BOSNIA / A Question of Stature : Setting a Foreign-Policy Agenda

America’s soul-searching over sending troops to Bosnia is not just about whether bringing peace to the Balkans is worth American lives. It is a national referendum on the character and scope of U.S. foreign policy for the coming century. The country has been engulfed in polarized debate since the signing of the peace accord in Dayton, Ohio, making clear that Americans are divided and confused about the scope of their responsibilities abroad and, in particular, about when they should be willing to put the lives of U.S. soldiers on the line.

Understandably so. U.S. foreign policy can no longer run on the fumes of the Cold War, as it did under President George Bush. Though his fine speech on Monday was a start, President Bill Clinton has not done a good job of informing Americans what’s worth fighting for. He supported U.S. participation in humanitarian relief operations in Somalia, only to order U.S. troops withdrawn after 18 soldiers were killed. He dispatched an invasion force to Haiti, but spent little time explaining his actions to the American people, lest a rousing public debate erode support. Even last week’s address, though tough and direct, was thin on exactly what national interests are at stake in Bosnia.

Republicans have not filled the gap. They trip over each other to take potshots at Clinton’s foreign policy. But they have hardly contributed to an informed debate about where, when and how to use force in the post-Cold War era.

Bosnia will prove to be a watershed in U.S. foreign policy because it is emblematic of the security challenges the United States will face in coming decades. Vital national interests of the United States are no longer under siege, as they were during the Cold War. But the country does face significant threats that require an appropriate level of sacrifice. To ignore these threats today is only to create the need for more painful sacrifice down the road.

Americans like black and white, all or nothing. But the world won’t play along. Americans must therefore decide whether they have the foresight and courage to invest in their country’s future by taking on limited military engagements proportional to limited strategic interests.

Bosnia is a critical test. Important, though not vital, U.S. interests are at stake in the Balkans. The mission assigned to North Atlantic Treaty Organization forces is limited and will enable the scope of U.S. commitments to remain in line with these interests. If the American people can’t muster support for this one, it is a sure sign that the illusory complacency of isolationism is taking hold and the world is headed into a dark era of U.S. retreat from global affairs.

The first reason for putting U.S. lives on the line in Bosnia is that America’s national interests are at stake. It is true that none of the combatants in the former Yugoslavia is a major military-industrial power with the capability to threaten the territory or economic security of the United States or its key European allies. This single fact explains why the United States and its NATO partners chose not to wage a full-scale ground war against the main aggressor--the Serbs.

But U.S. interests would be directly threatened should fighting spread outside Bosnia. Kosovo, Macedonia and Albania lie just south. Ethnic tensions within and among these three areas are already high; it would not take much to ignite them. Greece would be tempted to join the fray, as would Turkey. A wider Balkan war involving major European powers would not permit U.S. indifference. Greece and Turkey are both NATO members, invoking American engagement in the conflict through treaty-based commitments. U.S. troops would be involved--and not just as enforcers of a peace settlement.

A spread of the war to the north or east is far less likely. Although they have minority populations, Hungary, Romania and Bulgaria are not ethnic tinderboxes like their neighbors to the south. But all three are struggling against the political and economic legacies of communist rule. The Bosnian war has made this task more formidable by destroying regional trade and burdening communities with refugees. A widening zone of failing states in Central Europe jeopardizes America’s strategic and economic interest in integrating the region into the West. Peace in Bosnia, because it stabilizes Central Europe, is worth considerable U.S. sacrifice.

Critics counter that the conflict is unlikely to spread. After all, fighting in Bosnia raged for more than three years without spilling over.

These critics overlook the critical role American policy has played in containing the war. U.S. troops serve in Macedonia as part of a multinational force deployed to prevent spillover. Both the Bush and Clinton administrations sternly warned Serbian President Slobodan Milosevic that his regime would face serious consequences if he expanded the war into Kosovo. Tight enforcement of economic sanctions on Serbia was key in bringing Milosevic to the negotiating table.

The war has not yet spread largely because the parties in the region take seriously America’s commitment to prevent it from doing so. If the United States backs away from participation in the peace-enforcement mission, these same parties will take a far different view of U.S. intentions. The willingness of other NATO members to send troops to Bosnia will fade. The war will start again, and its spread will become a reality.

