Free Outpost: Life on the Frontlines of American Diplomacy: A Memoir by Christopher R. Hill Page B

at me before. Holbrooke added yet another task: opening his thin brown leather briefcase to find a clean pair of socks to change into in the middle of all this. I had been looking at John taking his seat and watching a little of Andrea Mitchell’s newscast myself, still waiting for Holbrooke to reengage with whatever it was he had asked me to come to his office to discuss, then turned to him to ask, “That’s wonderful, but could you tell me what the job is?”
    “I want you to be the new director of the Balkans for the new office I have just created: the Office of South Central European Affairs.”
    I thought about insisting on a name change for the office before accepting (South Central Europe sounded more to me like Switzerland than the Balkans), but decided I could fight that one later. I accepted. He glanced at his watch to see that it was about 7:30 P.M. and that he was late for something. He threw some papers in his briefcase (as well as the dirty socks), explaining that John would tell me the details. Before he left, he encouraged me to make whatever personnel changes I wanted in the office and said, “See you in New York on Sunday at noon.”
    John and I walked into his office, next to Holbrooke’s, where he filled me in on what would be happening in New York. The United Nations General Assembly would be starting its fall meetings. I was to accompany Holbrooke to meetings in New York that would take up most of the week and would be primarily focused on the Bosnian delegation, expected Sunday afternoon. The task was to convince the Bosnians, and others, that lifting the arms embargo on Bosnia, as many in the U.S. Congress were calling for, would not so much help the Bosnians as it would embolden the Serbs and increase the bloodshed.
    However, the U.S. position needed to go beyond simply opposing the lifting of the arms embargo. We needed to show the Bosnians, starting with President Alija Izetbegovic, that we were serious about finding a solution to a crisis that had spanned two administrations, caused thousands of civilian causalities and human rights violations on a scale not seen inEurope since World War II, and was ruining the transatlantic relationship just when it needed to become stronger in addressing post–Cold War challenges. Izetbegovic needed to know that America was committed to ending the war and achieving a just solution for the Bosnians. We would not abandon the problem, or leave the Bosnians to their fate. We would be committed to the end.
    Since my time in Yugoslavia with Ambassador Eagleburger, things had not gone well there. Yugoslavia, relatively small though it was, was a symbol for both East and West, having defied Stalin, but never integrating with the West. It also was a leader in what was then called the Third World and was a key player in the so-called North-South dialogue. In the beginning of the twentieth century, south Slavic peoples came together to resist the Austro-Hungarian Empire, which was seeking to replace the Ottoman Empire, now in fast retreat. The collective interests of those south Slavic peoples had long given way to centrifugal forces as each republic, especially the more economic advantaged northern ones, looked for a way out of Yugoslavia. Slovenia’s exit was relatively painless, but the fact that large Serb minorities had lived in Croatia and Bosnia for centuries would make the declaration of independence of those two republics far more problematic. The fact that Bosnia’s population was some 30–35 percent Serb would make its own declaration especially difficult. Immediately after the holding of the independence referendum by the Muslim-dominated government, the Serbs, especially those in the rural areas of eastern Bosnia, rose up to declare their own right of self-determination so that they would not be a minority in a new Bosnian state.
    Sitting with John after the “interview” with Holbrooke, I asked him if that was how most decisions were being made in