BOSNIA OBJECTIVES: STILL HAZY AFTER ALL THESE YEARS

	With ÒsafeÓ havens in Bosnia seemingly destined to topple
one by one in a new version of the domino theory, the United States
and its allies in Europe and the United Nations remain divided over
what should be done to halt Serbian aggression.

	This lack of agreement and a clear game plan have long been
seen by two University of Virginia experts on Eastern Europe as the
major threat to the success of the UN mission in Bosnia. Both are
faculty members of the universityÕs Woodrow Wilson Department of
Government and Foreign Affairs.

	PAUL SHOUP, a political scientist who has studied and
written about the former Yugoslavia since he did his doctoral
dissertation on it 35 years ago, warned more than two years ago that
Òthe West should not go into Bosnia to bomb the Serbs, especially
not without a political solution in mind.Ó Shoup favored the safe
haven concept but predicted it would require armed protection by UN
troops and sooner or later cause Western casualties.

	Shoup says the United States and the international community
destroyed the Serbian economy, weakened their ability to negotiate a
political settlement and merely hardened the SerbsÕ determination to
gain a military victory by imposing sanctions without setting clear
conditions for lifting them.

	ALLEN LYNCH faults a lack of presidential leadership for the
hazy U.S. policy toward the Bosnian situation. Lynch says the
failure of the president and Congress to develop a clear and
consistent position on Bosnia is a sign of a larger and probably
ongoing problem: the lack of a U.S. vision of world order.

	This failure of vision could have more serious implications
if internal stresses trigger wider ethnic violence in Russia or its
neighbors, says Lynch, who is collaborating on a book that compares
the disintegration of YugoslaviaÕs multi-ethnic states with the
collapse of the former Soviet Union.  A scholar and periodic on-site
researcher of Russian foreign policy, Lynch won a Marshall D.
Shulman award from the American Association for the Advancement of
Slavic Studies for his 1987 book ÒThe Soviet Study of International
Relations.Ó

	Shoup can be reached at his office (804) 982-2952 or home
(804) 973-6218.  Lynch can be reached at (804) 924-3192 or (804)
977-1868.

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July 27, 1995