Foreign Policy Briefing No. 30 March 17, 1994

U.S. TROOPS IN MACEDONIA: BACK DOOR TO WAR?

by Ted Galen Carpenter

Ted Galen Carpenter is director of foreign policy studies at the Cato Institute and author of A Search for Enemies: America's Alliances after the Cold War.


Executive Summary

The continued presence of U.S. troops as a trip-
wire force in Macedonia is an increasingly risky ven-
ture. President Clinton's apparent rationale for the
deployment was to deter further Serb expansionism,
thereby preventing the conflict in Bosnia from becoming
a wider Balkan war. But the Macedonia mission places
U.S. troops adjacent to Serbia's restive, predominantly
Albanian province of Kosovo. The outbreak of fighting
in Kosovo, which could erupt at any time, would likely
spill over the border into Macedonia, involving the
American forces stationed there.

Moreover, Macedonia itself may be the target of
expansionist ambitions of Albania, Bulgaria, and Greece
as well as Serbia. The recent decision by Athens to
impose an economic embargo against its northern neigh-
bor is the latest manifestation of tension. Although
Bosnia remains the most likely arena in which the
United States could become entangled in a Balkan war,
Clinton's regional containment strategy--symbolized by
the Macedonia deployment--also entails serious risks.


Introduction

Concerns that the United States might intervene in the
fighting convulsing the former Yugoslavia have thus far
centered on the conflict in Bosnia. The Clinton adminis-
tration's episodic threats to launch air strikes against
Serb forces if they continue to besiege Sarajevo represent
one possible scenario for U.S. involvement. Indeed, the
likelihood of that scenario has increased significantly in
the aftermath of NATO's February 1994 "ultimatum" to Serb
forces. Another possibility would be the introduction of
U.S. forces as part of a United Nations/NATO mission to
enforce a peace settlement reached by Bosnia's contending
Croat, Serb, and Muslim factions. The hostile public reac-
tion to U.S. casualties in the Somalia "peacekeeping" opera-
tion underscored the political risks inherent in a similar
Bosnia enterprise, but the administration nevertheless
continues to insist that it would contribute troops to such
a force.

Although Bosnia continues to be the most likely arena
for U.S. intervention in the Balkans, President Clinton's
decision last summer to send 330 U.S. soldiers to the former
Yugoslavian republic of Macedonia as part of a UN peacekeep-
ing operation also has lethal potential. Clinton's ration-
ale for deploying those troops was to prevent the fighting
in Bosnia from spreading southward, thereby possibly ignit-
ing a wider Balkan war. What the administration's regional
containment strategy may ultimately do, however, is entangle
the United States in the tragic Yugoslavian conflict that
American policymakers have thus far been wise enough to
avoid--despite periodic bouts of saber rattling.


A Risky Tripwire Strategy

Washington's policy on Macedonia is so flawed and
internally contradictory that it verges on incoherence.
The United States sent troops months before it even extended
diplomatic recognition to an independent Macedonia. Sensi-
tivity to objections by Greece (and Greek-American voters)
to the use of the name "Macedonia" by the new republic
caused the Clinton administration to delay establishing
diplomatic relations.(1) The United States found itself,
therefore, in the novel position of deploying military
forces to protect a country that it did not officially
acknowledge--an anomaly that was not corrected until Febru-
ary 1994.

That is only one of the many bizarre aspects of Ameri-
can policy. The U.S. military contingent is under orders to
merely "observe and report" on developments along the Serbi-
an-Macedonian border. As Air Force Times columnist Fred
Reed notes, if Serbian forces did invade Macedonia, one
would normally expect the Western news media to report the
event. American soldiers are clearly not needed as cub
reporters to cover a Balkan war. Despite the official
mandate to observe and report, it is apparent that the U.S.
troops are there to deter Serbia from making aggressive
moves against its southern neighbor. What is less clear is
whether the Clinton administration fully comprehends the
implications of that mission. Reed points out, correctly,
that the tiny American force could accomplish little of
military value in the event of a conflict: "The intimidating
effect of 300 troops relies on the belief that, if the 300
are messed with, several armored divisions will come to see
why."(2)

