The Clinton administration finally acknowledged, in effect, that Bosnia’s Muslims had lost the war and that the only way to win it for them was to send in U.S. ground troops – ““several hundred thousand’’ of them, ““involving significant casualties,’’ warned Defense Secretary William Perry. The Americans weren’t about to make that commitment, and the Europeans, who already have thousands of U.N. peacekeepers in Bosnia, were more interested in getting out than getting in deeper. So the administration stopped trying to persuade its allies to bomb the attacking Serbs or lift the arms embargo on the beleaguered Muslims. Concluding that NATO’s future was more important than Bosnia, Washington agreed to pursue a diplomatic settlement. Without military leverage, the deal would have to reward the aggressors and punish their victims.
No one was proud of the record in Bosnia. ““By saying that we would try to reverse aggression and then backing down, we have all become accomplices,’’ charged a U.N. official in Sarajevo. NATO, which successfully faced down the Soviet threat, appeared irresolute against the Serbs. The allies refused to stand up to the aggressors and instead relied on a feeble U.N. ““protection force.’’ U.S. officials insisted their views on Bosnia hadn’t changed; they were merely facing the fact that the allies didn’t support them. ““It’s a tactical retreat only,’’ said a White House adviser. If diplomacy fails, Washington will ask the U.N. Security Council to lift the arms embargo.
But first the Clinton administration wanted to head off political pressure from the new Republican majority in Congress to do something rash and unilateral, such as bombing the Serbs or arming the Muslims. ““NATO has been helpless, hopeless, maybe irrelevant in this whole process,’’ Republican Senate leader Bob Dole complained during a visit to Europe. Dole wanted to bomb the Serbs and lift the arms embargo. But any such step would prompt the Europeans to pull out their peacekeepers – and Washington has already promised to send in ground troops to cover a withdrawal. Two German-based U.S. armored divisions, the 1st and the 3rd, have been put on alert for that contingency. Thus, helping the Muslims or hitting the Serbs could embroil U.S. troops in ground combat.
Bosnia’s future, meanwhile, was being determined by Serb fighters. Counterattacking in the northwest, they closed in on the Muslim enclave of Bihac, a U.N. ““safe area.’’ They battered the predominantly Muslim government’s V Corps, taking hundreds of prisoners and forcing some of them to chant: ““Bosnia is for the Serbs.’’ The Pentagon, which opposes U.S. military involvement in Bosnia, concluded that the Muslims were beaten. ““V Corps was the best they had,’’ said a Defense Department analyst. ““It’s over.’’ Perry even went on television to concede the Serb victory and to warn that ““airstrikes cannot determine the outcome of the ground combat.''
While NATO confronted its failure in Bosnia, the United Nations ate crow. The Serbs held hundreds of peacekeepers as actual or virtual hostages, even forcing three U.N. military observers to lie down on a runway at a Serb airbase to deter NATO bombing. When Secretary-General Boutros Boutros-Ghali visited Sarajevo to remonstrate with the warring parties, the Bosnian Serb leader, Radovan Karadzic, refused to come to the airport to talk with him. Jeered by Bosnian crowds, Boutros-Ghali went away muttering about pulling out the peacekeepers. And when special U.N. envoy Yasushi Akashi visited the Bosnian presidency building in Sarajevo, the Serbs hit it with missiles, injuring no one but sending a strong message.
Soon everyone was playing the blame game. The Americans attributed the conflict mainly to Serbian aggression, but the Europeans said that view was too simplistic; they called it a ““civil war,’’ with fault on both sides. NATO’s supporters accused the United Nations of spinelessness, pointing out that airstrikes had to be authorized by a ““dual key’’ system that gave U.N. officials an effective veto over allied action. ““One key was in the hands of people who didn’t believe in using it,’’ said a senior State Department official. ““I believe the U.N. is being made a scapegoat,’’ replied Kofi Annan, the head of peacekeeping operations. ““It is absolutely unfair when member states do not want to take the risks, when they do not want to commit the resources, but blame the U.N. for failure to act.''
Reviving the diplomatic track was the subject at a meeting in Brussels of the Bosnia ““con-tact group’’ – the United States, Russia, Britain, France and Germany – which is promoting a peace plan that would require the Serbs to hand back some of the territory they have conquered. The group’s only option was to sweeten the pot for the Serbs. It agreed on ““equitable and balanced arrangements’’ for the warring parties, meaning that the new confederation between Bosnian Muslims and Croats can be matched by a Serbian confederation, if all sides agree. That could allow the aggressors to achieve their ultimate objective: a ““Greater Serbia’’ linking the Bosnian Serbs to their brethren in Croatia and in Yugoslavia’s dominant Serbian Republic. But even that may not be an adequate concession. Diplomatic sources said the Serbs would insist on retaining a larger portion of Bosnia than the 49 percent allocated to them under the peace plan.
To get agreement from the Bosnian Serbs, the contact group hoped for help from Slobodan Milosevic, president of the Serbian Republic and an original sponsor of the ““ethnic cleansing’’ campaign in Bosnia. Under severe economic pressure from a trade embargo, Milosevic officially closed his border to the Bosnian Serbs last summer, after they rejected the peace plan. But there is evidence that his regime has secretly supplied the Bosnian Serbs with fuel and antiaircraft missiles. Milosevic may want his Bosnian allies to retain as much territory as possible. And he has powerful support from the Russians, who last week vetoed a U.N. resolution aimed at blocking the flow of fuel to the Bosnian Serbs. Eventually, if Milosevic does not pressure his friends into a deal, U.S. officials say they will make another attempt to lift the arms embargo on the Muslims.
NATO wants to put the Bosnian debacle behind it. ““The crisis in Bosnia is about Bosnia. It’s not about NATO and its future,’’ Secretary of State Warren Christopher said as he left for Brussels. But the Balkan misadventure put NATO through its worst disagreements since the 1956 Suez crisis, and without a Soviet military threat, the allies had nothing to rally around. The distance across the Atlantic seemed to be increasing, and Britain’s ““special relationship’’ with Washington was under special strain. Michael Clarke, director of the Center for Defense Studies at the University of London, predicts that by the second decade of the next century, ““an Anglo-French-German relationship will quite likely loom larger for Britain than an Anglo-American one. And I wouldn’t have said that even three years ago. Bosnia isn’t the cause. It’s just the symptom.''
The balance of forces in Europe has shifted, a fact that Bill Clinton underscores this week with a quick visit to a security conference in Budapest. NATO hopes to maintain its relevance by expanding, especially to the east, incorporating former Soviet satellites. That has Russia’s back up, over both the membership list and the timetable for expansion. But taking on new members is one way for NATO to reinvent itself. Another and perhaps better way is to face more squarely the military challenges in a volatile new age of uncertainty.
