‘The Full (Dead) Weight of U.S. Diplomacy’: Clinton Sells Out The Bosnians

(Washington, D.C.): The Clinton Administration has failed its first test of leadership in the field of foreign policy: In announcing the Administration’s new U.S. policy toward Bosnia-Hercegovina, Secretary of State Warren Christopher promised repeatedly to throw nothing more at the Serbian aggressors than the "full weight of U.S. diplomacy."

At best, the practical effect of the "Clinton Plan" will be to perpetuate the disastrous, passive Bush policy — which has done so much to condemn Bosnia to dismemberment and genocide. At worst, it will oblige the United States to commit armed forces — including, in all likelihood, ground forces — to try to "enforce" whatever settlement the United Nations, European Community and now U.S. mediator Reginald Bartholomew can coerce the Bosnian government to accept. This is hardly a formula for a "sustainable" peace. Instead, it is a script for: the continued destruction of the innocent people of Bosnia in the near-term; the loss of American lives in a conflict with ill-defined and politically circumscribed rules of engagement; and in due course, a wider and more dangerous war in the region.

Three aspects of the "Clinton Plan" for Bosnia give rise to special concern:

• The Russian Connection: President Clinton has fallen prey to the same strategic error as his predecessor in believing that an increasingly hardline government in Moscow can be relied upon to bring constructive pressure to hear on one of its clients. In 1990, Mikhail Gorbachev tried desperately to stave off the U.S-led attack on Saddam Hussein’s Iraq. While he failed in that effort, he was, nonetheless, instrumental in saving Saddam’s hide when American forces were ordered to stop short of Baghdad. It is predictable that Boris Yeltsin’s retrenching regime will similarly try to exploit any leverage given it by the Clinton Administration to impress and placate (former) communist allies at home and in Belgrade.

 

• The "Peacekeeper" Excuse: Secretary Christopher’s rationale for declining to take more forceful actions against the Serbs was that U.N. peacekeeping forces could be endangered. The Bosnians have made perfectly clear that, if they have to choose, they would prefer to have no peacekeepers and the means by which to defend themselves than to be denied those means and be stuck with peacekeepers who cannot keep the peace.

 

• "Reginald Owen": In announcing the appointment of Amb. Bartholomew to serve as the U.S. member in the U.N. – E.C. – U.S. mediating troika, Secretary Christopher made a telling Freudian slip: He twice confused Bartholomew with Lord Owen, the European Community’s wily and frequently unscrupulous representative. Fresh from a series of arms control negotiating assignments in which he showed an appalling readiness to abandon principled U.S. positions and interests in the name of closing a deal, Reginald Bartholomew is utterly the wrong man to bring backbone, discipline and tenacity to a parley that is supposed to make the Vance-Owen plan for "peace in our time" genuinely acceptable.

The Bottom Line

The Center for Security Policy believes that the only purpose for which U.S. forces should be committed to the conflict in Bosnia is to bring about conditions that will enable the victims of Serbian aggression to defend and liberate themselves and their property. This will require, unless Serb combat operations cease at once, the physical destruction (by American air power) of as much as possible of the heavy weaponry and logistical support infrastructure being brought to bear by Serbian forces against the civilian population of Bosnia. The arms embargo against the Bosnian government must also be lifted immediately.

Absent such concrete steps, alternative plans like that adopted by the Clinton Administration today amount to rank appeasement of aggressors. Worse yet, they represent — ironically — an abdication by the United States of the very responsibilities and betrayal of the very strategic and moral interests that Secretary Christopher cited this afternoon as justifying the "Clinton Plan" on Bosnia.