American Disparity: Assessing the USA's Contrasting Involvement in the Serbo-Croatian and Russo-Ukrainian Wars

As the leading military and economic power, the USA often uses its strength to intervene in foreign conflicts. To the public, their interventions are usually communicated as well- intentioned. Nonetheless, after examining how the USA has reacted to the Russo-Ukrainian War of 2022-ongoing and the Serbo-Croatian War of 1991-1995, it becomes clear that the USA's foreign policy is determined by more factors than just 'humanitarian concerns' or the 'spread of democracy'. That is because the two wars were strikingly similar in both their reasoning and course, which makes the USA's contrasting involvement in them stand out. While the USA is Ukraine's biggest donor of military and financial support, Croatia was pretty much left on its own. Yet, even though US interventionism and its inconsistencies are heavily debated topics, no comparison of it has been drawn between this thesis's specific case studies, even though they depict the inconsistency of US interventionism well. This raises the question as to why the US involvement in the two wars was so different, even though the wars were so similar. An answer to this central question can be found in Mearsheimer's Theory of Offensive Realism. The theory argues that states, no matter the cause or severity of a conflict, will not 'turn offensive' and intervene abroad unless that intervention is beneficial to them. Meaning that even if the USA was faced with two similar conflicts, and only one of them would significantly benefit the USA and its stance in the world, the USA would only intervene in that one. After looking at the two cases from the USA's point of view, the war in Ukraine and its outcome had a more significant importance to the USA and its allies in Europe, which Russia could threaten with a victory in Ukraine. On the other hand, Croatia, even though it showed the desire to integrate into the democratic West, was not of interest to the USA, which was preoccupied with other conflicts at that time, and considered the Yugoslav War as a regional conflict happening outside of its sphere of influence. Therefore, instead of humanitarian or ideological reasons, the US decision-making on where to intervene and where not is more influenced by self-interested reasons, which were pointed out by this thesis.