A Constitution of the People and How to Achieve It

Bosnia had a long stretch of independence from the 12th century to the Turkish conquest of 1463 and that period (until a time long-after) saw Bosnia emerge as a meeting place for different faiths whatever the dominant political power (Dizdar 2009, 113). Islam spread along the Adriatic sea-routes. Muslims travelled inland from Dalmatian ports decades before the Ottoman conquest when Islam was formally introduced as the State-religion to part of Bosnia’s population (Dizdar 2009, 114). The Bosnian Church was outlawed by Bosnian King Stefan Thomas in 1450, prior to the Ottoman conquest, as a condition of the Pope’s help against the Ottoman threat. Help which was not forthcoming in any event (Dizdar 2009, 118). The loss of Bosnia’s native faith arguably made acceptance of the new Muslim faith that much easier.

As a Yugoslav Republic, Bosnia was the most heterogenous and the only one where no ethnic group formed an absolute majority.24 As Džankić (2015, 2) explains, Bosnia was not dissimilar in this respect to other post-Yugoslav states although it was unique in the extent of its diversity:

“The post-Yugoslav states, despite being small in terms of inhabitants and territory, are populated by a wide variety of different groups exhibiting an incredible spectrum of, and variation in, intergroup relations. As such, they represent a true laboratory for understanding people’s attitudes towards post-communist, post-partition and post-conflict states and the rights they have within them.”

Bosnia’s Muslims lived largely side-by-side with its large numbers of Catholic, Orthodox Christian and Jewish (minority) communities as shown by a highly heterogenous constellation of cities, towns, villages and hamlets across the country. The majority of its Muslim and Christian populations were, and still remain, closely related genetically or ‘ethnically’. The three constituent groups have been found by Marjanovic (2005) to “share a large fraction of the same ancient gene pool distinctive for the Balkan area.” That is, they are descended from folk living in that region before the arrival of the Slavs, Christianity or Islam (Carmichael 2015, xiv, 4). Bosnia also always had significant minority populations which included among them Roma, Hungarians, Turks, Jews, Germans, and Vlachs among others.

Bosnian then has historically encompassed manifold diversity in identity and heritage. As Carmichael (2015, xiv) notes, ‘essentialism’ about who belongs and who does not is a long-term symptom of violence and “rejection of the very notion of overlapping identities and shared heritage.”

When armed conflict broke out in 1992, popular accounts (as noted in Chapter 3) depicted the conflict as having emanated from “ancient ethnic hatreds” implying that neither could the country’s ethnic groups coexist, nor had they co-existed previously. The conflict was seen as a natural by-product of un-natural diversity. The very argument used by the ethno-nationalist elite protagonists of the war who broke apart Bosnia’s communities and pitted them against one another in conflict.

Glaurdić (2012) documents how this “ancient hatreds” narrative was deliberately co-opted by numerous Western governments who knew it to be wrong but found it a convenient excuse, for various policy reasons, to not intervene in the Balkans. This was before the armed conflict in Bosnia broke out. British foreign secretary, Douglas Hurd, for instance, in June 1991 justified the then government’s policy of supporting Yugoslavia’s continued existence by wrongly claiming that: “Yugoslavia was invented in 1919 to solve a problem of different peoples living in the same part of the Balkans with a long history of peoples fighting each other” (Glaurdić 2012, 175-177). This view persisted in many policy, political and media circles throughout the armed conflict in Bosnia and persists still to the present day. The New York Times, even on 14 August 1994, was still writing about the impossibility of an inherently diverse Bosnia: “But Bosnia is a land with no clear ethnic identity—like the former Yugoslavia, the former Czechoslovakia and the former Soviet Union—and all such countries have proved prone to fragmentation in the post-Communist world [...] But in the end a country unwanted by its inhabitants cannot survive. It may be thus, too, with Bosnia” (Cohen 1994).

