Concealed hazards of implementation

At this writing, President Clinton is poised to dispatch the first of 20,000 U.S. troops to Bosnia. They will be sent to "implement" the so-called peace agreement that has been extorted from the parties to the conflict over nearly three weeks of marathon negotiations in Dayton, Ohio.

They will evidently go in defiance of a 243-171 vote in the House of Representatives last Friday on legislation barring such deployments in the absence of explicit congressional authorization.

In the days ahead, the serious shortcomings of this agreement will become clear. Among the problems likely to be a focus for legitimate criticism are: the agreement’s dire implications for the future of a multi-ethnic Sarajevo – to say nothing of a multi-ethnic Bosnia; the protection it affords war criminals, notably the chief perpetrator, Serbian President Slobodan Milosevic; its unconstructive ambiguity concerning the Bosnian government’s right to acquire the arms and military training necessary to provide for its own defense; the unfulfillable rights of refugees to return home or receive compensation; and the problematic command and control arrangements that will afford the Russians considerable opportunity to interfere with, if not to veto, NATO peacekeeping operations. Inevitably, the fact that tens of thousands of international peacekeepers cannot "implement" so inherently untenable an accord will manifest itself – probably with a U.S.-led retreat that will do grievous harm to America’s prestige and credibility.

If such dismal prospects take time to become evident, three recent developments that bear on the Bosnia problem are already evident indicators that something is, in the words of the children’s mind-teaser, "wrong with this picture":

Events in Haiti bear out the folly of deploying U.S. troops in non-emergency situations without congressional assent. [Recall that President Clinton insisted on invading Haiti and reinstalling Jean-Bertrand Aristide in the face of strenuous, bipartisan objections from Congress. Thanks largely to the efforts of former Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Colin Powell, Sen. Sam Nunn and former President Jimmy Carter, the invasion was effected virtually without bloodshed. It nonetheless occurred without congressional approval; indeed, it was timed to pre-empt scheduled votes on Capitol Hill that would almost certainly have disapproved of such military action on behalf of Mr. Aristide.]

In the wake of parliamentary elections characterized by widespread fraud and voting irregularities, President Aristide has apparently been emboldened to employ anew the techniques of mob violence and political coercion that he has used before to maintain control. In the past, such street violence has been employed by Mr. Aristide to preserve his hold on power. It should come as no surprise if, in the weeks leading up to the scheduled Dec. 17 presidential elections, mobs are heard demanding that the president seek re-election. Of course, to do so, Mr. Aristide would have to disregard both a constitutional prohibition against such a possibility and his repeated promises not to run again – centerpieces of the Clinton administration’s case that a U.S. intervention in Haiti would lead to democratic rule.

Whether Mr. Aristide actually stands for a rigged re-election or chooses to exercise effective control through a successor government dominated by his party, the bottom line is the same: The deployment of tens of thousands of U.S. troops and the infusion of many hundreds of millions of American tax-dollars into Haiti has not assured the functioning of democracy there, to say nothing of ensuring it will survive the scheduled withdrawal of U.S. troops from the island in March 1996. There is no reason to expect even more misguided unilateral executive branch actions regarding Bosnia to produce more felicitous results.

Earlier this month, the Joint Chiefs of Staff concluded that the Pentagon’s budget was underfunded by at least $50 billion over the next five years. At the levels planned by the Clinton administration, there will be serious shortfalls in investment or "recapitalization" needed to ensure that tomorrow’s military is equipped with modern, effective weapon systems. Unfortunately, the president refuses to seek additional resources for national defense from the Congress. In fact, he is poised to veto the fiscal 1996 defense appropriations bill in part on the grounds that it provides some $7 billion more than he requested. Instead, the administration is telling the armed services to take the needed funds away from other vital Pentagon requirements.

Among the early targets for such cannibalization appear to be programs for theater missile defense even though Mr. Clinton and Company have repeatedly described them to be top priority activities in the face of burgeoning ballistic missile proliferation. Matters can only be made vastly worse as the multibillion-dollar costs of a Bosnia peacekeeping operation have to be factored in.

Last Friday, an American serviceman was court-martialed for challenging the validity of an order that compelled him to serve a foreign power – the United Nations. Interestingly, until the Clinton administration started promulgating a Presidential Decision Directive embodying its notorious policy of "aggressive multilateralization," military personnel who had volunteered to defend the United States and its interests were never compelled against their will to defend the U.N. and its interests.

The Army’s prosecution of one of its medics, Spec. Michael New, however, marks an ominous development: By making a punitive example of him, the administration will probably inflame growing opposition within the military and among the population at large to its practice of subordinating U.S. personnel, assets and sovereignty to multilateral institutions. This sentiment can only be intensified by a debacle in Bosnia – even if it is administered primarily by a U.S.-led multinational alliance rather than by the United Nations.

In short, there is plenty wrong with the picture being painted by a president suddenly seized with the trappings of peace in Bosnia after three years of indifference and fecklessness in response to the conflict there. If the full dimensions of the multilateral-fiasco-in-the-making in Bosnia for the well-being, readiness and morale of the U.S. military, for U.S. interests and for the people of Bosnia may only be surmised at this point, it is just the gravity – not the odious nature – of the outcome that is in any doubt.