The Bosnia Trap : Solving the Unsolvable

Is peace at hand in Bosnia? Is the Clinton Administration beginning to show some foreign-policy competence and sophistication? A week ago, both questions seemed ridiculous. The shelling of the Sarajevo market put the Bosnian war back on the international front-burner--but peace seemed as far away as ever. And the Clinton Administration was still clueless, uttering threats against the Serbs it had no power to enforce, and offering the Bosnians hollow promises of support that only prolonged a hopeless struggle.

But late last week, the Administration signaled a change of course. With Russia trying to block air strikes by the North Atlantic Treaty Organization, and with Boris N. Yeltsin refusing to take President Bill Clinton’s phone calls for two days, the Administration seemed to understand just how bad its Bosnian options really were, and accepted that its entire Bosnian policy had been a mistake.

Although the threat of air strikes remains if the Serbs fail to remove the artillery around Sarajevo, there will be no more talk about bombing the Serbs to the negotiating table, no more huffing and puffing about European “appeasement” of Serbian aggression. The Administration has now agreed to back the European peace plan it once condemned; and some officials now support lifting economic sanctions against Serbs, who the Administration once compared to the Nazis.

Apparently, two important facts finally sank in. Air strikes won’t change the military balance in Bosnia, and the ethnic division of Bosnia is inevitable.

Air strikes were always popular with people who wanted to “do something” about the Yugoslav war but didn’t want to commit U.S. ground troops. But the option was never realistic. Air strikes are a trap. What happens if we bomb and they still don’t obey? What then: More threats? More air strikes? And if they still don’t obey? What then--ground troops, or a humiliating admission of failure?

To its credit, the Administration has always understood it would be hopeless to intervene with U.S. ground troops. The Serbs are the best and most determined guerrilla fighters in Europe, and the Bosnian Serbs are tougher than their Yugoslav cousins. During World War II, the German Luftwaffe launched massive bomb attacks on Belgrade and the German Army marched into the capital.

This was the signal for a furious campaign of national resistance. The Germans retaliated with brutal savagery, executing hundreds of innocent civilian hostages in retaliation for German soldiers shot by partisans. Serbs were slaughtered wholesale by Croatians allied with the Nazis. The Serbs--like the Vietnamese and the Afghans--fought on. By the end of the war, some of Germany’s toughest and most cruel divisions were hopelessly tied down in a losing guerrilla war in Yugoslavia.

Can we succeed where Adolf Hitler failed? Do we really want to try? The Administration always knew the answer to both questions was no--but it couldn’t bring itself to accept the inevitable consequences. If we aren’t going to go to war against the Bosnian Serbs, then the Bosnian Muslims have lost the war, and they will have to take the best terms the Serbs can be persuaded to give them.

This was the bone in the Administration’s throat: Accepting Serb demands for partitioning Bosnia meant accepting ethnic division of a multiethnic country, recognizing mass expulsions of Bosnian Muslims from their homes by the victorious Serbs. This, said the more idealistic and fuzzy-minded members of Clinton’s foreign-policy team, was tantamount to accepting ethnic cleansing, something the United States can never do.

This misses a subtle but important difference. The forcible removal of populations involves the involuntary exile of people who belong to the “wrong” ethnic group. Ethnic cleansing is the combination of forcible removal with deliberate crimes and atrocities: massacres of civilians, systematic attempts to destroy rather than relocate a particular group of people. When people are ordered to leave their homes, this is forcible removal. There may be a threat to use force if people do not go peacefully, but this is far different from the murderous anarchy and pogroms where people are shot, brutalized and chased from their homes by armed gangs of thugs.

Let us be careful here. Recognizing that forcible relocation has created new facts on the ground does not mean condoning war crimes. Where civilians have been murdered and populations massacred as the result of interethnic conflict--where ethnic cleansing has been practiced--crimes have been committed. The question of how the world should treat war crimes in the former Yugoslavia will have to be decided when the shooting stops and a U.N. tribunal begins its work. This is a difficult question and the final answers are unlikely to satisfy anyone fully. But, for now, it is enough to draw a distinction between catching and punishing criminals and stopping a war.

Forcible removal isn’t new. It isn’t even always illegal. In 1945, the victorious allies met at the Potsdam Conference and ordered the forcible removal of the Sudetenland Germans: 3 million people, guilty of no crime except German ethnicity, were driven from their homes under appalling conditions. The United States and Britain approved this unjust and cruel act. Later, 12 million more Germans were driven from Poland--some died as they struggled on foot through winter snows.

Forcible relocation was bad, but it solved some problems in Poland and Czechoslovakia. Demands of ethnic Germans in Sudetenland and the Polish Corridor helped destabilize those countries before World War II and increased German political support for Hitler. Those problems don’t exist any more. Without relocations, there would now be millions of restless Germans in Poland and Czechoslovakia. They would be a majority in many parts of both countries, and many would be demanding reunion with the Fatherland.

The Balkans have a long history of relocations. The breakup of the Ottoman Empire left ethnic groups scattered and intermingled from Yugoslavia to Iraq. Repeated massacres--of Armenians, of Turks, of Jews, of Greeks, of Albanians, of Serbs, of Gypsies and of Croats--led to forcible relocations throughout the area. For the West today to act as if forcible relocation is a crime invented by the Serbs and without historical precedent is disingenuous and misleading. When people have grown to hate each other, and that hate has grown murderous, there is no point in forcing them to live side by side. Instead of basing policy on opposition to the principle of relocations, we should be working to alleviate the suffering of the victims and to help them build new lives in new homes.

Forcible relocation is like divorce: messy, expensive, bad for the children and never a good solution. But, sometimes, it is the least bad possible solution. It would be better if the peoples of the former Yugoslavia could live together in peace. But, obviously, they can’t, and we will not get peace until boundaries correspond more closely than they do now with the distribution of the former Yugoslavia’s peoples.

Now that the United States has swallowed this bitter pill, peace may not be as far away as it looks. For all the noise, the three sides in Bosnia--Croats, Muslims and Serbs--are not all that far from a settlement. The Serbs have won most of what they wanted on the battlefield, and are even willing to make a few small concessions to the Muslims. The Muslims, for their part, are fresh from a string of victories over the Croats, and the Croats are ready to settle. Peace hasn’t broken out because the Muslims are hoping for a few more gains against the Croats and a slightly sweeter offer from the Serbs--perhaps under pressure from the West.

Now the Clinton Administration, beneath the usual diplomatic double talk, is in the process of extinguishing the last Muslim hopes for victory and encouraging them to accept a political settlement based on the military facts on the ground. This will stop the killing, improve the conditions of life for Bosnians and allow the process of reconstruction to begin. It will also reduce the chances--very real and very worrying--that the Bosnian war will spread to engulf the entire Balkan peninsula.

The Bosnian Muslims have lost land in the war, but peace will be different. The Bosnian Muslims are a talented, entrepreneurial and well-educated people--much more so than the Serbs. They may have lost the war, but they are likely to win the peace. This has happened before--look at Germany and Japan.

The Clinton Administration has finally accepted that the West can’t help the Bosnians win the war. This doesn’t mean we are helpless: We can and should help them build a peace. A generous program of reconstruction and development aid can give the survivors of this terrible, unjust war something that more bloodshed can’t--real hope.

And, speaking of hope, the new realism now animating the Clinton Administration offers hope to Americans as well. It may be that, at last, the Clinton Administration is shaking off its rosy illusions about the state of the world, and that the next three years will see more of the sophisticated foreign-policy thinking that offers the best hope for world peace and American security.