ABSTRACT
The importance of 1991 in the war tapestry is frequently overlooked. In Europe, a number of crucial moves set the framework for international policy in Yugoslavia and its successor states over the following four years, till the war in Bosnia ended in late 1995. The pivotal policy that year is often perceived to have been the recognition of Croatia, led by Germany, which many allege triggered off the war in Bosnia months later. Such analysis tends to overlook a number of factors, both on the ground and in relation to the involvement of other major world powers in 1991 which are seen as having feebly succumbed to the German dictate under its then Foreign Minister, Hans Dietrich Genscher. The failure of The Hague Peace Conference chaired by Lord Carrington is also largely attributed by Carrington himself and, unsurprisingly, by Slobodan Milosevic, to Germany’s ‘hasty’ recognition of Croatia and Slovenia.2 By contrast, the Vance Plan, involving the despatch of UN troops to Serb-held territory in Croatia, is often seen as the main, if not only, redeeming feature of international policy that year, central to ending the Croatian war. Close study of the international decision-making process at this time suggests that these assumptions may be somewhat misconceived, and that in fact Britain steered the process, at times flying in the face of its European partners, through a series of closely inter-linked policies established in the late summer of 1991, which facilitated the agenda of Serbian elites led by president Slobodan Milosevic in Belgrade, and implemented by the Yugoslav National Army ( JNA) and Serbian paramilitaries on the ground.3
