During 1991–2, several territories of the Socialist Federal Republic of (SFR) Yugoslavia declared independence. Though Macedonia and Slovenia managed to gain autonomy quickly and relatively peacefully, ethnically driven wars resulted in Croatia (1991–5) and Bosnia–Herzegovina (1992–5). U.N. forces were installed in Croatia in February 1992, and the focus shifted in April to Bosnia–Herzegovina, with the outbreak of civil war among its ethnic Croats, Serbs, and Bosniaks. The United States and its NATO allies became involved in a protracted debate about whether to intervene in the civil war in Bosnia1 to stop ethnic “cleansing” and genocide. During these various Yugoslav (also known as Balkan) wars, which stretched to include Kosovo during 1996–9, the United States, United Nations, and members of the international community watched as “ethnically based criminal violence” by “the majority population – Muslim, Serb, or Croat – cleansed its community of now unwanted minorities.”

The U.S. decision to intervene in Bosnia involved several discrete phases: protecting U.N. humanitarian relief efforts as of July 1992; bolstering NATO no-fly zones as of April 1993; campaigning in May 1993 for the selective lifting of a U.N.-imposed arms embargo and the conducting of air strikes; deciding later that month to pursue a policy of containment; pushing for a negotiated settlement through a diplomatic “endgame strategy” developed in the summer of 1995 (while Congress was in recess after voting to break the embargo); and participating in the two-week NATO air campaign that began late that August.