The notion of ancient-ethnic hatreds, most likely lost on contemporary commentators, did have local precedent. Nobel prize winning author Andric (1920) often found it difficult, in his great literary works, to resist the orientalist narrative as a simplistic answer to complicated questions; negating what he found to be Bosnian’s ‘tenderness’ and ‘love’ with an underlying darkness largely emanating from its experience with ‘Turkishness’: “But in the secret depths underneath all this hide burning hatreds, entire hurricanes of tethered and compressed hatreds maturing and awaiting their hour” (Andrić 1993, 115).25 Countless experts on the region, however, and many Bosnians themselves (as demonstrated in Chapters 2 and 3) reject that thesis. A thesis that impacted the drafting of the Bosnian constitution and the Dayton Peace Agreement that brought the conflict to a prima facie conclusion.

Whilst Bosnia has experienced violence and bloodshed seen as inter-ethnic and communal—most notably in the Second World War and the 1992-1995 conflict—those conflicts were not without very specific contexts. The crude labelling of conflicts in Bosnia as ‘inter-ethnic’ or communal conflict is unjustified. The Croatian Ustasha movement, for instance, almost completely wiped out the Jewish and Roma populations and attempted to annihilate the Serb population of the Independent State of Croatia which included modern-day Bosnia. These were Jewish citizens who sought and were given shelter in Bosnia after expulsion from Spain during the Inquisition. It came about after Hitler’s Third Reich invaded Royalist Yugoslavia in April 1941 and the fascist Croatian regime of Ante Pavelić allied itself with Nazi Germany and combined their coinciding interests (territorial annexation and ideological homogenisation for that purpose) with devastating effect (Carmichael 2015, xiv). In retaliation, Chetniks, extreme Serb nationalists, perpetrated atrocities in Bosnia against Croatian Catholics and atrocities against Muslims (Carmichael 2015, xviii). It was only with the victory of the left-wing Partisans, led by the Yugoslav Communists, that the nationalist bloodshed was brought to an end and not without bloody reprisals against the Chetniks and Ustasha—reference to whom would frequently arise in the conflict in the 1990s.

Between 1992 and 1995, as set out in Chapters 2 and 3, the conflict was largely elite led. Before the referendum on independence in 1992, as SFRY was breaking up, Bosnia had not been a fully independent State since the Middle Ages. Possible rule from Istanbul, Vienna and Belgrade was ever present (Carmichael 2015, 2). It was in this context, of outside interference and long-term instability, that domestic political elites have easily manipulated historical memory to their own advantage, or external powers have manufactured the conditions allowing their own rule in Bosnia or direct annexation (Karl 1993; Noel 1996; Majstorović 2004; Gagnon 2004).

Despite the two devastating conflicts in the 20th century, Bosnia’s population for the vast majority of its history has belied the European trend in seeming self-destruction: the most recent manifestation of which was the fascist-ideology driven Holocaust under Hitler and the sweeping communist purges under Stalin. Bosnia has tried to resist the trend to wipe out its diverse populations in favour of homogenisation driven by exclusive ethno-nationalism. Bosnia’s heterogenous population has lived coterminously and harmoniously for centuries (Sells 1998, 3-5). The irony is that the extremist nationalists targeted for destruction the very essence that demonstrated tolerant and multi-confessional living: the national library containing records of inter-religious dialogue and living, the oriental institute with the largest collection of Jewish and Muslim manuscripts in Europe, and religious and cultural buildings and monuments imbued by cross-ethnic and inter-religious symbolism (Ibid).

It was a multi-confessionalism that survived serious suppression under communist Yugoslavia and indeed flourished later in some ways. For instance, before the start of the 1992 conflict, approximately one third of marriages in Sarajevo were mixed—this was not because of communism but in spite of it (Crosby 2017). Prior to the siege of Sarajevo, a majority of the capital—hand in hand with those of different religions—came out to oppose the war. As Carmichael (2015) has succinctly put it:

“This embrace of tolerance, which has sometimes been described as the Bosnian spirit (bosanski duh), was not just the forced repetition of the Communist regime’s mantra of brotherhood and unity and it came from the heart. If Bosnia came late to nationalism, then it suffered the most for its tardiness and the belief of its citizens that a multi-faith society was possible, even preferable.”

