[PEN-L:6034] [Response to critique of bombing critique

[Ken Hanly <khanly@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

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Subject: Re: [PEN-L:6003] Re: Kosovo:  A Response to the Critics
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Ricardo Duchesne wrote:

> war", much as Vietnam was television's "first war" and the Gulf War was
> the war that saw CNN come of age as a major mass media outlet.  Perhaps
> predictably, information about the conflict has become confusing and
> contradictory.  Much of the information has to be viewed through jaded
> eyes as the propaganda machinery on both sides of the conflict has gone
> into high gear.
>
> Having said all that, I want to offer (risk?) a reply to some of the
> criticisms of NATO policy that have been offered on the lists I post to
> and elsewhere over the last months.  The general lines of criticism
> appear to be crystallizing.
>
> Criticism No. 1:  NATO's bombing of Yugoslavia is illegal under
> international law.
>
> The critics of the NATO bombing have made a powerful argument that NATO's
> action is illegal because the action was undertaken without the approval
> of the UN Security Council.  They've also argued that the bombing
> constitutes illegal aggression against a sovereign country.
>
> It is clearly difficult to argue that NATO's bombing constitutes the
> operation of a collective security system as envisioned in the United
> Nations Charter.  It may even be aggression under international law.
> Nevertheless, the legal absolutism of some of NATO's critics seems
> misguided, especially considering that the treatment of the Kosovars by
> the Serbian authorities violates norms of human rights enshrined in the
> Geneva Convention, the UN Charter; the Universal Declaration of Human
> Rights; the UN International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights; and
> the UN International Covenant on Economic, Social, and Cultural Rights,
> to name only a few.  Legal proscriptions against war are by no means to
> be casually thrown aside.  Nevertheless, it is well to remember the
> spirit, if not exactly the letter, of Abraham Lincoln's response to those
> who criticized him for suspending the right of _habeas corpus_ during the
> Civil War:  "[A]re all the laws _but one_ to go unexecuted, and the
> government itself go to pieces, lest that one be violated?" (Lincoln,
> 1953, p. 430).

    COMMENT: In the first instance however the bombing was not justified by reference to any violation of human rights by Serb
authorities. It was justified as a technique to force Milosevic to sign the peace accords. That in itself would seem to be a
further violation of international law, the Vienna agreement re treaties. Only later is this argument introduced, after the
evacuation of international observers generated conditions under which Milosevic was able to engage in massive ethnic cleansing
and no doubt other acts of violence as well, that the justification is offered that some moral imperative and violation of
Geneva  conventions by the FRY justify intervention.   Even if this were a reason it is not at all plausible as a justification
without further argument. WHy is it that NATO rather than the UN should intervenene? How are the Genevea conventions to be
interpreted?
Many would claim that they generate an obligation only within a country's borders. If it justifies outside intervention the
questions are: Who is to do the intervening.Who is to decide if the principles are violated? Any party that decides it is
justified? What are the implications of this for international law. The argument from authority (Lincoln saith) is rather odd
for a Canadian source to use. Is this a polite Orwellianism? Breaking the law to preserve the law. ANother pair to join: Bombing
for peace. Destroying sources  of information to provide information etc.



>
>
> Criticism No. 2:  The Serbs have been unfairly demonized.
>
> It's been argued on these lists in the last few weeks that Serbian
> violations of the human rights of the Kosovars have been greatly
> exaggerated.  It's even been suggested that there's no evidence that the
> Serbs are mounting a systematic campaign of ethnic cleansing in Kosovo.
> Regardless of the exact number of persons killed and displaced by ethnic
> cleansing might be, and "hard" data on the subject is naturally difficult
> to obtain, it remains true that respected non-governmental organizations
> in Kosovo, including the American Red Cross, World Vision, Human Rights
> Watch, and Amnesty International, have all reported interviews with
> refugees that present a credible and consistent story of refugees being
> forcibly removed from their homes by the Serbian authorities.
>
> Accounts from these organizations are available at the various Web sites,
> listed below.
>
> It's also been argued that within the former Yugoslavia, the Serbs are
> not alone in their chauvinism and use of ethnic cleansing.  The Croats
> and Bosnians have both embraced similar chauvinistic ideologies, as
> illustrated by the writings of Franjo Tudjman and Alija Izetbegovic.  The
> Croats, at least, have been accused of ethnic cleansing.  Unfortunately,
> this "plague of both your houses" argument, whatever basis in fact it may
> have, doesn't legitimize Serbian ethnic cleansing.  To claim otherwise
> would be to commit a "so's-your-old-man fallacy."  Nor does it defeat the
> argument for intervention by NATO, any more than pointing out the nature
> of the combatants in a turf war among mobsters or street gangs is an
> argument against intervention by the police.
>

