When No One Is Prepared to Say ‘No’ to Aggression : Bosnia: The failure to halt ethnic strife is having a deep and destructive impact on the post-Cold War world. Goodby Desert Storm principles.

The tragedy of Bosnia is not limited to the spilled blood of a people and the ravaging of a nation. Unfortunately, the real legacy of Sarajevo and Tuzla and Srebrenica and the other now memorialized Muslim cities is almost certain to be felt in distant lands for years to come.

In other words, the stakes in Bosnia extend far beyond the Balkans.

Indeed, the failure of international efforts to halt ethnic strife in Bosnia is already having a deep and destructive impact on the post-Cold War world, reversing principles established during the past half century and taking the “new order” in dangerous directions.

At its simplest level, the inability of the United Nations, European Community and United States to stem the Serbian onslaught reverses the precedent established in both world wars and, more importantly for what lies ahead, during Operation Desert Storm.

By forcing Iraq to withdraw from Kuwait, the international community signaled, strongly and comparatively swiftly, that aggression was unacceptable in the post-Cold War era. At the time, that principle was widely heralded as the cornerstone of what President George Bush dubbed the New World Order.

Over the past year, however, Serbs have conquered 70% of Bosnia and forced hundreds of thousands to abandon their homes, while facing only marginal international pressure until comprehensive economic sanctions were imposed last month. European reluctance to get more deeply involved and the Clinton Administration’s dithering still provide the Serbs with room to maneuver militarily.

The overall message is that the international community will not automatically act to block aggression--even in the horrific and intolerable cases when the victims are overwhelmingly civilians and either unarmed or underarmed.

Simply put, no one is prepared to say no--much less never again.

Equally important is the precedent Bosnia sets for multiethnic states both near and far from the Balkans--or even the mere principle of a multiethnic state.

Again, the conflict is already sending the wrong signals globally, just as dozens of other countries in Europe, Asia, Africa and even the Americas face challenges from secessionist movements based on nationalist, ethnic or religious differences. Some of the candidates--ranging from key strategic states like Russia, Zaire, Canada and India to smaller powers such as Afghanistan, Angola, Belgium and Georgia--are already obvious.

“Separatism now has a legitimacy that it hasn’t had since World War II,” says Donald Horowitz, a Duke University professor of law and political science and a specialist on ethnic issues. “The ease with which Yugoslavia broke up is terrifically important because, if you look around the world, most countries in the world are multiethnic. If the world community allows or facilitates their breakup, it will be a much different world.”

Again, the contrast with Iraq, another state created artificially by European powers in the aftermath of a world war by pulling together ethnically diverse provinces, is stark. When both northern Kurds and Shiite Muslims in the south rose up against the Sunni Muslim leadership in central Baghdad after the Gulf War, the outside world refused to back the insurgents or allow the oil-rich Gulf state to disintegrate into three ethno-centric parts. The U.S.-led coalition opted for territorial integrity over self-determination less out of principle than out of fear that Iraq’s breakup would fuel instability or Islamic activism elsewhere in the region. Whatever the motive, the action also served to send a strong signal discouraging the dissolution of multiethnic states.

In less than a year, however, the world reversed course in dealing with the Yugoslav crisis. Under pressure from Germany, Europe hastily recognized Slovenia and Croatia, without mediation or considering precedents, after the two republics voted to break away from the Serb-dominated Yugoslav state. This time, territorial integrity lost out to self-determination, although principle again had less to do with the decision than self-interest and historic ties. Then when Bosnia-Herzegovina followed suit, Serb territorial and ethnic-cleansing attacks went virtually unchecked for months.

As a result, the likelihood of other traditional states--not only in Europe--being dismembered by separatist claims is now much higher, especially since the world has no means of adjudicating separatist demands. Indeed, more than two years after the onset of major border changes and the introduction of new states--22 alone from the breakup of the Soviet Union, Yugoslavia, Czechoslovakia and Ethiopia--there is still no mechanism to address the problems of ethnic conflict.

Finally, the setting of this crisis makes the Bosnian precedent particularly ominous for countries worldwide.

“Europe is an advanced Continent with great diversity that fought two world wars over the issue of ethnicity, which was supposed to be resolved so it wouldn’t happen again. Millions paid for that lesson in the war and the Holocaust. But Europeans haven’t learned,” explains Allen Kassof, director of the Project on Ethnic Relations in Princeton, N.J. “And the failure goes beyond the ethnic issue. It also suggests that Europe, even after two world wars, can’t manage its own affairs.”

The repercussions play out particularly over human-rights issues.

During the last half of the 20th Century, a new standard was established for individual and minority rights. A plethora of regional and international documents codified human rights for the first time. The widely accepted global standard then spawned a myriad of groups to monitor human rights globally and to preserve the new code.

But Bosnia has now set a contradictory precedent. The superficial European involvement thus far in response to the worst human-rights violations on the Continent in 50 years effectively lifts those restraints on other groups, not only in Europe.

The Bosnia debacle also effectively splits Europe into two classes or categories--those worthy of intervention and those unworthy of expending resources or political clout. Even if Europe is eventually mobilized by the United States or the United Nations to act more powerfully in resolving the Bosnian crisis, the principle and spirit of one Europe has already been violated.

Then there is the prospect of millions of refugees being displaced indefinitely.

Unwanted in the land of their birth, many Bosnian Muslims could well turn out to be the European equivalent of Palestinians, Kurds and Armenians. They would be the first people in Europe, where the Enlightenment originally spread the concept of empowerment, to be disempowered since communism consumed the eastern half of the Continent after World War II.

The price of the Bosnian tragedy is already intolerable. But in terms of its historic impact, the final cost--on many levels--hasn’t even begun to be paid.