1996 Ad

Christian Century, Jan 17, 1996 by James M. Wall

AS THE REFRAIN of the old Tom Paxton song says, "I can't help but wonder where I'm bound." Looking ahead to a new year is always an occasion for curiosity and wonderment, but never for certainty. Another poet, William Shakespeare, said, "What's past is prologue." But prologue to what? This question haunts anyone who dares predict what will happen. Nevertheless, one can't help pondering what lies ahead for the globe in 1996. ,

The presence of NATO forces, led by 20,000 U.S. troops, should finally give Serbs, Croats and Bosnian Muslims a chance to stop killing and to start building a stable if awkward and patched-together peace. Contrary to what propagandists and hard-line advocates on both sides have claimed, the hatred on all sides has less to do with ancient religious or ethnic conflicts than it does with the quest for political power b leaders such as Serbia's Slobodan Milosevic, who exploited the fall of communism to begin his drive for a greater Serbia and thereby plunged the region into violent conflict.

History will judge leaders like Milosevic harshly, and it will also rebuke Western leaders who failed to act sooner to halt the carnage. But that was last year. What lies ahead is a hope that with the Dayton plan in place, and NATO troops enforcing the agreement, the southern Slav states may finally decide that they will be able to live with one another as democracies as least as well as they did under communism. There will undoubtedly be serious setbacks in the implementation of the peace process. And NATO soldiers will suffer casualties, more from accidents and land mines than from overt military conflict. These casualties will inevitably weaken American support for the mission. The U.S. is not yet sure of its role as a peacekeeping superpower In most other military engagements, the nation has had an enemy whose leaders were elevated to villain status. In this respect we miss the relative certainties of the cold war. As John Updike said, it gave us a reason to get up every morning.

We are not in the former Yugoslavia to fight a war; we are there to help people keep the peace agreement their leaders have made. It is a new role for us, and a difficult one to sell to the public and to politicians who want to keep our soldiers out of harm's way. But doesn't any military action involve getting in harm's way? In 1996 President Clinton will need to stand firm in his commitment to the Dayton plan, and he will need to make his case to the American people that the U.S. has a moral obligation to avert continued warfare.

The 1996 presidential campaign remains an unknown element in this peace mission. A president is always vulnerable to sharp swings in public opinion when foreign endeavors call into question his leadership--as was the case with President Carter in Iran. And even a successful military engagement does not guarantee political success, as President Bush discovered after the gulf war. Republican front-runner Bob Dole is not likely to turn away from his reluctant support for Clinton's peace mission. But were a Pat Buchanan or a Steve Forbes to become the Republican nominee, he would not hesitate to attack Clinton for his engagement in Bosnia. Look for the isolationism that lies just below the surface of American politics to emerge again.

Though decades of oppression under communism have left them ill-prepared for their role, religious leaders among the Serb Orthodox, Croat Catholics and Bosnian Muslims have a tremendous leadership opportunity in 1996. To rise to the challenge, they must move beyond encouraging violence in God's name and present a vision of differing religious groups coexisting in peace.

Religious leaders who look more to the future than to the past are also needed in the Middle East. A minority Christian and majority Muslim population in the West Bank and Gaza could provide crucial leadership in the next year as Palestinians learn to live under their new limited autonomy. Religious extremists on both sides will seek to exploit past grievances. Moderate leaders can confront this exploitation only if they themselves move away from the rhetoric of the past. Israel is currently enjoying a favorable world press because of its willingness, following the trauma of the assassination of Yitzhak Rabin, to continue to move toward relinquishing control of occupied territories.

Israel is also living with the consequences of having allowed Jewish settlements on Palestinian land--a tactic designed to prevent the creation of a Palestinian state. These well-entrenched and government-financed settlements now haunt the nation as a Palestinian state approaches reality. In Israel's November 1996 elections, the labor coalition will try to ignore, and the Likud faction will seek to exploit, the presence of these settlements. Neither can make the issue disappear. The party that offers the most reasonable way out of the settlement dilemma stands the best chance of political success.

The conflict in Israel in the coming months will not involve Israelis and Palestinians so much as Israeli hardliners, who have always opposed Palestinian autonomy, and those moderates. who know that as long as Jewish settlements remain within Palestine, with their specially built highways and massive drain on the natural resources of the West Bank and Gaza, permanent peace will not be possible. Rhetoric will also have to give way to reality when talks on Jerusalem begin this year. There are many Jerusalems--the Arab eastern and Israeli western sectors, the Israeli housing complexes built to the east of the city on Palestinian land, and the Old City with its religious symbolism--and no easy solutions. Until the discussion focuses on these different Jerusalems, political and possibly violent clashes over the city's future are inevitable.