[Congressional Record Volume 141, Number 91 (Tuesday, June 6, 1995)]
[Senate]
[Pages S7743-S7746]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]
UNITED STATES POLICY TOWARD BOSNIA
Mr. DOLE. Mr. President, at this moment, several thousand United
States troops and their equipment are headed for Europe to positions
near Bosnia and Herzegovina. Tomorrow the Armed Services Committee will
hold hearings on this deployment and U.S. policy. On Thursday the
Senate Foreign Relations Committee will also conduct hearings to learn
about current United States policy toward Bosnia.
These hearings are of critical importance--not only because of the
seriousness of sending American ground forces into harm's way, but
because of the continued confusion over U.S. policy.
Last Wednesday, at the Air Force Academy, the President stated, and I
quote:
I believe we should be prepared to assist NATO if it
decides to meet a request from the United Nations troops for
help in a withdrawal or a reconfiguration and a strengthening
of its forces.
But, a few days later, in his weekly radio address, the President
stated that in addition to assisting in the withdrawal of UNPROFOR,
the United States may send ground troops in the ``highly unlikely
event'' that part of the U.N. force became ``stranded and could not get
out of a particular place in Bosnia'' and need ``emergency
extraction.'' The President added that such an emergency operation
would be ``limited and temporary.''
The first question each of the committees must ask is what is U.S.
policy today. Is it to help strengthen and reconfigure U.N. forces, or
is it to assist in ``emergency extraction''? Furthermore, what is the
difference between reconfiguring forces and emergency extraction? What
is the relationship between emergency extraction and total U.N.
withdrawal? Would such an extraction be a prelude to full withdrawal?
In other words, what is the mission of U.S. ground forces if they are
deployed for contingencies other than participating in a complete
withdrawal of U.N. forces.
Then the committees will need to turn to basic operational questions:
What is the NATO-U.N. relationship? When does NATO command begin? How
far does it extend--to all air and ground forces in Bosnia?
[[Page S7744]]
What is the command structure and its relationship with U.N.
commanders?
What are the rules of engagement? Are they robust?
What are the threats to our forces? How will they be addressed?
What is the estimated duration of the operation? Last August during
DOD authorization conference former U.S. Envoy Chuck Redman told
conferees that Pentagon estimates were that a withdrawal operation
would take 3 months--to include equipment. If the current plan
anticipates a longer duration, why is that the case? If the duration is
lengthy, is this because of demands by UNPROFOR contributors to take
all of their equipment--not just lethal equipment? And will U.S. lives
be risked to save equipment?
With respect to emergency extraction operations, how are the terms
``limited'' and ``temporary'' defined?
What will the United States role be in U.N. decisions which could
lead to such emergencies, for example if Bosnian Serbs retaliate for an
UNPROFOR action by overrunning Gorazde?
In addition, the committees will need to pursue the administration's
decision to provide close air support to the quick reaction force.
Reportedly, Secretary Perry has agreed to make helicopter gunships part
of potential close air support operations for the quick reaction force.
AC-130's, unlike our F-16's, fly slow and close to the ground--
therefore they are more vulnerable.
What actions will NATO take to suppress the threats posed by surface
to air missiles [SAM's]?
When will such action be taken?
An American pilot was shot down by a SAM and is missing. Last
December, Adm. Leighton Smith, our NATO Commander in Naples wanted to
take out Bosnian Serb SAM sites because of the threat they posed to
pilots patrolling the no-fly zone. But, NATO did not take out those
SAMS because the U.N. commanders said ``no.'' Had NATO acted 6 months
ago, our pilot may not have been shot down. So the question now is, are
we going to send more Americans into harm's way without taking measures
to reduce the risk?
On the diplomatic front, there are also many questions.
What is the diplomatic strategy with respect to Serbian President
Milosevic? Are we sure there is a split between Milosevic and Radovan
Karadzic, or is Milosevic playing good cop and Karadzic bad cop? If
there is a split how do we explain Milosevic's role in releasing some
of the U.N. hostages? Has Milosevic been promised anything in return
for his assistance in securing the release of hostages? I understand
this afternoon there way be another 50 or so released.
Are we going to agree to lift most sanctions on Serbia in return for
recognition of Bosnia and what does recognition mean--really closing
the borders and cutting off supplies and military contact with the
Bosnian Serbs?
If we lift sanctions on Serbia now, how do we maintain any leverage
over Serbian actions against the Alabanians in Kosova and Serbian
support for militant separatists in Croatia?
