Jimmy Carter in Bosnia--1994

In 1994, former President Jimmy Carter took it upon himself to enter into direct negotiations with the illegal Bosnian Serb Republic leadership. The embarrassing cluelessness and staggering amoralism of his words and deed during this sordid episode were concisely exposed in an editorial, written in acid, from the January 9, 1995 issue of The New Republic magazine entitled "Merry Christmas, Mr. Karadzic." That article is not available for free from their website, but it is reprinted in The Black Book of Bosnia: The Consequences of Appeasement, a great collection of writings from their pages covering the war period which collectively serve as something of a relic of mid-90 liberal interventionism (albeit a frustrated, outraged, and ultimately defeated variant).

The shame of seeing a former US President sitting at a table with the two future butchers of Srebrenica, lending his prestige and legitimacy to their vile cause, should still rankle any honorable or even merely decent American. I am sure I am not the only one among us who has ever wondered, "What does Mr. Carter think of his actions then, given the benefit of hindsight?" Knowing about Srebrenica and Zepa, knowing of the growing body of evidence that the ICTY and the OSCE have accumulated, has Mr. Carter rethought his shameful decision to elevate those thoroughly dishonest, racist thugs to the level of statesmen?

Well, thanks to the recent publication of his book Beyond the White House: Waging Peace, Fighting Disease, Building Hope, we now have an answer, and it is neither uplifting nor surprising. The NR editorial described Carter's approach to negotiations thusly:

"For peace is never lasting or true when it is based on the belief that there is nothing worse than war; but that is Carter's belief. He practices "conflict resolution," a contentless approach to conflict, for which all parties in all conflicts are like all parties in all conflicts, and there are no conflicts that cannot be fairly ended by compromise."

This explains why his diplomatic venture had no lasting impact on events in Bosnia, and I suppose it at least helps us to understand why he announced at the time that his meeting with Karadzic represented "One of the rare chances to let the world know the truth." Carter can be forgiven for not knowing much about Bosnia or the Balkans; he cannot be forgiven for abdicating any sense of moral idealism in the single-minded quest for a peace agreement at any price. To say nothing of the smug self-righteousness which characterizes his self-serving account.

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Carter begins his account by mentioning that in June of 1994, he was approached by New Hampshire state House speaker Chris Spiro and Serbian ambassador Milan Milutinovic, who delivered a personal message from Slobodan Milosevic himself requesting that Carter come to Belgrade to negotiate. Carter says that he declined because "I had no desire to become involved in the Balkans." Given what came later, this ranks as by far the wisest decision he ever made on the matter; pity he didn't stick with it.

Unfortunately, though, seven months later Radovan Karadzic offered Carter a second chance to stick his nose into a situation he had no interest in understanding, and this time he accepted the invitation:

"Early in December 1994, I received a handwritten letter from the Bosnian Serb political leader, Radovan Karadzic, requesting I meet with a delegation to explore ways for the Serbs to accept the latest recommendations of the International Contact Group (United States, United Kingdom, France, Germany, Italy, and Russia). I was not very familiar with the political situation in the former area of Yugoslavia, although I had welcomed Marshal Tito to the White House for a formal visit."

Note that Carter mentions that the note from Karadzic was "handwritten"; suggestive of a thoughtful, civilized gesture. Given that the prose in this account is rather clipped and perfunctory, the inclusion of this detail is clearly meant to reflect positively on the mass murderer he would soon enough be commiserating with.

More serious is the seemingly innocuous mention that he was "not very familiar" with the situation in Yugoslavia; as if any reasonably informed citizen at the time was not cogent of the daily TV broadcasts and constant print journalism on the war. How could any person who makes international diplomacy his self-appointed mission have NOT known enough about the situation in Bosnia in the winter of 1994?

He goes on to describe Karadzic as

"...a poet and a psychiatrist who was accused of holding some UN hostages and was growing increasingly independent from Slobodan Milosevic, the elected ruler of the Serbs, who also sought dominion over the other provinces."

Apparently, Carter felt the need to prove he wasn't kidding when he wrote he was "not very familiar" with the situation. Karadzic was accused of "holding some UN hostages"? Well, yes, he was accused of that--along with masterminding mass murder, genocide, and the violent destruction of a sovereign nation. I don't know if the description of Milosevic as the "leader of the Serbs" is simply lazy language or if Carter unwittingly buys into the same collectivist mentality that Serbian nationalists embodied. Milosevic was the leader of Serbia, not of "the Serbs." And how interesting that Carter felt obligated to point out that Milosevic was elected. How neat--Diana Johnstone would be proud.

It gets worse--here is the next sentence:

"In April 1992, Bosnia had come to be recognized as an independent state, and Karadzic became the first president of the Bosnian Serb administration, with it capital in the mountain town of Pale."

This goes beyond whitewashing events--this amounts to a complete repudiation of reality. I have no idea what to say in response. If former President Carter really believes this, he is an idiot. If he does not believe it, then he is something much, much worse.

Carter isn't quite done paying homage to the Bosnian Serb "Administrator":

"As a Greek Orthodox Christian, he had reached out to fellow Orthodox countries and publicly stated, "The Bosnian Serbs have only two friends: God, and the Greeks." This was a fairly accurate statement at the time we received his letter."

