BOSNIA

One would prefer a situation in which, long before a final troop commitment was imminent, the general thrust of a president’s international judgments appeared clearly correct, and the other party said so, working cooperatively to rally the country behind him. But we have never been blessed with such luck on the question of Bosnia, a horror of Byzantine complexity to which the United States has responded with a dizzying series of false starts and hard swerves. There has been legitimate Republican-led opposition to the administration’s Balkan policy. And it was therefore almost inevitable, if and when the call for American ground forces arose, that some measure of partisan conflict would arise with it.

That conflict, per se, is nothing to celebrate. Domestic politics invites , even requires, all manner of bare-knuckle fighting between Congress and the W hite House. But except in the rarest of circumstances, only a president’s per sonal stature is invested in those battles, and the “worst” possible outcome is that his party loses its next national campaign. Where international securit y determinations are concerned, however, a president’s individual authority is significantly inseparable from the authority of the presidency generally. Any m ajor rejection of the man also, unavoidably, impeaches his office — the instit ution against which foreign governments judge American resolve. If the presiden t must make his way overseas against furious opposition, or fails to make his w ay at all, then U.S. international credibility and influence are damaged, at le ast in th e short run.

That will be one sad, undeniable result if, in the next few weeks, Congress fails to support the Bosnian peace plan — and U.S. troop commitment — initialed in Dayton, Ohio. But it is rapidly becoming apparent that something even more momentous than a temporary wound to American prestige is at issue here. The entire structure and purpose of post-1945 American foreign relations, our posture of energetic international engagement, is implicated in Bosnia. And with distressingly few exceptions, Republicans, who have worked hardest to maintain that posture these past 20 years, are behaving as though they may no longer care.

If the United States has no “vital national interest” in leading a coherent, effective NATO, we have no vital interest in anything beyond our shores. Bosnia is the victim of brutal aggression across internationally recognized borders on a European continent over which NATO necessarily claims protective dominion.

The war has been exacerbated by past NATO actions; enforcement of the arms embargo has worked to Serbian advantage. The current cease-fire is the product of NATO will. The prospective peace is entirely dependent on NATO force. And without a U.S. deployment, that force will not exist. Our British and French allies, already on the ground in Bosnia, insist on it. Bosnia’s president refused to come to Dayton unless it was guaranteed. No U.S. troops, no peace.

And because Bosnia has, like it or not, become a NATO responsibility, any failure of peace threatens NATO’s effective survival.

President Clinton, unfortunately, is an imperfect guide for such a dark forest. Hansel-like in his national television address last week, he dropped dozens of pebbles by which he might find his way back to domestic political safety in next year’s reelection campaign. No imaginable Republican attack line was left unanticipated. His Bosnia mission will not be about war, but about peace, and “especially children.” It will be “under the command of an American general.” It will have “clear, limited, and achievable” goals, and ” should and will take about one year,” at which point Bosnia can once again become “a shining symbol of multiethnic tolerance.” But — over and over again he conceded — “that doesn’t mean we can solve every problem.” America ” cannot and must not be the world’s policeman.”

It was a timid speech. The president sang his score with few technical mistakes. But in its weird combination of soaring, excessive promise and painfully obvious pleading, its required theme — that we either go to Bosnia or signal the beginning of an American military and diplomatic retreat from the entire world — was barely audible.

Republicans might be expected to amplify that internationalist chorus; until recently, they had it memorized. Bob Dole still does. He will encourage other Republicans to “support the president,” words that just a handful of them are now prepared to use. Most of Dole’s presidential primary opponents excoriate him for offering even the hope of eventual Republican agreement on Bosnia. Phil Gramm promises that Bosnia will “define this race.” Other leading Republicans claim still not to see the American security interest in the Balkans and pose ultimately unanswerable questions about “exit strategy.” Further down the leadership ladder, undisciplined by their seniors, the vocal mass of Republicans take daily aim at the president, and make grotesquely casual references to “body bags” and “Vietnam.”

What’s got into them? If it is public opinion on Bosnia that Republicans fear, they are fearful too quickly. Most Americans do not want to send troops.

They almost never do. But a plurality of CBS survey respondents say they at least understand why we might go. A plurality of respondents to the CNN/ USA Today/Gallup poll already favor deployment, and a majority of them feel an American moral obligation to help keep a Bosnian peace. Widespread, visceral opposition to an American Bosnia mission seems still restricted to what might be called the populist “conservative street.” The newsletter Talk Daily reports 85 percent opposition to the Dayton accord among call-in radio listeners, most of whom appear to believe that President Clinton’s Bosnia policy was invented by Democratic campaign consultants.

Liberal critics to the contrary notwithstanding, Republicans did not take control of Congress last fall by pandering to populism’s least sophisticated, most crudely nativist impulses. A gestural anti-Clinton politics on Bosnia is something Republicans do not need; the president has given them all the domestic policy opportunities they could ever ask for in next year’s election. And at its current volume, such a pandering, populist politics is bad for the country. When the “conservative street” is wrong, it should be corrected-or ignored.

The current Washington consensus is that American troops will go to Bosni a, one way or the other, as they must. M ost expect the Senate to endorse the deployment. But the House of Representatives remains very much in doubt, and in private conversation administration off*cials admit they would, if faced with explicit rejection, prefer to see no House vote at all. An unpleasant prospect, that: the Congress essen- tially holding its nose in grudging acquience as American soldiers march into harm’s way. If the president is to lead us overseas, the maintenance of American international standing requires that we succeed. Boxing Clinton in and carping at him won’t help achieve that result. Instead, Republicans can and should improve America’s position on Bosnia — in two particular respects.

The worst conceivable disaster that might befall America in Bosnia is a chaotic military pullout, under fire, in a breakdown of the peace. And such hostilities are made more likely, not less, if potential combatants are convinced that U.S. domestic politics will force us to withdraw at the first hint of trouble, or the end of Dayton diplomacy’s one-year limit, whichever comes first. The president himself knows his time limit must be elastic; he told Senate Democrats as much behind closed doors last Tuesday, reminding them that his speech had promised a homecoming in “about” one year, not strictly on the 365th day. In his mouth, that sounds like a “didn’t inhale” equivocation. But it’s true, just the same. And Republicans should give him cover, loudly announcing that once our troops go in, they will not be pushed out by any hostile force — or any arbitrary deadline that becomes inconvenient.

Diplomatic niceties aside, the bulk of U.S. forces will leave Bosnia only when they can do so with a reasonable expectation that inter-ethnic carnage will not instantly resume. That is the much sought-for “exit strategy”; there is no other realistic one. And diplomatic niceties aside once more, it is not ” mutual trust” based on “NATO neutrality” that will allow such an exit. The Serbs do not put down their guns because they trust America will treat them fairly. They do so because they know we sympathize with Bosnia, and they trust only that we will kick their skulls in if they break the peace. In the absence of NATO force, an equal deterrent function can only be served by a rearmed Bosnian Federation. Here, too, Republicans should give the president cover, justifying and strengthening his determination to pursue an American-led rearmament effort.

This is asking most congressional Republicans to change the spirit of their Bosnia rhetoric rather dramatically, to be sure. It will be awkward for many of them. But that’s a small price to pay given the stakes involved. The alternative, a body blow against the perceived American commitment to international leadership, would be a grave shame. More than a small bit of which would justly attach to the GOP.

David Tell, for the Editors