Keeping U.S. Soldiers Is Bosnia Essay, Research Paper

Keeping a Large American Military Force in Bosnia

Bosnia, the former communist country of Yugoslavia, is having a civil war since 1991. Three factions are fighting for control. They are the Serbs, Croats and the Muslims. All three factions are fighting and killing each other along with killing innocent civilians. To keep the three factions from doing their harm, the United Nations has sent in thousands of troops from across Europe. For almost a year the United States has had about twenty thousand soldiers stationed in Bosnia. We Americans need to have a large military force in Bosnia for a longer time than just a year.

The peace nicks of this country decided that keeping this large force over in Bosnia is too expensive. They say that it takes more than a billion dollars a year to maintain a force of that size in Bosnia. The opposition reported that three out of five Americans do not support the idea of American forces in Bosnia.

The United Nations has two missions for the troops in Bosnia. First the soldiers need to keep the factions away from each other so all of the killing can stop. The United States soldiers are there for peace keeping not peace enforcement. To get this done America needs a large military force to be in Bosnia. The factions will respect a large military force and Bosnia is a large country that the soldiers will patrol. The United Nation needs a large military force to get this done.

The second mission of our soldiers is to see that they sign a peace plan. Having the factions sign a peace plan and then sending the soldiers home right afterwards would not be a good idea. The soldiers need to stay longer than a year to ensure that all of the three factions can honorably follow the peace plan.

Another interest the world has in Bosnia is to keep the civil war from spreading to other European countries. If the war was to spread out over Europe, this would cause the region to destabilize. To prevent a breach of security in the Bosnia area, President Clinton received permission from congress to send 20,000 soldiers into Bosnia. Our Soldiers will join a larger United Nations force from Europe.

An additional interest we have in the region is to stabilize the economy. The economies of some European countries are fragile enough and they probably could not handle any type of military self defense. Having a military force in place to stabilize the region is easier and cheaper than to wait for the countries to go into economical turmoil. Then the United States would have to spend a larger amount of money to repair the damage to the cities and the economies. Also if the surrounding countries see the United States military presence they will get a sense of security. With this sense of security they would most likely have an easier time with their own economy.

Having a large military force in place for a year or longer would help the situation in Bosnia. Accomplishing the goals set forth by United Nations will help end the fighting in Bosnia so that peace between the fight factions can have a chance to win.