The absurdity of the principle of retrospective
justification is, surely, recognized at some level. Accordingly, many attempts
to justify the NATO bombing take a different tack. One typical version is
that “Serbia assaulted Kosovo to squash a separatist Albanian guerrilla
movement, but killed 10,000 civilians and drove 700,000 people into refuge
in Macedonia and Albania. NATO attacked Serbia from the air in the name of
protecting the Albanians from ethnic cleansing [but] killed hundreds of Serb
civilians and provoked an exodus of tens of thousands from cities into the
countryside.” Assuming that order of events, a rationale for the bombing
can be constructed. But uncontroversially, the actual order is the opposite.
The device is common in the media, and scholarship often adopts a similar
stance. In a widely-praised book on the war, historian David Fromkin asserts
without argument that the U.S. and its allies acted out of “altruism”
and “moral fervor” alone, forging “a new kind of approach to
the use of power in world politics” as they “reacted to the deportation
of more than a million Kosovars from their homeland” by bombing so as
to save them “from horrors of suffering, or from death.” He is referring
to those expelled as the anticipated consequence of the bombing campaign.
Opening her legal defense of the war, Law Professor Ruth Wedgwood assumes
without argument that the objective of the NATO bombing was “to stem
Belgrade’s expulsion of ethnic Albanians from Kosovo”— namely,
the expulsion precipitated by the bombing, and an objective unknown to the
military commander and forcefully denied by him. International affairs and
security specialist Alan Kuperman writes that in East Timor and Kosovo, “the
threat of economic sanctions or bombing has provoked a tragic backlash,”
and “Western intervention arrived too late to prevent the widespread
atrocities.” In Kosovo the bombing did not arrive “too late to prevent
the widespread atrocities,” but preceded them, and as anticipated, incited
them. In East Timor, no Western action “provoked a tragic backlash.”
The use of force was not proposed, and even the threat of sanctions was delayed
until after the consummation of the atrocities. The “intervention”
was by a UN peacekeeping force that entered the Portuguese-administered territory,
under UN jurisdiction in principle, after the Western powers finally withdrew
their direct support for the Indonesian invasion and its massive atrocities,
and its army quickly left.
Such revision of the factual record has been standard procedure throughout.
In a typical earlier version, New York Times foreign policy specialist
Thomas Friedman wrote at the war’s end that, “once the refugee evictions
began, ignoring Kosovo would be wrong…and therefore using a huge air war
for a limited objective was the only thing that made sense.” The refugee
evictions to which he refers followed the “huge air war,” as anticipated.
Again, the familiar inversion, which is understandable: without it, defense
of state violence becomes difficult indeed.One commonly voiced retrospective justification is that the resort to force
made it possible for Kosovar Albanians to return to their homes; a significant
achievement, if we overlook the fact that almost all were driven from their
homes in reaction to the bombing. By this reasoning, a preferable alternative—grotesque,
but less so than the policy pursued—would have been to wait to see whether
the Serbs would carry out the alleged threat, and if they did, to bomb the
FRY to ensure the return of the Kosovars, who would have suffered far less
harm than they did when expelled under NATO’s bombs.An interesting variant appears in Cambridge University Law Professor Marc
Weller’s introduction to the volume of documents on Kosovo that he edited.
He recognizes that the NATO bombing, which he strongly supported, is in clear
violation of international law, and might be justified only on the basis of
an alleged “right of humanitarian intervention.” That justification
in turn rests on the assumption that the FRY refusal “to accept a very
detailed settlement of the Kosovo issue [the Rambouillet ultimatum] would
constitute a circumstance triggering an overwhelming humanitarian emergency.”
