Title: WHAT THE WEST MUST DO IN BOSNIA
Source: The Wall Street Journal
Date: Thursday Sep 2, 1993 Sec: A p: 12
Length: Long (2946 words)
Abstract: The text of an open letter presented to President Clinton
on Sep 1, 1993 is printed. The letter urges US and UN
action in Bosnia.
The following is the text of an open letter presented to President
Clinton yesterday:
In Bosnia, the situation goes from bad to worse. The people there are
in despair about their future. They are victims of brutal aggression. But
they are also the victims of the failure of the democracies to act.
Instead of opposing the acquisition of territory by force, the United
Nations and the democracies have dispatched humanitarian assistance to
Bosnia. But welcome as it is, this will not stop the massacres or halt the
ethnic cleansing. Humanitarian aid will not protect the besieged children
of Bosnia from being herded into Muslim ghettos or orphaned or maimed or
slaughtered.
These could have been our children.
If we do not act, immediately and decisively, history will record that
in the last decade of this century the democracies failed to heed its most
unforgiving lesson: that unopposed aggression will be enlarged and
repeated, that a failure of will by the democracies will strengthen and
encourage those who gain territory and rule by force.
---
1. Humanitarian Aid and Future Ethnic Cleansing.
In Bosnia the democracies have used the need to deliver humanitarian
aid both to excuse their own inaction and to keep the recognized
multiethnic state of Bosnia outgunned and therefore itself unable to
protect its civilian centers from slaughter by a dictator bent on making a
Greater Serbia. Western governments now vying publicly to save several
hundred maimed Bosnian children will not escape the responsibility they
assumed for the slaughter of hundreds of thousands of other children and
their parents, when they refused to let an independent Bosnia defend
itself.
Recently, the U.N. and EC mediators, with U.S. support, threatened to
withdraw humanitarian aid in order to coerce the Bosnian government into
accepting violent changes in its borders and a partition into ethnically
pure states, with Bosnia a set of widely dispersed, unarmed Muslim
ghettos. But the U.N., the EC and the U.S. have continually condemned such
changes and that partition as totally unacceptable. Such a partition,
they've said, is unstable: It will mean still more killing, broken
families, and the expulsion of millions at a time when Europe is closing
its doors to refugees. If the fall of Sarajevo is a preface to a partition
creating unarmed Muslim ghettos, it will be a preface also to further
disasters, ethnic cleansing and instability -- in Sarajevo itself and
other Bosnian 'safe havens' protected only by the U.N., in the rest of the
Balkans, and beyond.
Bosnia, unlike Somalia, was no civil war. Like Kuwait, it was a case of
clear-cut aggression against a member of the U.N. -- a member whose
independence the U.S., Europe and the international community have
recognized for at least 16 months.
When the Baath dictatorship seized all of Kuwait in August 1990, it
tried to erase Kuwaiti identity using rape, torture, the seizure of
Kuwaiti passports and the forging of a new identity of Kuwait as a
province of Iraq. A coalition of several NATO powers and some non-NATO
countries joined the U.S. in demanding and then, in January 1991,
compelling Iraq's withdrawal by using first air power throughout Iraq and
then ground forces in Kuwait and southern Iraq. The coalition was
exercising the right of individual and collective self-defense of each of
its members and of Kuwait. It aimed at more than mitigating Kuwait's
suffering. The U.N. endorsed the coalition's aim to get Iraq out of
Kuwait, and the aims beyond Kuwait to reduce Iraq's power to terrorize its
neighbors. But the U.N. exercised no authority over the coalition.
In the same way, the U.S. should now lead a coalition of Western
governments that exercises the right of each to individual and collective
self-defense. The U.N. Charter does not confer that right; it acknowledges
it to be 'inherent.' Nor is that right conditioned on the
secretary-general's approval.
The West's air-to-air fighters overflying Bosnia needed no further
preparations to shoot down the command helicopters and helicopter gunships
that the Serbs, in yet another blatant violation of their promises, used
to drive the Bosnian army from their defenses of Sarajevo on Mounts Igman
and Bjelasnica. The West could have done this without elaborate plans to
coordinate air strikes against ground targets, without endangering U.N.
forces on the ground, and without the permission of the secretary-general,
Europe's Council of Ministers, the 16 NATO ambassadors and a variety of
U.N. commanders -- procedures that appear designed to make the fall of
Sarajevo a fait accompli. A disaster not only for the Bosnians, but for
the relevance of the U.N., Europe, NATO -- and the U.S.
