U.S involvement in Bosnia :: essays research papers

The United States Involvement in Bosnia; is it positive or negative. After a lifetime of war in Bosnia, can the United States really offer positive change? To truly get a feel for the conflict in this region we must first look at the long-standing hatred between the occupying ethnic groups: Serbs, Muslims, and Croats. From 1481 to 1903 the Ottoman Empire was the ruling body over the entire Balkan region. By the early nineteen hundreds the Ottoman Empire had collapsed. In 1918, at the end of World War One, Russia annexed the Balkan region renaming it Yugoslavia. In 1919 Joseph Stalin, Communist ruler of Russia and its satellite states (i.e. Yugoslavia), appointed Tito to be the head of Yugoslavia. Tito quickly became an iron fisted and ruthless dictator. The Machiavellian characteristics exhibited by Tito have given all Serbs a reputation as being strong armed and merciless. With Tito’s death in 1991, Yugoslavia collapsed and split into 3 independent states: Bosnia, Herzegovina , and Croatia. In 1994 Slovadon Malosovitch was elected ruler of the Serbian state. Incidents of mass genocide and several other war crimes became regular occurrences under his rule. The Bosnian crisis has shown the world the worst of human nature. On behalf of the United Nations, in an effort to settle the unrest in the Balkan region, The United States became involved in 1995. The United States involvement includes: the commitment of twenty thousand troops, the troop support of legions of tanks and other vehicles, and the â€Å"full support† of the United States Government. Unfortunately this upset the native Bosnian people. So, although the United States feels obligated to help the Bosnian Cause, they may be worsening the situation with their involvement, both there and in the U.S There are two sides to this story. The first is the opinion that the United States should completely withdraw from Bosnia. The other opinion is that the United States should go headlong and give B osnia their full support, and commit more troops and more supplies to the Bosnian Cause. There are some positive things done by the United States in Bosnia. The presence of U.S troops did bring temporary peace to the area. Although the peace is purely an act, it does give leaders time to talk and plan without worrying about their people dying. Also, the United States presence in Bosnia helped to eradicate the most horrific problem in Bosnia, large Serbian concentration camps and mass Albanian genocide.