Bosnia Is Past the Point of No Return : Serbia has won; not even a full-scale ground war can now achieve what the West dared only to dream about.

Campaigning for the League of Nations in 1919, President Woodrow Wilson declared, “If you want to put out a fire in the Balkans, you do not send to the United States for troops.” Intuitively, most Americans think that this is good advice for today. They may not be able to distinguish between Karadzic, Mladic, Izetbegovic or Silajdzic, but they recognize a brick wall when they see one. As presidents, generals and senators throw themselves into a new round of frenzied hyperactivity over Bosnia, the American people want no part of it.

It’s a great pity that the Washington political class seems unable to absorb this message. In response to the fall of Srebrenica, the air waves and op-ed columns have buzzed with calls for American involvement. Strategically, this is precisely the opposite of what is required. Worse than that, demands for American intervention border on moral irresponsibility because they appear to hold out hope of American help that, unless public opinion shifts 180 degrees, is extremely unlikely to materialize.

The fact of the matter is that, as dispassionate military observers have been saying for some time, the Serbs have won the war in Bosnia. Their capture of Serbrenica makes this clear. In response to attempts by Bosnian government forces to break out of Sarajevo, the Serbs have struck back hard, demonstrating that they control the battlefield. The Bosnians are now staring defeat in the face.

To overturn this state of affairs would in practical effect require a full-scale war against Serbia of at least the same proportions as Desert Storm. This means a massive deployment of American force both in the air and on the ground. If this is what the advocates of American intervention want, they should say so. This would at least allow public opinion to respond to an honest rather than a pseudo-policy.

“The road to hell is paved with good intentions.” This adage fits well on the tombstone of Western policy toward Bosnia. Well-intentioned, well-meaning outsiders have made an intrinsically hideous situation all the more hideous. The idea of a multiethnic Bosnian society living in harmony with itself was, of course, a laudable goal for American policy, as was the resistance to aggression and ethnic cleansing. But the notion that these goals could be had on the cheap has been the most reprehensible part of Western--and especially American--policy. Reprehensible, because it is not the West that is paying with its blood and tears. The West will soon forget about Bosnia--as it already had about Rwanda--and move on to other things. The torn lives in Bosnia will not be so easily put back together.

For reasons of human decency, therefore, the moment of decision has arrived. Two choices seem available, both extremely tough.

One possibility is war: The West could summon up its courage, make good on its fine promises and decide to roll back Serbian aggression. But let no one be in doubt about what this means. This would not be a matter of hygienic tank kills as seen during the Gulf War. This would be total war on the Serb population, with all the horrors of house-by-house combat. Recent pictures of British soldiers training for the rapid reaction force make the point: They were not steering precision-guided munitions; they were kicking down the door of a shadowy basement. This would be the face of war in Bosnia.

The other alternative is equally distasteful: Bosnia’s capitulation and the partition of the country. Since the start of the war in 1992, the Bosnians have had several opportunities to conclude it. Mediators have come and gone. With each round the settlement terms have gotten worse. The 51/49 split of Bosnia proposed earlier this year is no longer available. The Bosnian Serbs will now demand to hold on to their conquests and Bosnia will be dismembered.

This is neither fair nor just. But that is not the choice that either Bosnia or the West faces. Many in the West seem to want to fight to the last Bosnian. Greater hypocrisy is difficult to imagine. A much better approach would be to tell the Bosnians that the West is not coming to their aid, that half-baked proposals like lifting the arms embargo will only make their defeat more complete, and, therefore, they should cut the best deal they can today. Because tomorrow the deal will be worse.

It is all too easy to savage a proposal of this kind. The victim is indeed being punished. But preference for the easy option has been the cancer at the heart of American policy toward Bosnia. The fall of Srebrenica exposes the fallacy of that approach. The time has come for toughness, one way or the other.