Western governments should act now substantially to reduce Serbia's
immediate and future power of aggression and ultimately to put the
Bosnians in a position where they won't have to rely indefinitely on the
protection of the international community.
With this limited political aim, Western air power would play a much
larger role, and U.S. and other Western ground forces a much smaller and
more transient role, than in U.N.-directed options that look toward an
indefinite future of protecting on the ground helpless Muslim ghettos and
besieged corridors of supply to them. The ghettos and the corridors to
them would be subject to continuing artillery, armor and sniper attacks so
long as the source of these attacks in Serbia is left intact.
Air power directed against the present and future potential sources of
such attack can be used selectively and discriminately. The no-fly zone
could be enforced and defenses suppressed over Serbia as well as Bosnia.
And a very high percentage of the military aircraft on the large airfields
in Serbia could be destroyed, with minimal danger to Serbian civilians or
to UNPROFOR (U.N. Protective Force) troops.
The U.N. alternatives mean a future of ethnic cleansing and endless
military protection by the international community.
---
2. Bosnia Is Not History.
What the West says and does now in Bosnia will affect the future in
Bosnia itself; in the rest of the Balkans; and in other newly independent
countries that, having gained their freedom when a communist dictatorship
fell apart, now find that freedom threatened by former rulers who would,
like Milosevic, use the pretext of protecting minorities to retake
strategic facilities and territory that their pan-national military has
never been reconciled to giving up.
Even now, after 16 months of a perverse Western policy piously
condemning the pan-Serbian aggressors while doing nothing to stop the
massacres, the West can use military force substantially and
discriminately to reduce the power of the poorly motivated and
ill-disciplined Serbian Army in Bosnia and its source of support in Serbia
itself. And the West can help arm the larger, highly motivated Bosnian
Army that still maintains a precarious control of the towns containing
most of Bosnia's industry, including its weapons industry. In this way the
West can improve the odds for the survival of a free multiethnic Bosnia.
On the other hand, if Western mediators and UNPROFOR confine unarmed
Bosnian Muslims to small, purified remnants of Bosnia, the public will
watch with horror as these ghettos disappear before its eyes on television
while Serbs violate this ceasefire -- as they have all the others for 23
months in Croatia and Bosnia. A spectacular display, at the same time, of
the unshakably naive faith in Serbian promises that underlies Western
cynicism. Realpolitik revealed as fantasy in real time.
Even if, like Kuwait in August 1990, all Bosnia (and not just Sarajevo)
were seized, it would be essential for the democracies to make clear, as
they did in the case of Kuwait, that violent border changes and ethnic
cleansing will not stand, whether by Serbia in Croatia and Bosnia, or by
Croatia in Bosnia.
If the West does not make that clear, it will have nothing persuasive
to say to the Croats and the Serbs who have already renewed the conflict
Serbia started two years ago when it used the Yugoslavian Army to seize
territory in Croatia and then turned to invading Bosnia. Nor will the West
be able to stop Serbian ethnic cleansing of Albanians in Kosovo and of
Hungarians in Vojvodina. In Macedonia (unrecognized by either the U.S. or
Europe because the Greeks object), where the U.S. and Sweden have deployed
ground forces with no clear purpose, Western policy seems even murkier
than for the other former Yugoslavian republics. There the West will have
nothing coherent to say to resolve potential conflicts among Greeks,
Serbs, Albanians, Bulgarians, Turks, and frustrated Macedonian
nationalists who may topple the moderate Grigorov. Finally, the West will
have nothing to say to discourage the now serious threat presented by
pan-nationalists in the former Soviet Union and elsewhere.
---
3. The Role of Force and of Empty Threats.
Empty threats have a perverse effect.
Against a dictator who will yield only to superior force the West can
threaten most ferociously in the hope that threats alone will be enough to
stop aggression -- that its threats and endless preparations will 'send a
message.' But if the West doesn't use force at all or if it uses it
symbolically rather than substantially to reduce Milosevic's power, or if
it uses force to coerce Bosnian capitulation, 'the message' received will
only bring American and Western resolve into contempt.
---
Margaret Thatcher
Former Prime Minister of the U.K.