Even during the devastating conflict during the 1990s—manipulated to pit Croat against Serb against Muslim—scholars of Bosnia have accounted for the intermediate space of co-existence, harmony and acceptance that would be seemingly impossible in such a context. Carmichael (2015, 3) records the bottles of alcohol stored by Bosniaks for their Catholic neighbours; Christians refraining from eating pork in Ramadhan; the ringing of the Orthodox church bells in lieu of the Muslim call to prayer; a heterogenous fighting force (comprising Bosniaks, Croats and Serbs) at the start of the war and in particular in Sarajevo although it later became homogenised as the war dragged on (Perry 2019); the multi-ethnic human chains formed to try and rescue thousands of ancient and priceless Christian, Jewish, Muslim manuscript collections deliberately targeted for destruction by the HVO and Bosnian Serb forces in Sarajevo, Mostar and other besieged cities (Sells 1998, 2); the protection of the Sarajevo Haggadah which was written in Barcelona around 1350 and has been in Bosnia since the 19th century (Mašić 2020); snipers calling old classmates across the front-line to warn them that they were in the crosshairs of their guns (Sadinlija 2020).26

Bosnia is a living embodiment of what some have concisely characterised as ‘unity in diversity’ (Mahmutćehajić 2003). Whilst a whole generation has grown up, as a consequence of war, without the shared and lived experience of ‘unity in diversity’, (and even an active denialism of the past), the idea of a Bosnia transcending religious, linguistic, cultural or national division is less chimeral than presumed.27 Chapter 2 on political culture will address the existence or otherwise of this chimera, in detail, by examining political culture of the people in Bosnia today. Given, however, what we know of Bosnia’s history, how exactly was Bosnia’s constitution drafted? Did it take into account the historical, cultural and societal development of Bosnia? And did any people who had lived in the distinctly diverse cultural milieu of Bosnia have a say?

The Bosnian constitution is not conventional in any sense drawn up as it was merely as an Annex (IV) to the General Framework Agreement for Peace in Bosnia and Herzegovina (“Dayton Peace Agreement”). The Constitution, as well as the Dayton Peace Agreement, was initialled following intense negotiations over 20 days at the Wright-Patterson Air Force Base in Dayton, Ohio on 21 November 1995 and signed in Paris on 14 December 1995. The peace conference at Dayton was led by then Assistant US Secretary for European and Canadian Affairs and Chief US peace negotiator, Richard Holbrooke, and co-chaired by then Special Representative of the European Community (“EC”), Carl Bildt, and First Deputy Foreign Minister of Russia, Igor Ivanov. The location was unconventional but was chosen to reduce the ability of participants to negotiate via their local power-base or the media.

The context, of course, was also far from conventional. There was a brutal conflict that was ongoing in Bosnia with direct involvement of the newly independent Croatian State as well as the two remaining States of the former SFRY, Serbia and Montenegro. The predominantly Bosniak enclave of Srebrenica had fallen in July 1995 to the Bosnian Serb forces. Forces who were responsible for horrific atrocities which were later held, by international bodies, to have amounted to the crime of genocide (UN IRMCT 2020).28 US policy makers faced pressure to take stronger action and bolster what were, until then, largely EC or UN led peace talks; the atrocities in Srebrenica only confirming an ineffectual and muddled response to three years of conflict (Rohde 2012).

