Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: SUNDAY, August 8, 1993 TAG: 9309100374
SECTION: EDITORIAL PAGE: D3 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: JAMES Y. SIMMS
DATELINE: LENGTH: Long
In the United States, the debate over whether to intervene has two basic components
First, there is the humanitarian and moral claim that the Serbs are unjustified in their actions, and that the West has an obligaton to stop the killing, raping and ethnic cleansing. This argument is made by former United Nations Ambassador Jeanne Kirkpatrick, New York Times columnist Anthony Lewis, Secretary of State Warren Christopher and Sen. Joseph Biden, among others.
On the other hand, there are the real politicians, like former National Security Adviser Brent Scowcroft, retired Marine Gen. Bernard Trainor, retired Col. Harry Summers and the noted State Department expert on Europe, Lawrence Eagleberger. They argue that the United States should not intervene, even though it is a horrible situation, because it is not in our national interest; that we cannot do everything everywhere; and that Bosnia is a quagmire.
While I recognize the magnitude of the tragedy and the suffering occurring in the Balkans, I lean toward the realpolitik position. My study of history suggests that this is one of those horribly complex problems that we cannot do much about, and that defies a solution based on American concepts of right and wrong, or justice and injustice.
The humanitarian and moral-interventionist argument ignores the power of nationalism as a justification for killing, is unhistorical in its strident condemnation of ethnic cleansing, and denies the likelihood of complications that intervention would entail.
The dynamic appeal of nationalism is the primary factor that complicates the situation in the Balkans and prevents a resolution of the problem on humanitarian grounds. While nationalism may be passe in the United States and Western Europe, it is a powerful driving force in the Balkans. The Croats want to create their own state, the Slovenes theirs, and the Serbs want a Greater Serbia. What is important to note is that in their consciousness, national unification takes precedence over the sanctity of human life.
The Serbs in particular want control of their own destiny. Creation of an independent Serbia for all Serbs is a goal they have had for several hundred years. They have fought five wars in the past 100 years to achieve it, and have been prevented from achieving it due to the constant interference of the great powers.
The Croatian, Slovenian and Serbian desires for independent existence as nation-states invariably means warfare. In the history of human society, it is virtually a universal law that states are born or die in struggle, and we are witnessing the death of Yugoslavia and the birth of Greater Serbia, Slovenia and Croatia. It is true that Ukraine became independent of the USSR without bloodshed, but only because the Russians were not prepared to fight to keep control of that region.
Greater Serbia is coming into existence in the same way that France, England, Italy, Germany, Russia, Israel and the United States came into existence - through war. Even a little historical perspective would suggest that the struggle in the former state of Yugoslavia is pretty much what is to be expected: The peoples of the Balkans, like the peoples of the Middle East, Northern Ireland and South Africa are still willing to die and kill for their version of God and country.
Being an independent people, we Americans have the luxury of taking the high road of morality whereas the Bosnians are forced onto the low road of self-preservation.
People of good conscience are repelled, and rightly so, by the level of bloodshed this struggle for nationhood entails, and particularly by the fact that in Bosnia thousands of women and children are often the victims. Unfortunately, making war on the entire population has long been a revolting but commonplace fact of warfare.
In support of that statement, I would offer the following: 1) Sherman's march to the sea and Sheridan's ride through the valley, 2) the blockade of Germany during World War I, 3) the bombing of German and Japanese population centers in World War ll, the dropping of the atomic bomb ... When our existence has been at stake, we have made war on everything and everyone in sight. We did not take the moral high ground but did what was necessary to survive. Are the peoples of the Balkans doing any more or any less?
True, we did not make war on the civilian population of North Vietnam; perhaps that was a reason for our defeat. As Clausewitz, the great philosopher of war, has argued, the nature of war is slaughter; that is what makes it so ugly, and that is what is going on in Bosnia.
A concomitant to the struggle for national unity is the practice of ethnic cleansing, the forcible removal of one ethnic group from its homeland by another. In the context of historical perspective, two observations can be made.
First, although ethnic cleansing is to be deplored, it is not genocide per se and is not really comparable to the Holocaust; to make such a comparison belittles the magnitude and the horror of the Nazi policy of racial extermination. All the peoples of Bosnia - Serbs, Croats, and Muslims - are experiencing ethnic cleansing, even if the Serbs were initially responsible for the practice.
While physical displacement does cause anxiety and suffering, it is not physical elimination. If the undesired group moves, it will no longer be harmed, whereas the Nazis embarked on a program to destroy European Jewry altogether.
