REFLECTIONS ON BOSNIA

LORD OWEN AND THE SERBS

In early February '93, Lord Owen made appearances in New York City
on the Donahue and Charlie Rose shows. On a couple of occasions on
those shows Lord Owen gave away his pro-Serbian position when he
made the point that much or most of the Bosnian territory then in
dispute or already overrun by Serbian forces had been controlled
and occupied by Serbs before WWII.  It was as if he were saying
that since the Serbs had previously occupied those territories and
lost them during the Hitler years, they should be allowed to
reconquer them today.

I was familiar with this view because my father, a Yugoslav Jew
who escaped to this country during the war, was aided and found
sympathy among the Serbs during those harrowing years.  In recent
months when the subject of Serbian aggression was mentioned, my
father would make the point that 850,000 Serbs were killed by Nazi
and pro-Nazi Croatian forces known as the Ustasha.  My father is
so pro-Serbian that he dismissed reports of Serbian atrocities. My
father also excoriated New York Times columnist Anthony Lewis,
because, my father said, Anthony Lewis "is always talking about
the Muslims."

Update--April 28, 1993 After an uneasy truce in and around
Sbernica, shelling has resumed in nearby areas by all sides and
the killing and the misery continues apace while the Clinton
administration dithers its response.  In the days leading to the
collapse of resistance at Sbernica, Lord Owen changed his tune.
Previously he had opposed military intervention on the grounds
that it would endanger U.N. relief workers. When Serbian forces
began to march on Sbernica, the threat to U.N. relief soldiers
went unmentioned while Lord Owen called for outside intervention
to stop Serbian aggression, including the use of air strikes.  The
current disastrous situation can be seen as a failure of the West
and a failure of the Vance-Owen initiative which did nothing to
halt the Serbs. Now that it's too late to save Muslim areas that
Lord Owen felt should be in a Muslim state, Lord Owen belatedly
calls for strong action.

CLINTON AND BOSNIA

In the summer of 1992, George Kenney, a senior State Department
official, the undersecretary in charge of the Yugoslav desk, made
news when he resigned from the State Department because of the
Bush administration's refusal to take any action to halt Serbian
aggression.  As Kenney saw it, Bush's inaction was largely due to
the president's unwillingness to risk any political capital by
getting involved there.

Apparently the same is true of the Clinton administration.
Clinton gives the impression that he cares more than Bush did
about the terrible ongoing tragedy, but the practical effect has
so far been the same.

According to the New York Times, (4/16/93) the Clinton
administration did everything it could to suppress a mid-March
report by its own experts which called for military action if
necessary to protect "safe havens" for the Muslims. At one point,
Senate majority leader, George Mitchell was so incensed that the
report was kept from Congress, that he called for an
investigation.

Instead of helping the desperate Bosnians, Clinton has signalled
again and again that Milosevic and the Serbs are free to do what
they want in Bosnia--indeed, Clinton and the West have been
signalling that the Serbs should get on with the job and finish
off the Bosnians as quickly as possible while we turn the other
way.  A key signal was when Clinton made it clear that he would
NOT send in American military forces on the ground.  On this
issue, Clinton has made me wistful for Bush.  Bush and Baker could
not have done worse, and might have been pressured to do better
well before this time.  Lives in Bosnia might have been saved and
the destruction might have been curtailed..

The Nation, the left and "the Bosnian QUANDARY"

Typical of the left's inability to come to grips with the core
issue involved in Bosnia, i.e., a clear aggressor destroying
hundreds of thousands of lives, is the editorial on the "Bosnian
quandary" in The Nation (4/26/93).  In the end the editorial votes
to do nothing, even while noticing "the ghastly atrocities of the
Bosnian Serbs"  and that the "greater and lesser powers...dither
and fuss [and] hang back." ("Before anything else happens, the
Clinton Administration ought to pay the $530 million the United
States owes the" U.N. the editorial concludes.)

In its most striking passage, the editorial writer warns that
"those who are pushing President Clinton to intervene on the side
of the Bosnians had better review U.S. foreign policy since World
War II."  The editorial argues for inaction on the basis that the
Bosnian Serbs are no worse than any number of U.S. clients
including the Chileans, the South Africans, the Greek fascists and
others. (In a subsequent column for The Nation, Christopher
Hitchens correctly called this editorial, "contemptible.")

