JOSEPH CAMPBELL: A look back at the Dayton accords that ended war in Bosnia 30 years ago.

“The central fact for us as Americans is this,” Clinton said in announcing the accords had been reached. “Our leadership made this peace agreement possible and helped to bring an end to the senseless slaughter of so many innocent people. … Now American leadership, together with our allies, is needed to make this peace real and enduring.”

Clinton’s rhetoric anticipated a more robust expression of “American Exceptionalism” by Secretary of State Madeleine K. Albright, who declared in a television interview in 1998: “We are the indispensable nation. We stand tall and we see further than other countries into the future, and we see the danger here to all of us. I know that the American men and women in uniform are always prepared to sacrifice for freedom, democracy and the American way of life.”

U.S. peacekeeping forces began arriving in Bosnia in December 1995; they were to stay no more than a year. As it turned out, the last U.S. peacekeeping troops left Bosnia in 2004. There was not one U.S. fatality in hostile action during the nine-year commitment.

The Dayton accords, though hardly without defect, gave rise to a creaky and uneasy peace that has lasted 30 years. Such longevity — remarkable as it was unimagined — signals a seldom-recognized reality that diplomacy’s fruits need not be flawless to endure.

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