A Little Bombing Is a Dangerous Thing

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The confusion in Bosnia -- on the battlefield as well as in diplomatic quarters -- did little to help the Administration think out an effective policy. After two U.N. peacekeepers were injured on Friday, the U.N. military commander in Bosnia, Lieut. General Sir Michael Rose, suggested further air strikes to enable his military observers to withdraw from the battlefield. But Akashi, who was in the Bosnian Serb headquarters in Pale trying to resuscitate negotiations, was not willing to approve the request. The next day when the Serbs began encircling Gorazde, Rose and Akashi called for "fairly robust air cover," according to a senior White House official. When a Serb tank fired on a hospital, injuring several people, Rose and Akashi upped their request to "close air support." But when NATO aircraft went in search of targets, bad weather forced the planes to fly low, which in turn resulted in the downing of the British jet.

When the Clinton Administration had quietly encouraged limited strikes on the Gorazde perimeter earlier in the week, it had several aims in mind. It was trying to rob the Serbs of another battlefield victory, inject new life into stalled peace negotiations and redeem its own recent bumbling performance, when senior officials publicly contradicted each other about the prospect of air strikes. While the bombings were technically NATO operations in response to a request to protect U.N. peacekeeping troops, in practice the attacks were a U.S. experiment: an attempt to use limited military force to end the fighting in Bosnia. But the result was inconclusive, with the Serbs still in a position to fight on, and Washington appearing unable to punish the Serbs, no matter how blatant the provocation.

Moreover, the long-threatened NATO air strikes had hardly been models of military precision. In misty weather, embattled U.N. peacekeepers called for fighter-bombers to hit Serbian tanks that were firing into Gorazde. Two U.S. Air Force F-16s swept in and dropped three 500-lb. bombs on some tents. The following day, as shells continued to pound Gorazde, two Marine F/A-18s tried to drop four bombs on the Serbs. One bomb remained stuck in its rack; two hit the ground but failed to explode. The planes swooped down in the wake of the bomb that did blow up and strafed Serb positions with cannon fire, wrecking three military vehicles.

In the two-year Bosnian war that has resulted in 200,000 people dead or missing, those four U.S. bombs were a military pinprick. Politically, however, they shook the ground in all directions -- for a few days. As Bosnia lay relatively quiet, Washington took pride in its muscle flexing. "Every time we have been firm," said Clinton, "it has been a winner for the peace process." The Bosnian Serbs, who denounced the strikes as an intervention in support of the Muslims they are trying to crush, broke off contact with the U.N., charging that it had chosen sides.

The Serbs did not immediately retaliate by killing peacekeeping troops, as NATO had feared, but at least two were wounded -- and one subsequently died -- in the continued fighting. Serbs abducted some blue helmets at gunpoint and held hostage more than 200 U.N. soldiers and civilians. They surrounded several artillery depots around Sarajevo and on Saturday reportedly seized heavy weapons sequestered by peacekeepers.