George Shultz, Former Secretary of State
Prince Sadruddin Aga Khan
Former U.N. High Commissioner for Refugees
Frank Carlucci, Former Secretary of Defense
Francois Heisbourg
Former Senior Adviser to President Mitterrand
Jeane J. Kirkpatrick
Former U.S. Ambassador to the U.N.
Zbigniew Brzezinski
Former National Security Adviser to the President
William Clark
Former National Security Adviser to the President
Paul H. Nitze, Former Chief Adviser on Arms Control
Max Kampelman
Former Head of the U.S. Negotiating Team on Nuclear and Space Talks with
the Soviet Union
Walther Leisler Kiep
Chairman, Atlantik Bruecke (Bonn)
Natan Scharansky
Former Soviet prisoner of conscience
George Soros
Creator of the Open Society Fund, supporting opposition in Belgrade
Murat Karayallin, Mayor of Ankara
Elie Wiesel, Nobel Laureate
Czeslaw Milosz, Nobel Laureate
Joseph Brodsky, Nobel Laureate
Susan Sontag, Writer
Sir Karl Popper, Philosopher
Albert Wohlstetter
Winner, Presidential Medal of Freedom
---
Morton I. Abramowitz
Pres., Carnegie Endowment for International Peace
Fouad Ajami
Johns Hopkins University
Mark Almond
Fellow of Oriel College, Oxford University
Muhyi Al-Khateeb
Member of Iraqi National Congress (London)
Abdulrahman Al-Rashed
Editor in Chief, Al Majalla (London)
Ivo Banac
Professor of Modern History, Yale University
Daniel Bell, Professor Emeritus, Harvard University
Ishik K. Camoglu
Political Commentator, Turkish Times
David S. Clark
Professor, University of Tulsa Law School
John Cogan, Senior Fellow, Hoover Institution
Devon Cross, Pres., Donner Canadian Foundation
Ihsan Dogramac
Chairman of the Board of Trustees, Bilkent University (Ankara)
Robert H. Donaldson, President, University of Tulsa
Alfred Dregger
Hon. Chairman of the CDU/CSU, German Bundestag
Osama El Baz
Senior Political Adviser to the President of Egypt
Sukru Elekdag
Former Turkish Ambassador to Washington
Charles W. Fairbanks Jr.
School of Advanced International Studies, Johns Hopkins University
Alan Fogelquist, Historian of the Modern Balkans
Rend Rahim Francke, Director, Iraq Foundation
Gerald Frost
Director, Centre for Policy Studies (London)
Frank J. Gaffney Jr.
Former Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense, International Security
Policy
Henry Louis Gates Jr.
W.E.B. DuBois Professor of African American Studies, Harvard University
Patrick Glynn
Resident Scholar, American Enterprise Institute
Zuhair Hamadi
Director, Organization for Human Rights in Iraq
Marshal Freeman Harris
Former head of Bosnia desk at the State Dept.
Pierre Hassner
Director, Centre d'Etudes et de Recherches Internationales (Paris)
Donald Hicks
Former Undersecretary of Defense for Research and Engineering, Department
of Defense
Fred S. Hoffman
Former Director of Strategic and Theater Forces, Department of Defense
Efraim Inbar
Director, Besa Center for Strategic Studies at Bar-Ilan University
(Israel)
Werner Kaltefleiter
Professor Political Science, Christian-Albrechts University, Kiel
(Germany)
David Kay
Former Head of the IAEA Inspection Team in Iraq
Zalmay Khalilzad
Former Director of Policy Planning, Defense Dept.
Altemur Kilic
Former Turkish Deputy Ambassador to the U. N.
Teddy Kollek, Mayor of Jerusalem
Mirko Kovac, Serbian novelist
Salko Krijestorac
Correspondent for Ljiljan, 'Free Bosnia' magazine
Laith Kubba, Member, Iraqi Natl. Congress (London)
Beate Lindemann
Executive Vice Chairman, Atlantik-Bruecke (Bonn)
Gerhard Lowenthal, Journalist, ZDF-TV, Germany
J.J. Martin
Senior Counselor, Presidential Commission on Integrated Long-Term
Strategy
Stjepan G. Mestrovic
Professor of Sociology, Texas A&M University
Joshua Muravchik
Resident Scholar, American Enterprise Institute
Uwe Nerlich
Director of Research, Stiftung Wissenschaft und Politik (Germany)
Emma Nicholson, M.P.
