Indeed, the politics of the decision may have been less troubling to Dole than the policy itself. “I think it’s a mistake” to send troops, he said. “I think it’s wrong.” Dole has always been clear about what he favored: arms and air support for the Bosnians, but no ground troops. He has been frustrated by the president’s inconsistency–three years of nothing, and now this ambitious, ambiguous exercise in peace-making, map-making and nation-creation. It is an operation whose success depends on three indisputable imponderables.
This is a tough one for Dole to swallow. Clinton hasn’t acted like a commander in chief, especially on this issue–and his press secretary, Mike McCurry, seemed to admit it last week. “President Clinton may have understood the power of the presidency intellectually in the beginning,” he told The New York Times. “But he feels it viscerally now.” If true, it’s about time. But a great many Americans have trouble believing it is true. “The public is intensely and overwhelmingly opposed to this,” said a Republican congressman, “and part of it is they don’t trust Bill Clinton to lead a military operation.” The mistrust may be misplaced: Clinton had a chance to duck this responsibility but didn’t. He could have allowed the Dayton talks to fail–there were discussions at the White House about whether to do just that during the negotiations’ final spasms. But, at a crucial moment, Clinton chose to involve himself (he called and cajoled Croatian President Tudjman). And, sources say, the president has been downright presidential in Bosnia planning meetings ever since. It may be that Clinton has come to understand that his re-election will depend on a course of political chiropractic: his backbone will have to be straightened. Still, he’s a rookie at war: can he be trusted?
Everybody says so, but who knows? “NATO is the most successful defensive alliance in history,” Dole said on the Senate floor. Right, but it’s never been tested in battle. Dole also said, “We are NATO, as far as I’m concerned.” That’s not quite true. NATO is also the British and the French–especially the French, who will have military responsibility in the most difficult Bosnian theater: Sarajevo. In fact, the very same French forces who have been part of the supine U.N. operation will now have to aggressively enforce a peace agreement that transfers crucial Serb neighborhoods in Sarajevo to the Bosnian government. This will be dangerous work. Will the intermittently steadfast French have the gumption to perform the mission? “There is concern about this at the very highest levels of our government,” says one former national-security official.
There already are extreme differences over what may be the crux of the Balkan operation: whether or not to arm and train the Bosnian army. Dole is adamant that this be done; the administration is less adamant; the NATO allies are opposed. Dole’s argument seems the most reasonable: we won’t be able to leave Bosnia until Bosnia is able to defend itself. It’s the only plausible “exit strategy.” But it does depend on the third of the indisputable imponderables.
It never used to be. And wishing won’t make it so. The American negotiators have created a Rube Goldberg “entity,” composed of a Serb thing and a Muslim-Croatian thing, and a fierce border between them. There is talk of elections and democracy and gradual easing of tensions and . . . there is also reality. Reality is that the two local bullies, the Serbs and the Croats, will pay lip service to the American contraption–but neither really believes there is such a thing as Bosnia, and both quietly await the day America goes home and Bosnia can be gobbled up. “Our job should be to make it indigestible,” says Richard Perle, an unpaid adviser to both the Bosnians and to Bob Dole. The only way to do that is to equip and train the Bosnian army. The faint of heart in Europe and the Pentagon will say: You can’t do that. It will mean we’re taking sides. It will make the military mission more dangerous. Yes and no. It will mean we’re taking sides, but the Serbs–the prime aggressors in the neighbor-hood–already know that: we’ve bombed them (and they’re not eager for it to happen again). The most plausible Western purpose here has always been to protect the Bosnian Muslims from annihilation and strive for a regional stability, however sullen. The rest–elections, a multiethnic state–are nice ideas, but not very likely.
The extraordinary American diplomacy of the past few months has put stability within reach. Bob Dole had to struggle past qualms, politics and predilections to acknowledge that achievement last week. He did, and went a step farther: his demand for an explicit commitment to arm the Bosnians will make this a stronger peace agreement. It was a rare and noble thing in an ugly town.
