A Turning Point for Europe--and U.S.

Turning points in international relations are clearer in retrospect than in prospect, but the United States may well stand at a turning point in its relations with Europe. Until this week, this country had not taken a leading role in the Balkans crisis. No American interest, no Persian Gulf oil, was at risk in the Balkans. American security was not in jeopardy. Americans have been sickened at the spectacle of genocide proceeding with impunity, but the Clinton Administration, like the Bush Administration, has been unwilling to risk its citizens’ lives to stop the genocide.

A great power may define a given conflict as beyond its sphere of concern without ceasing to be a great power. Can the United States define the Balkans conflict as that kind of conflict? Until this week, this country had managed to have it both ways, neither engaging its power to bring the conflict to resolution nor clearly withdrawing from any role in the resolution. This week, however, the most direct U.S. intervention to date, an airlift of relief to eastern Bosnia, led to a defiantly timed, maximally brutal Serb attack on Cerska, one of the Muslim towns targeted for help.

In a word, U.S. power was mocked. Moreover, Radovan Karadzic, leader of the rebel Bosnian Serbs, has carried the taunting a step further in an open letter that reads in part: “Will (the Bosnian Muslims) finally get America to intervene militarily on their behalf by shooting down an American plane and having that too blamed on the Serbs? The tragic and deplorable terrorist incident at the World Trade Center is fresh testimony to the extraordinary volatility and immediate danger of direct foreign involvement.”

Deliberately ambiguous, the statement nonetheless amounts to “Watch your step, Clinton.” Russia has offered to participate in the U.S. airlift, which looks more and more like, absurdly, an airlift of supplies to the Serbs rather than to their victims. But Russia has also pointedly said that it will veto any peace accord that doesn’t satisfy the Bosnian Serbs.

Subtly, the Balkans conflict has been inserted into a latter-day East-West conflict, and the East is winning. The Serbs go about their “ethnic cleansing” unimpeded. The Russians impose their will without firing a shot. The Europeans and Americans are proven impotent. In short, a turning point in Europe.

Options remain, a familiar list: lifting the arms embargo on Bosnia, creating in-country safe havens, enforcing relief shipments by force of arms, attacking the Serb artillery shelling Sarajevo, enforcing a no-fly zone by preemptive attack, drawing the line by placing troops in Kosovo and Macedonia. But if none of these options is taken--and, to judge from the lame declaration issued after an emergency meeting of the U.N. Security Council Wednesday, it appears that none will be--then the grim game may be up. NATO commander Manfred Woerner says his forces are ready to enforce a peace settlement; but no settlement is remotely in view. Instead, the Bosnian Muslims are about to die as a people, slaughtered by their enemies as the Jews of Europe were slaughtered by the Nazis. What else may be dying with them only time will tell.