[Congressional Record Volume 140, Number 75 (Wednesday, June 15, 1994)]
[House]
[Page H]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Printing Office [www.gpo.gov]


[Congressional Record: June 15, 1994]
From the Congressional Record Online via GPO Access [wais.access.gpo.gov]

 
                         SELF-DEFENSE IN BOSNIA

  (Mr. HORN asked and was given permission to address the House for 1 
minute and to revise and extend his remarks and to include extraneous 
material.)
  Mr. HORN. Mr. Speaker, last week a majority of this House voted to 
lift the embargo that has crippled the people of Bosnia from defending 
themselves under the inherent right of self-defense that is recognized 
in the United Nations Charter. One hundred and nine nations in the 
United Nations have said Bosnia ought to be permitted arms as a matter 
of that inherent right of self-defense.
  On June 10, Mr. Speaker, in the Wall Street Journal, Dr. Albert 
Wohlstetter--University Professor Emeritus at the University of Chicago 
and one of America's greatest strategic thinkers--wrote an article that 
takes apart, piece by piece, every single argument we have heard from 
this administration as to why the embargo should not be lifted. I 
commend this wise article to my colleagues.
  When you realize that only one out of every four Bosnian soldiers has 
a rifle, it is clear that the other three could use rifles and light 
infantry equipment to stop tanks and armored personnel carriers which 
now roam freely over the Bosnian countryside. We are not talking about 
sending American troops. We are talking about the Free World, and 
others, providing supplies for a besieged people.
  Mr. Speaker, I think my colleagues will find of particular interest 
Dr. Wohlstetter's comments on the need for leadership by the United 
States in ending this world tragedy. If this administration would stand 
up and cease the procrastination that has made the Bosnian people who 
want to be free, tragic victims of oppression in the last decade of the 
20th century, then we might well also encourage--as Dr. Wohlstetter 
concludes the democratic forces in Russia to ``oppose the resurgence of 
a Russian interest in dominating tens of millions of people who are 
against such Russian domination in the now independent former Soviet 
republics.''
  I attach the Wohlstetter article:

             [From the Wall Street Journal, June 10, 1994]

                       Notes to Clinton on Bosnia

                        (By Albert Wohlstetter)

