Why Clinton Must Save Bosnia

By Richard H. Curtiss

Recently a member of the Bosnian government asked an American correspondent when U.S. President Bill Clinton was born. "If he is a Gemini [born between May 21 and June 20], he might still be capable of changing his mind another time," the inquirer explained hopefully. In fact, it would not be necessary for Clinton to change his mind to save Bosnia—and American honor.

He need only act on his campaign statements criticizing then-President George Bush's inaction there, and the stirring declaration in his inaugural address last January that, "Our hopes, our hearts, our hands are with those on every continent who are building democracy and freedom."

Bosnia was the closest thing in Eastern Europe to a multi-cultural society on the American pattern. Its population was 44 percent Slavic Muslim, 31 percent Serb, 17 percent Croat and the remainder Jews, Gypsies and other minorities. They lived in mixed neighborhoods and apartment buildings. Intermarriage was common. Ethnically, the three major groups are the same, and all speak Serbo-Croatian.

It was the cancer of excessive nationalism that broke up the Yugoslavian federation, which consisted of six republics and two autonomous regions. The sickness did not start in Bosnia, where physical separation of the Orthodox Christian Serbs, Catholic Christian Croats, and the Slavic Sunni Muslims would be impossible without massive population transfers.

It originated in Serbia and then in Croatia and Slovenia, perhaps in reaction to the seizure by Serbian nationalist President Slobodan Milosevic of autonomous Kosovo in 1989 and the autonomous region of Vojvodina, with concomitant "ethnic cleansing" of Croats living there, in 1991. To Americans who blame Germany for the breakup of Yugoslavia, Germany responds that Serbia had been practicing ethnic cleansing in Croatia and seeking to stamp out Slovenian independence for six months before Germany recognized the two republics in December 1991.

The U.S. followed suit and bears special responsibility in the case of Bosnia, which it recognized as a separate republic, although that multi-cultural state did not have powerful European protectors like Serbia's Russia and France, and Croatia and Slovenia's Germany and Austria.

When Serbia began encouraging Bosnian Serb nationalist Radovan Karadzic to establish his breakaway "Srpska Republic" within Bosnia, and Croatia's extremist President Franjo Tudjman urged Bosnian Croat leader Mate Boban to seize as much of Bosnia as he could, the U.S. encouraged Bosnia's joint presidency, consisting of two Croats, two Muslims, two Serbs and one representative of the other minorities, to hold together. To this day there are members of all of these groups in the Bosnian government and fighting in its armed forces for their multi-cultural government.

President Clinton's instincts have been to honor U.S. commitments to the territorial integrity of Bosnia, to the United Nations Charter's ban on the acquisition of territory by force, and to a Bosnian society patterned on American multi-culturalism. He was skeptical from the beginning of the "Vance-Owen" plan, which rewarded the Serbs and Croats for assaulting the territorial integrity of Bosnia.

Clinton's own decision was to support Bosnia's plea for lifting of the U.N. arms embargo, which prevented only the Bosnian army, and not the Serbian and Croatian militias, from obtaining arms to defend itself. He was promised congressional support for this policy by Senate Minority Leader Bob Dole (R-KS) as well as members of his own party. Clinton also asked for NATO support for U.S.-led air strikes against Serb artillery shelling civilians in Bosnia and, if it became clear that Serbia was continuing to supply the assaults on Muslim areas in Bosnia, bombing of bridges linking the two countries and possibly Serbian military installations.

Motivating Milosevic

It was the assumption that such air strikes might begin within days that motivated Serbian President Milosevic to accept the Vance-Owen plan and to threaten to blockade the Bosnian Serbs when they rejected it. Opposition at home to Clinton's plans came from Chairman of the Joint Chiefs Colin Powell, an Army officer, but not from the U.S. Air Force command. Opposition to lifting the arms embargo came from British Prime Minister John Major, but not from his predecessor, Dame Margaret Thatcher. Opposition to the air strikes came from France and Russia, both historic Serbian allies, although Russian President Boris Yeltsin had promised in return for U.S. political support in Russia to support Clinton in Bosnia.

Daunted, Clinton and his secretary of state shelved (but did not renounce) their own plans and went along with the British/French plan to protect Muslims within six "safe havens," while, presumably, Serbs and Croats systematically slaughtered Muslims and each other throughout the rest of Bosnia. Now the Europeans are discussing abandonment of the Vance-Owen plan and letting the Serbs of Bosnia join Serbia, the Croats of Bosnia join Croatia, and the 44 percent who are Muslims keep two separate enclaves comprising about 10 percent of Bosnia's original area.

Warren Christopher's inability to organize U.S.-led international action to support the Bosnian Muslims has been a personal disaster. Asked by Los Angeles Times reporter Doyle McManus, "What happened to Warren Christopher's reputation in only four months?" the taciturn secretary of state responded with one word: "Bosnia. "

Still Time to Recover

There still is time, however, for Christopher, and his boss, to recover. The president has not yet embraced Europe's 1993 version of a Munich pact to sell out Bosnia. "My preference was for a multilateral state in Bosnia, but if the parties, including the Bosnian government, agree, genuinely and honestly agree, to a different solution, the United States would have to look at it seriously," Clinton said on June 17.

The Bosnian government is not going to agree to a suicide pact, and is backed by the Islamic world and much public and media opinion in Europe and the United States. Meanwhile, whatever Bosnia does, the Serbs will go right on seizing Muslim villages and towns. According to George Kenney, the State Department desk officer for Yugoslavia who resigned in disgust at U.S. policy in August 1992, in the absence of serious international intervention, the full-scale war fought in 1991 and 1992 between Serbia and Croatia also probably will resume this summer.

Polls show that Americans would support lifting the arms blockade and U.S. air strikes, so long as they were part of an international effort. If President Clinton is perceived as wobbly on foreign affairs and oblivious to the catastrophic effects of a Bosnian surrender on the rule of law and the prospects of peace with justice in the world, he could reverse this by matching his future actions to his past words. His presidency, and U.S. honor, depend on it.