Clinton and Bosnia
U.S. President Bill Clinton is poised to claim a major foreign But no treaty can guarantee a stable peace for very long. And policy victory. After years of apparent indecisiveness, Clinton's foreign policy is laden with pitfalls. The U.S. president
Washington pressed NATO to intervene against the Bosnian has silenced his critics for the moment, but he still has numerous
Serbs. If a peace treaty follows the air strikes, Clinton will take obstacles to overcome - objective and subjective, international credit for resolving a crisis left to him by his predecessor.
10 International Viewpoint n° 270 - October 1995
CLINTON's BOSNIA POLICY has little to do with Bosnia itself. Rather, the president sees the former Yugoslav republic as a small but significant piece of a complex international puzzle. In the nightmares of Washington's policy-makers, Bosnia represents the dark side of the New World Order. It is the monster which global capitalist restructuring has unleashed and which threatens to snuff out the hopes the Clinton administration has for the postCold War world economy.
Following the lead of capital itself, all of the major capitalist powers have become advocates of globalization and free trade. Clinton successfully campaigned for the support of the U.S. Congress for the North American Free Trade Agreement and the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade. Washington hopes that the elimination of government services, regulations, and impediments to capital mobility will help capitalism replenish itself after more than two decades of sluggish growth.
Before that hypothesis can even be tested, however, the Clinton administration must address severe international crises its policies have exacerbated. The threat of violent and reactionary nationalism arises almost inevitably out of capitalist globalism. Clinton's speeches acknowledge that militant jingoism in Europe is in part a result of the lightning pace of economic change and the destruction of living standards such change entails.
Yet neither the White House nor any major world leader is prepared to offer relief. As most of the former Communist Kit Adam Wainer is an activist in the United Federation of Teachers in New York City and is a member of the U.S. revolutionary socialist organization Solidarity.
and domestic. by Kit Adam Wainer
New York 25 September 1995 world descends rapidly into poverty the Clinton administration is far too preoccupied with reducing the federal budget to even consider serious aid packages. Thus, there is no Marshall Plan in sight. Besides, the very thrust of globalization is to allow capital to follow its natural course, going only where it can find profits. That means bypassing vast areas of central and eastern Europe and allowing the latter to rot, just as capital and the state have allowed major industrial centers of the United States to rust.
BOSNIA, therefore, awakens Clinton from the euphoria of a world economy without borders and reminds him of the dangers he is helping to create. Militant jingoism and nationalist warfare threaten to destabilize European restructuring and undermine all bourgeois plans. The former Yugoslavia is only one threat, although probably the most severe one. In Bosnia the president also sees Armenia and Azerbaijan, Macedonia and Greece, and the civil wars in Georgia. Beyond them he sees bigger dangers: Greco-Turkish and Russo- Turkish conflagrations. Last spring Clinton's Assistant Secretary of State for European and Canadian Affairs expressed his boss' fear of nationalist violence in the pages of Foreign Affairs.
If any of these malignancies spread — as they have already in parts of the Balkans and Transcaucusus — general European stability is again at risk. And for Germany and Russia, the two large nations on the flanks of central Europe, insecurity has historically been a major contributor to aggressive behavior.!
It is difficult to believe that the Assistant Secretary is genuinely worried about a fourth reich. His exaggeration is more likely crafted to alarm others in Washington of the dangers European nationalism poses to their interests.
RECENTLY the United States has intervened throughout the southern Balkans to prevent the spread of the Bosnian model. Since 1992, as the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund have encouraged the Macedonian government to restructure its economy and reduce inflation, Washington has bolstered its influence over the governments of Albania and Bulgaria. The U.S. Central Intelligence Agency has taken over Albania's largest air field and there is evidence of an increasing CIA presence in Macedonian politics.2 The White House's aim has been to prevent the spread of the Bosnian war into Macedonia. To that end Clinton's aides have pressed the Sali Berisha regime in Tirana to curb its support for Albanian separatism in Macedonia and attempted to reduce Greco-Macedonian tensions. The United States has also sent a battleship to the Aegean Sea to mute the dispute over oil reserves between Athens and Ankara. For these efforts the Clinton administration has won the praise of the otherwise scornful voice of Misha Glenny. 3
Over the same period, the United States became more involved in the Bosnian war itself. U.S. Vice President Al Gore helped broker the 1994 accord between the Bosnian government and the Croatian nationalist militias. Since then the U.S. military has established an intelligence-gathering center on the Adriatic island of Brac.
