America and Bosnia
Robert W. Tucker and David C. Hendrickson
Abstract:
American intervention in the conflict between Serbia and Bosnia stems from
interests in European order, and not from preserving a world order, or from
denouncing military aggression. The expected but undesirable focus on Europe is
the outcome of radically altered power equations after the end of the Cold War.
Pres Bill Clinton should refuse to be swayed by powerful vested interests and
commit his policies to achieving peace in the region on the basis of a
territorial arrangement.
Full
Text: COPYRIGHT 1993 The National Affairs, Inc.
THE WAR
IN Bosnia has occasioned the first significant debate over foreign policy of
the post cold war period. It has thereby done what the war against Iraq did not
do. The short-lived debate that attended armed intervention in the Persian Gulf
resembled in most respects the debate attending armed intervention in the last
decade or so of the Cold War. All that was missing was the Cold War itself, and
thus the risk of armed conflict with the Soviet Union. In Congress, an
interventionist Republican party was pitted against a non-interventionist
Democratic party. In the broader public debate, those urging war against Iraq
were those who had supported armed intervention on earlier occasions, while
those who opposed going to war were those who had opposed resorting to force on
these same occasions.
In the
case of Bosnia, the identity of the participants has changed. In Congress the
debate over whether to pursue an interventionist course has not followed party
lines. The Democrats can no longer be identified with an anti-interventionist
position. The same is true of a number of public figures who had once been
reliably anti-interventionist. Indeed, some of the most insistent criticism of
both the Bush and Clinton administrations for failing to give military support
to the Bosnian Muslims has come from those whose anti-interventionist
disposition had long been taken for granted. Thus what Senator Joseph Biden has
come to symbolize for the liberal democrats in Congress, Anthony Lewis has come
to symbolize for liberal expression in the media.
The
debate over America's course in the Balkans has also aroused the emotions and
passions of participants in a way the earlier debate over war in the Gulf did
not. There is an intensity of feeling over Bosnia that was not apparent over
Kuwait. It may be seen in the heightened rhetoric that has become almost
commonplace among critics of the American government's "failure" to
date to come to the aid of Bosnia's beleaguered Muslims. For this failure,
Leslie Gelb has written, "Bosnian Muslims will pay with their lives, and
Americans with their faith." The loss of our soul, it is argued, will be
matched by the sacrifice of the nation's vital interests. Albert Wohlstetter
has found in our recent record in the Balkans "the worst performance of
the democracies since World War 11-and the most dangerous." One must go
back to the debate over Vietnam to find statements of comparable intensity.
Although
the war in Bosnia has aroused such strong emotions and passions, it has not
evoked comparable appeals for the sacrifice of blood and treasure. With very
few exceptions, those who have called for American intervention have been
careful to emphasize the quite modest costs they are willing to pay in
intervening. While insistent that the interests at stake in Bosnia are very
great, they are equally insistent that these interests be secured at modest
cost.
The
debate over Bosnia has thus been marked by a disjunction between interests
avowed and costs rejected. It has also been marked by a view of the war's
origins that must yield a distorted picture of the interests that are at stake.
The conflict is not, as it has been so often depicted, a conventional case of
aggression by one state (Serbia) against another (Bosnia). The insistence upon
seeing its origins in these terms must distort its true nature, obscure the
objectives of an intervention, and lead to a view of the interests at stake in
the war that is misleading and unpersuasive. It is not the repelling of
aggression as such, nor the maintenance of that ill-defined abstraction known
as "world order," that constitute the interests at stake in Bosnia.
Neither is it the need to appease a Muslim world that, in the absence of
western intervention in Bosnia, stands ready to succor Bosnia's Muslims. The
great interest at stake in Bosnia is neither more nor less than order and
stability in post-Cold War Europe. If a persuasive case cannot be made on these
grounds, it probably cannot be made at all.
DESPITE
THE complex and tangled history of Bosnia and Herzegovina, the origins of the
war in that republic of Yugoslavia proceeded from causes that were not
inordinately complex. The true cause of the war was the structure of reciprocal
fears that existed within Bosnia on the eve of the conflict. Each group feared
domination by others, and not unreasonably so. For the Muslims, the prior
secession of Croatia and Slovenia had left them, in effect, as members of a
Greater Serbia, and they not unnaturally feared that their interests would
suffer badly in a rump Yugoslavia dominated by the Serbs. In such an
eventuality, the repressive acts that the Serbs had committed in Kosovo might be
duplicated in Bosnia; and independence appeared as the only escape from this
fearful prospect. The Serbs reasoned in essentially the same way. As part of
Yugoslavia, their interests would be secure; as a minority in a unitary Bosnian
state dominated by the Muslims, they foresaw a repetition, at best, of the
discrimination they had suffered in Kosovo when its status was elevated in the
1974 Yugoslav constitution--and, at worst, of the horrors they had suffered
during World War II when Bosnia formed part of the Nazi supported Croatian
Ustasha state.
The
Croatians, for their part, wanted out of Yugoslavia for the same reason that
the Muslims did, and wanted out of Bosnia for reasons not dissimilar to those
of the Serbs. Their vote for independence in the March 1992 referendum, as
Aleksa Djilas has observed, did not betoken support for a unitary Bosnian
state; on the contrary, their exit from Yugoslavia was the means by which they
might gain entry into newly independent Croatia.(1) Their attitude was an ominous
portent, because it meant that a majority of the population in Bosnia and
Herzegovina, and the best armed part at that, was opposed to the creation of
this new state. The Serbs and Croats in Bosnia had the support of the two
nationalities that had traditionally contended for dominance in Yugoslavia.
