‘DRIVERS WANTED’: WILL REPUBLICAN CONGRESS RISE TO CLINTON’S CHALLENGE ON BOSNIA?

Precis: Concerns are mounting daily, in
Congress and elsewhere, about the nature and potential
costs of President Clinton’s Bosnia initiative. Leading
security policy practitioners today raised a number of
serious objections to the Dayton Deal. Clearly, before
the United States becomes any more implicated in this
flawed accord — a result that would inevitably arise
from the further, unauthorized deployment of American
troops to Bosnia — the Senate should promptly join the
House in barring such deployments without express
congressional approval.

(Washington, D.C.): Bill Clinton’s decision to send
upwards of 20,000 troops ⁽¹⁾
to Bosnia to “enforce” the peace agreement
brokered last week in Dayton may represent the defining
moment of his presidency. The response to that
decision, however, almost certainly will be the most
critical security policy challenge faced by the 104th
Congress.

Unfortunately, the Republican congressional
leadership will fail that challenge if, as it now appears
inclined to do, it accedes to the President’s commitment
of American forces to hazardous duty in Bosnia. That
would be the effect of the Congress either a) permitting
a fait accompli (i.e., the insertion of large
numbers of troops in Bosnia without express congressional
authorization) or b) belatedly adopting a resolution
designed simultaneously to “support the troops”
and provide a modicum of political cover if the mission
becomes a fiasco.

Influential Dissenters

Principals and distinguished friends of the Center
for Security Policy today provided a wealth of reasons to
be concerned about the Dayton Deal. Former Secretary
of Defense and Energy James Schlesinger told the
Senate Armed Services Committee: “The reality of the
post cold war world is that the United States has limited
political capital for foreign ventures. We should husband
that political capital for those matters that are of
vital interest to the United States.” He expressed
concern about several aspects of the actual operation,
including the following: “The likelihood of us
coming out intact is slim”; “the justifications
are not persuasive”; and “I am concerned that
there may be a mismatch of the forces and the
mission.”

Dr. Schlesinger went on to warn:

“With the[ir] heavy armor, our forces will be
road-bound down in the valleys…We will need to
reconstruct the transportation systems in the area to
accommodate [our] 60-ton tanks…Given the road-bound
nature of our forces, they will not be able to reach
beyond the first range of hills with their
direct-fire weapons.”

Dr. Schlesinger observes that this situation will
lead to a need to send out foot patrols up the mountains,
creating more risk to U.S. troops.

In a major address on the Senate floor today, Senator
Jon Kyl (R-AZ) — a long-time member of the Center
for Security Policy’s Board of Advisors and recipient of
its 1994 “Keeper of the Flame” award —
expressed his concerns about the Dayton Deal. He said, in
part:

“If this peace that has been negotiated is so
fragile…that the only thing between peace and war
is that of the 60,000 ground troops, and 20,000 have
to be Americans, then this is a peace which is bound
to fail. It is not a peace of the heart. It is not a
peace that has been committed to by the belligerents,
but rather a convenience that has probably been
forced upon the parties and is probably doomed to —
if not failure — at least a very rocky road, which
means a lot of casualties on the part of the
peacekeepers. And that is a situation we need to take
into account before we support the President’s
decision to send the troops…

“It is true, if the Congress turned its back
on the President at this point, there would be some
embarrassment to the United States. The question
we have to ask ourselves is: Is the risk of
casualties and is the precedent which is being set to
send those troops outweighed by some temporary
embarrassment to the United States?

“I submit at this point, at least I have
concluded that the answer to that is ‘No,’ that the
Congress has to make it clear to the President that
he cannot simply go around making premature
commitments without the advice and consent of the
Congress, commitments which some of us believe not to
be wise, and then justifying the support for that on
the basis that the commitment was made and,
therefore, cannot be questioned anymore.”

Other leading Senators, including Sens. Jim Inhofe
(R-OK), Hank Brown (R-CO) and Kay Bailey
Hutchison (R-TX) deserve credit for raising their
voices as well in strong opposition to the President’s
planned deployment. Sen. Inhofe, who recently returned
from a deeply disturbing fact-finding mission to Tuzla —
the prospective site for the American headquarters in
Bosnia, remarked in a statement issued after Mr.
Clinton’s address to the Nation last night:

“Once again, the President has treated
Congress poorly in this matter. He has essentially
committed the troops first and asked for Congress’
blessing second. Congress is not being asked to make
a judgment about the basic wisdom of sending troops,
but rather forced to consider the consequences of
breaking a commitment it had no part in making in the
first place.”

In the attached op.ed. articles published in today’s Wall
Street Journal by
former Under Secretary of Defense Paul Wolfowitz
and former Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense
Douglas Feith and in the Washington Times href=”index.jsp?section=papers&code=95-D_98at2″>by Center director Frank Gaffney,
additional arguments are made as to why the Congress must
not rubber-stamp the Dayton Deal. Amb. Wolfowitz went on
to note in his own appearance today before the Senate
Armed Services Committee:

“The peace agreement did not end the deep
enmity that led to this war, or quench the desire for
revenge that the war has unleashed…Neither arms
control measures, nor constitutional provisions, or
international police task forces will hold the
continuing sense of enmity or grievance in
check.”

The Bottom Line

Senate Majority Leader Robert Dole has signaled that
he wants to keep an open mind about the President’s
initiative. If Sen. Dole wishes to leave the issue
genuinely open, however, then he must ensure that Mr.
Clinton is prevented from putting thousands of American
troops on the ground in Bosnia, effectively mooting
congressional deliberations about supporting the
deployment of “peace enforcers.”

The obvious vehicle for accomplishing this would be
for the Senate to join the House in adopting legislation
that would prohibit the use of appropriated funds for the
deployment of U.S. forces in Bosnia. An early vote should
be scheduled on this legislation which was originally
sponsored by Rep. Joel Hefley (R-CO). Such a step
would allow the ultimate decision about whether to
authorize deployments to be held in abeyance, while
permitting an opportunity for a full airing of the
aforementioned and related concerns and a further
detailing of the nature of the mission, exit strategy,
risks, responsibilities, etc. If he genuinely wishes
to “support the troops” and create a
constitutionally and strategically sound basis for a
unified foreign policy approach, Sen. Dole must schedule
an early Senate vote on the Hefley legislation.

(1) This week’s edition of Defense
News reports that the numbers cited by the Clinton
Administration to describe the U.S. and NATO forces to be
deployed to Bosnia (20,000 and 60,000 respectively)
greatly understate the actual size of the military
commitment being contemplated. According to that
respected trade publication, these figures refer only to ground
combat personnel. The actual levels may be as high as
240,000 when associated logistic and other support
personnel are factored in.