The Bosnian imperative: an open letter to Bill Clinton.

• Author: Renner, Michael
• Position: Editorial

Dear President Clinton:

The international community finds itself in growing disarray over the violent dismantling of Bosnia-Herzegovinia and the prospect of a wider Balkans conflagration. You have ruled out committing U.S. ground troops unless all contenders agree to the Vance-Owen peace plan. Unfortunately, it appears that the Bosnian Serb leadership was emboldened by your decision, which signaled to them that the outside world would continue to stand by in the face of genocide. But while responding to the challenge of humanitarian intervention can be postponed, it cannot be avoided forever.

The United States cannot, and should not, be the world's policeman. Only the United Nations, representing the collective will of humanity, carries the legitimacy necessary for intervention. But one thing the United States can do is to help create a Volunteer Peacekeeping Corps, staffed by individual volunteers from the armed forces as well as by civilians, to serve under U.N. supervision. These individuals would be trained in the unique skills demanded by peacekeeping - including mediating conflicts, monitoring borders, setting up protected zones, and supervising the disarming of antagonists. This is, in fact, what the Scandinavian countries have been doing with great success since 1964, when they began setting up a joint system to prepare volunteers - currently about 4 percent of their total armed forces - for...