Mission Possible

...every use of force promises body bags or downed pilots but no hope of success...

...As if to prove the point, Mladic brought up Vietnam last week in a CNN interview...

...He reminded viewers how the United States had left Southeast Asia with its "tail between its legs," and he predicted it would do so again in Bosnia...

...It is also another key element of the Mission Impossible syndrome, for it sets the bar ever beyond the reach of any practicable foreign policy...

...They know that the United States, even after its triumph in the Cold War, still has Vietnam on its mind...

...NATO's air campaign might have succeeded in cowing the Serbs even without the Croatian victory in the Krajina last month...

...American and NATO military power could accomplish little...

...Charles G. Boyd (recently retired as Deputy Commander in Chief of the U.S...

...They have been told that the world is a chaotic, incomprehensible place where the old rules about power no longer apply-and where even the weakest players are somehow impervious to the vast military, economic, and political influence America wields...

...every air campaign is futile...

...But the demand for enduring solutions to the world's troubles is really just a debater's trick...

...They know that although America has the wherewithal to destroy them, American will to do so will always be open to question...

...Despite its appeal to the amateur strategist, a reliance on air power alone-the strike option- in this type of terrain with these kinds of targets has never held any real promise of conflict resolution...

...It took the tiny army of Croatia to prove that the enormous dark shadows that had paralyzed American foreign policy were being cast by very small and vulnerable figures...

...In addition, a prostrate Russia scarcely able to quell the rebellion of Chechens on its own territory transmuted into a powerful Serb patron capable of vetoing international decisions just as if it were the Soviet empire of old...

...Until last week, the Mission Impossible syndrome thrived on the Bosnian crisis...

...Foreign disputes in which we involve ourselves, especially in this post-Cold War era, are "age-old" or "ethnic" and, therefore, "intractable...

...NATO airstrikes will not create the "enduring solution" Boyd and others claim to want...

...Displayed daily by politicians and pundits whose words are beamed to every corner of the world, the Mission Impossible syndrome begs for challenges from the world's ruthless men...

...Americans could save themselves and the world a great deal of trouble if they developed a bit more confidence in the prudent and timely use of force, a confidence commensurate with their nation's capabilities...

...This fear may be America's only serious weakness in the post-Cold War era, but for a great power it can be the most dangerous...

...American fears of what could go wrong in any military mission, combined with the perception that Bosnia's conflict was waged by men driven mad by ethnic hatred, had turned the Bosnian Serbs into invincible giants...

...A successful policy in the Balkans will solve problems where possible and suppress the worst manifestations of the problems that cannot be solved...

...Small wonder Americans sometimes seem unen-thusiastic about conducting foreign policy...

...Military missions will always be fraught with risks, but the leadership role that politicians in both parties claim for the United States cannot be won without some risk...

...But one wonders if the United States and NATO would have had the courage to launch the campaign before the Croats revealed just how weak the Serbs really were...

...For years, military experts like Boyd and politicians from both parties have patiently and persistently explained to the American people that military activism doesn't work...

...Our expensive, high-tech tanks won't work in the Middle Eastern desert...

...More important, the success of this measured but effective use of military might may help the world's most powerful nation get over the pervasive fear that every foreign policy tangle is a Mission Impossible...

...When the foreign ministers of Bosnia, Croatia, and Serbia met in Geneva on September 8 to begin talking about a settlement of the conflict, they stood on the rubble of four years of conventional wisdom that American and NATO military action in the Balkans could have no useful effect...

...European Command) declared in the pages of Foreign Affairs that any course of action other than acquiescing to the territorial demands of the Serbs was foolhardy...

...In the past six years, Manuel Noriega, Saddam Hussein, and Raul Cedras all made the same calculation...

...Air power...

...Every military campaign is a potential quagmire...

...And after years of being told about all the many chances for failure, perhaps the launching of last week's air campaign will remind Americans that military action can also succeed...

...Only very large numbers of troops on the ground" could "make a difference," Boyd wrote, skillfully employing the Powell doctrine with its usual purpose of frightening civilian leaders away from the use of force...

...And America's own allies had come to appear as powerful as they were independent, capable of disdainfully brushing off America's feeble requests as if this were once again the early nineteenth century...

...Even as waves of NATO warplanes flew missions over a virtually depleted Bosnian Serb army, even as Serb leaders in Serbia and Bosnia both eagerly sought negotiations while the bombs fell, American and NATO officials fretted about what the fist-shaking Mladic would do next-as if there were something he could possibly do in the face of such overwhelming power...

...The result in all three cases was an unnecessary intervention...

...Our laserguided bombs won't work in the Balkan hills...

...But NATO air strikes have dramatically altered the situation in the Balkans to the point where a peaceful settlement stands its best chance to take root since the start of the conflict four years ago...

...That would be a welcome step forward, because a timid superpower poses a greater danger to the present world order than ten Serbias...

...To accomplish that perfectly reasonable and important goal, however, will require Americans to get past their misplaced fear of their own powerlessness...

...Indeed, just this past month, Gen...

...Those we support and those we oppose are irrational and thus not susceptible to the kinds of threats and blandishments that once worked so well in dealing with such rational leaders as Stalin, Khrushchev, Mao, and Kim Il-Sung...