Overturning a former 30% judgment, the Dutch supreme court on Friday ruled that Dutch military forces were 10% responsible for the July 1995 deaths of 350 Bosnian Muslims at Srebrenica.
That judgment was reached in rough proportion to the approximately 350 innocent Bosnian Muslim men and boys who were rounded up from a United Nations compound in Srebernica and massacred by Bosnian Serb paramilitaries. The atrocity occurred after Dutch forces allowed the Serbs to take control of those who had previously been under protection at the UN compound. The remaining 8,000 victims at Srebernica were massacred outside of the compound.
But allow me to say something that’s sure to offend: Had U.S. forces been present at Srebrenica, I believe many more lives would have been saved. This bears noting, because although U.S. forces were involved in the broader NATO operation to secure civilians, they were not present at Srebrenica.
Why do I believe U.S. forces would have performed better than their Dutch counterparts?
Two reasons: U.S. military culture and the credible threat of American retaliation.
Survivor testimony records how Serb paramilitaries, under the eyes of Dutch soldiers, were seizing young women out of the crowd and gang-raping them, then murdering them. They were killing children for a quick laugh. They were conducting an orgy of anarchic brutality that I believe U.S. combat infantry officers never would have tolerated.
The thematic undercurrent of U.S. military culture is centered around the pursuit and domination of the enemy. In pure Clausewitizian terms, U.S. Army and Marine officers — those who would have been in command on the ground — are taught and retaught to relentlessly pursue the enemy and throttle him into submission or death. A reinforced instinct for aggression is the defining quality here, and it stands in contrast to the more conciliatory thematic approach of European military officers. Thus, in light of the paramilitaries’ pure brutality against desperate innocent civilians, I believe an American commander would have ordered his men to present arms against Ratko Mladić’s hordes.
What would have happened next? Well, this is where U.S. forces would have had an even greater advantage over the Dutch. In face of a now-imminent threat to U.S. personnel, the U.S. military would have surged other forces into the area to reinforce its personnel. Facing the threat, U.S. higher-ups would have likely disregarded United Nations and NATO bureaucracies. And the paramilitaries would have known and feared this potential consequence. They would have known that the outnumbered American forces were just one element of a far more powerful force that could be rapidly deployed against them.
In that understanding, Mladić would have faced a choice: kill the civilians and the small American garrison, and face future annihilation, or withdraw and live to commit atrocities another day. I believe he would have chosen the latter option.
Regardless, there are two certain truths from Srebrenica. What happened is a stain on humanity. And it would have been more just for Ratko Mladić to suffer a face canoe rather than the luxurious imprisonment he now enjoys.
