Is NATO Serious? Ten Days Will Tell : When is an ultimatum an evasion?

On Wednesday NATO gave the Bosnian Serbs an ultimatum: They must withdraw their artillery and other heavy weapons from around Sarajevo in 10 days or NATO will begin air strikes against them.

This sounds stern, but the artillery has a range of 18 to 25 miles, and the ultimatum requires withdrawal to a distance of only 13 miles. Worse, other weapons, not covered by the ultimatum, have done most of the damage: mortars, machine guns and sniper rifles. NATO has said that it will begin immediately to silence these weapons, but will it?

The declared policy of the European Union and the United Nations has been partition of Bosnia-Herzegovina, and negotiators Lord Owen (for the EU) and Thorvald Stoltenberg (for the United Nations) have opposed either arming the Bosnians to defend themselves or bringing in outside forces to defend them. In effect, if not by intent, this policy has used the continuation of the Serb onslaught against Bosnia to pressure Bosnia’s government into capitulation.

The United States has refused to bring any diplomatic pressure to bear in the same direction but has also declined to intervene militarily. President Clinton’s insistence that NATO must not make empty threats had itself come to be seen as an empty threat.

What has now changed? The latest Serb atrocity, a ghastly slaughter in a Sarajevo marketplace, has momentarily aroused Western public opinion. Meanwhile, the Bosnian government has been mounting enough of a counteroffensive to raise the prospect of a European Vietnam, with the Bosnians playing Viet Cong in a guerrilla war likely to continue for many years. To prevent this, the Serbs’ tacit backers must appease Western public opinion by a show of sternness, after which the Serbs can find other means to force a Bosnian capitulation.

If the NATO ultimatum means that Europe and the United States now agree that Bosnia is the aggrieved party and are about to foil the two-year siege of Sarajevo, everything has changed. Equally possible, unfortunately, is that nothing has really changed.

If the ultimatum does not end the siege of Sarajevo, it will quickly come to seem merely an elaborate evasion in the wake of an extreme provocation. We shall be back where we were: the Bosnians refusing to surrender, the Serbs unable to win and the West refusing to intervene. Only time will tell, but the pace clearly is speeding up: One way or another, the next 10 days will send a message.