Putting Clothes on the Emperor : Is NATO finally serious about Sarajevo?

Put up or shut up.

Monday, as a communique was being drafted that would commit NATO to attack Serb artillery emplacements from the air if the strangulation of Sarajevo continued, President Clinton spoke sternly:

“If we are going to reassert this warning (issued for the first time last August), it cannot be seen as mere rhetoric. Those who attack Sarajevo must understand we are serious. In voting for this language, I expect (NATO) to take action when necessary.”

Tuesday, the communique was ratified: NATO reaffirmed its readiness under the authority of the Security Council of the United Nations “to carry out air strikes in order to prevent the strangulation of Sarajevo, the safe areas and other threatened areas in Bosnia-Herzegovina.”

The Serbs attacking Sarajevo responded to this new threat by immediately meeting the one non-procedural condition NATO had stipulated. They launched a mortar attack that shut down the Sarajevo airport, halting the airlift on which Sarajevo depends for food. This followed a week of intensified shelling of the airport and of densely populated central Sarajevo.

Accordingly, Clinton must now--immediately--call for an emergency NATO summit and at it he must demand that the threatened air strikes be executed.

NATO has made the air strikes conditional on a unanimous vote of its 16 member states, thus giving Greece, a NATO member but a Serbian ally, a veto. NATO has also made the strikes conditional on approval by the Security Council, thus giving U.N. General Secretary Boutros Boutros-Ghali, a past opponent of military assistance to the Bosnians, a veto. These escape clauses may exist because some NATO members, rather than take the necessary action, want only not to seem to be avoiding it.

But not Clinton. He has already attacked that very escapism: “Failure to act on promises of action,” he said Monday, “will have great ramifications in the future in other contexts.” In effect, Clinton has given his word that he will not allow the NATO promise to become a damagingly empty one.

Let him now be a man of his word and move NATO from talk to action. Greece may stop him. Boutros-Ghali, perhaps with the tacit backing of some of the NATO states, may stop him. But let Clinton not pusillanimously check beforehand to see whether his flag will be saluted before he raises it. He tried that once before, sending Secretary of State Warren Christopher on a European diplomatic mission that left NATO bewildered and Christopher humiliated.

The time has come for the President to call several bluffs at once. If he does so, either Sarajevo will be en route to rescue or NATO will be exposed as a paper tiger. Either way, the sooner the better.