It is clear that key UN officials-including Yasushi Akashi, special representative of the Secretary-General for the former Yugoslavia, and General Bernard Janvier, overall commander of UNPROFOR-were extremely reluctant to use air power against the Bosnian Serbs, even within the narrow criteria set by the Security Council. Instead of agitating for greater latitude or capitalizing on their narrow opportunities for action, Akashi and Janvier refused to approve nearly every Dutchbat request for air support. Their actions question the conception of international civil servants as disinterested actors who implement directives imposed by member states according to the principles of the UN. They are individuals with their own interests, and those interests contributed to the failure at Srebrenica.

In the spring of 1995, after a UN-ordered NATO bombing run, the Bosnian Serb Army seized several hundred peacekeepers all over Bosnia as human shields to discourage further bombing. Sensing that there was little political will in the West to stand up to the Serbs, Janvier made a fateful decision. In negotiating for the release of the peacekeepers, he privately assured top Bosnian Serb General Ratko Mladic that there would be no further air attacks. There is no evidence to suggest that Janvier had the authority to make such a promise, which effectively abrogated the Security Council's own resolutions on protecting safe areas.

As the Bosnian Serb Army slowly encircled and overran Srebrenica several months later, numerous requests for air support from the Dutch soldiers were rejected by Janvier and Akashi, even though the conditions under the mandate for using air power had technically been satisfied. These decisions were based on interpretations made by UN officials, not governments. In one instance, according to a UN report, air strikes were denied because it appeared that the Bosnian Serbs "did not intend to overrun the entire enclave," but merely to seize part of it; the Security Council's mandate, however, called for any attacks on safe areas to be deterred by peacekepeers. After several more requests from the peacekeepers, UNPROFOR finally sent NATO planes swooping down on Srebrenica; they damaged just one Bosnian Serb tank before the town was completely overrun.

The attack provoked Mladic into threatening to kill the peacekeepers he had already captured at Srebrenica. While a panicked phone call from the Dutch Ministry of Defence definitively prevented any future use of air power, the abandonment of Srebrenica cannot be attributed solely to the actions of member states. By consciously employing a narrow interpretation of their mandate, UN officials created the conditions under which it was impossible to employ air power effectively against Mladic's troops.

Rather than acting to carry out their mission, Janvier, Akashi, and others were trying to undermine it. Before the pinprick airstrike, Janvier and Akashi argued that the use of air power would not be the best interpretation of the mandate; afterwards, the all-important mandate was subordinated to the safety of the Dutch troops. In either case, the goal was to avoid the use of force at all costs, no matter how high.

Between carrying out the mandate handed down by the Security Council, avoiding confrontation with the Bosnian Serbs, and safeguarding the organization's own credibility, the fates of the displaced people at Srebrenica were rarely and barely a concern for the international civil servants of the United Nations. As Akashi's assistant reportedly said at a meeting with Janvier at the height of the attack on the enclave, "There's no choice [about using air power] if [the Dutch] troops are under attack....If they're not under attack, it's different. Then the question is, "How much shelling can civilians stand?"

Peacekeepers' Alternate Selves

One of the cornerstones of a liberal international order is an international peacekeeping force that can prevent, control, and end armed conflicts. Proponents of such a vision, however, must face the unpleasant reality of the Srebrenica massacre-an incident in which the myth of blue-helmeted, neutral-yet-principled peacekeepers bravely interposing between warring sides quickly faded away. To this day, the shame and repeated calls for an inquiry in the Netherlands have only underscored the fact that despite the impossibility of their situation, the idea of laying down their lives to protect others, no matter how idealistic, never seemed to enter the minds of the Dutch peacekeepers at Srebrenica. Moreover, even as Bosnian civilians were literally dragged from sight before "disappearing" to the sound of gunfire, the peacekeepers became instruments of ethnic cleansing, assisting in the "safe evacuation" of refugees, including the 8,000 men and boys who soon "disappeared."

It is interesting to note that Dutchbat consisted entirely of volunteers and enjoyed the full backing of its government; each decision to send troops to Bosnia was unanimously approved in the Dutch parliament. Not only was peacekeeping popular in the Netherlands, but polls showed that a majority of the Dutch public actually favored "peace enforcement," or robust and decisive military action, against the Bosnian Serbs. According to several accounts, many of the troops at Srebrenica saw great value in their work. They were described by journalists as genuinely wanting to help the people of Bosnia, and one even allegedly begged her captain to allow her to stay when her tour of duty ended in January 1995.

After several months of duty in the enclave, the high spirits began to sink. The Bosnian Serb forces restricted the flow of supplies and humanitarian aid and prevented soldiers who had left the area from returning. At the time of the final assault, the battalion was only at half-strength. Intermittent sniper fire from both sides made working conditions even more difficult. Tensions with the local population worsened to the point where a peacekeeper who had been ordered to abandon his post in the face of a Serb advance was killed by a Bosnian Muslim soldier in an attempt to force him to return to his position. These incidents heightened the sense among the Dutchbat troops that they were caught between two equally repugnant armies, neither better than the other.

As the Bosnian Serb attack increased in intensity and repeated requests for NATO air strikes were denied at higher levels, the peacekeepers became increasingly despondent and panicked. They lacked the manpower and the weapons to fight off a coordinated attack and began to see themselves not as soldiers but as cannon fodder. According to an account in the London Independent, one peacekeeper described the situation as "real war," adding that he had "never expected to be in the middle of that"-even after the peacekeepers had been in a war zone for several months.