How to Get Out of Bosnia in Five Years, Not Five Decades

As U.S. troops contemplate staying in Bosnia “indefinitely” (forget about June 1998, which was never viable anyway), the president’s policy team should be at work on a strategy for a real departure date. If we do not begin to take steps soon, U.S. forces are destined to be in Bosnia for as long as anyone cares to imagine.

Remembering why the U.S. went into Bosnia is the key to understanding the conditions necessary for our departure. We surely did not go in solely to protect human rights or to stem the flow of refugees; if that were true, we would have gone in 200,000 lives sooner. Dayton remains a worthy goal, but it is a very long-term goal, much akin to pursuing human rights in Burma. Rather, the U.S. went into Bosnia to ensure that NATO remained intact as the primary instrument for maintaining peace throughout Europe. That was and remains our goal. Should the U.S.--and therefore NATO--withdraw and the conflict resume (which is a certainty today), NATO would be neutered and the whole of peace in Europe would be at risk.

Therefore, the U.S. and NATO must stay until the parties can live in peace without an international military presence, or until a credible peace enforcer besides NATO is found. Either result will preserve NATO and Bosnia. However, if history is any guide, the first scenario will require a U.S. presence in Bosnia for 50 years or more. Recall that the Balkans have either been at war or ruled from outside or under a dictator’s thumb for the past 500 years. Today’s outside ruler, trying to hold off war and dictatorship, is the U.S.-led NATO. Therefore, the second option--finding a suitable alternative peace enforcer--should be our immediate goal. It will take more than a little time to find such a force, and the solution lies far from Bosnia.

A basic strategic template for U.S. action might look like this: The U.S. relies on regional institutions and powers to manage local crises, intervening militarily only when regional actors get overwhelmed and broader U.S. interests (like regional peace or commerce) are at risk. Once American intervention quells a crisis, the U.S. shifts to a careful but clear strategy of returning management of the crisis to regional control. Rarely does the U.S. stay until a crisis is fully resolved--certainly not in Bosnia. Only a strategy that includes the successful return of a crisis to regional hands, once it is again manageable, can sustain the U.S. role in the world.

The potential regional actors for Bosnia are the much maligned Western European Union and the European Union. As the military part of that still-being-born odd couple, the WEU should now become the object of much U.S. attention and support. With understanding and cooperative backing by the U.S., and with a little hard-nosed diplomacy, the WEU could replace NATO in Bosnia in a few years as the head of a European-led, U.S.-supported military or police force.

Contrapuntally, the WEU is very unlikely to do so in response to threats of summary U.S. departures or demands that Europeans do more. Those tactics summon nightmares of being left holding the body bags while the U.S. calls the shots from the comfort and safety of Washington. What is needed is U.S. leadership--positive and cooperative steps that show the way to achieving what Europeans are seeking with growing resolve--a credible capability to manage at least the low end of their own security affairs.

The WEU is routinely--and unfairly--discounted in Washington as a hollow shell. No longer true. Over the past five years the “new” WEU has painstakingly built a sound institutional base. It has also mapped out and exercised links to military forces in the field. But the WEU is still untried in a bona fide crisis. The U.S. should lay out a strategy whereby the WEU can win its spurs and gain the capabilities--and confidence--to take over in Bosnia between 2000 and 2005, a reasonable target window.

Over the next two years, that means earnest negotiations with the WEU to gradually metamorphose the force in Bosnia from U.S. leadership to European leadership (after all, it always has been a predominantly European force anyway). Then, Europeans can move the force from the NATO womb to the WEU at their will, and U.S. forces would be out-of-theater, serving as reaction and support forces. Together the U.S. and the WEU should plot their response to the inevitable challenge to European leadership that will come from one or more of the conflicting parties (all of whom are equally culpable and suspect). Those challenges must be met swiftly, collectively and with overwhelming force.

Once in control, it will be up to the Europeans to see the crisis to its end, while the U.S. turns its leadership and forces to more pressing matters of collective interest, such as the Persian Gulf, the Strait of Taiwan or Korea. In those theaters our erstwhile European allies and others should be encouraged to support us, just as we in turn continue our support in Bosnia. Meanwhile, Europe should get set for the long haul in the Balkans. Bosnia is sure to need an outside hand for scores of years. That hand should come from Europe, not America. But for that to happen, the U.S.--which for 50 years has suppressed the emergence of leadership in Europe--is obliged to show the way, or else remain on the ground in Bosnia until unchaperoned peace flowers where it has never been before.