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First Do No Harm: Humanitarian Intervention and the Destruction of Yugoslavia

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David Gibbs has written one of the few chronicles of the wars in Yugoslavia designed simply to tell the truth about what happened. Since so many mainstream accounts are content to recycle propaganda, it is no small accomplishment to present the facts without fear or favor. With a twenty-five page bibliography, "First Do No Harm" is a substantive contribution to the scholarly literature, one that will have to be engaged with whatever your perspective on the Balkan wars.

For Gibbs, the key to understanding the trajectory of the Balkan wars was rivalry over what was considered a ripe plum. Germany had its own imperial interests and was actually the first capitalist power to begin the process of tearing apart a social system that had proven quite viable until economic contradictions began to make it vulnerable to outside powers in the 1970s.

Although the United States and Germany shared hostility toward Milosevic, who was perceived as a Titoist holdover standing in the way of converting the Yugoslav economy into one more favorable to Western economic ambitions, they by no means saw their own interests as coinciding. Like dogs fighting over a bone, the United States sought to push its rivals aside and viewed NATO in particular as a means toward that end. Sharing Gervasi's emphasis on the role of NATO, Gibbs makes a strong case for seeing this military alliance as a bid to enhance the US hegemonic power at the expense of what became known as "Old Europe" in the early stages of the war in Iraq.

Gibbs fully intended "First Do No Harm" as a critique of both successful interventions such as the one that took place in Yugoslavia and the one that still lurches unsteadily in Iraq. It is essential for those committed to world peace to become familiar with the sorry history of so-called humanitarian intervention in Yugoslavia, since the same characters who orchestrated American strategy in the period are now in the driver's seat. Not only do we face escalation in Afghanistan and Pakistan, we are likely to hear the same kinds of "human rights" rhetoric that accompanied the Balkan wars. Given these looming dangers, "First Do No Harm" is a must read.

David Gibbs argues Humanitarian Intervention in The former Yugoslavia was a pretext to muzzle a resurgent EU which was spearheaded by Germany. After the break up of the Soviet Union, US geostrategy lacked a pretense to maintain a military presence in Europe via NATO. The EU began taking assertive measures to chart foreign policy objectives independent of the USA. Yugoslavia was the EU's first test case...

The common front between the US and the EC was to thwart Serbian attempts to keep the Yugoslavian political units integrated with the central government in Belgrade. Repeatedly the US subverted EU diplomatic initiatives which regressed into military solutions. Diplomatic initiatives would play into the hands of European interests vs military solutions by the USA. Of course, in the end America maintained hegemon status through NATO.

Gibbs persuasively argues a huge propaganda campaign mounted which totally distorted reality. Serb agression was emphasized while the US/EU backed Bosnian Muslims/Croats/Albanian attrocities were not reported or underplayed. For example, a NY public relation firm, Ruder-Finn Inc. Orchestrated a campaign to associate the Holocaust with Serbian agression. The President of Ruder-Finn explained how Jewish groups form the Anti-Defamation League and the American Jewish Congress were Manipulated to place a political advertisment in the New York Times which would link Serbia with the Holcaust in the popular imagination.

To put Gibbs work into total context, he argues IMF intervention helped to dislocate the Yugoslavian economy/ coupled with US/Western interference which encouraged secessionist movements by unscrupulous politicians. It appears if humanitarinism were the true motive then debt forgiveness and initiatives to encourage the Yugoslovian political units to remain cohesive would have prevented thousands of deaths. Gibbs also points out Yugoslavian debt was roughly 16 billion v over 20 billion spent on the war and counting.

I highly recomend this book. Gibbs arguments are clearly presented and backed by a multitude of sources/footnotes.

I've read many books on the Yugoslav wars. I did so because I was born in a little Bosnian town called Bihac. But my family moved to Belgrade when I was 3 years old. This was during WWII and in Belgrade we suffered terrifying bombing raids. We left Yugoslavia when I was 6 years old.

You couldn't miss the news of the Yugoslav wars as they screamed from the headlines throughout the 90s. Milosevic was Hitler, the Serbs were the Nazis, and the Muslims were the helpless victims. Really? Then in 1999 I heard that we were bombing Belgrade: I felt like I was bombing myself.