However, it is not the United States aim to be Europe's police officer. Quite the contrary, for Clinton the Balkans
RESS PHOIC
International Viewpoint n° 270 — October 1995 11 represent a major test of his central military goal: the fortification of multilateral defense forces. Elements of this larger policy include the gradual expansion of NATO and its transformation into a more activist and interventionist force than it ever was during the Cold War, the incorporation of former- Communist countries into NATO's Partnership for Peace program, and vague promises of full NATO membership to a select set among the former-east bloc. Strobe Talbott, Clinton's chief officer for Russian affairs articulates his administration's perspective on the need for a vast "collective security architecture:"
"[T]he lesson of the tragedy in the former Yugoslavia is not to retire NATO in disgrace but to develop its ability to counter precisely those forces that have exploded in the Balkans. And many of the nations in the region see NATO as having that potential. Representatives of several Central European states have said publicly that, for them, the Bosnian tragedy is an argument for joining NATO - and for adopting the standards of internal order and external behavior that will make them eligible".4
Efforts to integrate eastern Europeans into NATO's Partnership for Peace have proceeded. In August 1995, fourteen partnership members participated in joint military exercises in Louisiana, U.S.A.
"Collective defense remains an imperative need of European and transatlantic security, and central to American engagement in Europe," Talbott adds. "Just as an individual power keeps a standing army in peacetime, so the transatlantic community needs NATO."
TALBOTT, like Clinton, has a broad vision of transatlantic cooperation. He urges the expansion of the European Union, as a force for democracy and free trade. Furthermore, he credits the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe for helping to reduce tensions between the newly independent Baltic states and their ethnic Russian minorities.
Collective defense arrangements also have the advantage of shifting the responsibility for military security off of Washington's shoulders. The new thinking in Washington is that Europeans should supply most of the necessary fighting forces and pay for them as well.
U.S. policy has not been a constant since the end of the Cold War, however. Rather, it has emerged gradually, finding its most sophisticated form only under the administration. Zimmerman, Ambassador to Yugoslavia under former-President George Bush, for example, laments his government's failure to craft a clear policy as Yugoslavia was breaking up. From 1989 to 1991 Bush supported the preservation of the Yugoslav federation, resisting calls from Republican Senator Bob Dole to encourage Slovenian and Croatian independence. Bush, however, became disoriented when the Serbo-Croatian War brought Yugoslavia to an end between 1991 and 1992. At that point the president dismissed the former Yugoslavia as a "European problem" and Zimmerman did not encourage the use of NATO force to stop the shelling of Vukovar and
At the time, Zimmerman met with Croatian President Franjo Tudjman. The Zagreb leader told the U.S. Ambassador of his plans to join with Serbia to partition Bosnia. Zimmerman's recollection reveals the extent to which his administration had failed to develop a
"With some heat I asked, "Mr. President, how can you expect the West to help you get back the parts of Croatia taken by the Serbs when you yourself are advancing naked and unsupported claims on a neighboring republic? There was no answer. I added, "And how can you expect Milosevic to respect a deal with you to divide Bosnia when he's trying to annex part of Croatia?' Amazingly, Tudjman answered, 'Because I can trust Milosevic.' On the way down the stairs after this surreal discussion, I asked one of Tudjman's aides if I had gotten too
12 International Viewpoint n° 270 - October 1995 emotional in defending the integrity of Bosnia. 'Oh no,' he said, 'You were just
Zimmerman was stuck representing an administration which had not yet considered a sophisticated response to the social and political catastrophes which befell southeastern Europe after the Cold War. Consequently, he had no alternative but to pray that he had not offended Tudjman by hinting that hid government might have a policy.
Clinton came to office in 1993 and gradually the development of "collective security architecture" became a prime objective of U.S. foreign policy. His State Department has pressed for an expansion of NATO's role and the use of United Nations peacekeepers as a genuinely multi-lateral force. In State Department thinking, the development of reliable collective defense far outweighs any particular outcome in the former Yugoslavia. Consequently, U.S. policy in Bosnia has had the appearance of being directionless and Clinton has been accused of indecision.
