Clinton Faces Tough Decision on Bosnia

As President Clinton concludes his campaign with a series of high-profile appearances, his foreign policy advisors are quietly preparing for one of the most controversial decisions of his presidency: the next step in Bosnia.

Win or lose, it is a decision he must make within weeks.

While Clinton has managed to push beyond today the touchy issue of whether to extend the presence of U.S. troops in the Balkans, even with the election behind him the decision will not be easy. And if he is reelected, the two options he faces will be extremely uncomfortable.

Will he keep the promise he made to Congress and the American public in December and end U.S. military involvement in Bosnia-Herzegovina when the current peacekeeping mandate runs out Dec. 20? If he chooses that course, he risks throwing away the progress made toward peace and cedes the United States’ role in the Balkans.

Or will he keep U.S. troops in the region to consolidate the shaky peace? That choice would probably lead to another public assault on his credibility and a major run-in with a Congress whose support he needs for a successful second term.

“There’s the question of whether he can credibly go to Congress for [funding of] other kinds of international peacekeeping and peace enforcement missions if he’s seen as not keeping his word here,” summed up one White House official.

For that reason, the official said, U.S. involvement in a Bosnia “follow-on” force, which would replace the current peacekeepers, is not “a done deal.”

Even if the voters make him a lame duck today, freeing him from long-term political considerations, any attempt to extend the U.S. troop commitment in the Balkans would be a tough sell.

“It’s going to be a very difficult time,” predicted Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.), a leading critic of the way Clinton has handled the deployment in Bosnia. “There’s great resentment and skepticism.”

Events, however, are pushing the president to break his word.

Although ordering an end to U.S. participation in the NATO-led multinational peace Implementation Force, known as IFOR, would avoid problems domestically, such a move would be little short of reckless, say those familiar with the situation.

A U.S. military pullout now, these sources say, would endanger the hard-won, fragile stability in Bosnia in which the United States has invested so much.

It also would risk a major rift with U.S. allies in the North Atlantic Treaty Organization and probably start unraveling the international effort to keep peace in the region.

Britain, France and other nations with large troop commitments to IFOR have said they will quit if the United States pulls out.

“It would be irresponsible,” said former U.S. Assistant Secretary of State Richard Holbrooke, the principal architect of the peace that has taken hold thanks mainly to the presence of IFOR.

Holbrooke’s successor, John Kornblum, agreed.

“We’re still at a point where international support is necessary” to make the peace effort successful, he told a group of correspondents here last week.

At least through today’s U.S. elections, the administration has seemed determined to stick by its semantic defense.

In response to questions about the future of U.S. forces in the Balkans, senior administration officials have said only that IFOR’s mandate will end as scheduled Dec. 20, exactly one year after it began. There is no talk of renaming or reshaping the mission, they insist, and all that comes after that date remains speculative.

In fact, Defense Secretary William J. Perry and Gen. John M. Shalikashvili, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, told a congressional committee last month that even without an extension of the U.S. military presence, it would be mid-March before the last IFOR-assigned U.S. troops are out of the region.

Further, White House officials now say that a contingent of 5,000 U.S. troops dispatched early last month to Bosnia as part of a cover force to guard the impending withdrawal of IFOR units was told before its departure that it might be ordered to stay beyond March.

The force has been “given warnings that it’s not impossible that once the IFOR pullout is complete, it could be given a follow-on mission, if there is one,” one official said.

Britain was so certain of a continued U.S. presence that it recently deployed a new brigade of 5,000 troops for a six-month tour of duty.

“That we’re putting a fresh brigade out there now would seem to make its own point,” British army spokesman John Beer said.

With timing that could not be more convenient for Clinton’s reelection chances, military planners at NATO headquarters in Brussels are scheduled to present their requirements for a post-IFOR force to their political masters Wednesday.

According to alliance sources, planners have studied troop and equipment needs for four political options, including two highly unlikely extremes: continuation of the current IFOR mandate with a similar-size force of 52,000 troops or, conversely, a complete military pullout.

Most planning so far, these sources say, has been devoted to the two more likely courses of action, both of which would involve extending the U.S. troop presence in the region.

One of these plans reportedly calls for a multinational force about half to two-thirds the size of IFOR, to deter new conflict and lend confidence to those struggling to knit together the divided country.

“This is much the preferred option,” one alliance official said.

The other of the more likely plans under study involves a smaller, more mobile rapid-reaction force stationed just outside Bosnia, possibly in Hungary and aboard ships at sea, that could return quickly to the country if fighting breaks out again.

NATO ambassadors must choose one of those options--most likely before the end of the month. Member states, including the United States, must then commit troops to the mission within days.

Several factors aside from strict military considerations are likely to influence the shape and size of any U.S. contribution to a follow-on force. In an attempt to better sell at home an extended U.S. commitment, the administration seems to be pursuing two tactical goals:

* It is packaging a further military commitment as heavily as possible in clear, persuasive language that will outline how and in what time frame the burden of rebuilding Bosnia can be transferred from international to local control.

“We have to show how this place can at some point effectively fend for itself,” one official said.

* It is using the current uncertainty about the U.S. military commitment to pressure European countries to shoulder greater burdens in crucial areas.

One White House official, for example, hinted at a possible direct link between the number of troops the United States might be willing to commit and European willingness to devote more resources to civilian tasks, such as beefing up Bosnia’s feeble and corrupt civilian police.

“We might calibrate how many troops, what kind of time frame . . . depending on how the Europeans do on the police, on other civilian programs,” this official said.

The United States sees a revitalization of local civilian police forces as a core issue in building a normal society in Bosnia.

“They can either be part of the problem or a huge part of the solution,” one State Department official said about the civilian police. “They can either be busy burning people’s homes down or protecting the rights of individuals. The police have to be retrained, reorganized and reequipped. If this doesn’t happen, then the whole Bosnia policy is up the spout.”

At a recent donors conference in Ireland, the U.S. officials said they were virtually alone in pledging to assist in upgrading the police.

They implied that the U.S. political will to commit militarily to a follow-on force could also be strongly influenced by a meeting in Paris this month, when nations supporting the Bosnia peace accord brokered last year in Dayton, Ohio, are to set priorities for a second year of civilian reconstruction in the war-torn land.

“If we come out of Paris confident that we’re on the right track on the civilian side, then it gives us more confidence that a follow-on force might do some good,” a senior Defense Department official said. “If we don’t, then it will make us more skeptical that a follow-on force will have much use.”