It’s Not a Fair Fight : Arms embargo on Bosnia makes no sense given such a well-armed Serbia

“I agree that we cannot commit ground forces to become involved in the quagmire of Bosnia. . . . But . . . there are things that can be done short of that. . . . There are . . . 2 million refugees now because of the problems in what was Yugoslavia, the largest number since World War II. And there may be hundreds of thousands of people who will starve or freeze to death this winter. . . . We should stiffen the embargo on . . . Belgrade . . . and . . . we have to consider whether or not we should lift the arms embargo now on the Bosnians since they are in no way in a fair fight with a heavily armed opponent bent on ethnic cleansing.”

Those words of Gov. Bill Clinton last Sunday reflect the views of a growing number of U.S. foreign policy experts. The genocidal horror that impends in Bosnia must be prevented. That the Balkans are ideal terrain for guerrilla warfare is, as Margaret Thatcher put it, “one for our side.” Whether or not any other nation is involved in another Vietnam, Serbia clearly is. The Bosnians, having seen the Serbian death camps, will fight to the death, for nothing but death awaits them if they stop fighting. But that determination will save lives only if Bosnia is given the means to defend itself.

Serbia’s army is Europe’s fourth-largest. Facing it are irregulars equipped mostly with small arms. U.S. policy, an arms embargo against both sides, resembles nothing so much as the embargo against both sides in the Spanish Civil War. Franco, armed by Hitler, was the ultimate beneficiary of our “fairness.”

On Wednesday a Bush State Department spokesman said: “Are we considering a change in the arms embargo? No, we continue to support the U.N. arms embargo the way it is. We don’t support actions that we think could worsen the conflict.” That pigheadedness is a mistake.

Iran has tried to rally world Islam to the Muslim side in this struggle, but Bosnia-Herzegovina is not a Muslim state. It is, unique in world polity, a secular state in which Muslims and Christians participate as equals. If the United States will not come to Bosnia’s defense, then it must at least allow Bosnia to defend itself. End the arms embargo against Bosnia.