Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: WEDNESDAY, April 20, 1994 TAG: 9404200093
SECTION: NATL/INTL PAGE: A-1 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: By DONALD M. ROTHBERG ASSOCIATED PRESS
DATELINE: WASHINGTON LENGTH: Medium
Bosnian Serb challenges to the West in Gorazde and Sarajevo conform to an emerging pattern in the post-Cold War world.
For Americans, the reluctance to become more deeply involved hearkens back to the aftermath of Vietnam and even older isolationist impulses.
But the failure to find a way to deal with the Serbs is not uniquely American.
After all, no European nation has stepped forth and declared its willingness to force the Serbs to behave. Even the Russians suffered a diplomatic black eye from their latest mediation efforts.
``I would strongly recommend that the Serbian side no longer try the world community's patience,'' said Russian Foreign Minister Andrei Kozyrev.
In fact, the Serbs have tried the world's patience and gotten away with it for two years of savage ethnic fighting. Throughout that time, the world community has watched with horror and demanded an end to ethnic cleansing and the sieges of Muslim population centers in Bosnia.
The United Nations sent peacekeepers, but there was no peace to keep. More force was needed, and the United States took the lead in persuading NATO to put its air power at the call of the U.N.
Back in the Bush administration, U.S. officials made it clear they thought warfare in the former Yugoslavia was a European problem. But the downside of being the world's only superpower is that it becomes hard to avoid a leadership role.
``The United States cannot go over there unilaterally, send its forces in, and start fighting on the side of the Bosnian government,'' President Clinton told MTV on Tuesday, as he worked with advisers to come up with a way to put more pressure on Bosnian Serbs. ``I don't think that is the right thing to do.''
Once again the talk is of air power, which has become another way of saying that neither the United States nor its allies are willing to use ground troops to try to impose peace on Bosnia.
Is it a case of the limits of power?
Not at all, said former U.N. Ambassador Jeane Kirkpatrick.
``There isn't any question about limits of power,'' she said. ``There's just a question about limits of interest or limits of will.''
She said there was a failure of imagination in the inability of the West to see Serbian leader Slobodan Milosevic's desire to expand his conquests.
``This guy is not just interested in Bosnia,'' she said. ``This is a guy with large appetites.''
Kirkpatrick also argued there is a failure of empathy ``which defines the fate of the various victims as not really our business. We don't feel their pain and their loss.''
Arnold Kanter was the No. 3 official in the State Department during the Bush administration, which was even less willing to become involved in the former Yugoslavia than its successor.
``The difference between the Soviet Union and Bosnia is we knew the Soviet Union could threaten our vital interests, and so the stakes were really quite clear and we were prepared to run risks and lose lives,'' he said.
``Serbia is a pipsqueak compared to Russia. It's not that we don't know how to deal with them because they're weak. We don't know how to deal with them because no matter how weak they are, they can still exact a price, and we're uncertain how much we're prepared to pay because our stakes are so low.''
Former Defense Secretary James Schlesinger said part of the problem is inherent in the limits democracies face when trying to deal with a troubled world.
``Any foreign policy depends in this democracy on public support,'' he said. `` We keep forgetting that.''
Schlesinger was critical of suggestions that the way to pressure the Serbs was with more air strikes.
``One should not have air strikes to simply show unhappiness,'' he said. Air power alone wouldn't do the job without what he called ``follow up activities,'' which would mean ground forces.
Most important, he said, was that ``if you're not going to do anything, don't pretend to the other party that you are.''
by CNB