[Weekly Compilation of Presidential Documents Volume 31, Number 52 (Monday, January 1, 1996)]
[Pages 2223-2227]
[Online from the Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]

<R04>
Interview With the Armed Forces Media

December 22, 1995

Bosnia

    The President. First let me say that I have just come from a 
briefing here at the Pentagon with our senior military officials who are 
working on the mission in Bosnia. We've also had a teleconference with 
General Joulwan, getting the latest up-to-date briefing on the 
conditions of the deployment. And I would say--I should emphasize to you 
two things.
    One is that, notwithstanding some weather problems and a few delays 
occasioned by Christmas traffic on the rails in Germany, we're pretty 
much on schedule. And secondly, and even more important, the attitude 
toward compliance thus far in Bosnia by all parties has been quite good. 
Now, it's early in the mission, but so far the attitude toward 
compliance has been very good, and we're encouraged by that. And we 
think we can stay on schedule for the separation of the forces and the 
other elements of it.
    And also in this Christmas season, I'd like to remind the people who 
serve our country that we are doing this essentially for three reasons. 
First of all, because we can do it, and when we can do something like 
this, it's consistent with our values to stop suffering and slaughter on 
the scale we've seen it in Bosnia.
    Second, because it's very much in our interest to contain and end 
this war, to prevent it from spreading in a way that can involve our 
NATO allies on opposite sides and many other countries that are critical 
to the stability of Europe. It's also important for us to do what we can 
to promote a stable and democratic and free Europe. We, after all, have 
fought two World Wars because we did not have such a Europe; we had a 
long cold war because we did not have such a Europe. So it's in our 
interest.
    And finally, it is critical to our ability to lead the world for the 
next 10 or 20 years as we sort out what the security arrangements of the 
post-cold-war era will be. I can tell you that our leadership of NATO 
specifically, and in general our ability to lead in the world toward 
peace and democracy, is very much tied to our willingness to assume a 
leadership role in this Bosnia mission.
    I could see it on my recent trip to Europe, whether it was talking 
to Prime Ministers in Great Britain or Ireland or Germany or Spain or 
just to people on the street. It means a lot to them to know that the 
United States is still there working and leading and being a good 
partner.
    So for all these reasons, I think this is a very, very important 
mission to our country.
    Q. Thank you, sir. Mr. President, I'm Austin Camacho from the AFRTS 
News Center. After Operation Joint Endeavor, what do you see as the U.S. 
role in that area formerly known as Yugoslavia? What will be our role 
there?
    The President. Well, I think, first of all, we'll still be there 
through NATO and whatever role that NATO assumes in the general area 
beyond our NATO member nations. But more importantly, I would expect, 
after this mission is over, we will continue to have American citizens, 
both people who work for and represent our Government and people in the 
private sector, going in and out of there helping in the reconstruction 
effort, contributing to that, supporting the political process in 
whatever way we can.
    But I think it is quite important that the NATO force not become an 
occupying army. We're not dealing with Berlin here. We're not--all we're 
trying to do is to give this peace agreement a chance to take hold. And 
we have a very clear and limited mission. In fact, I want to make sure 
that all of our folks know that, as far as I know, this peace agreement 
is the first one ever where the military annex to the agreement was 
actually written

[[Page 2224]]

