‘Coming Home to Roost’: Proliferating Crises In Southern Europe Eviscerate the Illusion of Post-Cold War ‘Stability’

(Washington, D.C.): It is becoming
ever more evident that the Balkans are
poised once again to ignite in spasms of
civil disorder and ethnic conflicts,
possibly setting off a broader
conflagration in Southern Europe and
exposing profound divisions in the
Atlantic alliance.

The Unraveling Dayton
Accords

In recent days, the Contact Group on
Bosnia pulled the plug on the scheduled
hand-off of the Brcko Corridor — the
narrow strip that connects the so-called
Republic of Srpska with Serbia proper —
to the Muslim-dominated Bosnian
government. This action was justified by
its advocates as a necessity, at least
temporarily, if the Bosnian Serbs are to
be prevented from resuming hostilities.
Unfortunately, this breach of
faith with the Bosnian Muslims is an
almost certain invitation to renewed
violence on their part.
Worse still, alliance discord over the
ultimate disposition of Brcko now places
U.S. forces in the cross-hairs as
arbitrators of the future of this
strategic corridor.

As it happens, Croat efforts to expel
Serbs from East Slavonia is driving some
of these refugees toward Brcko
— further exacerbating the situation at
the very moment that a announcement of
the problematic “resolution” of
this issue is imminent (15 February).

At the same time, the divided city of
Mostar is once again becoming a
flashpoint for Bosnian Muslim and
Croatian bloodletting. A series of
bombings in Mostar and, most recently, a
cold-blooded attack by armed Croats
against Muslim civilians participating in
a funeral ceremony there have lit the
fuse for a renewal of the highly
destructive fighting in this
once-beautiful city. These episodes have
also given lie to claims of a
Muslim-Croat federation upon which U.S.
policy has been largely predicated in
recent years.

The Croat attacks against
Muslims will probably resurface the
Iranian/mujahedeen involvement in Bosnia,
despite the Clinton Administration’s
systematic efforts to paper over this
natty strategic problem. In
fact, Iranian and proxy forces continue
to exercise considerable influence in the
Bosnian government — a direct
by-product, in part at least, of the
Clinton Administration’s secret decision
to allow Tehran to arm its Bosnian
co-religionists — despite official U.S.
pronouncements that such Iranian
involvement has been terminated. This
ongoing penetration of Sarajevo’s
security and other institutions by such
elements all but assures that the
conflict that will accompany the imminent
breakdown of the Clinton Administration’s
vaunted Dayton Accords will be a
dangerous one for targeted American
personnel in Bosnia.

Collapsing Pyramids in
Albania May Shake Others’ Foundations

The Albanian government is still
reeling from the effects of an escalating
scandal associated with a failed pyramid
scheme that has deprived a majority of
Albanian families of a part or all of
their life savings. The Center for
Security Policy has learned that other
confidence rackets are about to
exacerbate the social turmoil in Albania.
Should this upheaval intensify further,
that country’s desperate poverty and
rampant inflation may fuel an explosion
that crosses national boundaries.

Of particular concern is the
ever-volatile situation in the near-by
ethnic Albanian enclave of Kosovo in
Serbia. Albanian President Berisha is
responding to his domestic woes by
becoming more reckless in his conduct of
foreign affairs — notably with respect
to the Albanian population of Serbia’s
Kosovo province, a well-honed technique
for diverting attention from difficulties
at home. The Milosevic government has
found it difficult to resist the
temptation to brutalize the people of
Kosovo; fears that turmoil in Albania
could incite unrest among Serbia’s
Albanian minority could provide a pretext
for a new and bloody crack-down in
Kosovo.

Meltdown in Macedonia?

Like Albania, Macedonia has recently
been racked by its own pyramid schemes
and the resulting public protests. With
an already fragile economy, the country’s
finances could worsen quickly — possibly
leading to mass demonstrations and
political instability involving, among
others, the large ethnic Albanian
population in Macedonia. Between
Pan-Islamic pressures from Albania and
Pan-Orthodox pressures from Bulgaria,
Serbia and Greece, Macedonia is between
the proverbial rock and a hard place.

This could be particularly problematic
for the United States since the U.S. has
contributed a reinforced battalion to the
UNPREDEP deployment in Macedonia. Since
Russia is currently attempting to block
an extension of this mandate (which
expires in May), the Clinton
Administration seems inclined to offer
security assurances to the Macedonians on
a unilateral basis, if necessary,
notwithstanding the complete absence of a
plan for assuring stability there or for
extracting U.S. personnel.

Despoiled Bulgaria

Bulgaria’s economy, infrastructure and
resources have been subjected to a
systematic looting by its former
nomenklatura that is extreme even by the
standard of other kleptocracies of the
former Soviet empire. As with the
foregoing nations, these conditions make
Bulgaria ripe to join those in Europe’s
southern tier that are poised to
experience potentially violent
instability.

The Aegean Crisis

Finally, tensions between
Greece and Turkey are intensifying,
fanned by deliberately provocative
Russian arms sales to the Greek Cypriots
(in all likelihood, accompanied by
Russian “technical advisors”)
and to Greece, itself. As a
result, simmering antagonisms between
Athens and Ankara over territorial rights
in the Aegean and the Islamic-Orthodox
confrontations throughout the Balkans are
primed to produce conflict. Such an event
would have profound, if highly
unpredictable, implications for NATO (not
least, for any prospect of its expansion)
and the future course of “the Great
Game” now underway in the Caspian
Basin and Transcaucasus.

The Bottom Line

The Clinton Administration has
contributed to the potential for new
calamities now brewing in Southeastern
Europe by, to varying degrees: allowing
the aforementioned, incendiary conditions
to fester; missing numerous opportunities
for prophylactic action; encouraging
ill-advised initiatives (notably, the
Iran-Bosnia scandal); and squandering
U.S. prestige and influence on feckless
multilateral responses. Against the
backdrop of a serious succession crisis
in Zagreb, an as-yet-unresolved political
struggle in Belgrade and the increasingly
worrisome character of the Sarajevo
government — to say nothing of the
uncertainties surrounding Boris Yeltsin’s
hold on power — no one can be
sure how the dynamic developments
described above will play out.

Two things should be clear,
however: First, Bill Clinton’s
Rube Goldberg, gerry-built approach to
security policy is beginning to come
apart at the seams — with a
considerable, and growing, potential to
imperil U.S. forces and interests. A
comprehensive and urgent review must,
accordingly, be undertaken to reassess
the policies and deployments that will do
nothing to prevent the looming
catastrophes but may well implicate
the United States in them — if not
cause it to be held responsible for
creating them.

Second, a principal architect
of these deeply flawed policies has been
tapped by President Clinton to be the man
responsible for monitoring their success
or failure. It is deeply
disturbing, for example, that Anthony
Lake is making the point in courtesy
calls with Senators who will shortly
consider his nomination to become
Director of Central Intelligence that he
believes the policy of facilitating
Iranian penetration of Bosnia was a
correct one. So is his
continuing assertion that the Dayton
Accords have been successful and, indeed,
a model for post-Cold War management of
regional crises elsewhere.

Senators must satisfy
themselves that Mr. Lake can be relied
upon to provide honest, objective
documentation — even where so doing will
demonstrate the bankruptcy of policies he
was intimately involved in formulating.
In the absence of persuasive evidence to
that effect, and in the face of much
evidence to the contrary, Mr. Lake
is clearly the wrong man for the job.