-- begin forwarded message: -- Date: Sun, 2 May 1999 19:27:32 +0900 From: Hendrik To: Multiple recipients of NETSOURCE-L <netsource-l@mail.think.service> Subject: [NS] Al-Ahram, Cairo: The UN's death certificate 15 April 1999 The UN's death certificate By Hassan Nafaa Nafaa There are two sides to the NATO attack on Yugoslavia, precipitated by recent developments in Kosovo. If we are to make an accurate appraisal of the crisis raging in the Balkans, we must examine both. First, the regime in Serbia is undeniably brutal. It has committed unfathomable atrocities. No one with a conscience can look away from the horrors being perpetrated by the Milosevic regime, or let them go unpunished. To do so would be complicity in the crime. This consideration has inspired many, particularly in the Arab and Islamic worlds, to support NATO's military intervention. The other facet of the truth is that NATO has excluded the Security Council from involvement in the Kosovo crisis. It took the initiative with no international authorisation, which would have lent legitimacy to the use of force. This dimension casts a dark shadow over NATO's purported aims. The desire to justify NATO's action is perhaps a natural reaction. At the outset, it seemed reasonable to argue that NATO had no other choice but to act alone. Russia supported the Serbs, was adamant in its refusal to use arms against the regime in Belgrade and openly hinted that it would use its veto in the Security Council in order to protect that regime. The Russian position could clearly be interpreted as a green light for Milosevic to go ahead with his policy of ethnic cleansing, which he had implemented successfully in Bosnia. If NATO did not bother to obtain the clear prior approval of the Security Council, certainly the urgency of the humanitarian aims (stopping the ethnic cleansing) justified such a procedural breach. From the perspective of the provisions of international law regulating the use of force in international relations, provisions that are ostensibly binding on all nations, NATO's behaviour takes on another light. By taking the unauthorised initiative to intervene militarily in Kosovo, NATO has set a serious precedent. This episode could lead not only to the total marginalisation of the UN, but also, conceivably, to NATO supplanting the Security Council in matters concerning the preservation of international peace. Even presuming that noble motives are behind NATO's current action -- and not all are prepared to concede that -- there are no guarantees that these motives will always be noble when it decides to act without a go-ahead from the Security Council. These apprehensions are legitimate and do not bode well for the UN in the "new world order". This is not the first time that the UN has been shunted aside, or that collective force has been brought to bear outside the scope of international legitimacy. On previous occasions, however, recourse to force took place under a legalistic umbrella, using such justifications, however spurious they may have been, as the legitimate right to self-defense. On this occasion, NATO has acted as though the UN did not exist, as though whatever ethical justifications it offered were sufficient to "legitimise" its actions. Nothing like it has occurred before in international relations since the founding of the UN and the founding of NATO. The Kosovo crisis is therefore a landmark in the development of the relationship between the UN and the international system. History may later write that this marked the UN's clinical death, and that only the opportunity to pull the plug on the life support machine remained before preparing the corpse for burial. The UN's slow demise has been paved by a number of international crises. The horrors of World War II convinced the international community that it was essential to create an effective system for collective security that all countries could rely on. The UN Charter provided specific provisions for such a system and laid down general rules for international behaviour to which all member nations were expected to adhere. It also established an international body -- the Security Council -- to monitor the behaviour of nations, and endowed it with the powers and means to enforce respect for international law. For this system to function, however, it had to meet an important condition: the unanimous agreement of the major allied powers which had been victorious in World War II -- the powers which, alone, are permanent members on the Security Council. Sadly, such unanimity has rarely obtained since the founding of the UN. If the division of these powers into two camps forestalled the effective implementation of the Charter's formula for collective security throughout the period of the Cold War, the collapse of the Soviet Union raised hopes that perhaps the system could be given new life. For a short time, it seemed that the opportunity presented itself in the context of the international consensus that prevailed during the Kuwaiti-Iraqi crisis. That opportunity soon proved illusive, for subsequent events demonstrated that unipolar hegemony over the world order is not conducive to an effective system of international security. While the notion of a mechanism for collective security was grounded in the concept of joint participation in the international order, the party that emerged victorious from the Cold War saw things otherwise, elbowing out of its path all bidders for a share in the leadership of the world order. The gap is growing ever wider between the desire of the international community to revitalise the system of collective security laid out in the UN Charter and the US's drive to secure its hegemony over the world order. One of the sad ironies of the Gulf War was that the crisis which gave birth to the slogan "the new world order" eventually furnished incontrovertible proof of the attempts to bury the hopes and aspirations kindled by the international consensus at the beginning of that war. The