It is argued by some that nothing can be done by the West unless we are prepared to risk permanent involvement in a Vietnam- or Lebanon-style conflict and potentially high Western casualties. That is partly alarmism, partly an excuse for inertia. There is a vast difference between a full-scale land invasion like Desert Storm, and a range of military interventions from halting the arms embargo on Bosnia, through supplying arms to Bosnian forces, to direct strikes on military targets and communications.
Even if the West passes by on the other side, we cannot expect that others will do so. There is increasing alarm in Turkey and the Muslim world. More massacres of Muslims in Bosnia, terrible in themselves, would also risk the conflict spreading.
Serbia has no powerful outside backers, such as the Soviet Union in the past. It has up to now been encouraged by Western inaction, not least by explicit statements that force would not be used. A clear threat of military action would force Serbia into contemplating an end to its aggression. Serbia should be given an ultimatum to comply with certain Western demands:
• Cessation of Serbia’s economic support for the war in Bosnia, to be monitored by international observers placed on the Serb-Bosnian border.
• Recognition of Bosnia’s independence and territorial integrity by Belgrade and renunciation of territorial claims against it.
• Guarantees of access from Serbia and Bosnia for humanitarian teams.
• Agreement to the demilitarization of Bosnia within a broader demilitarization agreement for the whole region.
• Promise of cooperation with the return of refugees to Bosnia.
If those demands (which should be accompanied by a deadline) are not met, military retaliation should follow, including aerial bombardment of bridges on the Drina linking Bosnia with Serbia, of military convoys, of gun positions around Sarajevo and Goražde, and of military stores and other installations useful in the war. It should also be made clear that while this is not a war against the Serbian people, even installations on the Serbian side of the border may be attacked if they play an important role in the war…
Serbia will not listen unless forced to listen. Only the prospect of resistance and defeat will lead to the rise of a more democratic and peaceful leadership. Waiting until the conflict burns itself out will be not only dishonourable but also very costly: refugees, terrorism, Balkan wars drawing in other countries, and worse.[81]
For a short while it looked as if the argument might be won. I believe that within the White House, the State Department and the Pentagon there was some genuine reassessment of strategy. But then the military and foreign policy establishments recovered sufficiently to offer any number of reasons why large-scale intervention by ground troops (which I had never suggested) was too risky, why the arms embargo on Bosnia must stay (which ensured that the victims were deprived of self-defence) and why air strikes would not be effective (possibly true on their own, but plainly false if conducted in support of well-armed Bosnian forces as a means of altering the military balance).
Since the summer of 1992 there has been some movement in the direction I urged, but too little and far too late. Very limited air strikes under absurd restraints have occurred, but always against the background of protestations of the reluctance of the UN and NATO to go further. As a result of American pressure, there is some possibility of the arms embargo on Bosnia being lifted — but not before the moderate Muslim leadership had been forced into dangerously close reliance on Islamic powers such as Iran in the absence of Western help. Above all, whereas in August 1992 there was no official Russian involvement, the Russian government has now become a major player in the deadly game, thus raising the stakes in precisely the way I feared. Finally, British troops and the other forces in the United Nations Protection Force (UNPROFOR) are stationed in vulnerable situations in Bosnia, potential hostages to the Serbs if the West does at last become serious. The shameful failure in Bosnia has not only diminished our credibility and moral stature: it has now precipitated the most serious breach in NATO since Suez.
It is, though, important to regard the Bosnian fiasco as a symptom and not just a cause. There was an almost unreal quality about much discussion of international affairs over the whole of this period which was characterized by the rise and fall of the concept of a ‘New World Order’. The foreign policy thinkers were still engaging in arguments about whether ‘history’ (in the Hegelian sense) had ‘ended’ — whether we had reached, in the words of Francis Fukuyama’s stimulating essay, ‘the end point of mankind’s ideological evolution and the universalization of Western liberal democracy as the final form of government’.[82]
In contrast to Mr Fukuyama’s thesis has been the later prediction by Samuel Huntington that international politics will henceforth be dominated by a ‘clash of civilizations’ with the ‘world [being] shaped in large measure by the interactions among seven or eight major civilizations… [in which] the most important conflicts of the future will occur along the cultural fault lines separating these civilizations from one another’.[83]
The sense of unreality was emphasized by the contrast between these ambitious concepts of the intellectuals on the one hand and the hesitancy of the practitioners on the other. It was increasingly clear that the end of the Cold War — and only two years passed between the fall of the Berlin Wall and the official obsequies over the Soviet Union — had left Western politicians disoriented. It was not simply that security structures, above all NATO, and defence strategies had to be rethought. It was the whole justification, purpose and direction of foreign policy itself which seemed at issue.
PRINCIPLES OF CONSERVATIVE FOREIGN POLICY
Bismarck once remarked that asking him to pay attention to political principles while conducting foreign policy was like asking him to walk through a dense forest with a twelve-foot pole between his teeth. And this view is supported by some conservative theorists who ask us to consult only the national interest when formulating foreign policy. In fact, the apparent logic of their approach dissolves upon examination. How do we recognize our vital interests? How best can we pursue them once identified? Do they include freedom and democracy in other countries? How do you persuade your own citizens, or other governments, to join in the pursuit of your chosen course? To what extent is some structure of international order also a specific national interest? And if it is, what degree of sacrifice should we make for it? These and similar questions cannot be answered without reference to principles.
For me, the conservative approach to international affairs rests on five tenets, which in different degrees and combinations can be applied to the challenges we face.
The first of these is that collective security can be upheld only if it is guaranteed by a single power or an enduring alliance which is strong enough to dwarf challenges from other powers. In our present world, this means that America must remain the single superpower. This will not be achieved without cost, which American taxpayers alone should not be expected to bear. Nor will it be without friction: Russia and in due course emerging great powers like China, India, Japan, Brazil — not to mention the hypersensitive Europeans — will all resent this. But for the sake of peace and stability it is overwhelmingly the least bad option.
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82
Francis Fukuyama, ‘The End of History?’,