A U.S. SENATOR

If We Do Not Lift The Embargo, Who Will Protect the Safe Areas?

By Sen. Joseph Biden

(Text of Senator Biden's remarks in the Senate on July 25, 1995)

Madam President, as the Chair observed, many of my colleagues have commented on my passion on this issue. In the last two-and-a-half years I have probably risen in the Chamber a dozen times to speak on this issue. I know they do not mean to suggest otherwise, but I do not apologize for my passion on this issue.

In the 23 years I have been here, there is not another issue that has more upset me, angered me, frustrated me, and occasionally made me feel a sense of shame about what the West, what the democratic powers in the world, are allowing to happen.

I have on two occasions, with a year interval between, visited Bosnia, Croatia and Serbia. This does not make me qualified for anything other than explaining the depth of my concern and anger on this issue. I have been in and out on more than one occasion in Sarajevo and Tuzla and other safe areas. I have seen, as many have on television, and I personally have interviewed in the camps, people who literally, as a consequence of the cleansing, left—literally, not figuratively—their elderly mother on a frozen mountaintop to die because it would have slowed up the whole family to continue with her.

I, quite frankly, never thought that—as a young senator arriving here when I was 30 years old, with a traditional education both in undergraduate and graduate school with a focus on history—I would ever stand in the Chamber of the Senate and hear people refer to the policy of ethnic cleansing in anything other than an historical context. I never thought I would stand in this Chamber and read accounts and hear—not from senators but in the general discussions—about how the Bosnian government and the Bosnian people are trying to sucker us into getting involved.

I remember reading about people saying that the Jews in the Warsaw ghetto were trying to sucker us into a war against Germany. We have a way in this modern day to make the victim the aggressor. We make loose use of terms about this being a civil war.

The fact is that Bosnia is an independently recognized country—recognized by the United Nations and this country—that is being aggressively moved upon by the neighboring country of Serbia.

I hear people say in the media, in the councils of Europe, and even to some extent on the floor of the Senate that the Bosnian government and the Bosnian military are Muslim.

When I first raised this issue for my colleagues—and I say not with a sense of pride but with a sense of futility, that I believe I was the first to raise this issue with my colleagues several years ago—it was not a Muslim government. It was a multiethnic government.

In Sarajevo I met with the government that at the time was made up of over a third Bosnian Serbs, about 20 percent Croats, and the rest Muslims. All these people are Slavs. They are Croatian Slavs. They are Muslim Slavs. They are Serbian Slavs. It is not as if you read the press here and speak to Western leaders and it sounds as though we are talking about the government of Iran in Bosnia—or Muslim fundamentalism. All you have to do is walk through the markets and cafes. On one occasion when I was there, the bombing had ceased and the people were out. You saw Muslim men drinking liquor, and Muslim women, none of them wearing veils. It is not a fundamentalist Muslim society. These are people for whom, when the Ottoman Empire defeated them two different times, including the Hapsburg Empire, the deal was made. If you want[ed] to own property in what is now Bosnia, if you want[ed] to do business, you must be[come] a Muslim. So people converted. This is not a leftover from the Ottoman Empire. These are Slavs, all Slavic people. And here I am on the floor of the U.S. Senate defending and arguing for a resolution that was the same resolution that we passed in the last months of the Bush administration. We passed overwhelmingly a law urging the president to push to lift the arms embargo, and authorizing President Bush to be able to directly send $50 million worth of American military equipment to the Bosnian government. We passed that. That is the law today, the law. The president needs no authority to send weapons. We passed it.

I stand on the floor and listen to my colleagues talk about the fall of the safe areas. Do you know how those safe areas became safe areas? The contact group got together and said, "I will tell you what, we will make a deal with you Bosnians defending yourselves in Srebrenica and Zepa." The two that I mentioned already have fallen. "Here is the deal. You give us the weaponry you have, and we will tell the Serbs you are no longer a danger. And we will protect you. We will disarm you. We are not only going to stop arms from coming to you, but we are going to disarm you."

And the Bosnian government said OK, if that is what protects those folks. And then the United Nations understandably—and I will not take the time to explain why I think it is understandable—stood there and watched the Serbs come in and overrun the safe areas.

How many years on this floor have we heard, "If you lift the arms embargo, we are going to lose the safe areas"? You saw what the senator from Arizona spoke to on the floor last week. He held up a picture, I think from the New York Times , showing U.N. military blue-helmeted personnel sitting on their weaponry watching the Serbs in Srebrenica divide the women from the men, to send the women to rape camps, and take the able-bodied young men and send them off in another direction to prison camps, and then load everybody else up on a truck who was old and infirm and not suitable for rape or work and banish them to a third "safe area."

