Bosnia was the foreign policy issue over which candidate Clinton criticized Bush most sharply. Clinton had promised more aggressive action in that tormented place. Now he had the opportunity, and the meetings we held on Bosnia were full of belligerent rhetoric, But what aggressive action were we to take, and to what end? So far, none of the European countries that had sent in troops to help the war's victims favored fighting a ground conflict or using truce. They placed their faith not in might, but in diplomacy.
My own views on Bosnia had not shifted from the previous administration. In response to constant calls by the new team to "do something" to punish the Bosnian Serbs from the air for shelling Sarajevo, I laid out the same military options that I had presented to President Bush. Our choices ranged from limited air strikes around Sarajevo to heavy bombing of the Serbs throughout the theater. I emphasized that none of these actions was guaranteed to change Serb behavior. Only troops on the ground could do that. Heavy bombing might persuade them to give in, but would not compel them to quit. And, faced with limited air strikes, the Serbs would have little difficulty hiding tanks and artillery in the woods and fog of Bosnia or keeping them close to civilian populations. Furthermore, no matter what we did, it would be easy for the Serbs to respond by seizing UN humanitarian personnel as hostages.
My constant, unwelcome message at all the meetings on Bosnia was simply that we should nor commit military forces until we had a political objective. Aspin shared this view. The debate exploded at one session when Madeleine Albright, our ambassador to the UN, asked me in frustration, "What's the point of having this superb military that you're always talking about if we can't use it?" I thought I would have an aneurysm. American GIs were not toy soldiers to be moved around on some sort of global game board. I patiently explained that we had used our armed forces more than two dozen times in the preceding three years for war, peacekeeping, disaster relief, and humanitarian assistance But in every one of those cases we had had a clear goal and had matched our military commitment to the goal. As a result, we had been successful in every case. I told Ambassador Albright that the U.S. military would carry out any mission it was handed, but my advice would always be that the tough political goals had to be set first. Then we would accomplish the mission.
Tony Lake, who had served on the NSC during the Vietnam War, supported my Position. "You know, Madeleine' he said, "the kinds of questions Colin is asking about goals are exactly the ones the military never asked during Vietnam." Former Secretary of Defense Robert S. McNamara, in his confessional book "In Retrospect," admits to similar confusion over our ends in the Vietnam War, leading to the tragic results with which we are all too familiar.
I always felt more comfortable when the President was present at these discussions. Bill Clinton had the background to put history, politics and policy into perspective. Yet. he was not well served by the wandering deliberations he permitted. He had an academic streak himself and seemed to enjoy these marathon debates. As the talk dragged on, the participants eventually persuaded themselves that they had found a solution to the problem at hand that turned a sow's ear into a silk purse. But after a few days of exposure to critical light, the solution started looking suspiciously like a sow's ear again. In one case, early in 1993, the President was persuaded to propose lifting the weapons embargo against the Bosnian Muslims and to allow air strikes against the Serbs until the Muslims were better able to defend themselves. Secretary Christopher went off to sell this strategy to our allies, even though they had made it clear it was dead on arrival. He came back a week later and we spent another Saturday thrashing out another solution.
In 1994 and 1995 the UN and NATO, at US, prodding, did conduct limited strikes, and the Serbs employed the expected countermeasures. The harsh reality has been that the Serbs, Muslims, and Croatians are committed to fight to the death for what they believe to be their vital interests. They have matched their military actions to their political objectives, just as the North Vietnamese did years earlier. The West has wrung its hands over Bosnia, but has not been able to find its vital interests or matching commitment. No American President could defend to the American people the heavy sacrifice, of lives it would cost to resolve this baffling conflict. Nor could a President likely sustain the long term from involvement necessary to keep the protagonists from going at each other's throats all over again at the first opportunity.
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