Clinton Ready To Risk U.S. Lives In Bosnia U.S. Commits To Temporary Use Of Ground Forces From Wire Reports
Whenever President Clinton looks at Bosnia, his options range from bad to worse.
The least perilous choice, from Clinton’s standpoint, was the one he settled on Wednesday - a decision to help the U.N. peacekeeping force in Bosnia move to new positions or perhaps withdraw, even at the risk of putting American troops in harm’s way.
“We have obligations to our NATO allies,” the president told this year’s graduating class at the Air Force Academy in Colorado Springs, Colo., “and I do not believe we can leave them in the lurch. So I must carefully review any request involving a temporary use of our ground forces.”
This has already produced concern in Congress that the result would be a conflict from which the United States could not easily withdraw.
Sen. Bob Dole, a leading candidate for the Republican presidential nomination next year, issued a denunciation of the administration Wednesday, asserting that it was “nothing more than a policy of reinforcing failure.”
Other leading foreign-policy spokesmen in both parties also expressed strong doubts about Clinton’s apparent willingness to broaden the circumstances under which American troops might be committed.
“In general I’m very leery of putting American combat troops in Bosnia,” says Rep. Lee Hamilton of Indiana, the ranking Democrat on the House International Relations Committee. His constituents, he says, tell him this: “Stay out of Bosnia.”
Clinton’s risks have been increased by recent actions of the Bosnian Serbs. Their forces already hold more than 370 U.N. troops hostage, and could force the U.N. and American troops to give up their assigned roles as referees to become combatants.
And as the thinly spread U.N. force concentrates into more defensible positions, it may be forced to stop protecting some Muslim enclaves, leaving them more vulnerable to Serb attacks.
But for Clinton, the alternative to offering American military help was even grimmer: Had he not offered assistance, the White House would have broken faith with U.S. allies that have already contributed troops to the U.N. force, and perhaps given the U.N. troops no choice but to withdraw. Such action, Clinton said Wednesday, could bring “an even worse humanitarian disaster.”
In fact, none of the paths available to the United States and its European allies offers a quick and easy solution. Every approach is fraught with problems and large risks.
Here is an overview of pros and cons of the unpleasant Bosnian policy alternatives:
Walk away and let the Bosnians fight their own war - Nearly four years ago, the United Nations imposed an arms embargo against Yugoslavia and its former republics. It worked at stopping the Muslim-led Bosnian government from building up an arsenal, but it didn’t stop Bosnian Serbs from securing arms from their Serb allies in Yugoslavia.
Supporters of the Bosnian government on Capitol Hill - chief among them Dole - are pushing to have the United States lift the arms embargo, even it means acting alone and going against the wishes of the United Nations.
The Senate Majority Leader has introduced a bill to force the president to unilaterally lift the embargo - legislation that Clinton would likely veto.
The Dole bill is gaining support among lawmakers who are frustrated by the intractable nature of the Bosnian conflict and want to level the playing field so the two sides can settle the score on their own.
But critics warn of the consequences.
France and Britain have put the United States on notice that they would pull out their peacekeepers from the region if Washington violated the ban on arms sales to the Bosnian government.
If that happened, the United States would have to follow through on its commitment to send up to 25,000 troops to aid in the withdrawal of U.N. peacekeepers.
U.S. troops, meanwhile, might find themselves caught in the crossfire between Bosnian Serbs and newly armed Bosnian government troops. “Then we’re in the war big time,” said Rep. Hamilton, a strong critic of lifting the embargo.
Send in real troops to replace the peacekeepers - Military strategists follow the axiom that diplomacy is most effective when it’s backed by a show of brute strength.
But U.N. peacekeepers are armed only with pistols. Although NATO is providing air cover for the U.N. mission, U.N. leaders have been reluctant to call for airstrikes. When they did last week, Bosnian Serbs retaliated by taking U.N. hostages and stepping up their shelling of U.N.-protected “safe havens.”
Now some Republican lawmakers - including presidential candidates Richard Lugar and Phil Gramm - are pushing for a total withdrawal of U.N. peacekeepers. Eighteen nations have sent a total of 22,000 peacekeepers to Bosnia as part of the U.N. Protection Force (UNPROFOR).
“For the moment all UNPROFOR people are in danger,” Lugar said. “They’re being used as human shields by all the parties. … They are simply defenseless under these conditions.”
Lugar said it is time to send in a “robust” NATO contingent of 60,000 to 70,000 troops - about one-third of whom would be American troops.
The Bosnian Serbs, who maintain a ragtag militia of 60,000 men, have rebuffed all attempts at a negotiated settlement. Lugar said the NATO forces could change that. “We’re going to have to send enough people to secure the region and then from that position of strength we can conduct negotiations,” he said.
But are Americans ready to see U.S. troops killed in action in Bosnia?
Let the Europeans wrestle with the problem - In many ways, it’s too late for that.
Former President Bush tried to treat the conflict in Bosnia as a European problem when fighting erupted in 1992, following the secession of Bosnia-Herzegovina from Yugoslavia. The Bush administration viewed the ethnic conflict between Serbs, Croats and Muslims as a humanitarian crisis, but left the responsibility for settling the problem to the Europeans.
But in August 1992, presidential candidate Bill Clinton criticized Bush for his lack of resolve to halt the “ethnic cleansing” by Bosnian Serbs. He called for airstrikes against Bosnian Serb gunners, as well as a lifting of the arms embargo against the Bosnian government.
To try to retreat from the situation now would not only be politically embarrassing for Clinton, but threatening to the very stability of the United Nations and NATO.
Besides the moral obligation to stop the atrocities in Bosnia, the United States can’t afford to lose the cooperation of European allies on other matters of shared security.
Stay the peacekeeping course as much as possible - This, ultimately, is how the United States and its allies want to go in Bosnia.
The so-called Contact Group of nations trying to negotiate an end to the conflict - the United States, Britain, France, Germany and Russia - is doing whatever it takes to keep the U.N. mission in Bosnia alive. The options are simply too threatening or problematic.
To the relief of the Clinton administration, France and Britain, which have the most peacekeepers in Bosnia, will keep those forces in place and have sent reinforcements to the region.
U.S. negotiators, meanwhile, continue to work on a diplomatic solution. Their strategy is to increase pressure on the Bosnian Serbs by cutting them off from their Serb allies in Yugoslavia.
An American envoy, Robert Frasure, met Wednesday in Belgrade, Yugoslavia, with Serbian President Slobodan Milosevic. Frasure is trying to get Milosevic to recognize Bosnia in exchange for a suspension of the U.S. trade embargo. The recognition would not immediately end the war in Bosnia, but it would put pressure on rebel Bosnian Serb leaders.
Some observers, however, fear that the U.N. mission is endangered. Bosnian Serb leaders are treating U.N. peacekeepers as enemies and reneging on all agreements to allow them to perform humanitarian functions in the region.
“We’ve crossed the Rubicon,” said a European diplomat who follows U.S. policy on Bosnia. “The U.N. operation no longer can continue in the form it has for the last three years.”
ILLUSTRATION: Graphics: Tough choices in Bosnia