For Immediate Release June 7, 1995
On Bosnia, Clinton’s Wrong, Brown’s Right
By Ted Harvey
President Clinton came to Colorado recently to give the commencement address to the 1995 graduating class of the United States Air Force Academy. The speech was billed as a major foreign policy statement on Bosnia.
Since his 1992 election, Clinton has put forth numerous policy positions toward Bosnia. Most of his positions were simply trial balloons to see where the political winds were blowing; none had any impact on the outcome of the war. Most importantly, none led to the deployment of U.S. troops in harm’s way. The position he outlined at the AFA graduation however, did just that. The President announced that "we should be prepared to assist NATO if it decides to meet a request from United Nations troops to help in a withdrawal, or a reconfiguration and a strengthening of its forces." This position is dangerous and is void of any military objective or description of national interest. It also implies that the United States military is to be used at the whim of NATO and the United Nations should they happen to desire our involvement.
This position is dangerous. The President has proven his inability to set any solid foreign policy and is now abdicating his Constitutional authority as Commander and Chief to an international organization.
The region in question is roughly the size of Colorado. It is populated by Serbs, Croats, Muslims, Slovenes, Macedonians and Montenegrins, with large minorities of Hungarians, Albanians, Bulgarians, Romanians, Jews and Gypsies. There have been ethnic wars in the region for a thousand years. These conflicts were held in check when the area was dominated by the Ottoman, Hapsburg and Soviet empires. For the last three years the world has witnessed a disgusting display of barbarism in the region, with rape, murder, torture and "ethnic cleansing" being practiced on all sides.
Granted, the situation is horrific, but as long as it stays within the confines of the former Yugoslavia, it is not a national security interest of the United States. The problem has existed longer than the United States has, and will be around long after President Clinton will be in office. Proponents of intervention must understand the history of the region. If we are to stop the war through intervention it will take permanent occupation by a foreign, more powerful empire. I don’t think Americans would agree that it is our national interest to assume that role.
The stance the President is taking is similar to that America took during the Vietnam war. The war in Vietnam was also a civil war and America went in with limited forces and limited objectives. We didn’t go in to win. It was a war Bill Clinton personally avoided and demonstrated against. However, in some ways Vietnam was a very different situation than Bosnia. President Kennedy believed in the "Domino Theory": If Vietnam fell to communism then so would other countries around the world--a definite threat to the security of the United States.
In Bosnia we are not fighting communism; we are not fighting anything but hatred itself. President Clinton made my point in his commencement speech at the Air Force Academy. He said "in World War II the objective was simple: Win the War. In the Cold War, our objective was clear: Contain Communism and prevent nuclear war." In the Bosnia war we have no national security interest nor any military objective. Having no way to win, we should stay out.
The day after the President’s speech, a U.S. F-15 fighter jet was shot down over Bosnia. Following this incident Colorado Senator Hank Brown said he "hoped it will get the administration to begin to formulate foreign policy instead of running it off of the latest poll." The Senator went on to say that he thought it "was ironic that the president, who demonstrated against McNamara (an architect of the Vietnam War), is in the process of repeating his mistakes."
Nine hundred eighty-seven cadets graduated last week in Colorado Springs and took the oath to "defend the constitution of the United States against all enemies foreign or domestic." The message the President brought them was that they would also have to defend the enemies of NATO and the UN. I don’t find either the Serbs or the Croats to be enemies of the United States, and if NATO or the UN finds them to be theirs then let them send in their military, but they should not look to us to bail them out.
Ted Harvey is the Program Director for The Independence Institute, a think tank in Golden, Colorado.
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