In late August 1995, following an attack by Bosnian Serbs on Sarajevo, in violation of an international fire-free zone, NATO conducted air strikes on Serb positions. On 1 September 1995, Holbrooke announced that all the parties would meet in Geneva for talks. When the Bosnian Serbs did not comply with NATO’s conditions, NATO air strikes resumed. By September 1995, NATO airstrikes, under US command, were in full-swing and quickly running out of targets although they were only one month into the campaign (USD Jun 1996, 18). A cease-fire, following NATO bombing, was agreed in Sarajevo on 14 September 1995, negotiated by Holbrooke and signed by Radovan Karadžić and Ratko Mladić. The cease-fire precipitated the end of the longest siege in modern history: 44 months and resulting in over 10,000 deaths (USD Jun 1996, 12; Morrison and Lowe 2021). By November 1995, the tide in the war was also turning. The Bosnian Serb Forces had started to lose earlier gains with their control of the territory shrinking from some 75 per cent of Bosnia to around a 50-50 per cent split between the Bosnian Serb forces and the Federation forces (comprising the Army of the Republic of Bosnia and Herzegovina (“ARBiH”) which had re-allied itself with the Croat Defence Council (“HVO”)). The Serbs by then had also lost the Krajina, a self-proclaimed Serb proto-State with a Serb majority, within the newly independent Croatia (USD Jun 1996, 12).

Pressure was mounting on all sides, and in particular on the US Government, to bring the war to a conclusion. The Croat and Bosniak armies were 20 km from taking Banja Luka, a majority Serb city, and the possible future capital of a Serb Republic. The US had given express orders to the Bosniak and Croat leaders that it must not be taken (USD Jun 1996). Holbrooke, claimed that Milošević “begged us to stop the offensive before it reached Banja Luka” (USD Jun 1996, 14). Holbrooke stated they stopped the offensive not because of Milošević’s request but because the repercussions of continuing the offensive were assessed to be enormous due to: possible infighting between Bosniaks and Croats over war spoils and territory, leading to a break in the alliance; humanitarian concerns relating to further vast movement of refugees particularly Bosnian Serb refugees; and concern that Banja Luka would become the centre of anti-Karadžić Serb activity and, therefore, would no longer be a credible alternative to Pale (Serb Sarajevo) as the Serb centre of Bosnia (USD Jun 1996, 15-16). The US, however, as Holbrooke stated, “let the offensive roll” […] “we wanted the Croatians and the Bosnians to make as much military gain as possible” (USD Jun 1996, 13).

It was a moment of maximum leverage. The US was saying to the Bosnian Serbs that unless they agree to peace, they would lift the arms embargo on the Bosniaks, continue NATO airstrikes against them, and allow the Bosniaks and Croats to run them out of Bosnia completely (USD Jun 1996, 13-14, 221). To the Bosniaks and Croats they were saying that unless they end the conflict now and accept the US agreement, they are on their own other than benefitting from a possible lifting of the arms embargo (USD Jun 1996, 13-14, 221). For the Bosniaks that meant fighting again on two fronts and for the Croats it meant further instability on its frontier having just seized the Krajina. Croatia would also have to fight to defend areas in which there were no, and never were, Bosnian Croats. It was in this context the Bosnian constitution was being drafted which might lead one, understandably, to say the circumstances were difficult to reach a comprehensive settlement to a terrible conflict. But the process of its drafting raises all manner of questions. The most important of which was whether the process was conducive to setting up the foundation of a nation’s constitutional and political structure as well as facilitating long-term nation building.

The war began in 1992 with heavy international and US involvement from the beginning. There were numerous failed peace attempts. At least four peace conferences were brokered by either, or both, the EC, as it was then, and the United Nations.29 If an inevitable part of any peace process would have been a constitution then it makes one wonder, firstly, why it would have been inevitable as there was little to no precedent for it and, secondly, why the idea came so late. Even by 23 August 1995, Holbrooke, the principal senior negotiator was saying that nobody had given any thought to constitutional issues (USD Aug 1996, 9). To be fair, the State Department legal advisers, including Jim O’Brien, were in fact working on some so-called constitutional principles in the Summer of 1994 in preparation for the Contact Group meetings between the US, Russia, France, Britain, and Germany to bring the Serbs to the dialogue table. But clearly there was nothing being prepared that filtered to the upper levels or that was perceived to be of any great significance (USD Aug 1996, 10).