COMMENT:  Some of this is truly bizarre. Perhaps the author could cite someone who uses the argumentX also did ethnical
cleansing etc. therefore Milosevic is justified in doing it? That others have done ethnic cleansing without NATO intervention
brings into question whether ethnic cleansing is the ground for intervention in this case. If it is, why was there no
intervention in the other cases? There is an inconsistency that needs explanation.
   Certainly there are serious violations of human rights in Kosovo by the Serbs (and no doubt by the KLA and even NATO) and I
agree that it is impossible to get hard data on what is happening. The author of this piece though ignores the deliberate
repetition by NATO authorities as fact what is not proven or even turns out to be false. Execution of moderate leaders, the
convoy bombing just to name a couple of instances.
   Demonisation has the effect of making the evil of the FRY's actions more than they probably are and
hence lends more weight to the argument for intervention to prevent harm. The degree of harm is important because bombing itself
produces harm and am ethical principle is that the response should be proportionate to the harm. The author here does not even
address the significance of the issue of
relative harm and the role it ought to play in deciding whether intervention is justified.
    There is another aspect of demonisation not considered. In my view demonisation has really little to with an argument for
justification rather it exemplifies a successful use of psychological warfare techniques.
Demonising the enemy generates a strong pro-attitude towards any action that could be seen as punishing or stopping the evil.
This would explain why NATO spokespeople bring up stories of rapes, photos of supposed mass graves, and on and on in the absence
of hard data. Why does the author
of this article suppose this goes on?

> Criticism No. 3:  The plight of the refugees from Kosovo has been
> worsened by the NATO bombing.
>
> It's been argued on these lists that NATO's bombing has had the effect of
> simply turning more Kosovars into refugees.  According to one version of
> this argument, the bombing has caused the Serbs to step up their campaign
> of ethnic cleansing.  According to a second version, the refugees are not
> fleeing from ethnic cleansing, but from the NATO bombardment itself.
>
> The first version of this argument is the stronger one, in my view.
> Nevertheless, it contains the counterfactual assumption that ethnic
> cleansing would have proceeded at a slower pace or not taken place at all
> in the absence of NATO bombing.  In view of Mr. Milosevic's record over
> the last ten years, it is difficult for me to believe that it woul
> not taken place at all.  So for at least some of the Kosovars, it's not
> unreasonable to believe that the NATO bombing represents basically the
> difference between becoming a refugee now and becoming a refugee later.
>
>

COMMENT:  At least the author here is a bit circumspect This person has a thing about counter-factual assumptions. I gather that
calling something a counter-factual assumption has the implication that it is difficult to prove. This is simply not true in
general. If NATO were to drop an atomic bomb on Belgradea lot of people would be killed. Some problem proving that? Interesting
that the author while implicity impugning ones ability to prove counterfactuals himself adopts one without so much as a whimper.

 He claims that it is not unreasonable to believe that NATO bombing represents basically the difference between becoming a
refugee now and becoming a refugee later. This of course depends upon the counterfactual assumption that not bombing would
produce equal numbers of refugees. An assumption which surely can be shown is far from reasonable.
   The positive evidence of this is that Milosevic has been bad in the past. However, the author does not
point to what happened prior to the bombing in Kosovo. Many posts have shown that although monitors detected violations by
Milosevic , and also by the KLA,  there was nothing remotely like what happened after the bombing. The author apparently thinks
that international observers would make no difference at all. It is really tedious to go into a detailed analysis of such an
unplausible argument. I think it is superior
to Nathan's the bombing prevented genocide and replaced it by ethnic cleansing but only because
it has a structure that is at least plausible.
     I might just mention that if NATO had been willing to negotiate further FRY might very well have been willing to allow an
international force into Kosovo. In these circumstances ethnic cleansing would be difficult if not impossible. At the very least
if negotiations had continued the presence of international monitors would have restrained Milosevic and ultimately a diplomatic
solution was quite possible. No doubt the author will be comforted by the fact that these are counterfactual conditionals.

