The war in Yugoslavia was a turning point in the human rights movement. Appalled by the atrocities they saw, many Western war correspondents advocated for military intervention by the US and the EU. The rallying cry was “how can we stand by and let another Holocaust happen?” Eventually (not soon enough for what would soon be known as the “liberal hawks”) NATO did intervene in the war in Kosovo. Subsequent to that war, NATO set up the International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia, and some advocates of human rights were ecstatic. In its 2000 World Report the Human Rights Watch specifically cites the ICTY and the NATO military actions against Yugoslavia and concludes that this “foretells an era in which the defense of human rights can move from a paradigm of pressure based on international human rights law to one of law enforcement.”
The first question that needs to be asked is this: in retrospect was NATO’s intervention in Kosovo and the ICTY really a human rights victory? As for the first question, Noam Chomsky was an early critic of NATO’s intervention, for which he was roundly denounced as being a promoter of genocide. Just a few days ago, The New Statesman published an article by John Pilger which basically brings Chomsky’s arguments more up to date (and states them more succinctly).
Yes, I know that 70 years ago The New Stateman was an apologist for Stalin and that Chomsky and Pilger are virulent critics of US foreign policy. But that doesn’t change the facts: The number of victims of Serbian aggression were orders of magnitude less than the US and NATO claimed to justify their bombing campaign. NATO’s bombing killed many innocent civilians. Far more people were killed in Kosovo subsequent to the bombings, i.e they had the opposite of their intended effect.
As for the Criminal Tribunal, it turned out to be a one-sided affair. I have already noted elsewhere how KLA war criminals were let off the hook, and Kosovar atrocities were over-looked by the tribunal. Needless to say NATO war crimes weren’t even seriously discussed – why bite the hand that literally feeds you?
So if NATO wasn’t exactly interested in human rights, what was it’s motivation in intervening in Kosovo? I have already discussed this in detail when the US pushed through Kosovo independence a few months ago.
In sum, using NATO’s bombing campaign in support of Kosovo as a prime example of “positive” humanitarian intervention is just nonsense. In the broader sense, a devastating critique of the whole idea of using war as a tool for humanitarian intervention may be found in an article by Professor Robert Hayden from the University of Pittsburgh. Specifically he addresses HRW’s romantic notions about the NATO campaign:
This assertion [ed: HRW claim] is either naive or cynical. Attacks against civilians are inevitable in any supposedly humanitarian intervention. Every nation has the right to defend itself, and at the level of practical politics, a nation that is attacked will try to resist the attacker. Winning the war thus requires defeating not only the army but the nation — i.e., the civilian population. Therefore, the decision to attack a sovereign state is, logically, a decision to attack the civilian population of that state, not just the military. In this sense, the constant repetition during the Kosovo war that “NATO never targets civilians” was hypocritical, presumably meant to obscure the uncomfortable fact that humanitarian intervention requires the committing of humanitarian war crimes. What the New York Times has approvingly described as the “elevation” of human rights to a “military priority” (see its editorial of 13 June 1999) is thus actually a striking inversion of the principles that have guided the growth of human rights organizations.
For example, Amnesty International long required that its “prisoners of conscience” not be advocates or practitioners of violence. “Humanitarian intervention,” however, transforms what had been a moral critique of violence into a moral crusade for violence on a mass scale.
As a footnote to this site I have one of my favorite quotes of all times, stated by Benito Juárez, Mexico’s first indigenous President, a true champion of his people and a truly great leader: Entre los individuos, como entre las naciones, el respeto al derecho ajeno es la paz: Among individuals, as among nations, respect for the rights of others is peace. The inverse of Juárez’ statement is that war is the very opposite of respect for human rights. It is a contradiction in terms for someone who believes in human rights to advocate war. War by its very nature legitimizes immoral behavior. In war it is not only permissible, but it is required that you kill and destroy. For this reason we have to invent the artificial category of “war crimes.” Most killing is ok in war, just if you go “too far” is it considered a war crime.
