War Quote by John Pomfret

Pomfret’s line is less a neutral query than a pivot: it yanks attention away from the comforting morality play of Bosnia (victims, villains, helpless bystanders) and toward the mechanics of power that actually redraw borders. The “much more significant question” is a rhetorical shove, implying that the public conversation has been stuck on the wrong culprit or the wrong hero. He’s not asking what happened; he’s asking who enabled what happened.

The syntax is doing quiet work. “If anything” signals skepticism about official narratives while keeping plausible deniability: he can pose the allegation without making it outright. “Help the Croatian army” narrows the spotlight to external patronage and backstage coordination, the kind of support that rarely shows up in commemorations but often decides outcomes: intelligence sharing, training, logistics, diplomatic cover. The subtext is that maps don’t change because of righteous intent; they change because someone with capacity decides to make them change, or decides not to stop it.

Then he lands the provocation: it wasn’t the Bosnian army that “changed fundamentally the map of Bosnia.” That contrast reframes agency. It also needles a common Western habit of narrating the Bosnian war primarily through Bosniak survival and Serbian aggression, with Croatia treated as secondary. Pomfret is pointing to the decisive role of Croatian offensives in 1994-95 and the implied US interest in shaping a postwar settlement without deploying large numbers of American troops.

Contextually, the quote sits in the uncomfortable space between journalism and accountability: less about assigning virtue, more about tracing the chain of consequence that polite diplomacy prefers to leave blurry.