The second reason Bosnia warrants the potential loss of American life is that the future of the West is on the line. The United States and countries of Western Europe have spent the better part of this century building something unique in the history of international politics: a community of democratic nation-states among whom war is unthinkable. This cohesive West has been and should remain the anchor of U.S. foreign policy. The world will be a lonely and inhospitable place for America if this community unravels.

By opting out in the Balkans, the West will lose faith in itself and its ability to act collectively. As the sad history of the 1930s demonstrated, status quo democracies gradually drift apart as they tolerate repeated acts of aggression. By the time Nazi Germany posed a grave threat to Europe, it was too late. Britain, France and the United States had already chosen to go it alone. Appeasement--and the horrors that followed--was the result.

Sending troops to Bosnia is investing in the West’s long-term vitality. A successful mission will reaffirm to both decision-makers and publics in the established democracies that they are members of a community of like-minded states willing to share risks and responsibilities. NATO will demonstrate it has the political will to move beyond its old mission of defending the West against the Soviet Union to its new mission of broadening Europe’s zone of democratic peace.

Should NATO instead demonstrate its irrelevance, it will come apart, the United States will leave Europe, and the continent will again fall prey to destructive rivalries and conflicts far more serious than those in Bosnia. Building peace in the Balkans is about locking in the West and, with it, Europe’s long-term stability.

Moral obligation is the third reason for putting U.S. troops in Bosnia. The United States regularly passes up opportunities to intervene on moral grounds. And it should. U.S. troops would be dying in all corners of the globe if the moral outrage of ethnic violence or humanitarian disaster were sufficient justification for sending in the Marines.

But Bosnia is different, because it lies on Europe’s doorstep and is struggling to become part of the West. Sarajevo was as cosmopolitan as any city in Western Europe--and should be again. Bosnia belongs in our own political space.

This is why the West’s paralysis in the face of the slaughter in Bosnia has been eating away at the values and sense of common identity that undergrid Western society. How can citizens of liberal democracies claim to stand for democracy, liberty and tolerance if they allow these very values to be trampled on in the heart of Europe? It is because Bosnia is so close to home that moral concerns have left us so uneasy and so ashamed of our own inaction. We have been forced to reconsider who we are and what we stand for.

The fourth reason is that the mission is needed to turn back the isolationist tide threatening Congress and the U.S. electorate. This tide is rising only in part because of Clinton’s earlier lack of leadership. The isolationists have an unfair advantage: Convincing the public that the Bosnias of the world are not our problem will always be easier than making the case for sacrifice.

Selling international engagement to Americans will be harder than it was during the Cold War. The arguments have to be more nuanced because the threats are more complex and the interests at stake of lower priority. But Americans must come to appreciate that they will be better off if they make sacrifices--even when threats do not meet Cold War standards.

A final issue remains. Are ground troops necessary? Yes. For three reasons.

First, though the fighting has effectively stopped, an outside force is needed to keep the lid on. NATO troops will be buying time for the anger to subside and communities to rebuild. Without a NATO ground force, the current cease-fire will be nothing more than a pause in the slaughter.

Second, rogue elements are likely to seek to scuttle the accord. NATO troops, acting as third-party enforcers, will be able to neutralize these elements. If this task fell to local militias, the peace would likely unravel as the rival parties blamed each other for violating the accord and returned to the battlefield.

Third, ground troops are needed to help create a stable balance of power among the different groups within Bosnia. By training and rearming the forces of the Bosnian government while monitoring arms levels across the region as a whole, NATO forces will be establishing the minimum conditions for a lasting peace.

Americans should not ask Europeans to take on these responsibilities alone. America is and should remain a European power. If the U.S. commitment to NATO and European stability is to remain strong and credible, Americans must run the same risks as their NATO allies.

Clinton has mustered the political courage to tell Americans what they need to hear, not what they want to hear. Sending troops to Bosnia may not win Clinton votes, but as he said in Monday’s address, it is “the right thing to do.”

Americans must now muster the courage to stand behind their President. Doing so will be good for Bosnia, for the West and for the long-term interests of the United States. Perhaps most important, an American electorate still flirting with the comfort of isolationism will prove to itself that it knows better.*