From the beginning, it was evident that the independence of Bosnia and
Herzegovina could only be secured if it could muster large-scale support from
the international community.
There
is nothing mysterious about the calculations of the three national groups. Each
group nursed historic grievances, some more recent than others, but all of
which were felt with passionate intensity. The utter incompatibility of their
respective interests was such that war was far and away the most likely outcome
of Bosnia's secession from Yugoslavia. Indeed, one needs hardly to invoke the
notorious tribal hatreds and violent propensities of the Balkan peoples to
account for the war, for secession has nearly always in history been attended
with armed violence. It was so on the two occasions when it was attempted in
our own experience as a nation (in 1776 and 1860). Daniel Webster's famous
assertion in 1850--"Peaceful secession, Sir! Your eyes and mine are
destined never to see that miracle"--stated a fact applicable not only to
the American Union but to the normal experience of all states, which hardly
allowed any other conclusion but that secession was and would ever be an act of
war. The experience of the Soviet Union should not mislead us on this score,
for the peaceful break-up of a state is far more the exception than the rule--a
miracle, at odds with the normal course of events.
The
origins of the Bosnian war are thus relatively simple. What is exceedingly
complex is how the descent into savage fighting might have been averted; still
more difficult is how the war, once started, might have been--and might yet
be--stopped. That the policy which was adopted, in all its twists and turns,
has been an utter failure is a point that need hardly be labored. The role
played by the Western powers in attempting to put an end to the war has many
critics but few defenders. The judgment that historians will reach about the
diplomatic record of the past two years will doubtless be tempered by the sheer
intractability of the problems that were faced, but that it will be a harsh one
seems altogether likely.
In
assessing the role played by the United States in attempting to put an end to
the war, attention must first be drawn to the way in which the American
government interpreted the origins of the conflict, for this interpretation
dictated in critical respects its diplomatic posture. The American government's
explanation stressed that the war was caused above all by Serbian aggression.
The indictment rested fundamentally not on the violations of the laws of war
that the Serbs have undoubtedly committed on a lavish scale, but on the
decision to use force in the first place. In the U.S. view, the war itself was
a crime. Although the Serbs' violations of jus in bello have been seen to
confirm and compound their violation of jus ad bellum, the presumed existence
of the aggression itself has played a decisive role in shaping the policy of
the U.S. government. The assumption, moreover, that the war has been one of
Serbian aggression has been generally accepted in the United States; the debate
over intervention has not fundamentally turned over the existence of aggression
against an internationally recognized state, but over the potential costs of
U.S. military action to reverse it.
The
validity of this widespread consensus rests primarily on the fact that Bosnia
and Herzegovina gained recognition as an independent state in early April 1992,
and that all subsequent support which Belgrade provided to the Bosnian Serbs
constituted an illegal intervention in Bosnia's internal affairs. Yet the
manner in which independence was achieved and the manner in which recognition
was accorded were themselves highly questionable. In holding a referendum on
March 1, 1992, in which a majority voted to secede from Yugoslavia, Bosnia
satisfied part of the criteria laid down by the European Community and the
United States for achieving recognition (with the West also exacting from the
Sarajevo government a declared respect for minority rights), but the
referendum, boycotted by the Serbs, was itself a violation of the 1974 Yugoslav
Constitution. That constitution, like its predecessors, had conferred a right
of secession but made it dependent on the mutual agreement of the nations
composing Yugoslavia. It was based, that is to say, on the notion of a
concurrent majority of the constituent nations, not on simple majoritarianism;
to move to secession without the consent of the Serbs was a plain violation of
its terms.(2)
If the act
of secession was illegal within the terms of the Yugoslav constitution, was it
nevertheless legal from the standpoint of international law? Is it now, in
other words, an accepted principle of international law that a majority of the
population within a well defined province or constituent republic, if it so
wishes, has a right to secede from an existing state? There is little to
conclude that there is. No charter, treaty, or convention confers such a right,
and for the reason that a great many states (and nearly all those of a
multi-ethnic or -religious kind) would be incapable of maintaining themselves
if such a right existed. References to the right of self-determination in
documents such as the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights have
not been understood as conferring a right of secession. Were the case
otherwise, we would have the inexplicable phenomenon that a large number of
states had entered a suicide pact when they signed the covenant, and no known
rule of legal interpretation would allow such an absurd construction.(3)
These
considerations establish that the recognition of Bosnia's independence itself
constituted an illegal intervention in Yugoslavia's internal affairs, to which
Belgrade had every right to object. The contrary view may only be asserted on
the debased view that international law is whatever the United States and the
Security Council says it is and that we are free, like an Alice in the grip of
deconstructionism, to have words mean anything we like. These considerations do
not establish that Bosnia's Muslims had no justification for their secession,
but rather that the justification, if it existed, must be based on grounds
other than those of law (whether municipal or international). Appeal must be
made, in other words, to the natural right of revolution. But as Jefferson
wrote in the Declaration of Independence, this right is not an unqualified one:
only a "long train of abuses & usurpations" can justify a
decision to throw off established government.
