Planners outlined NATO’s largest military deployment in its history–60,000 men, a third of them American. The job: policing a 12-mile-wide disengagement zone in Bosnia for a year. The cost to the United States: $1.5 billion. The president was up on the details and prepped to parry questions from the congressional heavyweights, one participant said. Afterward, House Speaker Newt Gingrich remarked that it had been one of the best presidential briefings he’d ever attended.
But when Clinton’s aides took the show on the road last week, Operation Determined Effort began to look like a much tougher sell. This is, after all, what U.S. policymakers have tried to avoid since the first shots were fired in Slovenia in 1991–American troops on the ground in the former Yugoslavia. In congressional hearings, skeptics called the plan “dangerous,” “very disturbing” and “ill conceived.” Would Bosnia be another Somalia or Lebanon? Was the 12-month time limit for the operation dictated by military strategy, or politics? The public, too, was leery: a NEWSWEEK Poll found that 27 percent support sending U.S. troops to the Balkans; 59 percent oppose it. Progress toward a U.S.-brokered peace accelerated the debate. Secretary of State Warren Christopher announced that “proximity talks” will begin next week at Wright Patterson Air Force Base in Dayton, Ohio. Yet the critical task of building a domestic consensus for the use of U.S. troops was just beginning. “I don’t think we’ve made the case,” Christopher conceded.
NATO planners swear they’ve learned from the failures of U.N. peacemaking. Backed by armor, artillery and aircraft, the new “implementation force” (IFOR) would be more than three times the size of the fated U.N. “protection force” in the Balkans–“the biggest and the toughest and the meanest dog in town,” said Defense Secretary William Perry. Some details are up in the air pending a final peace settlement. But NEWSWEEK has learned that preparations are much farther along–and the details are far less fuzzy–than the administration is letting on. Indeed, NATO planners and grunts alike have been preparing for a year. Among the plan’s elements:
IFOR will comprise three divisions: one American, one British and one French. Brigades from other NATO nations will be slotted into these three core groups, for a total of nine brigades. A 10th brigade will be a helicopter-borne reaction force and mobile reserve. Its core will be from the U.S. Army’s South East European task force–about 5,000 troops headquartered at Vicenza, Italy. The U.S. headquarters will be in Tuzla, the French in Sarajevo and the British in the southwest, near Gorni Vakuf.
The bulk of the ground troops will be drawn from NATO’s Europe-based contingency forces, the Allied Forces Central Europe Rapid Reaction Corps (ARCC). Once a final peace agreement seems imminent, a small ARCC advance team will fly from its base in Rhein-Dahlen, Germany, to Bosnia. Three or four days after the signing, a 400-member forward headquarters team will begin setting up in Sarajevo.
The administration figures on total U.S deployment are far from firm. The 20,000 figure includes only the troops in Bosnia. Under the NATO plan, several thousand more U.S. forces would run a rear base in Croatia. NATO planners are looking at more than 70,000 troops in all, bringing total U.S. forces to some 25,000–not including air and navy units.
The White House campaign to build support for the Balkans operation has been almost as meticulously planned as NATO’s. Clinton and his top aides will take every opportunity in the next few weeks to make the case that America has a vital interest in safeguarding peace in Europe. A White House photo op on the eve of the Dayton meeting will underscore the message. Allied heads of state are already scripted in. “One after the other, they’re going to say, ‘We need U.S. leadership’,” says one Clinton aide. After a peace accord is worked out, Clinton plans a prime-time speech to explain why he wants to commit U.S. troops.
Most Congress-watchers think the GOP will eventually come around-or at least not seek to tie Clinton’s hands. So do European observers. “Clinton has given his word, so he will do it,” says one German official in NATO’s Brussels headquarters. That may be. But it will take a lot more selling.
Two administrations resisted putting GIs on the ground in the Balkans, but 20,000 may go in soon. NATO’s plans:
NATO troops would deploy within days or a peace deal
Main forces arrive by sea and through three airports
Most U.N. troops trade blue berets for their own hats
A fall deal could mean bivouacking in the cold
Soldiers will be backed by heavy armor and artillery
