Introduction

For the first two and a half years of Clinton's presidency, conflict raged in the Balkans. Atrocities continued to mount. Despite growing increasingly frustrated by his administration's inability to come up with a palatable solution to the crisis, the notion of using military force continued to be cast as intangible. However, following the massacre of 8,700 Bosniak men and boys in Srebrenica in June in 1995, the administration's Bosnia policy underwent a major shift. In this chapter, I examine Clinton's shift from restraint towards limited intervention through Operation Deliberate Force. In doing so, I show how the massacre at Srebrenica rekindled narratives likening the atrocities to the Holocaust. In this way, I argue that the massacre changed the way in which the conflict was viewed. Images of the atrocity, along with vision of dead and dying Bosnians gave these narratives tremendous power. I argue that the revived power of these narratives enabled a normative displacement leading Clinton towards a more principled interpretation of the conflict as he interpreted US interests in a new light. Such principled ideas were driven by Madeline Albright, Anthony Lake and in particular Al Gore's powerful, symbolic appeal: ‘What am I supposed to tell [my daughter]?’ if the US were to maintain a position of indifference (Gore quoted in Harris, 2006: 196). This encapsulated these principled interpretations in a powerful form, acting to displace the entrenched notion advocated by Colin Powell that the use of force in Bosnia was neither in the US strategic security interests, nor feasible.

The massacre made it clear that US policy towards Bosnia had not only become ineffective but was doing significant damage to the administration's credibility, undermining their capacity to manage other foreign policy issues. Such normative displacement would see the administration's policy shift towards a more interventionist approach, yielding early successes and eventually, the cessation of hostilities culminating in the signing of the Dayton Accords in Dayton, Ohio. While demonstrating the power of the different forms that ideas take in shaping interpretations, this case also serves to highlight that the repression of principled influences from the policy-making process prior to the massacre at Srebrenica had resulted in a stagnant policy which ultimately served to limit the US's capacity to pursue their interests, even in issues beyond Bosnia.