[Congressional Record (Bound Edition), Volume 147 (2001), Part 7]
[Senate]
[Pages 9181-9183]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]



                     AGAINST WITHDRAWAL FROM BOSNIA

  Mr. BIDEN. Mr. President, I rise today to take strong issue with 
remarks by Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld as summarized in the 
Washington Post on May 18 and subsequently reproduced in their entirety 
on the paper's website, that he is ``pushing'' to pull U.S. troops out 
of Bosnia. According to Secretary Rumsfeld, ``the military job [in 
Bosnia] was done three or four years ago.''
  I firmly believe that Secretary Rumsfeld's analysis of the situation 
in Bosnia is incorrect, and that his policy prescription would be 
seriously detrimental to the national security interests of the United 
States.
  First, let me turn to Mr. Rumsfeld's statement that the ``military 
job was done three or four years ago.'' It is true that IFOR, and then 
SFOR, successfully separated the largely exhausted warring parties 
without much difficulty. But to assert that this separation spelled the 
end of our troops' mission is to define ``military'' in such a narrow 
way so as to make it nearly meaningless in the Balkan context.
  Putting it in other terms, Secretary Rumsfeld seems to belong to the 
school that begins talking about so-called ``exit strategies'' as soon 
as troops are committed. Of course we need an ``exit strategy,'' and we 
have had one. The Clinton Administration early on outlined ten detailed 
benchmarks for Dayton implementation that need to be met before we can 
say ``mission accomplished'' and honorably withdraw. These are not 
secrets. The U.S. Embassy in Sarajevo hands out a list of the 
benchmarks to all visitors. I must assume that Secretary Rumsfeld is 
familiar with them, so it seems that he either believes they no longer 
apply, or that our troops no longer have anything to do with most 
aspects of Dayton implementation.
  From Secretary Rumsfeld's published remarks, I get the impression 
that he sees anything short of actual combat or the separating of 
warring parties as inappropriate tasks for our soldiers. If he does, I 
disagree with him. In fact, his view strikes me as the old syndrome of 
``preparing to fight the last war.'' The last two so-called ``Strategic 
Concepts'' of NATO have made clear that the most likely security 
challenges of the twenty-first century will be ethnic and religious 
strife, trans-national crime, terrorism and the like--rather than a 
frontal attack on the territory of alliance members.
  The details bear examination. Little more than two years ago in this 
city, NATO celebrated its fiftieth anniversary. At that Washington 
Summit, NATO issued the latest version of its Strategic Concept. I 
would like to quote several parts of the Strategic Concept in order to 
show that we and our allies have clearly understood that the military's 
function is not bound in a narrow straightjacket.
  The document, agreed upon by all nineteen NATO members on April 23 
and 24, 1999, declares in Article 20 that ``large-scale conventional 
aggression against the Alliance is highly unlikely.'' It goes on to say 
the following: ``Ethnic and religious rivalries, territorial disputes, 
inadequate or failed efforts at reform, the abuse of human rights, and 
the dissolution of states can lead to local and even regional 
instability.''
  It then graphically outlines the possible ramifications of such 
developments: ``The resulting tensions could lead to crises affecting 
Euro-Atlantic stability . . . [and] could affect the security of the 
Alliance by spilling over into neighboring countries, including NATO 
countries, or in other ways, and could also affect the security of 
other states.''
  Moreover, Article 25 of the 1999 Strategic Concept specifically 
states that ``The Alliance is committed to a broad approach to 
security, which recognizes the importance of political, economic, 
social and environmental factors in addition to the indispensable 
defense dimension.''
  How can these factors be addressed? Article 29 mentions the 
``Alliance's ability to contribute to conflict prevention and crisis 
management through non-Article 5 crisis response operations.''
  So, clearly NATO, including the United States, is on record as seeing 
the threats of this new century as being new, complex, and calling for 
a variety of responses. In that context the marvelous men and women of 
our armed forces serving in Bosnia and in Kosovo have taken on many 
tasks that military people of earlier generations, trained to stop the 
Red Army from pouring through Germany's Fulda Gap, either do not 
understand or believe are beneath the dignity of regular troops.
  But our troops understand their mission and believe in it. I have 
spoken at length with our soldiers in SFOR in Bosnia and in KFOR in 
Kosovo, and the overwhelming majority of them think that their broadly 
defined pacification activities are making a contribution to lessening 
the very threats that NATO's Strategic Concept describes.
  Skeptics may think that I have gained impressions that I wanted to 
get. Fair enough, I'm only human. But statistics don't lie. Every year 
the Pentagon issues re-enlistment targets for troops based abroad. When 
I stayed at Camp Bondsteel in Kosovo this past winter, I was told that 
the re-enlistment figures for our Army troops in KFOR were one hundred 
forty-two percent of target--the highest for any foreign-based units in 
the entire world. Re-enlistment rates in SFOR in Bosnia are also high. 
So obviously our troops in the field in the Balkans seem to grasp what 
Secretary Rumsfeld apparently does not: that what they are doing is 
important to the security of the United States and is not beneath the 
dignity of soldiers.
  I might also add that the charge that our Balkan-based troops lose 
their fighting ability has been shown to be another canard used to 
dress up neo-isolationist ideology. In fact, the U.S. Army has a well 
thought out program to restore so-called ``HIC'' or high intensity 
conflict skills to troops rotating out of the Balkans in a short amount 
of time. Equally important is the universally accepted fact that the 
troops who have served in SFOR and KFOR have acquired leadership skills 
through the missions frowned upon by Secretary Rumsfeld, which they 
never could have gotten sitting in bases in Germany or elsewhere 
outside the Balkans.
  I understand full well that non-military police forces also have a 
role to play. That is why several years ago I

