Beating Back the Serbian Onslaught : Bush tripartite approach to Kosovo crisis is helpful

If Bosnia-Herzegovina is a potential quagmire for any nation militarily engaged there, clearly it’s one for Serbia.

Having made clear that slaughter or the expulsion of non-Serbs from Serb-conquered territory is not a side effect but the goal of its invasion, Serbia has in effect closed the possibility of surrender for the Bosnians.

Meanwhile, a comparable assault--and comparable motivation for the victims of the assault--is being prepared in Kosovo, a formerly autonomous Serbian province where the population is 90% Albanian Muslim. The many Albanians in responsible government positions have been replaced by Serbs. Kosovar cultural treasures have been seized, wherever possible, and transported to Serbia. Figuratively speaking, the earth is being prepared for the scorching.

If and when the Serb assault begins, however, Serbia will be fighting a desperate foe on two fronts. And Croatia may well open a third front in the Krajina region, taken by Serbia last year and only nominally policed by U.N. peacekeepers.

Its early victories notwithstanding, Serbia is ill-prepared to fight a war of attrition on three fronts. The economic blockade against it has been porous till now, but that blockade is slowly growing stronger. The Bush Administration has been passive, but President-elect Bill Clinton, without tipping his hand, promises to be more active. In recent weeks, Bosnia has shown unexpected strength on the ground in one or two military encounters, and a better-armed Croatia has staged incursions into Serb-held northern Bosnia. In sum, Serbia increasingly has reasons to worry.

In a meeting earlier this week at The Times, Muhamed Sacirbey, Bosnia’s ambassador to the United Nations, said that Bosnia does not ask that Western ground troops be engaged on its behalf. What it asks is, first, a lifting of the arms embargo and, second, air support.

According to one news report, a senior Pentagon official, in a secret report last August, called lifting that embargo a moral imperative for the United States. Under James A. Baker III and Lawrence S. Eagleburger, the Bush State Department has declined this advice and tilted toward Serbia by maintaining a blanket Balkan arms embargo whose effect on the invader was much smaller than on the invaded. The position taken by the unnamed Pentagon official has been our position for some time.

We applaud, however, a new proposal made by President Bush to France and Britain that an international civilian monitoring force be sent to Kosovo. If Serbia attempts military action against Kosovo despite this tacit warning, Serbia loses, because it risks spreading itself too thin; of course if the monitors forestall such action, Serbia loses again.

And, to be plain, Serbia must lose. Serbian strongman Slobodan Milosevic must not be permitted, in Tacitus’ famous phrase, to make a desert and call it peace. Milosevic’s aggression must become, for his own country, a losing proposition. There are good tactical reasons to think it can be made such, and--as this brutal war threatens to spread--every moral and strategic reason to try to make it such.