Karadzic would no doubt be bemused to find out that he is Greek Orthodox, but other than this unconscious admission that Carter was absolutely clueless he could not have any complaints with Carter's characterizations. Carter was apparently too blinded by his own sense of moral equivalence to see this naked call for a pan-Orthodox crusade against other peoples for what it was; as for the implicit agreement with the notion that the Serbs--as their nationalist myths maintain--are a chosen people; the less said the better.

And so, Carter accepted the mission. He cleared it with the White House and the State Department. He assures the reader that Clinton encouraged his mission and wanted an immediate report afterwards. Carter gives no indication that there is something strange about the President of the most powerful country in the world taking such a passive role in events, but his lack of leadership on Bosnia was depressingly familiar by December 1994.

The details of the negotiations are not worth recounting, since Carter operated under the assumption that Karadzic was negotiating in good faith and that all the Bosnian Serbs wanted was a fair shake. Carter lists all the "concessions" he was able to win from the Bosnian Serb leader, who of course was very interested by that point in consolidating the ethnically cleansed territory his forces had won. Karadzic was trying to back the Bosnian Government into a corner, putting them on the spot so they could either accept an unjust "peace" or face international condemnation for refusing to sign. And Carter was the willing tool of this plot.

Carter then actually traveled to Bosnia after more meetings with various dignitaries, and after Karadzic appeared on CNN to repeat his promises to agree to a peace deal--Carter must not have been aware that he had made many such promises before. In Sarajevo he met briefly with Alija Izetbegovic, who "was skeptical about our mission and had some fairly harsh demands, but none that deviated substantively from the prepared text I had in my pocket." Carter did not, it seems, share the contents of that prepared text with Izetbegovic.

That was all the time he could spare for the actual President of the country; it was time to leave "war-ravaged Sarajevo" for Pale:

"Because the direct road was mined, our route was circuitous (a seventy-five minute drive to travel nine miles), through beautiful and undamaged farms, pastures, and mountain slopes reminiscent of the Alps."

Not even Michael Parenti could improve on this economical contrast between the Muslim President with his "harsh demands" and "war-ravaged" city accessible only be mined roads (mined by whom?) versus the peaceful, pristine land around the capital of the Bosnian Serb "Administration." Hey, there probably aren't very many Muslims in the pastures of the Alps, either.

Once he arrived, Carter was delighted that General Mladic and Mrs. Karadzic ("also a psychiatrist" he notes) were both in attendance. Carter mentions that he was stubborn about "substantive changes" but did allow for the inclusion of certain phrases such as "equal treatment of both sides" and "discussion of all issues." Given the context, these changes could only not be considered "substantive" if one accepts that the entire enterprise was a toxic, disingenuous fraud on behalf of ethnic cleansing from the start.

Carter insists he was able to get Karadzic to agree to drop his cease-fire demands down from the 12 months he had originally asked for to the 4 months Carter had been advised was the maximum that the Contact Group and Izetbegovic would accept. That Karadzic finally agreed to this was the only concession Carter either sought or achieved, and it wasn't his idea to begin with.

Then it was back to Sarajevo, where Carter presented the offer to Ejup Ganic (yes, he met with the Bosnian Serbs first) as essentially a take-it-or-leave-it offer. He told Ganic that he would go public and declare that the Bosnian Serbs had accepted peace and the Muslim-led government had refused.

And so Carter--or, rather, Karadzic--had the agreement. It sounded good on paper, and had it in any way reflected reality or the honest intention of the Pale regime it might have been worth the paper it was written on. And, pathetically enough, Carter still doesn't get it.

An interesting aside--on the flight out of Zagreb to Frankfort, Carter and his wife were "annoyed" when:

"...some duty-free Christmas presents were delivered to us in a Marlboro bag. I wrote Delta's CEO to complain about the airline's advertising cigarettes and urged him to ban all smoking on their flights."

Yes, the man who willingly acted as a stooge for a genocidal outlaw regime without taking the time to learn even as much about the war he was interfering in as any reasonably literate newspaper subscriber would know; the man who lacked the moral fortitude to take one hard look at the horrors being enacted all around him by the men he happily dined with; this same man took time out to write a letter protesting cigarette advertising on a bag. A bag containing free gifts. "Petty" does not convey the vacuity of such a man.

Is it any surprise that such a man still does not understand the implications of his actions? That he fails even now to grasp how wrong-headed his decision to negotiate on behalf of a tinpot fascist was? That at the end of this passage, he blames the international community for failing to meet the Bosnian Serbs halfway, letting his precious ceasefire slip away?

It is true; Carter ultimately faults the international community for continued warfare in the region; he concludes this short account by skipping ahead to Kosovo, where:

"A contingent of Albanian formed an armed force and contested control by Milosevic of portions of Yugoslavia. Although the Serbian response was at first fairly restrained, by mid 1999 hundreds had died in escalating retaliations, and more than 100,000 Kosovo Albanians were reported to have been forced from their homes."

So it wasn't just Bosnia that Carter knows little about. He does know enough to note that NATO dropped a lot of cluster bombs and toxic uranium bombs on "the Serbs," however. Which may be why he concludes with:

"It is interesting to conjecture about how many human rights atrocities, refugees, and deaths might have been avoided if our agreements and suggestions had been honored by the international community."

Mr. Karadzic thanks you, Mr. Carter.