Ironically,
it has been the advocates of large-scale intervention, and indeed the
Izetbegovic government itself, that have provided the most persuasive evidence
that Jefferson's threshold was not met in the Bosnian case. For the picture
that advocates of intervention have drawn of the almost idyllic relations that
prevailed among Serbs, Croats, and Muslims before the war severely undercuts
the view that the Muslims had suffered the degree of oppression necessary to
justify the natural right of revolution. It would be more accurate to say that
the Muslims had a reasonable anticipation that they would suffer such
oppression if they remained within the rump Yugoslavia; they acted, that is to
say, against "tyranny anticipated" rather than "tyranny inflicted"
(just as, in fact, the American colonists had done). That anticipation could
not but appear as utterly compelling to the majority of the Muslims; all that
has happened since the war broke out confirms it. What should draw objection,
however, is the assumption that whereas the Muslims had every reason to fear
living in a state dominated by the Serbs, the Serbs had no reason to fear
living in a state dominated by the Muslims. That assumption is fundamentally
implausible; it is, nevertheless, the unspoken assumption of the American
government's position and of the dominant consensus in the United States
regarding the origins of the war.
BEFORE
CONSIDERING the consequences this American interpretation of the origins of the
war had on the course of events in Bosnia, attention may first be drawn to the
extremely awkward, and yet almost entirely unremarked, position in which it
placed U.S. diplomacy. By the spring of 1992, our diplomacy was clearly
directed toward the breakup of Yugoslavian territorial integrity on the basis
of plebiscitary majorities in each of its constituent republics. Having
previously taken the position, as James Baker did in Belgrade in the summer of
1991, that the United States favored the preservation of Yugoslavia's
territorial integrity, American diplomacy did a sharp turn and pronounced
itself in favor of Yugoslavia's partition. Once this partition had taken place,
however, we once again insisted that the territorial integrity of the new
states was something sacred and inviolable. Having defiled the principle of
territorial integrity, the American government immediately rediscovered it in
all its purity. Thereafter, any suggestion that these new boundaries be changed
was subsequently met by the insistence, in the exasperated voice of outraged
virtue, that to do so challenged the very basis of world order.
The
reasons for this last attitude are clear. The shift in American policy toward
Yugoslavia took place immediately after the breakup of the Soviet Union.
Concerned primarily as they were with the potential for violence that this
breakup might bring, and thinking of Russia as they considered Yugoslavia,
American diplomatists searched for the means by which that potential might be
mitigated. The parallels between the two situations, indeed, were eerily exact.
Russia had her "famous twenty nine millions" outside the mother
country; Serbia had a comparable percentage outside its borders. It seemed a
sound approach to adopt the same policy toward both. Whatever the merits of
this approach as applied to Russia, however, it was an unmitigated disaster as
applied to Yugoslavia.
The
new-found reverence for territorial integrity may well have played a crucial
role in triggering the conflict in Bosnia. It is undoubtedly the case that the
United States and the European Community encouraged the Izetbegovic government
to hold the referendum on secession in the first place. It also appears to be
true that the United States encouraged Izetbegovic to reject the EC-sponsored
cantonization plan agreed upon in two separate meetings in late winter 1992.(4)
Izetbegovic's repudiation of the second agreement on returning to Sarajevo was
the immediate trigger for the war. Whether the Muslim leader repudiated this
agreement because of pressure from militants at home, as Glenny has said, or
because he understood America's advice to reject it as an implicit pledge of
military support, remains unclear. Given the distribution of military power in
Bosnia at the time, the only way to make sense of Izetbegovic's decision is to
assume that he did believe that the United States would make good on his
military inferiority; the support Izetbegovic received from the United States
to oppose cantonization may well have given him the confidence to take this
fateful step. Certainly, the mournful voices coming out of Sarajevo once the
war broke out attest to a sense of deep betrayal on the part of the Muslims.
The war
may have occurred in any event. The Lisbon formula was vague in crucial
respects, and contained no agreement respecting the boundaries of the three
cantons. Extremists on all sides were certain to raise formidable objections to
it. Whatever weight its rejection is assigned in bringing on the war, however,
cannot detract from the judgment that American diplomats acted in an extremely
irresponsible manner if, as reported, they advised Izetbegovic to reject the
Lisbon formula. If war was to be averted, an agreement respecting cantonization
was the last step at which it might have been. That the United States both encouraged
the Muslims to take the steps that led toward war, and then subsequently
abandoned them once the war broke out, is a damning indictment of American
diplomacy--and one, moreover, that is likely to receive die assent of virtually
all sides in the debate over intervention. Either we should not have encouraged
them or we should not have abandoned them; it is difficult to think of a
plausible defense for having done both.
Once
fighting started, the understanding of the war that attributed it fundamentally
to Serbian aggression had an equally bad effect on the diplomatic posture the
United States adopted towards settling it. The passions and hatreds unleashed
by the war were such that territorial partition almost immediately became the
only basis on which a compromise settlement might be reached. Yet the United
States consistently opposed all such proposals. A compromise settlement was
ruled out by the terms of the UN resolution passed in late May 1992, under
American prompting, which called for the disarmament of all irregular forces
and the withdrawal of the Yugoslav federal army (JNA) from Bosnian territory.
Only one reading of these resolutions was possible, and this was that they
required as a condition for lifting the sanctions imposed on Serbia the
establishment of the police power by the Sarajevo government over the whole
territory of Bosnia and Herzegovina.(5) Thereafter, the Bush administration
opposed the interest expressed by London and Paris in a territorial partition
before the August 1992 London conference. The incoming Clinton administration's
opposition to the Vance-Owen plan was of a piece with this policy. The American
interpretation of the war as one of Serbian aggression has made any compromise
settlement vulnerable to the charge of rewarding aggression. As such, it
precluded a negotiated settlement, and made it inevitable that the war would be
decided by sheer military power.
The
effects of this interpretation of the war on Serbia are also deserving of note.
