The text below is the author’s Master of Military Studies paper presented in 2008 at the US Marine Corps Command and Staff College. The author is a Dutch officer, presumably training in the US as a NATO exchange student. The paper is not remarkable either in its analysis or its conclusions, but it faithfully reflects the politically correct frame of mind in which this issue, regardless of the context, is almost routinely considered. Lt. Col. de Vin somewhat successfully outlines the complexity of his Dutch colleague Thom Carremans’ task as commander of the Dutch battalion in Srebrenica in July 1995. In the end he still finds it inescapable to conclude that “Karremans did not take the correct moral and ethical approach as he decided not to defend the enclave during the attack on Srebrenica,” but without facing some key issues. Is there any evidence that Dutchbat’s mission included an obligation to single-handedly “defend the enclave”? Why is the well-armed 28th Division of the Bosnian Army, stationed in Srebrenica and numbering at least 5,000 men, implicitly absolved from the obligation to defend the enclave and protect its population? In light of the overall strategic situation in the summer of 1995, would there even have been an attack on the enclave causing the moral dilemmas that de Vin grapples with if, in 1993, the agreement to demilitarize the enclave had been implemented and attacks out of its “UN protected territory” had been halted? Given the situation in the field, that armed troops under the command of the Sarajevo authorities in Srebrenica numbered at least 5,000 and Serbian forces tasked with gaining control of it about 2,000, what reasonable expectations could there be for about 200 Dutch peacekeeping soldiers to interpose themselves and “protect the enclave”? But, of course, just asking a few common sense questions is enough to give the entire phony moralistic game away. And if not, then surely the unctuous introductory quote from General Douglas MacArthur that “the soldier, be he friend or foe, is charged with the protection of the weak and unarmed”. It sounds very noble until it is recalled that Gen. MacArthur at the height of the Korean war advocated dropping atomic bombs on China to compel it to withdraw support from its Korean allies. If cooler heads had not prevailed and MacArthur had not been fired, possibly millions of “weak and unarmed” Chinese and Koreans would have perished as a result of the implementation of his proposed strategy.
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