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One, Two, Many Crises
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10104 |
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CURRENT ISSUES
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| Issue
Date : |
4 / 1993 |
1,602 Words |
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Jed C. Snyder
Jed C. Snyder is a senior research fellow at the Washington
office of the National Strategy Information Center, where he
is directing a project on "New Approaches to Transatlantic
Security." He served in the State Department during the first
Reagan administration, and from 1984 to 1987 was deputy
director of national security studies at the Hudson Institute.
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The list of potential trouble spots around the globe is limited only by one's imagination. With that caveat, three sets of problem areas and issues are briefly sketched below. In each case, absence of strong U.S. leadership could likely ignite a crisis: (1) Bosnia and Balkan security, (2) the former Soviet Union, and (3) weapons proliferation and Middle Eastern stability.
THE BALKANS
Proclaimed as the first major failure of the Western nations to stop a hemorrhage in the post-Cold War era (Desert Storm was the first post-Cold War crisis effectively handled by the allies), the continuing carnage in the former Yugoslav federation has raised concerns about the threshold for human suffering, political injustice, and attempted genocide. The grade question is: Should alarmed nations interfere in a conflict that diplomatically is a classic example of a civil (internal) war.
The conflict first in Slovenia, then in Croatia, and now in Bosnia, ceased to be an internal matter, however, when it created the largest refugee situation in the postwar period. The UN High Commissioner for Refugees estimates that more than 2.5 million people have been displaced by the fighting in the former Yugoslavia, with nearly 600,000 fleeing to neighboring countries (Germany alone has taken in more than 235,000). While precise estimates of casualties are not known, more than 50,000 have perished over the last two years.
The genesis of this horrendous war is the determination of the Serbs, led by President Slobodan Milosevic, to control as much territory of the former Yugoslav state as possible, regardless of the cost in human life. While it is true that all sides to this conflict--Serbs, Croats, Slovenes, and Muslims--have committed atrocities, a broad spectrum of observers state that the Serbs have shed the most blood, and recent statements by Serb leaders that such crimes have stopped are patently false. Former Polish Prime Minister Tadeusz Mazowiecki concluded that in Bosnia the bulk of rape, forced evacuation, and murder was still being committed by Serbs against Muslims.
In an effort to stop the bloodshed, the European Community and the United Nations are cosponsoring a peace plan, negotiated by former British Foreign Minister Lord David Owen (the EC emissary) and former American Secretary of State Cyrus Vance (the US envoy). The Vance-Owen plan calls for the establishment of 10 canton-like semi-autonomous provinces within the current state of Bosnia
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