What is the Sarajevo effect?

Answer 1

"the fear of becoming entangled in ethnic and nationalist disputes". Sarajevo was besieged and effectively destroyed in the early 1990s because of ethnic cleansing actions by the Serbs in Bosnia. NATO, the North Atlantic Treaty Organization, was obligated to defend Europe from aggression, but chose to avoid taking sides in the conflict. That choice was the result of fears that bringing in outside forces to resolve internal disputes, especially fighting as the result of ethnic or racial tensions, would result in a worsening of the conflict with no real benefit to any side. This "effect" is seen today in Darfur, Burma and other nation-states that are at war with themselves endlessly. No outside country has the will to intervene.