>
>
> Criticism No. 4:  NATO is hypocritical in claiming it is motivated by
> humanitarian considerations.  It has ulterior motives for its actions.
>
> It is undoubtedly true that NATO members, including the United States,
> have been considerably more willing to ignore some humanitarian
> catastrophes than others.  Like others on these lists, I find repugnant
> the disregard of the West for the implosion of political order now taking
> place in Africa.  Nevertheless, moral lapses of the Western alliance in
> the past do not defeat the ethical claim that attempting to pacify the
> former Yugoslavia and return the refugees and victims of ethnic cleansing
> to their homes is the right thing to do now.  Nor does any real or
> imagined "ulterior motive" of the NATO intervention constitute an
> argument that the intervention may not be humanitarian in its
> consequences.
>

What the moral lapses do show  though is that the author has in fact proved what was suggested, that NATO is being hypocritical.
This fellow just runs together "the West" and "NATO". The author is right in claiming that bombing could still be the right
thing to do but at least we should pause for a moment and askwhy it is that in some instances NATO or the West does the right
thing but in others it does not. Since NATO is the bomber here I think that the Kurd situation would be the obvious parallel the
author might want to explore.
    Of course an intervention that is not motivated by humanitarian motives may have humanitarian consequences. The author
doesn't list what these are in this case or show that the bombing has actually had humanitarian consequences==stopping ethnic
cleansing etc. saving innocent lives rather than killing them. The author needs to show that there are humanitarian consequences
rather than just noting that there could be. Those against bombing show that there are not.

> While I'm on the subject, let me comment on a couple of alleged "ulterior
> motives" for the NATO intervention.  Various posts to these lists over
> the last few weeks have suggested the possibility that NATO is motivated
> by a desire to control the Trepca mining complex.  As I've argued in a
> previous post to the International Political Economy list, it isn't clear
> to me why the West should require _military_ control of the mining
> complex.  Assuming the Western countries do care about Trepca, wouldn't
> it make more tactical sense to simply acquiesce in Mr. Milosevic's ethnic
> cleansing, thereby letting the Serbs do the work of pacifying Kosovo, and
> trade with Yugoslavia afterward?  The argument for Trepca as NATO's
> motivation depends upon an unsophisticated Leninist notion  of
> imperialism, according to which the requirements of capitalist economies
> produce attempts at military expansion in pursuit of markets, investment
> opportunities, and sources of raw materials.  After decades of talk on
> the left about "neoimperialism" conducted through multinational
> corporations or international capital mobility, why the reversion to
> older theories of imperialism?  Moreover, the economistic explanation
> requires one to accept that in order to control the former Yugoslavia's
> economy, NATO would be willing to blow up much of it.  Note, e.g., the
> targeting of bridges over the Danube River, a key Eastern European
> economic artery (I'm indebted to my friend Gregory Howe for bringing the
> bombing of these bridges to my attention).
>
> The other alleged "ulterior motive" is a strategic motive.  NATO, it is
> claimed by at least one poster, wishes to guard against the possibility
> of resurgent Communism in Eastern Europe.  Like the economistic
> explanation, the strategic explanation fails because it makes little
> tactical sense.  If NATO wished to secure a strategic position, it would
> clearly be less costly in materiel and lives to simply allow Milosevic to
> pacify the rump Yugoslavia and thereafter establish the sort of
> relationship with his regime that have brought the Hungary, the Czech
> Republic, and Poland into NATO.
>

I don't think that one needs to seek for an ulterior motive. The motive for the bombing seems clear enough IT was to force
Milosevic to sign the Rambouillet accords. NATO had threatened him with this. In the past Milosevic had ignored such threats and
he did so again. NATO was thus forced to bomb or haveits threats continually ignored. Why is that not an acceptable explanation.
The author doesn't mention it.

> I might note in passing that the degree to which NATO has justified
> itself with humanitarian arguments is being exaggerated by the critics.
> In his press conference of March 19 and in repeated public statements,
> President Clinton has explicitly acknowledged that NATO is also motivated
> by a wish to prevent a wider war:
>
>
>
> >This is a humanitarian crisis, but it is much more.  This is a
>
> >conflict with no natural boundaries.  It threatens our national
>
> >interests.  If it continues, it will push refugees across borders, and
>
> >draw in neighboring countries.  It will undermine the credibility of
>
> >NATO, on which stability in Europe and our own credibility depend.  It
>
> >will likely reignite the historical animosities, including those that
>
> >can embrace Albania, Macedonia, Greece, even Turkey (Clinton 1999).
>
> We have only to recall the sad history of Lebanon after Jordan's
> expulsion of the Palestineans in the early 1970s to realize how dangerous
> ethnic cleansing is to countries outside the former Yugoslavia.  The
> danger of a wider war and spreading instability implies that the conflict
> in Kosovo is not simply a Yugoslavian matter.  To the extent that NATO is
> motivated by this non-humanitarian motive of preventing a wider war,
> intervention seems justifiable.

COMMENT: So the author thinks that the bombing creates stability and dampens ethnic hatreds?Where is the evidence for this?