Chairman of Iraqi Humanitarian Relief Committee
John O'Sullivan
Editor, National Review
Martin Peretz
Editor-in-Chief and Chairman, The New Republic
Richard N. Perle
Former Assistant Secretary of Defense for International Security Policy
Boris Petrovchich
<======= ****************
Chairman, American Committee to Support Democratic Croatia
Norman Podhoretz, Editor, Commentary
Srdja Popovic
Founder of Vrema, opposition weekly in Belgrade
Reha Poroy
Vice Chairman, the Social and Political Studies Foundation, Ankara
Igor Primorac
Professor, Hebrew University, Jerusalem
Nasser Rabbat
Assistant Professor, M.I.T.
Paul A. Rahe, University of Tulsa Law School
Ghassan N. Rassan
Scientist, American Geophysical Union
Andras Riedlmayer, Harvard University
Peter W. Rodman
Senior Editor, National Review
Eugene V. Rostow
Former Director, U.S. Arms Control and Disarmament Agency
Nicholas Rostow
Former Special Assistant to the President for National Security Affairs
Henry S. Rowen
Former Assistant Secretary of Defense for International Security Affairs
Stefan Schwarz, Member, German Bundestag
Christian Schwarz-Schilling
Member of German Bundestag
Namik K. Senturk, Former Govenor of Istanbul
Ismail Seysal, Former Ambassador of Turkey
Albert Shanker
President, American Federation of Teachers
Henry Siegman
Executive Director, American Jewish Congress
Robert H. Silk
Coalition for Intervention Against Genocide
Michael H. Spreng
Chief Editor, Bild am Sonntag (Hamburg)
Hans Sterken
Chairman of Foreign Affairs Committee, German Bundestag
Norman Stone
Professor of Modern History, Oxford University
Andrew Sullivan, Editor, The New Republic
Seyfi Tashan
Director of Foreign Policy Institute, Hacettepe University (Ankara)
Bassam Tibi
Professor of International Relations, University of Gottingen
Abdurrachman Wachid
Head of Nahdutal Ulama, Indonesia
Helga Walter
National Strategy Information Center
Max M. Warburg
Partner, M.M. Warburg & Co. (Hamburg)
Leon Wieseltier, Literary Editor, The New Republic
Roberta Wohlstetter
Winner, Presidential Medal of Freedom
Otto Wolff von Amerongen
Chairman, German East-West Trade Committee (Cologne)
Paul Wolfowitz
Former Undersecretary of Defense for Policy
Aydin Yalcin, Editor, New Forum (Ankara)
Memduh Yasa
Chairman, the Political and Social Studies Foundation (Istanbul)
Mesut Yilmaz, Leader, Motherland Party (Turkey)
Rex J. Zedalis
University of Tulsa Law School
My Notes:
1. Several days later the WSJ added a note that Stevan Dedijer
signed also. Unlike his Serbian ultranationalist brother Vladimir,
Stevan Dedijer, although colorful personality, has relentlessly
criticised Serbia's fashist ideology, aggression and genocide.
As a university professor on geo-strategy in Sweden he immediately
offered his services to Tudjman and his primitive HDZ Mafia (as
several other competent people did) to form a Croatia's Strategy
Institute; of couse mediocre Tudjman, preoccupied by collaboration
with chetnick animals and by building massive corrupt and criminal
apparatus in Croatia ignored the offer - if he even could comprehend
its importance.
2. Prof. Wohlstetter (always humbly in background), drafted the above
appeal.
Mrs. Thatcher modified it by adding a very strong condemnation of
Tudjman and his government racist policy toward Bosnia. I have been
able, through Prof. Wohlstetter, to minimize these additions believing
(falsely) that it is still possible to reverse Tudjman's betrayal of
Croatia
and Bosnia and trying to focus the blame and fraudulent appeasement
of the West on the genocide source - Serbia. Interestingly, and in
line
with his pattern of behavior, Prof. Ivan Supek, president of Croatian
Academy of Art and Science, refused to sign the above appeal "for
being too critical to Croatia". As a sign of "gratitude" he was nearly
murdered by Herzegovinian HDZ Mafiosi during his visit to
"Herzeg-Bosnia"
shortly after.
3. At that time I worked closely with Prof. Stjepan Mestrovic so he was
also asked to cosign the above open letter to Bill Clinton
