Our Bite Must Equal Our Bark

There is a curious aspect to the debate about sending U.S. troops to Bosnia. Members of Congress opposed to helping carry out the Dayton peace agreement are some of the same people who added $7 billion to President Clinton’s defense budget. They want to maintain the largest, most powerful military force on earth. But what for?

The Soviet challenge is no more. And those opposed to the Bosnian deployment are effectively saying that we must take no risks with our military in meeting the new challenge after the Cold War: the ethnic conflicts that are the greatest menace to peace today.

Why, then, should we have such enormous, costly armed forces? Why do we want a defense establishment without a role?

To notice this anomaly is to understand that much more than the fate of Bosnia hangs on the current debate. What Congress does will decide whether the United States and its European allies have an effective way to maintain peace and security in the post-Cold War world.

The mechanism that worked for nearly half a century was the North Atlantic Alliance. Resting fundamentally on American strength and leadership, it held Western Europe together to face down any Soviet threat.

Now NATO is taking on a new role in Bosnia: policing the resolution of an ethnic conflict that threatens the peace of Europe. NATO military leaders have responded to that challenge with impressive speed, producing detailed plans that have won the approval of a skeptical Pentagon.

But everything depends on American leadership. Here is a peace agreement made possible by American-led NATO air strikes and American diplomacy, one that all parties want American forces to help carry out. If the United States were to walk away now from its own creation, the peace agreement for Bosnia would be dead. So would NATO. All the world would question American leadership.

In short, the consequences of saying no would be stark. No serious person on either side of the congressional debate doubts that.

One question often asked about the Dayton agreements is how the United States can help keep the peace and at the same time be committed to the arming and training of the Bosnian army so it can, in the future, hold its own against Bosnian Serb forces. It is a fair question, and an important one, but the United States went far in Dayton to answer it.

Annex 1-B, signed in Dayton, calls for fixed ratios of arms among the parties. To achieve them, it provides for a build-down of weapons by those who have a great many now and a buildup of the undersupplied: the Bosnian army.

The baseline is the present “determined holdings” of the remnant Yugoslavia, made up mostly of Serbia. Under the plan, this well-armed force will be cut to 75 percent of its existing baseline. Croatia will be entitled to 30 percent of the baseline, the Bosnian Federation 20 percent and the Bosnian Serbs 10 percent.

Those ratios will require substantial upgrading of the Bosnian army, especially in heavy weapons. Plans are for the weapons and training to come from elsewhere than the United States. But the Bosnians will get the arms that their supporters in this country, notably Sen. Bob Dole, have wanted for years.

The aim of the build-down, buildup strategy in Annex 1-B is to create a balance of military power in Bosnia. Secretary of Defense William Perry said we were determined to reach that objective even if the over-armed parties do not reduce their weapons: We and other countries would see that “the imbalance is corrected” by supplying the Bosnian army.

The commitment to a balance of forces on the ground is also an answer to the question of what our exit strategy is. When the NATO forces pull out in about a year, the Serbs would not be in a position to resume their aggression.

That the Dayton agreement will really turn Bosnia away from hatred is only a hope. But the undoubted reality is that the snipers have stopped killing children, the guns stopped destroying churches and homes. The guns will stay silent if America plays its part.

The outcome of this debate will tell the world where America is going as a great power. It will tell us who we are.

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