Amb. Thomas J. Miller

HIGHLIGHTS:

If we could do it all over again… build in a review mechanism

"If you asked Holbrooke, he would always tell you: The objective was to stop the fighting; it was to end the war and stop the killing. If he could do it all over again, or if I could do it all over again in hindsight, I would have built a mechanism to the Dayton Accords - a review mechanism - 5, 10 years down the pike. What we didn't know at the time, but we know now, is even if you had that mechanism, the current leadership in BiH is such that I think it would be very hard to do a successful review, which is to come up with government structures and instrumentalities that would work like a normal country."

More powers for the High Representative

"I also would have built in a review of a lot of powers for the High Representative. Now, you know, that door closed a long time ago. The High Representatives got very little powers at this point …I would have given the High Representative a lot of power because what we didn't know at the time but suspected was that the parties that were signatories were, you know, parties in the war and signatories to Dayton, those same parties would still be in power."

Accounting for things that you didn't anticipate

"In any future type of [conflict resolution] arrangement, I would build in a review mechanism, and I would also build in tie-breaking powers that would make sure that the obstinate obstructionist couldn't block whatever had come up in a review…In any complicated negotiation, you need to account for things you didn't anticipate. You got to have time later, whether it's 5 or 10 years, and that allows you to do self-correcting stuff. And then you also need to account for the obstinate players that they can't veto exercise of veto."

21 Days at Dayton: the logistics were brilliant

"I think there are some takeaways from Dayton that you can definitely use as a model for future negotiations… It is important how they set up the Dayton negotiation. The logistics were totally brilliant. And this was all Holbrooke. You needed to find a place that was so isolated that there were no outside distractions that people were not playing to the media. You basically needed to isolate people, and you needed to get the real players, not a bunch of underlings who had to refer to the boss every time they had to take a sip of water. They did that."

End the conflict. Build the structures that will work

"For the future, you need to understand that in any negotiations to end a conflict, there are really two objectives, and they're two separate objectives. One is to stop the conflict, stop the fighting, stop the killing, and then the second is to build institutions and structures that actually will work and will work for the benefit of the people. "

You don't get a negotiation just because you want one; you get one because you prepared the ground

"[21 days in Dayton] were extremely crucial, but if you hadn't done the shuttle diplomacy, you would never have gotten to Dayton. It's the sequence. And you really don't get a negotiation just because you want one. You get a negotiation because you prepared the ground for it, and there was a lot of stuff that had to be done. I mean, the threat of NATO bombing energised Milosevic. I think sometimes you need something strong to compel the parties to come to the table."

You need to understand the consequences of failure

"You needed something in this negotiation, what I would call the consequences of failure. In other words, if you didn't do it, what are the consequences? And that's really important; you needed credible interlocutors, and that's really important. The best thing to do is to get the main players, the principals because otherwise you're just dealing with a bunch of messengers, which just strings out the process. And you're not having to go back to capitals for the next instructions. "

Dayton would be much more difficult today

"I think it would be much harder, number one, much more difficult, because of all those things you mentioned. I think even more than social media and all these other distractions that are around today that weren't around in 1995. It's the will. "

Holbrooke, a bulldozer that could make this happen

"I've never seen a negotiator; I have never seen a person like Richard Holbrooke. He broke all the rules. He didn't care what people thought about him. He could be extremely rude and brusque if he had to, and he could be extremely charming when he had to. And you needed kind of a bulldozer like that to make this happen. I think if you had had a more traditional diplomat, it just wouldn't have happened, you know, that would have gotten bogged down."

The timing was good for Dayton

"The other thing that I would say is timing is everything, and the timing was good for Dayton because it was right after Srebrenica, right after the NATO bombing, right after a turn of the tide on the battlefield. And it was an opportunity that had to be seized at the moment."

You have to get the right people at the right time

"Timing is everything. A couple of things are absolutely essential. Both parties have to see that there's more advantage to a negotiation than there is to be continuing the conflict…You also have to have parties that really want it. You have to get the right people at the right time."

You had to take what you got

"In the case of Dayton and the conflict in BiH, the timing was right, and you didn't have, in hindsight, the best leaders for a creative negotiation. But you had to take what you got, and you know that's why you ended up with success in stopping the war and failure in coming up with a structure and institutions that could work."

Applicability of Dayton to today's conflicts

"When you think of Dayton, it's not just a historian's issue. It's an issue where you really have to think about the applicability of Dayton to today's conflicts, what you can take from it, and what you can discard. "

TRANSCRIPT:

• Please explain your connection and expertise with the Dayton Peace Accords.

