REVEALED: CIA Knew Yugoslav Wars Would End in Disaster | Dr. Harry Blain
What if the official story of the Bosnian War is a carefully constructed myth? We'll explore declassified documents that ask: Did US intelligence warn against the very policies that led to disaster? And was the climactic bombing campaign not a necessity for peace, but a way to rebrand a failed policy?Today I’m talking to Dr. Harry Blain, an Assistant Professor for Political Science at Sacramento State University. On this channel, we’ve been running several programs on the Wars in the former Yugoslavia and Harry wrote a paper on the subject called “The myth of coercive diplomacy: the US intelligence community and the war in Bosnia” (linked below), in which he explores declassified US intelligence documents on Yugoslavia.
Dr. Blain's research uncovers a startling story. We'll journey through assessments from the CIA's Balkan Task Force, revealing how experts consistently warned against the interventions the Clinton administration pursued. We discuss how early peace proposals, remarkably similar to the final Dayton Agreement, were scuttled. You'll hear the cynical backstory to the fall of Srebrenica—how it was viewed not just as a tragedy, but as a "diplomatic opportunity." We examine how the final NATO bombing campaign was less about forcing an unwilling enemy to the table and more about rebranding a policy failure and coercing Washington's own allies.
Links:
Harry's X (Twitter): https://x.com/hblain
Harry's paper: https://doi.org/10.1080/02684527.2025.2565551
Neutrality Studies substack: https://pascallottaz.substack.com
Goods Store: https://neutralitystudies-shop.fourthwall.com
Timestamps:
00:00:00 Preview & Introduction
00:01:55 What Declassified Intelligence Revealed vs. Public Rhetoric
00:06:06 Bosnia's Political Setup & Early Peace Plans (Vance-Owen to Dayton)
00:14:25 What was the nature of the fighting in early '93?
00:20:07 Did the Clinton Administration Ignore or Misuse Intelligence?
00:23:10 The 1995 Policy Reversal: How was failure rebranded as success?
00:25:46 The Fall of Srebrenica: A Cynical Diplomatic 'Opportunity'
00:34:45 Why Were Bosnian Serbs Denied the Right to Secede?
00:39:13 Madeleine Albright's Role and Prejudiced Narratives
00:45:04 The Human Cost of Avoiding Political Embarrassment
00:50:33 The Enduring Myth of Coercive Diplomacy
00:51:51 Conclusion Receive SMS online on sms24.me
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