more than a 100 were injured. What
made this event different from other wars raging that day across the globe was that
local television cameras were on the scene almost instantly, recording the horrific
spectacle of mangled bodies and gruesome scenes such as the cries for help from a
man with his leg blown off. The irresistible spectacle was soon picked up by CNN,
following the media’s prime directive “if it bleeds, it leads,” and from there diffused
outwards to the world’s television news and radio stations, and onwards onto the
front pages of the world’s quality newspapers the next day. A picture of the carnage
was on the front page of The Washington Post. A severed hand from the shelling
made the US edition cover of Time magazine a week later. The Bosnian war had
arrived. Bosnia’s violence had ‘jumped scale’ and become a global media event.
The Bosnian war erupted after a referendum on independence encouraged by the
European Community. Refusing to accept an independent Bosnia, Serbian ethno-
nationalists in the Yugoslav army, irregular militias from Serbia, and Bosnian Serb
irregulars launched a brutal ethnic cleansing campaign against non-Serbs in Bosnia in
late March and early April. On April 4 the Bosnian government of Alija Izetbegovic
mobilized police and reservists in Sarajevo as Bosnian Serb political leaders retreated
to the mountain village of Pale. Two days later, Sarajevo was shelled for the first
time and war raged throughout Bosnia. By April 21 the battle lines were drawn up
around Sarajevo and, despite intermittent cease-fires, a quasi-siege began as Bosnian
defenders fought Yugoslav army soldiers inside Sarajevo barracks and Bosnian Serbs
attacked the city from the surrounding hills. The Yugoslav army briefly kidnapped
Izetbegovic in an unsuccessful bid to secure its way out of the city. On May 18 a
Red Cross relief convoy on the outskirts of Sarajevo was shelled and an aid worker
killed. The Serbs also held hostage a convoy of women and children fleeing the
fighting (Burg & Shoup, 1999).
These actions triggered a heightened American response to the fighting. US Sec-
retary of State James Baker, in a deliberate speech act, designated the violence in
Bosnia “a humanitarian nightmare” after meeting British Prime Minister John Major
in London on May 22. The new situation description was associated with a series
of policy actions to be put into effect by the US government. The next day, in Lisbon
for an international conference on the fighting, Baker added a location specification
to his carefully chosen situation description, speaking of “a humanitarian nightmare
in the heart of Europe.” The situation, Baker continued, “is an outrage. We cannot
sit back and do nothing. We are going to do what is right” (Baker, 1995, 646).
Baker’s rhetorical flourish expressed increasing American dissatisfaction with the
European Community’s response to the fighting in Bosnia. When Yugoslavia began
to collapse in the summer 1991, the Bush administration agreed that management
of the crisis was best left to the European Community and not NATO (Gompert,
G. ÓTuathail / Political Geography 21 (2002) 601–628 603

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.’

Practical geopolitical reasoning

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:

1. The ‘objectivist’ tradition of realists, neorealists and orthodox geopoliticians who


understand foreign policy making and state action as structurally determined by
the interstate system (Waltz, 1979). This position has long been critiqued within
critical geopolitics.
2. The ‘rationalist’ tradition, which in IR refers to those who use rational choice
models to argue that individual human action is instrumentally rational. Rationalist
perspectives vary from those ‘hard core’ approaches that zealously read all state
elite behavior as evidence of ‘rational choice’ to those seeking to complement
rationalist models — for rationalist perspectives are difficult to sustain in the face
of the evidence of history — with accounts that address the role of ‘culture’ and
‘norms’ (Katzenstein, 1996) or ‘ideas,’ conceived as ‘supplemental independent
variables’ in the practice of foreign policy (Goldstein & Keohane, 1993). Laffey
and Weldes (1997) persuasively argue that these latter approaches are flawed for
they still work within a rationalist framework, separating ideas from interests and
treating them as rival explanatory variables, attributing neo-positivist causality to
‘ideas,’ and, finally, treating ‘ideas’ as individual possessions and ‘commodities’
(which are also termed ‘beliefs’ or even ‘shared beliefs’ yet assumed to be discrete
isolatable context-independent variables).
3. The ‘psychological approaches’ tradition characterized by a wide variety of per-
spectives. Larsen (1997, 3–11) divides these perspectives into two basic types,
‘belief systems’ perspectives and ‘psychological mechanisms’ perspectives. Belief
systems perspectives include ‘psychological environment’ (Sprout & Sprout,
1969), ‘operational code’ (George, 1969), and ‘cognitive mapping’ (Axelrod,
1976) theories. Psychological mechanism perspectives draw upon popular theories
in Psychology to construct their explanations. They include cognitive consistency
theory, schema theory and attribution theory (see Hybel, 1990, 21–31). The more
social psychology aspects of these approaches are particularly useful (and are
implicitly drawn upon below) but the general utility of the psychology approach
is hindered by its methodological individualism, its reduction of psychological
processes to the cognitive processing of individual decision-makers. In addition,
many of these approaches have narrowly positivistic conceptions of ‘beliefs’ and
language (see below).
4. The ‘social constructivist’ tradition which has perspectives that vary from those
still caught within the orbit of traditional IR and tentative in their conceptualiz-
ation of the social construction of foreign policy practice (Buzan, Waever, &
Wilde, 1998; Wendt, 1999), to those that use ‘discourse analysis’ in limited ways
(Larsen, 1997). Other perspectives consider rules in foreign policy reasoning
G. ÓTuathail / Political Geography 21 (2002) 601–628 605