In 2004 my husband Richard and I traveled throughout all of former Yugoslavia. The devastation was overwhelming - but it turned out that what we automatically assumed to be the handiwork of Serbs had just as often been perpetrated by Croats or Muslims. In Belgrade we found that NATO's "smart bombs' had hit a famous church and a monastery. Why?

Dr. Gibbs' book is one of the very best I've read on the subject of "WHY." It is meticulously researched and documented, but written with exemplary clarity. I expect it will strike some readers as controversial because it questions the idea that our engagement in the Bosnian and Kosovo wars was a purely "humanitarian intervention."

Think again. Dr. Gibbs demolishes this myth with enviable objectivity. The only axe he grinds is the pursuit of truth. It is an honest book and an absorbing read.

Next time somebody gushes over another "humanitarian intervention" - somewhere in the Middle-East or in darkest Africa, you'll know to look for skeletons. The trick is to stop the now habitual hypocrisy before another country is wiped out.

- From Washington was the "humanitarian intervention" in Yugoslavia. Insights that were common knowledge after Vietnam were purged from the "Washington consensus" during the Reagan regime, and with the "winning of the Cold War" the last shred of conscience was lost in unleashing mass violence on the world. The marginilized voices of the 1990s have now, once the dust has cleared and blood has dried, been seen as "right all along," as usual; and Professor Gibbs' superb forensic CSI displays the fingerprints along with the evidence.

It was all about NATO expansion, of course, and in Washington that means maintaining American dominance over Europe now that the Soviet threat is inconveniently laid to rest. Gibbs details how Yugoslavia was willfully pulled apart when a neutralist island in eastern Europe was no longer needed. How the war in Bosnia was deliberately prolonged by the Clinton administration, to the point where intervention seemed the only way out of endless cycles of atrocity, and justifying the inclusion of three new former Soviet clients into NATO. How formal incorporation of these new members was followed in two weeks by the war on Serbia/Yugoslavia, to crush the last independent military force in Europe and justify the final inclusion of all east Europe into NATO, as counterweight to the restless old Atlantic allies.

A cynical game of great-power expansionism was played, with all the right touches of wartime atrocity propaganda dusted off from WW I, to arouse the "liberal conscience" behind another crusade to make the world safe yet again for democratization and Atlantic investors. The pro-war "liberals" of the United States and Britain stand revealed as criminal as Milosevic and Tudjman for this bloody fiasco and its predictable postwar results, and perhaps even more so: Milosevic never hid behind "human rights" to disgorge explosive ordinance onto human flesh.

Professor Gibbs' work is highly recommended to those tired of wandering in the warfog of propaganda.

In this brilliant book, David Gibbs, Associate Professor of History and Political Science at the University of Arizona, argues that the USA should use peaceful means to address foreign policy problems. He notes that the Iraq war cost $3 trillion, while the USA gave just $200 million to fight AIDS, TB and malaria.

He shows how in the 1980s the IMF, under US direction, imposed its usual programme, cutting Yugoslavia's living standards by a third to amass capital to export to pay off debts. A World Bank official called the debt crisis a `blessing in disguise', enabling the USA to impose changes letting capital move more freely.

As Gibbs shows, "external intervention was one of the principal causes of the conflict. Interventions helped to trigger the breakup of Yugoslavia and the various wars that followed the breakup; later intervention served to intensify the war, and to spread the fighting." From 1990, before the June 1991 war, Germany fostered the secessions of Croatia and Slovenia. From February 1992, the USA fostered the Bosnia's secession. The USA also wrecked the March 1992 Lisbon agreement, precipitating the war in April.

Of the US intervention in 1999, former British defence minister John Gilbert said, "I think the terms put to Milosevic at Rambouillet were absolutely intolerable. How could he possibly accept them? It was quite deliberate." The provocation led straight to the Kosovo war. As Gibbs writes, "US diplomacy was instrumental in preventing an early settlement of the war and probably prolonged the fighting for several additional years."