Mr. President, I have not listed all of the questions that need to be
asked at the hearings this week. Furthermore, these matters need to be
placed in a larger context--namely, what is the objective of these
actions: Is it to remove U.N. forces or to keep them there? Are we
serious about withdrawal or not? If not, why not?
This bigger picture should be the focus of administration
consultations with the Congress. We should not only be informed about
NATO planning and operations. We should be engaging in a dialog about
where we are going. Are we at last going to lift the unjust and illegal
arms embargo on Bosnia?
I believe that the United States has interests in Bosnia and
Herzegovina. As George Will said this week in
Newsweek in response to the charge made by some that the United States
has no ``dogs in this fight,'' that, and I quote,
But those in the fight are not dogs and by the embargo we
have helped make the fight grotesquely unfair. What would be
the consequences on our national self-respect--our Nation's
soul--of a preventable Serbian victory followed by
``cleansing'' massacres? Bosnian Serbs have seized 70 percent
of Bosnia but they are not a mighty military force and will
become even less so if the Serbian Government in Belgrade can
be pressured into leaving Bosnia's separatist Serbs isolated
in combat with a Bosnian army equipped at last with tanks and
artillery. The Serbs fighting in Bosnia are bullies led by
war criminals collaborating with a dictator. If we don't have
an interest in this fight, what are we?
Mr. President, I believe that we need to assist our NATO allies in
the event of U.N. withdrawal. However, I also believe that we need to
recognize that U.N. efforts in Bosnia have failed--failed to stop
aggression, failed to bring peace, and failed to protect the Bosnians.
The New Republic in its June 19 editorial states that, and I quote,
There is another Bosnian crisis this week. Not in Bosnia,
of course. In Bosnia things are the same, only more so. A
greater Serbia is slowly and steadily emerging by means of a
genocidal war. No, the crisis is taking place in the capitals
of the Western powers, which are finding it harder and harder
to escape the consequences of their policy of appeasement.
The European decision to create a quick reaction force [QRF] is in
itself an admission of failure. The QRF is intended to protect
UNPROFOR, not the Bosnians. And the very tasks the QRF envisions being
engaged in, such as securing the Sarajevo Airport, are tasks that were
originally given to UNPROFOR by the U.N. Security Council. Therefore,
there is a real question of whether or not sending more forces--even
with more equipment--will do anything more than supply the Bosnian
Serbs with more potential hostages.
The bottom line is that keeping UNPROFOR on the ground indefinitely
will not bring us to a solution in Bosnia. Indeed it will prevent a
solution by reinforcing the failed status quo. As the New Republic
points out, and I quote,
It cannot have escaped the notice of our policymakers that
the U.N. is providing cover for the Serbs, except that the
U.N. is providing cover for our policymakers, too. It saves
them from the prospect of action.
Mr. President, withdrawing the U.N. force is the first step away from
failure and toward a solution. I support United States participation,
to include ground troops, in a NATO operation to withdraw U.N. forces
from Bosnia provided certain conditions are met.
Therefore, sometime over the next few days I intend to introduce a
resolution to authorize the President to use United States ground
forces to assist in the complete withdrawal of U.N. forces from Bosnia
under the following conditions:
First, NATO command, from start to finish, no U.N.-NATO dual-key
arrangement;
Second, robust rules of engagement which provide for massive response
to any provocation or attack on U.S. forces;
Third, no risking U.S. lives to rescue equipment; and
Fourth, prior agreement on next steps, to include lifting the arms
embargo on Bosnia and Herzegovina.
Mr. President, we need to support our allies. But we must make sure
that in so doing, we are neither prolonging a failed policy or leaping
into a quagmire. I believe that this resolution will provide the
President with essential support of the Congress and will help put us
on the right policy track.
Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the complete article by
George Will and the article in the New Republic be printed in the
Record.
There being no objection, the material was ordered to be printed in
the Record, as follows:
``A Dog in That Fight''? The Secretary of State, a Sweet Man Sadly
Miscast, Is Puzzled
(By George F. Will)
When Hitler sent Ribbentrop to Moscow in August 1939 to
sign the nonaggression pact with the Soviet Union, he sent
along his personal photographer with instructions to obtain
close-ups of Stalin's ear lobes. Hitler wondered whether
Stalin had Jewish blood and wanted to see if his ear lobes
were ``ingrown and Jewish, or separate and Aryan.'' This
historical nugget (from Alan Bullock's ``Hitler and Stalin:
Parallel Lives'') is offered at this juncture in America's
debate about Bosnia, as a reminder of a quality European
politics has sometimes had in this century. Some American
policymakers need to be reminded.
