START THE BOMBING, NOW!

(Washington, D.C.): At first blush, there appears to
be considerable irony in Bill Clinton’s recent embrace in
Bosnia of what his Administration calls “bombing in
the service of diplomacy.” After all, a hardy
perennial of the anti-war movement in which he was once
active was the demand to “Stop The Bombing,
Now!” Indeed, many believe the political opposition
that in the first instance operationally ham-strung and
then prematurely terminated strategic bombing campaigns
in Southeast Asia did much to deny the U.S. and its
allies success on the battlefield and at the negotiating
table.

On closer inspection, however, President Clinton’s
present approach to the use of U.S. airpower has a lot in
common with his earlier stance. For one thing, the
Vietnam-era military — which chafed under rules of
engagement and targeting directions emanating from the
White House — had a free-hand compared to the absurdly
micromanaged bombing operations that the United States
and several of its NATO partners have mounted against
Bosnian Serb forces in recent weeks.

‘Super-pinpricks’

As a result of the limitations imposed by Washington
either unilaterally, under pressure from the Russians or
pursuant to lowest-common-denominator guidance from the
UN and/or NATO secretariats, thousands of bombing
sorties have been mounted at a cost of many millions of
dollars and considerable risk to American and allied
pilots and aircraft. Yet, there has been little
perceptible — and certainly no lasting — damage
inflicted upon the Serb’s war-making capabilities.

In fact, the Clinton Administration, stung by earlier
criticism and the transparent failure of its
“pinprick” bombing operations, has allowed U.S.
air assets to be used exclusively for what might be
called “super-pinprick” attacks. Targets
were quite deliberately selected and struck in ways that
would not alter the military balance of forces in Bosnia.
Since the equivalent of the Ho Chi Minh trail — the land
and water routes and logistical supply network by which
Serbia and Russia have continued to support Bosnian Serb
predations — has not been struck, the ammo lost to NATO
attacks is being rapidly replenished. Air defense
operations have been suppressed, but not destroyed, as
disrupted command and control links to Belgrade are
readily repaired. And, of course, heavy armor, troop
concentrations, fuel depots and marshaling areas that
have deliberately not been targeted have gone unscathed.

Such minimal results do not reflect a lack of skill,
courage or capability on the part of U.S. and allied
aircrews. To the contrary, those who once argued that
air power could not materially affect the course of this
conflict in the absence of massive Western combat forces
on the ground have now been largely silenced. If only the
same energy and resources had been applied to truly
destroying Serb warfighting potential, conditions
essential to a real and durable peace in Bosnia might
finally have been created.

What the Bombing Has Wrought

The Clinton Administration would have us believe that
those results have, in fact, been achieved — that its
micromanaged use of “bombing in the service of
diplomacy” has concentrated the Serb aggressors’
minds and made possible heretofore elusive progress in
the so-called “peace process.” Clearly, NATO’s
air strikes have had a psychological impact. This impact
has not, however, been evidenced in a lessening of
Serbian war aims or resolve to accomplish them, as
wishful thinkers in Washington, New York and Brussels
would have us believe.

Instead, the principal effect of the bombing has been
to improve the morale and audacity of Bosnian government
forces and their Croatian allies seeking to liberate
territory in Bosnia-Herzegovina previously seized by the
Serbs. The resulting military reverses, rather than
the super-pinprick air strikes, have been responsible
for concentrating the minds of Serbian President Slobodan
Milosevic and other war criminals like his
hand-picked commander of the Bosnian Serb forces, Ratko
Mladic. They now profess a willingness to come to terms
and end hostilities.

But what terms? What peace agreement has
“diplomacy served by bombing” served up? Alas,
it is a formula for the ultimate, inevitable destruction
of Bosnia-Herzegovina, not a genuine — to say nothing of
durable — peace. To be sure, the Serbs have agreed
to accept a de facto partition of Bosnia that would cede
them control of less territory than they once held.
Recent Bosnian government and Croatian military gains,
however, have already accomplished this result. But in
most other respects, Serb war aims have actually been
legitimated by the deal struck by Bill Clinton’s point
man for Bosnia, Amb. Richard Holbrooke: It will
produce an “ethnically pure” Serbian entity,
governed by a constitution drawn up by genocidal
psychopaths like Mladic and his civilian counterpart,
Radovan Karadzic, for the express purpose of fulfilling
(eventually, if not in short order) Milosevic’s dream of
a Greater Serbia.