Gibbs reminds us how propaganda lies won public support for the wars. He notes that Alija Izetbegovic, president of Bosnia-Herzegovina, admitted in 2003, "Yes, I thought that the claims [about extermination camps] would help trigger a bombing campaign [by the Western powers against the Serbs] ... my claims were false. There were no extermination camps ..."

The Kosovo war, like the Iraq war, had no UN approval, so was illegal. Gibbs notes that New York Times warmonger Thomas Friedman admitted, "Any war we launch in Iraq will certainly be - in part - about oil. To deny this is laughable."

As Gibbs observes, NATO "was nominally a military alliance to guard against external military threats. But its real function was to maintain US predominance in Europe." He cites the 1992 Defense Planning Guidance document, by Wolfowitz and Cheney: "we must seek to prevent the emergence of Europe-only security arrangements which would undermine NATO."

Gibbs concludes, "alleged humanitarian interventions in the Balkans helped establish a new rationale - however spurious - for militarism. The Yugoslav case served to define US intervention as a benevolent and even altruistic activity, and this image has proven useful as a justification for virtually all overseas action." As Gibbs shows, "in most instances, the legacy of military intervention has been appalling."

This book, First Do No Harm: Humanitarian Intervention and the Destruction of Yugoslavia, given to me by a friend, is one of the best, if not the best, written on the subject of the mess that was created in the former Yugoslavia in the 1990s into the present. Personally, I believe that U.S. military intervention is, and has been, appropriate in certain circumstances and is justified. Military intervention in the former Yugoslavia, however, was a huge "mistake" for a number of reasons, the primary one being that it was done under the false pretenses of "humanitarianism" at the expense of the Serbs. The West, unfortunately, took the side of the bad guys against the good guys. It will be a while before all the "Truths" come out about what really happened in the former Yugoslavia from 1989 through 2009 and beyond, but this important book by David Gibbs is an essential part of that process.


Although Gibbs repeats and holds fast to some of the disinformation and myths regarding alleged Serbian "crimes" in the former Yugoslavia, to his great credit he is far better than most in being willing and able to cut through all the lies that have pervaded the analysis of what went on in the Balkans in the last two decades. I highly recommend this book, "First Do No Harm: Humanitarian Intervention and the Destruction of Yugoslavia" by David N. Gibbs. Even those who believe they know all there is to know about the issue of the former Yugoslavia will be shocked at the extent of the external subterfuge that went on in ripping that country apart and making the Serbs the scapegoats for the crimes. This external "intervention" will have repercussions for the free world, especially the Christian world, far into the future.

Here is a valuable excerpt from "First Do No Harm" regarding the alleged "Srebrenica Massacre" in Bosnia:

From Pages 160 and 161 by D. Gibbs:

"The origin of the Srebrenica massacre lay in a series of Muslim attacks that began in the spring of 1995. These attacks were launched from UN-protected safe areas, including the one in Srebrenica. According to the Dutch investigation of the massacre:"

"'The UN headquarters in Zagreb had...concluded that the Bosnian Muslims continually misused the safe areas to maintain their armed forces, which in some cases it looked as if they intended to provoke shelling by the Bosnian Serbs.'"

"Such actions invited Serb reprisals, and this dynamic contributed to the fall of the safe area. Beginning on July 6, 1995 Serb forces assaulted Srebrenica and quickly overran it, despite the (nominal) UN protection."

"The Bosnian government made no serious effort to defend the town and appeared unconcerned that it might be captured. EU negotiator Carl Bildt notes that Bosnian military forces assigned to protect Srebrenica were 'not putting up any resistance. Later it was revealed that they had been ordered by the Sarajevo commanders not to defend Srebrenica.' And Bosnia's foreign minister, Muhamed Sacirbey, told Bildt that Srebrenica 'had always been a problem for his government. They knew that a peace settlement would mean the loss of the enclave. So from this point of view, what had happened [the Serb capture of the town] made things easier' (emphases added by Gibbs). Bildt also noted that during his conversation with Sacirbey, 'I was more upset about what had happened than he [Sacirbey] seemed to be. His calm reactions and controlled arguments still seem to me to be a mysterious piece of the Srebrenica puzzle.'"

