MISSOURI COMMENTARY: A DAY OF RECKONING IS DUE IN BOSNIA

It may be time for the United Nations to declare defeat and come home from Bosnia. This has been a mission that was never quite sure of its mission. It has been a partnership effort of United Nations forces mostly seeking to operate like the Red Cross and NATO air forces once in a while seeking to act like Gen. Jimmy Doolittle. It has been a mess from the beginning and now is moving closer to its messiest.

From the beginning, President George Bush and later President Bill Clinton were adamantly opposed to using U.S. ground troops as part of any U.N. peacekeeping activities. Looking back, they were probably correct in their caution.

Sprinkling a few thousand American GIs amongst a 22,000-strong peacekeeping force would not have changed the result. Just imagine if today a couple of dozen American soldiers, under the command of a foreign general, were pictured chained to some Serb military installation deemed to be a target of a forthcoming NATO air attack. In the heat of the warmup season to the presidential campaign, there would be demands for all sorts of aggressive action beginning with air and sea invasions and maybe even using a tactical nuke or two. When we say we are not the world's policemen, we are better off if we mean it most of the time.

Despite our willingness, until now, to put our military where out mouth is, we somehow seemed to believe that we should mastermind the undertaking in Bosnia simply by example of our status as the world's only superpower and only military power of consequence. The British and the French, quite understandably, view it differently. They have the largest military presence in Bosnia with the largest numbers of people at risk. It is a European matter in a region that has throughout the 20th century generated more than its fair share of turmoil and anguish.

But the day may come where we may have to put out military where out mouth is. We have made a commitment to send in such forces as may be necessary to withdraw the U.N. peacekeepers if such withdrawal were deemed necessary. The British, the French and the other national contingents could ease their way into Bosnia under the guise of providing humanitarian relief. They cannot fight their way out as passive allies of the NATO air force bombing Bosnian Serb encampments.

He may not want to be the world's policeman, but we are the international 911 call when there is a need to move military men and equipment in or out of a dicey hot spot.

From the United Nations' and NATO's perspective, the Bosnian tragedy cannot go on half humanitarian and half bombing. Once the death toll of French and British soldiers or the humiliations of increased hostages becomes an unbearable domestic political burden to President Jacques Chirac and Prime Minister John Major, withdrawal becomes less a possibility and more of a likelihood. With their men at risk, their decisions are matters of compelling internal politics, not grandiose musings about great alliances.

The peacekeeping mission has to end some day. There isn't the will to upgrade it from peacekeeping to peacemaking -- only substantial U.S. ground participation and direction could do that.

The strange partnership of the U.N. and NATO along with a call for stronger actions by the troopless American government has caused some strains on the great alliance that has kept the fundamental peace since World War II. There was a tidy predictability of a continuing confrontation between NATO and the Warsaw Pact. It has given way to a Balkan mess.

The strain on the alliance would increase enormously if we were to back off on our commitment to expedite the withdrawal of U.N. forces.

Even as a rescue operation, it is not certain that there is enough popular support in America to put its young people at risk. Clearly we would be entering a war. Clearly blood has been spilled and more would likely be spilled -- now including American blood. President Bill Clinton, as a candidate for President, stated he would come to Congress if American troops were to be put in harm's way. He fudged on Haiti. It would be difficult to fudge on Bosnia where human slaughter is a condition of daily life.

Would a Republican Congress, loaded with a bunch of would-be presidents, be anxious to support a Democratic president on a very risky, less-than-glorious mission to rescue some embattled allies?

Senator Bob Dole, the Republican frontrunner, and House Speaker Newt Gingrich have both made utterances about bi-partisan foreign policy -- "politics ends at the water's edge" and all of that. Operation Shoot-Out Rescue in Bosnia would be the acid test.

~Tom Eagleton is a former U.S. senator from Missouri and a columnist for the Pulitzer Publishing Co.