Bosnia: Why the Yanks, at Their Own Pace, Probably Are Coming

By Richard H. Curtiss

"President Clinton is entitled to sympathy in the Bosnian problem. He inherited it from others who could have solved it so much more easily by acting promptly. But sympathy ends with his performance. He has given us the worst of all possible worlds: irresolution. He looks like a man unable to decide and unable to lead. The result is a disaster for the Bosnians, for peace and order in Europe and-not least-for Bill Clinton. "

—Columnist Anthony Lewis, New York Times, May 11, 1993

Candidate Bill Clinton had it right the very first time when, during the 1992 presidential campaign, he criticized President George Bush's inaction in the face of Serbian "ethnic cleansing" in Bosnia. President Clinton also had it right the second time, after 100 days in office.

It was then that he sent Secretary of State Warren Christopher to Europe to enlist support for a program to halt the genocide by which Bosnia's 31 percent Serbian population had seized 70 percent of the land. Clinton proposed that if the Serbs refused to join Bosnia's Muslims, who comprise 44 percent of the population, and Croats, who comprise 17 percent, in agreeing to the Vance-Owen peace plan for Bosnia, the international community should take two steps.

The first is to lift the arms embargo that prevents the Bosnian government from getting the artillery it needs to defend itself against well supplied Serb and Croat armies. That step "to level the playing field" would encounter no opposition from the U.S. Congress or the U.S. public. It was received very negatively by the British and French, however. They apparently fear that some arms could find their way into the hands of terrorists in Western Europe.

The second Clinton proposal is to bomb Serb artillery and military strong points in Bosnia until the shooting stops and, if it doesn't stop, perhaps extend the bombing to bridges, airfields and military strong points in Serbia itself. That proposal was criticized by the French, who feared it would provoke Serb retaliation against their troops presently in Bosnia.

Christopher accepted a third proposal originated by the Europeans, to lend U.S. military support to the "safe areas" already being established, willy nilly, around besieged Muslim populations. Where Christopher had in mind U.S. bombing strikes to take out Serb tanks and artillery shelling the safe areas, however, the French demanded that the perimeters be reinforced by U.S. ground troops.

Christopher returned rebuffed, and Clinton, who had expected to launch a major personal campaign to enlist the support of Congress and the American people for whatever intervention measures the U.S. and the Europeans had agreed upon, found himself with nothing to say. He looked and sounded irresolute and seemed to be blaming the Europeans for his own unwillingness to chart a course and persuade the rest of the world to adopt it, as George Bush had done in the Gulf war.

Alarmed by Clinton's initial warlike stance, Serbian President Slobodan Milosevic had initiated a highly public "blockade" of his Bosnian fellow Serbs for not accepting the Vance-Owen peace plan. Serbian television suddenly began a campaign to denigrate as a free-loading gambler Bosnian Serb political leader Radovan Karadzic, whom Serbian TV had been hailing as a hero the week before.

When no bombers were launched Christopher's return from Europe, however, Milosevic relaxed. His "blockade" turned out to be a sham, and the cease-fire that went into effect between Serbian and Muslim forces in Bosnia broke down. Serbian attacks on Muslim enclaves resumed and Croats, too, undertook to seize Muslim-controlled territory.

Some of the U.S. media began to turn its attention elsewhere, assuming that America's new president was prepared to ignore the Bosnian carnage, let the Serbs and Croats divide the spoils, and blame his inaction on the Europeans. That, however, is unlikely to happen.

Despite the delay, the U.S. very will intervene unless the Serbs (and Croats) truly halt their military incursions—a course they show no signs of taking until they are convinced the Yanks really are coming. The reasons the U.S. almost certainly will take action go to the heart of the differences between Americans European cousins.

All are deeply affected by the horrors they are seeing in Bosnia on their television screens nightly. The difference, however, is that media-driven public opinion does, eventually, affect, and sometimes dictate, policy in the United States. Unlike the European countries, where the government keeps some or all of the major television channels for its own use, the U.S. government has none.

In France, the "intellectuals" in the media establishment, who truly are agitated over genocide in Bosnia, can be neutralized by a French governmental establishment determined not to become further involved. In the U.S., by contrast, the policy makers vie among themselves for public opinion backing.

Last summer State Department desk officer for Bosnia George Kenney resigned to protest Bush's inaction. This year 11 of State's Eastern European desk officers signed a letter calling on Christopher to bring the Serb genocide more forcefully to the attention of the White House. In the White House itself, mid-level staffers reportedly were seeking to generate pro-intervention reports to influence the president.

In the United States, in a tug of war between the White House as it seeks to set the media agenda, and the privately owned television networks as they decide what daily "soundbites" to present or reject, there truly is a "level playing field. " Further, if U.S. national "newspapers of record, " and the hundreds of smaller newspapers they own outright or supply with syndicated columns, team up with the electronic media, they can beat the White House at any game.

