‘HELL NO, WE WON’T GO’ TO BOSNIA WITHOUT A VOTE IN CONGRESS

Precis: Much is riding on tomorrow’s vote
in the U.S. House of Representatives on legislation that
would bar the deployment of American ground troops in
Bosnia without express congressional authorization. If
approved, the effect could be not only to avoid the
unnecessary loss of life among U.S. service personnel in
Bosnia. The Hefley bill could also precipitate a
reassessment of what it will take to produce real
peace in the Balkans — and a long overdue repudiation of
the Clinton Administration’s efforts to make the American
military capable of doing little beyond hapless
international peacekeeping operations.

(Washington, D.C.): The House of Representatives is
expected tomorrow to take what may prove to be one of the
most momentous votes of the 104th Congress. It will
likely adopt legislation prohibiting the use of Defense
Department funds to send U.S. ground forces to Bosnia
unless specifically authorized by Congress.

This vote has been made necessary by the Clinton
Administration’s dismissive response to the House’s
overwhelming 315-103 approval of a non-binding, Sense of
the Congress Resolution on 30 October. It has taken on
greater urgency as the negotiations in Dayton appear, in
salami-like fashion, to be moving toward an agreement
that would — all other things being equal — formally
require American troops on the ground in Bosnia.

Why Congress Must Be ‘In the Loop’

The following are among the compelling reasons for
adopting legislation that has recently been introduced by
Rep. Joel Hefley, Republican of Colorado, and a large and
bipartisan group of his colleagues — legislation that
would block a U.S. deployment in Bosnia in the absence of
formal congressional approval:

• The Clinton Administration has failed to
  provide any sense that it knows what it is doing
  with respect to the deployment of U.S. forces as
  peacekeepers on the ground in Bosnia. This is
  not, however, as Administration officials
  generally argue, because the agreement under
  which the deployment would occur has yet to be
  completed. The fact is that planning by American
  and NATO military commanders on all the
  particulars is far advanced.

The problem, instead, is that the plans
are inherently fraught with operational
and other shortcomings. These include:

• the likelihood that American troops will
  be viewed as targets for politically
  motivated attacks, rather than
  peacekeepers — a prospect only increased
  by the expectation that U.S. personnel
  will simultaneously serve as neutral
  parties and as suppliers and instructors
  responsible for arming one of the
  factions (namely, the Bosnian
  government’s army);
• the creation of sectors reminiscent of
  the post-World War II division of
  Germany, connoting an ominously long-term
  commitment in Bosnia;
• the integration of Russian forces into a
  jury-rigged command structure likely to
  undermine NATO, embolden unreconciled
  Serbs and/or produce unnecessary strains
  with Moscow;
• and serious uncertainties concerning the
  “exit strategy.”

Interestingly, many of the flaws evident
in President Clinton’s prospective Bosnia
operation arise from ignoring his own stated
ground-rules for such actions as expressed in
Presidential Decision Directive No. 25.

Clearly, the Administration would prefer that
Congress not act on its deployment initiative
until after an agreement is signed and the United
States has begun to insert troops into Bosnia. At
that point, it becomes effectively too late to
do much about it.⁽¹⁾
Unless the House and Senate promptly make
congressional authorization a prerequisite for
any placement of U.S. ground troops in Bosnia,
legislators are likely to find themselves
confronted with another Haiti-style fait
accompli.

• The Hefley bill offers a manifestly
  constitutional means of asserting congressional
  prerogatives with respect to the use of the U.S.
  military in non-emergency situations. By
  stipulating the conditions under which
  appropriated funds can be expended, legislators
  are exercising their “power of the
  purse.” As House Speaker Newt Gingrich noted
  earlier this year in arguing (unsuccessfully) for
  repeal of the War Powers Act, this is precisely
  the mechanism that should be utilized if Congress
  wishes to have a say in the disposition of
  military forces in actual or potential combat
  situations.

By adopting the Hefley legislation in the
next few days, Congress can also signal what
considerations might influence whether it will
ultimately approve the deployment of U.S. ground
forces in Bosnia. Will such a step produce
conditions consistent with a durable peace? Or
will it amount to little more than the lubricant
for the umpteenth temporary suspension of
hostilities, to be followed inexorably by
renewed, inconclusive bloodletting? Will an
American presence on the ground mean that the
Serb aggression in Bosnia is rewarded and
legitimated instead of being reversed and
punished? Will the deployment allow those with
personal responsibility for war crimes and other
atrocities — starting with Serbian dictator and
chief Serb negotiator Slobodan Milosevic — to
escape justice? If congressional sentiments on
these scores are clearly expressed in the near
future, there is still a chance that they might
be factored into the negotiations and contribute
to a better product.

Finally, a strong vote opposing the
deployment without express approval from Congress
of U.S. forces in a hazardous, seemingly
open-ended deployment in Bosnia could have one
other therapeutic effect: It could bring to an
end the Clinton Administration’s purposeful
effort to reconfigure the American armed forces
from lethal instruments of national power
projection into constabulary organizations in the
service of the international community.
Unless the legislative branch intervenes soon,
though, a President who regularly holds up
multilateralism and UN peacekeeping missions as
alternatives to the U.S. acting as the
“world’s policeman” may ironically
succeed in reducing the American military to just
such a hapless and undesirable role — by
squandering its finite resources, eroding its
morale and dissipating the public support it
enjoys with harebrained operations in places like
Bosnia.

The Bottom Line

Faced with the prospect of a congressional vote
having such effects, Clinton and Company appear to be
feverishly trying to preempt Capitol Hill. First, there
was an agreement signed last week between the Bosnian
government and the Croats aimed at shoring up their
“federation.” Over the weekend, the Croats and
the Croatian-Serbs arrived at an arrangement whereby one
or two years from now Eastern Slavonia is supposed to be
returned to Zagreb’s control. If effective, neither of
these measures is objectionable. But by the same token,
neither appears to require the deployment of U.S. ground
forces to Bosnia.

Any day now, however, a “framework
agreement” — diplomatese for a deal that leaves
most of the vexing details to be resolved later — may be
reached and trumpeted as the peace accord for Bosnia that
will trigger such an American deployment. Unless Congress
has adopted the Hefley bill before then, it is a safe bet
that at least token U.S. ground forces will be swiftly
dispatched to Bosnia.

On the other hand, should the House and Senate adopt
the Hefley bill by veto-proof margins, the Congress and
the American people will be afforded an opportunity to
ensure that the details — upon which the lives of
U.S. servicemen and women and national interests may, to
some extent, depend — are also satisfactorily worked
out. If they have been, there will almost certainly be
no need for the United States to put troops on the ground
in Bosnia.

(1) As noted in a recent Center
for Security Policy Decision Brief entitled There
He Goes Again: The ‘It’s Premature’ Scam Is Designed to
Defer Vote on Bosnia Until It’s Too Late ( href=”index.jsp?section=papers&code=95-D_80″>No. 95-D 80, 24 October 1995), the
Clinton team has used the
“it’s-premature-to-talk-about-the-deployment”
strategy before. For months, it has employed this line to
stave off congressional review of the President’s
scarcely less problematic pledge to place U.S. troops on
the Golan Heights.