by the military commanders who were going to be expected to implement 
it. That is, the parties actually asked our military people to fashion 
the military annex to the agreement that was initiated in Dayton so that 
there would be a limited, defined, strictly military mission.
    Q. Mr. President, do you agree with the premise that Bosnia is 
really the first test of post-cold-war policy?
    The President. Well, I think it's been tested in other ways, but 
it's certainly the most significant military test of our post-cold-war 
policy if you accept the premise that what happened in the Gulf at the 
Gulf war could have occurred during the cold war as well as afterward, 
that this is literally a post-cold-war problem. Then it is the biggest 
military test.
    Q. Does that mean that--what is the success or failure of this then 
mean to American foreign policy 10, 15 years down the line?
    The President. Well, let me just say I think the most important 
thing here is that the United States was prepared to lead and to work 
with our NATO allies. If you remember, in the beginning when the Bosnian 
war broke out, a lot of our European allies said, ``Well, we ought to 
take the leadership role here. We'll do this. We'll do it through the 
United Nations.'' And we've played a very strong supporting role through 
NATO. After all, it's important that the United States never forget that 
during these last 4 tough years, we led in the conduct of the largest 
humanitarian airlift in history; we led in enforcing the no-fly zone, 
keeping the war out of the air, and a lot of other things that were 
done, including NATO's willingness to use air strikes to, first of all, 
bring about a relatively peaceful 1994 and then to bring about the 
conditions in which a peace agreement could be made in 1995.
    But what I believe this means, if we make this effort and if we 
succeed in our military mission, even if, God forbid, after we're all 
gone the thing should come apart, at least we will be united in doing 
what we can do to promote stability in Europe and to take a stand for 
peace in the post-cold-war era.
    If you remember when I sent our troops into Haiti with a U.N.-led 
mission, and then when I left a smaller number there when the United 
Nations took over on schedule, I always said that we could not guarantee 
the people of Haiti a future; they would have to do that for themselves. 
The same is true for the Bosnians. We cannot guarantee for them a future 
without war. What we can guarantee for them is a year without war, 
during which they can implement their own agreement and in which time 
they can have elections, they can begin the economic reconstruction, 
they can begin to see the benefits of peace, and then some equilibrium 
within the country can be established from a security point of view.
    But I think it would be a mistake for the United States or for NATO 
to believe that we should be going around anywhere guaranteeing the 
results of peace agreements which have to be guaranteed in the minds and 
hearts of the people who are making them.
    So this will be a success for our alliance, for our leadership, just 
by doing the mission. Obviously, it will be a much, much greater success 
if the humanitarian relief, the refugee relocation, the economic 
reconstruction all are completely successful and Bosnia has a permanent 
peace. That is the real measure of success. But the main thing is we 
have to define together where we must try and where we must stand 
against chaos. And I think we've done a good job of that here.
    Q. Mr. President, Cindy Killion from the European Stars and Stripes. 
Under what circumstances would you order the U.S. forces to withdraw 
from Bosnia within the next year, before the one-year mark?
    The President. The only circumstance that I can imagine doing that 
is if the mission no longer existed. That is, keep in mind, we are there 
not to fight a war. We are there not to stop a war. We are there to 
implement a peace agreement. We anticipate that there will be violations 
of this agreement but that the leaders will not abandon it and that the 
vast bulk of the people will not abandon it. So we have to be prepared 
for some violations. We even have to be prepared for some casualties, 
although I think our people have trained and planned as hard against 
problems for this mission as they ever have for any.
    But that would not cause me to withdraw. I believe that NATO would 
determine, if all the factions decided they wanted to go fight

[[Page 2225]]

again, that there was no longer a mission to perform.

Defense Authorization Bill

    Q. Hi, Bill Matthews with Army Times. Switching a little bit to the 
defense authorization bill, you have said you are going to veto it. The 
bill includes a pay raise and a housing allowance increase for military 
people. Since some of them are headed off to Bosnia, are you concerned 
that not getting the pay raise, not getting the housing allowance 
increase would be detrimental to morale? And is there some alternative?
    The President. Very much. Yes, there is an alternative. The Congress 
could send me a separate bill with the pay raise and the allowances in 
it, and I would sign it in a heartbeat. I think, indeed I hope, that 
they will do one of two things: I hope they will either do that, or when 
I veto this bill, assuming my veto would be sustained, which I believe 
it would because there are some unconstitutional restrictions on the 
President's authority as Commander in Chief in this bill which compels 
me to veto it--so they can either send me the pay raise and the 
allowance increase in a separate bill or they could delete the offending 
portions of the defense authorization bill and send it right back to me. 
They can do either one of those things. And I would hope the Congress 
would promptly act to do that.
    I do not want any erosion of morale and spirit among not only our 
people in uniform but their family members. I believe that we are 
completely united in supporting the full pay raise and the allowance 
increase. And I have done my best to budget for these things over a 
period of several years.
    I have visited a large number of our military facilities, both in 
the United States and beyond our borders. I have talked to a lot of 
people in uniform about this. And I think it is a very important issue. 
If we want to keep the very best people in our military, we're going to 
have to see to the quality-of-life issues. We've allocated a lot of 
money for it over the next budget cycle, and I want to release it, 
starting with these two issues.

