NATO Right to Intervene in

¶ … NATO Right to Intervene in Kosovo? Were There Alternatives to War? One of the most significant international conflicts of recent times was the war in Kosovo. From even before NATO became involved in the conflict, Kosovo had come to represent all nearly all sides of global policy debate the origins of which lay as far back as the Second World War.

Ever since World War II it seemed, the world had been divided into two camps - one on side, the friends of democracy, expanded freedom, and religious liberty, while on the other the supporters of strong-arm rule, division, and racial, ethnic, and religious partisanship.. Or so the arguments were framed.

For the arguments in favor of intervention in Kosovo were main, not the least of which was the idea that the intervention was aimed primarily at preventing another genocide - this time of Muslim Kosovars, who were about to be butchered by Christian Serbs; their culture destroyed; their history erased from human memory. NATO participation in suppressing supposed Serb aggressed and murderousness would be seen as a mark of international solidarity on the side of all progressive and forward-looking nations and peoples.

The world would unite together in the cause of good. Differences between countries would be put aside in favor of concerted action on the part of a noble, humanitarian cause. The North Atlantic Treaty Organization, too, would show its lasting relevance in a post-Cold War world. On the other hand, many recognized that the conflict's roots lay far deeper than the bigotry and slaughter of the Twentieth Century.

For them, the conflict was but the latest in a series of centuries-old battles between different ethnic and religious groups for land that the various sides had inhabited and fought over ever since the time of the first Turkish incursions into Europe. Outsiders cannot settle disputes people must settle for themselves. Wanting to reclaim one's land is not necessarily a claim to genocide. One side had used brutal methods first and the other was merely replying in kind... And many similar points were presented by those opposed to NATO intervention.

So the questions remain: Was NATO right to intervene in Kosovo? Were there no alternatives to war? Prevention of a humanitarian catastrophe - that was the primary justification for intervention shared by the prime movers within NATO.

It was almost the sole reason put forth by NATO's European members, and one of three major reasons cited by American President Bill Clinton in a televised speech on March 24, 1998 - "to demonstrate the seriousness of NATO's response to aggression, to deter Milosevic's escalating attacks in Kosovo, and seriously to damage Yugoslavia's military capacity to wage war in the future." As President's Clinton's first reason makes clear, the decision to use NATO was meant as a sign that the members of that organization would respond, as a body, to any perceived threats to human life and safety, and international order.

State leaders, like Yugoslavia's Slobodan Milosevic, would no longer possess the freedom to undertake actions within their own borders that were considered by other nations to be violation of basic human and civil rights. In its attempt to eliminate the Muslim Kosovars, Milosevic's regime was accused of ethnic cleansing. Already by the mid-1990s, United Nations officials and others had cataloged clear instances of a coordinated Serbian attempt to remove Muslims from communities in Serbia and Montenegro.

The rounding up and deporting of Muslims was found to be compelling evidence, "that the authorities in Belgrade and Podgorica at least passively condoned, and more likely promoted, the overall policy of ethnic cleansing." Local groups carefully and deliberated planned campaigns, and took action at agreed upon signals.

In one town, Prijedor, the United Nations' Secretary General's Commission of Experts found that the Yugoslav People's Army planned assaults, and stockpiled weapons, for six months before the atrocities that later took place, and that the Army itself provided military policemen and interrogators to the concentration camps that were later set up. Yugoslav President Slobodan Milosevic justified the slaughter of Muslims on the grounds that the Muslim population was highly-radicalized and violent, similar to many radical, anti-Western groups in the Middle East.

According to Milosevic and his allies, native Muslim militants planned to overthrow the Christian state and replace it with a hard line Muslim one. The massacre of Muslims, in other words, was a desperate attempt to head off a similar fate for Christian Serbs. Embracing government propaganda, the Christian Serbs who carried out the atrocities believed they were defending their lives and traditions from an alien menace, not unlike the Muslim Turks who have first surged into, and conquered, their lands centuries earlier.

Whether real or not in the present time, the threat of Muslim aggression was real enough in historic terms to many average Christian Serbs. They had been victims of Muslim atrocity before, and all groups concerned in the Region - Serbs, Croatians, and Bosnians - had at one time or another, and during the 1990s conflict, been guilty of terrible outrages against each other, actions that could only be characterized as war crimes. For many locals, Serb, Croat, Bosnian, Kosovar, the war was its own justification: Atrocities bred atrocities.

