NOT ALL PEACEMAKERS ARE BLESSED; HOARE-LAVAL PLAN WAS ANCIENT AGONY

Blessed are the peacemakers sometimes. Throughout the 1930s, with both Mussolini and Hitler in power, Europe tiptoed on the high wire of imminent war as the two dictators extorted their territorial gains.

In 1935, Mussolini made his grab at Ethiopia. There was consternation at this disreputable act of international thievery. Italy was no military powerhouse, but was strong enough to subdue Ethiopia in due course. The League of Nations got all excited. But what to do? Sanctions, yes, we could impose "a lethal oil embargo on Italy and bring down her economy." Fine. Good. But who would enforce the measures: the French Navy, the British Navy? What if the Italian fleet fired back? Men would be lost. Ships might be sunk. War. So maybe let's have sanctions, but not enforce them. Yes. That's a more prudent thing to do: unenforced sanctions.

Shouldn't the League do some negotiating on this? Yes, we must negotiate. Let's pick the British Foreign Secretary, Sir Samuel Hoare, and the French Prime Minister, Pierre Laval, to broker a deal between Mussolini and Emperor Haile Selassie.

Hoare and Laval worked out an agreement that they said was fair kind of fair sort of fair. From his own country, Haile Selassie would get 3,000 square miles and a port; Mussolini would get 60,000 square miles outright and 150,000 square miles for "exclusive commercial exploitation." Hoare said he had "to fatten the offer a bit" to get Mussolini to go along.

The world went bonkers on the Hoare-Laval Plan. The Ethiopian foreign minister said, "It rewards aggression. It rewards those who are killing our people. How can we be the victim of aggression and have our country taken away from us by the peacemakers?" Yugoslavia stated, "No country can acquiesce in its own dismemberment." The American Foreign Policy Association called it "peace without honor." The Australian Prime Minister asked, "What good can international organizations do if they just sit back and watch bullies grab what they want?"

In the British House of Commons, Prime Minister Stanley Baldwin always confused about foreign policy dumped Hoare overboard, admitting that he may have gone "a bit too far." In announcing the new British policy on Ethiopia, Baldwin said, "We stand where we stand" which statement let the whole world clearly know where Britain's heart was.

Premier Laval was his own Foreign Minister and could not make himself his own scapegoat. He slugged it out in Parliament for days. Paul Reynaud gave the greatest opposition speech. Like Baldwin, he wasn't interested in foreign policy and didn't know much about Ethiopia, but wanted the Laval government to fall and so to take France off the gold standard. Laval fell. So did the gold standard. So did Ethiopia. So did world honor.

Cyrus Vance and Lord David Owen, noble men of extraordinary patience, have fashioned the Vance-Owen Plan for Bosnia. The plan is not premised on conditions that should be, but on pragmatics of what can be. Thus, President Clinton, despite bolder notions previously expressed, has concluded that our European allies will venture no further in Bosnia than the Vance-Owen Plan.

The diplomatic might-have-beens of yesteryear won't pry open the pitiful, "intractable" closed book on Bosnia. The United States now brings its "full weight" to finding and implementing a less-than-optimal Bosnian solution. We must be certain that our European friends stay locked in the boat with us as full, upfront partners for the totality of the undertaking. Be ever on the lookout for Samuel Hoare and Pierre Laval.