Aggression 1, International Law 0

By GEORGE J. CHURCH

Policymakers have an awesome capacity to intone that "things can't go on this way" for months or years -- while things do go on the same way. In the rapidly disappearing republic of Bosnia-Herzegovina, though, the vicious fighting that has raged since February might really end soon. Not primarily because of the cease-fire announced in London last week; no one yet knows whether it will become fully effective, let alone last any longer than an eyeblink. Nor will any thanks be due to the American and European statesmen who have almost daily proclaimed that the bloodshed must stop but have done nothing effective. If peace -- even the peace of the grave -- is at all foreseeable, it is only because aggression is on the verge of winning in Bosnia.

Already, says a senior British diplomat, "Bosnia-Herzegovina has ceased to exist." Even if the cease-fire were to hold, Serbs control about two-thirds of the country, and Croats have proclaimed a quasi-independent republic in ! most of the rest. Sarajevo, if it should be able to hold out, looks increasingly like a Balkan West Berlin: cut off from any countryside, capital of Nowheresville. Outside city limits, only a few slivers of territory remain under the control of the Muslim Slavs who constitute 41% of Bosnia's population.

Now even the slivers are vanishing. "While ((French President Francois)) Mitterrand's visit diverted the world's attention to Sarajevo, the Serbs got all they wanted in northern Bosnia," says Vinko Begic, mayor of Derventa, one of the last towns to fall to the Serb offensive. In eastern Bosnia, only Gorazde, a town whose normal population of 20,000 has been swollen to 70,000 by a tide of refugees, remains a haven for the Muslims, and it is under heavy siege.

Nor does any of this necessarily mean an end to the killing. Ivo Banac, a Croatian-born Yale history professor, fears a repetition of the 16th to early 18th centuries. "Then," he says, "the region was in a state of permanent seasonal war." A modern version might consist of back-and-forth fighting among Serbs, Croats and remnants of an independent Bosnia across ever shifting frontiers. War could resume in Croatia too, despite the presence of 14,000 U.N. peacekeepers. Though a cease-fire has supposedly been in effect since January, Serbs last week resumed shelling the port of Dubrovnik.

There are rich possibilities for more bloodshed in other parts of the country still called Yugoslavia, which now consists only of Serbia and Montenegro. Triumphant Serbs might try to extend their conquests in Kosovo, a province populated overwhelmingly by Albanians; in Macedonia, like Bosnia a former Yugoslav republic that has declared independence; and in Vojvodina, another Serbian province with a large and restless Hungarian minority. Finally, says one diplomat, "there is the Serb-Serb civil war" for control of what would then be a Greater Serbia.

The best way to prevent such a chain reaction would be to stop aggression in Bosnia short of victory. But, cease-fire or no, there is little on the horizon that might do the job.

Military intervention? The only kind the U.S. and European powers will discuss is providing escorts for relief convoys to Sarajevo, and that would not prevent the people who are being fed from also being killed. As for a bigger expedition, says an American official, "we're nearing the point where intervention is impossible -- where people have fled and territory has been seized." In other words, there will soon be nothing left of Bosnia to save.

Sanctions? Western officials think they will eventually bite hard enough to modify Serb behavior, but by then Bosnia might be only a memory. Oil and weapons are still leaking into Serbia, mostly from Russian ships through Romanian ports on the Black Sea. Western officials do not see how they -- or, for that matter, Russian President Boris Yeltsin -- can stop the smuggling.

Diplomacy? Even while proposing a cease-fire that Croats and Muslims finally accepted, Serbian leader Radovan Karadzic insisted that his side would not give up any Bosnian territory in exchange for peace. That might well indicate that the Serbs are ready for a cease-fire only because they have conquered about as much of Bosnia as they want. Western powers could only indulge in more hand wringing.

The most encouraging voice sounded in, of all places, Belgrade. Milan Panic, a Serbian-American businessman and new Prime Minister of Yugoslavia, pledged to respect the independence of Bosnia and to insist that the shooting stop. He denounced the "ethnic cleansing" of Serbian areas as a "the disgrace of our nation." But Panic has little power; Serbian President Slobodan Milosevic is still the boss, and he has shown no sign of giving up creation of a Greater Serbia.

Some Western officials are beginning to wonder whether it is not time to switch primary attention to easing the suffering of the estimated 2.2 million refugees of the wars. Anything done for them, however, would not change the outlook. Sooner or later, with or without further fighting, the outcome in Bosnia seems almost sure to be a sweeping victory for aggression, reversing the supposed lesson of the Persian Gulf war: that the international community will band together to force an aggressor to give up his gains. In Bosnia the all-but-final score is Aggression 1, International Law 0.

With reporting by James L. Graff/Zagreb, James O. Jackson/Belgrade and William Mader/London