Why the Slaughter Affects U.S. Interests : American people must get Bosnian rationale from Clinton

In the 1940s, it was possible to argue that no American interest would have been served by an attempt to rescue the Jews from Hitler. But if it can now be argued in retrospect that morality absolutely required an attempt to rescue the Jews, even if some narrow definition of the American interest did not, then the analogous argument can be made that rescuing Bosnia’s Muslims or arming them to defend themselves is a U.S. duty today.

THE MULTIETHNIC STATE: Considerations of ultimate morality aside, however, the United States does have one intangible but important asset at risk in the Balkans. A citizenship-based, multiethnic state like the United States is ultimately safe only in a world where all states are, in principle, comparably organized. Some states--the Republic of Korea, for example--are essentially without ethnic minorities. Worldwide, however, ethnic mixing is so much the rule that if ethnicity begins to replace citizenship as the basis for statehood, chaos will ensue, a chaos that could not leave American interests untouched.

In Bosnia, if the world gives clear proof that those who wish to kill, burn and rape their way to ethnic purity will be resisted by force, then the right kind of world order would begin to emerge. Conversely, if no serious resistance is mounted, then that order will be endangered. Boris Yeltsin recognized this when, his referendum behind him, he moved Russia into the ranks of those publicly opposing Serbian fascism.

The citizenship-based state is an American ideal. If President Clinton can present its defense and propagation as the rationale for American intervention in Bosnia, then Americans--now almost equally divided about such intervention--may discover a willingness to become more involved. At the very least, if and when he urges military intervention, the President must make it clear that the United States has no quarrel with the Serbs as a nation. He must emphasize that we would have no quarrel with a Serbia that would obey international law and respect the rights of minorities.

THE INVINCIBLE ALLIES: If the President can rally the West to that ideal, then Serbs who oppose Serb fascism, and some do, will have an invincible ally. By the same token, Serb fascists will know that if they continue their bloody campaign for ethnic purity, nothing awaits them but their own Vietnam, an endless vista of guerrilla warfare in which those attacking them are armed by the West, while they themselves--whether or not under direct Western attack--are caught in a strangling embargo.

The U.S. goal cannot be victory followed by occupation and “re-education” on the World War II model. But the U.S. goal can indeed be resistance, a resistance that will make the cost of fascism so high for the Serbs that, however reluctantly, they will come to peace negotiations prepared to accept the ideal they now so contemptuously reject. For all their bravado, the Serbs surely know that they cannot win a war of attrition with the West. With a powerful, irrefutable, opening declaration from Washington, the rescue of Bosnia can be made a war the West cannot lose and the Serbs cannot win. All Americans wish Clinton could be spared the challenge of penning that statement.

U.S. domestic burdens have never been heavier. But some, as Shakespeare said, have greatness thrust upon them. Clinton may be one.