The article analyses the origin, the partial accomplishments, and the failure of John Major government’s attempt to promote the British vision of the international order in the early 1990s. The Major government envisaged to manage the asymmetric power relationship between the UK/Europe and the US in favour of the former, by enhancing the authority of the UN Security Council over the use of coercive power. It also aimed to prevent the continental Europhiles from institutionalizing the European independence from the US. The Major government needed to install such concept as the guiding principle of the post-Cold War international order, because it faced with the dilemma of balancing the UK’s security interests that demanded a solid transatlantic relationship and its economic interests that propelled the UK’s participation in the European integration. The former would isolate the UK from the rest of Europe, while the latter would insult Euro-sceptics within the Conservative party and that undermined the ability of the Major government in the parliamentary legislative process and the negotiation with other European states.
The collapse of the former Yugoslavia and the outbreak of the Bosnian conflict in the spring of 1992 put an additional strain on the transatlantic tension and exacerbated the above discussed dilemma. The UK was, therefore, actively involved in the international diplomacy regarding the mediation of the conflict. It successfully cemented a firm working relationship between the EC and the UN under the umbrella of the International Conference on the Former Yugoslavia (ICFY), which was established at the London Conference in August 1992. The then Bush administration of the US also supported the ICFY.
The British initiative, however, was sharply criticized by the successive US government: the Clinton administration. The new US government disliked the ICFY-promoted peace plans for fear of sending American ground troops and of ceding NATO’s power to the UN Security Council. In order to facilitate the NATO-led solution for Bosnia, the US circumvented the essential legitimacy and the institution that the UK relied upon: namely multilateralism and the UN. The British role in Bosnia was substantially ended when NATO launched the strategic airstrike operation against the Bosnian Serb forces in August 1995. The British policies to modify the international order also collapsed as a result of this. It was a critical turning point that eventually caused the dramatic international and domestic division regarding the use of force in the run up to the Iraq war of 2003.