When Serbians took hostages from U.N. personnel in Bosnia
and chained them to military targets as human shields, Warren
Christopher was puzzled: ``It's really not part of any
reasonable struggle that might be going on there.'' While the
Secretary of State, a sweet man sadly miscast, searches for
reasonableness amid the Balkan rubble, there are
``peacekeepers'' where there is no peace to be kept and
``safe zones'' where slaughter is random. UNProFor (the U.N.
[[Page S7745]] Protection Force) is akin to the Holy Roman
Empire, which was neither holy nor Roman nor an empire. The
U.N. force isn't forceful, so it needs more protection than
it offers.
This war has been misdescribed as Europe's first civil war
since that in Greece in the 1940s and the most portentous
civil war since republicans fought fascists in Spain in the
1930s. Actually, this war now churning into its fourth summer
is a war of Serbian aggression. It has been a war of
aggression since 1992, when the European Community recognized
Bosnia as a sovereign state, and since Bosnia became a member
of the United Nations. Perhaps Bosnia's inconvenient
existence is unfortunate, and perhaps Bosnia will yet be
sundered by partition. But it is a state and that is why Pat
Moynihan, carrying Woodrow Wilson's torch for international
law and collective security, says of Bosnia. ``Everything is
at stake here, if principle is everything.'' Says Moynihan,
if neither NATO nor the United Nations can summon the will to
cope with Serbia, ``what have we gone through the 20th
century for?'' We went through it because we had no choice,
but you know what he means: A century that began, in effect,
at the Somme and went downhill from there to Auschwitz is
ending with a wired world watching rape camps used in the
service of ``ethnic cleansing.'' All this 80 minutes by air
from Rome.
Europe's first war between nations since 1945 illustrates
an astounding fact: In this century of European fighting
faiths--communism, fascism, socialism, pan-Germanism, pan-
Slavism and more--the one hardest to extinguish turns out to
be the variant of fascism fueling the drive for Greater
Serbia. Like pure fascism it asserts the primacy of the
primordial and the goal of perfect national unity achieved by
the expulsion or murder of ``unassimilables.'' This explains
the violent Serbian loathing of Sarajevo, where Christians
and Muslims have peacefully coexisted. Hitler and Mussolini
thought they were defending old Europe against the modern
menace of Bolshevism. The Serbs think this is the year 732
and they are with Charles Martel saving Christian Europe by
stopping the Moslem advance at Tours. Or it is 1529 and they
are stopping Suleiman at the gates of Vienna. The Ottoman
Empire is long gone, but the gunners in the hills surrounding
Sarajevo refer to their targets--civilians dashing from
doorway to doorway--as Turks.
Serbia is a raw reassertion of pre-modernity, the idea that
uniform ethnicity and shared myths are essential to a
political community. This war, which mocks the notion that
Europe has become a supranational society, began in 1992, the
year the Maastricht Treaty was signed, supposedly to make
``Europe'' a truly political as well as geographical
expression. The United Nations, embodiment of the modern
aspiration of a morality of nations, has been no match for
Serbia. And the U.N.'s arms embargo against both sides--high-
minded, scrupulous neutrality between Serbian slaughterers
and their victims--has been a policy of gross immorality.
The embargo was imposed in 1991 against the whole of
disintegrating Yugoslavia. When Yugoslavia disappeared the
embargo was continued. That favored Serbia, which had ample
weapons from the former Yugoslav army and had a large
armaments industry. Now the embargo violates the U.N.
Charter, which acknowledges every nation's ``inherent'' right
of self-defense. President Bush defended the embargo with a
flippancy about the problem in the Bakans not being an
insufficiency of weapons. Today defenders of the embargo say
it economizes violence because lifting it would prolong the
fighting. This argument is especially unpleasant when used by
the British, who today might be obeying German traffic laws
if Lend-Lease had not prolonged the fighting.
So far the NATO nations have insufficient political will to
impose a solution or use force to help restore the integrity
of Bosnia. The Serbs are what the NATO nations are not:
serious. The NATO nations want to end the game, the Serbs
want to win it. Other people with ancient animosities and
modern weapons are watching. It probably is not just
coincidental that Russian revanchism became bold regarding
Chechnya as the NATO nations became, through the embargo,
collaborators with Serbian irredentism. If the irredentism
goes unopposed when the UNProFor charade ends, the
irredentism will become, even more than it already is,
genocidal.
