Matt Yglesias posts an article at The American Prospect touting the imperfections of the outcome in Kosovo as a tentative, hedged proof that even well-intentioned humanitarian unilateral interventions are bad news.

He ends his argument thus:

Timely and effective diplomacy can often avert humanitarian catastrophes before they break out at much lower cost than coercive force can end them once they’ve started. And the U.N.’s traditional peacekeeping operations, where parties to a conflict request third-party troops to help monitor and enforce a peace deal, have a solid track record of success but are perennially under-resourced by an indifferent United States. Greater commitment — political, financial, and (when appropriate) military — to these kinds of operations would bring much larger humanitarian benefits than would any hypothetic humanitarian wars.

Sounds good on paper. But in Kosovo’s case, Milošević recognized what current Serbian politicians don’t seem to grasp: Kosovo was ungovernable by Serbia with 2 million Albanians living there. He therefore began expelling them. Given that kind of rationale, it’s hard to imagine that diplomacy without at least some sort of a willingness to back it up with force would yield much.¹

As for parties to a conflict requesting third-party troops to help monitor a peace deal, Milošević had that one figured out too. In both Croatia and Bosnia he would agree to UN troops coming in to help him consolidate his gains on the ground. In Croatia, the UN Protected Areas (UNPAs) stood until 1995 when they were overrun by a Croatian offensive covertly backed by the US. In fact, it wasn’t until the Croatian offensive started to threaten Milošević’s gains in Bosnia that he became more than eager to enter into the negotiations that yielded the Dayton Accords.²

In the Balkans at least, diplomacy not backed up by force and reliance on just the UN yielded terrible results. Matt’s a very smart guy and I look forward to reading his book to see how he addresses these kinds of issues. I don’t doubt it’ll be a thoughtful argument, though I do doubt I’ll agree with much of it.