On one view, the drafting history of the Bosnian constitution can be described as utterly remarkable in almost every respect: from the modest expertise that was drawn upon, the lack of any formal procedure or process, and its lack of timeliness in planning and preparedness. On another view, and those of its principal drafters, it was the best that could be done in difficult circumstances and that hindsight is a luxury. No one, they would say, could have foreseen the difficulties and only so much could have been achieved in negotiating a constitution in a war context.

The actual drafting history might aid in getting off the proverbial fence. The Bosnian constitution was drafted largely by the US State Department lawyers. The State Department had substantial influence on post-war settlements including in: WWI and WWII Europe; Israel-Palestine; Bosnia; and then subsequently in Northern Ireland, Afghanistan and Iraq. In Bosnia, by mid-1995, the US—in particular the US Congress—had concluded that the Europeans were unable and unwilling to intervene meaningfully in Bosnia to end the conflict and so decided that its State Department should take a much firmer lead under then Secretary of State, Christopher Warren, and then Ambassador to the United Nations, Madeleine Albright. The US lead came in the context of many European and NATO allies being unwilling to lift the arms embargo on Bosnia and conduct air strikes on Serb forces; European States argued that lifting the arms embargo will prolong the war although in reality it was only the Bosniaks who were practically impacted by the embargo and the war had already gone on for three years. On 27 July 1995, the US Senate, with the atrocities at Srebrenica vividly in their mind, voted 69-29 to unilaterally lift the arms embargo (Mertus 2005, 167).

The shape of the American lead is really what was important for the purposes of drafting the future Bosnian constitution. Riga and Kennedy (2013) have found that, by 1995, South East Europe and Balkan experts, with decades of experience on Yugoslavia, were firmly embedded within the State Department's bureaucracy “on the Seventh Floor” (Riga and Kennedy 2013, paras 1.4, 4.10). Staff involved in the drafting process or in any major constitutional discussions were, however, limited to the human and civil rights lawyers in the State Department's Legal Advisor’s Office working outside of formal State Department channels (Riga and Kennedy 2013, paras 1.4, 4.10). Academic expertise was seen as too deliberative and impractical. The dominant perception was that the Balkan experts were too institutionally embedded in the State Department. Therefore, they were obstacles to be deliberately bypassed as sources of possible policy impasse (USD Aug 1996, 29-30). As Riga and Kennedy (2013) note “nation building came to be conceptualized as a generic policy problem, whose solution lay in universally and widely applicable formulae, rather than as a contextually contingent, political or localized problem, requiring specialist, substantive knowledge” (Ibid, paras 1.4, 4.10). The lawyers, who by 1995 were seen to have already conducted vast amounts of work on war crimes related issues in Bosnia, thereby, simply became the “relevant policy experts” (Ibid, paras 4.5-4.6).

As far as can be deciphered from the available primary records, the lead lawyers holding the pen on the draft constitution were James C. O’Brien, Miriam Shapiro, Gro Nystuen and some work was undertaken by Carol White, and Laurel Miller (USD Jun 1996; USD Aug 1996, 66). The chief negotiators, leading the talks from the US side were Robert ‘Bob’ Owen, Senior Legal Advisor at the US State Department (in place from 23 Aug 1995),30 and above him Holbrooke. Holbrooke was the link to the ‘higher-ups’ in Washington (USD Aug 1996, 110-111). The higher-ups here were John C. Kornblum, Ambassador to the OSCE (1991-1994) and then Assistant Secretary of State for European Affairs and Special Envoy to the Balkans (1995–1997), and Warren Christopher, 63rd Secretary of State, who was succeeded by Madeleine Albright in 1997. At the time of the Dayton negotiations, Albright was the US Ambassador to the UN. She was instrumental in getting in place NATO airstrikes that ended the siege of Sarajevo and put the Bosnian Serb and other paramilitary forces on the back-foot (Rubin 2019). Above them all sat the President, Bill Clinton.