"I'm Thomas Miller, I go by Tom. I was ambassador in Bosnia-Herzegovina from 1999 to 2001. So I was not at Dayton. At the time of Dayton, I was the number two in Athens. But I was very close to Richard Holbrooke. We spent a lot of time during the Cyprus negotiations, which was 1997 and 1999. And he talked a lot about the negotiations, most of which is in his book, but I got a level of detail that one gets when you're spending dozens of hours on planes and stuff like that."

• Should we observe the Dayton Peace Accords as a continuum, whereby its positive and negative attributes change depending on the context? How do we reconcile this Success-Failure tension when discussing its future and legacy?

"Well, I mean, it is what it is. You've described it, I think, perfectly. If you asked Holbrooke, he would always tell you the objective was to stop the fighting, was to end the war, to stop the killing. And I think if he could do it all over again, or if I could do it all over again, in hindsight, one of the things I would have done was build in a mechanism to the Dayton Accords, a review mechanism five, ten years down the pike. Now, what we didn't know at the time, but we know now is even if you had that mechanism, the leadership, current leadership in BIH is such that I think it'd be very hard to do a successful review. That is to come up with government structures and instrumentalities that would work like a normal country. So the other thing I would have done in hindsight is not just say there will be a review in 2005 and all chips are on the table. I also would have built in, in that review, a lot of powers for the High Representative. Now, you know, that door closed a long time ago and the High Representative's got very little powers at this point. But knowing what I know now I would have given the High Representative who ten years later was Paddy Ashdown. No, I think he had gone already. He came in 99, 2002. I think, yeah, he was still there. I would have given the High Representative a lot of power because what we didn't know at the time, but suspected, was that the parties that were signatories that were parties in the war and signatories to Dayton, those same parties would still be in power. And I say Dodik instead of the SDS. But, it's basically the same type of party. And you got the HDZ, you got SDA, who were then and now. So I would have done those two things. And in any future type of arrangement. Let's talk about Ukraine for a second, because that's coming up. I would build in a review mechanism, and I'd also build in tie-breaking, whatever you want to call it, powers that would make sure that the obstinate, obstructionist ones couldn't block whatever had come up in a review. And as you asked that question, I was really thinking about Ukraine. We're pretty sure from everything that we see that there will be some kind of peace implementation in Ukraine. And a lot of people are saying it's something that Zelensky is not going to like, the Ukrainians are not going to like. It will be shoved down their throat, which is, basically keep the lines where they are and make them semi quasi permanent. So, I think in any complicated negotiation, you need to account for things that you didn't anticipate. And you need to have a time later, whether it's five or ten years, that allows you to do self-correcting stuff. And then you also need to account for the obstinate players that they can't exercise a veto. So that's the two things I would do in hindsight."

• How can we observe the Dayton Negotiations Model: as a legacy of skilful diplomacy that ended a war and kept peace for 29 years or as a blueprint for future conflict resolution?

"That's a good question. I think there's some takeaways from Dayton that you can definitely use as a model for future negotiations. One, and people tend to kind of ignore this kind of stuff, but it really is important. How they set up the Dayton negotiation, the logistics, was totally brilliant. You needed - and this was all Holbrooke - to find a place that was so isolated that there were no outside distractions, that the people were not playing to the media. You basically needed to isolate people and you needed to get the real players, not a bunch of underlings who had to refer to the boss every time they had to take a sip of water. They did that. Now, I don't know if you can do that with Ukraine. I think that's going to be a lot harder. And I think for the future, you need to understand that in any negotiations to end a conflict. You can throw in the Palestinian-Israeli thing, too. And I'll get to that in a second. There are really two objectives. And there are two separate objectives. One is to stop the conflict, stop the fighting, stop the killing. And then the second is to build institutions and structures that actually will work and will work for the benefit of the people. In Dayton, because the fighting was so horrific, 100,000 people were dead. That's a hell of a lot. I know Sudan's more. But Holbrooke's focus was to stop the fighting. Look at the title of his book. It's "To end a war". It's not "To build a country". And so I think in future negotiations, take some of the lessons of Dayton, take some of the brilliant administrative stuff that they did. I just thought that was really, really good. But then focus on the two objectives, and that's of any conflict, you know, stopping the fighting and then building institution structures that actually... can serve the needs of the people and are not so cumbersome. This, you know, again, if Holbrooke was around, he'd say, given the main parties, Izetbegović, Tuđman and Milošević, that's the best I could get. And I fully understand that."

• Which elements from the Dayton negotiations process can transcend time and context and apply to mediating future conflicts? What are the most important lessons for the negotiators?