"And military correspondent Ripley provides further evidence that the Bosnian government allowed Serb armies to seize the town:"

"'British, Dutch, and other UNPROFOR personnel and many veterans of the Sarajevo press corps, including [Martin] Bell of the BBC, and Nick Gowing of the Channel Four television network all came to the conclusion that the Bosnian government decided to let Srebrenica fall to increase the pressure on the international community to intervene against the Serbs....A month before [the Serb attack], Sarajevo had ordered [Brigadier Oric, the local commander]...to leave for no apparent reason. He was then prevented from returning. As the situation worsened, the Sarajevo leadership made no effort to launch diversionary attacks...Dutch peacekeepers near Tuzla told Gowing that they saw Bosnian troops escaping from Srebrenica...carrying brand new anti-tank weapons, still in their plastic wrappings...[British UN peacekeeper Lieutenant Col. Jim] Baxter said 'they [the Bosnian government] knew what was happening in Srebrenica. I am certain they decided it was worth the sacrifice.'" [emphasis added by Gibbs]

"The foregoing information raises the possibility that the Izetbegovic government actually welcomed the conquest of Srebrenica and took specific measures to increase the likelihood that conquest would occur; and that in doing this, the government was acting on the basis of a larger strategy, which aimed at augmenting international sympathy for the Bosnian cause and thus drawing in NATO military intervention to be directed against the Serbs."

*****

The entire book is packed with valuable information such as the above. "First Do No Harm" is easy to read, which is remarkable considering the wealth of information it contains about a subject full of complexities. Gibbs is not only a meticulous researcher, he compiles and communicates his findings with integrity, which in this day and age of "Spin", is valuable indeed.



Aleksandra Rebic
February 2010

The break-up of Yugoslavia took place when I was still quite young so I was not really in a position to follow events as they were unfolding. I was vaguely aware of ethnic conflicts taking place in the Balkans but my understanding of what was taking place did not really go beyond the vague generalities which somehow have a way of entering the ether of collective consciousness.

The image floating around in the ether, at least in the United States, seemed to be of a deeply troubled region, the Balkans, torn apart by ancient ethnic conflicts which finally exploded due to the pressure of these internal forces of ethnic conflict until the atrocities finally reached a point at which the outside world, led by the United States, was forced to intervene and enforce a peace. After reading David Gibbs' book it is now clear to me that the image I had formed of the conflict was not a very accurate image of what actually took place. The image of the U.S. sitting idly by until it was finally forced to act out of humanitarian concerns is a particularly inaccurate image.

The purpose of David Gibbs' book is to explode some of the mythology surrounding the Balkan conflicts which have become engrained in our collective consciousness. Myth breaking is never an easy task since people are reluctant to give up myths they have grown accustomed to but David Gibbs is, in my opinion, more than equal to the task.

Not only does First Do No Harm provide an excellent summary of the break-up of Yugoslavia and the ensuing wars for those who, like me, are not already experts in the subject but Gibbs is also able to synthesize an overwhelming amount of evidence in support of his thesis which is, briefly, as follows.

First, the origin of the conflict in Yugoslavia was largely economic. I do not think Gibbs would deny that the Balkans have been an area of deep ethnic conflict for a very long time but ethnic conflict, on its own, was not what caused the break-up of Yugoslavia. Yugoslavia found itself in a difficult economic situation in 1973-74 with the rapid rise in oil prices. Yugoslavia's import bill increased due to increases in energy costs and its export bill decreased due to decreases in consumer demand in the rest of the world. Yugoslavia responded to this crisis by taking out loans in international capital markets which it was eventually unable to pay back (partly because its loans were largely denominated in dollars and the U.S. raised interest rates in 1979 to try to deal with inflation which raised the debt burden for Yugoslavia). Yugoslavia had to turn to the IMF for assistance and the IMF in turn enforced structural adjustments which increased levels of inequality and added fuel to ethnic conflicts paving the way for the rise of nationalist politicians like Slobodan Milosevic.

