APPEASEMENT AGAIN: LIKE ETHIOPIA, LIKE CZECHOSLOVAKIA.

by Stanley Hoffmann *

(International Herald Tribune, December 6, 1994)

Those of us who grew up in the 1930s and were later told about the lessons of Munich believed that the appeasement of aggression would not be repeated. We were wrong.

The way the so-called international community has dealt with Bosnia reproduces the League of Nations' handling of the Italian invasion of Ethiopia in 1935 and 1936 and, in a somewhat different respect, the British-French treatment of the Czech crisis of 1938.

When Italy invaded Ethiopia, the League imposed economic sanctions on the aggressor, but at the same time the British and French tried to negotiate a settlement with Mussolini. The sanctions, limited to certain products, were too mild to hurt Italy.

The British-French plan conceded two-thirds of Ethiopia to Mussolini, but public opinion in England killed it. Mussolini went on to conquer all of Ethiopia.

The international community made the mistake of simultaneously pursuing two incompatible policies: collective security against aggression, and a negotiated compromise between parties that were treated as morally equivalent. The hope of reaching a compromise kept the resort to collective security more symbolic than real. Aggression prevailed.

The same thing has happened in Bosnia. The United Nations' resort to international mediation has resulted in a succession of plans, each leaving more and more of Bosnia to the Serbs without satisfying them.

The United Nations has also resorted mainly to symbolic measures of support for the victims of Serbian aggression - the rather powerless International Criminal Tribunal, questionable economic sanctions, ceremonial NATO air strikes. Negotiations backed by no credible threat of armed force have turned into appeasement.

Symbolic collective security that did not even allow Bosnia to exercise its "inherent right of self-defense" by lifting the arms embargo on it has turned into a fiasco.

The only new thing that the United Nations has added to the Ethiopian precedent is an international force with a humanitarian mission - which, haplessly has been trapped in Bosnia. The force has become a hostage to the Serbs; for the British and French, its safety has become more important than Bosnia's, and a convenient pretext against any resort to more effective military measures.

The proper policy would have been to press the Serbs, by force if necessary, to stop using war and ethnic cleansing and to negotiate a fair settlement with their Muslim adversaries after a lasting cease-fire had been imposed.

During the crisis over the Sudeten Germans in Czechoslovakia, when Hitler negotiated directly with the British (who were acting for themselves and the French), he constantly refused to take "yes" for an answer; he kept escalating his demands while Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain kept increasing his own concessions at the expense of the Czechs.

At Munich, where the Czechs were not even invited, Hitler obtained pretty much all he had demanded. His only "concession" was to refrain from seizing by force what the British and the French were willing to offer him.

The Clinton administration began by condemning the Vance-Owen plan of early 1993 as a sellout of Bosnia. Now it seems ready to concede to the Bosnian Serbs both the right to confederate with Serbia - to form what would be the Greater Serbia of President Slobodan Milosevic's dreams - and the right to remain in control of all the territory they have seized by force until they obtain satisfactory constitutional arrangements from the Bosnian government. All of this, offered behind the backs of the Bosnian authorities, would be conceded in exchange for the Serbs' willingness to stop using force.

Britain and France have remained faithful to the sellout spirit of Munich. And the United States has preferred finally to join its obstinately appeasing allies rather than act alone and take risks to help a victim of aggression - as if appeasement entailed no risks of its own.

Are there differences between the situations? Weren't the two crises of the 1930s conflicts between states, whereas Bosnia is a civil war?

Some had tried to characterize Italy's invasion of Ethiopia as a legitimate act of colonial expansion. As for Hitler's dismantling of Czechoslovakia, many chose to see in it an intervention on behalf of a German minority mistreated by the Czech majority - in other words, an intervention in the domestic affairs of Czechoslovakia based on the impeccable principle of self-determination.

This is exactly what the Communists in Belgrade, reconverted into nationalists, have claimed in order to justify their dismantling of Bosnia. The Bosnian Serbs would never have been able to conquer 70 percent of the country without the Serbian army's intervention in early 1992 - in other words, without Belgrade's aggression against a multinational country recognized by the European Union and the United Nations.

Some argue that Bosnia should never have been recognized as an independent state in 1992 because of the uncertainty hanging over its future. But a refusal to recognize it would only have provided justification for Serbia's design of ethnic imperialism directed against the Muslims at a time when a European attempt to find a peaceful solution had been sabotaged by the Bosnian Serbs' decision to form a "republic" of their own.

The relations between Serbia and the Bosnian Serbs faithfully reproduce the relations between Nazi Germany and the Sudetenland. The only real difference is that President Milosevic does not have Hitler's power and global ambitions.

But can we be sure that Serbia's nationalists will be satisfied? A victorious Serbia could spread violence to Kosovo or to Macedonia or Albania. There is still the danger of a major international crisis in the Balkans, provoking a showdown between Russia and NATO, a split between the Western powers and Greece, and increasing tensions between Western Europe and the United States.

As at the time of Munich, the great powers have chosen "peace" at the expense of honor. They have not even obtained peace yet, and may get much more war. The dishonor they have already earned.

Stanley HOFFMANN

* The writer Chairman of the Center for European Studies at Harvard University, contributed this comment to the New York Times.