Time - Man of the Year/Time_Man_of_the_Year_Compact_Publishing_3YX-Disc-1_Compact_Publishing_1993.iso/moy/061592/0615640.000

Text File | 1992-09-22 | 6KB | 127 lines

                                                                                ESSAY, Page 78

Sarajevo Burns. Will We Learn?


By Charles Krauthammer


    By May 13, the fighting in Sarajevo had become intolerable.
Accordingly, U.N. Secretary-General Boutros Boutros-Ghali
announced that the bulk of U.N. forces in Sarajevo were pulling
out. The U.N., he said, simply cannot operate in a place where
there is no political will for peace. "Peacekeeping must be
based on the agreement of all parties."

    But when all the parties agree, one already has peace. It
is when the parties don't agree and are killing each other that
peacekeeping is needed. But at that point the U.N. gets out.

    Sarajevo burns and the world watches. The first serious
shooting war to erupt in the heart of Europe in 40 years elicits
protests and admonitions, Security Council resolutions and
embargoes, but nothing that stops the carnage. In Croatia, where
a U.N. cease-fire is supposed to have ended the fighting, the
historic city of Dubrovnik has just taken its most fearful
artillery pounding in six months. Bosnia is terrorized. And the
U.N. blue helmets head for safe ground.

    This is not cowardice. This is realism. The U.N. troops
refuse to immolate themselves doing a job that they inherently
cannot do. It is the kind of realism that America could use to
pierce some of the fantasies that have arisen in U.S. thinking
about the post-Soviet world. The chief fantasy is that the U.S.,
indeed the world, can now rely on "collective security" and its
agency, the U.N., for its safety and security.

    Yugoslavia is exactly the kind of conflict that collective
security was supposed to address: small, isolated, manageable,
involving none of the great powers. Yet as Lord Carrington,
mediator for another would-be agency of collective security (the
European Community), admitted, "It is very difficult to see what
can be done while they go on fighting."

    Precisely. U.N., E.C. and all the other entries in the
dictionary of collective security (c.s.c.e., oas, etc., etc.)
are powerless in the face of fighting. They keep the peace only
in places where hostilities have already ended, places like the
Golan Heights and Cyprus, where neither party is intent, at
least today, on going to war. Yet we know from history that as
soon as one or the other party changes its mind, all bets are
off. In May 1967, Egypt, preparing war against Israel, ordered
the U.N. to get its peacekeeping troops out of Sinai. Within
days they were gone. Within three weeks the war was on.

    If the U.N. can, at best, only keep peace, who is to make
peace? Who is to stop the fighting, halt the aggression? The
answer is simple: the world's one great power -- the United
States -- joined by whatever friends choose to help.

    Consider the gulf war, by now totally misunderstood. New
York Times columnist Leslie Gelb writes, "If the Persian Gulf
war promised a new era of collective responsibility, Yugoslavia
heralds its early demise." But the gulf war promised no new era
of collective responsibility. The gulf war was no more
collective than the Korean War, also fought under the U.N. flag.
It was not the U.N. that reversed Saddam's conquest of Kuwait.
It was the U.S. Army, based in Saudi Arabia, helped by Britain
and France. Everything else was window dressing.

    The gulf war helped create the illusion that in the
post-Soviet world the U.N., representing a world aroused, would
secure the peace and put down threats. Yugoslavia exposes the
emptiness of that dream. Today, as always, threats are met and
conflicts halted by the great powers, and most decisively by the
one dominant power, the United States. The U.S. intervened
decisively in the gulf and, for months, washed its hands of
Yugoslavia. That more than anything else explains why Kuwait
thrives and Sarajevo burns.

    Two weeks ago, the first signs appeared that the world
might indeed begin to stir on Yugoslavia. The Security Council
imposed a trade embargo on Serbia and Montenegro. What happened?
A spontaneous eruption of collective action?

    Hardly. What happened was that the U.S. changed its
policy. After months of ostentatiously letting the European
Community try to handle the Yugoslav crisis collectively, the
U.S. came to the conclusion 1) that Europe was hopeless and 2)
that the crisis was beginning to reach proportions that could
directly threaten the entire Balkan region. Unstopped Serbian
aggression might lead to war with Albania, Greek intervention
in Macedonia and, most catastrophically, the involvement of
Muslim, pro-Western Turkey.

    That is why the U.S. moved. And because the U.S. moved, so
did the U.N. No one, however, expects that sanctions will force
Serbia out of Bosnia. The tragedy of Sarajevo will probably
continue until the ethnic hatreds play themselves out. Or until
the conflict does indeed begin to engulf the entire region. At
which point the U.S., with others trailing, will intervene.
Undoubtedly, it will all be done under U.N. cover. Another
victory will be declared for collective security. Don't be
fooled.

    There is no such thing as collective security. There is no
reality behind the facade of U.N. "peacekeeping." The U.N. comes
to life only when animated -- manipulated -- by the U.S.

    This is not a preferred state of affairs for Americans.
Americans do not thirst for hegemony. Our most urgent hope after
any conflict -- most lately, Kuwait -- is to get out, go home
and disarm. And hope some other agency will keep the peace in
our absence. America would rather be Canada. But Canada can only
be Canada because it lives under the American umbrella. Who will
hold an umbrella over us? Boutros Boutros-Ghali?

    Would that he could. Alas, there is no safety for us, for
anyone, in collective security. If you doubt that, ask the
widows of Sarajevo. Ask the refugees scouring the skies for a
sign of the real peacekeepers, the U.S. Air Force.