Secretary of State James Baker famously said of the Balkan
conflict, ``We don't have a dog in that fight.'' But those in
the fight are not dogs and by the embargo we have helped make
the fight grotesquely unfair. What would be the consequences
on our national self-respect--our nation's soul--of a
preventable Serbian victory followed by ``cleansing''
massacres? Bosnian Serbs have seized 70 percent of Bosnia but
they are not a mighty military force and will become even
less so if the Serbian government in Belgrade can be
pressured into leaving Bosnia's separatist Serbs isolated in
combat with a Bosnian army equipped at last with tanks and
artillery. The Serbs fighting in Bosnia are bullies led by
war criminals collaborating with a dictator. If we don't have
an interest in this fight, what are we?
____
The Abdication, Again
This year is the fiftieth anniversary of the United
Nations. The celebrations will go on and on, as politicians
make banal speeches to command-performance audiences. It is
unlikely that Bosnia will appear among their banalities. For
it is in Bosnia that the debility of the United Nations has
finally been revealed.
There is another Bosnian crisis this week. Not in Bosnia,
of course. In Bosnia things are the same, only more so. A
Greater Serbia is slowly and steadily emerging by means of a
genocidal war. No, the crisis is taking place in the capitals
of the Western powers, which are finding it harder and harder
to escape the consequences of their policy of appeasement.
The doves, you might say, are coming home to roost. And they
still don't get it. When the Serbs made hostages of hundreds
of United Nations troops last week, a spokesman for the U.N.
thundered that ``the Bosnian Serb army is behaving like a
terrorist organization.'' But the Bosnian Serb army is a
terrorist organization, unless you wish to include systematic
rape among the terms of military engagement. And the general
in command of the U.N. forces in Bosnia demanded of General
Ratko Mladic ``that he treat the United Nations soldiers in a
manner becoming a professional soldier.'' But General Mladic
is not a professional soldier. He is a man wanted for war
crimes.
Here is what happened last week. The Serbs moved heavy
weapons closer to Sarajevo and fired upon it. They have done
so before. NATO issued warnings. It has done so before. The
Serbs ignored the warnings. They have done so before. NATO
launched a trivial attack against a Serb position. It has
done so before. The Serbs responded by taking U.N. troops
hostage. They have done so before. The only thing that
changed last week, in short, was that the latent became
manifest. De facto hostages became de jure hostages.
Also the iconography of the conflict was enriched. There
have been many indelible images of the slaughter in Bosnia;
last week's pictures of the scattered limbs in the Tuzla cafe
were only the most recent ones. What was lacking, until last
week, were images of the West's weakness. Now we have those
photographs of those U.N. soldiers chained to those poles.
Not exactly a picture of a helicopter lifting off the roof of
an American embassy, to be sure; but surely a picture of our
humiliation, of the forces of order flouted, of the triumph
of tribalism over pluralism, of the lupine post-cold war
world in full swing. No amount of ``pragmatic neo-
Wilsonianism'' (the empty locution of Anthony Lake, who
prefers the devising of bold foreign policy rationales to the
devising of bold foreign policy) will erase these images of
Western impotence from the memories of warlords and
xenophobes around the world. They have been instructed that
this is their time.
Two conclusions are being drawn from the success of the
Serbs. The first is that the use of force has failed. ``The
Bosnian Serbs have now trumped our ace,'' as former Secretary
of State Lawrence Eagleburger told The Washington Post.
Eagleburger's pronouncement is utterly self-serving; the man
was one of the architects of American appeasement in the Bush
administration. Still, the Clinton administration will not
exactly recoil from an analysis that refuses to entertain the
serious use of real force. For this reason, it is important
to understand that we did not play our ace in Pale last week.
Though the West has occasionally acted militarily against
the Serbs in Bosnia, the West's response has been
fundamentally unmilitary. No sustained air campaign against
the war-making ability of the Serbs in Bosnia was ever really
considered. (The precision of the wee assault on Pale, by the
way, shows what can be accomplished by air power.) Like
NATO's previous strikes, NATO's strike last week was more a
demonstration of inhibition than a demonstration of the lack
of it. This was not what the Serbs were fearing. It was what
they were counting on. This trifling retort to the Serbs'
violation of the Sarajevo arrangement played right into the
Serbs' hands: it was a military response so predictably puny
that it could serve only as a pretext for a Serb provocation.
It also reassured the Serbs that they will never experience
punishments proportionate to their crimes, and they
assassinated the Bosnian foreign minister.
