President Clinton wanted air strikes against the Serbs around Sarajevo. Within days, he got them. Two strikes, one Serb target hit. And then the debacle. The Serbs shelled civilians in the Tuzla “safe area” and, to emphasize Western impotence, took several hundred United Nations troops hostage.
It was all utterly predictable. A year ago, NATO launched two pinprick air strikes on the Serbs near Gorazde. Result? Savage Serb attacks on the city, the shelling of two other “safe areas” and the abduction of UN soldiers.
Yet the administration appears taken by surprise by this latest, standard Serb response to NATO air strikes. It is one thing for an administration to have no strategic vision or even tactical acumen. Is it too much to ask that it think two days ahead?
With astonishing aimlessness, the administration has maneuvered itself into the worst possible situation in Bosnia: No objective, no policy, only halting escalation that leaves the initiative in the hands of the adversary.
The newest idea being pushed by the Clinton administration is to add more NATO troops and redeploy them throughout Bosnia in more concentrated and fortified positions. This is eerily reminiscent of the short-lived “enclave” strategy of the early Vietnam War (circa 1965) under which the U.S. would hold the major coastal cities while the South Vietnamese army would do the dirty work in the countryside. It was a total failure. The South Vietnamese could not do it. The U.S., faced with the alternative of defeat and withdrawal, was left with the job–and ended up in a hopeless search-and-destroy counter-insurgency war.
This is an administration that seems not to have asked itself what would follow an air strike. Has it asked itself what follows an enclave strategy?
Do the UN troops hunker down like the U.S. Marines in Beirut, waiting to be attacked? Or do they use the strong points as bases from which to attack the Serbs, in which case we are back to search-and-destroy counter-insurgency?
The air strikes themselves are another melancholy echo of Vietnam, a feckless use of power not to achieve any military objective but to “send a message.” But air strikes that amount to pinpricks send a message of reluctance, not resolve. Serb defiance shows that the message has been received loud and clear.
What should be our policy in Bosnia? We should start from first principles: We have no obligation to Bosnia, but we have serious obligations to our NATO allies. Whatever our sympathy for the Bosnian people we have no obligation, legal or moral, to underwrite the arbitrary borders of the Bosnian state–any more than we had an obligation to underwrite the borders of the Yugoslav state (a sovereign member of the UN at the time of its dissolution) when it was broken up by ethnic separatists exactly as Bosnia is today.
The only objective worth the risk of American ground troops is the evacuation of allied peacekeeping forces from Bosnia if their situation becomes untenable. Our allies, particularly those who fought with us in the Gulf, deserve it; NATO solidarity–NATO’s existence–depends on it.
Events of the last week prove that the allied situation in Bosnia has indeed become untenable. It is time to get our friends out once and for all. Instead, Clinton is encouraging the Europeans to sink deeper into the quagmire by increasing their numbers. And he is risking protracted U.S. ground operations by pledging American troops to assist the reinforcement and redeployment.
With the enclave strategy, the UN force in Bosnia officially graduates from peacekeeping to peacemaking. Peacekeeping is the interposition of neutral forces between parties who are interested in staying at peace (as in Cyprus or the Golan Heights). Peacemaking is the UN euphemism for taking sides in a raging conflict to impose terms of peace by force of arms. In ordinary parlance, this is known as warmaking.
With the enclave strategy, mission creep becomes inevitable. We become an active combatant in a war and in the worst possible circumstances: Fighting from scattered positions in a manner that no military planner would ever have designed.
With the enclave strategy, the war goes on, the Serbs are in place, our allies remain vulnerable–and American ground troops have been committed. We will not repeat Vietnam, however. Not even this administration is capable of such madness. Instead, what awaits us down the road is precipitous and humiliating withdrawal.
Of this president, it is too much to ask wisdom in foreign policy. But one can demand coherence. A president who cannot tell us what we are doing in Bosnia and why has no business sending American troops while he is trying to figure it out.