Making War to Keep Peace (32 page)

• Resolution 770 provided that all necessary measures could be taken nationally or through regional agencies or arrangements to deliver humanitarian assistance in Bosnia-Herzegovina. That meant that NATO could use necessary force to deliver food and medicine to civilian populations under siege. No further authorization was required.
  
• Resolution 816 authorized states and regional groups to use necessary means to enforce no-fly zones. No further authorization was required.
  
• Resolution 819 authorized member states acting nationally or through regional organizations or arrangements to use airpower to protect UN peacekeepers. That meant that NATO, for example—or France or the United States—was authorized to provide air strikes to protect peacekeepers when they came under attack. No further authorization was required.
  

Sometimes it seemed that Boutros-Ghali understood this. In a meeting with the Committee on Foreign Relations of the French Chamber of Deputies on January 11, 1994, he was asked: “If tonight or tomorrow NATO formally decides to undertake air strikes, what will be your attitude? Will you support that demand?” He waffled, replying, “I don't have this power. It is for the Security Council to accept or refuse, to authorize
or not to authorize…It can give a mandate to NATO, or not give a mandate…. It is for them to decide.”

Yet Boutros-Ghali continued his inept efforts to micromanage military matters. In mid-winter of 1994, for example, he replaced a French unit that had been in the Bihac area for months with Bangladeshi troops who were new to the region, inadequately armed and trained, and not supplied with winter clothing or footwear. Several Bangladeshi soldiers were immediately captured. (Three hundred and forty-nine UN peacekeepers were being held hostage throughout Bosnia at that time.) Serb officers promised to cease harassing Bangladeshi forces only if NATO ceased its air strikes against Serb forces. The captured Bangladeshi soldiers were bound, gagged, and forced to remain on an airfield without food or water for many hours. One soldier died of bronchitis, asthma, and exposure. More hostages were taken, including a Jordanian major who also became ill and died. Because the area was under siege, it was not possible to quickly provide warm clothes. Those who fell ill were denied medical treatment. Three UNPROFOR hostages were tied on the runway of the Banja Luka airport for eight hours in November 1994 after a NATO air strike targeted a Croatian airfield. Several UN observers in Croatia were denied food for twenty-four hours at a stretch.
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If Boutros-Ghali recognized that the authorization lay not with him but with the Security Council, why did he so often insist otherwise? The explanation, I believe, lies in the secretary-general's ceaseless efforts to increase his power. These efforts had become a huge obstacle to effective peacekeeping and war making. His redefinition of the peacekeeping mission and the UN rules of engagement sent lightly armed forces into war zones with no reliable arrangements for reinforcement or defense. This is what happened to French, Swedish, and Bangladeshi troops in Bosnia.

It was the U.S. government's acceptance of such rules of engagement for NATO operations that allowed Bosnian Serb forces to shoot down an American F-16 and its pilot, Captain Scott O'Grady, on June 2, 1995. O'Grady was ultimately saved by his own initiative, stamina, and good luck, and by the determined efforts of his rescuers.
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In the days after the F-16 was shot down, the U.S. government neither retaliated nor expressed much outrage over this deliberate targeting of an unprotected U.S. plane on a routine, nonviolent mission.
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The Clinton
administration gave no one, including the offending Serbs, any reason to fear American displeasure. The Serbs had been permitted to install the SAM missile batteries that brought down O'Grady's plane in the area patrolled by American planes. Then U.S. planes were sent up without the protection of readily available, highly effective electronic equipment that provides notice to fighter pilots that they are being targeted by missiles.

It was past time for the members of the Security Council to accept responsibility—not just for providing troops, but also for ensuring adequate weapons, realistic rules of engagement, and competent military commanders.

The essential elements of the Bosnian conflict were changing. On August 28, 1995, the Bosnian Serbs carried out a third brutal attack on Sarajevo. Abandoning its usual neutral posture, the Security Council declared that beyond a reasonable doubt the Bosnian Serbs were responsible. The secretary-general, who habitually opposed the use of force regardless of the provocation, flatly condemned the attack. UN peacekeepers quietly left Gorazde to ensure that they would not be taken hostage.

