Bosnia's Mira Image
REES, MATTHEW
Bosnia's Mira Image by Matthew Rees On the evening of December 13, with the Senate tied in knots over the deployment of 20,000 American troops to Bosnia, Majority Leader Bob Dole shuttled back and...
...He has been evenhanded if occasionally muddled toward Croatia, recognizing the country's sensitive middle position between Serbia and Bosnia...
...The most valid complaint lodged against Baratta may be that in the debate over sending American troops to Bosnia, she was insufficiently attentive to the concerns of other Capitol Hill aides...
...Outside the small circle of those who monitor U.S...
...and "Freedom...
...This prompted 10,000 ethnic Albanians to stage a rally outside the hotel where the senators were to meet with local officials...
...Although peaceful, the rally was broken up by the Serbian-controlled police, with many injuries and arrests...
...She and Dole pursued a number of options with the Bush administration but made little progress once it became clear that the breakup of Yugoslavia was viewed as a European problem...
...Milosevic didn't attend the meeting, but Dole got a taste of his tactics when his henchmen strongly advised the U.S...
...Born Mira Radielovic, she was raised in Pasadena, California, in a Croatian-speaking household and spent Sundays in a Croatian Catholic church in nearby Arcadia...
...Word had seeped out in the Kosovo press that a U.S...
...In search of a whip count, he turned to one of his trusted foreign-policy aides, Mira Baratta...
...During the Krajina offensive in August, he cautioned the Croatians "to respect the human rights of the Serbs," but added, "I can understand the Croatians' actions...
...After the Senate, on July 26, and the House, on August 1, mustered veto-proof majorities for lifting the embargo, GOP senator John Warner of Virginia spoke on the Senate floor in praise of Baratta's tireless work...
...Baratta was the lead staffer on this, and a number of Capitol Hill aides question whether last summer's arms-embargo vote would have passed without her leadership...
...How does one acquire such passion...
...But this will hardly prevent her from climbing the foreign-policy establishment's greasy pole...
...Growing up in a Croatian American household has something to do with it...
...When Dole's resolution comfortably passed that evening with 69 votes, thanks in part to Baratta's legwork, it was only the latest evidence of her paramount role in Dole's Balkan policy...
...Some eyebrows were raised, for example, when she received the "Award for Excellence in Politics" from the National Federation of Croatian Americans in May for her "exceptional leadership on Capitol Hill in assisting Senator Dole's efforts to bring justice and peace to Croatia and Bosnia-Herzegovina...
...Third, she and Dole see eye to eye on issues related to the former Yugoslavia...
...But this hardly counts as treason, and most of the specific allegations range from the disingenuous to the downright comical, such as the claim from one Serbian group that Baratta is working for Dole because he is of Albanian descent (proponents of this theory-which his office denies-say his name should really be pronounced "doe-LAY") Indeed, there's a fundamental problem with the fifth-column charge against Baratta: Dole's record shows no particular bias in favor of Croatia...
...Dole advisers such as Perle, Wolfowitz, and Jeane Kirkpatrick are among Baratta's biggest boosters, and with Bosnia temporarily settled, she's about to start work on issues related to ratification of START II...
...When asked to explain Baratta's success, friends, former colleagues, and observers cite her depth of conviction on Balkan issues...
...sources say this experience began to cement a strong working relationship...
...It's good he didn't: What he saw upon arriving in Kosovo later that day has had a profound, and prolonged, influence on his views toward the former Yugoslavia...
...Legislation that would have blocked funding for the deployment had received 22 votes-many more than expected-and the fate of his own middle-of-the-road resolution was in doubt...
...But within this group, her influence and her expertise are widely recognized...
...He has taken a consistently hard line toward Serbia (calling it "an international outlaw state" in December 1992) and a consistently supportive position toward the Bosnian Muslims...
...As Dole watched these Gestapo tactics unfold, Baratta was nearby...
...Wolfowitz, who remains an informal Dole adviser, calls Baratta "fair and strikingly of the view that the differences aren't between Croatians and Serbs or Serbs and Muslims but between decent people trying to defend themselves and tyrannical bullies...
...It has three sources...
...Far from being a liability, Baratta strengthens Dole's staff with her expertise...