As we all know by now, they were hideous. With each side focusing on the hideous atrocities of the other, and rationalizing, denying, or ignoring its own, hate and revenge necessarily became more and more important components of the witch's brew. The genie was out of the bottle. The war acquired its own momentum. The revenge motive, which was minor at the outset, became major as a reason for its prolongation.

Central to the NATO argument in favor of intervention was a choice in favor of which side was "right." Taking sides in the conflict meant accepting some acts of brutality as legitimate examples of self-defense, while condemning others as outright aggression. With no Cold War left to fight, NATO was left with the need to redefine itself in a changed world.

In a Europe moving increasingly toward unity, NATO could find new meaning in terms of furthering the perceived European Union mission of welding a diverse continent into a single, unified whole. Minority groups, in particular, would need to find a new place, and a new voice, in this Europe of the future. In the former Yugoslavia, Muslims constituted a persecuted minority. In other parts of Europe, the Basques in Spain for example, minorities were clamoring for recognition of their unique cultures and languages.

Muslims were becoming an increasing presence on the continent as large numbers of Muslim immigrants from Turkey, and former European colonies, poured into the various member states of the European Union. Bosnia and Kosovo presented an ideal case to demonstrate NATO's capacity to aid in the fashioning of a new and welcoming multi-ethic and multi-religious society.

It was a fairly simple matter for politicians and activists, in say France and Germany, to portray Yugoslavia as an "uncivilized" area lacking in democratic institutions, riven by "primitive" local rivalries, with little or no real sense of national consciousness. Humanitarianism went hand in hand with the idea of fighting barbarism and brutality. The United Nations resolutions focused especially on the idea that the conduct of the Yugoslav government was unacceptable and uncivilized.

The International Community, as represented by NATO, looked on its role in the conflict as one of enforcing international norms. The United Nations demanded that all those guilty of war crimes in Kosovo be arrested - a clear statement that what was going on in Kosovo was in fact a war; a condition that would potentially require military intervention on the part of the world community.

Furthermore, the decision to consider the atrocious acts in Kosovo war crimes was significant in that it played to already existing precedent in regard to prior wartime atrocities and massacres. The Nuremberg Trials after World War II had already established the idea that the exigencies of wartime were no excuse for the commission of horrible crimes against civilians. German officers, and in separate trial in Tokyo, Japanese officers, were punished for their barbaric acts against both soldiers and civilians; crimes committed under the cover of wartime.

Kosovo, however; would be an extension of these principles to what many saw as a purely domestic conflict. Indeed, in the aftermath of the conflict, the International Tribunal for the Prosecution of Persons Responsible for Serious Violations of International Humanitarian Law Committed in the Territory of the Former Yugoslavia established as a firm principle of international law the idea that domestic crimes that violated international humanitarian principles also constituted war crimes in the same sense as those committed during international conflicts.

The European members of NATO would thereby receive a post-war justification for one of their primary reasons for invading Kosovo and interfering directly in the inter-ethnic conflict Serbs, Croats, and Bosnian Muslims. As for President Clinton's second argument in favor of NATO action - that Milosevic must be stopped - this relates directly to one of the more prominent arguments against NATO interference. Following the collapse of the Soviet Union and the Communist Bloc, the states of Eastern Europe sought to reassert themselves as independent political entities.

Milosevic presented many of his activities in a nationalist context. The moves toward "ethnic cleansing" were part of a larger campaign to solidify the new Yugoslavia as an ethnically homogenous Serb Christian state. The artificial order of Communism was going to be replaced by something of natural, domestic origin. The conflict between Christian and Muslim had been going on for centuries. Milosevic was merely attempting to achieve what others before him had not.

Added to this particular brand of nativist reasoning was also the notion that Yugoslavia, along with other formerly communist Eastern European nations, should be permitted to govern its own affairs free of outside interference.

At the time, in fact, many argued that a NATO intervention on the grounds of bringing a "better," democratic, and "more humanitarian" outlook to Yugoslavia, would only strengthen Milosevic's hand: President Milosevic, who faced significant democratic opposition, can now pose as a defender of the Serbs' national integrity; the extreme nationalists and superannuated communists in Russia can portray NATO's actions as evidence of the west's arrogance and determination to humiliate their country.

NATO invasion could be linked to attempts on the part of the Western Bloc to expand its influence and control into Eastern Europe. The call for attacking the "barbarians" in Yugoslavia could redound to the detriment of true democrats and humanitarians. Russia, too, would not be pleased by direct Western intervention in its former sphere of influence. The appeal to Slavic rights, on the part of Milosevic and his allies, would play well not only in Yugoslavia but in Russia with its long traditions of pan-Slavism.

