Do Something . . . Anything

By Bruce W. Nelan

Tears filled the eyes of the men and women who stood in the wintry spring wind at last week's dedication of the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum in Washington, remembering the mass murder of a half-century ago. Nobel Laureate Elie Wiesel, a survivor of the German death camps, turned from the audience to address Bill Clinton, who was sitting behind him. "Mr. President," he said, "I have been in the former Yugoslavia last fall. I cannot sleep since what I have seen. We must do something to stop the bloodshed." Wiesel almost pleaded: "Something, anything, must be done."

Standing brazenly among the honored guests, personifying the very tragedy ^ Wiesel condemned, was Croatian President Franjo Tudjman. His Croat brethren had just begun a vicious onslaught of "ethnic cleansing" in western Bosnia, burning villages and villagers in one of the cruelest campaigns of the war. "Whole valleys of people have been massacred here," a British peacekeeper on the scene reported. "It's horrendous."

After a sobering tour of Bosnia's battlefields, Senator Joe Biden came back to Washington last month and declared, "The U.S. must lead the West in a decisive response to Serbian aggression, beginning with air attacks on Serbian artillery." Senators Bob Dole and George Mitchell agreed, as did 47 Congressmen and 12 State Department officials who took the unusual step of petitioning Secretary of State Warren Christopher to back the use of military force against the Serbs. Ambassador to the U.N. Madeleine Albright sent a memorandum directly to the President in which she advocated air strikes.

The war in Bosnia is closing in on Bill Clinton. A growing number of Americans feel the same moral imperative to act that Wiesel expressed. Would that it were so simple. All week Clinton wrestled with the conflicting advice offered by his foreign-policy makers, themselves divided between the go-slow counsel of Christopher and Joint Chiefs Chairman Colin Powell and the more robust preferences of Defense Secretary Les Aspin and National Security Adviser Anthony Lake. When the President was asked at his news conference on Friday how he evaluated the options, his body language spoke volumes. He rolled his eyes, taking a deep breath and a long pause before saying he was "reluctant" to talk about them in public. But yes, he conceded, tougher steps were being considered.

Clinton pledged to announce his choices within a few days. While he wants above all to be a domestic President, he is eager to appear resolute and make a difference in Bosnia if he can. He does not want to put undue pressure on Boris Yeltsin to cooperate with the West or to endanger French and British troops on peacekeeping duty. Even so, he is casting about for more forceful actions that might end the war, or produce a cease-fire, or guarantee sanctuary somewhere for Bosnian Muslims.

All the new options, Clinton acknowledged, "have pluses and minuses," and "all have supporters and opponents in Congress." That is a large part of the President's problem. He is getting plenty of advice, but it is not consistent. He is being pulled and tugged in several directions at once in a * field -- foreign affairs -- for which he does not have his own fingertip instinctiveness. He is being asked to lead where his allies in Europe are reluctant to follow.

Clinton feels the strength of the moral argument for action echoing around Washington but is unwilling to start something without knowing how he will end it. He would like to halt the Serbian aggressors in their tracks, but he wants to take steps that provide clear, achievable objectives and that will encourage rather than cut off a political process leading eventually to a negotiated solution to the tribal wars. If he chooses to bomb the Serbs, he wants to be convinced that bombs will in due course push them into some mutually acceptable agreement.

Above all, Clinton does not want to make an open-ended commitment of U.S. blood and treasure. Most of the Congress is not behind intervention, partly because no one is sure what might work. "Given the resources you're willing to devote to the problem," says Lee Hamilton, chairman of the House Foreign Affairs Committee, "I think you have to lower your expectations about what you can accomplish." Members of Congress returned to Washington after the Easter recess with no feeling that their constituents were clamoring for the use of armed force. National opinion polls show that only about a quarter to a third of Americans favor military intervention.

After the Holocaust ceremony, the President said he accepted Wiesel's plea as a challenge to the West "to take further initiatives in Bosnia." In answer to questions at his press conference, he said he was convinced "the U.S. should lead" in trying to solve "clearly the most difficult foreign- policy problem we face." But he was not prepared to act unilaterally if the NATO allies, Russia and the U.N. Security Council did not support his proposals. "I do not think we should act alone," he said, "nor do I think we will have to."

Will anything work? The first Administration initiative -- a package of modest diplomatic measures announced on Feb. 10 -- is universally seen as a bust. Not only have negotiations on Bosnia failed but Serbian aggression has become even more brutal and more successful.

Aside from a handful of diplomatic gestures, such as opening an embassy in Sarajevo, the two new initiatives being urged on Clinton most strongly by official and unofficial advisers are to lift the embargo on arms shipments to Bosnia and to use air power against Serbian guns and supply routes. British diplomats say one of the others is a proposal from London for a military land, sea and air blockade that would completely seal off Serbia from contact with the rest of the world. Still another is the possibility of establishing and protecting "safe havens" for Muslims in the remnants of Bosnia.

Bombing Serbian gun positions or supply lines delivers a satisfying sense of muscularity, but some Pentagon officials argue that it would have little impact on ending the war. The problems are many: collateral damage, danger to U.S. pilots, highly mobile targets, retaliation against U.N. forces.

Lifting the arms embargo on Bosnia is an attractive option because it has a low risk of drawing the U.S. into a ground war, turning the responsibility for self-preservation over to the Bosnian Muslims. Unless Washington delivers the weapons, an end to the embargo could bring in suppliers, such as Iran, that the U.S. would not welcome in the Balkans, and would probably bring Russian weapons surging into Serbia as well.

One way or another, though, Clinton says, he will do more. In deciding how to step up the pressure, he must contend with three major problems. First, he will have to sell his plan to Britain, France and Canada, all of which oppose military intervention because they have troops on the ground who could be endangered, and to Russia, which has rediscovered its nationalistic ties of brotherhood with the Orthodox, Slavic Serbs. Second, all the peacekeepers convoying humanitarian aid in the former Yugoslavia will have to be withdrawn, beefed up or safe-guarded against retaliation. And third, he must define the goal he intends to achieve.

The truth is that Washington has never arrived at a firm concept of what kind of Yugoslavia it wants to see emerge from the wreckage of war. In the past, the Administration has been willing to agree to anything the Serbs, Muslims and Croats might all be pushed into accepting. That now looks like a hopeless effort, and Clinton will have to do better before he announces -- and wins support for -- the next chapter in his Bosnian policy. "The strong options depend on only one person," said a State Department official. The President does not need any more briefings or position papers. It is now a matter of his political will.

With reporting by J.F.O. McAllister and Jay Peterzell/Washington, with other bureaus