Why did the United States so strongly support Bosnian secession?
I think this support was the product of a number of factors. One, pointed out by former State Department official George Kenney, was the influence of media reports, in turn heavily influenced by a propaganda campaign run by Ruder Finn public relations agency on behalf of the government of Croatia, and later the Bosnian Muslims, which succeeded in presenting the Serbs as „new Nazis”. This public relations campaign was hugely successful with the public and politicians alike. American foreign policy-making can be vulnerable to the propaganda of lobbies, and the Croatian lobby was active and influential. The Bosnian lobby was smaller but very well connected, notably through Mohammed Sacirbey, the American son of a colleague of Bosnian Muslim leader Alija Izetbegovic who chose him to be Bosnia’s ambassador to the United States. There was a natural class affinity between American officials like Richard Holbrooke and the Bosnian Muslims, who had been the upper class under the Ottoman Empire a