Liberal hawks counter the moral argument by saying that even if war is inherently immoral, there is no denying the reality that war always has been and probably always will be an inherent part of human activity. So when war goes too far and enters the realm of war crimes, what are we supposed to – just stand there and do nothing? Being absolutist about war is itself an immoral stance since you are not stopping the killing. If we achieve our end of saving more lives by killing some, then so be it.
This is a seductive argument, but it does not live up to its own pragmatic standard. Firstly, in Kosovo it is hard to seriously argue that the benefit of the intervention outweighed its costs. But even if one were to concede this point (which I don’t) the triumphalism of human right-ism is a grave danger. As Hayden notes, human right-ism is now being used to legitimize more war by people who should know better. The wars in Afghanistan and Iraq are good examples. At the time, the human right-ists argued that saving the people of these countries from the Taliban and Saddam Hussein (respectively) justify these wars, even if that wasn’t the true motive of Bush & Co. In retrospect, seven years later we see what a sham that argument is. The people of these countries are suffering more now than they have in the past. The human and material destruction has been massive. Even if one were to argue that once the wars are over (whenever that will be) the people of these two countries will somehow be better off (something which at this point seems highly unlikely), the human cost of this “achievement” is intolerable. Bush & Co achieved their goal of massive transfers of wealth to the arms industries and control over the region’s oil. The racket was a great success. The human right-ists provided moral cover for this criminal racket and its devastating human costs. In my eyes, they are are more morally culpable than Bush & Co.
And yes I want to return again to Kosovo. The human right-ist argument for intervention in Kosovo is serving as an unholy precedent in Russia’s war against Georgia. Russia has made the moral comparison explicitly and it is pathetic to watch how the human right-ists try to squirm away from the moral equivalency. The guns haven’t yet even gone silent and Human Rights Watch is already declaring that the number of south Ossetians killed is far less than Russia claimed. I imagine that is correct, but it is is way too early to determine how much far less. And of course, the number of Albanians killed in Kosovo was far, far less than what NATO and the human right-ists claimed to justify intervention there, so playing the numbers game is a slippery slope. Honestly, i don’t think HRW is doing this out of some hidden anti-Russian agenda. Rather, their conscience is bothering them and it is critical for them to differentiate this war from Kosovo. Well it isn’t. Instead of justifying their past mistakes, even at this late date HRW had the opportunity to rectify the past by denouncing human right-ism rather than engaging in a propaganda war. Instead, HRW has tainted itself forever.
This same need to clear their conscience seems to be operating in the New York Times and the Washington Post, supposedly “liberal” newspapers. Reading their coverage of the war has been breath-taking. I thought anti-Russian propaganda was an artifact of the cold war, long gone. In fact, their coverage reminds me of Pravda more than anything else. Besides the news coverage which goes out of its way to try and debunk every statement made by the Russian military (I wish their coverage of Israel would be 10% as aggressive) their editorial content seems hell bent on proving Russia is the greatest threat to world peace since Hitler. On Saturday’s op-ed page the Times had a piece about a North Ossetian’s attempt to “sell nuclear materials to terrorists,” which was “miraculously” nipped in the bud by the ever vigilant Georgian intelligence. Of course, it is equally likely that the whole event was rigged by Georgian (and US) intelligence: the reporter never bothers to ask why the Georgians were so open with him about such a treacherous and risky affair, as it was happening! In the book review section they had a review of the book The Terminal Spy about the Litvinenko affair, where in 2006 the KGB apparently poisoned one of its own in London. Now maybe I am being a bit of a conspiracy theorist about the latter, since the book’s publication date is this month. While this might be a happy coincidence, review copies are sent out months earlier so one can still wonder given the context of the Times blatant anti-Russian bias. More to the point, whatever little credibility the Times still had (which is not much since it allowed Judith Miller to serve as a war shill for Bush & Co in the run up to the Iraq war), has been ripped to shreds by its blatant anti-Russia propaganda campaign.
Tags: Empire, Feature, Human Rights, Hypocrisy, Kosovo, Media, Nationalism, War Racket
