Reluctant Warrior

By Bruce W. Nelan

Americans know what a war in the desert is like. Many remember a bitter conflict in the jungle. Now they must imagine one in the mountains:

On a balmy Adriatic evening, U.S. Navy attack planes leap from the deck of their carrier on tails of flame. As they climb through the gathering darkness, signals from the radar domes and computers of Air Force AWACS planes direct the jets to targets nestled in the forests and pastures of Bosnia and Herzegovina. Ahead of them, electronic-warfare jets swoop down to jam any Serbian antiaircraft radar that might still be working.

In a valley in eastern Bosnia, American Special Forces troops with blackened faces silently slip out of a tree line to point laser beams at Serbian artillery pieces, ammunition stores and fuel dumps. The F/A-18 Hornet and A-6 Intruder aircraft from the carriers roar in, lock on to the laser spots and send their bombs streaking toward the targets.

Air Force F-15s, British Tornadoes and French Mirages, launching from bases in Italy, join in with precision bombing of Serbian militiamen. The attacks go on night after night for months. Meanwhile allied agents supply the bedraggled Bosnian Muslim troops with new artillery and tanks, along with advisers to show how the weaponry works. Before long, the land battles among Bosnia's warring peoples become more evenly matched. At that point, perhaps, the Serbs might finally be willing to make peace with the Muslim-dominated Bosnian government.

That is the Bill Clinton plan for getting tough with the Serbs. At least it is the essence of the ideas Secretary of State Warren Christopher was shopping around Europe last week as the U.S. sought support for a way to push the Serbs toward the peace table and end a slaughter that has taken at least 134,000 lives. The U.S. proposal is to exempt Bosnia from the U.N. embargo on arms sales and use air strikes to protect Muslim enclaves from Serb attacks until their forces are strong enough to defend themselves.

There was a glimmer of hope at week's end that none of this would be necessary. At Sarajevo airport, the commanders of the rebel Serb forces and the Bosnian army signed a cease-fire agreement aimed at "a cessation of armed attacks" throughout the country on Sunday. They also agreed to demilitarize the encircled Muslim towns of Srebrenica and Zepa.

It was far from clear that the truce would hold. Many such accords have broken down over the past year, and the Serbs have not honored their April 18 agreement to halt the siege of Srebrenica. The Bosnian government is also mixing its signals. It formally asked the 9,000 U.N. troops in the country to leave because their governments are using their presence as an excuse for not lifting the arms embargo.

If Clinton does decide he must use military force, he will have to do a major selling job not just to the allies but to a divided Congress and a skeptical American people. In a TIME/CNN poll, only 36% of those surveyed said the U.S. should do more to stop the war in Bosnia, vs. 52% who said the U.S. has already done enough. For many Americans, the horror of Bosnia is a modern- day Holocaust that carries a moral obligation to intervene. Some Americans think the U.S. can do so at a low cost in lives, expecting the fast-acting, high-tech precision of the Gulf War. But many shudder and see the frustration of Vietnam, the years of domestic conflict and the long black slabs of the Vietnam Memorial engraved with 58,000 names.

For Clinton, history offers little guidance because there is no direct parallel for the action he is considering. If he uses military force in Bosnia, he cannot know whether he will succeed. If he bombs the Bosnian Serbs, their brethren across the Drina River in Serbia proper might heed the call of blood and join them for a war of annihilation against the Muslims. Or the Serbian militiamen who now bestride 70% of Bosnia may simply dig in and refuse either to negotiate or pull back.

The prospect of stumbling into a quagmire or of outright failure looms large for a President who was elected to cure domestic ills and who, as he begins his second 100 days in office, is already in political trouble. Clinton told a television interviewer last week that he was distressed when he heard the Bosnian Serbs had refused to go along with the peace plan negotiated by Cyrus Vance and Lord Owen. "I don't want to have to spend any more time on that than is absolutely necessary," Clinton said, "because what I got elected to do was to let America look at our own problems and our own challenges and deal with those things."

The Administration was unprepared at this early stage to deal with a foreign policy problem of such high risk and low payoff, one that even the old hands in the Bush Administration had shied away from. "The question raised by Clinton's performance," says a U.S. diplomat, "is not just his backbone but his basic competence." A measure of the Clinton team's frustration: at the last meeting of the President's advisers before his May 1 decision to send Christopher to Europe with a sample case of options, a frustrated participant asked, "Isn't there anyone outside the government with some bright ideas? Someone who could help us?"

