Dayton Report Card

Abstract

With the debate heating up on the future of Bosnia after the withdrawal of the United Nations stabilization force (SFOR), scheduled to take place in June 1998, Jane Sharp, of the Institute for Public Policy Research and the Centre for Defence Studies at King's College, London, considers the West's commitment to ensuring a durable peace in Bosnia-Herzogovina. She assesses the successes and failures of the Dayton peace process against the backdrop of a litany of missed opportunities the West had beginning in 1991 to prevent war in the former Yugoslavia and then to end the fighting quickly once it had begun. According to Sharp, the West's continued unwillingness to deal forcefully with the aggressors has greatly hampered the implementation of the Dayton accords; it has also led to a fragile peace that will likely disintegrate unless the West recommits itself to the peace process. Among Sharp's policy recommendations is the establishment of a U.S.-led NATO combined joint task force to replace the departing SFOR.