BOSNIA

The United States and its international partners face the greatest and most dangerous crisis in Bosnia since the Dayton agreements were signed 18 months ago to restore peace there. The peace process is now paralyzed. It is imperative that President Bill Clinton order, without delay, a series of interlinking actions, difficult as these decisions may be, to reassert U.S. and NATO authority in Bosnia. He must do this even before he decides whether to extend the presence of U.S. troops beyond next July’s deadline. There are about 8,500 Americans in Bosnia as part of NATO’s 32,000-strong Stabilization Force.

First, however, Clinton must resolve existing, deep differences within his own administration over basic Bosnia policy, bring along America’s often reluctant European allies and try to avoid the self-defeating compromises of the recent past. On July 10, for example, British commandos went after two suspected small-fry Bosnia Serbian war criminals--killing one in a firefight and capturing the other--but there was no follow-up. Sixty-five alleged Bosnian Serb war criminals, most notably Radovan Karadzic, the Serb Republic’s powerful chief, are still at large.

While Karadzic’s arrest is a top priority for civilian policy-makers, he remains defiantly untouchable because neither U.S. nor allied military commanders are prepared to risk casualties trying to catch him, whether they succeed or not. In Washington, unfortunately, Karadzic’s fate has become the overriding test of NATO’s willingness to enforce the Dayton agreements, and it sharply divides the State Department and the Pentagon. Both Secretary of Defense William S. Cohen and the Joint Chiefs of Staff firmly oppose any move to snare him. Karadzic, aware of this split, has gone on the offensive, orchestrating low-intensity, but irritating attacks on international personnel in Bosnia and a vicious media campaign in reprisal for the British commando raid.

Seen from Bosnia, Clinton’s first step should be to order Karadzic’s capture, even if he has to overrule his military establishment. Most international civilian officials in Bosnia minimize the threat of a large-scale violent reaction by Karadzic’s followers, but the point is made that the dispatch of troops there, as the president has done, cannot be a risk-free undertaking if it is U.S. policy to carry out NATO’s side of the Dayton agreements.

The longer Karadzic holds effective power, other fundamental aspects of Dayton, such as the return of hundreds of thousands of Bosnian Muslim refugees to their homes in the Serb Republic, will remain ignored. There is also serious concern that he may instruct Bosnian Serbs to boycott the Sept. 13-14 municipal elections in what had been conceived in Dayton as the multiethnic nation of Bosnians, Serbs and Croats.

To suspend the municipal elections in the face of a Serb boycott would leave the overall peace process in tatters; to hold them under such circumstances would render their results meaningless. Either way, de facto partition within Bosnia would become a permanent reality. To complicate matters, officials are divided over whether it would be wiser to try to grab Karadzic before or after the elections (assuming they are held).

Notwithstanding the steady deterioration of Bosnia’s political and security situation and the judgment on the ground that a turning point has been reached in NATO peacemaking, Washington and its partners have, so far, responded with rhetoric only. Even short of capturing Karadzic, for example, the White House has abstained from acting on a strong civilian recommendation from within the administration that NATO forces counter the recent attacks on international officials by seizing a cache of warehoused Bosnian Serb weapons and silencing television stations that lead the anti-NATO media campaign. The belief is that this would be a message Karadzic, who presumably does not seek a full-scale confrontation with NATO forces, would understand. In 1995, belated NATO air strikes pushed him to the Dayton negotiating table.

By contrast, U.S. and allied policy is confined to threats, warnings and dubious political stratagems. Washington claims that last month a parade of high-level allied officials turned up the “heat” on the Bosnian Serbs by denouncing their terrorism and media campaign. In response, terrorist incidents fell off and the media campaign abated. But no international official believes that Karadzic, with so much at stake politically and personally, has turned over a new leaf. He still thinks he’s safe, and no visible effort has been made to resolve the awesome refugee problem.

Meanwhile, it appears that Washington and its allies have convinced themselves that the Karadzic quandary may be resolved as a result of his current struggle with Biljana Plavsic, who replaced him after Dayton, for the sake of appearances, as president of the rump Serb Republic. Intended to be a puppet, Plavsic rebelled in June, denouncing Karadzic and his associates for enriching themselves on a grandiose scale through smuggling and black-market rackets. She called for new elections to the Bosnian Serb Parliament.

The U.S. instantly moved to show her its support, with U.N. Ambassador Bill Richardson calling on her in Banja Luka, the Bosnian Serb capital. Karadzic, ensconced at his headquarters in Pale, near Sarajevo, hit back at Plavsic by having her expelled from the ruling Serb Democratic Party. But NATO intelligence is so ineffective that it is impossible to gauge her support or predict the outcome of their fray. It is uncertain, for instance, whether she commands the full loyalty of the paramilitary units protecting her at the Banja Luka palace. Plavsic, however, is about the only serious political card held by the U.S. and its partners, and they were dealt it only by an accident of internal Serb politics.

With the future of Bosnia hanging improbably at this juncture on such a thin thread and in the absence of other indentifiable U.S.-NATO policies, American credibility is at stake unless Clinton soon produces a convincing position. Clearly, time works against permanent peace, long-range stability and the promise of democracy in Bosnia. The multiethnic state envisaged in Dayton may never turn into reality. There is absolute consensus that war among Bosnians, Serbs and Croats would resume the instant the Americans and other NATO forces depart.

It is, then, another moment of truth in Bosnia for Clinton and his decision-making. With an election year around the corner, he may not wish to be the one who “lost Bosnia.”