The meetings in which top advisers developed Bosnia proposals to offer Clinton were often rudderless, according to a close associate of one participant. In a break with tradition at such meetings, the lower-echelon advisers tended to pipe up freely, sometimes carrying on debates among themselves, while senior officials like Christopher offered sensible observations but were mostly silent. Defense Secretary Les Aspin was just the opposite, caroming from subject to subject, the official said. Foreign policy experts Tony Lake and Sandy Berger, meanwhile, wanted to position Clinton as a forceful leader, to set him apart from Jimmy Carter.

This vacuum of authority has led to the emergence, ironically, of Joint Chiefs of Staff Chairman Colin Powell as a central figure in the Administration's security policy. Powell, who has clashed openly with Clinton on issues like gays in the military, found himself thrust into a key role in developing a Bosnia plan, even though he had serious reservations about intervention. In meetings with Congress last week, Aspin and Powell left no doubt about the situation. Powell dominated the session, going into such detail on the military options, an attendee said, that he may have undercut the Administration's position by stating the drawbacks so clearly. Other White House advisers have been even more forcefully opposed to military intervention. One official believes the President finds himself in a corner "because he has no strong views of his own," and warns that if Clinton gives in to the impulse to put Americans into Bosnia, "I think he'll lose his presidency."

Yet Clinton decided that after speaking so boldly on Bosnia in the past, inaction carried great political risk. "He wants to be a Big President," says a senior Administration official. "He wants to do Big Things." The Administration finally arrived at an approach designed to rally the public, but one that, if it failed, would not damage the presidency. "We didn't want to be stuck," says a senior official. Air strikes alone did not make sense, because they could not end the war. So the White House decided to try to exempt the Bosnian government from the embargo, and hoped that might push the sides toward a cease-fire and negotiations. Meanwhile the U.S. would use air attacks to keep the Serbs from grabbing all that remained of Bosnia while the Muslims were rearming. That would aim air power at a clear goal for a limited time and not just be an "act of lashing out."

The choices narrowed a lot more quickly than the White House had intended. When Christopher took off for Europe after a four-hour policy session on May 1, he was under instructions to feel out the Western allies and Russia about the combination of air strikes and rearming of the Muslims. Clinton knew the Europeans were against those measures, and he fully expected to amend his proposal after Christopher made his rounds of the allied capitals. In calls to several Presidents and Prime Ministers, Clinton sketched out what he had in mind, stressed it was not a final decision and asked for support.

The strategic game changed abruptly when the leader of the Bosnian Serbs, Radovan Karadzic, showed up on May 1 in Athens to sign the Vance-Owen plan to partition the country into 10 provinces. If the plan were to be carried out, the U.S. would have to live up to its promise to contribute as many as half of the 60,000 -- or more -- peacekeeping troops sent to Bosnia. It was a pledge that most of Washington thought would never be called in.

Karadzic's surprising acquiescence abruptly refocused Christopher's discussions. Air strikes were virtually off the agenda as the allies began talking about patching together a peacekeeping force of three or four divisions. All the major European countries, including Russia, said they were ready to police Vance-Owen with ground troops in Bosnia.

No sooner had Washington been sobered by this possibility than the Bosnian Serbs reversed course again. At a meeting of their self-designated parliament at Pale, in the mountains east of Sarajevo, they refused overwhelmingly to accept the Vance-Owen plan and Karadzic's signature on it. They ignored his pleas for support, as well as those from Serbian President Slobodan Milosevic, who had supported and financed them.

The Serbs, particularly their militia leaders, were adamant, arguing that the Vance-Owen plan meant giving up land they had bled for -- something they would never do. "Let them bomb us," smirked Radoslav Brdjanin, a faction leader from Banja Luka. "We will win the war." Serbian commanders had already begun moving their headquarters and supply centers out of towns and into caves and wooded areas. After 17 hours of debate at Pale, the assembly voted to submit the peace proposal to a referendum among Bosnian Serbs on May 15. The move was a ploy that allowed Karadzic to claim Vance-Owen had technically not been rejected.

Clinton, who had spent days getting used to the idea of securing peace in Bosnia with American troops, was dumbfounded by the rejection of the peace plan. "It showed," said a White House official, "that the chain of influence was less strong among the Serbs than just about everybody predicted." The President responded to the Serbs' go-to-hell decision by urging the "international community to unite and to act quickly and decisively." What the U.S. sought, he said, was "not to act alone, not to act rashly, not to do things which would draw the U.S. into a conflict not of its own making and not of its own ability to resolve."