Two lawyers who were lead drafters of the Bosnian constitution have made remarkable admissions in interviews conducted post-Dayton. James C. O’Brien, principal lead drafter from the State Department, remarked “we haven't grasped how to construct policy around democratic nation-building where there is diversity, in part because we do not understand the underlying [contextual] power structures” (Riga and Kennedy 2013, para 4.12). Gro Nystuen, Senior Legal Adviser for the EC, said: “we didn't get this right and didn't quite understand it in Bosnia; one could have imagined a lot of different arrangements, but that would have required knowledge on a very detailed level about the persons involved and their interests and constituencies […] 'where was the specialist?” (Ibid).31 It is of little help now but, evidently, the specialists were on the Seventh Floor!

In fact, in some cases, they were on the opposite side of the negotiating table—the Bosniaks had a wide team of largely legal experts including at Dayton Dr Paul Williams from Public International Law and Policy Group. The European Community had their own legal teams, led by Carl Bildt, to push through a ‘European constitution’, apparently at the impassioned request of the Bosniaks who feared that an ‘Americanised constitution’ might make them somewhat of an exception within Europe and, therefore, imperil possible future European Integration (USD Aug 1996, 52-53, 79-83, 92-94). Some European amendments, such as the creation of a Central Bank, went into the draft after tough negotiations although the Europeans never proposed an alternative constitution (USD Aug 1996, 52-53, 79-83). Even then, however, there is much doubt about the expertise or thoughtful local knowledge that went into the process of drafting. There are also considerable questions over who exactly had formative influence over the mechanics of the negotiations. For instance, US Ambassador Swanee Hunt recalls an astonishing account of preparations being made for the Washington Agreement, brokered by the American administration, which saw the Bosnian Croats and Bosniaks settle the “war within the war” which culminated in the creation of the constitution of the Federation:

“Ambassador Swanee Hunt recalls walking into a room in her Vienna embassy and seeing a blurry-eyed Bosnian hunched over a computer. “Do you have any material that would be good for a constitution?” he asked. It was the spring of 1994 and the height of the American-brokered negotiations between Bosnian Croats and Muslims. Hunt’s staff quickly phoned up the Swiss embassy and obtained a copy of their constitution on disk. “That might be why the Federation of Bosnia is carved into cantons,” she sighs, remembering the somewhat quirky and extremely personal nature of diplomacy. One thing that really stood out in Hunt’s experience was the absence of women. “Out of all of the negotiators that came through Vienna while I was ambassador, zero were women,” she remembers. “With Yugoslavia having the highest percentage of women PhDs in central and eastern Europe, I wondered, how is this possible?” (Mertus 2005, 168).

Whether apocryphal or not,32 there is an undeniable truth underlying that account; both the piecemeal nature of the work that went into the drafting and that Bosnian women, and women generally from the region, were absent from the peace process or negotiations at Dayton. Not a single person from forty, multi-ethnic, women’s associations operating in Bosnia to try and end the war (united under one umbrella—the Union of Women’s Organisations) was invited to the Dayton peace talks (Mertus 2005, 168). Representatives of multi-ethnic peace organisations or general grass-roots civil society were absent from Dayton; and much was done (and often is) in such pressured circumstances by those policy experts, who happen to be on hand, on a hunch and a whim. In this case, and often in conflict cases, it included the instigators of the war. As Hunt says, “we didn’t have any conduit to reach into those communities, to engage them in what we wanted to do … that is what needed to change” (Mertus 2005, 168).