The reaction of Milosevic to the full court press he confronted from the United
States and the international community was to abandon formally the claim of a
Greater Serbia, while keeping it up in fact. In the hope, apparently, of
avoiding UN sanctions, Serbia and Montenegro accordingly established a new
state of Yugoslavia and simultaneously recognized the independence of Croatia
and Bosnia. The JNA was formally withdrawn from Bosnian territory while at the
same time its weapons, stores of ammunition, and most of its men passed to the
control of the Republika Srpska. These maneuvers had about them a farcical
character. It was easily documented that Serbia continued to give support to
the Bosnian Serbs; denials of this fact by Milosevic only confirmed his
reputation as a liar. He was forced into this absurd position by the attitude
taken by the international community, which stood foursquare behind the claim
that Bosnia's secession was legal and that Yugoslavia had no right to prevent
it by force. The effect, however, on the conduct of the war was pernicious.
However bad the JNA's record had been in the Croatian war and in the beginning
stages of the war in Bosnia, it had a better record than that of the Serbian
irregular forces; to disband it was to invite an increase in the number of vile
atrocities that have distinguished the war's conduct. This decision also
weakened the link between Belgrade and the Bosnian Serbs, and made it more
difficult for Milosevic to apply the kind of pressure on them necessary to
reach a settlement.
Perhaps
the most paradoxical effect that this understanding of the origins of the war
had was on the prospect that the United States or the international community
might use force to limit Serb territorial claims. For one thing, it made it
much more difficult to reach a consensus either at the United Nations or within
the Western alliance on the possible limited use of force. Given the objectives
that flowed directly from the definition of the conflict as unadulterated
Serbian aggression, it was evident that any limited use of force would leave
unsatisfied the larger objective of "restoring" Bosnian territorial
integrity, and that after the first drink, to paraphrase John F. Kennedy, it
would be necessary to take another. If the objective were the disarmament of
Serbian militias throughout Bosnia, it was a moral certainty that the Serbs
would resist this through force, and that the objective could only be achieved
through a major war. Just as the Americans were capable of vetoing diplomatic
measures that pointed toward partition, the Europeans (and Russia) were capable
of vetoing steps that pointed toward such a war. The end result, of course, was
a stalemate at the UN and within the Alliance in which fervid denunciations of
the war were paired with measures that held out no prospect of ending it on
terms conformable to those laid out in UN resolutions.
The
skepticism of the U.S. military toward any intervention in Bosnia was
reinforced by the same considerations. By virtue of the overly ambitious
objectives that the American understanding of the conflict entailed, every
proposal to use limited force was highly vulnerable to the objection that it
would not satisfy the aims American diplomacy had laid down. For the limited
use of force, when paired with these highly ambitious goals, would have
succeeded in ensuring precisely the kind of objective that the diplomatists had
deemed totally unacceptable. There was no plausible end game in this scenario.
Escalation was written all over it. Even had the JCS been willing to swallow
its understandable reservations toward any kind of military involvement in the
Balkans, it would not and could not digest the proposition that U.S. military
forces be committed in a way that left a huge gap between the military means
proposed and the political ends embraced.
IN THE
DEBATE over intervention, the principal alternative to the course followed by
western policy in the past year has come to be known as "lift and
strike"--lifting the arms embargo against the Sarajevo government and
striking Serbian forces with American airpower. There have been variations in
the views of the numerous adherents to this approach, with some suggesting that
Serbia proper be bombed immediately and others insisting that the first step ought
to be targeting gun emplacements surrounding Sarajevo, while the threat of
escalation to Serbia is held in reserve. Whatever their overall merits, the
various options recommended for the use of airpower have been relatively clear;
this is not true, however, of the "lift" portion of the strategy. How
and where the training of Bosnian Muslims would take place, who would supply
the arms, their method of delivery into Bosnia--these and other questions,
however critical, have remained generally obscure. This is true not only of
most commentaries in the media but also of the Clinton administration itself.
The Clinton plan called for air strikes in Bosnia proper and neither disavowed
nor threatened further aerial escalation. What it intended to do beyond lifting
the legal prohibition at the UN on shipments of arms to the Muslims, however,
remained unclear.
Whether
this initiative, the culmination of months of indecision on the part of the
incoming administration, was seriously meant cannot be known with assurance.
The deliberate manner in which the decision was reached, the pallid message
that Warren Christopher delivered on his "consultations" with
European allies, did not bespeak great conviction. It had the air of a
proposition uttered in an academic seminar, an opinion among conversationalists
in the liberal arts, that was to be weighed, sifted, analyzed, amended, and
indeed perhaps rejected if sufficiently serious flaws (admitted, of course, to
exist) might be found in it. Clinton's tactics resembled more than a little
those employed by Eisenhower during the Dien Bien Phu crisis of 1954, when the
president used the search for a consensus in Congress and among the allies as
the means of killing a plan of military intervention. Clinton appears to have
followed a similar tack in the Bosnian crisis, and may indeed (as a careful
student of Vietnam) have had the Eisenhower precedent in mind.
The
mysteries associated with this initiative are not exhausted by whether it was
seriously meant by Mr. Clinton. The most peculiar feature of "lift and
strike" was the disparity between the limited means that were proposed and
the stakes presumed to exist. This disparity has characterized most American
commentary on the crisis. Advocates of intervention have nearly always combined
a description of the crisis that recalled the 1930s with a fastidious aversion
to the use of American ground forces that recalled the 1970s. If this
aggression of the Serbs approached, in sheer evil, the worst crime of the
century, a rather more robust conclusion than "lift and strike" would
seem inexorably to follow. Yet, for nearly all commentators, and for the
Clinton administration itself, it did not follow.