(Onuf, 1989), rhetorical frameworks in foreign policy (Kuusisto, 1999), develop


‘grammars of state action’ (Milliken, 2001), explore ‘common sense’ in foreign
policy making (Weldes, 1999), and seek to deconstruct foreign policy practice
(Campbell, 1998). These latter traditions are particularly useful for critical geo-
politics though, as might be expected, the in-depth studies are historical and
not contemporary.

Studying historical and near contemporary practical geopolitical reasoning is a


difficult challenge for it requires near total immersion in the everyday world of
foreign policy discourse and practice. Researchers need to become ethnographers of
foreign policy behavior, yet without ever having direct access to the micro-world of
their subjects. Detailed empirical reconstruction of the historical record of policy
formulation and policy-making, without knowledge of crucial private meetings, key
memos and other private archival material, is also a challenge. Finally, there is the
sometimes overwhelming complexity of perpetually shifting positions by multiple
actors — key personalities and principals — and multiple institutions — intra-state
bureaucracies, inter-state allies and rivals, international organizations – refracted
through a heterogeneous mass media with its own geographical webs and circuits
of circulation.
Many have been content with broad interpretative reconstructions of foreign policy
making and debate, but in doing so, attribute an unjustified coherence and consist-
ency to the policy (Ó Tuathail, 1996). Such analysis tends to understate fundamental
aspects of the policy process like ongoing arguments over the classification of geo-
political crises and the development of geopolitical storylines, internal tensions and
incoherences in geopolitical scripts, and the ways in which the foreign policy process
defines ‘problems’ and ‘solutions.’ There is a need to specify in detail a ‘discourse
analysis’ of practical geopolitical reasoning that addresses these questions.

Discourse analysis: problematizing policy argumentation

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.

A framework for analyzing practical geopolitical reasoning

Figure 1 outlines a four-part framework for analyzing practical geopolitical reason-


ing. The framework privileges the role of the mass media in creating and conditioning
how international crises erupt and are represented, as a mini-series of repetitive and
occasionally spectacular images, and as a constantly updated archive of storyline
dispatches from the region (some of which get much more attention than others
because of their influence within the micro-world of policy-makers). Let us consider
each of the elements of the framework in turn.
608 G. ÓTuathail / Political Geography 21 (2002) 601–628

Fig. 1. A framework for the analysis of practical geopolitical reasoning.

Categorization and particularization: the ‘Grammar of Geopolitics’

Social scientists have long recognized that categorization is fundamental to under-