Given the centuries-old ethnic hatreds, perhaps the shifting of hated groups along ethnic lines might be less harmful in the long run than constant bloodshed. Loss of property is far more acceptable than loss of life, and it is possible to recover from such a misfortune as evidenced by the resettlement of millions of displaced persons after World War ll.
An ironic observation concerning ethnic cleansing is that many who condemn the practice are either hypocritical or have forgotten our own history. Perhaps those who so shrilly condemn ethnic cleansing have forgotten that official American policy, in conjunction with our allies, was to ``cleanse'' Eastern Europe of millions of Germans after Germany's defeat in World War ll. We also agreed to ``temporarily'' move the border of Germany westward to compensate the Poles for loss of territory in their eastern frontier to Russia. These agreements were worked out at the Big Three conferences at Yalta and Potsdam.
As a result, there are no Germans in the Sudetenland, Posen, Stettin and East Prussia, or in Hungary or Rumania. Something in the range of 6.5 million to 12 million Germans, more than the entire 4.4 million population of Bosnia, were ordered off their homelands and moved.
One might note that since that policy was implemented, there have been no ethnic German issues in Eastern Europe of the type that Hitler exploited. Clearly, we are quite willing to use ethnic cleansing when it is in our national interests. Unless members of the Clinton administration and Congress would advocate the return of German lands to their former owners, perhaps we should refrain from using ethnic cleansing as moral justification for intervention in Bosnia. And where are all the complaints about the treatment of the Palestinians?
Second, the study of Balkan history would also suggest that if U.N. and American ground forces were to intervene in Bosnia, we might well find ourselves in an open-ended quagmire.
One arrives at this conclusion based on the long history of guerilla warfare waged in the region against the Turks, prior to independence from Turkey, and against the Germans, between 1941 and 1944. Indeed, as two noted Balkan scholars have stated, during World War ll ``the most effective and active of all the partisan movements was that organized in Yugoslavia, where the terrain and the long tradition of guerrilla warfare contributed to the success of the action.''
Soon after the German conquest of Yugoslavia in April 1941 and the dismemberment of the country by the Nazis, two major partisan movements emerged: 1) the Chetniks, led by Drazha Mihailovich, a Serb, and 2) the communist-partisans, led by Josip Broz-Tito, a Croat. The situation became so confused in Yugoslavia that in essence a three-sided struggle emerged with Chetniks, communists and Germans all fighting one another.
It is worth noting in this respect that the name ``chetnik'' has an important traditional connotation referring to a 19th-century military unit that had fought the Turks. In 1941, Chetnik bands first appeared in Bosnia, due in large measure to attacks by the Ustashi terrorists forces of the pro-fascist puppet regime established in Croatia.
The history of the region also reveals how difficult it is to make a determination about who is right and wrong. The ethnic-racial-religious animosities that exist in the former Yugoslavia, as in the Balkans generally, have a long history and have been so exacerbated over the past two years that a settlement other than by force seems unlikely. The ethnic group that appears to be most in the wrong today, might well have been the side wronged 50 or 100 or 200 years ago.
For example, during World War ll, the fascist-puppet state of Croatia attempted to either exterminate or convert to Catholicism all Orthodox Serbs in its territory. The Croats also attacked the Jews. Muslims joined Croats in this extermination campaign so that, in addition to the guerrilla war of communists vs. Chetniks vs. Germans going on in Yugolsavia, a four-way religious war was also taking place - Catholic and Muslim vs. Orthodox and Jew.
Because of the complexities of the situation in the Balkans and especially in the former territory of Yugoslavia, a solution to the problem obviously will be very difficult. These people are tough, know what it means to suffer, and harbor centuries-old hatreds.
Intervention of the great powers to establish some sort of f+istatus quo ante o in Bosnia will not resolve those hatreds. One reason we still have major ethnic-religious problems in the Balkans is that the great powers have been imposing settlements on the region that satisfied them rather than dealing with the wishes of the indigenous people.
The tragedy in the Balkans is not that there is a clash between right and wrong, however much some people put most of the blame on the Serbs. What makes the carnage in the Balkans a tragedy is that is the clash between right vs. right - the right of a Croatian, Serbian or Muslim to live and die in dignity and peace.
It remains a fact that people still believe some things are worth dying for. As long at that view exists, human beings will resort to force to achieve their ends. All the king's airplanes and all the king's men will not be able to put Yugoslavia or Bosnia back together again.
\ James Y. Simms is professor of history at Hampden-Sydney College.
by CNB