General Shilly-Shali

By WILLIAM SAFIRE
The New York Times, April 21, 1994

When a President is bereft of an organizing principle, policy is made by personalities. The
dominant person in national security affairs, especially regarding Bosnia, has been Gen. John
Shalikashvili, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs.

That was a surprise because “General Shali,” a refugee from Poland at age 8, is in no way
overbearing. He is a good soldier, well liked in the service and among European diplomats;
presiding over the drawdown of U.S. forces in Europe was widely thought to be his
career-capping job.

This artillery officer floated to the top partly because President Clinton did not want an Air
Force general — with a belief in the ability of air power to intervene decisively in the Balkans — to
be his principal military adviser.

Shali stepped into a vacuum. Anthony Lake, who gives hawkish speeches on Bosnia, does not
strongly influence the President; Secretary of State Christopher was burned by our European
allies and is twice shy; Defense Secretary Perry is inclined to defer to the Joint Chiefs.

According to readers of confidential cable traffic, General Shilly-Shali has long been the
foremost exponent of letting the Serbs get away with “force and fraud.” He thinks air power is
inapplicable, and only massive ground troop intervention, which he opposes on the non-military
grounds that it has no backing in the U.S., would stop the Serbs.

That hypercautious advice on air power from an artilleryman led to the continued humiliation of
the U.N., the exposure of NATO as impotent and the abdication of U.S. leadership.

For one brief moment, when Mr. Clinton appeared willing to bomb Serbian artillery around
Sarajevo, the Serbs backed off. But when General Shalikashvili and Secretary Perry all but invited
them into Gorazde, they struck again. Their fresh attack was feebly answered by “pinprick
bombing,” in Zbigniew Brzezinski’s phrase, which only encouraged them to take U.N. hostages,
shoot down a NATO plane with a surface-to-air missile and snatch back their escrowed weapons.

Now President Clinton is following the advice of the only White House voice capable of
challenging General Shilly-Shali: Stan Greenberg, the pollster, is reporting that the sight of a
nail-nibbling President amid pushmipullyu advisers is beginning to adversely affect U.S. public
opinion.

Result: Yesterday’s policy-wonk public analysis by Mr. Clinton about his telephonic wheedling
and pleading with other world hand-wringers. He half-threatened to raise the level of tactical
pinpricking to “the Sarajevo level” unless the Serbs stop.

NBC’s Andrea Mitchell asked: Should the Serbs be prepared for strategic as well as tactical air
strikes? Going after their ammo and fuel supplies is how air power could be effective. But Clinton
refused to discuss “the tactical details of our policy . . . until they have been worked out with our
allies.”

If he had such agreement to get tough, he would surely have announced it. Why not give the
Serbs good reason to settle before real bombing began?

But the telesummitry is all a charade. We huff and puff; the Serbs pause; we un-huff; the Serbs
then blast the next U.N. “safe area.”

What will bring the Serbs to the negotiating table with sincerity in their hearts? One thing alone:
force, followed by fear of further force.

If the President is able to lead, he should lead NATO into these actions:

Assemble all U.N. forces in Bosnia in defensible positions; provide close air support.

Destroy the bridges over the Drina river, over which Serbia now supplies its Bosnian puppet
forces.

Bomb 10 of the 30 key Serbian targets on a list already drawn up by NATO commanders;
these include ammo dumps, fuel supplies, headquarters. Pause for negotiations before hitting the
rest.

In other words, give air power a chance. Belgrade, where war orders come from, has electric
utilities not out of reach. If strategic bombing fails to coerce a peace, victims of aggression are no
worse off and attackers will have fewer tanks.

Mr. Clinton should cut the shilly-Shali approach and simultaneously place a resolution before
the U.N. Security Council to lift the arms embargo that hobbles the Bosnian Muslims. The world
will then see who is for what in Bosnia.