standing how people make sense of their world (Onuf, 1989). It organizes strangeness
and chaos into familiar classes and understandings of phenomena. It is the process
of taming through naming, anchoring the strange in the fields of the familiar. Classi-
fication is complemented by the activity of particularization, where arguments about
the uniqueness of the case are developed and refined through debate.
Arguments about the appropriateness and essence of categories combine and clash
with arguments about the particularities of a specific case, to locating and fixing
phenomena within a certain field of meaning, as having ‘family resemblances’ while
also having individualized features. A background of shared culture — loci or ‘com-
mon-places’ — (“storehouses for arguments”; Perelman and Olbrechts-Tyteca 1969,
83) and ‘common sense’ are drawn upon to categorize and particularize. This store-
house of ‘common-sense’ is not “a harmonious system of interlocking beliefs, but
is composed of contraries.” (Billig 1987, 235) The whole process has the important
quality of being unremarkable.
In geopolitical reasoning, analogies (the Munich analogy or the Lebanon
comparison), images (quagmires, slaughter) and metaphors (hardheaded thought,
Vietnam syndrome) are particularly important (May, 1973). But to develop a full
appreciation of the ‘building-blocks’ of the storylines that came to specify and define
the Bosnian war in U.S. geopolitical culture, we need to consider the rules that
govern categorization and particularization in geopolitical reasoning. I shall adopt a
dramaturgical metaphor and consider international geopolitics as theatrical drama on
a world stage. Use of dramaturgical metaphors to consider politics is as old as history,
for politics contains great drama and tragedy. Statespersons are on a very public
stage and act out certain roles and perform in expected ways before mass audiences.
G. ÓTuathail / Political Geography 21 (2002) 601–628 609

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.

Fig. 2. The grammar of Geopolitics.


610 G. ÓTuathail / Political Geography 21 (2002) 601–628

WHERE? Location specification

The activity of specifying location is central to geopolitical reasoning yet often


appears unexceptional and obvious. Geopolitical reasoning is invariably a form of
scalar categorization and reasoning where the local is related to the regional and the
global, with the local frequently overdetermined and overwritten by the global con-
text. Indeed, designating something as ‘geopolitical’ is conventionally a represen-
tation of its global scale. In Bosnia, there were many location specification options
with a series of inchoate storylines attached. Was the Bosnian war a local, regional
or global affair?

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:

앫 Bosnia as a distinct region with a long multi-cultural history and tradition of


mutual religious tolerance OR
앫 Bosnia as an artificial region that never had any independent identity of its own
and should be divided between the two nation-states, Croatia and Serbia.

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

Regional classifications tended to predominate throughout the course of the Bosn-


ian war, but especially in the first year. The two dominant competing classi-
fications were:

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:

앫 Bosnia as place of limits, as a conflict where America needed to exercise restraint


and refuse to succumb to the moral pressure to intervene militarily in the war. It
provoked the leading actors in US foreign policy to repeat the mantra: “America
is not the world’s policeman.”
앫 Bosnia as a globally significant place where George Bush’s “new world order”
was being challenged, and as a ‘test’ of America’s global leadership. It was a
place that demonstrated America’s indispensability in world affairs.
612 G. ÓTuathail / Political Geography 21 (2002) 601–628

WHAT? Situation descriptions

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:

앫 International aggression by an outside power, (a Serbian dominated Yugoslavia),


against an independent internationally recognized sovereign state, or
앫 An intractable civil war between the peoples of the former Yugoslavia.

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?”

MS. TUTWILER: I don’t do comparisons, and I am not aware of a national


security interest literally — since that’s what you’re trying to pin me down on —
literally — that I have heard expressed by our government (Tutwiler, 1992b; see
also Tutwiler, 1992c).

The incoherent responses to the reporter’s request to compare American reaction


to the situation then current in Bosnia and its response to the invasion of Kuwait
reveals how geopolitical reasoning is formulated within the context of public debate
and dialogue over classifications and particularizations. Tutwiler’s verbal stumbling
indicated discomfort at the line of questioning and unease with the moral implications
of America’s position. (She was reportedly one of those pushing for a tougher admin-
istration response to the Bosnian violence). It is clear that the administration faced
a legitimacy question given its rhetoric about a ‘new world order’ in response to the
Kuwait crisis. Moreover, its responses to the Bosnian crisis were not well practiced
at this stage. Her awkward refusal to ‘do comparisons’ was undoubtedly to avoid
the administration being trapped by its own crusading ‘new world order’ rhetoric.
One geopolitical sound bite — “we’re not the world’s policeman” — was repeat-
edly voiced whenever the administration was pressed on what it planned to do about
the Bosnian genocide. The administration had declared publicly in early May that
‘no US troops’ would be used in the Balkans, committing itself to a Europeanization
strategy. This meant that ‘the situation’ the administration could allow itself to recog-
nize in Bosnia was one of effects, not causes. It recognized ‘heart-rendering tragedy’
not genocide. While the State Department’s spokesperson struggled before the press
corps to avoid the rhetorical trap of ‘new world order’ discourse, President Bush’s
first public acknowledgement of the Bosnian violence was in a formal speech on 21
May 1992. Bush, campaigning for re-election, remarkably reiterated the crusading
rhetoric used during the Kuwaiti crisis. “We now recognize the full sovereignty of
Slovenia and Croatia and Bosnia, and we stand in solidarity with their people. Let
614 G. ÓTuathail / Political Geography 21 (2002) 601–628

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”?

