The beginning of 1994 seemed to show a heightened involvement and resolve on the part of NATO and the United Nations Protection Force (UNPROFOR) in Bosnia and Herzegovina and Croatia with the successful ultimatum to the Serbs laying siege to Sarajevo, the downing of four Serbian aircraft by NATO in February, and the increasingly active role played by the US Administration to support the more resolute use of force in both NATO and the UN. The situation appeared to stabilize somewhat with agreements between the Bosnian Government and Bosnian Croats, and Muslim-Croat military cooperation, after February and March.

However, the second part of the year witnessed an increasingly bitter dispute between the United Nations and NATO and among the NATO members about when and how to apply force. The conflict in Bosnia and Herzegovina had an increasingly negative impact on the functioning and legitimacy of both organizations--all this against a background of continuing failure to reach a political solution. As the year ended there were signs on the one hand of increasing fatigue and exhaustion among the warring parties in Bosnia and Herzegovina and on the other of a possible rekindling of the conflict on Croatian territory.

The UN and NATO had different objectives and different views of the use of force. The UN's objective was humanitarian relief, for which operation NATO was to provide protection by its overflights; it specifically saw its role as protection, not punishment. Yet even these objectives in fact required measures that went beyond traditional peacekeeping measures. For NATO, consistency, credibility and speed of response were crucial if its overflights or (slightly later) air strikes were to be at all effective. The UN was frequently reluctant to make use of NATO power; there were instances of the Secretary-General or his representative in the former Yugoslavia, Yasushi Akashi, refusing to authorize air strikes which UNPROFOR commanders had requested. The resolve apparent at the beginning of the year disappeared after Bosnian Serbs detained UNPROFOR personnel to use them as `human shields' after NATO had bombed the runway at Udbina in Krajina in November. By the end of the year NATO was making contingency plans for UNPROFOR's withdrawal.

Domestic pressures confused relations within the two organizations. In the USA there was pressure from Congress (particularly after the November 1994 congressional elections) for resolute action and for the lifting of the arms embargo on the Bosnian Government. This led to the USA unilaterally withdrawing from the policing of the arms embargo and to conflicts within NATO. Russia played a useful role in the spring in putting pressure on the Serbian Government after the siege of Sarajevo, but later turned to seeking some rewards for Serbia for its cooperation.

In the closing months of 1994 the UN had 13 500 peacekeeping troops in Croatia and over 22 000 peacekeepers in about 20 locations in Bosnia and Herzegovina.