"The Lesser Evil" by Richard K. Betts, in The National Interest (Summer 2001), 1112 16th St., N.W., Ste. 540, Washington, D.C. 20036.

During the Cold War, the United States was often wrongly accused of neo-imperialism. "Today, however, we are engaged in real neo-imperialism" in the Balkans, says Betts, director of the Institute of War and Peace Studies at Columbia University. He calls for "a modified bug-out."

When President Bill Clinton sent troops to Bosnia in 1995, he said they would be out within a year. Today, there are 5,700 U.S. troops in Bosnia and 5,400 in Kosovo.

Reluctant to face "an unpalatable choice between the much stronger efforts that cultivating political stability would require and a withdrawal that might reignite war," the United States, the North Atlantic Treaty Organization, and the United Nations have "drifted toward openended occupation," says Betts. But that has seemed the path of least resistance only because the costs thus far have been low, with no U.S. casualties. The odds that the costs will remain low indefinitely are poor, especially in the event of further economic decline, he says. Rumblings can already be heard—Croat rioters have disturbed the calm in Bosnia, for example.

"Contrary to the implicit logic of enthusiasts for limited intervention," Betts says, "there is no evidence that a liberal, tolerant, de-ethnicized political order is the natural default option once a peaceful truce is attained." Re-establishing civic trust among the ethnic groups whose members have been killing one another in large numbers is no easy task. "To create secular liberalism in the Balkans amounts to remaking the societies—nation-building and state-building," he says. Even if the United Nations, with Russia and China in the Security Council, did sanction an effort to impose Western-style democratic liberalism, neither the United States nor the European Union would be likely to undertake it, Betts says.

What about partition? "To make states both ethnically homogeneous and territorially defensible... would require revised borders and forced population transfers," he observes. "This would contravene international law and Western moral sensibilities to a degree that makes it a fanciful option."

That leaves, says Betts, the least bad option: Plan for an American withdrawal in, say, six months, and turn the policing of the Balkans over to the European Union, which has been groping for an independent "defense identity." If the Europeans refuse, then the United States still should get out but also should arm "the weaker of the local states" in the region to give them says—but it could be no more disastrous a chance of survival. An American with-than what continued temporizing may drawal would be "rather shameful," Betts bring.