West Can’t Stand By Silently : Bush must launch major effort on Yugoslavia

World War I began with the murder of the Austrian Archduke Ferdinand by a Serbian. In 1991, Western Europe is not about to be drawn into any general war by the Serbo-Croatian War, which they and the United States alike view as an internal Yugoslavian matter.

So far the European Community and the United States have confined themselves to economic sanctions. Alas, no one seriously expects sanctions to stop the bloodshed, and 7,500 have died already. Where will this horror end?

Should NATO intervene militarily? That can’t be ruled out, though it would be impossible without U.S. participation. Meanwhile, without resorting to force, the United States may be able to rob the aggressors of the fruits of their aggression. The Serbian army now raping Croatia has been secure in the thought that defeated Croatia would either be forced back into a reconstituted Yugoslavia or cede much of its territory to Serbia. Thereafter, Greater Serbia or a new Yugoslavia would take its place in Europe.

It is just this cruel confidence that politically stunning action by the United States might shatter. What the aggressors should be led to see in their future is not the stability and increasing prosperity of a Hungary but the isolation and desperation of an Iraq. The Bush Administration should consider the option of withdrawing its diplomatic recognition of Yugoslavia on the grounds that Serbian aggression against Croatia has now destroyed the Yugoslav federation. If Washington takes that step, then Thomas Pickering, U.S. ambassador to the United Nations, should propose, on the same grounds, that Yugoslavia be stripped of its seat in the United Nations. Over likely Chinese objections, he should raise the further prospect of U.N. military intervention. The United States should declare that it regards the erstwhile Yugoslav army as an outlaw force, not the legitimate troops of a sovereign state. And the United States should urge the European Community to declare a permanent ban on Yugoslav or Greater-Serbian membership in the community.

Challenging Serbian aggression in this way need not entail political recognition of Croatia or any other erstwhile Yugoslavian province. Mediation can redraw borders and perhaps renew the federation. Split or joined, however, the salvation of these states will lie in new, cross-border protections for minority rights.

In the short run, Europe faces a dire emergency. Drastic political action is needed. It falls to the only remaining superpower to take the lead.