THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Friday, September 29, 1995 TAG: 9509290703
SECTION: LOCAL PAGE: B3 EDITION: FINAL
SOURCE: BY BILL SIZEMORE, STAFF WRITER
DATELINE: NORFOLK LENGTH: Long : 128 lines
Has NATO found a new reason for its existence?
Some of its boosters think they've found a model for the North Atlantic Treaty Organization's proper role in the post-Cold War world: the international effort to quell the civil war in the former Yugoslavia.
They acknowledge, however, that the mission is full of potential pitfalls - not only in Bosnia and the other ex-Yugoslav republics but here at home, where a skeptical Congress and public may not yet be sold on it.
In two separate forums Thursday, NATO's Atlantic military commander, a senior U.S. defense official and a scholar from a Washington think tank all said it is likely that the United States and its European allies will need to wade more deeply into the Balkan bloodletting before it is over.
The discussion is likely to continue next week in Williamsburg when Defense Secretary William Perry hosts a two-day meeting of NATO defense ministers and military chiefs.
The allies emerged relatively unscathed from NATO's intensive bombing campaign over Bosnia earlier this month, and diplomats are cautiously optimistic about the peace talks under way among the warring parties.
But if a peace agreement is reached, NATO stands poised to take on a much higher profile and more perilous role in the Balkans. President Clinton has pledged up to 25,000 U.S. ground troops as part of a multinational force to police the peace plan's implementation.
Speaking to the World Affairs Council of Greater Hampton Roads at Old Dominion University, Marine Gen. John J. Sheehan said, ``If we don't define our security identity in terms of a trans-Atlantic relationship . . . then we're doomed to repeat history.''
Sheehan is commander in chief of NATO's Atlantic Command, based in Norfolk.
``Twice in the past, the United States has withdrawn from Europe, and twice we've had to go back - at a tremendous cost in terms of lives and resources,'' he said.
U.S. Undersecretary of Defense Walter B. Slocombe, appearing alongside Sheehan, called the 46-year-old NATO alliance ``the bedrock of our security policy'' and said the United States will continue to keep about 100,000 troops in Europe.
``But because the world has changed, NATO must change as well,'' Slocombe said - and that means taking a lead role in Bosnia.
``If there is a peace settlement, as we hope there will be, we will have to include a NATO implementation force to ensure that the parties will pull back to the lines they have agreed and stay there,'' he said.
``That force must be a NATO force - the United Nations is incapable of organizing a military operation on that scale - and the NATO force must have a substantial U.S. component.''
In answer to a question, Slocombe said the administration hopes the operation could be concluded in about a year.
Barry Blechman, president of the Henry L. Stimson Center, a Washington think tank, sees the Bosnia mission as a crucial test of NATO's ability to ensure the stability of Europe.
Blechman, who served as assistant director of the Arms Control and Disarmament Agency in the Carter administration, was the keynote speaker at a seminar on the future of NATO sponsored by ODU's graduate program in international studies.
To carry the Bosnia mission to a successful conclusion, Blechman argued, NATO must resolve what he has dubbed the ``intervention dilemma.''
``Since the end of the Cold War, successive administrations - Bush and Clinton now - have found themselves caught in a difficult dilemma,'' he said. ``On the one hand they face great popular pressure, political pressures, to become involved in conflicts overseas, both international and domestic.
``On the other hand, they face even greater popular and political pressures not to pay a price - certainly in terms of American lives, but even in terms of the financial costs.''
How to solve the dilemma? The administration needs to aggressively sell the Bosnia mission to Congress and the public, Blechman said.
``A successful foreign policy has to have ambition. It can't just accept the world as it is,'' he said.
If the problem in Bosnia is not solved, he said, the conflict could grow in ever widening circles - to Serbia, Hungary or other unstable countries in the region.
But Blechman and three other panelists at the ODU seminar said Americans should be told up front that the Bosnia mission will be messy and protracted - perhaps lasting two or three years.
``It's going to be a very lengthy process,'' said Dutch Rear Adm. Jacques Waltmann, assistant chief of staff at NATO's Atlantic Command. ``There's 800 years of hatred, 800 years of killing. . . .
``The public perception is that the good guys are the Muslims, the little-bit-good guys are the Croats and the bad guys are the Serbs. But if you talk to people that have been there during peacekeeping operations, they come back and the least they might say is, there are no good guys and no bad guys.'' ILLUSTRATION: Graphics
ABOUT NATO
NATO is a military alliance of 16 North American and West
European nations established in 1949.
MEMBER NATIONS: Belgium, Canada, Denmark, France, Germany,
Greece, Iceland, Italy, Luxembourg, the Netherlands, Norway,
Portugal, Spain, Turkey, United Kingdom, United States
MILITARY COMMANDS:
Allied Command, Atlantic, based in Norfolk
Allied Command, Europe, based in Brussels, Belgium
U.S. FINANCIAL SUPPORT: The United States spent an estimated
$286.4 million on NATO-related defense in 1994.
Source: 1995 NATO Handbook
12 ELEMENTS
The Henry L. Stimson Center, a Washington think tank, studied 13
international peacekeeping operations for the U.S. Defense
Department and developed a list of 12 elements it found necessary to
make them successful:
1. Sustained commitment from a very powerful state
2. Deployment of adequate military capability
3. Realistic, tangible and clearly defined objectives
4. Early planning for a transition when the operation is over
5. Emphasis on the maintenance of civil order
6. Impartial treatment of all parties in the conflict
7. Close linking of diplomatic, military, humanitarian and
economic objectives
8. Seizing the initiative
9. Concentrating forces in key locations, not dispersing them
over a wide area
10. Unity of effort among political, military and civil
components
11. Clearly defined and consistent standards of behavior
12. Swift and proportional use of force against violators
by CNB