Huge Disappointment from Clinton on Bosnia : Suddenly Administration sees some good in Vance-Owen

After a long and much-publicized review of policy options in the Balkans war, President Clinton on Wednesday ratified former President Bush’s policy and, in fact, offered the Serbian aggressors in Bosnia the strongest indications yet that they need not fear the United States. The Clinton Administration promises that U.S. ground forces will be available for an eventual U.N. peacekeeping force in the Balkans, but then the Bush Administration had never ruled that out. What’s the difference between the Clinton policy and that of Bush? Not much.

Here was the flip-flop. Clinton abandoned the range of intermediate options that he had favored as a candidate, options lying between the quagmire of ground war, on the one hand, and acquiescence in genocide, on the other. The arms embargo on Bosnia will not be lifted. The no-fly zone will not be enforced. The detention camps will not be closed, nor will the Red Cross be given access to them. U.N. relief efforts will not be given protection. There will be no air strikes against Serb artillery shelling Sarajevo nor any air cover for Bosnian forces on the ground. And Clinton offered a less-than-ringing confirmation of Bush’s commitment of unilateral U.S. deterrence of a Serb attempt at “ethnic cleansing” in Kosovo.

BLOOD AND OIL: Clinton has appointed the Bush Administration’s NATO ambassador to serve as a superfluous third Balkans mediator, superfluous because the Administration now seems to have all but endorsed the peace plan of the current mediators, Cyrus R. Vance and Lord David Owen. The Administration speaks vaguely of raising the cost of war to the Serbs through the trade embargo. That embargo, lately being enforced with new thoroughness in Germany, a major prewar trading partner of Serbia and Montenegro, could work in the long run if other countries were to enforce it with comparable rigor. But it is no bar to genocide in the short run.

That being the case, the inference that the disgruntled Muslims of the world will draw from the Clinton renewal of Bush passivity in the Balkans is: No blood for no oil. The inference that the Russian right will draw is: If the West can’t stop the Serbs, it surely can’t stop us. The inference that rabid nationalists will draw in planning a “final solution” of their (fill-in-the-minority) problem is, in Elie Wiesel’s words: You can get away with it.

The Vance-Owen plan is unenforceable. It was reckless for Clinton to commit even the 5,000 to 12,000 U.S. troops that the European mediators ask in the doomed effort to enforce it. But there is every likelihood that negotiations will never reach the point of enforcement. The costs of aggression for the Serbs have now gone down, and down with them go any remaining Serbian will to even temporize with the negotiators.

THE RUSSIAN FACTOR: “Our values and interests give us reason to help create an international standard for the fair treatment of minorities,” Secretary of State Warren Christopher said in announcing the Administration policy. No partner in the creation of that standard will be more important than Russia; and for that reason, the new U.S. attempt to involve Russia in forming a Balkans agreement that the Serbs will accept is welcome. However, the current Russian position contradicts the Administration regarding any tightening of the trade embargo against Serbia: The Russians ask that the embargo now be lifted in view of Serbian cooperation with Vance and Owen.

The hour is still early for the Clinton Administration; it may come to realize that the Vance-Owen plan will, most likely, serve one purpose only: A problem that Europe, through NATO, could have resolved will be kicked upstairs to the United Nations, where it cannot be resolved but where it can and will be entertained indefinitely. The Clinton Administration should want no part of this. There is still time to stop the shelling and start the true peace.