Bill Clinton: “No because when I ran for President I made it clear that I would support a lifting of the arms embargo multilaterally. I…”

“No because when I ran for President I made it clear that I would support a lifting of the arms embargo multilaterally. I never said I would lift it unilaterally. I was, frankly, surprised, given the record we had of Serbian aggression when I became President, that our allies would not agree to lift the arms embargo multilaterally. But they felt it would put their own troops too much at risk, and they believed that it would not do what I thought, which was to induce the Bosnian Serbs to make a quick peace. Let me say that air strikes cannot win a war, but they can raise the price of aggression. And if you believe as I do, that territorial disputes between the sides now could be resolved without the legitimate interests of any ethnic group being eroded, I think that's a very important reason for using air strikes to increase the price of aggression. But it didn't happen in `93, so in `94, we got a different kind of agreement to use air power, our own air power, in return for not lifting the arms embargo on the Bosnian Government. And it worked. The Serbs and the Bosnian Government brought their heavy weapons into collection points. The cafe areas were largely free from shelling and military activity. And the whole thing only came apart when, number one, no peace was reached in 1994 and, number two, when military activity started in the central part of the country spread to these safe areas and the U.N. would not permit NATO to strike back. So that's what I would say. If you say for sure you're going to do something, you simply have to do it. And if you don't do it, you suffer. And that's what happened to the U.N. and the NATO. And because the United States is a part of those organizations and has a leading role in NATO, it hurt us as well. And that's why I told our allies I would try one more time to have NATO play a role in this, one more time to try to support them with their Rapid Reaction Force. But the United States could not be part of any endeavor that made commitments which were not kept. We have to keep commitments once we make them. Ms. Liasson. You've talked, though, about the limits of the U.S. being able to dictate the outcome of something when we don't have troops on the ground. Does that mean that the U.S. can only lead if it's willing to commit troops in situations like this?”