Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: WEDNESDAY, May 5, 1993 TAG: 9305050292
SECTION: EDITORIAL PAGE: A11 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: ARYEH NEIER
DATELINE: LENGTH: Medium
As a consequence, they were able to persuade mediators Cyrus Vance and Lord David Owen again and again to predict that success was around the corner. In that manner, they enlisted Vance and Owen to argue at length against intervention. This got the Serbs past moments when it appeared that world anger would finally boil over and lead to military strikes.
The fact that on Sunday the Bosnian Serb leader, Radovan Karadzic, finally signed the Vance-Owen peace plan indicates that he at least recognizes that the string has finally run out. The world has had enough of the detention camps, the torture, the rapes, the summary executions, the destruction of Cerska, the devastation of Srebrenica and the continued bombardment of civilians in Gorazde, Sepa, Tuzla, Bihac and, of course, Sarajevo.
Some of the militia leaders who dominate the Bosnian Serb parliament would plainly like to continue killing non-Serbs for a while longer. And though they are greedy for more than they get under the Vance-Owen plan, it could be that they will ratify their leader's decision.
The peace plan is, of course, deeply flawed in accepting cantonization along ethnic-religious lines. Also, if it is adopted, implementing it will be a formidable task. The most difficult part would be creating sufficient security in areas supposedly reserved for Bosnian Muslims - but overrun by Serb and Croat forces - to persuade the hundreds of thousands of refugees to attempt to return to their pillaged communities.
Yet with all its faults, the Vance-Owen plan has long seemed the least bad of the possible alternatives.
However, if the Bosnian Serb parliament refuses to accept the plan, this time the world must act. It would be better by far if military intervention was approved by the U.N. Security Council. But if that is blocked by a Russian or Chinese veto, or in some other way, the United States should signify its willingness to act on its own. Such other countries as would follow Washington's lead - and there would be many that would respond to our leadership - should be invited to assist.
Establishing criteria for military intervention in foreign conflicts is, of course, very difficult. In the post-Cold War era, in which little that happens in remote parts of the world can be said to threaten directly U.S. security interests (except, perhaps, as President Bush contended, the interruption by Iraq of Kuwaiti oil supplies), the occasions to use armed force should be few and far between.
Though moral grounds for the use of force could be found in many parts of the world, there are also many good reasons not to intervene, including the risk of making a bad situation worse. Yet there is one compelling basis for the use of military might, at least when all else has failed as it has so far in Bosnia, that seems to me to override all the factors that ordinarily should tip the balance in favor of forbearance. That is genocide.
The United States, like most governments of the world, is a party to the 1951 Convention on Genocide, defined as the crime of killing a people in whole or in part on racial, religious or ethnic grounds. Article I of the convention provides that genocide is "a crime under international law which they [that is, the governments that are parties to the convention] undertake to prevent and to punish."
The affirmative obligation to act reflects the consensus of the nations of the world after the Holocaust that genocide is the gravest crime known to humankind. Having failed to prevent or punish genocide by other means, military intervention is all that is left.
The fact that other governments that are also parties to the Genocide Convention have also failed in their duty to prevent and punish genocide is a sad commentary on the lack of resoluteness of the international community in upholding its solemn commitments.
Yet the dereliction of others does not relieve the only remaining superpower of its responsibilities. The United States, which can act speedily and decisively to stop genocide, has at least a duty to demonstrate leadership by trying.
This is not to say that President Clinton should act unilaterally. Both on constitutional grounds and because of the momentousness of the decision, one man acting alone should not be empowered to make war. The president should call on Congress to authorize military action. If the Bosnian Serbs' parliament does not accept peace and if their forces have not halted all their attacks by the time the president obtains the requisite approval from Congress, it will be time to use force to stop genocide.
by CNB