The Clinton doctrine - Bill Clinton's failed policies toward Bosnia-Herzegovina - Editorial

National Review, June 21, 1993

AFTER WEEKS of fits and starts, the Western powers and Russia settled on a lowest-common-denominator policy in Bosnia that represents, in essence, a collapse. On May 22 the foreign ministers of Britain, France, Spain, Russia, and the U.S., meeting in Washington, announced what they called a "joint action program." Its main thrust was to call for creation of "safe havens" for Muslim civilians, to be protected by international forces. In other words, no further efforts will be made to roll back Serb military gains, but refugees will be shielded in ghettos which will soon enough come to resemble Palestinian refugee camps (i.e., breeding grounds for international terrorism). Other steps included a step-up of humanitarian relief supplies, the sending of monitors to Kosovo and Macedonia to prevent the spread of the conflict, warnings to Bosnian Croats to stop mistreating Muslims, and maintenance of the (ineffective) economic sanctions on Serbia.

The new policy is not really "joint," since the U.S. refuses, rightly, to send ground troops for any of these functions and promises only logistical support. It involves no particular "action" of any significance, certainly not the air strikes or arming of the Bosnians that Bill Clinton promised in his campaign. And the result of the new policy has been to embolden Serbia, which, seeing no obstacle to its victory, has now refused to permit international observers to monitor whether it is arming Serbs in Bosnia. This in turn has elicited a wave of indignation from Islamic countries at the West's sellout of the Bosnian Muslims.

For the Clinton Administration, the humiliating climbdown in Bosnia fits comfortably with a major pronouncement on foreign policy by a senior State Department official to a Washington luncheon on May 25. (The official spoke on condition of anonymity, but was later unmasked as the Number 3 man, Peter Tarnoff.) He declared that the United States would henceforth concentrate on its domestic economic problems and withdraw from many foreign-policy leadership roles that it had customarily assumed. He said the U.S. would defer more to the UN and to our allies (as in Bosnia), and take a pass on dealing forcefully with the various "middleweight powers" that threaten us in the post-Cold War era. He praised Warren Christopher's trip to Europe in early May in which the Secretary of State lamely suggested, but did not press, the President's ideas for stronger action against the Serbs. "People were genuinely disarmed by the fact that he was there to consult," Mr. Tarnoff said approvingly.

The only people disarmed were the Bosnian victims of Serb aggression--and, in a deeper sense, all those in the world who look to the U.S. for protection. There is no substitute for vigorous American leadership if the world is to offer any semblance of hope for security and decency. This scandalous Clinton Doctrine was quickly repudiated by the White House, but the disclaimer rang false. This Administration's foreign policy, in fact, is in the grip of the defeatism and passivity that Tarnoff expressed, That invites not only ridicule and contempt but also an increasing probability of future fiascos. Foreign policy and national security give all the signs of being a significant political issue in 1996. We can only pray that too many irretrievable disasters do not befall the Free World in the interim.