New Role for a Cautious NATO

With the end of the East-West military confrontation, the North Atlantic Treaty Organization finds itself searching for new missions to justify its continued existence. The Europe of the 1990s, threatened in its eastern regions by violent eruptions of old ethnic hatreds, could well provide one. For the first time, NATO’s 16 member states say they are prepared in principle to send alliance forces outside their traditional defense area. But they will consider doing so only if there is a rock-solid European consensus in favor of such a step.

What has been happening within the republics of the former Yugoslavia is the obvious inspiration for this break with precedent, although when the NATO foreign ministers met in Oslo this week to adopt the new policy they carefully noted that they were not proposing to intervene in the Balkans at this time. Intervention there or in other European disputes would come only if the 52-member Conference on Security and Cooperation in Europe requested it. NATO would also insist on using its troops as a peacekeeping force, not a peace-imposing one. A firm armistice would have to precede any NATO intervention in the Balkans.

Even then, as diplomats at the conference made clear, many NATO members would likely be reluctant to send their forces into what they see as a potential quagmire. About 10,000 U.N. peacekeepers are already in Croatia, where fighting has pretty much been halted. But warfare continues to shake Bosnia. NATO members, as an indication of their current thinking, this week made clear their support of the U.N. sanctions that have been voted against Serbia, which is held chiefly responsible for continuing the fighting. But they balked at U.S. efforts to go on record in support of even possibly using force to make those sanctions more effective.

There is, then, somewhat less to NATO’s decision this week than might first appear. It has approved a departure from more than 40 years of policy, but it is still not ready to act on this precedent by intervening in the Balkans or anywhere else. This is understandable; NATO members are democracies, and democratic governments, if they are wise, seek clear signs of public support before taking bold actions. Meanwhile, though, the bloodletting and the barbarism in Bosnia go on, with the world still apparently powerless to force a halt.