The NATO attacks continued and intensified. From September 10–20, 1995, thirty-four hundred sorties were flown. Communication and transportation resources and military stores were targeted. At the same time, the now-adequately-armed Croatian and Bosnian forces began to sweep Serb forces out of land they had captured. Both Croats and Muslims wanted to keep fighting, but Washington insisted that the war should end.

After the second wave of bombing hit Sarajevo in February 1994, Christopher signaled to our associates that we would act only in conjunction with them, asserting “there are atrocities on all sides.” A new joint action plan was organized by the United States, Russia, France, the United Kingdom, and Spain as a containment plan; it called for sealing Bosnia's borders and establishing Muslim safe areas. Clinton himself became active in the search for a settlement and was prepared to settle for a three-way partition with terms dictated by Serbs and Croats.

The United States undertook the effort to negotiate peace and a unified state but was unable to do so. In fact, a war seemed likely between the Muslims and the Croats. For a while, Muslims permitted the Serb forces
(JNA) to assume a number of policing functions. Then cooperation between Croats and Muslims broke down almost entirely, and the Croats, while still formally allied with the Muslims, effectively became allies of the Serbs; they were complicit in some of their most brutal attacks, including the siege of Srebrenica, and participated in creating more refugees and more misery for the Muslims. Croat militia members murdered dozens of Muslim civilians in Ahmici and other villages. Milošević and Croatian president Franjo Tudjman plotted settlements that would leave less and less land for Muslims and press them into smaller and smaller areas.

In March 1994, under pressure from Washington, Bosnian Muslims and Croats stopped fighting and agreed to form a federation. Cooperation between these two republics of former Yugoslavia got under way after Tudjman transmitted a message that Iran was ready to ship arms to Bosnia. The Clinton administration quietly acquiesced, without informing its allies or Congress. Arms shipments began in April 1994, and from that point on, Bosnian forces received a steady supply. The U.S. government delivered no arms itself, but covert support was given by Islamic nations—including Iran. The arms were accompanied by small but increasing numbers of mujahideen.

The Bosnians undertook offensives that opened roads to Tuzla and defeated Serbs in Bihac, which was under heavy shelling. Soon the newly armed Bosnian forces began to win battles and undertake more military initiatives. Croatia and Bosnia won battle after battle, and by 1995 controlled most of Krajina.

Tension over the continued lack of a UN response to Serbian aggression had been building, with Americans calling for more vigorous use of airpower, implementation of the Security Council resolutions, and more determined use of force to punish and deter the attacks. Congress had made repeated calls to lift the arms embargo and permit Bosnia to defend itself.

As 1994 drew to a close, it seemed clear that it would not be easy to heal the rift between the U.S. government and its NATO allies on the matter of Bosnia. The NATO military operation, which had been under way since April, revealed differences that were broader, deeper, more unpleasant, and more important than anticipated. Many Americans had been
surprised by how passively the British and French greeted the carnage in Bosnia, and by Boutros-Ghali's opposition to the use of force to stop the brutal aggression. These differences would not be easily overcome; nor would the differences between the United Nations and its critics in Congress.

In November 1994, against European objections, the Clinton administration announced that it would no longer enforce the arms embargo. That same month, Republicans won control of Congress; Majority Leader Robert Dole and House Speaker Newt Gingrich announced their support for the lift-and-strike policy, and noted that a congressional majority supported their position.

The following month, former president Jimmy Carter negotiated a four-month cease-fire. At its end, the Bosnian and Croatian governments undertook more military offensives after the Serbs attacked safe areas and took several hundred UNPROFOR troops hostage. UN negotiators struck a deal with the Serbs to release the hostages in exchange for a promise that there would be no more NATO air strikes against Serb forces.

Each of the principals had his own priorities and goals. Radovan Karadzic, leader of the Bosnian Serbs, understood that his forces and resources were dangerously thin and that he was likely to be betrayed by MiloÅ¡ević, whom he accused of treason. “You have turned your back on the Serbs,” he charged, having concluded that MiloÅ¡ević would do nothing to help them. He was right. MiloÅ¡ević was ready to abandon the Bosnian Serbs as part of his plan to achieve the lifting of the sanctions on Serbia imposed since 1992. The Croatians were preoccupied with extending their control over Krajina, an area that Clinton's national security advisor, Anthony Lake, had targeted as a center of a future state of Bosnia-Herzegovina, which he was eager to cobble together out of the Muslim-Croat federation and the Bosnian Serb ministate.