>
>
> Criticism No. 5:  The bombing campaign has been militarily ineffectual,
> and could succeed only through a ground offensive likely to be extremely
> costly in people and materiel.
>
> The bombing clearly has not persuaded Mr. Milosevic to accept NATO's
> terms as I write these words.  Furthermore, military analysts believe the
> German experience during World War II indicates that the Serbs would make
> any invasion a costly endeavor (cf. Bandow 1999).  Any ground offensive
> would require the support of states neighboring Yugoslavia; such support
> might be difficult to come by, because of the danger of reprisals from
> Yugoslavia.  Furthermore, one ally that would be key to an invasion,
> Greece, opposes the use of the port of Thessalonika against its fellow
> Eastern Orthodox in Serbia (_Business Week_, May 3, 1999, 66).  Finally,
> former Clinton advisor Dick Morris has publicly expressed doubts about
> whether or not the U.S. public would support an invasion involving
> substantial casualties (_New York Post_, April 13, 1999).
>
> Of course, the choice of military strategy depends upon the political
> goals to be achieved in Kosovo.  Personally, I agree with the position
> taken by the Center for Security Policy, a Washington-based think-tank
> studying foreign policy and defense issues.  In its _Decision Brief_ of
> April 12, 1999, the Center declared that NATO must cease legitimating and
> perpetuating the Milosevic regime by making deals with it.  Any
> meaningful victory, it says, must include "the end of Slobodan
> Milosevic's reign of terror" through the elimination of his regime, the
> removal of the Serbian army from Kosovo, and the return of Kosovar
> refugees to their homes (Center for Security Policy Publication No. 99-D
> 42).  Any political goal short of the removal of Mr. Milosevic is
> unlikely to resolve the conflict effectively, and could exacerbate it.
> Attempting to use the military to carve out an enclave for the Kosovars,
> whether disguised as "humanitarian assistance" to the internally
> displaced or not (cf. Cohen 1999; O'Hanlon 1999), is likely to create a
> Balkan version of Israel that would become the subject of regional
> animosity and future wars.  Attempting to arm the Kosovars themselves to
> allow them to continue struggling for themselves (cf. Anderson and
> Phillips 1999) would only turn the conflict into a festering guerilla war
> like Angola or Kampuchea.
>
> Accepting that the political goal should be the removal of Mr. Milosevic
> clearly rules out any diplomatic solution.  Three basic military options
> remain:  (a) continuation of the current bombing; (b) removal of current
> limitations on bombing targets; and (c) the introduction of NATO ground
> troops.
>
> The present military strategy, as noted above, is now widely viewed as
> having failed.  Removal of current "Vietnam-like" restrictions on the
> targets of bombing might destroy Serbian military capability and limit
> ethnic cleansing, but will not drive the Serbs from Kosovo or bring
> ethnic cleansing to a halt (cf. Hooper 1999).  That leaves the option of
> ground troops.  For whatever it's worth, at least one former U.S.
> commander in Bosnia has argued publicly against overestimating Serb
> military capabilities (_New York Times_, March 30, 1999).  Not even
> critics of U.S. military intervention doubt the ability of NATO to win a
> ground offensive possibly involving the conquest of all of Yugoslavia,
> although they say such an offensive would be difficult.  For example,
> Doug Bandow comments, "Of course, NATO would win," although "victory
> would come at a high price" (Bandow 1999).
>
> Under these circumstances, therefore, it appears the main barriers to
> victory are political, not military.  NATO's leaders fear that the public
> would be unwilling to support a ground offensive involving heavy
> casualties.  In my view, their fear is misguided.  Dick Morris claims
> history indicates Americans are unwilling to bear casualties in warfare.
> I think history proves no such thing.  Essentially one case, Vietnam,
> bears out Morris' claim.  When convinced of the rightness of a cause or
> the importance of a conflict to vital national interests, as in the case
> of the two world wars, Americans are more than willing to fight.  It is
> the responsibility of our leaders to persuade them to support an
> unconditional victory in Yugoslavia.  Yes, the political ineffectual
> "Peace at Any Price" crowd left over from the 1960s will moan and groan
> and beat drums at the White House.  Yes, the incipient isolationists of
> Newt Gingrich's Republican Party will question the administration's
> military judgement.  But the conflict and the suffering of the people of
> Yugoslavia, Serb and Albanian alike, will end more quickly and decisively
> if the end of the Milosevic regime becomes our goal.
>

COMMENT:  So the author is going to create peace by having more war still. Compared to othernationalists Milosevic is mild. How
does the author propose to insure that these people do not come to
power? Democracy? Already in Bosnia democracy has led to the election of a president in the Serb Republic who was summarily
dismissed by SFOR authorities. A Serb radio station has had its licence re
voked for support FRY to eagerly. etc. etc.

Cheers, Ken Hanly




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