[[Page 9182]]

began calling for the creation of a ``gendarmerie'' force for crowd 
pacification and assistance to refugees returning to their homes. In 
fact, so-called ``MSUs'' or Multinational Specialized Units were 
created in Bosnia. Unfortunately, though, their strength has been 
allowed to decrease. U.S. General Mike Dodson, Commander of SFOR, told 
me that while he once had nineteen MSU units under his control, the 
number has shrunk to eleven. They should be beefed up to their former 
strength.
  In addition, new local police forces have been created both in the 
Federation and in the Republika Srpska. Some of them are functioning 
well, others not so well.
  But neither the MSUs, nor the local police forces, have the clout or 
inspire the fear in the ultra-nationalists that the regular SFOR troops 
do. We may not like this situation, but we have to face the facts: 
Bosnia is not yet fully pacified, and the recipe for curing the unrest 
is exactly the opposite from talking of withdrawing American troops.
  A few months ago, I stood here and said that we are at a critical 
juncture in Bosnia. The moderate, non-nationalist forces embodied in 
the ``Alliance for Change'' political coalition had just made 
important, even extraordinary, gains by winning, in free and fair 
elections, control of both the national and the Federation parliaments.
  The hardline ultra-nationalist HDZ Bosnian Croat party has violently 
refused to yield to its democratic defeat. Rather, it announced that it 
was creating its own ``self administration'' and withdrew its troops 
from the Muslim-Croat Federation Army and from cantonal police forces. 
An international operation that seized the bank through which the HDZ 
conducted its nefarious activities prompted a violent riot in Mostar in 
which serious bloodshed was only narrowly averted. After extreme 
pressure from the West the Bosnian Croat ultra-nationalists have 
indicated that they may resume participation in government 
institutions, but the situation remains precarious.
  In the Republika Srpska the hardliners who owe their allegiance to 
indicted war criminal Radovan Karadzic and who are at least 
rhetorically supported by Yugoslav President Vojislav Kostunica have 
been up to their old caveman tactics.
  Two weeks ago they broke up a ceremony in Banja Luka in which the 
cornerstone was to have been laid to rebuild the great Ferhadija 
Mosque, destroyed by Bosnian Serbs in the early 1990s. They trapped two 
hundred Bosnian and international officials for several hours before 
they were rescued. As a nice reminder of their lofty cultural level, 
the Bosnian Serb thugs burned Muslim prayer rugs and let a pig loose on 
the mosque grounds. Incidentally, although President Kostunica 
criticized this barbarity, he added that the reconstruction of such 
buildings was a provocation!
  Ultra-nationalists have also rioted in Trebinje and elsewhere against 
returning refugees.
  In short, the situation in Bosnia and Herzegovina is hardly pacified. 
It is a time of great opportunity, for the hardline Serbs and Croats 
are reacting to their dwindling power. But it is also a time fraught 
with danger.
  For example, one strictly military task remaining to be accomplished 
is the amalgamation of the rival armies. If the U.S. forces, and SFOR, 
would withdraw before this occurs, renewed warfare would almost 
certainly break out. Instead of publicly musing about exit strategies, 
we need to be stressing our country's commitment to helping Bosnia and 
Herzegovina move once and for all beyond the domination of the corrupt 
ultra-nationalist parties.
  Moreover, rather than setting artificially limited goals for our 
military and then congratulating ourselves on fulfilling them, we need 
to utilize SFOR to kill the serpent that continues to poison Bosnian 
life: by apprehending the more than three dozen individuals indicted by 
The International Criminal Tribunal at The Hague for war crimes who are 
currently living with impunity in the Republika Srpska. This rogues' 
gallery includes, above all, Karadzic and General Ratko Mladic--who, 
according to Carla Del Ponte, the Chief Prosecutor of The Hague War 
Crimes Tribunal, enjoys the protection of a security detail that is 
paid for by the Yugoslav army.
  SFOR claims that it doesn't know where Karadzic and Mladic are. Well, 
Mrs. Del Ponte, with whom I met earlier this month, has offered to use 