In
assessing the plausibility of "lift and strike," it is necessary to
recur again to the objectives to which this two-pronged strategy would have
been married. The plan, or something like it, had been promised to the Muslims
in exchange for their grudging support of the Vance-Owen plan; the attempt to
change the balance of forces on the ground in Bosnia might therefore plausibly
be read as an attempt to provide the Sarajevo government with sufficient
military leverage to obtain an approximation of the territorial lines that had
been contemplated in that settlement. But since the Clinton administration had
itself made clear on coming into office that it considered Vance Owen seriously
defective, on the grounds that it rewarded aggression, and since the
Izetbegovic government clearly adhered to the same opinion, it seems fair to
infer that the plan of intervention, if such it can be called, anticipated a
change in military possession well beyond that contemplated in the Vance-Owen
plan. The larger political objective of "restoring" Bosnia's
territorial integrity had not been formally abandoned, and there was strong
U.S. support for arraigning Serb leaders in war crimes trials. As the main
precedents for such action were the war crimes trials after World War II, which
were only made possible because of the complete defeat and occupation of
Germany and Japan, it was not implausible to give a rather expansive reading to
the war aims the United States might pursue.
How far
these objectives would have reached is unclear; what is clear is that the Serbs
would have seen this intervention as being highly injurious to their vital
interests and would have fought it tenaciously. This may appear a less than
surprising conclusion, but it had several important implications. That many of
the arms would have to pass through Croatia (which had by this time repudiated
its former uneasy alliance with the Muslims) was perhaps the least of the
difficulties. Of greater importance was that whatever areas chosen for the
receipt of arms and for training would have become highly significant military
targets. The plan would have ensured that enemy forces (probably the Croats as
well as the Serbs) had a vital interest in attacking, and no interest in
respecting, any safe haven in central Bosnia. Given their military dominance, a
race would likely have set in between the ability of the Serbs to render these
areas militarily untenable and the ability of the U.S. to prevent this result.
It was almost wholly implausible to believe that this result might be achieved
with airpower alone. Yet the use of U.S. ground forces to prevent this result,
not only in the Clinton plan but in most such plans, was precluded.
The
situation would have produced strong pressures on the United States to escalate
the air war. Attacks on Serbia itself, which a large number of the advocates of
intervention (though not the Clinton administration itself) had always
advocated, would almost inevitably have followed. Whether these attacks would
have reached Belgrade's infrastructure, as some proposed, is unclear; that this
was seriously suggested is a depressing commentary on the expedients to which
the mismatch between our high objectives and our unwillingness to expose
American forces seems regularly to lead. It does seem clear, in any case, that
carrying the air war into Serbia would not have ended the conflict, and that
its only effective function would have been to punish the Serbs.
Taken
together with the stated aims of policy, "lift and strike" promised
nothing so much as a further enlargement of the doughnut of Lebanonization,
narrowing the inner circle and extending the outer one, at potentially grave
cost to our real interest in European order.
IT IS A
STRIKING feature of the debate over the Balkan war that the critically
important issue of interest has only seldom been seriously addressed. When
interest has not simply been denied or subordinated to humanitarian claims, it
has more often than not been invoked in terms of universal principle. Thus it
has been contended by many urging America's intervention in the conflict that
the vital national interest at stake in Bosnia is nothing less than world
order. On this view, the principle forbidding aggression is the very basis of
world order and it requires that Serbia's aggression against Bosnia be
repelled. The debate over interest has been carried on between those
entertaining radically opposed positions, between those who find very little at
stake and those who find almost everything at stake, between those who do not
see beyond Bosnia and those who soar over the Balkans and Europe and see the
world. As a result, the critical middle ground of interest, Europe, has been
neglected.
The
inadequacy with which interest has been considered in the debate over Bosnia is
equally apparent in the unfolding of American policy. While the Bush Administration
did consistently oppose any partition of Bosnia, it made very little effort to
clarify the interests at stake in supporting Bosnia's territorial integrity. A
policy of encouraging the Muslims to resist any kind of feasible settlement
with the Serbs, which necessitated accepting a partition of some sort, was
attended by the refusal either to give the Muslims any active military support
or even to assist them in obtaining arms from abroad by ending the UN embargo
on arms.
The
Clinton administration came to office highly critical of its predecessor's
record, particularly the Bush Administration's failure to work toward lifting
the arms embargo. It did not appear to come to office with a clearer view of
the nation's interests in the Balkan war. Mr. Clinton's view of the conflict
had always been marked by a certain confusion. Intent as a candidate on helping
the Bosnians, he was also determined that we must not get involved in the
quagmire. This insistence that help must be given but involvement avoided has
persisted. On the eve of deciding upon the pursuit of a "lift and
strike" policy in Bosnia, in the spring of 1993, Mr. Clinton was still
determined that "The United States is not, should not, become involved as
a partisan in a war."
Given
this insistence upon altering the course of the conflict while standing aside
from it, of becoming involved while remaining withdrawn, the president's
failure to articulate the nation's interests consistently and persuasively in
the Balkan conflict is not surprising. Occasionally, Mr. Clinton has insisted
that our interest is strictly humanitarian. Taken by itself, however, it has
never been clear why this should constitute an interest sufficient to justify
American intervention, for if this is the basis the number of cases in which it
ought to be applied is very large indeed.
On only
one public occasion has the president given a considered statement of the
interests at stake in the Balkan conflict. Speaking before a World Bank
conference on May 7, 1993, Mr. Clinton declared:
The
Serbs' actions over the past year violate the principle that internationally
recognized borders must not be violated or altered by aggression from without.
