A Deadly Message if Serbs Are Unchecked : Europe, Asian security at risk; U.S. must seize the moment

Danger, in the post-Cold War era, is more likely to begin with an aroused nationalminority than with a hostile superpower. The message of an unchecked Serb victory in Bosnia-Herzegovina for any anxious minority in Europe or the former Soviet Union is: Kill before you are killed. It is security folly to stand by as Serb victory sends that message to the world.

NATO’s abstention and the United Nation’s de facto complicity in the Serb slaughter will do for collective European--and even Central Asian security--what police failure in the 1992 L.A. riots did for gun control. Russian neo-fascism will imitate Serbian neo-fascism in the Russian diaspora. Non-Russians, especially Muslims, may strike first rather than permit that to happen. Smaller struggles--Slovaks against Hungarians, etc.--would proceed by the same logic. Western Europe will try but fail to hold back a flood of refugees.

Rather than acquiesce as European collective security collapses, the Clinton Administration should bend every effort to revive it.

First, the Administration should welcome Russian President Boris Yeltsin’s invitation to hold a summit conference with the United States and the European Union on the former Yugoslavia. Until just days ago, Russia was the Bosnian Serbs’ protector. Now, Russia’s own envoy recommends halting negotiations with them. The Administration should seize the moment and recommend that Bosnian Serb negotiations be suspended indefinitely.

Second, at the conference the Administration should seek Russian approval for a lifting of the arms embargo against Bosnia and for NATO air strikes aimed broadly at halting the Bosnian Serbs’ aggression. In exchange, the Administration should, if necessary, agree to a face-saving lifting of the economic sanctions against Yugoslavia. Lifting the sanctions would fuel the aggression less than lifting the embargo and engaging NATO would impede it.

Third, the Administration should propose that the U.N. forces be evacuated from Bosnia lest they become hostages or targets in the aftermath of NATO air strikes and the lifting of the embargo. As Britain’s Sir Michael Rose, commander of U.N. forces in Bosnia, bitterly admitted on Monday, “the U.N. peacekeeping operation has been . . . blatantly used to cover the prosecution of the war by the Serbs.” With the United Nations under direct Serb attack and on the verge of fleeing, the humanitarian argument for continued U.N. presence is eroding. Once no NATO member has U.N. troops on the ground, all may more easily agree to use air power freely. As soon as basic security is re-established, U.N. forces may return.

Fourth, the Administration should insist that the summit function as a historic peace conference, redrawing borders and addressing minority rights for all the former Yugoslav republics. If the independence claims of the Bosnian Serb Republic win a hearing, so should the parallel claims of ethnic Albanian separatists in Serbia’s 90% Muslim province of Kosovo. But no mere redrawing of borders can yield either ethnic homogeneity or ethnic peace. There must also be the firm protection of minority rights. Serbian abuse of Albanians in Kosovo is chillingly documented in a just-released Human Rights Watch report, “Open Wounds: Human Rights Abuses in Kosovo.” But clearly the Serbs dispersed in the Balkans also require protection.

NATO-Russian collaboration against aggression and on behalf of minority rights would send into the post-Cold War political world the very opposite of the kill-or-be-killed message that a Bosnian Serb victory would send. The Balkans War is not an isolated aberration but a small-scale model of large-scale security challenges to come. Taking it as that, the major powers can, if they choose, introduce themselves as well as the Serbs to a new world order.