Therein lies the potential danger of the administra-
tion's initiative. If fighting erupts in Macedonia, the
U.S. force can easily become a tripwire for full-scale
military engagement. A senior Pentagon official acknowl-
edged that if American troops found themselves in danger,
they would have to be either reinforced or withdrawn.(3)
Escalation would be the more likely scenario, since hawks in
the United States would insist that America's "credibility"
was at stake. Indeed, Secretary of State Warren Christopher
stressed that "the U.S. is not likely to leave its troops in
Macedonia undefended. You can be sure of that."(4) Macedo-
nian deputy foreign minister Risto Nikoyas is quite candid
about the situation into which the United States has gotten
itself. While conceding that the small troop presence has
more of a symbolic than a military effect, Nikoyas added,
"Having 300 Americans here is also an obligation for the
United States; in case of difficulty, they cannot just flee
from Macedonia."(5)


Is Macedonia a Likely Battleground?

Although at the moment the Serbs are busy attempting to
consolidate territorial gains in Croatia and Bosnia, Serbian
expansionists may ultimately have designs on Macedonia,
which nationalist elements typically call "southern Serbia."
(The region was part of Serbia until it was conquered by the
Ottoman Turks in 1371.) Although there is not a large Serb
minority in Macedonia (Serbs make up barely 2 percent of the
population), historical factors could be sufficient to
interest Belgrade.

Macedonia is also a potential arena for conflict aris-
ing from competing territorial claims of several other
regional powers. Bulgaria qualified its recognition of
Macedonia by reiterating its long-standing claim that Mace-
donians are merely "western Bulgarians."(6) Sali Berisha,
president of Albania, has demanded that Macedonia's Albanian
population (some 21 percent of the total) be given cultural
and political autonomy. (Albania, in fact, sought to block
Macedonia's entrance into the Conference on Security and
Cooperation in Europe until the government in Skopje ac-
corded Albanians the status of "constituent nation," with
the right to veto any proposed changes to the Macedonian
constitution.)(7) And Greece, of course, displays open hos-
tility to the new republic; most recently, Athens imposed an
economic embargo and virtually closed the border with its
northern neighbor.(8)

There is a significant possibility that the fate of
Macedonia will be similar to Bosnia's--and for similar
reasons. Bosnia has never been a viable political entity;
it is a location rather than a nation, a piece of land where
ethnoreligious factions collided several centuries ago and
have continued to battle intermittently ever since. Macedo-
nia exhibits many of the same characteristics. Journalist
Robert D. Kaplan notes that Macedonia was the inspiration
for the French word for "mixed salad" (macedoine), which
accurately connotes the country's demographic diversity.(9)
An artificial multiethnic state does not have good prospects
for survival in a region that is witnessing a rising tide of
ethnic and religious chauvinism.

History offers little reason for optimism, either.
Author Misha Glenny notes that "whenever war has broken out
in this century, either Bosnia or Macedonia has been its
main theater."(10) Indeed, Macedonia was both the principal
arena of and the principal prize in two brief but bloody
struggles, the Balkan wars of 1912 and 1913. The first
conflict pitted Turkey, which then controlled Macedonia,
against a loose alliance of Serbia, Greece, Bulgaria, and
Montenegro. The second found Bulgaria waging war against
Serbia, Greece, Montenegro, and Romania over the territorial
spoils of the first. Bulgaria, thwarted in its goal of
acquiring Macedonia during the First Balkan War, and com-
pletely excluded from the territory after being defeated in
the second, subsequently made an alliance with Germany and
the other Central Powers in World War I, hoping to reverse
that outcome. It tried again in World War II, allying
itself with Nazi Germany for the explicit purpose of "recov-
ering" Macedonia.(11) That tenacity is testimony to the long-
standing nature of Bulgaria's ambitions regarding Macedonia.
Despite Sofia's reluctant (and heavily qualified) recogni-
tion of Macedonia's independence, those ambitions have not
disappeared.

There is little indication that the situation in Mace-
donia is significantly more stable today than it was at the
time of the Balkan Wars, given the smoldering ethnic and
territorial disputes. The attitudes of Bulgaria, Albania,
and Greece also demonstrate that Serb expansionism is not
the only source of potential danger to the tiny U.S. peace-
keeping force. An extremely worrisome omen occurred in
November when the Macedonian government claimed to have
foiled a secessionist plot directed by Albania.(12) A trip-
wire strategy is inherently risky, but it is especially so
in a case involving multiple, competing expansionist powers.