WHO? Actor typifications

In considering the discourse of the US Bosnia policy debate, several competing


strategies of actor typification are evident. A classificatory dilemma that faced the
administration was whether to use:

앫 an equivalency strategy; or
앫 an aggressors and victims strategy.

In the first subject-positioning classification, the essential sameness of the protag-


onists is underscored. In the words of Deputy Secretary of State, Lawrence Eagle-
burger “There are no angels there.” The phraseology was re-iterated by Tutwiler in
her press briefing of 4 May 1992. In the second typification, there are clear ‘good
guys and bad guys’. The Serbs were identified as the clear perpetrators of violence
and the ‘Muslims’ were overwhelmingly recognized as the victims of ‘Serb
aggression’. Implicit in this categorization game are quasi-religious and historical
stories like ‘the Holocaust,’ with the subject-position of ‘bystander’ open for appro-
priation and determination.
The Bush administration and international actors used both classificatory stra-
tegies, each closely connected with blame strategies. Each was articulated euphem-
istically in State Department briefings such as “the United States condemns per-
petrators of violence in Bosnia on all sides, including the Serbian side and the
Yugoslav army which clearly bear the heaviest blame for continued fighting in Bos-
nia, and have the greatest responsibility for working to obtain a cease-fire” (Tutwiler,
1992a). Such a rhetorical stratagem was not confined to the Bush administration or
the United States. Interviewed on CNN News on the 7 May 1992, Lord Carrington,
then chair of the European Community’s Peace Conference on Yugoslavia, informed
his audience “everyone is to blame to a greater of lesser degree” because of “cen-
turies-old bitterness and rivalries” and then added, a few sound-bites later, that “the
Serbs are more to blame than anyone else” (Carrington, 1992).

WHY? Attributions and imputations of causality (blame strategies)

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:

Too complicated, says Lord Carrington, the European Community negotiator, as


he refuses to fix blame for the bloodshed in Bosnia. Too complicated, says Lawr-
ence Eagleburger, Deputy Secretary of State, finding fault with all sides. Too
complicated, say aides to Secretary of State James Baker, who shies away from
Bosnia after desultory efforts to stem the violence. But what’s so complicated?
Serbia’s strongman, Slobodan Milosevic, is responsible for the aggression in Bos-
nia. Why not isolate Serbia, politically and economically, until Mr. Milosevic
calls off the aggression and withdraws? (Times, 1992a).

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.

SO WHAT? Strategic calculation

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.

Opposing this was a position that asserted that:

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).

The assemblage of storylines

The social process of categorization and particularization produces a knowledge


specific to the policy challenge under consideration. From these building blocks
higher-level storylines are constructed and refined. Storylines are sense-making
organizational devices tying the different elements of a policy challenge together
into a reasonably coherent and convincing narrative. Hajer declares that “the key
function of storylines is that they suggest unity in the bewildering variety of separate
discursive component parts of a problem…The underlying assumption is that people
do not draw upon comprehensive discursive systems for their cognition, rather these
are evoked through storylines” (1996, 56).
Most public policy issues are characterized by competing storylines, with less
popular narratives marginalized politically and culturally. The development of storyl-
ines around the Bosnian war was gradual. While journalistic dispatches noted that
the violence was the worst in Europe since World War II, the emplotment of a
regularized narrative around the conflict took time. The Bosnian government and its
allies in America sought to promote its point of view. Foreign Minister Haris
Silajdzic visited Washington in April and May 1992, on a trip organized by a Wash-
ington PR firm (Sremac, 1999). On April 12 he visited James Baker at the State
Department for their first meeting since the onset of widespread fighting in Bosnia.
Silajdzic’s descriptions of events in Bosnia had a strong impact on Baker with him
later describing it as “without doubt one of the most emotional meetings I had as
Secretary of State.” (Baker, 1995, 643). Silajdic also toured Congress and briefed
members on the fighting. He returned to Washington in mid-May and spoke at the
National Press Club. “My country,” he declared, “has turned into a slaughter-
house…Not since World War II has Europe witnessed so much loss of life and
human suffering.” The conflict was not a civil war — it was not “parallel to that of
Lebanon” — but international aggression. The Bosnian violence “is not an inter-
ethnic fight” but an “aggression “ against Bosnia-Herzegovina by the Republic of
Serbia and Montenegro. He explained “ethnic cleansing” as a process whereby non-
Serbs are driven out of their homes, villages and towns and moved to “concentration
camps…established throughout the entire republic.” Questioned on the historical par-
allel with Europe in the 1930s when “the civilized world looked on while helpless
minorities were massacred and butchered,” Silajdic said that “there is the same thing
going on, on a lesser scale, and the world seems unable or unwilling to stop it. But
there is definitely a parallel” (Silajdzic, 1992).
618 G. ÓTuathail / Political Geography 21 (2002) 601–628

