Dividing Bosnia Is The Only Answer

Lost in the commotion over the Senate vote to lift the arms embargo against Bosnia, and President Clinton’s threat to veto such a move, is a small fact of some importance: Both the president’s policy and Congress’ policy duck the real issue in Bosnia and are formulas for continued war.

What are our real interests in Bosnia?

They are four: halting the killing, preventing the conflict from spreading, preventing the conflict from turning into a Christian-Muslim holy war and ensuring that it does not end in a way that permanently damages the United States’ ties with its European allies, NATO and Russia.

The only way to realize those objectives is for the United States and its allies to draw a map dividing Bosnia along the lines of the NATO-Russia Contact Group proposal - 50 percent Serb, 50 percent Muslim-Croat - and then to use all necessary force, including bombing Belgrade if necessary, to impose those cease-fire lines on all parties.

But, you might say, that would drag the United States into the war.

Hey, we’re already in the war. Last month, the United States and NATO committed to using their air power to defend a Muslim safe haven from further murderous Serbian attacks.

Well, if we are ready to use what Defense Secretary William Perry called “massive” air bombardments to defend an isolated Muslim safe haven, why not use such force to defend a ceasefire and a settlement map that could stop the killing altogether?

Usually, countries decide their war aims first and commit their military power second. Clinton has done just the reverse. The White House has decided to get involved militarily in Bosnia - but with no clearly defined plan for achieving America’s basic interests.

If we are going to enter this war, it should be only to end this war - and the only way to do that is through some form of partition.

Of course, it would be preferable to have a pluralistic, multiethnic Bosnian society and state where everyone lives together.

But the warring parties had that once. It was called Yugoslavia, and the Serbs, Muslims and Croats all helped to rip that state apart. That is why the only way to stabilize things now is to divide Bosnia among them.

But instead, the Clinton administration and Congress are posturing.

The administration doesn’t want to lift the arms embargo, but it also doesn’t want to impose any settlement because it fears that would involve the United States too deeply and because it knows it would mean accepting the very partition plans it has advised the Muslims for years to reject.

The Clinton administration wants more of the status quo because its only clear goal is to get through November 1996 without U.S. troops in Bosnia.

Congress, in contrast, just wants to get through the evening news. It wants to feel good about lifting the arms embargo but does not want to recognize that this will trigger a heavier Serbian onslaught against the Muslims, which they will be able to resist, in the short term, only with the help of direct Western military intervention - which is precisely the sort of deep involvement Congress actually is trying to avoid.

With the administration’s plan, the Muslims will lose slowly. With Congress’ plan, the Muslims will lose quickly.

Neither the administration nor Congress wants to recognize what the Europeans have - that the ideal, multiethnic, democratic Bosnia, if it ever were possible, cannot be achieved now.

The only way to achieve a pluralistic Bosnia would be to force the Serbs, Muslims and Croats to live together under one roof, which they demonstrably do not want to do. None of the parties right now is fighting to live together. Each is fighting for ethnic survival or independence.

We can lament the loss of a multiethnic, pluralistic Bosnia, but we cannot build it from the raw material at hand. The only sane thing left to do is to stop the killing and build the least bad peace in Bosnia we can - a peace in which Serbs, Croats and Muslims live apart until they can learn again to live together.

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