Sowing the wind - failure of NATO and western nations' military policy towards Bosnia-Herzegovina - Editorial

THE U.S.--or is it NATO? or is it the UN?--has bombed Serb positions around Gorazde in eastern Bosnia to force an end to the Serb siege of the Muslim city. The Serbs finally pulled back their artillery, after an assault that had killed at least seven hundred civilians, wounded more than two thousand, and left much of the city in ruins. If this was a famous victory for our side, it was one we stumbled into. After an earlier bombing threat had induced the Serbs to leave Sarajevo, U.S. officials made it clear that they didn't intend to do anything anyplace else; this invited the Serbs to go after other cities, including the strategically located Gorazde. This was such an embarrassment that NATO was then obliged to rush to Gorazde's rescue and to promise to defend several other "safe havens."

The credibility of this new, broadened NATO commitment remains in doubt, however. Tactical airstrikes against mobile targets Eke artillery are notoriously ineffective, as NR has pointed out before. Even U.S. officials are reported to doubt that the Serbs will refrain from challenges to other cities or will be more compliant at the negotiating table. The weakness of the world community's position is only compounded by the confusion in the chain of command among the U. S., NATO, and the UN, with the UN at one point vetoing airstrikes that NATO commanders had recommended. As George Will has put it, we had a Japanese diplomat (UN special envoy Yasushi Akashi) working for an Egyptian civil servant (UN Secretary General Boutros Boutros-Ghali) commanding a British general (UN local commander Lieutenant General Michael Rose) deciding when American planes would bomb and when they would not. Gorazde will not go down in history as a great vindication of the "multilateralism" (i.e., abdication of U.S. sovereignty) of which this Administration is so enamored.

The same slavish obeisance to multilateralism maintains the collective arms embargo against Bosnia: the Administration continues to insist that it can do nothing to help the Bosnians directly because it can't get the votes in the Security Council. The perversity of this argument is amply rebutted by the U.S. Congress (both Houses of which have voted to lift the embargo unilaterally), by Senator and former UN Ambassador Daniel Patrick Moynihan, and by legal scholars who point out that Bosnia is being denied its legitimate and inherent right of self-defense.

The Administration's stubbornness on the arms embargo is only part of a larger perversity--the illogic of a policy that has deliberately eschewed any strategic military action that would decisively improve the balance of forces on the ground and thereby forestall Serb aggression. Hence the resort to palliatives like intervening only to let relief convoys through. Hence the fundamental lack of credibility that invites the contemptuous Serb reaction we have seen. A strategic air campaign--against Serb logistics in Bosnia and against the Serb military machine and political leadership--might have had a better result.

Soon we can expect a flurry of new diplomatic activity. The Russians (as the Serbs' lawyer) and the U.S. (as the champion of all that is true and virtuous) have now supplanted the hapless UN-EC effort of Vance, Owen, & Stoltenberg. The big boys are now in charge, thank you. And both the big boys probably Ewe ready for a deal--the Russians, because the Serbs have acquired all the territory they wanted to acquire, and the Americans, because Bill Clinton wants to concentrate on health care and is ready to pressure the Bosnians to accept a deal based on the status quo.

The good news is that such a settlement would end the killing (at least for a while). The bad news is that it would be patently unjust, ratifying the illgotten gains of "ethnic cleansing." It would, for that reason, be an unstable outcome in the long run, as the Muslims nursed their wounds and prepared for their revenge. Into this swamp the Clinton Administration has pledged to send 25,000 U.S. troops to help police a settlement--making us the Serbs' enforcers against an inevitably restive Muslim population.

And that's the optimistic scenario.