Editorial from News and Letters October 1997

Bosnia: between two kinds of partition

The recent announcement by the Clinton administration that it will keep U.S. troops in Bosnia long past the original June l998 deadline for their withdrawal has intensified debate in Washington over the direction of its Bosnia policy. The narrow confines in which this debate is occurring, however, is preventing many from grasping the real nature of U.S. actions. On Sept. 23 Samuel R. Berger, Clinton's national security advisor, announced that an extended presence of U.S. troops is needed in Bosnia in order to prevent a resumption of full-scale warfare between Croats, Muslims and Serbs. If U.S. troops were to withdraw by next June, he asserted, a major catastrophe could occur.

Arguing against this are such standard-bearers of the Republican Party as Senator Kay Bailey Hutchinson of Texas, who favors an immediate withdrawal of U.S. troops. Hutchinson, who openly supports the partition of Bosnia between Serbs, Croats and Muslims, revealed the basis of her position when she said "our peacekeepers have been assigned missions that are inherently not peaceful, like forcing refugees back into mixed neighborhoods." Aside from the fact that the U.S. and NATO forces have done no such thing, it is clear that nothing irks this Texas Republican more than the thought of encouraging different ethnicities to live together. Such racist attitudes motivate the Republican Party's entire attitude on Bosnia.

PLAVSIC--MINION OF CLINTON POLICY

Though the Clinton administration claims to be governed by more enlightened motives, its policies in Bosnia are likewise furthering an apartheid-like separation of Muslims, Croats and Serbs. This is most of all seen in its support of Biljana Plavsic, President of the renegade Serb "Republika Srpska," established through the ethnic cleansing of thousands of Bosnian Muslims.

Clinton proclaimed her an ally of U.S. interests after she broke with Radovan Karadzic, the notorious war criminal who once headed the neo-fascist Serb enclave, after he cut her out of the take from various illicit trade and extortion schemes. But she has never distanced herself from Karadzic's narrow nationalism. She was a fervent advocate of the war against Bosnia who often referred to Muslims as an "inferior civilization" which should be annihilated. Yet despite her continued refusal to criticize any Serbian actions during the genocidal war against Bosnia, the U.S. has now embraced her as a "moderate"!

By supporting figures like Plavsic, while refraining from any serious effort to arrest war criminals like Karadzic, the U.S. is ensuring the lines of ethnic apartheid in Bosnia will be permanent. So why is Clinton anxious to maintain a long-term military presence there when his policies are leading to the kind of outright partition advocated openly by his Republican Party critics? His claim that U.S. troops are needed in order to "avoid bloodshed" is hardly believable, given that the U.S. sat back and watched as tens of thousands of Bosnians were massacred during the war. Something different is at stake--U.S. concern over the future of NATO should renewed fighting in Bosnia take matters beyond the perimeters it has envisioned for it.

NATO PREVENTS A CLEAN FIGHT

Berger stated this plainly on Sept. 23 when he said a resumption of military hostilities after a U.S. departure "would undermine NATO's credibility at a critical moment when the alliance is preparing for new members and new missions. This would throw into question America's leadership in Europe."

The U.S. fears that in the advent of any renewal of hostilities, the Bosnians will be in the position to make major military gains. This is not an unjustified view. Bosnia was on the verge of inflicting a military defeat on the Serbs when the U.S. forced them to accept a cease-fire and the Dayton Accords. Since then, the Bosnians have become much more powerful in economic and military terms. A resumption of hostilities could easily lead to the total defeat of the Serb leaders in the Republika Sprska.

Such a military defeat of the Serb leadership by the Bosnians could break the shackle of neo-fascist narrow nationalism which has gripped the region. This applies not only to the Republika Srpska, but Serbia itself. As the failure of this year's protest movement in Serbia to detach itself from various narrow nationalist leaders showed, so long as Serbian narrow nationalism does not suffer a military as well as political defeat, it will be all the harder to loosen its grip on the minds of the Serbian masses.

It is precisely this eventuality that current U.S. policy aims to prevent. Far from taking the ground of Clinton's arguments with the Congressional Republicans, what is needed is opposition to U.S. military intervention in Bosnia rooted in a firm defense of Bosnia's struggle to create a truly multiethnic society.

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