The U.S. and the Kosovo Crisis By Achin Vanaik THE HINDU, Chennai, India, April 22, 1999 THREE QUESTIONS dominate the analysis and assessment of the NATO air- strikes against Mr. Slobodan Milosevic's Yugoslavia. How wrong or right are these? Why has the United States carried out these strikes? What are the consequences? The first issue goes to the heart of the tension between the claims of national sovereignty and its inviolability as laid down in the U.N. Charter and those of universal human rights as embodied in the U.N. Declaration of Human Rights. Doesn't humanitarian intervention (in the name of which the U.S. is justifying its actions) override principles of national self- determination and non-interference from outside? Insofar as nations and nation-states are historically contingent phenomena, the collective rights associated with them, e.g., the principle of non- interference and national sovereignty, cannot take precedence over the universal human rights of individuals. Countries and peoples are entitled to intervene to prevent and mitigate human rights violations in other countries. Universal abhorrence of apartheid, colonialism and massacres should lead to just such interference. However, it does not follow that the current U.S. and NATO intervention in Serbia is justified. Humanitarian intervention is a general principle but its actualisation must proceed within properly defined limits and possibilities. It is one thing to sanction non-military intervention ( economic or cultural sanctions, diplomatic condemnation and pressure, relief aid, etc.) and quite another to try and justify external military intervention. As a general rule this is unacceptable. The rare exceptions would be when the existence of a people is itself threatened by mass slaughter, e.g., the millions killed by the Pol Pot regime justifying the Vietnamese invasion (which also had other motives). Terrible as the tragedy of ethnic cleansing by the Serbian Government against the Kosovan Albanians is, it clearly does not fall into this category. Here we are talking of hundreds of thousands of refugees. Moreover, even if the principle of external military intervention is applicable in a certain case, there is the crucial question who is entitled to carry out the intervention. There is a world of difference between an internationally-accepted body doing so (and that too within explicitly defined limits) and any country or group of countries acting on its own. In short, there is the matter of "good faith," which is established by the historical record of the intervening body and not simply by its professed declarations. Here the international record of the U.S. is nothing short of disgraceful. It has been the rogue state par excellence repeatedly defying international rulings whether by the World Court or by U.N. resolutions when these have not suited its interests. In short, there is no serious or genuine legal, moral, political justification for the U.S.-led NATO's actions in Serbia. To understand why NATO on U.S. dictates has carried out these strikes we need to understand the U.S. policy perspectives after the end of the Cold War. The collapse of the former Soviet bloc, of the USSR itself and former Yugoslavia, provided a new ambition and opportunity, which the U.S. was quick to seize. It has since 1991 sought to extend its influence to Eastern Europe, to the independent former Soviet republics and to the region once constituted by Tito's united Yugoslavia. This was in keeping with the U.S. ambitions to become the dominant global force. At the same time, this was to be achieved without provoking serious resistance notably from Russia and China or from ambitious players such as Japan, Germany and France. What were the most favourable conditions that could allow the realisation of this goal ? What were to be the favoured instruments for its pursuit? The Eastern Bloc countries had to be rapidly incorporated into the world capitalist system economically and into the American sphere of influence politically. The same applied to the Balkans. To this end, it was vital that a class of capitalists firmly committed (because it would benefit most quickly and strongly) to the rapidest path of systemic transition to capitalism be created. A shock therapy or the IMF/WB-sponsored neo-liberal economic restructuring was the favoured instrument. The issue was never whether the mass of ordinary citizens in Eastern Europe, Russia and the Balkans should suffer the least from the transition but that the social conditions for securing the irreversibility of the transition - a powerful capitalist class - should be established as quickly as possible. This is a matter of great importance because much of the tragedy in the Balkans, whether of Bosnia or of Kosovo, has to do with the great economic and social hardship imposed on ordinary people throughout the Nineties by such neo-liberal policies - the largely untold story about this region. As for U.S. political influence, it had to be enhanced through NATO. This was especially important because the end of the Cold War raised both the legitimacy and the prospect of new forms of organising the security of Europe, particularly through the search for new cooperative arrangements with Russia. This would have ended the political separation of Russia from Europe which, along with the American determination to keep German power down, was the rationale for having a U.S.-led NATO regime. It was summed up in the old saw about NATO's purpose being "to keep the Russians out, the Germans down and the Americans in." Once it was decided to strengthen NATO, then this imposed its own logic. NATO had to be enlarged despite the alienating effect on Russia. Its credibility as the principal military security force in Europe had to be reinforced and sustained. The problem with Mr. Milosevic has not been his ruthless "ethnic cleansing". The U.S.-brokered Dayton Accords (which symbolised the West European inability to "stabilise" the region without a crucial U.S. input) were actually more favourable to Serbian and Croatian desires to cantonise Bosnia permanently than to maintain a truly independent and multi-ethnic Bosnian political entity. The problem with Mr.Milosevic is that despite the lesson provided by Dayton, he had the temerity to directly challenge American and NATO credibility, not accepting the U.S.-determined conditions for regional stability as in the Rambouillet (France) agreement, which incidentally gives Kosovo less autonomy than it enjoyed in the old Yugoslav Federation. He needed to be taught a lesson. The actual effects of the air-strikes are contradictory. NATO has asserted its status as the European security-military structure to the exclusion of all structural rivals, actual or potential. This has been highlighted by the obsequious acceptance of its acts by the most powerful governments in Europe. However, the military punitive measures do not weaken Mr. Milosevic's domestic political position; they actually promote his effort to reduce and destabilise Kosovo's Albanian population. There is yet another contradiction. If these strikes set a further precedent (after the earlier strikes against Iraq, Afghanistan and Sudan) for the U.S. to act when and where it wishes as a global policeman, it does not follow that it can actually do so with impunity or with easy endorsement by public opinion either internationally or within the Western countries themselves. Also at play here is a distinctive post-Cold War dilemma. Though the U.S. military might has in comparative terms become great, the payoff in terms of political influence and control (whether in Iraq, Iran and the Middle East generally or in the Balkans) from the exercise of such might has become more problematic! Finally, such acts are counter-productive, alienating other major non-Western countries, especially Russia, and encouraging it and others to seek countervailing alignments. -- "In short, there is no serious or genuine legal, moral, political justification for the U.S.-led NATO's actions in Serbia." --