WASHINGTON -- As the distant Bosnian war swings between atrocity and cease-fire, a quieter conflict grinds on inside the U.S. government, sapping the strength of policy-makers, eroding the Atlantic alliance and blocking decisive American action.
Since Yugoslavia's ethnic patchwork pulled apart in 1991, a shifting cast of players ranging from low-level State Department desk officers to presidents has agonized over the consequences, spending more time and worry on Yugoslavia than on just about any other international problem.
But after nearly four years of frantic diplomacy and frustrating debate, policy-makers remain at odds over basic questions:
Is this a war of aggression or a civil war? Will heavy weaponry and airstrikes halt the conflict, or will it take the deployment of hundreds of thousands of U.S. troops, a move that could lead to heavy American casualties? And what is the price of U.S. inaction?
"It's the most frustrating issue I've ever dealt with, and we were always running behind," said Stephen Hadley, former assistant secretary of defense for international security policy in the Bush administration.
In Washington, it has been an exhausting, damaging battle between those arguing in favor of what they believe to be morally right and those arguing about what is politically possible, a process that has highlighted the imperfections in the making of foreign policy.
By now, the original goal has been shown to be unreachable: a multiethnic state in Bosnia-Herzegovina. The second wave of European genocide in a half-century has gone largely unpunished. Despite a fragile winter cease-fire, a weary Clinton administration worries about explosive new fighting in the spring and the danger of a wider war.
U.S. experts started predicting Yugoslavia's collapse as early as 1980, the year that Josip Broz Tito died -- the Communist dictator who had held Serbs, Croats and Muslims together for decades. By late 1990, U.S intelligence analysts were fore-casting that Yugoslavia's breakup was imminent.
In retrospect, officials say early action by the United States and its allies might have prevented the horror that followed, first in Slovenia and Croatia, and then, starting in 1992, in Bosnia.
Brent Scowcroft, President George Bush's national security adviser, says now:
"Had we gotten together with the Europeans and drawn up these nice conditions, gone to the Yugoslavs and said, 'Look, we don't think you ought to break up. It doesn't make sense. You ought to try to rationalize your differences. But if you insist on breaking up, OK, but here are the conditions we insist on, [it] might have worked.
"Should have been tried," Mr. Scowcroft said, "and it wasn't."
Before the war spilled into Bosnia in 1992, Pentagon officials floated the idea of sending a military peace keeping force to deter it.
But Mr. Bush wanted to stay out. He defied the power of televised carnage to put political pressure on him to act. Having led the anti-Iraq coalition and sent a half-million troops to the Persian Gulf, he was happy to leave this crisis to the European Community, which was eager to show that it could tackle a security problem on its own.
This kept the United States and the NATO military alliance on the sidelines from mid-1991 through mid-1992, a time when U.S. global prestige was highest.
This period of inaction coincided with the Bosnian Serbs' largest offensives to grab large chunks of Croatia and Bosnia.
Among top aides, no one pushed Mr. Bush strongly, not even Mr. rTC Scowcroft or then-Deputy Secretary of State Lawrence S. Eagleburger, both Yugoslav experts.
"We could not solve it at a price we were prepared to pay, which at worst would have been another Vietnam," argues Mr. Scowcroft, who to this day views all sides in the conflict as equally bad.
The Persian Gulf war, he says, had finally purged the nation of the "Vietnam syndrome," the fear that any major U.S. military action lacking broad popular support might embroil the nation in another bloody, drawn-out and divisive conflict. "I didn't want to bring it back," Mr. Scowcroft says.
While the top ranks of the national security bureaucracy wanted to duck the issue, the lower-level experts called for military action, as more and more evidence was found of genocide against Bosnian Muslims.
As Serbs pursued their brutal campaign of "ethnic cleansing" against Muslims and Croats, some advisers pestered Secretary of State James A. Baker III to propose air attacks against Serb artillery around Sarajevo, the Bosnian capital.
But others demurred. Robert Zoellick, a top Baker aide, said: "I never felt certain what course of action was right."
And as the Bush re-election campaign heated up, the administration feared being accused of launching military action merely to boost the president's popularity.
'Humanitarian nightmare'
The result was that the administration settled for labeling the conflict a "humanitarian nightmare," rather than what many officials thought it has been from the start: a Serbian war of aggression.
As for Mr. Baker, he goaded Europeans to do more even as he privately disparaged them as incompetent.
In the midsummer of 1992, as the Baker team was shifting to the Bush re-election campaign, allegations surfaced about one of the most sensational Serbian atrocities -- prison camps reminiscent of Nazi terror. But the department failed to react until news articles and television footage of emaciated prisoners caused a public uproar.
By late summer 1992, internal frustration with administration inaction broke into the open with the resignation of a State Department Balkan desk officer, George Kenney, who was the first of several officials to quit in protest.
Some Pentagon officials pressed for arming Bosnia's Muslims, arguing that such action would prevent the eventual need for U.S. ground troops to enter the war.
Toward the end of 1992, the lame-duck Bush administration tried unsuccessfully to sell the idea to the Europeans.
During the 1992 presidential campaign, Bill Clinton attacked Mr. Bush for inaction on Bosnia and called for helping the Muslims militarily.
Aides also disparaged the Bosnian peace plan worked out by the European Union and the United Nations.
Enter President Clinton
But once in office, Mr. Clinton changed course. He learned, as had Mr. Bush, that what was desirable in the Balkans was not necessarily possible.
Instead of seeking to lift the arms embargo right away and begin airstrikes against the Serbs, he decided to try diplomacy first.
Over the next two years, Mr. Clinton's policy would alternate between urging NATO to use modest force against the Serbs and ceding the initiative to Europe.
The Serbs, meanwhile, continued to capture territory. While rhetorically siding with Bosnian Muslims, the administration, at key moments, acquiesced in Europe's bid to coax the Serbs into a settlement.
Thus began a pattern that has persisted to the present: When U.S.-led military pressure is off, Bosnia's Serbs resume "ethnic cleansing" -- forcing Muslims and Croats from areas under Serbian control -- and stepping up attacks against Sarajevo and other Muslim population centers.
Serbian offensives, in turn, trigger new threats of military action from Washington. When these have appeared real, the Serbs have scaled back their attacks and sounded amenable to negotiations.
Of the officials trying to influence Mr. Clinton, Madeleine K. Albright, envoy to the United Nations, and W. Anthony Lake, Mr. Clinton's national security adviser, pushed hardest for military action against the Serbs.
But at key moments, Mr. Clinton has heeded the cautionary counsel of the Pentagon and European allies; the result is that airstrikes have been limited and seemingly ineffective.
Christopher's policies
Secretary of State Warren M. Christopher has veered from one camp to the other.
He has argued in favor of the United States' setting policy, in hopes that Europe would follow. At other times, Mr. Christopher has tried to push the conflict aside, arguing at one point that atrocities were being committed on all sides.
By this past December, the administration gave up all pretense of threatening force and allowed former President Jimmy Carter to try to negotiate a cease-fire.
Meanwhile, the internal war takes its toll.
"Everyone's a bit worn down by the problem," said a senior White House official assigned, like so many past and present colleagues, to "manage the conflict, prevent it from getting worse and somehow wrestle it to the ground."