Their actions threaten to widen the conflict and foster instability in other
parts of Europe in ways that could be exceedingly damaging. And their savage
and cynical ethnic cleansing offends the world's conscience and our standards
of behavior.
It does
not help in assessing the administration's position that this statement has
since been contradicted, and on more than one occasion, by Mr. Clinton's
secretary of state. While the president in the above quoted address stated that
the nation does have "fundamental interests" at stake in the Bosnian
conflict, his secretary of state has declared that the war "does not
involve our vital interests." The war in Bosnia, Mr. Warren Christopher
has explained, involves our "humanitarian concerns" only, not our
strategic interests. Indeed, having decided to distance themselves from the war
as a result of their failure to persuade the European allies to support a
"lift and strike" policy, both the president and the secretary of
state began to characterize Bosnia as a civil rather than an international
conflict. The change, though not consistently adhered to, was indicative of
what may yet prove to be the complete abandonment of a position to which the
president had so recently appeared firmly committed.
Mr.
Clinton may always reclaim the position he took in May. Having changed his
position in the past, he may change it again. If he does, it will be to embrace
a view that was flawed then and remains flawed today. It will not do to
identify America's interest in the Balkan conflict primarily with the
prevention of aggression. It will not do if only because the war did not arise
as a simple case of aggression and the endless repetition that it did will
neither make it true nor persuade a skeptical public. Even if that view of the
origins did gain more acceptance than might reasonably be expected, it still could
not be counted on to support the anticipated costs of military intervention. It
did not do so in the Persian Gulf, where the interest in oil was clear and
compelling, and it would not do so in Bosnia. Nor would humanitarian concerns
succeed where a world order interest had failed.
If
there is a vital American interest at stake in the Balkan war, it is to be
found not in world order but in European order. The great issue of foreign
policy Bosnia has raised--or at least should have raised--is that of our
interest and role in Europe, now that the Cold War is over. Earlier
circumstances were such as to make our interest apparent and compelling. A
Soviet dominated Europe, it was believed, would seriously endanger the security
and independence of the United States. It would do so by virtue of the immense
resources that a Soviet-dominated Europe would place at the disposal of a state
that insisted on seeing us as their enemy. Beyond these considerations, the
American interest in Europe extended to the preservation of a political and
economic order in which free institutions would flourish.
All
this ensured that whatever the differences we had with our European
allies--whether over extra-European issues, over burdensharing, over strategy
for meeting the Soviet threat, or even over what constituted the requisite
degree of loyalty to the alliance itself--would be overcome by the need that
each side of the Atlantic had for the other. In the phrase that was often used
to characterize the transatlantic relationship, Europe and the United States
shared a "community of fate," and although the phrase surely
overstated the nature of the bonds between the two sides of the Atlantic, it
also expressed a profound truth about a relationship of mutual dependency that
did exist. It may be recalled that only a decade ago, during the Euromissile
crisis, this truth was put to the test in circumstances that were seen by many
American and Europeans alike as heralding a serious crisis in the alliance,
even perhaps eventuating in its breakup. But the institution that was judged at
the time by not a few expert observers as having become an "empty
shell" survived and went on to play a significant role in the concluding
chapter of the cold war.
It is a
measure of the distance we have come in the very few years since the end of the
Cold War that an American secretary of state can refer to a war that may well
have serious consequences for Europe's stability as "a humanitarian crisis
a long way from home, in the middle of another continent." It is perhaps a
still more striking indication of the change in the relationship that formed
the principal pillar of the post World War II order that Mr. Christopher can
characterize America's role to date in the Balkan conflict as "proportionate
to what our responsibilities are" and to insist that "we can't do it
all." These statements, taken together with a corresponding pattern of
behavior, raise the question: is Bosnia a portent of a readiness to abandon a
once Eurocentric policy? And if it is, what is the rationale for so momentous a
change? Mr. Christopher has said, and the president apparently agrees, that the
Balkan war is primarily a European problem. But the evidence is abundant that
it is a European problem that has already had a damaging impact on the
credibility and integrity of the western alliance. It is also clear that the
image of the European Community has suffered greatly from its failure to
resolve satisfactorily the war being fought on its doorstep. Nor is it only the
collective impotence of the Community that must cause concern, for the Balkan
war has prompted the leading states of Europe to pursue separate and often
conflicting policies toward the war in a manner reminiscent of a past that few
wish to see revived.
Is an
American government now to remain largely indifferent to these and other
consequences of a failure to deal effectively and satisfactorily with the
Balkan conflict? To respond that the conflict is primarily a European problem
is to acknowledge that the possible consequences of failure do not engage our
interest or, at any rate, do not engage our interest sufficiently to warrant
committing ourselves militarily in a manner the American government has so far
refused to do. But if this is the case, then a momentous change has indeed
occurred in the nation's foreign policy. It has occurred not because our
resources are limited and we cannot impose our will everywhere, all of which is
certainly true, but because we have determined, consciously or unconsciously,
that what was once our most vital interest no longer merits even the modest
commitment (modest by former standards of the cold war) that Bosnia might
require. It no longer merits this commitment, not because the Europeans could
themselves satisfactorily resolve the problems of Bosnia if they had sufficient
will to do so, which is assuredly the case, but because we no longer have the
interest to do so. We are playing a game with Europe that we have played
before. During the cold war, that game was always won by Europe, since the
American interest in the security and independence of Europe in the end assured
Europe of victory. The game has apparently changed, however, and Europe may now
become the loser.
