Counting the consequences of Bosnia’s war

"Bosnia in 1995 met all these conditions. Iraq met none of them."

These principles are controversial, especially to those belonging to the Bolton-Rumsfeld school of international diplomacy. However, Bell said that in Iraq the commanders, at least on the British side, could see disaster coming. "We had no plan for day two," he reports one as saying, maintaining that a lack of military experience among the politicians that sent the troops to war resulted in a misunderstanding about what force, by itself, could achieve.

But this is not a book about Iraq. Bell saw the Bosnian conflict through from beginning to end, apart from short breaks for R&R on less onerous assignments and once when he was wounded. He did not seek Bosnia; it sought him, and as the BBC's most seasoned war correspondent the task was inevitable.

He had returned from covering the First Gulf War in the hopeful belief it would be his last. "I was given the job of reporting on the changes in Europe following the fall of Communism, things like the reunification of Germany; for a while I thought this might make me the BBC's peace correspondent," he said.

But those changes were to include the break-up of Yugoslavia, and the wars that followed. His trademark white suits would be augmented with flak jackets for the next four years.

He is damning of the West's attitude through most of the conflict. What was eventually worked out in 1995 could have been achieved in 1992 with the saving of tens of thousands of lives. Inattention prevailed at every level.

"The Bosnian War was described by the American Secretary of State, Warren Christopher, as 'a problem from hell', which was a coded way of saying that there was nothing that he or anyone else was able or willing to do except to wish it away. And to a large extent, the West averted its gaze," he writes.

And when the ever-breaking waves of horror finally forced its attention, what was the result? He describes the resulting constitution worked out under the Dayton Accords as so Byzantine as to be a formula for unending governmental deadlock and confusion – something I can testify to in my own reporting on post-war Bosnian reconstruction.

In what is supposed to a unitary state the Serbs are virtually autonomous and are even allowed to call their region Republika Srpska; hard-line Croatians harbour their own secessionist dreams and politicians with extreme nationalist views are almost constantly in power, voted in by electorates who see the need to have a strong man in charge as a form of protection.

The Dayton Accords that brought peace are now an obstacle to Bosnia's development and progression towards modern statehood, ensuring its communities remain apart and suspicious of each other.

In 2009, William Hague, then Britain's shadow Foreign Secretary, and Paddy Ashdown, the European Union's High Representative to Bosnia from 2002-05, co-authored an article in the United Kingdom Financial Times which Bell reproduces in part. The pair said the consequences of Bosnia's disintegration would be catastrophic: