Humanitarian intervention

[Keaney Michael <michael.keaney@xxxxxx>]

Chris Burford wrote:

A Google search for ["Ian Bruce" Herald] produced a number of articles
suggesting to me that his sources have included a KLA insider, and someone
close to George Robertson, now Nato Secretary General.

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MK: He does appear to be well connected alright. It's not so clear to me,
however, to what end he's pursuing these leads. It was always obvious where
the likes of Pincher was coming from, for example.

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The French position in this article seems less mysterious if you accept
that they were always more pro-Serbian even than the British Foreign Office
under Hurd. Clinton therefore stood back and let them take responsibility
for the Szrebenica massacre in the eyes of the informed upper echelons of
NATO.

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MK: I don't buy your take on Clinton, whatever the truth of your preamble.
The Clinton era saw the engineering of a new role for NATO, from officially
defensive to an emergent policing role. For NATO to accomplish this it would
require the backing of its main member, whose own interests would be served
by this development via the sharing of the military/logistical/financial
burdens but retaining overall command. The NATO apparatus itself, of course,
wishes to extend its life and role, but has been able to accomplish this
only with the approval, tacit or otherwise, of the US. Palming Srebrenica
off onto the French might be good politics (esp. in the wake of the
revelations concerning Chirac's holiday expenses and the pall this casts
over his re-election prospects: see yesterday's Independent), but it's
disingenuous, at best. It ignores the integral role played by the security
services of Britain, the US, and Germany (see Robert Fisk also in
yesterday's Independent). The latter, remember, was also the first to
recognise the independence of Croatia, thereby legitimising the anti-semite
and bloodthirsty Tudjman.

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The Herald is the former Glasgow Herald. Glaswegian would not necessarily
accept that Glasgow is the second city of Scotland. Among its interesting
speculations is that if Scotland were to declare independence, it would
have Britain's Trident nuclear weapons system or England would have to
spend several billion building a new site after overcoming public
controversy about its location. With Britain's nuclear weapons, plus the
Secretary General of Nato its confidant, why should the Herald consider
itself a provincial paper?

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MK: It doesn't. That's why it became "The Herald", dropping the Glasgow bit.
But its aspirations and its position in the UK press pecking order do not
necessarily match. In the UK (i.e. London/Whitehall) scheme of things,
"Scotland's newspaper" (as it has long sold itself) is, by definition,
provincial, because Scotland is a mere "region" of the UK.

Michael K.