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

Storyline attribute Balkan Vietnam European genocide

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.

The performative geopolitical script

In works on the idea of ‘storylines,’ there is no contrasting notion of ‘scripts.’


There is a case, however, to be made for introducing just such a distinction into the
analysis of practical geopolitical reasoning. Within the discipline of Psychology,
there is a considerable literature on the idea of ‘scripts’ concerned with cognitive
information processing and individual psychological patterns, especially on how indi-
viduals ‘act out’ certain foundational scripts set down early in life (Berne, 1996). In
this literature, a script is a “structure that describes appropriate sequences of events
in a particular context” (Schank & Abelson, 1977, 41). Scripts are “coherent
sequences of events expected by individuals” (Abelson, 1976, 33). They are specific
situational forms of knowledge, ways of doing and acting through certain social
episodes (Harré, 1979). They are structured by tacit rules and dense cultural forms
of knowing that exceed verbal structures and communications.
The concept of a ‘geopolitical script’ can be specified in a more precise manner
and in contrast to ‘geopolitical storylines.’ A geopolitical script refers to the direc-
tions and manner in which foreign policy leaders perform geopolitics in public, to
the political strategies of coping that leaders develop in order to navigate through
certain foreign policy challenges and crises. It is a way of performing whereas a
storyline is a set of arguments. Geopolitical scripts, of course, do contain arguments
from storylines. A storyline provides a relatively coherent sense-making narrative
for a foreign policy challenge. It becomes a regularized interpretative emplotment
of a geopolitical drama and is refined and deepened through public argumentation
and debate. In contrast, a script deals with the pragmatics of foreign policy perform-
ance. It is a tacit set of rules for how foreign policy actors are to perform in certain
speech situations, and how they are to articulate responses to policy challenges and
620 G. ÓTuathail / Political Geography 21 (2002) 601–628

problems. It is a public relations briefing book that is not necessarily coherent or


unified, and may contain multiple storylines, voices and positions, depending on the
situation. It is the ‘discursive software’ of foreign policy practice. It contains formal
scripted elements and sequences but is sufficiently flexible to allow creative ‘free-
lancing,’ ‘improvisation,’ and ‘adaptation’ in exchanges with reporters or diplomatic
meetings. Policy speeches are rewritten to respond to the spin of the day (Kurtz,
1998). Classificatory systems are fudged or made more rigid depending upon the
immediate context and political need. Emergent metaphors and images are incorpor-
ated or resisted in an ongoing war of position to maintain policy consensus, and
‘public face’ (Goffman, 1972; Harré & Langenhove, 1999).
The graphic violence of the Bosnian war presented the Bush administration with
a credibility problem as it geared up for the presidential election. Bush could not be
seen to be insensitive to the violence and the tarnishing of his ‘new world order’.
The challenge for the principals of US foreign policy making in the summer of 1992
was to devise both a modus vivendi between the two emergent storylines that defined
the Bosnian war to a U.S. audience, and a modus operandi that allowed America to
appear as a concerned moral actor in world affairs while not intervening militarily.
What developed was a pragmatic geopolitical script performed in public by the presi-
dent and other U.S. foreign policy actors. The drama performed was ‘Bosnia the
humanitarian nightmare.’
The ‘humanitarian nightmare’ script was a fudge, a performative effort to handle
the divergent policy implications of the emergent ‘Balkan Vietnam’ and ‘European
genocide’ storylines. The phrase was first used, as already noted, by James Baker
in May 1992 and it was repeated by President Bush on a number of occasions when
addressing Bosnia. One mark of its centrality is that it appears as the title of the
single chapter on Bosnia in Baker’s memoirs The Politics of Diplomacy. That chapter
is framed by two quotations, one by Silajdzic articulating the ‘European genocide’
storyline, the other by John Major articulating the ‘Balkan Vietnam’ storyline. The
script was a superficial pastiche of both storylines. It enabled administration officials
to appear as morally concerned actors on the international stage, articulating elements
of the ‘European genocide’ storyline without requiring them to address forcefully
the causes of this violence. This script allowed US foreign policy makers to have it
both ways. The administration could position America as a morally motivated, yet
hardheaded realist. They could articulate motifs drawn from Balkanist discourse
while also, as the occasion demanded, acknowledge the universality of the problem.
They could be seen as ‘doing something humanitarian’ while remaining neutral on
the outcome of a genocidal war.
Having a script about how to respond to a foreign policy challenge is never suf-
ficient. Geopolitical scripts have to be performed convincingly to maintain and secure
legitimacy. Securing support for a policy of doing nothing serious in Bosnia was
always going to be difficult, especially for a verbally challenged President like
George Herbert Walker Bush. Since he was running for re-election, Bush had to
expose himself to press questioning. He articulated policy generally and superficially,
disguising the choice not to intervene by articulating bland banalities. An example
is an exchange Bush had with reporters in early June:
G. ÓTuathail / Political Geography 21 (2002) 601–628 621