Clinton and Lake discussed the next steps and decided to press the Europeans for tougher measures. White House spokesman George Stephanopoulos explained later that everything depended on what the Europeans might agree to do. "The first goal," he said, "is to reach a united front with our allies and make final decisions and then go to the American people and explain what our policy is."

When Christopher returned to the White House on Saturday, however, he was nearly back where he had started a week earlier. Though the allies listened sympathetically, they were not convinced that either lifting the arms embargo or launching air strikes would hasten a settlement. They professed concern about a wider war and revenge attacks on their thousands of troops on peacekeeping duty in the former Yugoslavia. After Christopher reported to the President on Saturday morning, Stephanopoulos told reporters there would be more talks with the Europeans. "This is a continuing process," he said.

The stakes for the President, meanwhile, have escalated. By sending Christopher abroad and calling for prompt action after the Bosnian-Serb rejection, Clinton generated momentum toward a confrontation. It would be awkward for him to back down. "Once you say you're going to do something," explained a congressional leader who was briefed by Aspin last week, "you have to do it. There is no turning back without a big cost." Even so, Clinton is not planning to order any military moves unilaterally or suddenly. He intends to ask Congress for a vote of confidence and the U.N. Security Council for a resolution.

The council could present an obstacle because the Russians, who hold veto power, insist on taking the Bosnian Serbs' May 15 referendum seriously. Russian Foreign Minister Andrei Kozyrev said he hoped "the population will be wiser than its legislative branch." Moscow he said, was not excluding "any option, including tough measures" if the Serbs remain defiant, but Washington wonders if Russia would approve air strikes against fellow Slavs.

Russians and other Europeans see another good reason for delay: Milosevic's reaction to the Bosnian Serbs' refusal to follow his instructions. After the vote in Pale, Milosevic stalked out, flew back to Belgrade and announced that he was cutting off all Serbia's assistance to them except for food and medicine. But many Western military experts contend that Milosevic cannot really seal the Serbian border and that Bosnian Serbs have stockpiled at least two years' worth of war materiel and food.

Beyond the statecraft is Clinton's biggest assignment: persuading the American people that their children and their billions should be spent on Bosnia. (Maintaining a fully deployed armored division of 25,000 at peak readiness in Bosnia for one year could cost $5 billion.) It is a long reach to argue that vital U.S. interests are involved, beyond a preference for peace and stability in all parts of the world. With the rationalizations peeled off, the West's concern is prompted by the moral imperative and is essentially humanitarian. That is why France and Britain sent troops to escort aid shipments and do not feel any urge to do much more.

One of the more sour speculations about White House motives was offered last week by Ross Perot in an interview with U.S. News & World Report. The Texan suggested that Clinton was out to "get a little war going" to "distract the American people" from economic hard times and broken campaign promises. An indignant Stephanopoulos responded that Perot's assertions were "outrageous" and "ill-considered and intemperate."

Congress is divided over the issue in some surprising ways, with veteran hawks and doves swapping roles. The Republican leader in the Senate, Bob Dole, is calling for military action, but former Vietnam naval aviator -- and POW -- Republican John McCain is a leader of the opposition to bombing. Many members of Congress are calling for clear explanations from Clinton. Democrat Sam Nunn, chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee and one of Capitol Hill's leading military experts, says, "There ought to be a clear exit point. We ought to know how we're going to get out."

Leaders in both houses agree, nevertheless, that after hot debate, a majority will support the President on what he asks for. "You can't really beat a President on a national-security issue," says Lee Hamilton, chairman of the House Foreign Affairs Committee. "I'd expect him to get what he wants when the time comes."

At the Pentagon, preparations have been at full speed for months. Planners are ready for the order to go, starting with a quick strike on Serbian artillery positions -- quick because surprise is vital to catch them in place. The targets have already been mapped and reported to operations officers by U.S. Special Forces teams moving stealthily around Bosnia. Events may be pushing the decision makers. "Things are going so fast," says Brent Scowcroft, who was George Bush's National Security Adviser, "and nobody knows quite where we are headed."

When it is time for the go or no-go decision, however, Clinton will have to make it himself. He has only a few choices. He can go ahead with air strikes, stall for more time or risk a loss of credibility by backing away. He can also be certain that if Bosnia is an annoying distraction today, it will become a monumental headache that crowds out his domestic programs if he sends American forces into action.

With reporting by Michael Duffy, J.F.O. McAllister and Bruce van Voorst/Washington, with other bureaus