“I can bring the conditions in which peace can be established, but I cannot bring peace to this country.”

Why Peacekeeping is So Difficult http://globetrotter.berkeley.edu/conversations/LWSmith/lwsmith-con07.html <br class="br">Interview at USC Berkeley (1997) <br class="br">Context: When we went to Bosnia the people in Bosnia welcomed us with open arms, and I would go down the street and people would come up and say, &quot;Admiral, thank you for bringing peace to Bosnia.&quot; And my standard answer was this, &quot;I cannot bring peace to this country. Only you can bring peace to this country. I can bring the conditions in which peace can be established, but I cannot bring peace to this country.&quot; So the mistake we have made in our country, if we have made a mistake, is that we believe that we can influence or that we can enforce a peace, and we cannot. You can stop the fighting, and we did. And you can put money into a country and you can try to build it up so that the momentum you get from a visible economic engine creates a condition where peace will take hold. But that requires a political will that is not today evident in Bosnia. It was certainly not evident when I was there.<br>I think we are doing the right thing to put our military into these kinds of operations. No one is better able to do it. Peacekeeping is not a soldier function, but only soldiers can do it, because we&#x27;ve got the organization. We can make things happen in a hurry.