Europe
would become the loser at a critical juncture in its history. In the wake of a
bad outcome in the Balkans, one that left the door open to a wider conflict in
southeastern Europe and that was productive of still greater disarray in the
alliance, European stability would be put at risk. In the recriminations that
would inevitably ensue, the United States could not be expected to withdraw
entirely its military presence from Europe but its commitment to Europe would
almost assuredly be weakened. So too, the EC would be further weakened. Having
failed to act cooperatively and effectively, the major European states could be
expected to fashion their own separate policies to deal with future instability
in eastern and southeastern Europe. In these circumstances, the great problem
of order in a post-Cold War Europe would almost surely be exacerbated.
That
problem, at the heart of which is the question of how to accommodate German
power with the least amount of tension and instability, has yet to be squarely
addressed. It cannot be postponed indefinitely. Eventually, the most powerful
state in Europe will entertain pretensions to a role and status commensurate
with its power. In doing so, it is bound to stimulate the suspicions and unease
of a continent that has not forgotten the past. In the absence of the United
States, and of a still credible American military presence, how would Europe
deal with the problem of German power? Simply to pose the question is
tantamount to articulating the principal reason for maintaining the substance
of the American relationship of the past half century with Europe. The
withdrawal of America's power from and commitment to Europe would leave Germany
dominant yet insecure. Indeed, its very dominance might well prove to be the
principal source of its insecurity, for it could not fail to sense the fears
others would entertain of its dominant role. A familiar cycle might set in, one
that in the past has all too often resulted in an expansionist policy. That in
this instance the expansion would take an economic rather than a military
expression would not thereby render its consequences harmless. The fears of
others might still prove strong enough to generate a rising instability and to
deal a setback to European cooperation from which it would not recover.
It is
difficult to believe that the American government is now indifferent to these
prospects or that it is unmindful of the need to fit German power into a
European order in which the constraints of the cold war are no more. The
balancing of German power and the reassurance of Germany's neighbors cannot be
done without the continued commitment (and presence) of American power--a power
that in the course of balancing German power would also serve to reconcile
Europe to that power. Whether the United States is capable of playing this role
may well be questioned. It is not one particularly congenial to the nation's
diplomatic traditions. Nor does it accord with America's post World War II
experience in Europe. That the nation would have to play this complex and
difficult role at a time when its power in Europe will in any event be
declining can only add to the difficulty of the task. Still, this is the task
that will have to be addressed if America's interest in a stable European order
is to be maintained. Yet it is this interest that the Administration's response
to the conflict in the Balkans has placed in question. That response must raise
profound doubt about America's continued willingness and ability to remain the
ultimate guarantor of order in post-Cold War Europe.
It is
painfully clear that the war in Bosnia provides an inauspicious occasion for
reaffirming the continuity of the American interest in Europe. The
circumstances attending any American intervention in Bosnia are such as to hold
out the real possibility of failure, one that could prove disastrous for
America's presence and future role in Europe. But passivity must also entail a
price, and it is likely to be very high. Had American governments never deigned
to take serious note of Bosnia, the risks of inaction might have been kept
modest. This was not the course that was taken, however, and now the
consequences of our previous actions must be faced.
THE
GREAT DEFECT of American policy toward Bosnia has stemmed from the disjunction
between ends that were overly ambitious and means that were plainly inadequate
to the stated objectives. The alternative to the policy that was followed would
have been to combine an insistence on limited ends with a determination to
employ forcible means. An armed mediation conducted on the basis of a
territorial partition would have had several advantages over the course which
was followed. By tying the threatened use of force against the Serbs to limited
territorial objectives, it would have offered the Serbs terms that, though
falling well short of their maximal territorial aims, would nevertheless have
respected their vital interests and provided them with a strong incentive
toward reaching a compromise settlement. At the same time, it would have made
clear at the outset to the Muslims that Western support was conditional upon
their acceptance of the principle of partition, instead of encouraging the
delusion--for delusion it was--that outside intervention would achieve their
dream of establishing a unitary Bosnian state. Finally, had the American
position been framed in these terms, it would have provided the basis for a
unified and credible NATO strategy.
Whether
the general elements of such a strategy can be reconstituted today may well be
questioned. The disarray within the Western alliance, the contempt with which
the Serbs have learned to treat Western threats of intervention, and the
general deterioration of Muslim defenses have combined to produce a precarious
situation on the ground. Nevertheless, there are changes in the American position
that could make a real difference in the Bosnian end game, and that ought to be
vigorously pursued.
The
first is strong American support for the principle of territorial partition. No
useful purpose is served at this late date by repeating the undoubted truth
that partition sets a bad example and ought to be resisted wherever possible.
For the more relevant truth is that it is the worst of solutions except when it
is the only one. Given the ferocity of the fighting that has occurred, it is
against nature to expect that the three nations can restore at any time in the
near future the decent relations that once existed among them. With few
exceptions, they cannot live side-by-side and must be separated. Resistance to
partition also carries with it the signal disadvantage of weakening the
connection between the Bosnian Serbs and Croats and their co-religionists in
Belgrade and Zagreb. It would be far better from the standpoint of enforcing a
settlement if the Serb and Croat entities in Bosnia proposed under the
Serb-Croat partition plans were abolished and the territories they received in
a settlement absorbed by the mother states. Any workable settlement must rest
on the ability and willingness of Serbia and Croatia to rein in their own
extremists; the establishment of separate Serbian and Croatian states within
Bosnia works strongly against this criterion.