Holbrooke’s False Peace — Disaster for Bosnia,
Calamity for the U.S.

It is sheer self-delusion to construe such
an arrangement as one conducive to stability in the
Balkans. In the event that this deal is actually
formalized, it will merely set the stage for the next
round of conflict.

Unfortunately, in the interval, President Clinton
appears determined quickly to insert into Bosnia as many
as 25,000 U.S. troops equipped with heavy armor. The
perceived urgency is apparently motivated by two
considerations: First, the Administration knows that
Congress is unlikely to go along with this deployment.
Hence the need to present it — as in Haiti — with a fait
accompli. And second, Mr. Clinton wants to be able to
start withdrawing American troops early in the upcoming
campaign; if he is to start getting them out in
six-to-eight months, he has to get them in
quickly.

Such a deployment is likely to be even more of a
misuse of the men and women who serve in the U.S.
military than the super-pinprick bombing campaign has
been. After all, they will be placed in harm’s way
for a period that will almost certainly prove longer than
President Clinton now envisions. Getting them and their
vast quantities of heavy equipment out again will be no
trivial undertaking, particularly if their withdrawal is
opposed by civilian populations in Bosnia. And, perhaps
worst of all, like the current UN peacekeeping force,
these American troops will be obliged to play the role of
honest brokers in Bosnia. Moral equivalence between the
aggressors and their victims will be the order of the
day. They will, as a practical matter, be subjected to
impossible command and control arrangements; as likely as
not, the UN and other foreign authorities will have a say
over their actions.

Worse yet, given the changing correlation of forces
on the ground in Bosnia, the principal role such U.S.
and allied personnel may be asked to perform could be the
odious task of safeguarding Serb land-grabs and
preventing any reversal of Serbian ethnic cleansing.
The war criminals responsible for such travesties will
come under American protection and taxpayers in this
country will be obliged to contribute to Serb economic
reconstruction. Incredibly, the Clinton Administration
also wants to save face for the Serbs by introducing
Russian troops into the mix, affording Moscow a pretext
and the means to involve itself even more deeply — and
insidiously — in Balkan affairs.

The Real Lessons

Before the United States goes any further down this
unpromising track, it would do well to reflect upon the
lessons that can be extrapolated from the recent NATO
bombing campaign: If aimed at the appropriate target
sets and effectively executed, U.S. air power (operating
unilaterally or with allied participation) can enable
Bosnian government and Croatian forces to reestablish a
unified state in Bosnia-Herzegovina. This can
clearly be facilitated by an immediate lifting of the
arms embargo against the Bosnian government.

Such an arrangement is the only hope for returning
most refugees to their homes, creating conditions in
which economic recovery is likely to enjoy Western
support and avoiding the eventual, if not near-term,
creation of Greater Serb and Greater Croat entities —
among the most serious impediments to a stable peace in
the Balkans. This outcome is also the only foreseeable
basis upon which to avoid a massive U.S. military
commitment on the ground in Bosnia, either for the
purpose of withdrawing the UN peacekeepers currently
there or to try to maintain an unworkable
“settlement” between the warring parties.

The Bottom Line

Of course, using air power effectively in Bosnia —
to say nothing of lifting the arms embargo, would oblige
the United States to stand with the victims of genocidal
aggression, rather than further indulge in moral
equivalence. It need not, however, require a greater
allocation of U.S. military resources than have been
devoted to date in connection with Bill Clinton’s
“bombing in the service of diplomacy.” If
anything, it will take far fewer resources than the
Administration has in mind in order to pull off a Dunkirk
retreat on the one hand, or a Somalian peacekeeping
operation on the other.

To be sure, there are risks associated with this
approach. Russia will not like it; Belgrade will howl;
and the United States might find itself with a pick-up
team of like-minded nations, as in Desert Storm, rather
than a UN/NATO-sponsored operation. But there are even
worse risks associated with the other options. American
involvement in Bosnia on the Administration’s terms or,
alternatively, its complete disengagement from the
conflict there is likely to produce far worse outcomes in
the Balkans. And given the demonstrated capacity of
conflicts begun in this region to precipitate crises much
farther afield, it behooves the United States to stop
the war in Bosnia by starting the real bombing, now.