Now America Is Stuck With the Balkans Crisis : Diplomacy: The press is on; the limping Vance-Owen effort is transformed by Clinton’s worthy gamble.

In the past week, the foreign-policy torch passed from George Bush to Bill Clinton when the new Administration declared its policy on Bosnia. Now the United States has assumed primary responsibility for pursuing peace in the Balkans. Given the nature of the mess that Clinton has inherited, he has made a creditable start.

A little U.S. leadership on Yugoslavia a year ago would have left both its people and the new U.S. President in a far better position than they are today. But the Bush Administration repeatedly passed the buck to the United Nations or the European allies, while it also opposed the Europeans’ efforts to develop regional security arrangements that might have reduced the demands on NATO and U.S. leadership.

President Clinton would have preferred to get his feet firmly on the ground before promulgating a policy on Bosnia that, inevitably, also has a critical impact on the future of Russia and other post-communist states, European security arrangements, the role of the United Nations and America’s standing throughout Eurasia and the Muslim world. But his hand was forced when Cyrus Vance and Lord Owen--the peace negotiators for the United Nations and the European Community--moved their efforts to the United States and the nation’s airwaves.

Their efforts also forced the Clinton Administration to shelve, at least for now, three ideas that had been circulating in Washington. One is that a show of U.S. military force is needed to persuade Serbia to halt its aggression and negotiate seriously. Another proposes opening a window in the embargo to allow the Bosnian Muslims to purchase arms to defend themselves. And the third is that Serbia’s aggression should not be rewarded by letting it keep conquered territory.

But none of these ideas could be pursued when the Vance-Owen plan seemed to offer a purely diplomatic resolution of the conflict. No U.S. President could choose military action over diplomacy, however flawed, against the background of the Bush Administration’s failure to tell the American people that the United States has important interests in the Balkans that justify the use of force.

Wisely, Secretary of State Warren Christopher began his presentation of policy by laying out the case for U.S. engagement. He first drew a line around the conflict, stating that the United States will not countenance any expansion of Serbian aggression in Kosovo and will support a stronger international presence in Macedonia. And he both associated the United States with the Vance-Owen mission and promised assistance--presumably including military deployments--in enforcing any peace agreement that is reached.

Thus the United States is now stuck with the Balkan crisis. But that fact also transforms it and offers the first possibility of a solution. America cannot afford failure in a region so tightly linked to Central Europe, the area that historically has commanded preeminent U.S. foreign-policy attention.

It is to be hoped that all the warring parties quickly get the message. The United States will not use military force up front, but it has now firmly laid down the principle of such use and hence of Bosnia’s importance to U.S. interests.

With the United States now engaged, a failure of diplomacy is more likely to bring a review of military options to underscore the seriousness of U.S. purpose; before, such a failure was more likely to bring a U.S. retreat from the problem.

Most important is what the United States will do with its newly assumed role of leadership. By acknowledging its interests and accepting direct responsibility for diplomacy, the Clinton Administration can begin to rally to a common purpose all the states that are interested in European security. This includes the Russians.

Notably, a visit to Moscow is the first task for the U.S. negotiator who will join the Vance-Owen effort. This is designed not just to seek Russian support for diplomacy and, beyond that, to show Serbia that it can expect no succor from abroad. Equally important, this Washington-Moscow diplomacy is designed to give President Boris Yeltsin an argument to use against hard-line opponents of his rule who charge that Russia is being ignored while great events take place in an area of its traditional interest.

Whichever way the Bosnian crisis now develops, President Clinton’s key task is to build support for U.S. leadership--in Europe, at the United Nations and at home. He must take a leaf from his predecessor’s book during Desert Shield, when the President Bush developed the case for protecting U.S. and global interests in undoing Iraq’s invasion of Kuwait.

Of course, the Clinton plan for Bosnia comes with no guarantees. This past week’s gamble--that engaging the “full weight of American diplomacy” will be sufficient to gain at least a respite in the fighting-- may not pay off. U.S. military force may have to be applied before rather than after a peace settlement. But at least Clinton has shown his awareness of U.S. interests in the conflict, he has leveled with the American people about those interests and he has given the Serbs one last chance to accept a way out of the current mess without a U.S.-led expansion of military action to Belgrade’s back yard.