       Yesterday the House voted to order President Clinton to 
     lift the U.S. arms embargo against Bosnia. The administration 
     had told its supporters in Congress that allowing the 
     Bosnians to be armed for their self-defense would:
       (a) prolong, widen and intensify the war, and drag the U.S. 
     into it.
       But in fact, as many authorities on international law 
     testify, the embargo in UN 713 (Sept. 1991) applied to a 
     ``Yugoslavia'' that no longer exists and never had a valid 
     application to Bosnia, a state whose independence has been 
     recognized by the U.S., Europe and the U.N. Moreover, it was 
     the arms embargo, requested by Slobodan Milosevic, that 
     invited Serbian aggression by keeping his victims out-gunned. 
     It has prolonged the war for three years so far, while its 
     advocates have claimed the embargo would shorten it. 
     Depriving the victims of arms invited the widening from 
     Slovenia to Croatia to Bosnia, and now threatens to widen it 
     further in Kosova, the Sandjak and Macedonia; and it 
     increased the intensity of the genocidal slaughter.
       It is the promise that the U.S. has made to insert a large 
     contingent of lightly armed ground forces in the guise of 
     ``peacekeepers,'' to enforce an ethnic partition between 
     unarmed Bosnians and armed Serbs--which the United Nations 
     and the EC have themselves stated would inevitably be 
     unstable and unenforceable--that might drag the U.S. into a 
     war of aggression, and on the wrong side.
       (b) involve the U.S. in an infeasible program for 
     transporting weapons that Deputy Secretary of State Strobe 
     Talbott says he ``presumes'' must match in number and caliber 
     the heavy weapons, the medium tanks and the armored personnel 
     carriers that have been supplied by Serbia to its proxies in 
     Bosnia.
       And (c) that this would involve an infeasibly large and 
     lengthy program of American soldiers training the Bosnian 
     army in their use.
       But, in fact, what the Bosnians (and the new federation 
     between Bosnians and Croats, whose alliance the 
     administration has just brokered) need primarily are: light 
     infantry weapons of the sort that can stop the tanks and 
     armored personnel carriers of the ill-disciplined Serbian 
     invaders, whom the Bosnians greatly exceed in number and 
     motivation; rifles: e.g., Soviet-designed AK-47s; light and 
     heavy machine guns; light mortars and some of more extended 
     range; anti-tank guided missiles of the sort the U.S. 
     provided to the Afghans; and light communications and jamming 
     equipment of the kind that helped the Slovenian guerrilla 
     operations route the Serbian-controlled Yugoslav Army in less 
     than two weeks at the start, in June 1991, of Serbia's 
     genocidal aggression in the Balkans.
       Such weapons are widely available and easy to transport. 
     The Bosnians, who have had, for example, only one rifle for 
     each four of its soldiers, have been receiving some such 
     weapons since their new federation with the Croats, and this 
     has already had an effect on turning the tide on the 
     battlefield.
       Gen. Martin Spegelj, formerly of the Yugoslav Army and 
     former Croatian defense minister, has pointed out that 
     Bosnians as well as Croats during their military service have 
     been trained in the use of such weapons. To operate the 
     Soviet-designed versions of them in particular, they will 
     need little or no extra training.
       (d) be acting unilaterally and would jeopardize relief 
     efforts and endanger the United Nations Protection Force.
       In fact, it is absurd to keep repeating that the U.S. would 
     be acting unilaterally. One hundred and nine members of the 
     U.N. General Assembly, including some of our NATO partners, 
     voted to allow Bosnia to receive arms in exercise of its 
     inherent right of self-defense. No country voted against it.
       Preventing the Bosnians from defending themselves has meant 
     the slaughter of over 200,000 innocent men, women and 
     children, and the maiming, torture and systematic rape of 
     countless others. Softening this disaster slightly by sending 
     bandages and anesthetics for surgeons forced to amputate a 
     child's leg can hardly compensate for the continued shelling 
     and maiming of children and other innocents. As for the 
     dangers to the United Nations Protection Force, these have 
     come almost exclusively from the Serbs, who haven't hesitated 
     to harass, shoot at and take hostage the French, British, and 
     even Russian soldiers whose operations have functioned to 
     consolidate Serbian gains, releasing Serbian forces to seize 
     more.
       (e) jeopardize other U.N. sanctions, including those 
     against Iraq, Haiti and Serbia.
       This is the most outrageous claim of all. The sanctions 
     against Iraq were a condition of the U.S.-led coalition's 
     ceasing to fire at the end of Desert Storm, as well as of 
     valid U.N. resolutions directed against Iraq rather than its 
     victims. And also, the U.S., France and Germany--as well as 
     the U.N. bureaucracy--are ignoring the most flagrant 
     violations of the sanctions against Serbia. They are ignoring 
     the network of drug smugglers, pickpockets and thieves in 
     Europe who have been flooding Belgrade with luxury goods and 
     hard currency. And, most outrageous, they are ignoring the 
     thousands of vehicles that daily carry arms and supplies from 
     Serbia to its proxies in Bosnia and Croatia, in direct 
     violation of the valid embargo against Serbia embodied in UN 
     757.
       As many Europeans and an increasing number of Americans 
     understand, it is this that damages the reputation of the 
     U.N. as an impartial, universal organization, and the genuine 
     interests of Europe and the U.S. Congress should demand the 
     enforcement of the valid embargo against Serbia's continuing 
     supply of arms to its proxies in Bosnia and Croatia, and of 
     the U.N.'s demand that Serbia withdraw the weapons and 
     supplies it has sent its proxies in Bosnia.
       (f) cause a rift between the U.S. and its NATO allies, and 
     with Russia.
       In fact, the interests of the U.S., of NATO and of Europe 
     will be served only by the exercise of U.S. leadership--not 
     by the collapse of the U.S. whenever some European government 
     in disarray expresses misgivings. That this collapse disturbs 
     some European governments has recently been observed by 
     several thoughtful European experts on the defense of Western 
     Europe. In the Persian Gulf, the U.S. led a coalition of 
     willing NATO members and other interested powers--in spite of 
     the fact that the Russians opposed it, the Greeks opposed it, 
     the Belgians wouldn't sell ammunition to the British; and the 
     French, who had opposed the use of force against Iraq, went 
     along only when they saw that the U.S. was going to go ahead 
     anyway with those who were willing.
       The exercise of such leadership today would strengthen 
     those democrats in Russia who oppose the resurgence of a 
     Russian interest in dominating tens of millions of people who 
     are against such Russian domination in the now-independent 
     former Soviet republics. These democrats recognize that this 
     resurgence is incompatible with the movement of Russia toward 
     democracy and free markets.

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