SUPPORT FOR TROOPS TO BOSNIA MAY BE LUKEWARM AT BEST

So there is to be peace in Bosnia. There will be some form of peace, that is, if this past week's news out of Dayton, Ohio, is to be fully credited. Negotiators met for several weeks at Wright-Patterson Air Force Base near Dayton under the auspices of the Clinton administration's secretary of state, Warren Christopher, and his deputy, Richard Holbrooke. A series of marathon negotiating sessions culminated with Tuesday's signing of a peace agreement.

At the heart of the peace agreement, or rather any chance for its enforceability, is the proposal for 60,000 peacekeeping troops to be stationed in the Balkans. President Clinton is proposing that 20,000 of these are to be American troops on the ground in this, one of the world's bloodiest and most unstable battlegrounds. Clinton will address the nation Monday night in support of this proposal. He has a major selling effort to do with an American public that remains skeptical, and rightly so.

The roots of racial, religious and ethnic animosities that have made the Balkans a byword for bloody strife and division are ancient. These bitter quarrels have raged nearly a thousand years and have been subdued only intermittently. Even Adolph Hitler, who marched 300,000 German troops into this corner of Europe during World War II, didn't fully succeed in imposing order in the region. More than 40 years of Communist control kept things mostly quiet in the former Yugoslavia, only to see these simmering quarrels explode into full-scale warfare and the slaughter of innocents once the Iron Curtain fell.

The terrain is mountainous and, in many parts, bleak in the extreme. The Bosnian Serbs hate their Muslim neighbors, and the feeling is mutual. Into this bloody cauldron President Clinton is proposing to plop down 20,000 American troops, in part to guard a long corridor five miles wide and many miles long. By its very nature, the troops are to be placed in an exposed and highly vulnerable position open to guerrilla and other random attacks.

It is by no means certain that Americans are ready to send our armed forces to serve for an indefinite commitment under such precarious circumstances. This is, after all, Europe's back yard -- not America's. Anyone who happened to watch the absolutely chilling "60 Minutes" report broadcast last Sunday, will be profoundly skeptical, if not flatly opposed, to this proposed deployment. Experienced British and American commanders were interviewed. Each testified to the long-term nature of any large-scale commitment of American ground forces. These experts offered the sobering testimony that presidential claims of a one-year commitment are strictly for domestic consumption and not to be taken seriously. With a cold-eyed clarity born of bitter experience, they warned that if such a force is deployed, we will ultimately train our grandchildren for their roles as Bosnian peacekeepers. Who among us thinks the American people are ready for such a protracted struggle?

The absolute test for committing American group troops in a war-torn foreign land must be the presence of a vital national interest of the United States. Former President Bush's masterful orchestration of more than 80 nations' forces to stop Saddam Hussein's grab for the world's oil supply met and passed this test. It isn't clear that this Bosnian adventure passes it at all.