Tough Choices Come Into Sharper Focus : Military action more likely as other Bosnian options fade

To no one’s surprise, Serbian President Slobodan Milosevic has used the totalitarian control he enjoys over state-owned television to defeat Milan Panic in the Serbian presidential election. But real support for Milosevic, and for the even more virulent fascism of Vojislav Seselj, is strong enough. And so Panic, returning to his figurehead post as Yugoslav prime minister, is now more superfluous than ever. There is, in short, no longer any hope that internal changes in Serbia can bring the Bosnian crisis to a resolution.

Meanwhile, the U.N. peacekeeping mission has been declared a failure by no less a figure than Brig. Gen. Hussein Abdel Rezek, commander of the U.N. forces in Sarajevo. He reached this conclusion after Serb armor took the Sarajevo suburb of Otes and Serb artillery once again closed the Sarajevo airport.

Rezek is right: If the U.N. forces cannot keep the airport open, then they no longer serve any real purpose. Worse, when Britain argues that military action against the Serbs in Bosnia would jeopardize Britons in the U.N. forces, those forces become, in effect, a hostage held by Serbia to stymie Bosnia’s self-defense.

As, on the one hand, the war-making parties in Serbia coalesce and, on the other, the peacekeeping forces in Bosnia collapse, the choice facing the West comes into a sharpened focus. One unfortunately familiar alternative--favored by the British and French--is appeasement. President Francois Mitterrand and Prime Minister John Major, opposing the sale of arms to Bosnia and outside military intervention alike, apparently hope that if Milosevic gets Bosnia-Herzegovina, he will be appeased, the war will stop and there will be peace in our time.

No such hope is entertained by the more immediately affected foreign ministers of Poland, Hungary, Austria and Slovenia, who met with President Bush on Tuesday of this week and asked him to to take within 20 to 30 days “more forceful” action than enforcement of a no-fly zone. In a separate statement on Dec. 19, the Turkish foreign ministry denounced the folly of meeting a military aggressor by “humanitarian” measures. The Turks are only stating the obvious. The proper response is not to send food but to send guns.

Sending guns is the second alternative that will lie before President-elect Clinton late next month. The Bosnians have stated that they do not want ground troops coming to their rescue. They do want a lifting of the arms embargo against them as well as air support that goes beyond the mere enforcing of a no-fly zone. With arms and air cover from NATO, the Bosnians may be able to lift the siege not just of Sarajevo but also of other Serb-besieged towns. NATO, following the plans drawn up by Gen. Colin Powell, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, and the Supreme Allied Commander at NATO, Maj. Gen. John Shalikashvili, can establish in-country safe havens for Bosnian refugees which, at some later point, may be turned over to U.N. peacekeepers.

Thirteen senators, including such Republican leaders as Bob Dole and Malcolm Wallop, recently wrote President Bush urging an end to the arms embargo against Bosnia. Bipartisan support for even stronger moves by President-elect Clinton is quite likely to be forthcoming by Jan. 20. As former Secretary of State George Shultz has argued, there is a great deal the United States can do in the Balkans short of sinking into a guerrilla war. Deciding whether to do it could be the first foreign-policy crisis of the Clinton Administration.