A Chronic Case of Impotence

By GEORGE J. CHURCH

Like pre-1914 Europe, the new world order of George Bush died in Sarajevo.

-- French political analyst Pierre Hassner

The comparison is a bit hyperbolic: hardly anyone expects a third World War to blossom from the present fighting in the capital of Bosnia-Herzegovina. But in other respects Hassner's comment is right on. The essence of Bush's "new world order," proclaimed shortly before the Persian Gulf war, was that quick, decisive action by international bodies would make the world unsafe for aggression. But when the next test came, in the breakup of Yugoslavia, the U.S. and its European allies floundered.

A year of vicious ethnic bloodletting has ensued. Now most of the world has decided that the prime cause of the fighting is the nationalist fervor of Serbia. Yes, the war is a more complicated eruption of ancient religious, ethnic and territorial hatreds, but it is Serbia's determination to bite off parts of the other republics peopled by Serbs that keeps the war going. And the U.S., the 12-nation European Community, the 52-nation Conference on Security and Cooperation in Europe (C.S.C.E.) and the United Nations have let it roll on unchecked while dithering helplessly about what, if anything, to do.

There are no obvious solutions if the parties on the ground are unwilling to call it quits. Even now the odds are that the sanctions finally imposed last week by the U.S., the European Community and the U.N. Security Council will not stop the bloodshed before Serb leader Slobodan Milosevic achieves, by dint of arms, his apparent aim of forging a Greater Serbia.

Like Saddam Hussein, Milosevic probably could have been halted only by force. But no one outside Yugoslavia was -- or is -- prepared to go to war against him. Military intervention, most believe, would be likely to land outside powers in a Vietnam-style quagmire and cost them heavy casualties. There may be universal outrage at the human carnage, but unlike Iraq's grab for oil-rich Kuwait, Serbia's depredations against Croatia and Bosnia do not threaten the strategic interests of the U.S. or European neighbors enough to justify the risks of sending in troops.

! The U.N. sanctions go about as far as foreign pressure can, short of war. They will stop all Serbian exports and all imports except for food and medicine, freeze Serbian assets held abroad and break all air links to the outside world. The key measure, though, is an embargo on oil, the lifeblood of both modern industry and mechanized armies, but it is far from certain that the tap will be turned off. Almost half of Serbia's fuel comes from Russia and China, which went along only reluctantly with the sanctions resolution. Some British diplomats are worried that oil may slip into Serbia from Romania, or from the Middle East via Greece, which has important trade routes through Serbia.

Worse, the sanctions may not work even if they are enforced. Serbia is close to self-sufficiency in food production and has stockpiled goods and fuel; its external trade has already been nearly halted by the war without noticeably denting the Serbs' fighting spirit. "The more primitive the economy, the more impervious the country is to boycotts," notes Michael Dewar, deputy director of the London-based International Institute for Strategic Studies. Though British officials hope that economic hardship might eventually loosen Milosevic's hold on his followers, one senior French diplomat fears that it will breed an us-against-the-world solidarity.

If sanctions fail, there is some cautious talk about military intervention to the extent of providing armed escorts for shipments of food and medicine to Bosnia's beleaguered Muslim Slavs. But so far the Security Council has not authorized sending U.N. troops to the republic; members are concerned that the soldiers might come under fire and suffer casualties. Similar worries delayed the dispatch of a peacekeeping force of 14,000 to Croatia until the Serbs had completed their conquest of Serb areas, and an "ethnic cleansing" of those regions to expel Croats continues.

The months of flopping around give little reason to hope that the international community can agree on and carry through any more vigorous course of action. The Europeans and the U.S. had long refused to accept that Yugoslavia was irresistibly coming apart. Germany had to bludgeon the Community into recognizing the independence of Slovenia and Croatia. The U.S., Britain and Greece argued -- prophetically, as it turned out -- that the move would inevitably lead to recognition of independent Bosnia-Herzegovina and give Milosevic an excuse to spread the fighting into that land. Until last week, Russia helped to block even the mildest sanctions against Serbia in the C.S.C.E. and at the U.N.; along with China, Russia apparently fears to set a precedent for interference in its own ethnic conflicts. The U.S. until very recently let the Europeans take the policy lead. Only in the past two weeks has Secretary of State James Baker woken up to lecture them for doing nothing effective and to push hard for sanctions. If Yugoslavia presents a test case for the ability of international bodies to defuse the ethnic violence that is emerging as the greatest threat to world peace, then the world community has resoundingly flunked.

With reporting by David Aikman with Baker, William Mader/London and Frederick Ungeheuer/Paris