A guilt trip with photo opportunities: Jonathan Eyal says America shares our failure in the Balkans

AT LONG last, the Balkan roulette is becoming interesting: the commander of United Nations forces in Bosnia, General Philippe Morillon, is holed up in the town of Srebrenica, trying to persuade local leaders to allow through aid convoys. Elsewhere, artillery shells are interspersed with food pallets parachuted from high altitude, complete with pork rations for Bosnia's Muslims. And in New York, Europe's mediators, invariably drawn from a pool of retired politicians, are supplemented by young American diplomats determined to succeed.

After more than a year of indifference, the United States has returned to the Balkans. The ever-young republic that does not tolerate ethnic cleansing (as every native American Indian can testify), the superpower that never accepted violent changes of frontiers (as all the citizens of the Soviet empire remember) is ready to harness its might in order to uphold its values in Bosnia.

In practice, the US is merely slipping into the European game of virtual unreality. Instead of radical thought, it offers the same ragtag of 'principles'. And instead of action, it concocts fresh photo opportunities in the Balkans.

In keeping with the tradition of packaging every foreign policy twist as America's gift to humanity, President Bill Clinton's administration is full of righteous indignation. As far as Washington is concerned, the Europeans have not only failed to provide for security in their own back yard, but were on the verge of accepting Bosnia's defeat at the hands of Serb aggressors. The reality is that responsibility for the Balkan debacle is shared across the Atlantic and the reasons for Europe's paralysis apply to the US as well.

The European Community initially rushed into handling the Yugoslav war not because it had the necessary instruments for dealing with the conflict or any idea of what it wished to promote, but mainly because it hoped to acquire both as it went along. Not surprisingly, the effort was a disaster, but Washington matched the Europeans' stupidity at almost every stage. Indeed, it was James Baker, then Secretary of State, who, in the hope of becoming a new Abraham Lincoln, preached unity to the Yugoslav republics on the eve of their war with a blind indifference to reality. And the US shared the Europeans' hope that the mere act of recognising Bosnia's independence would save the republic from destruction.

The Balkan catastrophe has not come about merely because of badly implemented policies or a lack of vision, as Clinton's administration believes. Instead, it raises fundamental questions about the post-Cold War world that neither the Americans nor the Europeans are yet prepared to answer. For the reality is simple: those who preach the virtues of their principles must ultimately be ready to fight in order to see them enforced.

During the Cold War period, it was relatively easy to suggest that any conflict, however remote, could affect world peace and therefore required a joint response. But a humble Serbian artillery shell cannot reach London or Washington and, if violence is to be discouraged, nations have to be persuaded that Yugoslavia's wars matter. However, they have remained far from convinced of this.

Western politicians engaged in arcane disputes about Europe's 'architecture', and the relative merits of the EC or Nato, without realising that the very concept of collective security needed rethinking. The West rushed to pocket the 'peace dividend' by cutting defence budgets, but continued trumpeting ever-grander principles. Tinpot Balkan dictators noticed the contradiction, and went on fighting.

For most ordinary Europeans and Americans, Yugoslavia remained a place where people with unpronounceable names fought over their 'Slavonias', a Ruritanian plot that went terribly wrong. They were horrified by the pictures of wanton carnage and destruction, but still did not see why their sons and daugh-

ters should be sent to stop the fighting.

The general sense of frustration has resulted in a remarkable reversal of roles. The very people who as late as the Gulf war were claiming that force solves nothing in international relations are now demanding a military intervention in Yugoslavia. And the generals, who spent billions on the assumption that only force deters aggression, now claim they are unable to stop the fighting.

Instead of explaining the principles at stake in the Balkans, most Western politicians have perpetuated the ambivalence, by steering a median line between doing everything and accomplishing nothing. Yugoslavia has had four peace-keeping operations, but no peace to keep. It also has plenty of foreign soldiers with no mandate to fight and relief agencies tasked with making sure that those who depart this world do so with full stomachs.

The Clinton administration could have broken the impasse. It had two options: either to face realities on the ground by accepting the Vance-Owen plan for Bosnia, or to pledge its forces for a battle to uphold its principles. But far from facing up to the challenge squarely, Washington added a new set of specious arguments. It accepted that the Serbs might end up holding some of their occupied Bosnian land, but protested that this should not be as much as Vance and Owen had first suggested. It threatened that those responsible for atrocities would face a war crimes tribunal, but not before they were gently persuaded to sign a peace accord.

American officials claim that their involvement has at least settled a few other matters. If Western forces are to be introduced into Bosnia, these will be co- ordinated by Nato, not the Western European Union or the European Community, which initially hoped to lead a cavalry charge from Brussels with its filing cabinets. And Washington has succeeded in getting Russia involved in the process, thereby exerting pressure on Serbia in a more meaningful way. Yet the assertion that a heavy Western military presence in support of a Bosnian peace plan would bring stability to the Balkans remains dangerous nonsense.

THE main challenge in former Yugoslavia is not only to achieve a Bosnian settlement, but also to stem competition between nations such as Croatia and Serbia, which are simultaneously upholders and challengers of the territorial status quo. The West has no strategy for dealing with this wider problem. Its current policy of demanding greater autonomy for Kosovo but opposing outright independence for the region's ethnic Albanians cannot succeed. Indeed, the arrival of Western troops in Bosnia may well signal an Albanian uprising in Kosovo and further troubles in the Serbian enclaves of Croatia. As long as the war is handled piecemeal, violence will continue throughout the region.

The lesson of Yugoslavia is that conflicts must be handled early, before they erupt into violence, with the entire array of international institutions. Furthermore, the West must accept that preaching also entails responsibilities: if principles are proclaimed but never enforced, those who bark without revealing their teeth are soon be ignored.

Far from accepting this logic, the US is wistfully looking back to a world in which such decisions never needed to be taken. President Clinton's senior officials have received with equanimity Russia's claim that it will police its former empire, hoping that this should prevent further Yugoslavias. Bottling up nationalist aspirations by consigning people to new spheres of influence simply because nobody knows what to do with them has produced Yugoslavia's tragedy and guarantees further misery. The soldiers who remain in Bosnia will not be defending either peace or principles; they will be merely expiating the guilt of politicians who failed to face up to the challenges of the post-Cold War world.

(Photograph omitted)