PERSPECTIVE ON BOSNIA : Should NATO Rescue the U.N.? : The Western allies may have to end their neutrality and attempt a Cold War approach against the Serbs.

For the moment, the United Nations Protection Force (UNPROFOR) is staying in Bosnia. But if NATO accepts a U.N. request to rescue UNPROFOR, what is likely to happen? As the foreign ministers of the NATO powers meet today in the Netherlands, here are five factors they may wish to bear in mind.

* Militarily, the Serbs are losing. The separatist Serbs of Bosnia-Herzegovina and Croatia expected early, decisive victories followed by reunification of the territory they had captured with Serbia proper. They have failed. They are now fighting a war of attrition on two fronts against highly motivated enemies--the Bosnian and Croatian armies--who outnumber them and are increasingly well armed. Monday, even as the Bosnian Serbs humiliated the United Nations, they were retreating before a Bosnian Muslim advance west of the besieged town of Tuzla. The Serbs have failed to reverse the recent Croatian gains in the north. Time is not on their side.

* What little influence Russia has over Serbia is potentially ominous. During the Cold War, the relationship between Yugoslavia and the Soviet Union was no closer than the relationship between Tito and Stalin. It may not be much closer now. Real alliance requires more than the Cyrillic alphabet and nominal adherence to Eastern Orthodox Christianity. But Slobodan Milosevic’s rump Yugoslavia has never broken with totalitarianism, and Boris Yeltsin’s Russia is drifting back toward it. Chechnya and Bosnia are twin atrocities. NATO should beware of encouraging a newly aggressive Russia to establish, in effect, a western base in Serbia.

* If Britain and France -- just a third of UNPROFOR--pull out, other national contingents may remain. The drift in British and French popular opinion seems to be toward withdrawal, but the popular mood backing other UNPROFOR contingents--especially those from Islamic nations--may be different. Even now, the Jordanian and Pakistani contingents nearly equal the British and French. The Islamic guerrilla movement Hamas has lately declared its solidarity with the Bosnians and called for a lifting of the arms embargo against them. NATO may need to determine what position it will take toward other possible intervenors.

* An evacuation of UNPROFOR may become an ad hoc form of the much-maligned “lift and strike” option. With the Serbs as declared enemies, NATO may require the Bosnians as friends if it is to control casualties during an evacuation. Once UNPROFOR is in full flight and the ethnic cleansing of Sarajevo itself impends, the Bosnian Muslims may match the Bosnian Serbs in a frenzied attempt to capture UNPROFOR and/or NATO arms. Rather than run that risk, NATO may have to lift the arms embargo against Bosnia and support the Bosnian ground troops by land and air, at least while the evacuation is in progress. NATO should hesitate before adopting a neutrality that makes the entire population its opponent, if not its actual enemy.

* If the United States cooperates in a NATO evacuation of UNPROFOR, the most frequent objection to “lift and strike” will no longer be valid. Once U.S. troops are on the ground and assisting in a military evacuation, U.S. support for air strikes will no longer be open to the charge of unseemliness. As for the objection that lifting the embargo will prolong the war, it too will collapse. Yes, arming the Bosnians will prolong the Balkans War, but that will be its purpose, just as arming the British was intended to prevent a quick German victory and prolong World War II. NATO might also consult its Cold War experience. As David Gompert argued in Foreign Affairs magazine, the best way to win the Balkans War may be to treat it as a miniature Cold War: Arm and feed the enemy’s enemy while wearing the enemy down through economic isolation. A slow victory is vastly preferable to a quick defeat.