The Bosnian constitution, of course, did not miraculously appear, in its entirety, in 20 days of negotiations at Dayton. But large parts of it did not emanate until the Dayton negotiations themselves or very close to the negotiations. Even by 23 August 1995, as noted earlier, Holbrooke, the principal senior negotiator was saying to his State Department legal teams that nobody had given any thought to constitutional issues. The earlier work had clearly not filtered up to the ‘higher-ups’ and in any event, as O'Brien noted that work was “so sketchy and incredibly thin model of what the constitution would be” […] “an extremely thin central government with very limited powers and thus no real separation of those powers because that would be splitting an amoeba. It was essentially a Presidency” (USD Aug 1996, 10, 18, 28). Real discussion around some rudimentary options for the constitution took place around 25 August 1995 with the Bosniak delegation (USD Aug 1996, 10). Whatever the earlier work alluded to by O’Brien, in declassified documents, released under Freedom of Information by the US State Department in 2016, O’Brien explains exactly how significant it was by the August 1995 meeting:

“SE: What guidelines were you operating on here for these meetings? What was—was—[sic] the contact group constitution from 1994. They were the late talking points. They were pretty vague in terms of any internal political structure. What were you relying on in these discussions? JO: We just made this up. MS: Yeah. We -- it's funny actually to go back and read these papers and you realize how much of it really did make into the constitution and the rest of [inaudible] agreement. I guess at that point we had two goals. One was trying to figure out what kind of governmental structure to develop that would keep certain essential things there like the continuity of the state. The borders of the state, have common institutions that could exercise. [sic]” (USD Aug 1996, 13-14).

There was, however, some actual initial documentation that was the starting point for negotiations. The documentation included the Agreed Basic Principles (“Geneva Principles”) of 8 September 1995 and later some further Agreed Basic Principles of 26 September 1995 (“New York Principles”) (OHR 1995). By November 1995, the Federation—established by the Washington Agreement of 18 March 1994—was in place with its own constitution. Republika Srpska was also very much in place having been proclaimed by Bosnian Serb leaders in 1992. The Geneva Principles essentially confirmed that Bosnia would remain within its original borders when it was a Republic of the SFRY. The Geneva Principles established the starting point to Dayton. Bosnia was to be comprised of two entities, split 51:49 in favour of the Federation although the starting point was to be subject to negotiation. Each entity was to have a right to establish parallel relations with neighbouring countries so long as they maintained Bosnia’s territorial integrity. It was also taken as a given that there would be some respect for human rights and a right to return for “dislocated” people.

One might expect that the Geneva Principles had regard to the vast experience of the State Department and other world experts on constitution drafting. In recently declassified documents, there are a series of interviews—entitled the ‘Dayton History Project’—which were conducted purely for posterity in 1996. Those interviews were with some of the principal architects of Dayton. The Geneva Principles were drafted by Bob Owen in late August 1995. In the declassified interviews conducted by James O’Brien with Holbrook and Owen, Owen was asked how the Geneva Principles came about. He replied that Holbrooke and he felt that a very basic starting point was needed to see what the parties would accept: “Holbrooke said go ahead and prepare something, so I sat down and started writing it out in long-hand on the airplane” (USD Aug 1996, 23, 25-26). When asked whether he was looking at historical precedents like Camp David or “back at models of similarly complicated negotiations for this” when drafting, Owen replied without hesitation: “No, right off the top of my head.” Whichever way the Principles were drafted, however, they were presumed effective as they were quickly agreed by the Bosniaks and by Milošević on 1 Sep 1995 in a hunting lodge in Belgrade at what Owen described as “a day of bonding with the Godfather […] where in a span of twelve hours he was both drunk and sober and, over cigars and wine, you got him to agree to this” (USD Aug 1996, 28). The spelling mistake, still in the current published draft, presumably, was a transcription error. The quickness with which the Principles were agreed could equally, however, be seen as reflective of insufficient thought and preparedness.