Anyone who doubts this wasn't in the U.S. during the 1992 presidential election. Then the media ganged up to make George Bush look inept as well as inarticulate, to depict the economy as in worse shape than it was, and to help a small-state governor overcome some major political liabilities to look presidential.

Now much of the major network and newspaper establishment that tilted so openly to put Clinton into office is goading him to save the Muslims in Bosnia. The issue is presented as a choice between protecting helpless innocents or tolerating murderous bullies, and as a major test of his leadership. Clinton's reaction, Americans (and Clinton) are being informed, will define his presidency, and demonstrate his fitness or unfitness to lead. The fact that all of this is true only makes the media campaign harder to resist, no matter how uncertain Clinton actually may feel.

Eventually, unless the Serbs stop their land-grabbing, Clinton will have to act. When he does, the U.S. Congress will, after predictable posturing and public soul-searching, support him. So will the U.S. public, which grants a president the benefit of the doubt in foreign affairs—at least until things start going wrong. And, if history is any guide, when the U.S. takes action, the Europeans will come on board, as they did in Iraq and Somalia.

The one thing not predictable is when America's new president will make up his mind. He truly is untried.

There are other lessons to be learned from all this by Middle Easterners and Americans concerned with the Middle East. One is the contrast between the pressures on Clinton to help Muslims being pushed around by Christian Serbs and the pressures not to get involved where Muslims (and Christians) are being pushed around by Jewish Israelis.

Muslims from Morocco to Indonesia are right when they say there is a double standard in the Christian West. But in the U.S., in contrast to Europe, the double standard is not anti-Islamic. It is just pro-Israel.

Awareness that they are profoundly biased for Israel in Palestine makes liberal American Jews all the more anxious to go to the aid of persecuted Muslims in Bosnia. Liberal American Jewish organizations, too, have been faster off the mark in calling on Clinton to stop the genocide than many Christian groups. There also are differences between American Jewish groups concerned about a multitude of social issues, like the American Jewish Congress, and other Jewish groups concerned only about extracting U.S. support for Israel, like the American Israel Public Affairs Committee and the Anti-Defamation League. While the American Jewish Congress urges U.S. support for Bosnia, AIPAC and ADL are silent.

Making Their Positions Clear

Let it be noted also that mainstream American churches, Protestant and Catholic alike, though always painfully slow to react, now are making their positions known. They deplore the Serbian genocide against Muslims, and will support U.S. military measures to stop it. The fact that it is Christians who are victimizing Muslims may or may not have slowed these reactions, but it has not changed them. Christian Arab-American leaders, too, have publicly expressed their solidarity with Bosnia's Muslims.

It seems that most Americans, regardless of their religious or ethnic backgrounds, have learned the true lesson of the European Holocaust: "Never again" is meaningful only if it means "never again to anyone, anywhere," not just "never again to my kind."

This gets right to the heart of the differences in the way Europeans and Americans will, eventually, react to the holocaust being suffered, at this moment, by Bosnian Muslims in the villages, towns and cities where they have lived "since time immemorial. "

European vs. American Reactions

In many European countries, there still may be a visceral resistance to the increasingly multiethnic nature of their societies. Not very long ago, being British, French or German meant your ancestors had lived in your country and spoken your language for generations. Now it just refers to the kind of passport you carry. It's something new, since World War II, and much of the subconscious resentment it generates focuses on Muslims, who constitute some of the most visible components of the new multiethnic societies of Western Europe. Consciously or unconsciously, that's one reason the British and French may have been a little slower to rush to the defense of Bosnian Muslims than they might have been if the victims, instead of the villains, were the Serbs, their allies in two world wars.

Americans are different in at least one respect. Neither the Crusades nor anything that has transpired since in Christian-Islamic relations has impinged on the national consciousness. Americans are accustomed to living next door to, working beside, serving in wars with, and marrying people whose ethnic and religious roots are different. America has its own problems, notably black-white relationships and those resulting from the present massive influx of poor Latin Americans. None of these, however, have anything whatsoever to do with Islam or the Middle East.

Americans are coming to feel just as involved with the fate of Bosnian Muslims as they do, belatedly, with the fate of the Jews of Europe half a century ago. The worry that Americans might have been able to do something they didn't do then to help the Jews contributes to the reluctance to stand idly by now. It would be exactly the same feeling if the victims were Serbs or Croats. It's sympathy for the underdog and aversion for the bully, regardless of race or religion, and it's as American as cowboy movies and apple pie.

It doesn't mean that Americans are better or bolder than anyone else—just different for valid historical reasons. But it's a fact that the Serbian government today and Rafsanjani's Iranian government tomorrow should consider. As in World War I and World War II, unless the shooting, shelling, bombing, burning, looting, raping and killing stop, the Yanks—in their own sweet time and at their own unpredictable pace—almost certainly are coming.

Richard H. Curtiss is the executive editor of the Washington Report on Middle East Affairs.