This, in a nutshell, is the economic background to the break-up of Yugoslavia. It is important to see the economic causes behind the break-up of Yugoslavia since it is one of David Gibbs' theses in this work that the break-up of Yugoslavia could potentially have been avoided through some degree of debt forgiveness. The IMF has a history of forcing structural adjustments on debtor countries as a way of ensuring that international debts are repaid (which is hard to justify from a purely free-market standpoint since it effectively protects creditors from any risk) and these structural adjustments often lead to destabilizing political situations. At the end of David Gibbs' book he argues for a new foreign policy strategy which focuses on preventing humanitarian crises as opposed to sending in the troops (or, rather, the bombers) after humanitarian crises have already exploded. One strategy for preventing crises would be economic aid, debt forgiveness, and a new IMF strategy which does not force structural adjustments and austerity on countries that are already suffering from economic hardship.

David Gibbs also outlines the importance of outside intervention in the break-up of Yugoslavia. The break-up of Yugoslavia was not, as I had imagined, a purely home grown phenomenon. Germany played a part in the break-up by encouraging Croatia to secede and helping them to form an intelligence service.

The U.S. played a significant role in the process of the break-up of Yugoslavia and prolonging the wars through its unwillingness to support attempts by the European Community to broker peace deals. The EC attempted, for example, to provide a constitutional agreement, the Lisbon agreement, that would allow the secession of Bosnia-Herzegovina while avoiding a violent civil war. All three sides in the conflict (Serbs, Croats, and Muslims) offered tentative support for the agreement and there was a very real chance that war could be avoided but the U.S. sabotaged the agreement. The U.S. encouraged the Muslim government to refuse to sign the agreement (despite the fact that the agreement that was finally settled upon in the Dayton accords three years and thousands of lives later was quite similar in many ways to the Lisbon agreement) largely due to rivalry between the U.S. and the EC.

A major theme of this book is the attempt of the U.S. to maintain its hegemony, along with the relevance of NATO, by sabotaging the efforts of the EC. After the Cold War the relevance of NATO was in question. It was hard to justify high levels of military spending when there were so few threats left in the world. A U.S. led military intervention in the Balkans was just the kind of thing that was needed to justify the continued military spending and the continued existence of NATO. David Gibbs finds it hard to square the United States' supposed humanitarian motives with their continued efforts to sabotage the efforts of the EC to broker peaceful solutions to the break-up of Yugoslavia.

David Gibbs believes that U.S. foreign policy should be based on 1) first doing no harm, and 2) preventing humanitarian crises before they begin. In regard to the first goal David Gibbs points out that the Balkan interventions were universally a failure. U.S. intervention in the Balkans, especially when measured in terms of lives lost, made things worse rather than better. David Gibbs points out that the U.S. killed almost as many innocent civilians in Kosovo with their bombing as the Serbs had killed before the U.S. decided to intervene (though the Serbs became more violent after the U.S. intervention).

It is hard to imagine anyone disagreeing with the second goal of attempting to prevent humanitarian crises before they begin. It is possible, of course, to argue that we should do both, i.e. try to prevent humanitarian crises before they begin as well as offer military assistance after they have begun. David Gibbs does not believe this is feasible largely because of cost. The cost of our humanitarian military adventures is quite high and, David Gibbs believes, that money could be put to better use by focusing on things like disease eradication, debt relief, and combatting global climate change. Spending money on debt relief and economic aid would have the added benefit of potentially preventing humanitarian crises from arising in the first place.

I am not entirely sure whether I agree with the idea that we should give up on the idea of humanitarian intervention entirely though I think we need to rethink our strategy of relying exclusively on bombing campaigns. It does not seem to me to improve the moral standing of the United States to say that we are willing to kill innocent civilians in our efforts to stop humanitarian crimes while being unwilling to risk the lives of our own soldiers. But I think David Gibbs has presented a strong case against humanitarian intervention, although "humanitarian" has to be put in quotes since one of Gibbs' theses is that there is very little genuine humanitarian concern in humanitarian interventions. It is not clear to me how David Gibbs would feel about a genuine humanitarian intervention as opposed to an intervention merely masquerading as one. It is, at least, not entirely clear to me that we should give up entirely on the idea of humanitarian intervention even if it is necessary, as I think it is, to expose the reality of humanitarian interventions for what they are.