Defense Spending

    Q. Mr. President, Jim Wolffe, also from the Army Times. On a 
slightly longer term budget issue, the Republican 7-year budget plan, 
while it has more money for defense in the first couple of years, 
actually targets less money towards defense spending in the out-years 
2000 and beyond. Secretary Perry said earlier this week that that would 
force him into the difficult decision of actually cutting force 
structure to pay for modernization.
    You've talked a lot about social spending in the budget debate, but 
I haven't heard you talk much about defending defense spending. Is that 
something you're willing to give away to get a deal?
    The President. Well, let me say that I still hope that I can work 
with Congress in a way that that choice won't be necessary. It is true 
that they front-loaded more defense spending than we did, which made it 
very attractive to all the people who wanted it in these years. But what 
we tried to do was to have a balanced commitment.
    I think the worst thing that can happen to the military is to be 
jerked around with these up and down budgets and unpredictability. What 
we tried to do is to get our folks together here and to say, ``Okay, 
what do we need over the next 5 years? What do we need over the next 7 
years?'' The only thing I can say to you, and I would say with some 
sense of assurance, is that our political system has shown a willingness 
now to respond if there's a problem created for our forces in uniform 
and for our national defense.
    I mean, I think--one of the things you see that in the last 3 years 
is we've had a remarkable bipartisan ability to maintain a strong 
defense as a part of our continuing engagement in the post-cold-war 
world. And I think that everyone knows that the military went through a 
significant downsizing with a remarkable maintenance of excellence and 
morale and that now we have to sustain the system that we have created.
    And so I would say to our forces in uniform, I'm going to get the 
very best budget agreement I can. I hope we can get an agreement. But if 
there is an alarming tailoff in years 6 and 7, I think it can be 
corrected in the future. And I believe if we balance the budget, get 
interest rates down, the econ- 

[[Page 2226]]

omy will grow more quickly. And one of the big differences between me 
and the Republicans in Congress is that they have now given me an 
economic plan which says if we do everything they want, at the end of 6 
or 7 years interest rates and unemployment will be higher than they are 
now. I find that very hard to believe. I think that we're going to be 
better off, not worse off, if we do this, and we'll have more money, 
therefore, to invest in defense.
    So I would not worry too much about the out-years. Whatever happens 
in this budget agreement, at least as long as I am here--and I can't 
conceive of anyone else coming into this job or anyone coming into 
control of the Congress that would not try to sustain a long-term plan 
for the military, because that's what we've learned--that if the 
military has a plan they can do nearly anything, but we can't jack 
around the plan. And we don't want to play games with people's lives or 
with the national security.

Bosnia and Politics

    Q. Mr. President, I'm Dave Gollust from Voice of America. Can I jump 
back to Bosnia for a second and politics? How important do you consider 
the success of the Bosnia operation to your own political prospects? Is 
it a defining moment for you? And secondly, from a tactical point of 
view, would you mind if Senator Dole was the first senior political 
presence in Bosnia on Christmas?
    The President. Well, let me answer the first question. If you look 
at recent American history, the evidence is that the success of the 
Bosnia operation may not have much to do with the election in 1996, but 
the failure of the Bosnia operation or the sustaining of significant 
casualties could have a great deal to do with it in a negative way. And 
that's all. The conventional political wisdom is, ``Why would the 
President do this? There's no upside and tons of downside.''
    But I have to say, when you take a job, you have to do what you--you 
have to do the job. And to be President at the edge of the 21st century, 
in a time of dramatic, dramatic change in the way we work and live and 
relate to each other, means that you can't predict the future and you 
just have to do what you think is right. So for me, this was not--once I 
became convinced we could train for this mission, that we could define 
the mission in the peace agreement, that we could minimize the risks to 
our troops, then the decision to me was not so difficult, no matter what 
the political downside, because I believe, in a time like this, you have 
to ask yourself which decision would you rather defend 10 years from now 
when you're not in office, if it goes wrong?
    I would much rather explain to my child and my grandchildren why the 
United States tried to stop slaughter, prevent the spread of the war, 
maintain NATO instead of destroy it, maintain the leadership of the 
United States in the world for peace and freedom. I would much rather 
explain why we tried to do that than why, because of the short-term 
political problems, we permitted the war to resume, it expanded, NATO's 
alliance was destroyed, and the influence of the United States was 
compromised for 10 years.
    I think it's obvious if you look at it that way--what do you want to 
tell your grandchildren 10 years from now? That the United States is 
doing the right thing. And the political risk is part of the price you 
pay for being President. Anybody who doesn't want to take any political 
risk at a time like this should not run for the job.
    Now, in terms of who goes to Bosnia when, I don't think we should 
politicize it. Senator Dole and I worked together to get the support 
that the Senate gave to this mission. He expressed his reservations 
about it, but he supported my decision as Commander in Chief. I 
appreciated that. And obviously, at the appropriate time, I have no 
objection to either Senator Dole or anyone else for that matter going to 
Bosnia.
    The question is, when is the appropriate time? If I had my way, I 
would be spending Christmas Eve and Christmas morning there. That's what 
I wanted to do. But our commanders made it clear that when a President 
comes into Bosnia, if I fly into that airport at Tuzla, and then I go 
down to Sarajevo when they're in the middle of this deployment, it would 
be exceedingly disruptive. So even though I wanted to go there to say to 
the American people I believe this mission is on the right track and, 
most importantly, to support the troops and to reassure their

