Swirling Winds of War Around Bosnia : Is U.S. military intervention all but inevitable?

Is the deteriorating situation in the former Yugoslavia now a job for the United States rather than the United Nations? Consider the plight--one can scarcely any longer say the role--of the besieged U.N. peacekeepers in the Balkans. Maj. Gen. Philippe Morillon, French commander of the U.N. peacekeepers in Sarajevo, flees the city, blaming Bosnians for an attack on his residence and demanding an explanation from Bosnian President Alija Izetbegovic. Meanwhile, according to a report in the Times of London, angry Croat irregulars come close to launching a grenade attack on British U.N. peacekeepers. In Belgrade, Gen. Zivota Panic, commander of the Yugoslav army, warns that enforcement of a no-fly zone in Bosnia will be met by Serb attacks on the U.N. forces.

And now there’s more evidence of a U.S. buildup. “Bosnia: Winds of War from Friuli” reads a headline in La Stampa, the highly respected daily newspaper of Turin, Italy. Friuli, a region in northeast Italy, is home to the U.S. Air Force base at Aviano, which, according to La Stampa, and despite duly noted Pentagon denials, is on war alert. AWACS reconnaissance flights are up. U2 mapping flights are in progress. The helicopter transport Guam is in readiness in the port of Trieste, on the Adriatic near the Slovenian border.

ANOTHER LINE: Is the United States preparing to go it alone one more time? In Geneva, diplomatic sources report that President Bush has warned Serbian leaders that the United States--the United States, not NATO, not the United Nations--is ready to use military force if the Serbs move against the ethnic Albanians in the Serbian province of Kosovo. There may be little sand in the Balkans, but the President seems to have drawn a line.

And not without reason: The U.N. mission now seems ill-suited to the growing ferocity of the challenge. The peacekeepers, regarded as the enemy, or close to it, by all parties to the conflict, lack both the weapons and the mandate to take the kind of military action that would guarantee their own security, much less that of the country in which they find themselves. It is time to withdraw them and admit that either the Balkan war will have a military resolution or it will have no resolution at all.

What to do? Arming the Bosnians for their own defense while providing them air cover and attempting to secure in-country safe havens for their refugees would not entrap the United States in an endless guerrilla war. The Balkans are ideal terrain for guerrilla war; but, as Margaret Thatcher has remarked, “That’s one for our side.” It is Serbia that, recklessly, has mired itself in the quagmire of endless war.

Taking those reasonable measures to avert an ongoing, genocidal invasion ought, in the first instance, to be a European endeavor. But if the Europeans are bent on appeasement and if, as Serb militants heady with their recent electoral victory have demanded, Serbia begins the outright annexation of conquered Bosnian and Croatian territory, then time may be too short: The task may fall to the United States after all.

CLOSING CURTAIN: The pace of political and military development is almost palpably quickening. Ideally, President Bush will forestall direct action until after President-elect Bill Clinton’s inauguration. The outgoing President’s greatest service to the country as the new Administration begins will lie in bringing the intervention in Somalia to something approaching closure and preventing Iraq’s Saddam Hussein from attempting new aggression during the transition.

If, however, military action must be taken before Clinton’s inauguration, then it is essential that Clinton be not just notified but included in every aspect of the planning. Whatever lies ahead in the Balkans, it won’t be quick and it won’t be easy. For that and other reasons, it is essential for the President-elect to have the military reins well in hand from the start.