The Linkage to Kosovo

The deployment of a tripwire force in Macedonia is
imprudent, but even more alarming is the tendency of "con-
tainment" enthusiasts to link that presence with suggestions
for similar action in the adjacent territory of Kosovo to
protect the Albanian majority there from Serb oppression.
That various pundits have advocated such a measure is bad
enough, but more disturbing is a senior administration
official's admission that the dispatch of U.S. troops to
Kosovo was seriously considered in May 1993.(13)

Proponents of intervention seem to forget that Kosovo
is a province of Serbia, and an attempt to deploy American
soldiers there would constitute an act of war. They appar-
ently indulge in the same fantasy as Albanian president
Berisha, who in response to a journalist's query about
whether Serbia would ever allow NATO forces in Kosovo,
stated: "NATO doesn't need Serb acceptance. It can be done
as in Korea or Somalia. They will not be there to kill
Serbs; they will be there to protect the area [against more
ethnic cleansing]."(14)

It is far more likely that Serbia (or any other state
with a modicum of military capability) would forcibly resist
the occupation of one of its provinces by a foreign army.
Moreover, that probability is especially high in this case,
given the intense emotional and historical significance of
Kosovo to Serbia. As historian Thomas Emmert observes,
Kosovo is considered holy land by Serbs--the core of the
medieval Serbian kingdom and the scene of their devastating
defeat at the hands of the Ottoman Turks in 1389, which
ushered in nearly five centuries of Turkish domination.
(Serbia did not regain its independence until the Congress
of Berlin in 1878, and Kosovo itself was not retaken until
1912, during the First Balkan War.) Emmert and other ex-
perts on the Balkans warn that Serbs throughout the region
would passionately support Serbia's right to protect its
"Jerusalem."(15)

Nevertheless, interventionists invariably contend that
the United States and its European allies ought to protect
Kosovo's Albanian majority. One reason they cite is to
prevent a larger Balkan war. A Serbian crackdown on Kosovo,
they warn, would at the very least produce a flood of refu-
gees into Albania and Macedonia. Such destabilization would
provoke intervention by Albania, as well as unsettle the
delicate ethnic balance in Macedonia, thereby putting great
pressure on Bulgaria, Greece, and Turkey to cross the Mace-
donian border to protect their minorities. Glenny, for
example, asserts that if "Macedonia becomes the southern
Balkan battlefield, the opening gun will be fired in
Kosovo."(16)

Proponents of intervention contend that it is also
imperative for moral reasons. According to their thesis,
the brutal regime of Slobodan Milosevic in Belgrade has not
only abolished Kosovo's status as an autonomous province--
guaranteed in the old Yugoslavian constitution--but is de-
priving Albanian Kosovars of virtually all political rights
and civil liberties. Even worse, Belgrade now seems poised
to launch a full-scale campaign of genocide under the banner
of ethnic cleansing. The United States was culpable for not
taking action in Bosnia, they insist, and it must not stand
by while the same thing happens in Kosovo.

As is the case for most things in the Balkans, the
reality is considerably more complicated. There is little
doubt that Belgrade's policies toward Kosovo in recent years
have been repressive. From the Serb perspective, however,
not only does Serbia have a compelling historical claim to
Kosovo, but Serbs, not Albanians, have been the victims of
persecution--if one adopts a longer term view. They contend
that as late as the 1930s, Kosovo had a Serb majority. Only
after Benito Mussolini conquered Albania in 1939 and the
Nazi army defeated Yugoslavia in 1941 did the population mix
began to shift, as Italy authorized its Albanian protector-
ate to annex Kosovo. Although Yugoslavia reacquired the
province in 1945, the communist government of Marshal Josip
Broz Tito continued a pro-Albanian policy as part of a
larger strategy to constrain Serb influence in the Yugosla-
vian federation. Discriminatory measures adopted by a
succession of Albanian-dominated Kosovo governments (with
Tito's blessing) caused hundreds of thousands of Serbs to
leave the province, including some 320,000 between 1966 and
1981 alone.(17) According to Serb nationalists, that forcible
out-migration is why Kosovo is now 85 percent Albanian.

