Bosnia: Before We Send in Peacemakers

by Richard Perle and Paul Wolfowitz
The Washington Post, October 24, 1995

Recent administration talking points on the decision
to send American troops to Bosnia were curiously
incomplete: The section entitled “What are the
objectives?” was blank. Sections outlining the
number of troops to be sent, the command arrangements and
the duration of the deployment were complete, those
issues apparently settled.

Logically, one would expect the objectives of a
military deployment to be clearly defined first. But
there is little logic, and less clarity, in
administration thinking about Bosnia.

If the president has his way, 20,000 American
soldiers will be sent to Bosnia on a mission that has not
yet been defined, to implement an agreement that does not
yet exist.

They might go to support a “peace”
arrangement that is stable and lasting, one that provides
a multi-ethnic Bosnia with boundaries the Bosnians
themselves can defend. But the agreement now being worked
out is far more likely to be unstable and short-lived,
leaving Bosnia a Muslim ghetto with indefensible borders.
Secretary of State Warren Christopher says our boys will
return home within a year, but he doesn’t say how they
might be safely withdrawn without risking the collapse of
any agreement they are sent to Bosnia to protect.

Without knowing the details of the agreement American
troops would be sent to enforce, neither the president
nor Congress can judge whether sending them is foolish or
wise, whether the benefits outweigh the risks. Sometimes,
peacekeeping missions are prudent and wise, as in the
case of the U.S. presence in Sinai. But what makes that
mission prudent — and fundamentally different from
Bosnia — is that both Israel and Egypt want a stable
peace and welcome U.S. monitors, the terms of the
agreement are clear and, most of all, the agreement is
enforced fundamentally by a stable balance between the
parties, not by American troops.

In Bosnia, at least one side will likely seek to gain
advantages by violating an agreement that will be neither
clear nor self-enforcing. The continuing military
imbalance virtually guarantees that. There are limits to
how far peacekeeping can go in patching together an
agreement that is otherwise unable to stand on its own.
The record in Bosnia thus far should give us pause.
American forces could well find themselves the targets of
dissatisfied parties, possibly on all sides — a far cry
from the Sinai mission and ominously like the ill-defined
mission in Lebanon in 1982.

There has been significant progress in Bosnia in the
past several weeks. But it is NATO air power, not
peacekeepers, and, more important, the effectiveness of
Croatian and Bosnian forces on the ground, that have been
the key to the progress that has brought this about.
Indeed, that progress has come not because of
peacekeepers but in spite of them.

This is no criticism of the peacekeepers themselves
who bravely risk their lives on a daily basis. But their
limited mission and rules of engagement have regularly
forced them to look on helplessly as the people they were
supposed to protect were slaughtered. They have been held
hostage to prevent the effective use of NATO air power,
which became possible only after they were deployed to
safer positions. Perhaps worst of all, concern for their
safety has been the major argument against providing the
Bosnians the means to defend themselves.

Vacillation and weakness have marked American policy
in Bosnia under both Bush and Clinton. We have
participated in a shameful embargo that kept Bosnia from
defending itself. We supported safe zones and no-fly
zones and then stood by while people in “safe”
zones were massacred, sometimes bombed by Serb planes
violating the no-fly zones. Those zones are being
violated now, even as we try to fashion a
“peace” that will require potential victims to
accept assurances that outside forces will protect them.

Before committing peacekeepers, whether NATO or
American, to Bosnia, the administration needs first to
achieve a fair, stable and uncoerced peace on the basis
of which it can then — and only then — define their
mission. There is still time for the administration to
develop a clear and workable plan before confronting
Congress with an impossible choice between a foolhardy
deployment and repudiation of an American president.

Most of all, the administration needs to clarify the
potentially contradictory relationship between
peacekeepers and the more effective underpinnings of a
stable agreement: the ability of the Bosnians to defend
themselves, backed up perhaps with the threat of NATO air
power. After more than 2 1/2 years of claiming to deplore
the embargo against Bosnia — while enforcing it all the
same — vague hints that it will be lifted with a peace
agreement are neither adequate nor convincing.

Congress has correctly made the Bosnians’ ability to
defend themselves a central concern of American policy.
This is the right time to press this issue. American
peacekeepers should not be sent to protect Bosnians who
continue to be rendered helpless by an arms embargo that
an ill-conceived peacekeeping arrangement might only
reinforce.