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).

Bush re-iterated this ‘its-very-complicated’ line in a press conference with foreign


journalists on July 2, specifying the crisis as one of getting humanitarian aid to the
suffering. In his words, the US role was to help assist on a humanitarian basis and
not to be ‘forward-leaning’ in terms of bringing lasting peace to Bosnia, even though
that was a desirable aim (Bush, 1992b). This was accompanied by an interpretation
of the crisis as a confusing ethnic war, a rejection of the Desert Storm model of
response, and a refusal to classify the crisis as ‘international aggression.’ While Bush
appeared to be giving voice to the ‘Balkan Vietnam’ storyline — avoiding US soldi-
ers being ‘pinned down in some kind of guerilla environment’ — his administration’s
rhetoric and arguments were inconsistent. The policy of sanctions against Yugoslavia
held that the Bosnian violence was clearly co-coordinated by Milosevic and threat-
ened the national security of the United States, yet Bush refused to see the conflict as
“international aggression.” Rather he evoked balkanist themes about “ancient ethnic
rivalries and hatreds,” implicitly describing the conflict as a complex civil war. It
was in the Balkans yet it was in Europe. It did not raise questions about NATO’s
role yet it forced the president to answer questions about NATO’s role. Though
Baker originally dismissed it as a conflict with no US national interests, before the
end of the Bush administration, Eagleburger was describing the conflict as a “cancer
at the heart of Europe”, and calling for the prosecution of Milosevic as a war crimi-
nal. Such ‘performative contradictions’ would also characterize the Clinton adminis-
tration’s policy towards Bosnia as geopolitical scripting (con)fused the “European
genocide” and “Balkan Vietnam” storylines (Ó Tuathail, 1996).

The foreign policy process as problem-solving

In considering practical geopolitical reasoning, it is important to appreciate that


geopolitical discourse is also a problem-solving discourse with regulatory aspirations.
The ‘grammar of geopolitics’ does not simply construct visions of world space but
622 G. ÓTuathail / Political Geography 21 (2002) 601–628

is already a practical problem-solving discourse, in dialogue with other positions,


