Can It Really Be America’s Position to Do Nothing? : Air strikes must be employed to relieve the sickening siege of Sarajevo

The weekend’s terrible bloodshed in Sarajevo--68 dead and more than 200 wounded--once more puts the immensely difficult issue of Bosnia before the Western World. Let’s put this horrible matter this way: What course of action would entail the lesser risk? Would it be for the West to ignore the latest atrocity? Or for the West to take strong military action, without delay, in response?

That is the question that President Clinton and Secretary of State Warren Christopher now must ask themselves. For if the United States does nothing at all, that would be seen throughout the world as a major policy decision. Bosnia is no longer simply George Bush’s legacy; it is now specifically Clinton’s problem.

The brutal mortar attack on Sarajevo’s open-air market has changed the equation. If, in the past, the decision not to decide could somehow be justified--as prudent, cautious, statesmanlike--that no longer is the case. Not to act now is to turn one’s back on attempted genocide.

So the question is: Do nothing? Or do something? Whatever--but do decide.

SAVE SARAJEVO: Last summer, reviewing the options, The Times made the case for Western intervention to relieve the siege of Sarajevo. That, in our view, is still the best course. To do more at this time--to launch massive air strikes, against many if not all significant Serbian military targets--would be to plunge the entire theater into a sudden, massively larger war. Who knows how other parties, especially Russia, would react?

But to go the other way--to pretend as if the problem will go away, or to argue that there is no compelling American or Western interest in putting a stop to the calculated and callous Serbian aggression--would be to feed that aggression, the primary, though not the solitary, cause of the current tragedy. For who knows at which point the thirst of the aggressor would be slaked. Bosnia? Greater Serbia? Beyond? Aggression is never predictable.

Here is why the sensible middle-ground option--to relieve the siege of Sarajevo with Western bombing of the promontories surrounding the besieged city, and to be prepared to place a small, token force of NATO and/or U.S. forces at the city’s airport--makes the most sense.

-- It is a discrete act. It attacks one problem, it saves one situation, it does not involve massive forces or intervention, it would be nearly universally supported and indeed enthusiastically praised. And it would be morally right.

--It sends a clear message. Such a relatively small, symbolic commitment--involving whatever level of air bombardment is required around Sarajevo to silence the Serbian guns--is the only way of convincing Belgrade that the Serbian strategy of selective strangulation is doomed. If America commits, and commits firmly, Sarajevo will be saved and the Serbs will have to see the light. They must see that the choking of Sarajevo is becoming a disaster for themselves as well as the city’s residents.

This is the best policy to spur peace. For without Western action now, the theater will be no closer to peace, the war might widen and the volatile region could become increasingly unstable. Only action by President Clinton now can curb the slide toward chaos; only a carefully conceived, limited and successful use of air power can hope to arrest the genocide.

U.S. ALLIES: Relieving the siege of Sarajevo has not had the support of this nation’s longtime ally, the British, though on Monday London did call for “immediate and effective action.” Along with the Canadians, they have had peacekeeping troops on the ground in Bosnia, and they fear retaliation from Serbian forces if the West uses air power. Those fears are hardly baseless. It may therefore be necessary for U.N. Secretary General Boutros Boutros-Ghali to order a partial and possibly temporary withdrawal of the soldiers stationed there under the flag of the United Nations.

If President Clinton spells out a limited, targeted humanitarian mission to save Sarajevo, the American people will support him and he Bosnia tragedy will be moved back from the terrible abyss toward which it is now heading.