THERE HE GOES AGAIN: THE ‘IT’S PREMATURE’ SCAM IS DESIGNED TO DEFER VOTE ON BOSNIA UNTIL IT’S TOO LATE

(Washington, D.C.): As the reasons mount for opposing
the Clinton Administration’s bid to put U.S. troops on the ground
in Bosnia, the White House is scrambling to find a way to
postpone congressional action. Last Sunday’s New York Times
reported that an indiscrete Administration official “said
today … the Administration wanted to time any vote to progress
in the peace talks in order to portray a vote against sending
American troops as tantamount to opposing a settlement.”

Toward this end, Clinton spokesmen are now asserting that it
is “premature” to hold a vote on the prospective
deployment. They argue that, since they are unable to answer virtually
any questions about the details of the mission, Congress
cannot possibly evaluate whether it is one worthy of support.

Where Have We Heard This Before?

In so doing, the Clinton team is employing a well-practiced
gambit: The same tactic has thus far successfully deferred
congressional efforts to oppose the also-dubious dispatch of U.S.
personnel to monitor the Golan Heights in the event that a
“peace agreement” is struck by Israel and Syria. As a
result, even though the planning for such a deployment is far
advanced and President Clinton is at least as committed to
undertake it as he is to placing American forces in Bosnia, there
have been no congressional hearings held on the matter nor any
resolutions of disapproval considered.

The “it’s premature” gambit has a predictable
result. It effectively forecloses Congress’ option to reject the
deployment at such time as the legislative branch is ultimately
permitted to address the question. In the words of two
distinguished friends of the Center for Security Policy — former
Assistant Secretary of Defense Richard Perle and former Under
Secretary of Defense Paul Wolfowitz — writing in the href=”index.jsp?section=papers&code=95-D_80at”>attached op.ed. article published in
today’s Washington Post, Congress is, at that juncture,
“confront[ed] with an impossible choice between a foolhardy
deployment and repudiation of an American president.”

If, on the other hand, Congress were permitted at the outset
to interpose its objections to such ill-advised uses of the U.S.
military, American negotiators and their foreign interlocutors
would be able — indeed, would be obliged — to devise
alternative arrangements.

Why A ‘No’ Vote on U.S. Troops in Bosnia is Justified
— and Needed Now

The following are among the compelling reasons why the United
States Congress should object to the use of American ground
forces in Bosnia — and why it should do so at once:

• Creating ‘sectors’ in Bosnia is a formula for its
  permanent partition, or worse. At the very least, it will
  legitimate a Russian presence in the Balkans and reward
  the ‘ethnic cleansers.’ The Bosnian Serbs have
  announced their intention to insist upon such
  arrangements not only for the Bosnian countryside, but
  also for Sarajevo. They have also stated that they will
  have to approve peacekeeping deployments and intend to
  accept only “Russian or other friendly troops”
  on Serb-controlled territory. The French, meanwhile,
  appear quite willing to legitimate in Bosnia a Russian
  presence in part of Bosnia reminiscent of Moscow’s Cold
  War occupation of Germany. According to today’s New
  York Times, a senior French official said yesterday:
  “The Russians are a great army. They command their
  troops. Give them a sector.”
• The presence of the Russians will make utterly
  problematic any Western effort to resist the Bosnian
  Serbs’ announced intention — formally reiterated just
  today — to secede and become part of a Greater
  Serbia. That step will not only vindicate the
  longstanding ambitions of the Serbian dictator and war
  criminal, Slobodan Milosevic, and his Bosnian proxies
  (e.g., Radovan Karadzic and Gen. Ratko Mladic). It will
  also invite Croatia to act on its counterpart agenda for
  territorial accessions at Bosnia’s expense.
• Once U.S. forces are committed to ground operations in
  Bosnia, they will either likely be there for a very long
  time or they will have to be withdrawn in haste and,
  probably, in ignominy. The Times also cites
  French Prime Minister Jacques Chirac as saying “it
  [is] impossible to set limits on how long a peace force
  would be in Bosnia. ‘We will be there for twenty
  years.'” Even if his estimate is off by a factor
  of three or four, such a deployment would represent a
  significant commitment of American combat forces for
  years to come.
• Alternatively, in the absence of a compelling and widely
  accepted basis for having American troops on the ground
  in Bosnia, it is predictable that U.S. casualties — for
  example, as a result of deliberate attacks, accidental
  incidents (e.g., hitting land mines) or hostage-taking —
  will prompt demands from the public and the Congress for
  rapid disengagement. Neither the NATO alliance nor the
  credibility of U.S. leadership outside of Europe will be
  served by such an outcome.
• The costs of this operation will be staggering,
  particularly if the United States is also saddled with a
  tithe of one-third of the $5-10 billion estimated to be
  required to “reconstruct” Bosnia.
  Conservative estimates of the outlay required to sustain
  a U.S. heavy armored division in Bosnia for a year are on
  the order of $1.5 billion. If an additional price of
  putting American troops into Bosnia turns out to be
  getting dunned for the costs of deploying 20,000 Russian
  forces, these costs will only grow.
• There is no way to integrate Russian troops
  into a NATO command structure without adulterating that
  structure — and advancing a long-standing Kremlin
  objective of mortally weakening the Atlantic Alliance.
  Yesterday’s summit meeting between Presidents Clinton and
  Yeltsin, in which they agreed in principle to incorporate
  Russian peacekeeping forces and to remand to their
  respective defense ministers the “details,”
  virtually assures that there will be a Russian
  presence in the Balkans on terms unsatisfactory to the
  U.S. Congress and NATO.
• As things stand now, American forces in Bosnia will be
  in the unenviable position of United States having
  simultaneously to appear as ‘honest brokers’ — with
  all that implies for moral equivalence between the
  aggressors and the victims of their aggression — and
  to provide arms and military training to the Bosnian
  government forces. The temptation will, of
  course, be to drop the latter mission, and with it any
  hope of providing a lasting basis for deterring further
  Serb (or, for that matter, Croatian) aggression in
  Bosnia.

The Bottom Line

As with the idea of deploying U.S. troops on the Golan
Heights, it is entirely possible to determine that the placement
of American “peacekeepers” in Bosnia is a bad idea —
even in the absence of particulars about how they will be
deployed, under whose command and control, the rules of
engagement, etc. The same can be said of a proposal to shoot
oneself in the leg; it does not matter much what caliber the
weapon is, whether the wound will be in the knee, or in the upper
or lower leg. It is still a lousy proposal.

Congress must not, therefore, accede to the Clinton
Administration’s insistence that the legislative branch await the
conclusion of negotiations before addressing the idea of a U.S.
deployment to Bosnia. It should act now to rule out such a
deployment. Since the Administration has indicated it would not
feel bound by a resolution of disapproval, the appropriate
vehicle would be to tie the “purse strings.” This could
be most readily accomplished by including in the Fiscal Year 1996
Defense appropriations bill (which was recently returned by the
House to conference committee) a prohibition of American combat
forces on the ground in Bosnia in the absence of explicit
congressional approval.