[[Page 2227]]

families, I'm taking the advice of the military commanders. I do not 
want to interrupt this mission.
    The mission's success is the most important thing. And that's what I 
believe should guide everyone. I think everyone--there are different 
levels of disruption that different trips would cause, and I think we 
ought to try to just keep it nonpolitical. I hope anybody that wants to 
go there that has a reason to go, including Senator Dole, will be able 
to go at the appropriate time. And that's the determination that needs 
to be made.
    Q. Mr. President, you mentioned the safety of the troops as being 
part of your decision a couple times in that last answer. We're sending 
quite a large force involved in the Bosnia mission. Some might say, 
awfully large for a peaceful mission. How extensive do you think the 
danger is to our troops there?
    The President. Well, I think there is--let's look at what the 
sources are. No one can--the extent of the danger depends on factors 
that we can't fully predict. But I believe that we have minimized the 
risks. What are the possible problems? First of all, if you look at what 
the United Nations went through over the last 4 years, I think something 
over 200 people lost their lives in Bosnia. But more than half of them 
lost their lives in accidents. So we have really worked hard to train 
against accidents, to prepare--to look at the roadways, to look at the 
railways, to look at the airfields. We've worked hard to minimize the 
loss of life or serious injury due to accidents.
    Then we know there are a lot of land mines there. I got a very 
encouraging report today that the parties themselves in many places are 
assisting us in removing the mines. But there are a lot of places where 
there are a lot of mines laid where the land was first in one hand and 
then another, where we don't have records of the mines, where people 
don't have memories of them. So we have trained very hard to deal with 
land mines. I think that's the next biggest danger after accidents.
    Then the third problem is people that fought in that war who are 
either from the country or who came in from without the country who may 
have either a specific grudge against the United States or, more likely, 
will just be frustrated because they don't agree with the peace 
agreement that the leaders made and, therefore, some--and then, 
fourthly, there is just the possibility of encounters that go wrong. The 
only casualty we sustained in Haiti had nothing to do with opposition to 
our being there. It was a man who was literally a common criminal who 
ran through a barrier, and there was an incident, and he shot one of our 
soldiers dead.
    So I would say that those are the dangers in order.
    Q. Mr. President, I think that's all the time we have.
    The President. Thank you, and Merry Christmas. I appreciate what you 
do.

Note: The interview began at 10:35 a.m. in the Visual Recording Facility 
at the National Military Command Center, the Pentagon. The following 
journalists participated in the interview: Sgt. Austin Camacho, American 
Forces Radio and Television Service; Jim Garamone, American Forces 
Information Service; Cindy Killion, Stars and Stripes; Bill Matthews and 
Jim Wolffe, Army Times; and David Gollust, Voice of America. In his 
remarks, the President referred to Gen. George A. Joulwan, USA, Supreme 
Allied Commander, Europe. This item was not received in time for 
publication in the appropriate issue.