But Will the Fighting Stop? : Can Carter’s takeover of Lord David Owen’s role make a real difference?

Today begins a four-month Bosnian cease-fire brokered by former President Jimmy Carter. Will the cease-fire be observed? Perhaps: Some say the Bosnian winter imposes a natural cease-fire. But perhaps not: On Thursday Bosnian Serbs fired two shells into Sarajevo’s Old Town, killing two and wounding seven. “Large pools of blood could be seen in the fresh snow,” the Associated Press reported.

A cease-fire is, in any event, not a peace but at best only a prelude to peace. To what kind of peace is this prelude?

Official Bosnia, some say and many hint, must accept its defeat and move on to formal surrender. If Carter can broker a peace without surrender, the Clinton Administration seems to reason, good for him. If not, bad for him, perhaps, but better him than President Clinton.

Concretely, surrender will occur if and when terms like those dictated Wednesday by Bosnian Serb leader Radovan Karadzic replace the take-it-or-leave-it peace plan solemnly backed by the five-power “Contact Group” since last summer. Karadzic wants more and better territory. He also wants the right for a sovereign Bosnian Serb state to make whatever alliances it chooses: Greater Serbia, perhaps, but on its own terms.

If you surrender on these terms, the fighting will stop, the Western powers tell Bosnia, with Carter now playing the role once played by Lord David Owen. But will the fighting stop? What guarantee can Carter provide Bosnian President Alija Izetbegovic that the terms of the surrender will be enforced? Today Karadzic wants Sarajevo divided into Serb and non-Serb zones. What if, tomorrow, he decides to reunite the city?

Essentially, Carter and the Atlantic powers can offer Bosnia no guarantee but Serb good faith. Surrender may not even bring a lifting of the arms embargo. Post-surrender, the major powers will not defend Bosnia, and yet they may continue to prevent Bosnia from defending itself. If they promise otherwise, who, at this point, will believe them?

Bosnia--on the most realistic, cold-eyed of grounds, abandoning all hope of victory and seeking only a guaranteed end to the fighting--has as much reason to reject the surrender terms as to accept them. This is particularly the case, of course, since surrender does not mean merely submitting to Serb rule but facing death or exile by a Serb regime bent on “ethnic cleansing.”

Karadzic, with a veiled sneer, describes his peace plan as a way for the West to save face. It is exactly that, and for exactly that reason Izetbegovic will be under intense Western pressure to accept it. If and when he does so, however, the Serb-Croat war will quickly resume, and the Bosnian Croats may desert Bosnia for affiliation with Croatia. In short, the war will spread, for, tragically, peace in the Balkans can no longer be purchased even at the price of Bosnian surrender.