***

William Pfaff, a European based journalist who writes for the The
New Yorker and the Los Angeles Times, is among a group of liberal
columnists like Anthony Lewis, and Leslie Gelb who have clearly
and consistently called for strong Western and American
intervention to stop the Serbs.  Pfaff's most recent column
(Liberal Opinion Week 4/19/93) is entitled "International
Cowardice Worsened Bosnian Tragedy."

He clarifies the international failure which has led to present
situation in one sentence. "Having refused to intervene to
sanction the threat to minority rights in newly independent
Croatia in June 1991, or to block or penalize the military
aggression by Serbia that immediately followed, and the atrocious
"ethnic cleansing" which followed that, the United Nations now
contemplates deploying in Bosnia military force on a scale which
two years ago could have deterred the horrors Yugoslavia has since
experienced."  He goes on to explain that U.N. plans now envisaged
call for a "more daunting and open-ended military assignment than
a direct military intervention to halt the aggression would have
been a year ago."

Aryeh Neier on the Serbs In his "Watching Rights" column in the
The Nation (5/3/93) Aryeh Neier gets to the heart of the
motivation of the "aggressors"--the preferred term for the Serbian
forces who have been besieging and shelling Sarajevo for more than
a year.  He explains that "there is no  military purpose that is
served by the destruction of its fabric and its people...Above
all, few of those aligned with the forces attacking Sarajevo would
want to live there even if the city could be rebuilt.  They are
not city people.

"It is this, I believe--aside from a desire to break the morale of
Bosnians and make them press their government to accept peace at
any price--that explains the conduct of the siege of
Sarajevo...[I]t is a loathing for all that is urban, pluralist and
cosmopolitan that has made Sarajevo the object for devastation.

"Historically, most of the Serbian population in Bosnia and
Herzegovina has been rural, while Muslims, who were the civil
servants and intelligentsia during the centuries of Ottoman rule,
made up a disproportionate share of the urban population....The
destruction of Sarajevo is not only an expression of hostility
against this city; it is also an attack on the urban idea....The
demagogues who whipped up the passions let loose by this war
exploited not only ethnic and religious bigotry but also hatred
for all that is cosmopolitan."

The light that Neier sheds on the issue helps to clarify what is
at stake.  The Serbs represent the know-nothing, anti-secularist,
fundamentalist, fascist forces who are attacking the urban,
cosmopolitan, secular, multi-cultural idea.  They are attacking
the rest of us, just as Hitler did. One irony is that at the
beginning of the crisis over Bosnia, it was for awhile maintained
by the Serbs and their supporters that they were responding to a
threat by the Bosnian Muslims to create a fundamentalist state.

Neier has shown that it is the Serbs who are  the great threat to
secularism, multi-culturalism, diversity and democracy.  It's the
Serbs who are attacking the democratic notion, the democratic
idea.

Anthony Lewis comes close to the point when he asks why does
respect for Clinton's presidency "depend...on his acting
effectively against Serbian aggression?...First of all because to
do nothing about genocide would be such a betrayal of the values
we and our allies profess."  (Times, 4/26/93) But it's not merely
a betrayal of our values.  It's because the Serbs are attacking us
by proxy, just as Hitler was.

One argument for decisive action by the West that is heard in a
different form, is that war in the Balkans is destablizing for
Europe.  We hear it as, the Bosnians are Europe's Palestinians;
that is to say, just as the Palestinian refugee problem has been
the key to instability in the Middle East, just so will the
hundreds of thousands of Yugoslav refugees of all ethnicities
result in turmoil in Europe for decades to come.

One of the lessons of the twentieth century is that even though
the Atlantic Ocean divides us, the Americas are ultimately tied to
the destiny of Europe. If Europe is destabilized, the U.S. will
inevitably be affected and drawn into its problems.  As in a
whirlpool,  sooner or later we will be drawn into the maelstrom.
And as past history and Pfaff have shown, it's much better if we
do so decisively, quickly and on our terms.