[ This article gives some partial answers on US' motives for Balkan involvement. According to Cohen, America is opposing Serbs because it wants to support "moderate Islam." -ddc ]

TWO ROADS: Bosnia Makes Atlantic Unity An Oxymoron

[The NY Times, The Week In Review, Nov. 27, 1994, Sec. 4, pages 1 and 3]

[Photo with caption:

As the war in the Balkans drags, two divergent visions of the Bosnia conflict are dividing the United States from Britain and France, whose positions are closer to Russia's. A scene earlier this year in war-weary Sarajevo.]

By ROGER COHEN

ZAGREB, Croatia -- LIKE a slow cancer, the Bosnian war is eating away at the Atlantic alliance, laying bare a divergence of strategic interests so basic as to rise the America's allies, at least in the way that they were in confronting Moscow  during the cold war.

Last week the issue was Bihac, yet another small, hitherto unknown Muslim enclave in Bosnia under assault from the Serbs. The Clinton Administration wanted stronger action beyond the two selcetive NATO air strikes carried
out last week against Serb positions in Croatia and Bosnia. It proposed an immediate demilitarization, more destructive NATO air raids.

But, taking positiuns closer to Russia's than to America's, west European governments balked. In one sense their reasoning was purely practical: Europeans, including the Russians, have peacekeeping troops in harm's way in Bosnia, and Americans do not. Bit if the American decision not to send troops to Bosnia -- made by the Bush Administratiun in 1992 and upheld by President Clinton -- has sapped NATO unity, it has also diverted attention from deeper problems.

The Bosnian war confronts Europeans and Americans wilh different strategic considerations, whereas the old Soviet threat presented the same overall danger on both sides of the Atlanlic and so acted as the super-glue of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization.

Not in Our Backyard

The first strategic difference is obvious Bosnia, unlike the Soviet Union is not an intercontinental threat; the United States has a buffer called the Atlantic Ocean. Europe does not have this luxury. In fact, Bosnia is to France asChicago is to New York.

This geographical fact makes Europcan countries, including Russia, more inclined to put a priority on ending the war and helps to explain recent European outrage at President Clinton's decision to stop enforcing the arms embargo against Bosnia's Muslim-led Government. Since World War I, Europeans have carried memories of what can happen when they get drawn into taking sides on the treacherous groond of the Balkans.

The second strategic difference is more subtle, but no less important. It concerns fslam, and the nations' differing views of Bosnia's Muslim community. For the Clinton Administration, the defense of the moderate Islam of the Balkans is also a way to bolster moderate Islamic countries generally -- particularly two crucial and potentially vulnerable allies, Egypt and Turkey -- against Islamic fundamentalism. "We have been pretty careful about reaching out to moderate Islam," said Jonathan Spalter, a spokesman for the National Security Council. "Of course, we have never explicitly stated that there is a beachhead in Sarajevo to check Teheran. But the reason in the rhyme is there."

That reason is straightforward enough: If fundamentalists in Turkey and Egypt could point to an American abandonment of Bosnia's Muslims, their cause would be strengthened. "America has an eye to a broader Muslim audience in Bosnia," said Mats Berdal of the International Institute for Strategic Studies.

France traumatized by its recent expcrience of Islamic funedamentalism in Algeria, has taken, along with Britain, a rather more detached and unsympathetic view. Government officials speak privately of their concern over the emergence of any sort of Muslim state in Europe, and note the close relations between the Bosnian Government in Sarajevo and Iran.

The third strategic difference concerns Serbia. The Clinton Administratiun has invested heavily in Albania, another moderate Muslim country on the Mediterranean. This investment has had a stabilizing effcct, for now in that America has restrained Albanian ambitions to unite with its people in Macedonia and the Kosovo area of Serbia. But, given the acute Serbo-Albanian tensions in Kosovo where ethnic Albanians are the  overwhelming majority, support for Albania sets America in a collision course with Serbia.

Russia, huwever, is a traditional ally of the Serbs, and Britain and France have enduring links with Serbia dating back to their alliances during the two World Wars. To some extent, in both Paris and London, Belgrade is still seen as a counterweight to overwhelming German influence in Croatia.

All these trans-Atlamic differences have tended to bring Britain, France and Russia somewhat closer, and this month two extraordinary developments occurred.

The first was a meeting in Paris on Nov 18 between the French, British and
Russian Foreign Ministers -- a gathering that evoked the Triple Entente of
the early years of this century, in which France, Britain and Russia allied
to resist German and Austro-Hungarian expansioll. At the meeting this  month, Alain Juppe, Douglas Hurdand and Andrei Kozyrev called for renewed unity of purpose within the "contact group" on solving the Bosnian problem. That appeal was addressed to the United States, which from a Eurupean perspective broke ranks through the arms embargo decision. Thus Britain, France and Russia united, at least momentarily, to speak to America.

Going It Alone

The second development was an agreement between Britain and France to
establish their first joint military organization, to coordinate air forces
in peacekceping and relief missions. It was a small step, but one suggestive of a British feeling that the special relationship with America should be  hedged.

Over all, in a season when President Clinton is promoting a Pacific economic community and preparing for a Miami summit to seek unity in the American hemisphere, it seems clear that Europe is now the area most neglected by the Administration. In this context, the disarray over Bihac was a mere detail, but a telling one. NATO still needs reinventiun, to deal with small towns in Bosnia but also post-Communist European security as a whole. Bosnia has revealed profound strategic shifts. They must be dealt with it.  Europe and America are to unite within NATO to make an impression on the Balkan parties, whose history has given them a deep understandillg of the effectivenss of force and the weakness of incoherent alliances.