Unfinest Hour: Britain and the Destruction of Bosnia

He has carried out dozens of interviews, trawled through the documents and come to the conclusion that Britain's political leaders were afflicted by a disabling form of conservative pessimism which not only rejected military intervention by Britain but prevented any other country intervening. Attitudes changed with the change of government by the time of Kosovo for, as the current, much wider crisis only too telling reminds us: isolationism is no longer an option. --Michael Hatfield.

Reader Reviews:

The Trial of Major and Hurd (0/0 people found this helpful)

In November 1993,according to Dr.Simms,the Bosnian government threatened to put Britain on trial in front of the International Court of Justice as accomplices to genocide.This book tells you why.
Simms' portrayal of the Major government of 1990-97 has to be read to be believed.Major,Hurd and Rifkin were simply uninterested in the fate of the Bosnians in the face of Serb aggression,if anything they grovelled before Milosevic.They consistently obstructed efforts by NATO to stop Serb attacks,and then refused to allow any Bosnians to enter Britain as refugees.The Major administration then repeatedly refused to lift an arms embargo,so the Bosnians couldn't defend themselves,and tried as hard as they could to stop anyone else from supplying weapons to the Bosnian government.
Why?Dr.Simms makes it clear that Major and co. weren't deranged racists or islamophobes,nor were they idiots.They were deeply pessimistc about the idea of humanitarian intervention(so much for the Bosnians)and they were unable to see that Yugoslavia had disintergrated and that the Serbs were intent on grabbing as much territory,and killing,raping and/or exiling as many of their enemies(real or imagined)as possible.That was simply beyond their imagination.
Margaret Thatcher,in one of the very few sensible things she ever said or did,supported the lifting of the arms embargo on Bosnia.Dr.Simms reports Douglas Hurd as once saying "There is no such thing as 'the international community'".If,as Thatcher averred,there is no such thing as society,if political leaders don't care about their own citizens,why should they care about anyone else?Is it too much to state that Major and co.simply elevated Thatcher's dog-eat-dog attitude towards her own people into the basis of foreign policy-I don't think so.
If you're British and you're ever tempted to vote Conservative,read this.If you're not,read this and wonder at how putrid the British establishment can be.Finally,be aware that ideas have consequences,and not necessarily those wished for by the originators of those ideas.When Thatcher denied society existed,I very much doubt she could have imagined that a few years later,one of her acolytes would use this idea as an intellectual justification for shrugging his shoulders at mass murder.

Heavy reading, but well worth it (4/5 people found this helpful)

This book is full of important information for anyone interested in what happened in Bosnia between 1992 and 1995. The style is very academic (unsurprising considering that Brendan Simms is a lecturer at Cambridge), comprehensively dissecting events, and so can be heavy reading at times - quite different from the easy readability of Mark Curtis and Robert Fisk.

Unfinest Hour, however, still deserves its 5 stars because of its comprehensive coverage of the topic - there's no other book that deals with the topic so well. Despite it being heavy reading, it can still be a page-turner due to the disturbing revelations within it.

Very enlightening... (9/15 people found this helpful)

I found the book very enlightening, not only does it give a very detailed account of the Britain and France's obstructivness and the ignorant & decrepid line of the Major government but also delves into the vast subject of post Cold War 'international communtiy' and of the role and the ambiguity of EU and NATO. Another important issue the book covers is that of transatlantic relations, of the sometimes awkward triangle between the EU, Britain and the US and the need for coherance when such a conflict is taking place but most importantly it highlights the horrific consequences of such petty politics between such powerful nations and how the West failed to deal with the first major conflict since the Cold War, and one on the EU's doorstep.

Appeasement Exposed (11/15 people found this helpful)

I had no idea at the time of just how sinister a role was played by the UK establishment in condemning Bosnia to it's fate. I always believed that more should have been done to intervene but now I know why it was not and, most interestingly, how assistance to Bosnia was prevented. Unsurprisingly, cabinet members at the time, notably Hogg, Hurd and Rifkind, all receive much criticism as does "the perfect popinjay" David Owen, but I didn't realise Thatcher and David Trimball had taken such admirable positions on the issue, not to mention our lovable cousins across the Atlantic.

The book is well written, occasionally humorous, and the overwhelming majority (but not all) of the arguments it presents are coherent and well referenced. It certainly does have an agenda but this is in no way disguised. My only main complaint is the length of the chapters. At approximately fifty pages each, it is hard going to find a suitable place for a break, especially as some of the material is relatively mentally taxing. That said, the author presents what is a demanding subject in a style that maintains interest.

The material covered in this book is highly relevant to current events in Iraq, on which we all have an opinion. I found it very interesting to see that many of the voices who are today complaining about western imperialism, the immorality of military intervention etc were the same as those who lent their support to British foreign policy in the early 1990s, with appalling consequences.

Note: this is not a history of the break-up of Yugoslavia, which is covered with great skill in the excellent "Death of Yugoslavia" by Silber and Little.

Unfinest hour, finest read (8/11 people found this helpful)

Although complex, unless you have an understanding of key events and of key persons, i found the book superb. I had little knowledge of the bosinan conflict and this book helped to expand my small knwolegde. Not only did it do that, it also gripped me and kept me eager throughout. The unrevelling of information appears to be deliberate and just suits the subject matter. Try it you might like it

Unfinest Hour: Britain and the Destruction of Bosnia

Brendan Simms

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