The Political Interest

By Michael Kinsley

CANDIDATE CLINTON SAW NO AMBIGUITY LAST AUGUST: "History has shown that you can't allow the mass extermination of people and just sit by and watch it happen." President Clinton added a caveat last week: The U.S. will not act alone in Bosnia. "America is ready to do its part," Clinton said. "But Europe must be willing to act with us. We must go forward together." The impulse is noble, but the effect could be pernicious. Multilateralism, the collective action by peace-loving nations against malefactors, can either empower or paralyze. It can confer a legitimacy that unilateral efforts might otherwise lack (as in the Gulf War). "Or," says a self-described White House hawk, "the insistence on consensus can stay our hand if it can't be achieved." As Walter Lippmann once warned, multilateralism can become the internationalism of the isolationist.

What's worse, the ill-timed and poorly managed pursuit of a common strategy can disarm the threat of force as a weapon capable of causing the enemy to retreat. "Which is what some of us have come to think of Chris' mission to Europe," says an Administration official about Secretary of State Warren Christopher's recent Continental tour. Coupled with the President's insistence on a concerted response and the allies' resistance to his options menu, "it's not surprising that the Bosnian Serbs concluded we were bluffing and so voted against the Athens agreement," says this official. "We either should have had our ducks in a row before Chris left, or he should have stayed home and hid behind his poker face. As it is, we looked like beggars, when we know from experience that the allies will fall in line if we toughly set out what we're going to do. This business of the President saying we can't lead if the allies won't follow ignores the lessons of the past 40 years. They'll follow if we lead. Indeed, their domestic politics almost always demand that we lead so their officials can tell their publics that they're merely following. For a democratic superpower, consultation is important, but it should always be essentially cosmetic."

The road from here seems clear enough. Having in effect said the Bosnian Serbs must cease and desist, Clinton must act. But enthralled by multilateralism and fearful of a Vietnam-like quagmire (and against the private advice of senior military officers like Joint Chiefs of Staff Chairman Colin Powell, who believes intervention should be massive or not at all), the President seems bent on adopting a feelgood strategy -- a limited action designed, above everything, to ensure a swift exit, a policy that defines success as merely having done something without regard to the ultimate result. By all accounts, Clinton aims to "level the killing fields," to borrow the words of British Foreign Secretary Douglas Hurd. The Serbs, says the President, have benefited from the West's de facto intervention; the United Nations-sponsored arms embargo has had the "unintended consequence of giving the Serbs an insurmountable military advantage, which they have pressed with ruthless efficiency." Lifting the embargo under the cover of allied air support will "at least increase the right kind of violence," says Richard Bartholomew, one of the Administration's Bosnian policymakers. Then the Muslims can decide for themselves "how they will die," says Senator Joe Biden.

Assuming the allies finally follow (which seems likely, since their appetite for recalcitrance appears to have run its course), these minimeasures could begin almost immediately. "It's the ultimate cop-out to let them fight it out," says Lord Owen, who has been trying to broker a negotiated settlement for almost two years. Owen aside, there is no assurance that the genocide will moderate. Does anyone seriously think the Serbs will picnic as their opponents arm, or that they'll suddenly respect the lightly defended enclaves where innocents have gathered to escape the slaughter, the so-called safe havens they are currently shelling with impunity? Similarly, there is no certainty that the war won't widen in the Balkans anyway, and hardly any chance that the battle will be decisive enough to roll back the Serbs' territorial gains (although a new balance of power could conceivably precipitate serious negotiations). "All of that may be true," says a Clinton adviser, "but at least the President will be able to make the case that we've done the best we could without putting our own troops on the ground -- assuming he isn't tempted to do so if things go badly. And he'll be able to stand behind multilateral action, which is the Democratic ((Party)) politicians' historic preference. The President's created a political problem for himself, so he's seeking to get out of it politically, with tactics that have the look and feel of real, muscular action. That's the game now. The morality rhetoric -- the Holocaust analogy and all that -- will of course continue as the President rallies the country. But as the underlying reason for action, morality takes a back seat to politics."