...Indeed, while a weakened Serbia ultimately benefits Croatia, to indict Baratta for this is unfair though not surprising: The conspiracy theories spun about Baratta's role reflect the passion and hysteria that permeate debates about the Balkans...
...Articles by influential analysts like Albert Wohlstetter were regularly distributed, and briefings by foreign policy bigshots such as Dick Cheney, secretary of Defense in the Bush administration, and Paul Wolfowitz, dean of the Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies, were held for senators of both parties...
...During the past year, an active education campaign was waged from Dole's office, informing senators and staffers on the panoply of issues involved, such as the illegality of the arms embargo...
...Probably sooner...
...Today, says one Capitol Hill foreign-policy aide, "Mira is the majority leader when it comes to Bosnia...
...First, she works for Dole, which automatically gives her a role in policy debates...
...delegation would arrive in Pristina, the capital, on August 29...
...The demonstrators chanted, "U.S.A...
...Her first year she focused on NATO and arms control, but after communism's collapse and a swing through Eastern Europe with the senator, her duties changed...
...That's a slight exaggeration, but it's clear Baratta's role in implementing Dole's ideas has steadily increased, particularly since the Republicans took over Congress and the majority leader began running for president...
...Warren Christopher would probably challenge that assessment, but there's no denying Baratta's clout...
...policy toward the Balkans, the 35-year-old Baratta is unknown...
...Bosnia's Mira Image by Matthew Rees On the evening of December 13, with the Senate tied in knots over the deployment of 20,000 American troops to Bosnia, Majority Leader Bob Dole shuttled back and forth from his second-floor Capitol office to the Senate floor, working to ease political tensions...
...Not surprisingly, then, the peripatetic majority leader has invested enormous trust in his aide...
...Dole was skeptical that purely diplomatic or economic pressure could end the war, and in the fall of 1992 he seized on lifting the U.N.-imposed arms embargo as America's best option to help the Bosnian Muslims...
...When Dole heard this he walked out of the meeting, telling his hosts he wouldn't abide by their suggested travel restrictions...
...Since the war began in June 1991 following the secession of Croatia and Slovenia, Dole and Baratta both have seen unrestrained Serbian aggression as the central issue...
...Needless to say, Baratta's ethnic background has opened her to charges of pro-Croatian bias...
...policy...
...On a visit to Belgrade in late August 1990, Dole and six other senators met with representatives of the Milosevic government to discuss human rights and democratic elections...
...But dating back to June 1991, she has spent an enormous amount of time on the Balkans...
...She traveled with him to London and Brussels last November to discuss Bosnia with NATO allies, and she helped write his grandly titled article, "Shaping America's Global Future," in the spring issue of Foreign Policy...
...Baratta, who calls herself a Reagan Republican, began working for Dole in June 1989 after a three-and-a-half year stint at the Arms Control and Disarmament Agency (earlier, she studied European and security issues at Georgetown University and the Fletcher School...
...Second, she has as good an understanding of the Balkans as anyone on Capitol Hill...
...Should Dole be elected president, there's no question the precocious Baratta sooner or later would be offered a high-level slot on the National Security Council or at the State Department...
...Later, Dole wrote in the Washington Post, "The scenes we saw from our speeding bus were appalling and unforgettable-tanks and troops everywhere, hundreds of demonstrators fleeing in all directions, trying to avoid the club-wielding security forces, and tear gas rising over the confusion and carnage...
...Moreover, she is probably the only congressional staffer monitoring ex-Yugoslavia who speaks and reads both Croatian and Serbian...
...delegation to scrap their planned trip to Kosovo, a Yugoslav province where Milosevic had imposed martial law the previous year...
...Having supported Dole in the '88 GOP primaries, she landed on his staff with the help of a colleague...
...There aren't a lot of specialists on the region, and congressional aides say Baratta possesses an understanding of Balkan nuance that would elude those who had not been exposed all their lives to the region's dicey politics...
...Richard Perle, an informal Dole adviser who worked on behalf of the Bosnian Muslims at the Dayton peace talks, says that other than Richard Holbrooke, Baratta has been the most influential individual in shaping U.S...
...U.S.A...
...Freedom...
Vol. 1 • December 1995 • No. 15