I also find it hard to believe that politicians are quite as cynical and devoid of human feeling as they sometimes appear in Gibbs' book. It is hard for me to believe that all the politicians and military commanders involved in the Balkan interventions were entirely unconcerned with the humanitarian crises taking place and were simply looking for excuses to flex NATO's muscles. My guess is that it was a mixed bag, some relatively pure intentions mixed with impure intentions, as it always tends to be in life.

Whatever the case may be David Gibbs' book deserves the highest praise. It is one of the most enlightening books I have ever read on international conflict and foreign policy. It is absolutely essential reading for anyone interested in the Balkan conflicts.

***Addendum: I have been doing a little research on David Gibbs' book and have found that it has been heavily criticized by some Balkan scholars. Josip Glaurdic published a review in International Affairs vol. 86 no. 2 which criticizes a number of Gibbs' claims as well as his sources and scholarship. Marko Hoare also heavily criticized the book. I found Marko Hoare's initial criticism to have a somewhat petty tone and was ready to dismiss it, especially after reading David Gibbs' response to the criticism, but I thought Marko Hoare's response to David Gibbs' response was far more substantive and raised some genuine questions in my mind about Gibbs' book. Unfortunately David Gibbs did not choose to write a response to Hoare's response to his response (phew!) so it is difficult for me to assess his arguments. I would be curious to know 1) what other reader's opinions are of Marko Hoare and Josip Glaurdic (since I am not in anyway an expert in this field it is hard for me to assess where different scholars are coming from; neither Hoare nor Glaurdic seemed to me to be blindly ideological but I would be curious what other people's opinions are), 2) whether David Gibbs has attempted to respond to Marko Hoare's second critique, 3) whether Samantha Power has ever attempted to respond to David Gibbs' sustained critique of her position in this book, and 4) what the best books to read would be on this highly contentious subject (I would like to get books that present as many sides as possible on what took place in the Balkans but I am not interested in books that are obvious propaganda one way or the other). Anyone who has answers to any or all of those four questions, please post a comment under my review. I am very interested in the opinions of those who are more knowledgeable than I am on this subject***

At the age of 56, having been educated in the 1970's when political science created "comparative studies" as a ruse for avoiding field world and foreign language mastery in favor of statistical comparisons from afar, I am now quite accustomed to seeing each generation rediscover core knowledge.

Even more distressing for one who loves books as artifacts of human wisdom, is to see each generation re-discover knowledge known to earlier generations, without citation. Scholarship seems to be on a wheel making little forward progress, at least in the humanities.

This is a fine book. It is exceptional for both its clear-eyed understanding of the combination of evil and banal ignorance that characterizes those in power, whether of one party or another. In the 1970's, for the US Institute of Peace, I wrote that the greatest threat to peace was the cataclysmic separation of those with power from those with knowledge. This book manifests all of that brilliantly.

It is also exceptional in this era for being a clear-eyes appraisal of the evil of military intervention. This again is not new knowledge, but it is helpful to have this generation be reminded.

Great evil has been done "in our name," for the basest of reasons. I pray that our rising generation of digital literati will not be as ignorant in power as those who now surround world leaders--sychophants, dilitants, and craven opportunists.

See also:
The Sorrows of Empire: Militarism, Secrecy, and the End of the Republic (The American Empire Project)
Deliver Us from Evil: Peacekeepers, Warlords and a World of Endless Conflict
Tragedy & Hope: A History of the World in Our Time
War is a Racket: The Antiwar Classic by America's Most Decorated Soldier
Breaking the Real Axis of Evil: How to Oust the World's Last Dictators by 2025
Confessions of an Economic Hit Man
The Shock Doctrine: The Rise of Disaster Capitalism
Running on Empty: How the Democratic and Republican Parties Are Bankrupting Our Future and What Americans Can Do About It
Grand Illusion: The Myth of Voter Choice in a Two-Party Tyranny
The Search for Security: A U.S. Grand Strategy for the Twenty-First Century