Russia, even in the days of the tsars had seen itself as the protector of Slavic peoples everywhere, and also of the Eastern Orthodox Church. Clinton's third rationale, that NATO must destroy Yugoslavia's ability to make war once more played to the nationalists in Yugoslavia and elsewhere. It could also easily be seen as stirring up anti-American, and anti-Western, sentiments in general. The United States was taking upon itself the role of "sole superpower," determining who could possess significant military capacity and who could not.

Echoes of these arguments could be heard in the march to war in Iraq in 2002 and 2003. Opponents of NATO intervention could claim that countries had a right to decide for themselves whether to become part of the global order represented by the United States and its allies.

American and NATO intervention would in this instance be but another outgrowth of Wilsonian interventionism - the empire of globalism that the forces of democracy and capitalism were endeavoring to impose on lands and peoples without such traditions or aspirations: The American century was all about the separation of territorial and economic power; the rise of U.S.

empire is premised on the disconnection between economy and politics understood in terms of the clearly demarcated arrangements of 'absolute' space." American ideals were obliterating the older boundaries between nation-state and global community. In asserting their right to control the ethnic make-up and customs and laws of their nation, the Yugoslavians could be perceived as defending a long-standing system of international relations, one that pre-dated the two World Wars. Why shouldn't Yugoslavia be permitted to fashion its own destiny? A similar argument could be applied within NATO itself.

The North Atlantic Treaty Organization was designed specifically to fight the threat of Soviet-sponsored Communism. Its very name implied the restriction of its activities to those territories fronting the North Atlantic Ocean. Though its membership had already been expanded in the days of the Cold War to include states, such as Turkey, that did not fit the geographical definition of the organization, its mission had, nevertheless; remained the same.

Many could, and did, ask why an alliance the purpose of which was to prevent Communist aggression was now going to undertake military action against a minor state the activities of which did not present a direct threat to any of NATO's members. President Clinton sought a way around these objections, By June 1998 [he]..

was referring to the Kosovo crisis as not simply a humanitarian challenge and a foreign policy problem, but as also "an unusual and extraordinary threat to the national security [...] of the United States." At the same time, politically powerful imagery from the past, especially the need to learn from the failure of appeasement, was intertwined with the task of promoting the expanding agenda. Kosovo was being tied into other American military adventures. The specter of Vietnam loomed especially large.

The American president was still struggling to find a role for American military power in a new, post-Cold War world. Vietnam had been fought in the name of rolling back the Communist advance. The United States had been defeated by militarily inferior local forces. In Western eyes, the "bad guys" had triumphed over the "good guys." NATO could be allowed its share of "mission creep" if the mission could somehow be depicted as a continuation of the same old battles. Those who opposed NATO interference would have disagreed.

The United States was not fighting an existential enemy as Clinton insisted, but undertaking a role for which it had not been designed, nor intended. Was Bill Clinton struggling for a new role for an organization that should have ceased to exist with the death of Communism in Europe? The various arguments presented for an against NATO intervention in Kosovo all carry considerable weight, yet, the profound humanitarian losses themselves cried out for action.

Certainly, Yugoslavia, as other nations, should be allowed the freedom to determine its own destiny and form of government. Different peoples do possess different customs and laws. Still, the Muslim Kosovars had inhabited those lands for hundreds of years. True there had been fighting for nearly as long. Both sides had committed terrible atrocities. All the guilty parties should have been prosecuted. In the case of humanitarian violations, justice should have been blind, and the West should not have taken sides.

but, in terms of the Conflict of the 1990s, it was not the Kosovars who had tried to remove or exterminate their rivals. Slobodan Milosevic and his associates undertook a deliberate and calculated policy of eliminating the Muslim community from their midst. The Nuremberg Trials and Tokyo war crimes trials had definitively established the principle that acts of horror and brutality cannot be committed against civilian populations during time of war.

The republic of Yugoslavia had clearly launched a war against a segment of its own population - a population that had not risen up against the government, nor, without provocation, undertaken any violent acts against either the administration, or the Christian population in general. The case for humanitarian intervention was obvious. As for the expansion of NATO's mission, this can be overlooked in terms of conditions on the ground. NATO was not founded to undertake humanitarian missions.

Its reason for being was gone with the fall of the Soviet Union and the collapse of the Communist Bloc. Nonetheless, NATO represented a convenient agglomeration of forces - a community of will - that could be used for humanitarian purposes. In the case of Kosovo, NATO chose to act when others would not. President Clinton pushed for intervention for many reasons, not all of which related to the well-being of the Muslim inhabitants of Kosovo. He sought to.