The stakes in the Balkans are no longer as minor as they once seemed the squabbles of warring tribal nationalisms in a land seized with historic furies. Those Serbian renegades battering the city of Gorazde have laid siege to nothing less than the "new world order" of American primacy proclaimed in the aftermath of the cold war and the Persian Gulf. Even so, Bill Clinton is now signaling a new resolve: the setting up of five more "safe havens" in Bosnia, the drawing yet again of another line in the sand for the Serbs, a greater willingness to resort to wider airstrikes. Yet, until now, he blustered but hoped to be spared.
There is in the land a growing conviction that we have become accomplices to the Balkan slaughter. The Clinton administration hid behind the Europeans and draped its policy with the cover of multilateralism. But multilateralism proved to be an alibi for abdication. Deep down most Americans understood that in its active incarnation, during George Bush's triumphant expedition into the Persian Gulf, multilateralism was but a flag of convenience for American power. They knew that were America to lead in the Balkans, the Europeans were bound to follow.
Nor have they been taken in by the pretext that our passivity is something owed Russian power, a deference to those deep currents of Pan-Slavic solidarity supposedly at work in Russia. That country is ruined, her claims to preeminence a mere cover for a great failure. The Serbs in Bosnia and Belgrade must grasp this as well. They have shown Russian entreaties the same contempt they have displayed toward the Western powers.
In a different world, during an earlier Balkan war in 1877, German Chancellor Otto von Bismarck declared the Balkans not "worth the healthy bones of a Pomeranian musketeer." Clinton has no such luxury: Benign neglect of Bosnia will not do at this late hour. True enough, Bosnia could be sacrificed without the risk of a general war in Europe. But the stakes in the Balkans, though intangible and admittedly smaller than the material interests in the Persian Gulf and the Arabian peninsula, are compelling nonetheless. Were the cruel tribal fantasy of the Serbians to go unchecked, the peace of Europe and the broader example of a plural society would sustain a devastating blow. In their delirium, the Serbs are hacking away at darkness at the outer edge of "the West," keeping Islam and Islamic fundamentalism at bay. That great pretense ought to be seen for the fraud that it is and ought to be thwarted. The specter of an Islamic state in Bosnia is a scarecrow: The Sarajevans and other Bosnians are true bearers of a universal culture, children of the secular enlightenment of the West. The Rubicon has been crossed in the Balkans. Bill Clinton has done this without dispatching ground troops, and he has done it in broad daylight, in full view of other would-be predators waiting to see what becomes of the standoff between order's cavalry and the Serbian brigands.
