Do we want a Europe ruled by blood?

The West is caught between intervention and realpolitik as Bosnia capitulates to the grim logic of war

Contemplating the disaster of Srebrenica and the possible consequences of it for the enclaves and the rest of Bosnia, there is no need to guess about the Serbian plan. We have the record. One leading Bosnian Serb explained last year that it was important to "cleanse the pockets ... of the madmen infected with the Asiatic plague, who hold a knife at our backs."

That man, Gojko Djoko, also spoke of a "final solution" involving partition between Serbia and Croatia. UN negotiators may jet about and babble, hoping, as the Commons was incredulously told yesterday, that the Serbs can be persuaded to hand back Srebrenica and let the wretched refugees go home.

But Radovan Karadzic has already spoken, as plainly as is possible, about what is happening. He has told his troops: "Pay no attention to what we do at the conferences, as all the maps are transient, and only what you hold is eternal. Hold every village of ours, and do not worry." As for the Muslims? "I do not see a future for the Muslim nation."

Are things this grim? It was only a few weeks ago, in the aftermath of the UN hostage crisis, that Western policy appeared to offer some hope of getting the Serbs back to those conferences. A rapid reaction force was being prepared. Belgrade seemed to have some hold over the Bosnian Serbs. It was inglorious, but it was not a disaster.

What has changed is that after a short pause the Serbs and the Bosnian government have both concluded that the UN, yet again, was not serious. The fighting round Sarajevo has resumed; in response, as the Bosnian government was doing well there, came the wolf-swoop on Srebrenica. We in the West may take ourselves seriously, with our jets, helicopters and historic regiments; but out there they have long since decided that we are an obscure and uninteresting joke.

Some of the contempt for the West has filtered back even to the Commons. As Malcolm Rifkind made his first statement as Foreign Secretary, defending the "we just plug on" line, the arguments were muted. An air of political exhaustion and despair hung over the chamber. There was plenty of commentary; but scarcely any ideas or proposals. Talk, but not energy.

The fact is, both main groups who do have strong views know that their solutions are bad ones, and half-approve the Government's unwillingness to concede. The interventionists, citing appeasement and genocide, are well aware of the lack of the preparation and leadership that would be needed for a full-scale military involvement.

And the pullers-out, talking the language of realpolitik and national interest, are aware that British national interests would also be damaged by withdrawal. Their view was eloquently put yesterday by the Powellite and former cabinet minister John Biffen, when he quoted Bismarck's dictum that the Balkans were not worth the bones of a single Pomeranian grenadier.

But the damage to British interests which would follow a scuttle are well summarised in a recent Bow Group pamphlet by the Tory historian Brendan Simms as including the destabilisation of south-eastern Europe; a longer- term threat to the British position on the UN Security Council; the threat to the British-American relationship; a serious refugee problem for the EU; and serious damage to relations with the Muslim world. Hardly a triumph for either realpolitik or the national interest.

Ministers have been caught between the two vivid, clearly expressed points of view. They have spoken murkily and temporisingly, and used the UN's humanitarian mission as the excuse for being neither interventionists nor pullers-out.

Doing so, they have saved very many lives. Whatever the worth of Pomeranian bones, or Welsh bones, many Bosnian bones have been kept whole and moving by the preparedness of Western soldiers to be derided, humiliated and fired at while trying to feed people who would have been left to starve by less civilised men. This is not something to be ashamed of.

Now, however, the war has moved on, and the UN troops are barely relevant at the flashpoints. We can expect the resultant policy tensions to crackle round the Cabinet table. In the past, Kenneth Clarke and Michael Heseltine have been among the strongest voices questioning deep British involvement in Bosnia, while John Major has been one of the ministers most in favour of plugging on.

Interestingly, Malcolm Rifkind's position has shifted significantly. Over the past couple of years as Defence Secretary, he has seemed a few notches more sceptical about British involvement than other ministers. He persisted in describing the conflict as "essentially a civil war". During a vicious artillery barrage on Srebrenica in April 1993, which led to it being declared a "safe area", Rifkind spoke, bizarrely, of Bosnia as being "a conflict in which all three ethnic groups have willingly engaged".

Comments like these led to a widespread view that Rifkind was, if not pro-Serb, at least a confirmed Bosno-sceptic. But he has changed his mind and become a bit more persuaded by the need to stick it out. Yesterday, for instance, he was challenged by the Labour MP Bob Wareing to confirm that Bosnia was merely a civil war, and he pointedly disagreed, adding that the prime responsibility lay with the Bosnian Serbs.

Rifkind's shift on Bosnia has certainly been a factor in his recovering reputation with the Prime Minister; before the reshuffle, he and Major formed something of an axis. So, although many observers, including the Germans, assumed that the arrival of Rifkind at the Foreign Office would increase the likelihood of British withdrawal, the reverse is the case.

The really big, and still unanswered, question is whether the rapid reaction force is to be used seriously, for instance to establish a supply route into Sarajevo. Some military men originally regarded the force as partly a Downing Street-inspired PR exercise, intended to deflect press attacks during the last UN hostage crisis. Well, now we shall see.

If Western troops are not used, military logic now suggests that the remaining enclaves in eastern Bosnia will fall - though Gorazde may be large enough to hold out. Then the Bosnian government forces would concentrate on relieving Sarajevo and expanding their core territory in central Bosnia. Without the vast human hostage-camps of the "safe areas", they would have no reason to hold back. Nor would the Serbs.

This would become a straightforward conventional territorial war to the death. The United States would lift the arms embargo; the Russians, under whatever leader, might well respond by arming the Serbs. We would be worryingly close to a proxy US-Russian conflict at the southern edge of Europe - about as disastrous and final a failure of post-Cold War diplomacy as it is possible to imagine.

All Europe's optimism about a new order, an era of security and international law would have been refuted. The philosophical argument, as well as the ground, would have been won by General Mladic. For as things stand, that sturdy Serbian realist deserves the last word. "As long as planet Earth has been in existence," he says, "borders between states and peoples have been determined by the shedding of blood and by the cutting off of heads."