A
territorial settlement that left the Muslims at the mercy of their enemies
would evidently not constitute a satisfactory long-term solution. It should therefore
be a basic objective of Western diplomacy to get for the surviving remnant of
Bosnia as much territory as we can while providing it with credible military
guarantees. Although it is difficult to speculate on the form these boundaries
might take, a few guidelines are apparent. The Muslims ought to be accorded
between 30 and 35 percent of Bosnian territory in east central Bosnia and
Bihac, and they ought to be given Sarajevo. As the Serbs are a largely rural
population and worked nearly 60 percent of the land before the war, it is not
unreasonable, quite apart from their existing position of military dominance,
that they be given a larger territorial share. Nor ought they to be denied a
defensible corridor in the north linking Serb territories. By the same token,
however, the largely urban character of the Muslim population, together with
the success of the collective presidency in maintaining a multi-ethnic
coalition, gives the Izetbegovic government a strong claim to Sarajevo, whose
division would in any case provide a fertile ground for future controversy. On
the indispensable condition that the Izetbegovic government accepts a
territorial compromise, the United States and its allies should hold out for
these terms and should be prepared to go to war if the Serbs and Croats will
not agree to them. Such a threat cannot be confined to air strikes but must
include a willingness to introduce substantial NATO ground forces into central
Bosnia.
A
settlement among the parties obviously provides the most desirable outcome of
the Bosnian war. It should be that settlement at which U.S. diplomacy is
primarily aimed even while we accept war against Bosnia's Serbs (and possibly
against the Croats) as a possible outcome of our diplomatic posture. No such
settlement is likely to be reached, however, in the absence of a willingness on
the part of the Western powers to guarantee it. That such a settlement must
include a definitive territorial resolution of the Serbo-Croatian conflict and
the end of economic sanctions against Serbia seems clear. If it is to be
politically effective and morally tolerable, it must also make adequate
provision for the critical period of transition. It is in the first stages of a
partition that the dangers to human life are greatest; the beginning stages of
the agreement's implementation therefore require a large scale commitment of
allied forces. Once the lines have stabilized, this force might be drawn down
substantially, and its mission would change from ensuring the rescue,
protection, and resettlement of civilians to policing clear borders. People
would enjoy the right of going to, or staying in, the territories in which they
felt safest.
However
strong the case for American intervention, it remains a distressing fact that
the kind of intervention that is most justified is also the one the United
States seems least inclined to undertake. The most insistent advocates of
intervention want a war of righteous indignation to "restore Bosnia"
and punish the Serbs, a crusade that could only be carried out in defiance of
our NATO allies. It would be supremely ironic were such advocacy to badly
prejudice the possibility of containing the magnitude of the catastrophe
befalling the Muslims, but such has been the record thus far. The maximalists
on Bosnia imagine that their vehemence can do no harm if it pushes the
government forward with a plan of intervention; they neglect to consider that
the prospect of a war informed by maximalist aims inevitably provokes the
passionate opposition of states with whom--given the interests at stake--we
ought and need to act in concert. Their heated rhetoric retards, rather than
advances, the prospect of an intervention, and it has done so from the
beginning.
Clinton's policy, by contrast, works within the constraints set by allies who despise the maximalists and maximalists who despise the allies; hence both its desire to key its threats of force to the lowest common denominator--the continuation of the humanitarian aid missions--and its unwillingness to embrace the principle of partition. Unfortunately, a policy so constrained is likely to succeed only in perpetuating the war through another winter. The American government badly needs to break the mold it has set for itself and pledge its power to a definitive settlement. (1) Aleksa Djilas, "The Nation That Wasn't." The New Republic, September 21, 1992, p. 25. (2) See Misha Glenny, "What Is To Be Done?" The New York Revie of Books, May 27, 1993, pp. 14-15. (3) That a general right to self-determination (understood as conferring a right of secession to a majority within a well defined administrative unit) would be a formula for massive instability seems evident. The words of Robert Lansing, Woodrow Wilson's secretary of state, remain perhaps the most penetrating commentary on the consequences to which this presumed right would lead. "Fixity of national boundaries and of national allegiance, and political stability would disappear if this principle was uniformly applied." It was, he thought, a phrase "loaded with dynamite. It will raise hopes which can never be realized. It will, I fear, cost thousands of lives. In the end it is bound to be discredited, to be called the dream of an idealist who failed to realize the danger until too late to check those who attempt to put the principle in force." Robert Lansing, The Peace Negotiations: A Personal Narrative (Boston and New York, 192 1), pp. 96-98.
For the
clearest treatment of the right of secession in the Yugoslavian context, see
Richard F. Iglar, "The Constitutional Crisis in Yugoslavia and the
International Law of Self Determination: Slovenia's and Croatia's Right to
Secede," Boston College International and Comparative Law Review, Vol XV,
No. 1, 1992, pp. 213-39. For an older but still valuable refutation of a right
of secession, see Rupert Emerson, "Self-Determination," American
Journal of International Law, Vol. 65, April 1971, pp. 459-75. For a different
view, see Marc Weller, "The International Response to the Dissolution of
the Socialist Federal Republic of Yugoslavia," ibid, Vol. 86, July 1992,
pp. 569-607. (4) See Paul Lewis, "Two Leaders Propose Dividing Bosnia Into
Three Areas," New York Times, June 17, 1993. (5) That these terms
commanded impossibilities may be passed over as a minor point, but they
assuredly did so. If the JNA was to be withdrawn, it could not disarm the
irregular forces; if the arms embargo was continued on the Muslims, they could
not do so either. Who then was to do it?