circumstances surrounding the creation and enforcement of no-fly zones in Iraq and the behaviour of the United Nations inspection team combined to marginalise the UN and undermine its credibility. Since the collapse of the Soviet Union, the US has adopted a systematic policy intended to debilitate the UN. Still, until now, it has been careful to cloak its designs behind a gloss of international legitimacy. For example, it always claimed that the military operations it undertook against Iraq, independently or with other countries, were legitimate because they fell under the framework of the green light that had been given to it by the Security Council, and because the ultimate aim was to implement relevant Security Council resolutions. Now, in the Balkans, such formalities no longer matter. The US, for example, could have called for an emergency meeting of the General Assembly in the event of a Russian veto in the Security Council. That it chose not to indicates that the US is seeking a free and unfettered hand in the exercise of its policy, even over the UN's dead body. A comparison between the international and regional contexts under which the use of force was brought to bear in the Gulf and the Balkans brings to the fore vast differences between the two cases at both legal and political levels. The Gulf represented an instance of blatant military aggression waged by one member of the UN against another. The international alliance created to liberate Kuwait was easily justified on the grounds that it fell within the framework of legitimate collective arrangements for self-defense. The alliance was further given a clear authorisation to use force against Iraq in order to compel it to abide by UN Security Council resolutions. The international community was also prepared to accept the argument that the Iraqi invasion of Kuwait threatened the vital interests of the US and the countries of the Middle East. It is true that the US later abused the authorisation conferred upon it by the Security Council and intervened illegally in UNSCOM's activities; that, however, does not preclude the fact that there was a strong political and legal foundation for the use of military force in the Gulf. In the Balkans, there is no outside aggression. However urgent it is to offer protection to the victims of Serbian atrocities, military intervention cannot be justified by an appeal to the principle of international arrangements for self-defence. No member of UN or NATO has been attacked by another, and no UN member has appealed for NATO assistance. Nor can NATO be said to have acted to discipline one of its member nations, because Yugoslavia is not a member. Finally, the Security Council did not empower NATO to take punitive measures against Yugoslavia. Russia and China are openly opposed to its actions, as are some members of NATO itself, such as Greece. There remains only the humanitarian justification. Yet armed intervention must in all circumstances take place under the umbrella of the Security Council, which is not the case in Kosovo. Furthermore, military action has not alleviated the suffering of the Muslims of Kosovo. On the contrary, it has given Milosevic the pretext to evacuate them preparatory to making the region entirely Serbian. This development in fact justifies suspicions of NATO complicity in the assault on the Muslims of Kosovo. There are therefore strong grounds for arguing that the NATO bombing is motivated by strategic considerations, the aim of which is to exclude Russian influence from the Balkans and render the region an entirely Western preserve. The US is doing all it can to prevent Russia from establishing any measure of international influence. There is every reason to believe that this is a top strategic priority at present, and that helping the Muslims in Kosovo is no more than a camouflage. We should not let our sympathies for the Muslims of Kosovo cloud our examination of the potentially negative impact the NATO intervention in that region will have upon global strategic balances. NATO continues to assert that the air strikes will persuade Milosevic to allow refugees back into Kosovo and to accept the deployment of an international security force that will safeguard autonomous rule in Kosovo for three years, after which the Kosovars can vote to determine their fate. This means that NATO still believes it can accomplish its aims without having to bring in ground forces. If that assessment proves correct, it will come as a great relief, particularly to the Arabs and Muslims. Current developments in the Balkans, however, suggest that this rosy scenario is not within reach. Yugoslavia appears to have the ability to hold out against air strikes for some time, particularly if Serbia finds a way to compensate for its military and political incapacity to stop the strikes. The longer the crisis continues without a military or political resolution, the greater are the chances that NATO's resolve will be eroded. Finally, should NATO go ahead and wage a ground assault, particularly one that does not succeed quickly, it could broaden the scope of the conflict in the Balkans, perhaps precipitating more direct Russian involvement. In other words, however unpredictable the forecast, we cannot rule out the possibility of the conflict there escalating into a full-scale European war against a backdrop of intense US-Russian rivalry. -- Hassan Nafaa is professor of political science at Cairo University. -- Al-Ahram Weekly 15 - 21 April 1999 Issue No. 425 Published in Cairo by AL-AHRAM established in 1875 -- ----------------------------------------------------------------- Subscription information, appended by the listserver: * if you want to leave this list please send an empty message to <leave-netsource-list@hiz.bc.ca> * if you know someone who wants to join this list, please tell them to send an empty message to <join-netsource-list@hiz.bc.ca> ----------------------------------------------------------------- -- end forwarded message --