Richard Holbrooke, the assistant secretary of state for Europe, understood that the task of dealing with Milošević was his, and he relied principally on American airpower and tough talk. Milošević was furious with the Bosnian Serbs and warned them that he was ready to cut them off. Finally, and very reluctantly, the Bosnian Serbs agreed that Milošević could negotiate for them. NATO began heavy bombing on August 31,
1995, flying thirty-four sorties against the Bosnian Serbs over a period of two weeks.

Milošević asked the Contact Group to stop the bombing. In return, Holbrooke asked Milošević to accept a division of Bosnia-Herzegovina into two parts, with the Muslim-Croat Federation taking 51 percent and the Bosnian Serbs 49 percent. When Bosnian Serb general Ratko Mladic and Karadzic rejected the idea, Holbrooke walked out. Milošević told Mladic and Karadzic that NATO would destroy their forces if they continued to hold out against Holbrooke's proposal. Then, just as it appeared that the conference was about to break up, leaving Croatia and Bosnia in a stronger position, Washington applied more pressure, this time leaving Mladic and Karadzic to face the prospect of fighting alone.

In November 1995, when the United States and the other Contact Group members finally brought the warring factions together for peace talks, the Croats' top priority was eastern Slovenia. The Bosnian Serbs were determined to split Sarajevo. Silajdzic refused to meet with them and told Milošević he wanted Gorazde as a symbol of Bosnian presence on the Serbian border. Milošević capitulated. There would be three states: one Serb, one Croat, and one Muslim.

The four-month-long truce helped, but it did not prevent repeated attacks on Bosnian safe areas. The next month, another NATO bombing led to Serb withdrawal from Gorazde and marked the end of the total vulnerability of the Bosnian Muslims.

In Bosnia, clashes continued between the Americans and the secretary-general's special representative. One incident concerned Gorazde. NATO had declared a deadline of April 23 for the Bosnian Serbs to pull back their troops, but when the Serbs failed to comply, Akashi blocked the promised NATO air strikes. The United States complained that Akashi allowed Bosnian Serb tanks through to Sarajevo in clear violation of an understanding that no tanks would be permitted in the city.

CLINTON'S DISTASTE FOR U.S. UNILATERAL FORCE

The long-awaited NATO air strikes on Serb positions around Gorazde, which began on April 10, 1994, demonstrated that the White House was
ready to use limited airpower to achieve limited objectives. But President Clinton's comments on the strikes sounded more like a disclaimer than a statement of purpose: “This is a clear expression of the will of NATO and the will of the United Nations,” he said, as if the United States had no voice or responsibility in these decisions. “We have said we would act if we were requested to do so. We have now done so and we will do so again if we are requested.”
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One can only wonder why Clinton chose these words. Did he regard the American pilots' mission in Gorazde as more legitimate if it was specifically authorized by the UN? Was he trying to suggest that attacks by American pilots in American planes should be seen not as Americans but as representatives of a multinational force acting on behalf of a multinational body? Clinton's language was a clear reminder that many of his key advisers had a longstanding distaste for unilateral American use of force, and put their faith instead in a policy of active global multilateralism.

Among the most prominent statements of this policy was the 1992 essay “Military Action: When to Use It and How to Ensure Its Effectiveness” by William Perry, soon to become Clinton's secretary of defense. In the essay, which developed themes from an earlier article he coauthored with Ashton Carter (then assistant secretary of defense for policy) and John Steinbruner of the Brookings Institution, Perry advocated renouncing the use of American force in favor of a policy of “global engagement” through an international police force. Perry's recommendations were straightforward: all nations should reduce their military forces to those required for defense of their own territory, except for the United States and a few other major states, who would maintain some additional forces to supplement multinational forces as needed. Any new international aggression would then be deterred by those multinational forces, rather than any individual state. Though a Pentagon spokesman denied that Perry would follow its prescriptions as secretary of defense, their relevance to his performance was obvious.