The Mark of Bosnia: Boutros-Ghali's Reign of Indifference

Boutros-Ghali’s and the United Nations’ record in Bosnia was given a devastating assessment by David Rieff in The New Republic (February 12, 1996). There, with great clarity, is an autopsy of what was done and what was dodged in Bosnia. Boutros-Ghali provided cover for the great powers and their abdication of responsibility. He railed against them -- the French, the British, the Americans -- when he felt that they had been unfair to him, that he had been left twisting in the wind, that he had been provided with insufficient muscle to fulfill his mandate. Everyone knows that the United Nations commands no military divisions. But in Bosnia this secretary-general forfeited the organization’s principal asset: its moral standing to speak out on the great issues of the day. Boutros-Ghali never could find his compass in Bosnia, and his failure went hand in hand with pretensions about the dawn of a new age for the United Nations. Leadership in the aftermath of the Cold War indeed.

The secretary-general’s words take one’s breath away: ‘I am like a doctor. I diagnose the patient and make certain recommendations for his cure. But if he does not follow my advice, it is hardly my fault.’ Can we afford five more years of the same doctor and the same cure?

Fouad Ajami is Majid Khadduri Professor of Middle Eastern Studies at the Paul H. Nitze School of Advanced International Studies, The Johns Hopkins University.