In Bosnia, ‘Peacekeeping’ Forces Will Be ‘Peacemakers’ : Diplomacy: Bosnia has never been a nation and has no specific cultural identity. Why are we intent on preserving this Balkan no man’s land?

Rarely has a President been faced with decisions involving the Hobson’s choice presented to Bill Clinton over Bosnia. If the Bosnian Serbs reject the Vance-Owen plan, he is being urged to bring them into line by military action, probably bombing. If they accept the plan, he seems committed to contributing 20,000 U.S. troops to a peacekeeping force of more than 60,000. And he may well wind up being obliged to take both steps.

In either case, the United States would be participating in a civil war involving three fanatically passionate parties with no perceived threat to the security or well-being of the United States.

Clinton’s dilemma springs from two conflicting emotions. Serbian atrocities evoke an overwhelming humanitarian urge to do something. But the responsibility of the commander in chief, to risk American lives only in case of overriding necessity, impels restraint. If force is used, we dare not fail. But criteria by which to measure success are elusive.

Interventionists argue that moral imperatives override calculations of national interest. In the next breath, they insist on collective action and reject the use of ground troops. Neither restraint would apply if American security were at stake.

Understanding must begin with a definition of what is not at stake in Bosnia.

It is a civil war, not an invasion of a sovereign country by a neighbor. Croatia and Serbia support their nationals inside Bosnia, though Serbian assistance is the most flagrant.

It is not a holocaust in the German sense and not only because the number of casualties is mercifully not comparable to the Nazi crimes. The Holocaust represented a Nazi attempt to exterminate a peaceful minority in pursuit of warped racial theories. The Bosnian atrocities--appalling as they are--represent the barbaric methods of Balkan civil wars that, with some interruptions, have been going on for centuries.

It is not a trigger of a wider conflict. What could trigger a wider war would be Serb attacks on Macedonia or Kosovo, which should be resisted locally. An equally great danger is that U.S. military action could lead to an uprising in Kosovo and Croat attacks on the U.N. zones in southern Croatia.

Nor is the issue between peace on the Vance-Owen lines or continued conflicts. Cyrus R. Vance and Lord Owen have performed the miracle of negotiating in a vacuum amid petty complaints from the sidelines.

But none of the parties is content with the plan’s territorial aspects. War will therefore resume unless Bosnia is flooded by foreign troops prepared to stay there indefinitely and to fight all the contenders. Even the foreign minister of the Bosnian Muslim victims has affirmed Muslim determination to regain all of Bosnia by force if necessary. The international force will thus be not a peace-keeping but a peacemaking force.

The United States has only two interests in Bosnia: to end the outrage against its moral values represented by Serbian atrocities and to keep the war from spreading beyond the borders of former Yugoslavia.

The way to stop the atrocities is to stop the war. But the dividing line between the contending ethnic groups in Bosnia does not involve a U.S. interest.

I strongly support the sanctions being applied to Serbia, and if a cease-fire is not reached rapidly, I would favor stronger ones--including the break-off of diplomatic relations. The controversial issue is whether America’s moral outrage at Serbian conduct warrants military action followed by a prolonged U.S. combat presence in Bosnia to police it.

It is important to understand that Bosnia has never been a nation; there is no specifically Bosnian cultural identity. Located at the intersection of the Muslim, Greek Orthodox and Catholic religions and at the dividing line between the Ottoman and the Hapsburg empires, Bosnia-Herzegovina has been the no man’s land where nationalities displaced by endless Balkan wars were thrown together. Serbs, Croats and Muslims--descendants of Slavic Christians converted to Islam during Turkish rule and therefore considered turncoats by the other ethnic groups--have coexisted only under alien rule. The last time Bosnia was the subject of an international agreement was at the Congress of Berlin in 1878, when it was organized on the basis of Turkish suzerainty, Austrian military control and local self-government--hardly a precedent for a modern national state.

The most irresponsible mistake of the current tragedy was international recognition of a Bosnian state governed by Muslims, blindly following the precedent of Germany’s hasty recognition of Slovenia and Croatia. But whereas Croatia and Slovenia had their own identity, Bosnia was a Yugoslavia in microcosm.

