Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: SATURDAY, February 19, 1994 TAG: 9402240006
SECTION: EDITORIAL PAGE: A9 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE:
DATELINE: LENGTH: Medium
But the recent NATO ultimatum - to hit Serbs with air strikes unless they stop shelling Sarajevo - has proved a break from the past and, so far, a good thing. And not only because the Serbs have withdrawn some heavy artillery.
After a year of ignoble fits and starts, the NATO ultimatum has carried forward a delicate and difficult diplomatic maneuver: trying to convince Bosnian Serbs that the West really is prepared to use force, while trying to convince Bosnian Muslims that force won't in the end be used.
The dilemma is acute: To have an impact, the threat of force must be credible. But the use of force, while making us feel better, might make matters worse. And the possibility of force against the aggressor, if deemed real enough by the victims, only delays their acceptance of defeat.
The NATO ultimatum may be proving more effective than past threats not only because it is a NATO rather than a U.N. threat, and might actually be carried out. It also has been accompanied by a momentous change in U.S. policy.
The Clinton administration has been reluctant in the past to accept demands for ethnic partitioning of Bosnia because this would reward the Serbs' aggression and evil ethnic cleansing. Yet, if the West is not prepared to fight a war, which it clearly hasn't been, then the Muslims have lost in any case.
Clinton has quietly swallowed this bitter pill, and seems prepared to let the victims understand they must accept partition. The Muslims, ill-served thus far by an outraged but divided and disingenuous world community, will have to depend on these same ineffectual allies to win a negotiated settlement. No settlement will be just, but the one to insist on will leave Bosnians enough land to support what remains of their population, plus assured access to the Adriatic Sea.
It's the only remaining option short of escalating, fruitless war.
If NATO does have to resort to air strikes, so be it. The United States cannot keep threatening, then not act. Costs of inaction now would be far greater in the long run - for if a superpower isn't credible with its threats, it cannot use them cheaply to make other countries act the way it wants them to.
Air strikes might advance chances for a settlement by forcing the Serbs to make territorial concessions at the bargaining table.
But what if they only prompted Serbs to attack U.N. troops or food providers, or to viciously kill more Muslim civilians? What if they provoked greater involvement by the armies of Croatia and Serbia? Would America send more air strikes?
If, in the ensuing escalation, Sarajevo fell, Muslims faced extinction, and war was spreading across the Balkans, would we send in ground forces?
The stakes are high not just because of the human tragedy on the ground, or because a European boundary has been changed by force. The stakes are terribly high because ethnic cleansing is a poison that is now more likely to spread. The torture of Sarajevo is a particular affront to American ideals because it has been a city of multi-ethnic tolerance.
But the damage, alas, is done. The world hasn't yet set in place an effective instrument of collective security and international law, capable of early-warning preventive intervention. In this case, the mother rapers and child killers will be rewarded for their transgressions, with territory.
That reward was a given when Serbs and Croats began gobbling up Bosnia and the West initially failed to act. Some 200,000 deaths later, continued hope of a righteous military victory can only lead to the end of the Muslims - destroying them in order to save them.
If tragedy is inescapable, lives still can be spared. The remaining task is to pressure Serbs and Croats - in part by tightening economic screws and making them international pariahs - into offering the Bosnian government viable borders in a political settlement.
by CNB