The second conclusion is that we must act forcefully
against the Serbs to help . . . the United Nations. The
ministers of the Contact Group (including the foreign
minister of Russia, who must have been chuckling) announced
at The Hague that they intended to expand the size of the
U.N. mission and to fortify it with heavier weapons. They
said nothing about the nature of the mission itself. For all
with eyes to see, of course, the essential absurdity of the
U.N. mission was made brutally plain last week. The blue
helmets are ``peacekeepers'' where there is no peace in
``safe areas'' that are not safe. They have not impeded the
war or the genocide. They have impeded only a powerful and
decent response.
Recall that the ``safe areas'' of Bosnia were supposed to
be made safe by the U.N. There are six such enclaves:
Sarajevo, Bihac, Srebenica, Zepa, Gorazde, Tuzla. The list of
their names is a litany of lament. The U.N. has brought them
little respite. When the Serbs attack, the blue helmets
retreat. On May 21, The New York Times described a videotape
that captured a Serb atrocity on a Sarajevo street: ``The
crack of a shot echoes in Sarajevo's valley. He [a young
Bosnian man] falls. He lies on his side. He is curled in an
almost fetal position. A United Nations soldier looks on.''
In Bosnia, a U.N. soldier [[Page S7746]] always looks on.
Bystanders or hostages: that is what the ``peacekeepers
really are.
It cannot have escaped the notice of our policymakers that
the U.N. is providing cover for the Serbs, except that the
U.N. is providing cover for our policymakers, too. It saves
them from the prospect of action. That is why the plight of
the U.N. stirs them more than the plight of Bosnia. And
nobody is less stirred by the plight of Bosnia than the aloof
Boutros Boutros-Ghali, who put an early damper on
international outrage when he called this a ``rich man's
war.'' The Bosnians, he said, were less deserving than those
under siege, by hunger and by arms, in Africa. And the United
States followed the secretary general's recommendation. We
sent troops to Somalia and we sent no troops to Bosnia.
It is hard to think of a major crisis since the Second
World War in which the president of the United States has
wielded less moral and political authority. There are 22,470
U.N. troops in Bosnia, from eighteen countries. Britain has
3,565 men under arms; France has 3,835; Pakistan has 2,978.
The United States has none, and the Clinton administration,
the same administration that denounces the Republicans as
isolationists, regularly boasts about it. In such
circumstances, it is impossible for the president of the
United States to lead. But he is not chafing. He does not
wish to lead. He isn't terribly interested. When his national
security advisers met last week in the West Wing, he stayed
in the East Wing. He did tell a reporter, though, that ``the
taking of hostages, as well as the killing of civilians, is
totally wrong and inappropriate and it should stop.'' And
also that ``I would ask him [Boris Yeltsin] to call the Serbs
and tell them to quit it, and tell them to behave
themselves.''
To behave themselves. And if that fails, to go to their
room. Does Clinton grasp that there is evil in the world? And
does he understand that he is not the governor of the United
States? It is a requirement of his job that he care about
matters beyond our borders, matters such as war and genocide
and the general collapse of America's role in the world,
matters that will not gain him a point in the polls. The joke
on Clinton is that he is almost certainly about to be hoist
by his own isolationism. The result of the Bosnia policy that
was designed to spare the United States all costs in lives
and dollars may be a U.N. ``extraction operation'' that will
require the deployment of many thousands of American troops
and the expense of many millions of American dollars. And
Bosnia will have been destroyed. Nice work.
It is time to conclude this sinister farce. The U.N. should
get out of the way. It's forces must be withdrawn, so that
the Serbs may no longer hide behind them, and then the
Bosnians must be armed, so that they can fight their own
fight, which is all that they are asking to do. Withdraw and
strike, lift and strike. Obviously this is not as simple as
it sounds. The withdrawal of the U.N. will mean war; and
unless NATO provides protection from the air, for the
departing U.N. troops and for the training of Bosnian troops,
the U.N. withdrawal will expose the Bosnians to the Serbs as
brusquely as it will expose the Serbs to the Bosnians, and
Bosnia will fall. But there already is war and Bosnia already
is falling. Anyway, Bill Clinton and Boutros Boutros-Ghali
and John Major and the rest are not keeping the U.N. in
Bosnia to spare it horror. They can live with its horror.
They are keeping the U.N. in Bosnia to spare themselves a
reckoning with their own failure. For it is they who ordained
that Bosnia become a place where it is always too late for
justice.
____________________