her tribunal's capabilities to locate Karadzic and Mladic for SFOR. I 
think we should take her up on her offer. As long as these two mass 
murderers are on the loose, there will be no definitive peace in 
Bosnia. Our British allies have not been squeamish about undertaking 
risky operations to nab individuals indicted for war crimes. We must 
get Karadzic and Mladic, and, if necessary, the U.S. Army should be 
involved.
  The linchpin to the strategy of pacifying and democratizing Bosnia 
and Herzegovina is a continued robust U.S. military presence in SFOR.
  Secretary Rumsfeld's comments are bound to boost the spirits of the 
ultra-nationalist hardliners who, according to a recent report 
published by the State Department's Bureau of Intelligence and 
Research, ``are gambling . . . that [if] they can intimidate or just 
outlast the international community, they may still succeed in dividing 
Bosnia into ethnic states.''
  Moreover, I am certain that the Secretary's comments have reignited 
concerns among our European allies that they will be left holding the 
bag in Bosnia.
  In the Washington Post interview, Secretary Rumsfeld stressed that 
there was no friction between him and Secretary of State Colin Powell 
on this issue.
  His comments, however, appear to directly undercut Secretary's 
Powell's repeated assurances to our European allies during the past 
several months that the United States ``will not cut and run'' from the 
Balkans, and that ``we went in together with our allies and we'll go 
out together.''
  What on earth is going on here?
  Just as Secretary Powell has spent the last six months trying to undo 
the damage done by similarly ill-considered unilateralist comments in a 
New York Times interview by Condoleeza Rice, now the President's 
National Security Advisor, so the Bush Administration spin-doctors were 
quick to try to explain away the Rumsfeld interview by asserting that 
his proposals were only part of a process by which we intend to use 
NATO's Six Month Reviews to reduce our combat troops in Bosnia.
  Well, if that's the case, we have a case of ``choose your poison.'' 
One possibility is that the Bush Administration is, once again, 
internally out of control as President Bush showed by cutting off EPA 
Chief Christine Todd Whitman at the knees on carbon dioxide and 
Secretary Powell on his sensible support of South Korea's ``sunshine 
policy.''
  The other possibility is that Secretaries Powell and Rumsfeld are, 
indeed, on the same page, and that ``in together, out together'' really 
means that the United States intends to use its unparalleled influence 
within NATO to force our allies to join us in a precipitous withdrawal 
before the mission in Bosnia is successfully completed.
  Given the choice, I'd opt for poison number one, and wait for this 
Administration to finally get its act together. But I fear that poison 
number two is the more likely scenario.
  If my fears prove correct, and we withdraw our troops, I predict that 
renewed fighting in Bosnia is just a matter of time. This next round 
would be bloody, and, inevitably, we would have to go back in again, at 
much greater cost in men and materiel. Because no matter how much my 
neo-isolationist friends salivate at the idea of sitting on the 
sidelines while the European Union's European Security and Defense 
Policy rapid-reaction force takes care of things--they will be sorely 
disappointed, because for the foreseeable future ESDP will need massive 
American support to function.
  You know, I think this town has a great many very intelligent 
individuals, and Secretary Rumsfeld is one of the brightest of the 
bunch. It's difficult for me to understand how even the

[[Page 9183]]

most Asia-centered, or missile defense-centered person, can believe 
that their new foreign policy emphases have a chance of succeeding if 
Europe is not stable. And with the Balkans still erupting, Europe will 
not be stable.
  So let's all reread NATO's Strategic Concept and not view our 
military's tasks through a twentieth century prism. Let's listen to our 
men and women on the ground in the Balkans. Let's listen to our 
diplomats who know full well that a stepped up, resolute effort at 
Dayton implementation--backed up by a still robust SFOR--is what is 
called for. Let's stop talking about accelerated exit strategies before 
the mission is successfully accomplished.

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