05/09/2019 AMERICA IN THE EYE OF A HURRICANE - The Washington Post

The Washington Post

AMERICA IN THE EYE OF A HURRICANE

By Henry Kissinger
September 8, 1996
By the end of the year, we shall be facing a moment of truth in Bosnia: It no longer will be possible to gloss
over the incompatibility between the military and political provisions of the Dayton Accords, which brought
about the cease-fire.

There are pressures to use NATO (and American) troops to enforce the political provisions, and there is a
presidential commitment to withdraw our troops by Dec. 29. The looming crisis has four components:

The political provisions of the Dayton Accords require free elections, a unified Bosnia-Herzegovina, free
movement within Bosnia and the right of refugees to return to their homes. None of these goals is
achievable without the massive use of force.

At the same time, by establishing cease-fire lines patrolled by NATO, the military provisions of the
agreement have the practical consequence of protecting ethnic enclaves and therefore are an obstacle to the
proclaimed goal of unification.

Normally, elections presuppose the existence of a country. In Bosnia, elections are projected to create a
country from among three deeply hostile ethnic groups. Not surprisingly, each of those groups is
manipulating the electoral process, not to encourage pluralism but to unify itself for a showdown with the
hated neighbor.

Amid this turmoil, the president's stated policy remains that U.S. troops will be withdrawn by Dec. 29. The
other NATO nations have declared that they will follow suit.

If these contradictions are not remedied before the scheduled American withdraw\al, Bosnia is likely to
blow up again.

Twenty thousand American soldiers find themselves at the center of this looming crisis. At the moment,
things seem calm because we are in the eye of the hurricane, but as the various deadlines approach, the
success of the U.S. military deployment -- and the safety of our forces -- will depend on answers to these
questions: What is to be the ultimate balance between our military and political objectives? The role of our
forces in bringing about a political settlement? What, indeed, are we trying to accomplish?

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 05/09/2019 AMERICA IN THE EYE OF A HURRICANE - The Washington Post
Bosnia policy has reached this impasse because of a tendency to pursue immediate goals without assessing
their long-range consequences.

In 1991 the Bush administration aborted a plan nearly agreed on between the Bosnian ethnic groups that
would have created a loose confederation amounting to partition. The reason for quashing the plan was the
fear that de facto partition of Bosnia might become a model for the breakup of the Soviet Union,
endangering Gorbachev's reforms.

In 1993 the new Clinton administration rejected a similar plan devised by former secretary of state Cyrus
Vance and former British foreign secretary David Owen. The administration did not want to ratify the ethnic
cleansing conducted by the Serbs. But this decision triggered a new and even more serious round of ethnic
cleansing -- this time by all the parties.

In 1994 the Clinton administration, in order to get around the U.N. arms embargo it did not wish to
challenge, encouraged the covert sending of arms from Iran to Bosnia. The result was that fundamentalist
and terrorist Iran now has a foothold in Europe.

In this manner our policy drifted toward supporting a unified Bosnian state -- a commitment all the more
remarkable because, until it was created in 1992, Bosnia had never been an independent state. Though
Bosnian nationalists claim that a flourishing state around Sarajevo existed in the 12th and 13th centuries, it
surely did not have its present-day ethnic mix. And it is the ethnic -- or, rather, the religious -- conflict (since
ethnically there are few differences) that has made the search for political unity so intractable and so bloody.

For at least 500 years, Bosnia has been a province at the frontier among the Muslim, Catholic and Serbian
Orthodox religions, and between the Austrian and Turkish empires. None of its three religious groups -- the
Serb, Croat and Muslim -- has ever accepted domination by one of the others. Occasionally obliged to yield
to superior outside forces -- Turkish, Austrian or Communist -- they have never submitted to each other.

NATO's recognition in 1992 of an independent sovereign state of Bosnia called into being a civil war, not a
country. The three ethnic groups whose rivalries had broken up Yugoslavia fought each other in the much
smaller Bosnia with the savagery characteristic of Balkan wars, the vast majority of the atrocities in the early
stages being committed by the Serbs. Crimes such as the Serb slaughter of Muslim prisoners in Srbrenica
are despicable and justly the subject of an international war-crimes tribunal. But the parties are driven by
long memories. In almost every decade of this century, each group has logged enough crimes against the
others so that, in effect, there are no innocent parties in Bosnia.

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 05/09/2019 AMERICA IN THE EYE OF A HURRICANE - The Washington Post
Given that past, a multiethnic state runs counter to the principle of self-determination -- a defining cause of
America's foreign policy since the days of Woodrow Wilson. It will be achieved only if imposed by massive
force, not at the ballot box.

The Dayton agreement continues the pattern of short-term fixes that produce vast long-term consequences.
Its pursuit of a multiethnic Bosnia has driven us to bring about (or, more accurately, to impose) the so-
called Bosnian Federation, which is a shotgun marriage of Croats and Muslims. Together with its Serbian
counterpart, the Bosnian Federation is to constitute one of the two components of united Bosnia-
Herzegovina.

