RECKLESS ENDANGERMENT: CLINTON’S WILLINGNESS TO PUT U.S. FORCES IN BOSNIA EXEMPLIFIES MELTDOWN OF HIS FOREIGN POLICY

(Washington, D.C.): Yesterday’s announcement that
President Clinton is willing to commit as many as
twenty-five thousand American combat troops to a
deployment in Bosnia is the latest, alarming evidence
that U.S. security policy is in dangerously unsteady
hands. Indeed, this decision — and the manner in which
it has been reached — is a prime example of conduct by
the Clinton Administration that has eroded this
president’s authority and greatly diminished the United
States’ power and prestige around the world.

Consider the following features of this decision that
can be found in so many other defective Clinton foreign
and defense policy initiatives over the past two years:

• Inconstancy: Yesterday’s
  announcement flies in the face of repeated
  statements by Mr. Clinton himself and by his
  senior subordinates that the United States would
  not put American troops on the ground in Bosnia
  unless and until a peace agreement was achieved
  there. It raises inevitable questions as to
  whether the Administration is to be believed any
  more about this pronouncement than about others
  on which it has reneged.

• Shortsightedness: On the face
  of it, the idea of putting in as many as
  twenty-five thousand troops in order to remove
  23,000 peacekeepers seems harebrained. At the
  very least, it has not been thought through. It
  risks substituting Americans as hostages for
  British, French, Bengladeshi, Ukrainian and
  others who are currently suffering from Serb
  contempt and predations.

It certainly has not been established that
U.S. forces have to be put on the ground in order
to evacuate the personnel now serving in
Bosnia under U.N. command — something that
could probably be accomplished within several
days if their heavy equipment were left behind.
No one has yet made the case that
American troops should be put in harm’s way in
order to extricate British or French armored
personnel carriers.

• Misunderstanding U.S. Interests:
  The United States should earnestly want
  the removal of U.N. peacekeepers from Bosnia at
  the earliest possible moment. Their presence
  throughout the country has served less to
  alleviate the immense suffering of the victims of
  Serbian aggression — to say nothing of assuring
  the security of U.N.-declared “safe
  havens” — than it has to give the British
  and French a pretext for objecting to the
  effective use of airpower against the Serbs. If
  Britain and France are now ready to disengage,
  they should be encouraged to do so posthaste.

• Too Clever By Half: Instead,
  the Administration continues to encourage the
  so-called U.N. Protection Force (UNPROFOR) to
  remain in Bosnia. In fact, it has — according to
  an unnamed Administration official quoted last
  night by National Public Radio — decided to
  offer to deploy American troops to help withdraw
  peacekeepers in the hope that, by doing so, it
  can induce them to stay and, therefore, make
  such a U.S. deployment unnecessary.
  Unfortunately, since sentiment is building in
  Britain, France and other nations to remove their
  contingents assigned to UNPROFOR and since
  embroiling the United States on the ground in
  Bosnia has been a long-standing objective for
  many of these nations, the Clinton gambit seems
  doomed to fail — possibly catastrophically.

• Lowest Common Denominator Alliance
  “Management”: The Clinton
  Administration is, moreover, determined to
  accommodate two of its most important NATO allies
  — to say nothing of the Russians — who are
  determined to prevent effective military action
  against the Serbs. Having bought into the
  preposterous idea that it must choose between
  NATO and Bosnia, Washington has opted for a
  course of action that will surely erode what
  remains of U.S. public support for the former
  while assuring the ultimate Serb destruction of
  the latter.

• Inappropriate Use of Military Forces:
  It has been well-established that Mr. Clinton is
  not favorably disposed to military power; that he
  does not understand either the purposes it can
  usefully serve or its limitations; and that he is
  morally uncomfortable with its application. This
  gives rise to a “false tough” policy —
  one that tends to get the United States into
  trouble, time and again: The result is often that
  American military personnel are unnecessarily put
  at risk, defense resources are squandered while
  morale in the armed forces is seriously eroded,
  and public support for necessary overseas
  interventions is lastingly undermined.

• Ignoring Congress: The
  Clinton Administration has, in the conduct of its
  security policy, made a practice of disregarding
  congressional sentiment and of systematically
  circumventing the Congress’ oversight and
  authorization functions. There are occasions —
  specifically emergency situations requiring the
  immediate projection of military power — when it
  is necessary to act first and consult later. As
  has been evident in its earlier decisions,
  however, to commit forces to monitor a peace
  agreement in Bosnia, to restore Jean-Bertrande
  Aristide to power in Haiti, to place troops on
  the Golan Heights in order to observe compliance
  with an Israeli-Syrian accord, etc., the
  Administration has either taken Congress for
  granted or cynically acted in such a way as to
  deny it an opportunity to object.

What Should Be Done

The Center for Security Policy believes that the
Clinton Administration’s conduct in response to genocidal
Serbian aggression in Bosnia — like that of its
predecessor — has been shameful and inexcusable. This
sorry history must not be further perpetuated and made
even more ignominious by: rewarding Serbia for its
outrages by lifting economic sanctions, encouraging the
British and French to remain in Bosnia and/or by
inserting U.S. troops on the ground there.

The first order of business should, instead, be to
secure the immediate withdrawal of UNPROFOR personnel.
They should be encouraged to turn over their equipment to
the Bosnian victims of Serb aggression; if they cannot
confidently do so, the equipment should be spiked or
otherwise rendered unuseful to the Serbs. Removing such
troops should be well within the capabilities of the
British, French and Russians to accomplish.

Once that is accomplished, the United States should
take the lead in assembling a “coalition of the
willing” prepared and disposed to make effective use
of military power (namely air assets) to punish the
Serbs. This coalition would also take steps to neutralize
their present advantage in armaments — both by
destroying the marshalling areas, logistical supply
routes and support facilities in Serbia proper as well as
Bosnia that enable the Bosnian Serbs to fight on and by
arming the Bosnian government.

The Bottom Line

The Center for Security Policy does not underestimate
the difficulty associated with taking such steps at this
late date. Still it strongly believes that the
alternative is the consolidation of a Serb triumph that
will have grave repercussions in the Balkans and far
beyond. It will probably also assure the destruction of
NATO as the alliance founders on the recriminations and
distrust spawned by its performance to date — a
performance made inevitable by the subordination of the
Alliance’s forces to the United Nations and by the
appalling lack of leadership from successive U.S.
administrations. These points are eloquently made by a
distinguished member of the Center for Security Policy’s
Board of Advisors, Richard Perle, in comments that
appeared in Al Hunt’s column in yesterday’s Wall
Street Journal, a copy
of which is attached.