Now: The Macedonian Option?

In the attempt to restore peace in the Balkans, the West’s greatest strength is proving to be a paradoxical weakness. Fortunately, neither Serb nor Croat aggression in Bosnia-Herzegovina enjoys major-power support. On the contrary, all the major powers both recognize Bosnia-Herzegovina and support it, even if the Vance-Owen plan envisions changes in that country’s form of government. Under these circumstances, resistance to any political settlement that the West and Russia might choose jointly to impose would be futile.

The problem is that the West and Russia have chosen to impose nothing and instead to try only persuasion. For the Europeans, the Balkans are not quite Europe. Russia, whose historical ties to Serbia have been overstated, has even weaker ties to the other post-Yugoslav republics. The United States has only recently--and unsuccessfully--sought joint military action to halt a slaughter not seen in Europe since Hitler.

If neither Europe nor Russia will join the United States in taking military action (and if, as is the case, the United States cannot take action alone), is there a lower-cost option behind which the surely irresistible power of this new, post-Cold War coalition might be mustered?

Tentatively, the Clinton Administration has raised the possibility of deploying U.N. troops in Macedonia, the southernmost republic of the former Yugoslav federation. Though Greece, a NATO member, may well rather see Macedonia absorbed into Serbia than independent on Greece’s border, Macedonia itself would almost certainly welcome the protection. This would be only a modest move, a bid to contain, not to end, the conflict. But it could be a move through which the alliance--enlarged, now, to include Russia--could discover its own new power and a sense of common purpose.

This move joined to economic sanctions aimed at enforcing the cease-fire agreed to last August may be the most the alliance will bear--and just possibly a first step toward peace.