The Serb case has serious deficiencies. For example,
the higher birthrate of the Albanians--among the highest in
Europe--was at least as responsible for the changing demo-
graphics as were the anti-Serb policies adopted by the
Kosovo government. Nevertheless, Serb residents of Kosovo
were targets of discrimination--and sometimes acts of perse-
cution--for more than four decades. Although that fact does
not justify the perpetration of injustices against Albanian
Kosovars in the 1990s, it does help explain the intensity of
the Serb sense of victimization as well as the Milosevic
regime's determination to keep Kosovo Serbian.(18)

American politicians and pundits who contend that the
situation in Kosovo is one of bigoted Serb oppressors versus
innocent Albanian victims gloss over an extremely compli-
cated historical record. They are guilty of portraying the
moral muddle of Balkan politics as a pristine melodrama and,
even worse, of wanting to base Washington's policy on that
misconception. Not only do they dismiss legitimate Serb
grievances in connection with Kosovo, but they ignore the
issue of Albania's territorial ambitions, which apparently
include restoring the boundaries the country had as Italy's
protectorate in the early 1940s. The Berisha regime appears
intent on incorporating Kosovo--and possibly portions of
Macedonia with sizable Albanian populations as well.

U.S. officials seem dangerously casual about the risks
of meddling in Kosovo. In December 1992 President George
Bush warned Belgrade not to entertain notions of "ethnically
cleansing" the province of its Albanian population. Bush's
letter to Serbian president Milosevic stated bluntly, "In
the event of conflict in Kosovo caused by Serbian action,
the United States will be prepared to employ military force
against the Serbians in Kosovo and in Serbia proper."(19)
President Clinton expressed a similar warning in March
1993.(20) Sen. William Cohen (R-Maine) advocates a congres-
sional resolution endorsing the Bush-Clinton declarations,
thus making it clear to Milosevic: "Cross that line, and
Belgrade is in the cross hairs."(21)

U.S. policy appears to be moving toward making the
Albanian Kosovars de facto clients of the United States.
That step is fraught with danger. Even former State Depart-
ment official George Kenney, an outspoken advocate of a
hard-line policy in the Balkans, concedes, "It is not a
question of whether Kosovo will explode, but when."(22)

Kenney is not engaging in hyperbole. The province's
Albanian population is increasingly restless under Bel-
grade's repressive policies, and an armed revolt appears
imminent. Given the mythic significance of Kosovo in Serb
history, it is highly improbable that any Serbian government
would (or could) voluntarily relinquish control of the
province. Since the United States has put itself on record
as being prepared to use force to prevent more drastic forms
of repression, the ingredients are all in place for a mili-
tary conflagration. Indeed, the Bush and Clinton statements
may encourage the Kosovars to make a bid for independence,
in the belief that they can rely on U.S. assistance. The
Albanian government also has every incentive to foment
trouble in Kosovo as part of a strategy to realize the goal
of a greater Albania--an entity that some Albanian officials
believe would emerge from the ashes of a successful war by
the West against Serbia.


Risking a Needless Conflict

Public opinion surveys consistently show considerable
public resistance to U.S. military involvement in the former
Yugoslavia.(23) The extent and tenacity of such opposition
were apparently one factor that caused President Clinton to
reconsider his inclination to intervene in the Bosnian
conflict in May 1993, and they have continued to constrain
administration actions.

In this case, the public's wariness is justified.
There is no doubt that the violent breakup of Yugoslavia has
been a tragedy for the parties involved, and Kosovo or
Macedonia may become the arena for the next round of fight-
ing. Nevertheless, there is nothing at stake that even
remotely approaches a vital American security interest. It
has become a clichÇ among interventionists to compare Serbia
to Nazi Germany, with Milosevic playing the role of the "new
Hitler." According to proponents of U.S. military action in
the Balkans, the United States risks a rerun of the tragic
events of the late 1930s if it fails to stifle aggression in
its early stages. Those who embrace that view adopt a
simplistic, rote interpretation of history that ignores
fundamental differences between the two situations.

The crisis in the 1930s involved one of the world's
great powers--one with the second largest economy and a
large, well-trained military force--embarking on a frighten
ing expansionist binge. Serbia, on the other hand, has a
population of 9.8 million (about the same as Belgium's) and
a gross domestic product less than one-fifth of Denmark's.
Indeed, even before the UN economic sanctions began to bite,
Serbia's 1991 GDP of $18.75 billion was only modestly
greater than Luxembourg's.(24) Belgrade's military forces,
while not insignificant, largely consist of remnants of the
old Yugoslavian federal army (augmented by the Serb militias
in Bosnia and Croatia). The effects of the Yugoslavian
civil war and the UN arms embargo--despite some leakage--
have combined to degrade the readiness of those forces.
Although Serb military units might well be capable of mount-
ing a ferocious resistance to an intervening army in Serbia
itself, or in Serb-controlled portions of Bosnia and Croa-
tia, it is highly unlikely that they could mount credible
offensive operations against neighboring states, much less
against the major industrial powers of Western Europe.

