Don’t Hesitate This Time : Sanctions alone won’t stop Belgrade

Just over seven months ago, after 7,500 had been killed in Croatia, we wrote here: “The Bush Administration should withdraw 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. . . . And the United States should urge the European Community to declare a permanent ban on Yugoslav or Greater Serbian membership in the community.”

What would all that have accomplished? It would have shaken Belgrade’s confidence that its aggression could continue to be cost-free. We argued then that politically stunning action by the United States might shatter this cruel confidence and the aggressors might be led to see that their road would lead not to the stability and increasing prosperity of a Hungary but to the isolation and desperation of an Iraq.

Inch by ultra-cautious inch, the Administration is moving now. Washington still has not technically severed diplomatic relations with Belgrade, but Secretary of State James A. Baker III has recalled Warren Zimmerman, our ambassador to the now-shattered federation, and has indicated that the United States will not accept representation at the ambassadorial level from the union of Serbia and Montenegro that still calls itself Yugoslavia. Baker has also called for Yugoslavia’s expulsion from the United Nations and from other international organizations to punish it for “outrageous, barbaric and inhuman” aggression in Bosnia.

We commend him for this move, but with a heavy heart: If the equivalent steps had been taken in a single stroke last fall, Bosnia-Herzegovina might not have been invaded at all. At this point, though economic sanctions may be having some effect they are unlikely to save Sarajevo, Bosnia’s capital, from the kind of slaughter not seen in Europe since the Nazis took Warsaw. As one Serb dissident observed, Sarajevo will run out of water before Belgrade runs out of Coca-Cola.

Two weeks ago, the Senate passed a non-binding resolution calling on President Bush to seek a U.N. plan for an international military force that could intervene in Bosnia. As one of the sponsors said: “The United States cannot be the world’s policeman. What we can do is prod the international community to move toward enforcement of its own resolutions.” We agree, and we urge the Administration to act, this time with dispatch.