It is a mystery why anyone could think that Croats and Serbs, unwilling to stay together in the larger Yugoslavia, could be induced to create a joint state in Bosnia--together with Muslims they hated for centuries. Once the issue moved from social coexistence to political control, civil war became inevitable. Instead of being established as a nation, Bosnia was a classic case for international trusteeship--by the United Nations or the European Community.

Outside intervention must be in relation to three alternative, though not mutually exclusive, outcomes: stopping the fighting on existing lines while leaving the political settlement to later negotiations, imposing the Vance-Owen plan or a variation of it and forcing a return to the prewar lines.

The scale of the military effort will mount as political objectives are raised. A cease-fire in place might be achievable by sanctions or a modest military effort, though even a modest effort may widen the war to Croatia and Kosovo.

The Vance-Owen plan is resented by all parties--especially the Serbs and Muslims. The Serbs feel it gives them too little; the Muslims feel it concedes too much. This is why the Muslims rejected it at first, accepting it in the end primarily to enlist U.S. support against Serbia.

Finally, the restoration of the prewar lines would probably require a war, perhaps with Serbia--whose history is rife with last-ditch wars against countries far more powerful than itself and, in the past, was always supported by Russia.

If sanctions do not stop ethnic cleansing and if Clinton opts for intervention, military action should be confined to imposing a cease-fire--provided our military leaders see this as feasible. Any attempt by the United States and its allies to insist on a specific political outcome--especially one based on a unified Bosnia--will involve them in the civil war.

It is not clear why the international community should insist that ethnic groups that hate each other must live together in the same state. For it is unlikely that, after all the destruction and murder, victims of ethnic groups can be induced to live again in the same villages as their tormentors. The warring parties will have to be separated. It would be best to accept this reality and use the Vance-Owen lines as a basis for creating a small Muslim state (perhaps with a corridor to the sea) while permitting the Serbs and the Croats to join their mother countries. Lines could be rectified on the basis of U.N.-supervised plebiscites.

Such a course, it will be argued, rewards aggression. But only overwhelming outside power can induce the Serbs and Croats to live under a single government with the Muslims. If such a government were imposed, the Serb and Croat regions would soon resume the fight for autonomy. If we insist on a unified Bosnian state, we will become trapped in a cruel civil war and unforeseeable escalations.

Of all the military moves being envisaged, the most reckless is the dispatch of 20,000 U.S. troops for so-called peacekeeping to police such an outcome. Our troops will find themselves in a situation like the Marines in Beirut or the British in Northern Ireland; they would become hostages to indescribable passions.

In such a situation, whatever little cohesion exists in the North Atlantic Treaty Organization in support of military action would evaporate. It is difficult to tell whether White House calls for collective action are intended to evoke allied support or to create an alibi for U.S. inaction. But surely our European allies, all too familiar with Balkan wars, have no stomach for peacekeeping that turns into a shooting war. Moreover, in any prolonged military confrontation with Serbia, Russia will wind up on the side of Serbia, at least diplomatically. Even in peace enforcement, Russian troops will play a highly ambivalent role. We could be jeopardizing both NATO and our Russian relationship in a military effort.

The United States should set itself the following objectives:

* Produce a cease-fire, preferably by sanctions or, as a last resort, by force to stop ethnic cleansing.

* Avoid sending ground troops to Bosnia for any purpose.

* Forestall an expansion of the war into Macedonia and Kosovo by establishing a NATO presence in Macedonia.

Military force should be avoided. If the President invokes it, I would make two appeals. Clinton should remember there are no awards for losing with moderation. We should state moderate political objectives, but we should be decisive in conducting military operations. At the same time, once the President has decided on military action, those with reservations should rally behind him. Then the only exit will be via victory.

Clinton will blight his presidency if he goes beyond these principles. It is to America’s credit that she cares for the plight of distant peoples. But American leaders have a moral obligation as well to American lives, and they must not risk them for vague objectives and ambiguous strategies.