In the late 1930s Germany was capable of creating a
massive disruption of the international system; in the 1990s
Serbia is capable only of modestly strengthening its posi-
tion at the expense of its ethnic rivals within the bound-
aries of the former Yugoslavia. Not only does Belgrade not
have territorial ambitions outside those borders, it would
lack the economic and military power to pursue broader
ambitions even if did have them.

Consequently, the fighting in the former Yugoslavia is
a parochial struggle with little importance outside the
immediate region. Even the worst-case scenario--the spread
of the conflict to Kosovo and Macedonia, with subsequent
intervention by such outside powers as Albania, Greece,
Bulgaria, and Turkey--would not fundamentally alter that
reality. Unless the United States foolishly puts its pres-
tige on the line, and its military forces in harm's way,
there is little intrinsic reason why a third Balkan war
would threaten vital American interests any more than did
the Balkan Wars of 1912 and 1913 (which involved many of the
same parties).

Indeed, there is even less reason today than during
those earlier struggles. In the years immediately preceding
World War I, two increasingly antagonistic alliances con-
fronted each other across the heart of Europe. Those rival
alliances included all of Europe's great powers, and key
members of both alliances were closely identified with
Balkan clients. Thus, there was always the potential that a
Balkan conflict would escalate to a continent-wide war (as
ultimately happened in 1914) that could threaten important
U.S. security interests. The situation today is consider
ably different. Europe is not cleaved by rival alliances,
nor is there eagerness on the part of major European powers
to push the expansionist agendas of Balkan client states.
In fact, both Russia and the principal members of the Euro-
pean Union have repeatedly resisted calls to become involved
militarily (beyond deploying small contingents as part of
the UN peacekeeping forces in Croatia and Bosnia) in the
Yugoslavian morass.

The conflict in the former Yugoslavia should cause
American policymakers to reflect on the nature of legitimate
U.S. interests in Europe. America does have security con-
cerns on the Continent, but they are--or at least should
be--relatively narrow. The core interest is to prevent any
power (or an alliance of hostile powers) from achieving a
dominant position and thereby controlling the major indus-
trial states of Western Europe. Containing a would-be
hegemonic state is a more realistic objective than adopting
a smothering strategy--seeking to pacify every portion of
the Continent, however remote and obscure, and to resolve
every ethnic feud or territorial dispute that might lead to
armed conflict. Such a goal would be unnecessary as well as
unattainable.

In the absence of a great-power challenger, such as
Nazi Germany or the Soviet Union, that could dominate Europe
and pose a serious threat to America's well-being, the
United States can afford to view lesser regional conflicts
with considerable detachment. There is no justification for
Washington's seeking to micromanage the Continent's secur-
ity. That is especially true of intervening in the perenni-
ally unstable Balkans.

It would be tragic if having thus far avoided entering
the Balkan imbroglio through the front door in Croatia or
Bosnia, the United States found itself entering through the
back door in Macedonia or Kosovo. President Clinton may
have opted to send U.S. troops to Macedonia as an apparently
low-risk way of appearing to "do something" about the Yugo-
slavian war, thereby appeasing hawkish elements in the
United States who were angered by his failure to intervene
in Bosnia. Even if that was his rationale, deploying Ameri-
can forces as a tripwire on the perimeter of a dangerous and
unpredictable conflict is imprudent. The debacle in Somalia
should have taught U.S. policymakers the folly of even well-
intentioned interventions in complex, multifactional dis-
putes that the United States comprehends dimly, if at all.
President Clinton should extricate the American "peacekeep-
ing" force from Macedonia immediately.


Notes


(1) Athens vehemently objects to the use of the name "Mace
donia" by the new republic, insisting that it implies terri
torial claims on the Greek province of Macedonia. Greece's
complaints led to a compromise that resulted in the coun
try's being admitted to the United Nations under the cumber
some name of the Former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia.
Greek-American groups, however, opposed U.S. diplomatic
recognition even under that condition.

(2) Fred Reed, "Our Troops in Macedonia Are at Great Risk,"
Air Force Times, August 23, 1993, p. 62.

