Islamic Troops to the Rescue? : The French proposal could disguise the rout

On Monday, French Defense Minister Francois Leotard, joined by U.S. Secretary of Defense William J. Perry, called Monday for a strengthened NATO defense of U.N. operations in Bosnia, contradicting a position in favor of U.N. withdrawal taken just last week by French Foreign Minister Alain Juppe. However, the measures Leotard and Perry mentioned in their Washington press conference--concentrating the U.N. forces in just a few places, opening a well-defended corridor to the Adriatic and changing the rules of engagement--may only be disguised preparation for a Bosnian Dunkirk.

The British are reportedly cool to the proposal, though nothing proposed Monday would prevent U.N. officials and Sir Michael Rose, who commands U.N. peacekeepers, from barring, as they have hitherto, any inconvenient NATO action. By contrast, the Organization of the Islamic Conference, meeting in Morocco, has declared the readiness of its members not just to replace European U.N. troops but to do so even if the U.N. arms embargo is lifted, a measure the Europeans have argued would endanger U.N. forces. That suggestion attracted notice in France, which is in the middle of an electoral season. Perhaps the embarrassment of a precipitous French departure from Bosnia followed by the arrival of Islamic troops on European soil may have dictated a delay of the debacle.

At this confusing juncture the American policy options remain, in declining order of preferability (not probability):

1) Lift and strike: Lift the U.N. arms embargo against Bosnia and use NATO air strikes to support ground defense by Bosnia’s own troops. This is the option that President Bill Clinton favored as he came into office and what the Republican majority leaders of the Senate and the House of Representatives still favor.

2) Defense of the U.N. forces. If Leotard’s proposal is not a Dunkirk disguise, here is where it could count. The United States has nothing to lose by taking the proposal at face value. Even an orderly retreat, as opposed to a humiliating rout, may save U.N. lives now and U.N. credibility later.

3) Evacuation of the U.N. forces. If Leotard’s proposal is rejected by NATO (in which every member state has a veto) or frustrated by a U.N. commander too fearful of--or favorable toward--the Serbs to risk actively defending his own forces, then the humiliation of those forces will continue and will end only in potentially chaotic evacuation. At that point, whatever the domestic grumbling, the United States should assist in an expeditious evacuation. Effectively, these remain the U.S. options even in the wake of a peace proposal Wednesday by Bosnian Serb leader Radovan Karadzic. A declaration of victory more than a peace proposal, Karadzic’s offer is likely to be rejected by the Bosnian government but welcomed by a United Nations that at this point may want only a safe exit.

For now, the OIC countries want their forces to work as a part of UNPROFOR. Under Article 51 of the U.N. Charter, however, they may also come to Bosnia’s defense directly, without U.N. approval. Short of intervention, rumors are rife of a unilateral OIC lifting of the arms embargo against Bosnia. If the OIC attempts to land troops or deliver arms to Bosnia by sea, will the French and British now patrolling the Dalmatian coast try to stop them? Will the world see a Christian-Muslim naval war in the Adriatic?

Scarcely. Yet if the OIC action turns into measurable support for Bosnia, the Europeans may discover that by refusing to defend this Muslim-dominated European state they have succeeded only in enlarging the Muslim presence on their continent. With the OIC in the background, a NATO evacuation of the U.N. forces acquires a meaning that otherwise it would not have. The Balkans War may be evolving before our eyes into a world war in miniature.