Time - Man of the Year/Time_Man_of_the_Year_Compact_Publishing_3YX-Disc-1_Compact_Publishing_1993.iso/moy/060892/06089927.000

Text File | 1992-10-19 | 6KB | 120 lines

                                                                                COVER STORIES, Page 39

THE BALKANS

A Chronic Case of Impotence


The U.S., Europe and the U.N. have imposed sanctions, but they
don't stand much chance of stopping Serbia's war

By GEORGE J. CHURCH -- Reported by David Aikman with Baker,
William Mader/London and Frederick Ungeheuer/Paris


    "Like pre-1914 Europe, the new world order of George Bush
died in Sarajevo."

    -- French political analyst Pierre Hassner


    The comparison is a bit hyperbolic: hardly anyone expects
a third World War to blossom from the present fighting in the
capital of Bosnia-Herzegovina. But in other respects Hassner's
comment is right on. The essence of Bush's "new world order,"
proclaimed shortly before the Persian Gulf war, was that quick,
decisive action by international bodies would make the world
unsafe for aggression. But when the next test came, in the
breakup of Yugoslavia, the U.S. and its European allies
floundered.

    A year of vicious ethnic bloodletting has ensued. Now most
of the world has decided that the prime cause of the fighting
is the nationalist fervor of Serbia. Yes, the war is a more
complicated eruption of ancient religious, ethnic and
territorial hatreds, but it is Serbia's determination to bite
off parts of the other republics peopled by Serbs that keeps the
war going. And the U.S., the 12-nation European Community, the
52-nation Conference on Security and Cooperation in Europe
(C.S.C.E.) and the United Nations have let it roll on unchecked
while dithering helplessly about what, if anything, to do.

    There are no obvious solutions if the parties on the
ground are unwilling to call it quits. Even now the odds are
that the sanctions finally imposed last week by the U.S., the
European Community and the U.N. Security Council will not stop
the bloodshed before Serb leader Slobodan Milosevic achieves,
by dint of arms, his apparent aim of forging a Greater Serbia.

    Like Saddam Hussein, Milosevic probably could have been
halted only by force. But no one outside Yugoslavia was -- or
is -- prepared to go to war against him. Military intervention,
most believe, would be likely to land outside powers in a
Vietnam-style quagmire and cost them heavy casualties. There may
be universal outrage at the human carnage, but unlike Iraq's
grab for oil-rich Kuwait, Serbia's depredations against Croatia
and Bosnia do not threaten the strategic interests of the U.S.
or European neighbors enough to justify the risks of sending in
troops.

    The U.N. sanctions go about as far as foreign pressure
can, short of war. They will stop all Serbian exports and all
imports except for food and medicine, freeze Serbian assets held
abroad and break all air links to the outside world. The key
measure, though, is an embargo on oil, the lifeblood of both
modern industry and mechanized armies, but it is far from
certain that the tap will be turned off. Almost half of Serbia's
fuel comes from Russia and China, which went along only
reluctantly with the sanctions resolution. Some British
diplomats are worried that oil may slip into Serbia from
Romania, or from the Middle East via Greece, which has important
trade routes through Serbia.

    Worse, the sanctions may not work even if they are
enforced. Serbia is close to self-sufficiency in food production
and has stockpiled goods and fuel; its external trade has
already been nearly halted by the war without noticeably denting
the Serbs' fighting spirit. "The more primitive the economy, the
more impervious the country is to boycotts," notes Michael
Dewar, deputy director of the London-based International
Institute for Strategic Studies. Though British officials hope
that economic hardship might eventually loosen Milosevic's hold
on his followers, one senior French diplomat fears that it will
breed an us-against-the-world solidarity.

    If sanctions fail, there is some cautious talk about
military intervention to the extent of providing armed escorts
for shipments of food and medicine to Bosnia's beleaguered
Muslim Slavs. But so far the Security Council has not authorized
sending U.N. troops to the republic; members are concerned that
the soldiers might come under fire and suffer casualties.
Similar worries delayed the dispatch of a peacekeeping force of
14,000 to Croatia until the Serbs had completed their conquest
of Serb areas, and an "ethnic cleansing" of those regions to
expel Croats continues.

    The months of flopping around give little reason to hope
that the international community can agree on and carry through
any more vigorous course of action. The Europeans and the U.S.
had long refused to accept that Yugoslavia was irresistibly
coming apart. Germany had to bludgeon the Community into
recognizing the independence of Slovenia and Croatia. The U.S.,
Britain and Greece argued -- prophetically, as it turned out --
that the move would inevitably lead to recognition of
independent Bosnia-Herzegovina and give Milosevic an excuse to
spread the fighting into that land. Until last week, Russia
helped to block even the mildest sanctions against Serbia in the
C.S.C.E. and at the U.N.; along with China, Russia apparently
fears to set a precedent for interference in its own ethnic
conflicts. The U.S. until very recently let the Europeans take
the policy lead. Only in the past two weeks has Secretary of
State James Baker woken up to lecture them for doing nothing
effective and to push hard for sanctions. If Yugoslavia presents
a test case for the ability of international bodies to defuse
the ethnic violence that is emerging as the greatest threat to
world peace, then the world community has resoundingly flunked.