In reality, the Croat and Muslim parts of the so-called federation are to all practical purposes administered
separately, fly their own flags and, despite reluctant bows to our pressure, maintain their own armies. In the
city of Mostar, Croats and Muslims live on the opposite sides of a river bisecting the town; they enter each
other's part of town only at physical risk. And comparable hatreds dominate relations between the Serbian
part of Bosnia and the so-called federation. What is proved by trying to bring about a multiethnic state in
these conditions?

Not surprisingly, the projected Bosnian elections are turning into a travesty. Reports from each ethnic area
are unanimous concerning massive pressures and intimidation by the respective governing authorities. Each
group suppresses dissent and seeks to use the elections to solidify its ethnic base for the ultimate showdown
with the hated rivals. In the meantime, the Clinton administration is impaled upon the horns of a self-
inflicted dilemma: It supports the Bosnian election as a means of withdrawing our troops, while that
withdrawal is being prevented by the electoral process itself, because troops will be needed to police both
the election and its outcome.

Why should NATO or American forces be asked to risk their lives on behalf of such objectives? Two
arguments have been advanced on behalf of insisting on a multiethnic state: that Bosnia is the functional
equivalent of Czechoslovakia, and therefore failure to restore its original status amounts to another Munich.
The second proposition is the reverse of the first: that a multiethnic state in Bosnia is necessary not so much
to punish aggression as to prevent it. If Bosnia is permitted to disintegrate, it is alleged that other successor
states of Yugoslavia -- especially Macedonia -- will follow, tempting neighboring Greece, Turkey and
Bulgaria to intervene in another series of Balkan wars.

With respect to the analogy with Czechoslovakia, no unified state or multiethnic government has ever
existed in Bosnia. The military challenge is not the product of the Serbs' aspiration to world domination but
of the refusal of one ethnic group to submit to another. In the early stages of the conflict, a case could be
made for the proposition that Serbian conduct was so egregious a violation of our moral convictions that
response to it was clearly necessary. But that moment was permitted to pass.

With extensive ethnic cleansing, only the most insignificant remnants of other groups are left in each area.
To force these now ethnically homogeneous regions into a common entity guarantees another round of
ethnic cleansing in order to reverse the consequences of the last round. Without the presence of NATO and
American troops for an indefinite period, this will be unachievable. And based on historical experience, it
would surely involve continuing casualties.
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As for Macedonia, I doubt that what happens in Bosnia now will set a precedent for what Greece, Bulgaria
and Turkey decide with respect to their traditional battleground. The Macedonian problem is much more of
an international than an ethnic conflict; it can be constrained best by the parties' own assessment of the
balance of power among them and by the pressures NATO can bring on its member states, Greece and
Turkey. American willingness to maintain international order will surely be undermined by a doctrine that
all Balkan wars must be ended by U.S. military intervention.

The Clinton administration correctly regards achieving the cease-fire in Bosnia is as a major success;
maintaining it by policing the cease-fire lines for a time is compatible with our interests and values. The
present time limit is too short -- though American troops cannot be expected to patrol these ethnic dividing
lines indefinitely. To go further is to mire ourselves in the bog of Balkan internal politics. This would
produce an endless crisis that, like Somalia and Vietnam, would in the end erode our willingness to sustain
international responsibilities.

The present electoral travesty in Bosnia therefore should be abandoned. The only sensible electoral process
and one most compatible with America's historic commitment to self-determination would be a plebiscite in
each ethnic region on the simple choice between a multiethnic Bosnia and some form of partition. If a
majority in each region favored a unified Bosnia, the current electoral process could be restarted. Pending
the outcome of such a plebiscite, U.S. and NATO forces should be confined to their present mission of
policing the cease-fire.

Ironically, were a unified Bosnia ever to come about, it might well provide a platform for Serbs and Croats to
partition the Muslim part between themselves (which is how, in fact, the crisis began).

Realistically, a separate Muslim entity may be the best achievable outcome. It would be the solution most
compatible with the principle of self-determination and most conducive to long-term stability. The other
ethnic groups should have the same option or join their mother countries.

Since the Muslim entity will be weaker than its neighbors and given the historic hatreds, it should be given
some form of NATO guarantee -- provided the Muslim state can be stripped of its Iranian connection. Once
ethnic dividing lines are given international status, the cease-fire will be much easier to enforce, and some of
the incentives to resume military operations will diminish.

The desire to avoid a foreign policy debate in the middle of an election campaign is understandable. But the
penalty for continued evasion is stark. We must not drift into participation in a civil war in Bosnia in order
to tranquilize domestic debate for a few weeks. The writer, a former secretary of state, is president of
Kissinger Associates, an international consulting firm that has clients with business interests in many
countries abroad.

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