Then I hear today from the administration and others on this floor that what Senator Dole is proposing is not a policy. Let us review what the policy of the contact group, of which we are a part, has been. And I challenge anyone at all within hearing distance of this discussion to correct me if I am wrong or they think I am wrong. What is the policy of the contact group? One, negotiate a settlement. Two, in the meantime, guarantee the safe areas. That is the policy, beginning, middle, and end.

Now, let us examine it. When we joined the contact group—and we had not been a member of the contact group—we said we are joining because we had a commitment, made public, from the contact group members that if in fact the contact group arrived at what they believed to be an equitable settlement that they would present that settlement, which is essentially a division of Bosnia, to both the Bosnian government and the Serbs in Pale, and whoever rejected the contact group settlement would suffer the repercussions.

So guess what? We signed on. We came up with a proposal. I argued against it because it called for the partitioning of Bosnia, in effect, essentially 51-49. Presented to the Bosnian government, they accepted it. Let me remind all my friends, they accepted it. And the Serbs, meeting in Pale, their self-appointed "parliament" rejected it.

And what did we do? We suggested maybe we have to ease the arms embargo—ease the economic embargo on Belgrade to get Milosevic to put more pressure on Karadzic to accept. And then we said we are going to use airstrikes. Remember? That is what we said.

Well, obviously, the policy of a negotiated settlement is not on the Serb agenda. That is not part of what they are contemplating. And obviously we, the West and the contact group, did not fulfill our commitment. We reneged. And as they say in court, "Check the record." We reneged. Nothing bad happened, directly or indirectly, to the Serbs.

Then we are told—and I hear it time and time again—"You know, we cannot lift this embargo. Even if the Bosnian government had weapons, they would not know how to use them." Ladies and gentlemen of the Senate, the same Bosnian young men were in the same army as the Serb young men. There was universal conscription until the breakup of Yugoslavia. They are fully as capable. They need no help. They can do it themselves. They are not a bunch of folks who are not ready to fight. I heard someone say today—and because I am not sure whether it was intended to stay in the room or not, I will not mention the name—that he recently made a commencement speech at a major university, and his predecessors had made similar speeches at that university 20 years earlier and were greeted with signs saying "get out of Vietnam," and this particular person said, "The irony was I was greeted with signs saying 'get into Bosnia.'" How ironic. Cannot we learn our lesson?!!

The lesson is very different. Vietnamization was never a possibility because the Vietnamese people did not support it. Yet, unlike Vietnam, the Bosnian government said only one thing, "Do not send us your men. Do not come and fight for us. Let us fight for ourselves." All those of you who think you are Balkan scholars, read the literature. I heard two years ago on this floor, "We cannot do anything in Bosnia. They are the same forces, the Yugoslav forces, that held off the Germans." I might remind you most of that holding off was done by Bosnians in Bosnia. They were Yugoslavs, but it was in Bosnia. These tough fighters do not all live on the other side of the Drina River. The point is that these folks are fully capable, have a long history of both a will and a capability of defending themselves.

But what have we done in the name of peace? We have said, "If you defend yourselves, you will widen the war." Translated—we would rather 300,000 of your people get slaughtered in genocide than have the rest of us run the risk of a widening of the war.

The second part of the policy—protect the safe areas. Well, does that need to be spoken to? There will be no safe area, Madam President, within six months. That is the plan. That is how the West is going to save its conscience, because if we dally around enough, do not let them fight for themselves, at the end of the day there will be nothing to protect. We will say, "Oh, my God, my God, what an awful thing has happened." The secretary of state said today, "Many mistakes have been made. We would not do what we did again," in terms of policy.

Well, we are doing what we did again and again and again and again and again.

Madam President, I was told two years ago on this floor that airstrikes do not work; it does not make any sense. Yet, we are told today that the reason why we do not need this bill...is that in London they set down the law—bang. The contact group said, "If you, the Serbs, go at Gorazde, we will massively retaliate with airstrikes. It's going to work now." Do you not find that amazing? When asked, by the way, "Why Gorazde, why not Tuzla, too? Why not Bihac?? Why not Sarajevo?" "Well, we intend that is probably going to be covered," I think was the response.

Even a kid like me from Delaware can figure this one out. How did all of a sudden the threat of massive airstrikes take on a utility and capability it did not possess for the last two-and-a-half years? What has happened? Was there a revelation? Did the Lord come down and say, "Mend your ways. You can do it if you have the will?" Is that what happened? And if it did happen, Madam President, I respectfully ask the opponents of this amendment, why only Gorazde? Why there? Why nowhere else?

Madam President, this is not a policy. As I have said on this floor before with regard to arms control, we, the U.S. Congress, are not in a position nor were we institutionally designed to formulate foreign policy. But, Madam President, we know enough to know when one stinks. We know enough to know when one is recognized as a failure. We are institutionally constructed to be able to acknowledge that.

