Waking beast - Bosnia-Hercegovina - Editorial

National Review, Oct 14, 1996

THE recent Bosnian elections passed off quietly. But their effect was to legitimize the carve-up of Bosnia - Herzegovina along ethnic and religious lines. The elections were not, of course, free or fair. When the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe, under pressure from the Clinton Administration, agreed in June that the elections should go ahead, its chairman stated that conditions for free and fair elections did not then exist. Nothing in the intervening period altered that situation. Indicted war criminals were not arrested. Refugees were unable to return home. In all three ethnic-religious entities -- the Serb Republic, the (theoretically abolished but actually intact) Croat section, and the increasingly Muslim Sarajevo-government zone -- television stations have relentlessly pumped out partisan propaganda.

As NATIONAL REVIEW argued at the time, the American-imposed Dayton settlement was always likely to fail. Had Croatian, Bosnian Croat, and Muslim forces been allowed to roll back earlier Serb aggression completely, Bosnia could probably have survived as a multi-ethnic and tolerant sovereign state. Serb hardliners in Bosnia would have been discredited; Muslim and Croat leaders would have forgotten their own disputes in the afterglow of success; above all, American troops need never have been sent to police the complicated arrangements devised by the Dayton diplomats. But once the interventionist route had been chosen, it fell to the international community and IFOR (the Implementation Force) to honor their obligations, applying force where necessary against warlords who refused to disgorge the booty of ethnic cleansing. But the West had no stomach for that. So the disintegration of Bosnia continued, while international committees solemnly discussed how to keep it together.

War at some point seems inevitable. The Bosnian Serbs will probably declare a final break from Bosnia and union with Serbia as soon as they judge the situation favorable. For their part, the Bosnian Muslims and Croats have every reason to want to reverse Dayton's parceling out of land on a grossly unfair and entirely arbitrary 51 to 49 basis. American policy should now be based on this scenario. IFOR troops should depart on schedule by the end of the year; there is no point in their staying, since their task is hopeless. But their departure must be linked to providing the promised military assistance to the Muslim - Croat Bosnian Federation. A swift defeat of the Bosnian Serbs, completing the unfinished business of last summer, is essential if the bloodshed is to be minimized. Serbian President Slobodan Milosevic must be warned against the consequences of coming to the rescue of the Bosnian Serb leadership. Meanwhile, Croatia should be encouraged to give substantial assistance to its Bosnian allies. And if the president of Bosnia - Herzegovina formally calls on Croatia to help defend his state's integrity, America will have to counter European and Russian pressure on Zagreb to stay out of the conflict.

Above all, America must persist in its one major policy success --promoting the Bosnian Muslim - Croat Federation. The Federation is currently beset by strains. But these difficulties will be easier to resolve if the rest of the land seized by the Serbs in 1992 is handed back. Crammed into too little living space, Muslims and Croats naturally chafe at each other. In the longer term, the West will have to tackle the fundamental problem which has promoted war and genocide -- the nature of the regime and the political class in Belgrade itself. Until these are changed, the beast of the Balkans will not sleep.