Colonel Garald K. Robinson, commander of the 88th Air Base Wing when Wright-Patterson Air Base hosted the 1995 negotiations that ended the war in the former Yugoslavia, was not optimistic at the time, stating that “peace agreements often have little chance.”
The idea that the negotiations could end the war – “That would have been a miracle for me,” Robinson said after speaking as a panelist at the Roger Glass Center for the Arts at the University of Dayton.
Wright-Patterson Base provided the infrastructure for the talks, which brought together the leaders of the three countries that emerged from the breakup of the former Yugoslavia at the end of the Cold War. The base offered a relatively peaceful and secure environment rich in unmistakable symbols of United States (U.S.) power.
Despite the fact that the base had only 13 days to prepare for the arrival of the delegations, military engineers managed in four days to erect more than 1.200 meters of fencing, build 12 suites for high-level guests, and create a “base within a base” to host diplomats and heads of state. They provided 350 phones, 20 fax machines, 14 photocopiers, and – what was a major challenge at the time – 35 mobile phones and 50 computers.
“Let me tell you, we defined 24–7, getting everything ready to go,“Robinson said. “Getting… the five VOQ (visiting officers quarters) buildings ready – it was all hands on deck. All of the people within the civil engineering group, everything they had to do. Everything the security forces had to do,“ he said.
At the time, Robinson’s expectations of the negotiations were relatively low.
“My idea of success was that they hold negotiations and don’t end up shooting each other during the talks,” Robinson said, explaining why he didn’t expect much from the negotiations: “Would there be any real agreement? You have to look at the record of peace negotiations in the past. Look at what’s happening today. It’s very rare.”
As examples of how difficult it is to end fighting, he cited the prolonged conflicts in Ukraine and Gaza. The Korean Peninsula has been a frozen conflict since 1953.
The fact that the participants sat in the Hope Hotel and Conference Center at Wright-Patterson on November 21st, 1995, to put their initials on the documents that ended the war was extraordinary, Robinson said.
“I thought: ‘Man, this is fantastic.’ I think we can all be proud of that. In some small way, we contributed to the overall success of what happened,” he said.
The government of the U.S. announced on October 18th, 1995, that the talks would be held at Wright-Patterson. Robinson said that from that day, community members and other base units were reaching out to people asking if they could help.
“When they announced it, my phone was ringing nonstop,” he recalled.
The upcoming 30th anniversary of the negotiations is one of the reasons why the NATO Parliamentary Assembly came to Dayton for its spring session, Klix.ba writes.