seeking to secure and promote a certain normative order. This process of regulation
and governance can be divided into four for the purposes of analysis: problem defi-
nition, geopolitical strategy, geopolitical accommodation, and problem closure.
Hajer (1995, 22) identifies several functions of regulation and governance. The
first is ‘discursive closure’, or how “complex research work is often reduced to a
visual representation or catchy-one liner” (1995, 62). It is the process by which
complex knowledge is translated into regularized and reduced ‘policy talk’,
accompanied by a loss of meaning and the conditionality and uncertainty of original
knowledge claims. While appropriate to the fate of scientific knowledge in the
environmental policy-making process, it is unsatisfactory in geopolitics. Nearly all
geopolitical reasoning, heavily based upon analogies and historical parallels, can be
considered to be ‘discursive closure.’ More appropriate here is consideration of acts
of ‘problem definition’ implicit in the emplotment of the grammar of geopolitics and
the assemblage of regularized story-lines. How problems are defined and
delimited — what is included in or excluded from the description and specification
of a policy challenge — is crucial in understanding how geopolitics operates and,
in this case, consistently fails. The geopolitical equivalent to what Hajer identifies
in environmental discourse is the translation of complex foreign policy challenges
into extant geopolitical categories, conceptions, and recipies.
The second concept, emanating from the act of ‘problem definition’ and distinct
to geopolitics is the conscious development of a geopolitical strategy and policy line
by an administration. A foreign policy challenge and problem is identified in public
discourse and the administration’s reaction, assuming the problem is public and
pressing enough, is to develop a strategy of response to handle the crisis. This will
normally develop out of past standard operating procedures for handling this or simi-
lar crises. The strategy is usually hammered out in a series of high-level meetings
and consultations with authoritative and influential parties. The third notion is ‘geo-
political accommodation’ (for Hajer ‘social accommodation’) or how policy-making
tries to accommodate the interests, concerns and political needs of the various parties
to a conflict. Of course, there is often no geopolitical accommodation and very little
diplomatic communication at all. The final concept is ‘problem closure’ or the identi-
fication, development and promotion of a perceived solution to the defined problem.
‘Problem closure’ may not actually provide any kind of resolution of the problem
but may operate as a form of postponement in the hope that it goes away and retreats
from media and public consciousness.
The striking feature of the problem definition found in the Bush administration’s
script on Bosnia was its representation of the war in terms of its consequences and
not its causes. The already established remedial geopolitical strategy of the adminis-
tration was Europeanization. The geopolitical accommodation that developed was
institutionalized as the UNPROFOR ‘peacekeeping’ mission, and the European Com-
munity-sponsored International Conference on the Former Yugoslavia in Geneva.
By transferring the problem to the Europeans and the U.N., the Bush administration
declared that the ultimate solution to the conflict lay with the conflicting parties
themselves. Tutwiler described US policy in early May 1992 as “to do whatever we
G. ÓTuathail / Political Geography 21 (2002) 601–628 623

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

Performative script ‘Humanitarian nightmare’

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:

No country has influenced international relations as decisively and at the same


time as ambivalently as the United States. No society has more firmly insisted
on the inadmissibility of intervention in the domestic affairs of other states, or
more passionately asserted that its own values were universally applicable. No
G. ÓTuathail / Political Geography 21 (2002) 601–628 625

Table 3
US Argumentative Policy Space On Bosnia, 1992-2001

Foundational Story-Line Balkan Vietnam European Genocide

Institutional Home Pentagon, National Security State Department, majority in


Advisor, minority in Congress Congress, US ambassador to UN
Dominant Philosophy Realism: No vital US national Idealism: Values at stake
interests at stake
NATO And Policy, 1992-95 Stay out to preserve NATO Get involved to protect NATO
expansion (Yost, 1998) expansion
Policy On ‘The Map’ Cut deal. Accept Vance-Owen ‘London Principles’ (i.e. do not
accept results of ethnic
cleansing).
Goal Of ‘Endgame Strategy’ Strike, withdraw, and lift Strike, force peace, and stabilize
(Daalder, 2000) embargo
Goal Of U.S. Policy At Dayton End the war. Build a peace.
Talks
Dayton Payoff Partition, peace, and permissive Annex 7 allowing ethnically
environment for NATO forces. cleansed to return. Commitment
to bring ‘war criminals’ to
justice.
Dayton Implementation Minimalists (e.g. Leighton Maximalists (Holbrooke, 1998)
Smith)
Policy Today Move towards withdrawal of US Upgrade Dayton through more
troops. vigorous enforcement of Accords

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).

To study American geopolitics is to study the performative contradictions of a


state that articulates both realism and idealism in its foreign policy, a state that acts
narrowly out of self-interests, yet sees itself as “the last best hope of Earth” (Bush,
1992e). The operation of these contradictions were particularly cruel in the case of
Bosnia in 1992 as the Bush administration wrapped itself in the rhetoric of ‘humani-
tarian concern’ while refusing to intervene to stop the genocide. In practical terms,
this meant that the ‘breadline massacre’ of 27 May 1992 was merely the first of
many similar massacres in Sarajevo and throughout Bosnia. Bosnia would bleed for
years on Western television screens before the source of its violence was finally con-
fronted.

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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