Sarajevo Burns. Will We Learn?

By Charles Krauthammer

By May 13, the fighting in Sarajevo had become intolerable. Accordingly, U.N. Secretary-General Boutros Boutros-Ghali announced that the bulk of U.N. forces in Sarajevo were pulling out. The U.N., he said, simply cannot operate in a place where there is no political will for peace. "Peacekeeping must be based on the agreement of all parties."

But when all the parties agree, one already has peace. It is when the parties don't agree and are killing each other that peacekeeping is needed. But at that point the U.N. gets out.

Sarajevo burns and the world watches. The first serious shooting war to erupt in the heart of Europe in 40 years elicits protests and admonitions, Security Council resolutions and embargoes, but nothing that stops the carnage. In Croatia, where a U.N. cease-fire is supposed to have ended the fighting, the historic city of Dubrovnik has just taken its most fearful artillery pounding in six months. Bosnia is terrorized. And the U.N. blue helmets head for safe ground.

This is not cowardice. This is realism. The U.N. troops refuse to immolate themselves doing a job that they inherently cannot do. It is the kind of realism that America could use to pierce some of the fantasies that have arisen in U.S. thinking about the post-Soviet world. The chief fantasy is that the U.S., indeed the world, can now rely on "collective security" and its agency, the U.N., for its safety and security.

Yugoslavia is exactly the kind of conflict that collective security was supposed to address: small, isolated, manageable, involving none of the great powers. Yet as Lord Carrington, mediator for another would-be agency of collective security (the European Community), admitted, "It is very difficult to see what can be done while they go on fighting."

Precisely. U.N., E.C. and all the other entries in the dictionary of collective security (c.s.c.e., oas, etc., etc.) are powerless in the face of fighting. They keep the peace only in places where hostilities have already ended, places like the Golan Heights and Cyprus, where neither party is intent, at least today, on going to war. Yet we know from history that as soon as one or the other party changes its mind, all bets are off. In May 1967, Egypt, preparing war against Israel, ordered the U.N. to get its peacekeeping troops out of Sinai. Within days they were gone. Within three weeks the war was on.

If the U.N. can, at best, only keep peace, who is to make peace? Who is to stop the fighting, halt the aggression? The answer is simple: the world's one great power -- the United States -- joined by whatever friends choose to help.

Consider the gulf war, by now totally misunderstood. New York Times columnist Leslie Gelb writes, "If the Persian Gulf war promised a new era of collective responsibility, Yugoslavia heralds its early demise." But the gulf war promised no new era of collective responsibility. The gulf war was no more collective than the Korean War, also fought under the U.N. flag. It was not the U.N. that reversed Saddam's conquest of Kuwait. It was the U.S. Army, based in Saudi Arabia, helped by Britain and France. Everything else was window dressing.

The gulf war helped create the illusion that in the post-Soviet world the U.N., representing a world aroused, would secure the peace and put down threats. Yugoslavia exposes the emptiness of that dream. Today, as always, threats are met and conflicts halted by the great powers, and most decisively by the one dominant power, the United States. The U.S. intervened decisively in the gulf and, for months, washed its hands of Yugoslavia. That more than anything else explains why Kuwait thrives and Sarajevo burns.

Two weeks ago, the first signs appeared that the world might indeed begin to stir on Yugoslavia. The Security Council imposed a trade embargo on Serbia and Montenegro. What happened? A spontaneous eruption of collective action?

Hardly. What happened was that the U.S. changed its policy. After months of ostentatiously letting the European Community try to handle the Yugoslav crisis collectively, the U.S. came to the conclusion 1) that Europe was hopeless and 2) that the crisis was beginning to reach proportions that could directly threaten the entire Balkan region. Unstopped Serbian aggression might lead to war with Albania, Greek intervention in Macedonia and, most catastrophically, the involvement of Muslim, pro-Western Turkey.

That is why the U.S. moved. And because the U.S. moved, so did the U.N. No one, however, expects that sanctions will force Serbia out of Bosnia. The tragedy of Sarajevo will probably continue until the ethnic hatreds play themselves out. Or until the conflict does indeed begin to engulf the entire region. At which point the U.S., with others trailing, will intervene. Undoubtedly, it will all be done under U.N. cover. Another victory will be declared for collective security. Don't be fooled.

There is no such thing as collective security. There is no reality behind the facade of U.N. "peacekeeping." The U.N. comes to life only when animated -- manipulated -- by the U.S.

This is not a preferred state of affairs for Americans. Americans do not thirst for hegemony. Our most urgent hope after any conflict -- most lately, Kuwait -- is to get out, go home and disarm. And hope some other agency will keep the peace in our absence. America would rather be Canada. But Canada can only be Canada because it lives under the American umbrella. Who will hold an umbrella over us? Boutros Boutros-Ghali?

Would that he could. Alas, there is no safety for us, for anyone, in collective security. If you doubt that, ask the widows of Sarajevo. Ask the refugees scouring the skies for a sign of the real peacekeepers, the U.S. Air Force.