This assessment, however, is false. Clinton's emissaries have been trying for years to incorporate the region's strongest powers into various peace plans backed by multi-national forces. From 1993 through 1994 that agenda led Washington to objectively aid the Serbian nationalist militias by refusing to lift the arms embargo on Bosnia, or take any stern measures against the Serbian forces. But as the tide of the war began to turn in 1994, Washington began to court the Zagreb regime and the United States became more closely allied with Tudjman. Perhaps the one constant feature of Clinton's evolving agenda has been the desire to partition Bosnia to appease its two stronger neighbors.
The NATO bombardment of Bosnian Serb positions in August 1995 signalled a partial success for U.S. policy. Coming on the heels of Croatia's stunning victory in the Krajina earlier that month and in the context of the Bosnian government's growing military might, NATO's air strikes may have the temporary effect of compelling the Serbian Republic of Bosnia and the Sarajevo regime to accept a partition plan neither really wants.
Yet a Bosnian peace will be fragile. And the forces that threaten it also raise severe doubts about the prospects for a viable collective security architecture. First, all signatories to a NATO-imposed peace are likely to use the truce as a respite to prepare for a new round of fighting. The Serbian militias will reorganize and thus, so will the Bosnian government. Belgrade and Zagreb will begin preparations to annex swathes of
Second, many of the policies designed to prevent the spread of fighting are also creating new problems. IMF and World Bank austerity measures have stabilized the Macedonian dinar and brought inflation down to 20%. However, these gains have come at the cost of a staggering decline in production and a surge in unemployment to between 20% and 30%.? These are precisely the conditions which have driven so many to reactionary nationalism in the first place!
Third, the goal of expanding NATO is fraught with difficulties and Clinton's plans have been contradictory. Incorporating former east-bloc nations as full NATO members is problematic because most have outdated military forces and, therefore, have little to contribute to collective security. Romania's desire to make itself more attractive to NATO has led it to invest 10% of its budget on its military, while its domestic economy is in shambles.8 Furthermore, expansion of NATO eastward is seen in Moscow as a threat.
Fourth, the problem of defining Russia's role in the collective defense matrix has already sparked contention among the western powers themselves. Germany, for example, has expressed sympathy for Moscow's protest that the Treaty on Conventional Armed Forces in Europe is forcing it to destroy its arsenal at too rapid and costly a pace. Bonn is far less interested than are Washington or London in urging Russian compliance. (9)
Finally, all of these weaknesses have created grave doubts about Clinton's global agenda in the minds of Congressional Republicans and even some Democrats. The often raucous debates between the President and Congress over how to handle Bosnia reflect more than mere partisan bickering. They are reflections of the contradictory position the United States finds itself in. It fears the spread of nationalism but will not ameliorate any of its economic roots. It wants to compel peace but with someone else's soldiers and at someone else's
Clinton's politics of collective security have not yet proven adequate to the great tasks his government must undertake. Even if the latest round of NATO bombing finally forces a peace treaty, it will be a questionable victory for the U.S. president. After all, NATO's aerial campaign comes only after the United Nations peacekeepers have consistently failed to broker any treaties or protect their safe havens or even their own soldiers. Furthermore, NATO's latest actions come primarily at the request of the United States and, therefore, illustrate little of the bilateralism Clinton preaches.
Whether successful or not, Clinton's agenda has little to do with the preservation of a multi-communal Bosnia, or even the physical survival of its inhabitants. Clinton has repeatedly demonstrated his willingness to placate genocidal governments in the hopes of containing the Bosnian conflict within its present borders. There is, therefore, nothing humanitarian about U.S. intervention and little reason for humanitarians to pray for its success. Notes 1. Holbrooke, Richard. "America, A European Power." Foreign Affairs. March/April 1995. Page 48 2. Pettifer, James. "Macedonia: Still the Apple of Discord." The World Today. March 1995. Pages 55-58. 3. Glenny, Misha. "Heading Off War in the Southern Balkans." Foreign Affairs. May/June 1995. Pages 98-108 4. Talbott, Strobe. "Why NATO Should Grow." The New York Review of Books. August 10, 1995. Page 28. 5. Ibid. Page 27. 6. Zimmerman, Warren. "The Last Ambassador: A Memoir of the Collapse of Yugoslavia." Foreign Affairs. March/April 1995. Page 15. 7. Pettifer. Op. Cit. Page 56. 8. Sunley, Jonathon. "Tasks for NATO II: Improve the Partnership for Peace." The World Today. April 1995. Page 71. 9. Sharp, Jane M.O. "Tasks for NATO I: Move East and Revise the CFE." The World Today. April 1995. Page 69.