(3) Elaine Sciolino, "U.S. Says It Will Send 300 Troops to
Balkan Republic to Limit Strife," New York Times, June 11,
1993, p. A1.

(4) Quoted in ibid.

(5) Quoted in John Pomfret, "First U.S. Troops Arrive in
Balkans," Washington Post, July 6, 1993, p. A1.

(6) Sabrina Petra Ramet, "War in the Balkans," Foreign
Affairs 71 (Fall 1992): 87.

(7) Misha Glenny, "Is Macedonia Next?" New York Times, July
30, 1993, p. A27.

(8) James Rupert, "Athens Adds to Embargo of Macedonia,"
Washington Post, February 19, 1994, p. A22.

(9) Robert D. Kaplan, Balkan Ghosts: A Journey through
History (New York: St. Martin's, 1993), p. 57.

(10) Glenny.

(11) Kaplan, pp. 63-66.

(12) Andrew Borowiec, "Macedonia Says It Has Thwarted a
Military Plot from Albania," Washington Times, November 11,
1993, p. A15.

(13) Barton Gellman and Ann Devroy, "U.S. Weighs Troops for
Macedonia," Washington Post, May 12, 1993, p. A1.

(14) "A Call for NATO's Intervention," interview, Christian
Science Monitor, July 16, 1993, p. 8.

(15) Thomas Emmert, "Why Serbia Will Fight for 'Holy'
Kosovo," Washington Post, June 13, 1993, p. C1.

(16) Glenny.

(17) Alex N. Dragnich, Serbs and Croats: The Struggle in
Yugoslavia (New York: Harcourt, Brace, Jovanovich, 1992),
pp. 162-65; and Andrew Borowiec, "Diplomats Fear Kosovo on
Brink of Ethnic Fighting," Washington Times, August 25,
1993, p. A9.

(18) For a concise discussion of the Serb preoccupation with
victimization and heroic resistance during the centuries
since the Battle of Kosovo, and the exploitation of that
attitude by the Milosevic regime, see Christopher Cviic, "A
Culture of Humiliation," National Interest 32 (Summer 1993):
79-82.

(19) Quoted in John M. Goshko, "Bush Threatens 'Military
Force' if Serbs Attack Ethnic Albanians," Washington Post,
December 29, 1992, p. A10.

(20) "Clinton Warns Serbian Leaders on Military Action in
Kosovo," Washington Post, March 2, 1993, p. A14. The U.S.
State Department issued a new round of warnings in October
that the United States would regard any Serbian use of
military force in Kosovo as "a very serious matter" and
would respond. Colum Lynch, "In a Balkan Corner, Concern on
U.S. Troops," Boston Globe, October 30, 1993, p. A4.

(21) William S. Cohen, "In the Balkans: Get Real," Washington
Post, July 14, 1993, p. A21. For a similar view, see the
article by Joseph DioGuardi, a former congressman from New
York. Joseph J. DioGuardi, "The Line on Serbian Aggression
Should Be Drawn at Kosovo," Washington Times, November 18,
1993, p. A19.

(22) George Kenney, "From Bosnian Crisis to All-Out War," New
York Times, June 20, 1993, p. E17.

(23) For examples, see the results of an NBC/Wall Street
Journal poll and a Louis Harris poll in "Opinion Outlook,"
National Journal, January 16, 1993, p. 157; another NBC/Wall
Street Journal survey, Wall Street Journal, March 19, 1993,
p. A12; a USA Today/CNN/Gallup Poll, "Most Think U.S. Should
Stay Out," USA Today, May 7, 1993, p. 7; a CBS News poll in
"Opinion Outlook," National Journal, June 5, 1993, p. 1375;
and two NBC/Wall Street Journal surveys in "Opinion Out
look," National Journal, October 2, 1993, p. 2396, and
November 27, 1993, p. 2855. Despite the massive propaganda
barrage for U.S. action following the mortar attack that
killed 68 civilians in a Sarajevo marketplace, the American
public still remained wary. A subsequent USA Today/CNN/
Gallup Poll indicated no more than a narrow plurality (48
percent to 43 percent) supported air strikes and 59 percent
opposed sending ground troops. Gary Fields, "No Consensus
on U.S. Role," USA Today, February 8, 1994, p. A4.

(24) International Institute for Strategic Studies, The
Military Balance, 1992-1993 (London: Brassey's, 1992),
pp. 51, 87.


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