Madam President, the secretary of defense said to us today, "if you lift the arms embargo, three things will certainly happen." I wrote them down because I found them so fascinating.

First, the loss of the enclaves will occur. I assume that means if we do not lift the arms embargo, then there is at least a chance the enclaves will not be lost. Two are gone out of five now. What will keep the others from going?

Everybody understands the way this works, right? It goes like this. Since we did not sign onto the policy in the first place of putting the U.N. forces in there, and they went ahead and did that, then we, the United States, are now obliged to be there if the U.N. concludes that they should no longer be there.

Let us go through this again. The U.N. was placed in there when Western nations concluded that is what they should do. We said, "OK, if that is what you want to do, but we don't think that is going to work." Then, from the time I first introduced the lifting of the embargo two and a half years ago, I was told, "No, if you lift the embargo, the U.N. forces will leave and everybody will be slaughtered."

Then that took on a new twist in its maturation. Now it goes like this: "U.N. forces are sent in, we lift the embargo, U.N. forces go out, we then must go in because we have committed to take the U.N. forces out." Therefore—talk about the tautology—if you vote to lift the arms embargo, you are committing ground troops to fight in Bosnia. We are being "suckered in" was the phrase used today. Is that not amazing? How did we get there?

Had...the arms embargo been lifted, you would probably have a stalemate on the ground by now, and probably have a settlement. Obviously I cannot guarantee that, and we could have a wider Balkan war as well. Only history would be able to tell that, had we acted. But now Joe Lieberman, Joe Biden and Bob Dole—who are arguing against putting any American forces on the ground—are told that if we prevail, we are the reason America has to take over the war in Bosnia.

Madam President, the second thing the secretary said today was that, if we lift the embargo, we will damage the alliance. Tell me how you save this alliance? Tell me why, I say to any of the people up here, they should continue to spend $100 billion a year for NATO when there is no Soviet Union and they cannot even stop ethnic cleansing in their own back yard?

Third, I am told, they will send ground forces into Bosnia if we lift the embargo.

Madam President, I am tired of all of this, and I am sure you are tired of hearing me over the last couple of years repeat these arguments. But ask yourself the following question: If air power and the threat of it will work to save Gorazde, why only Gorazde?

Another argument is that the Bosnian army cannot fight, it would have to be trained and equipped. For example, the secretary of defense said today, if we lift the arms embargo, we will be in the position of going to war with our allies because we will be attempting to break the embargo through French lines to get in American tanks.

Whoa—this is ridiculous. Madam President, the same people who say these folks cannot fight are the same people who worried—on this floor and in the press two months ago—that the Bosnian government is at fault because of the gains they made in Bihac?. Remember? They were becoming too powerful. They beat the Serbs initially. All of a sudden the issue was that they are too powerful. This is going to make Milosevic mad. Milosevic is now going to cross the Drina River. But now we are told, if you lift the arms embargo, they cannot use the weapons anyway. Well, let us see, let us see.

I do not want American ground forces in Bosnia. I respectfully argue we would not even be talking about the possibility had we not signed on to a failed policy of putting UNPROFOR in there in the first place...we are told now that if we lift the arms embargo, all these terrible things are going to happen.

I ask my colleagues to ask themselves, if we do not lift the arms embargo, is anyone going to protect the safe areas? If we do not lift the arms embargo, is anyone going to protect the part of Bosnia that is not already occupied by the Serbs? If we do not lift the arms embargo, is the alliance going to be fixed up, right quick? If we do not lift the arms embargo, is the United Nations going to become a credible institution again in terms of peacekeeping?

If Members can answer yes to three of those four questions, do not lift the arms embargo. But if Members cannot answer yes to three of those four—and I think you cannot answer yes to any of them—then I respectfully suggest that the Senate majority leader and the senator from Connecticut are correct.

There is no more time, Madam President. Time does not work for these people. Time is not on their side. They will all be dead by the time the West decides to do anything at all about this problem.

I do not apologize for the passion. I do not even apologize for the time, but I do apologize to the people of Bosnia. I do apologize to the women in those rape camps. I do apologize to those men in concentration camps. I do apologize. For we are not to blame. But we have stood by—we, the world—and watched in the twilight moments of the 20th century, something that no one thought would ever or could ever happen again in Europe. It is happening now.

If we do not do anything now to help them fight for themselves, I ask, when are we going to do anything? I ask the rhetorical question, do you think we—we, being the West—would be doing this, do you think we would be as indecisive, do you think we would be as timid, do you think we would be putting a rapid deployment force in which has an express purpose to defend only the peacekeepers there, not the civilian population? Do you think we would be doing that if this was a Christian population? Maybe we would, Madam President, but I have a feeling the reason why the world has not responded in Europe is because they are Muslims—the same reason we did not respond in Europe—because they were Jews.

Sen. Joseph Biden is a Democratic senator from Delaware.