Dole Is Planning to Reignite Debate Over American Arms Aid to Bosnia

After four months of uneasy and undependable cease-fire, the wheels of war will soon start spinning again in Bosnia. The truce that Jimmy Carter brokered last winter expires next Sunday with the Bosnian Serbs and Bosnia’s Muslim-led government no closer to a peace agreement.

In Washington, where the weapons are words, the political hostilities over the bloodshed in the former Yugoslavia are also set to resume. Early next month, Senate Majority Leader Bob Dole (R-Kan.) plans to bring to the Senate floor legislation ordering President Clinton to break the U.N. arms embargo barring direct military aid to the Bosnian government. Clinton has tried and failed to rally support at the United Nations for lifting the embargo but has steadfastly opposed violating it unilaterally.

The Senate passed identical legislation twice last year and it is virtually certain to do so again. But the idea could face more searching debate this time. For one thing, Dole’s position is already coming under fire from two of his competitors for the Republican presidential nomination. For another, even some who have long supported the idea of breaching the U.N. embargo now believe that it would make a bad situation even worse.

It is understandable that Dole and his allies are looking for new departures on Bosnia. Three years after the Bosnian Serbs began their murderous assault against their neighbors, diplomats in Washington and Europe appear to have virtually thrown up their hands.

The silence greeting revelations of Iran’s role in arming the Bosnian government speaks volumes about the deficit of good ideas. Ordinarily, reports that Iran was expanding its influence--especially in a period of intense concern about terrorism--would send alarms ringing.

But when the Administration acknowledged 10 days ago that Iran, with tacit U.S. approval, was shipping weapons to the Bosnian forces, hardly a head turned in Washington. Letting Iran act as the agent of our empathy “is not a great situation,” said Patrick Glynn, a resident scholar at the American Enterprise Institute. “But it’s not a situation where we have good choices.”

That’s hardly what Clinton expected--or promised. He arrived in office denouncing Bush for inaction and committed to reversing the Serb aggression. But Britain and France have rebuffed Clinton’s calls for greater military aid to the government forces, and the Bosnian Serbs have rejected all diplomatic initiatives.

Now, Administration officials talk less about bolstering the Bosnian government, or even promoting peace, than suppressing the conflict to a manageable level. Whatever happens when the cease-fire ends--whether either side intensifies hostilities or both accept another porous truce--”it is hard to see any immediate outcome on this thing,” said one senior State Department official. “It may be what you settle down to is you don’t have a peace agreement but what you have is low-level skirmishes.”

Dole and his supporters contend that lifting the arms embargo would break that impasse and force a negotiated peace by strengthening the Bosnian government position on the battlefield. But it is entirely possible that lifting the arms embargo ultimately could weaken the Bosnian forces’ position and compel the deployment of American troops.

Glynn, who previously had supported breaking the embargo, makes that case in a tightly argued article this month in Commentary magazine. In the war’s first stages, he maintains, the West might have altered the strategic equation with arms shipments and air strikes. Now, with the Bosnian Serbs controlling 70% of the country and thousands of U.N. peacekeepers on the ground, the risks in breaking the embargo far outweigh the potential gains.

Britain and France have made clear that if the United States breaks the embargo they will remove their peacekeeping forces from Bosnia. That would trigger Clinton’s commitment to send as many as 20,000 U.S. troops to cover the evacuation. Against the backdrop of impending arm shipments, Glynn writes, the American troops would arrive “as allies of one of the belligerents in the war”--a status that “would vastly increase . . . the likelihood of attacks.”

Mira Baratta, a legislative assistant to Dole, dismissed those concerns. Evacuating U.N. forces from Bosnia, she said, would not require nearly as many ground troops as the Administration suggests. Besides, she argued, the peacekeepers would have to come out sooner or later.

Even if she is right and the U.N. troops were safely extracted, U.S. obligations might be just beginning. Many observers believe that the Bosnian Serbs, perhaps with direct assistance from Serbia, would immediately launch an offensive to strengthen their hold over the country before American arms started flowing. At that point, the State Department official argued, the possibilities become nightmarish: Bosnian Serbs seizing peacekeepers as hostages, renewed attacks on isolated eastern enclaves like Goradze, now provided at least nominal protection by U.N. forces.

In the past, Dole has argued for air power to repel such threats. But it is unlikely that air strikes alone could stop advancing troops. Would U.S. forces then be obliged not only to evacuate peacekeepers but to defend Bosnians? In a dynamic that Americans well remember, each step could increase pressure for the next. “By now the Vietnam analogy is hackneyed,” said Glynn, “but this is one case where it applies.”

Both chambers are likely to approve legislation ordering Clinton to break the arms embargo. But questions like Glynn’s--even if they represent a worst-case scenario--are sapping enthusiasm for a true showdown with Clinton over Bosnia.

When British Foreign Secretary Douglas Hurd visited Washington earlier this year, House Speaker Newt Gingrich (R-Ga.) told him that he felt obligated to support Dole’s position but would not make a crusade of it. A senior British diplomat recalled that another House Republican sat glumly through Hurd’s recounting of the case against arms shipments until the legislator at last found a comforting thought: “Of course,” the Republican said, “Clinton will veto it.”

That’s the cold heart of cynicism in this bosom of concern. Congressional support for lifting the embargo depends on the assurance that Clinton will either veto the bill or simply ignore it as unconstitutional.

That reality has left even some legislative allies surprised at Dole’s decision to force the issue again. In the past, voting to break the arms embargo has offered an easy opportunity for legislators to portray themselves as more committed than the President to punishing aggression--in effect doing unto Clinton what he did to Bush in 1992. But the politics may be more complex this time, especially for Dole.

As the debate picks up, Dole likely will face a cross-fire from two rivals for the GOP nomination who define the contrasting poles of Republican thought on foreign policy. Both internationalist Sen. Richard G. Lugar of Indiana (a former Dole ally on the embargo) and neonationalist Patrick J. Buchanan second Clinton’s contention that American troops would inescapably follow American arms into a Balkan quagmire.

Dole’s motivation extends beyond embarrassing Clinton. He also chafed against Bush’s inaction and he clearly feels a strong moral obligation to intervene.

But Dole has also warned eloquently against basing foreign policy solely on sympathetic impulses: “American lives,” he wrote recently, “should not be risked and lost in places . . . with marginal or no American interests at stake.”

If Dole believes that Bosnia passes that test, he should make that case. But he should not pretend that we can break this bloody and tragic stalemate with no greater risks than splinters and strained backs from unloading crates of weapons.