"I think they were extremely crucial, but if you hadn't done the shuttle diplomacy, you wouldn't have ever gotten to Dayton. So, it's a sequence. And you don't get a negotiation just because you want one. You get a negotiation because you prepared the ground for it. And there was a lot of stuff that had to be done. I mean, frankly, the threat of NATO bombing energized Milosevic. And I think sometimes you need something strong to impel the parties to come to the table. Rather than, you know, at the time of Dayton, remember that the Croats and the Bosniaks had taken the offensive. And they would have liked to keep on going. So you needed something in this negotiation, what I would call the consequences of failure. In other words, if you didn't do it, what are the consequences? And that's really, really important. You needed credible interlocutors. And that's really, really important. The best thing to do is to get the main players, the principals there. Because otherwise, as I said earlier, you're just dealing with a bunch of messengers and it just strings out the process. And you're not having to go back to capitals for the next instructions. And then, as I said before, you really needed to have this environment so isolated that they couldn't play to the media. They couldn't go shopping. They couldn't do anything. And, as you've seen, it not only was isolated, but it was pretty spartan. And that's fine, because that kind of says to these guys who had been living, at least Milošević and Tuđman, in the lap of luxury, you don't want to stay here forever."

• If we look at current global affairs, do you think the international consensus to end a war is weaker today than in 1995? Would the Dayton Peace Accords be successfully negotiated and signed today?

"I think it'd be much harder, number one, much more difficult because of all those things you mentioned. I think even more than social media and all these other distractions that are around today that weren't around in 1995 is the will. When Clinton came into office, he was very happy to follow the Europeans and just say, that's not our problem, or it's a European problem. And the metamorphosis of Clinton. Remember, Clinton came in, he was branded as a foreign policy neophyte. And then shortly after he came in, Black Hawk Down in Somalia happened. And that was seen as a massive disaster. So here's a president who's not like Bush Senior, who doesn't have a lot of experience in foreign policy, and his first foray into foreign policy is a disaster in Somalia so it took a lot of stuff to turn Clinton around. And then once Clinton was turned around, he had to turn the Europeans around. And as you know, that was even a bigger effort. So Clinton did get a reach on getting an end to the war. And he empowered Holbrooke. I came into the State Department in 1976. So that's 48 years ago. And I've seen a lot. I've never seen a person like Richard Holbrooke. He broke all the rules. He didn't care what people thought about him. He could be extremely rude and brusque if he had to, and he could be extremely charming when he had to. And you needed kind of a bulldozer like that to make this happen. I think if you had had a more traditional diplomat, it just wouldn't have happened. It would have gotten bogged down, and it just wouldn't have happened. And as you know from reading the book, it almost failed anyway. They had their suitcases out there and they're ready to go. And, and you need to have that kind of force of personality. The other thing that I would say is timing is everything. The timing was good for Dayton, because it was right after Srebrenica, right after the NATO bombing, right after a turn of the tide on the battlefield, and it was an opportunity that had to be seized at the moment."

• Finally, what do you see as the key challenges for the future of conflict mediation?

"Let me go back to my last comment about timing is everything. A couple of things are absolutely essential. Both parties have to see that there's more advantage to a negotiation than there is to continuing the conflict. And let's get back to Ukraine for a second. Are we at that stage? I'm not sure we are. Putin might see that he's got an advantage on the battlefield and would want to continue it. And if that's the case, then you're going to have a hard time negotiating an end to the conflict. You also have to have parties that really want it. And let's go to Palestine-Israel. We, the US, the Europeans, really want a two-state solution. But you can't find anyone either on the Palestinian side or the Israeli side that is enthusiastic and ready to negotiate a two-state solution. On the Palestinian side, it's got Mahmoud Abbas, who's 105 years old or so. He's actually about 88 or so. But he's totally monopolized power. And there is a next generation of Palestinians who would be credible negotiators. But on the Israeli side, you got Netanyahu, who's never really wanted a two-state solution. And now he's hemmed in by these right-wing extremists in his government that the government will fall if he ever uh indicated any interest in a two-state solution. And he will, if the government follows, he goes back on trial. So, I mean, it's pathetic, it's sad. I would say the same thing for Cyprus, something I know well. There's no indication that the Turkish side is interested in negotiation. And the last time the Greek side had a serious negotiation, they had a referendum and they rejected it. So, you know, you've got to get the right people at the right time. And I would just add with Cyprus, it's not a conflict anymore. The fighting stopped a long time ago. And, you've got to be 70, at least 70, to remember what happened. It was 50 years ago. And so most of the people on the island, on the Greek side, on either side, weren't even alive when this conflict happened. Cyprus is in the EU. It's a good life. Why do you want to take on the uncertainty of unifying with the Turkish side? I just mentioned those as examples. In the case of Dayton, in the case of the conflict in BIH, timing was right. In hindsight, you didn't have the best leaders for a negotiation, for a creative negotiation, but you had to take what you got. And that's why you ended up with success in stopping the war and failure in coming up with a structure and institutions that could work."