But events on the ground “relieved NATO of having to answer this point,”
he writes: namely, “the commencement of a massive and pre-planned campaign
of forced deportation of what at one stage seemed to be almost the entire
ethnic Albanian population of Kosovo just before the bombing campaign commenced.”There are two problems. First, the documentary record, including the volume
he edited, provides no evidence for his crucial factual claim, and indeed
refutes it (given the absence of evidence despite extensive efforts to unearth
it). Second, even if it had been discovered later that the expulsion had commenced
before the bombing, that could hardly justify the resort to force, by simple
logic. Furthermore, as just discussed, even if the commencement of the expulsion
had been known before the bombing (though mysteriously missing from the documentary
record), it would have been far preferable to allow the expulsion to proceed,
and then to initiate the bombing to ensure the return of those expelled: grotesque,
but far less so than what was undertaken. But in the light of the evidence
available, all of this is academic, merely an indication of the desperation
of the efforts to justify the war.Were less grotesque options available in March 1999? The burden of proof,
of course, is on those who advocate state violence; it is a heavy burden,
which there has been no serious attempt to meet. But let us put that aside,
and look into the range of options available.An important question, raised by Eric Rouleau, is whether “Serbian atrocities
had reached such proportions as to warrant breaking off the diplomatic process
to save the Kosovars from genocide.” He observes that “The OSCE’s
continuing refusal to release the report [on the observations of the KVM monitors
from November until their withdrawal] can only strengthen doubts about the
truth of that allegation.” As noted earlier, the State Department and
Tribunal indictments provide no meaningful support for the allegation—not
an insignificant fact, since both sought to develop the strongest case. What
about the OSCE report, released since Rouleau wrote? As noted, the report
makes no serious effort to support the allegation, indeed provides little
information about the crucial period. Its references in fact confirm the testimony
of French KVM member Jacques Prod’homme, which Rouleau cites, that “in
the month leading up to the war, during which he moved freely throughout the
Pec region, neither he nor his colleagues observed anything that could be
described as systematic persecution, either collective or individual murders,
burning of houses or deportations.” The detailed reports of KVM and other
observers omitted from the OSCE review undermine the allegation further, as
already discussed.
The crucial allegation remains unsupported, though it is the central component
of NATO’s case, as even the most dedicated advocates recognize, Weller
for example. Once again, it should be stressed that a heavy burden of proof
lies on those who put it forth to justify the resort to violence. The discrepancy
between what is required and the evidence presented is quite striking; the
term “contradiction” would be more apt, particularly when we consider
other pertinent evidence, such as the direct testimony of the military commander,
General Clark.Kosovo had been an extremely ugly place in the preceding year. About 2,000
were killed according to NATO, mostly Albanians, in the course of a bitter
struggle that began in February with KLA actions that the U.S. denounced as
“terrorism,” and a brutal Serb response. By summer the KLA had taken
over about 40 percent of the province, eliciting a vicious reaction by Serb
security forces and paramilitaries, targeting the civilian population. According
to Albanian Kosovar legal adviser Marc Weller, “within a few days [after
the withdrawal of the monitors on March 20], the number of displaced had again
risen to over 200,000,” figures that conform roughly to U.S. intelligence
reports.Suppose the monitors had not been withdrawn
in preparation for the bombing and diplomatic efforts had been pursued. Were
such options feasible? Would they have led to an even worse outcome, or perhaps
a better one? Since NATO refused to entertain this possibility, we cannot
know. But we can at least consider the known facts, and ask what they suggest.Could the KVM monitors have been left in place, preferably strengthened? That
seems possible, particularly in the light of the immediate condemnation of
the withdrawal by the Serb National Assembly. No argument has been advanced
to suggest that the reported increase in atrocities after their withdrawal
would have taken place even had they remained, let alone the vast escalation
that was the predicted consequence of the bombing signalled by the withdrawal.
NATO also made little effort to pursue other peaceful means; even an oil embargo,
the core of any serious sanctions regime, was not considered until after the
bombing.The most important question, however, has to do with the diplomatic options.
Two proposals were on the table on the eve of the bombing. One was the Rambouillet
accord, presented to Serbia as an ultimatum. The second was Serbia’s
position, formulated in its March 15 “Revised Draft Agreement” and
the Serb National Assembly Resolution of March 23. A serious concern for protecting
Kosovars might well have brought into consideration other options as well,
including, perhaps, something like the 1992-93 proposal of the Serbian president
of Yugoslavia, Dobrica Cosic, that Kosovo be partitioned, separating itself
from Serbia apart from “a number of Serbian enclaves.” At the time,
the proposal was rejected by Ibrahim Rugova’s Republic of Kosovo, which
had declared independence and set up a parallel government; but it might have
served as a basis for negotiation in the different circumstances of early
1999. Let us, however, keep to the two official positions of late March: the
Rambouillet ultimatum and the Serb Resolution.It is important and revealing that, with marginal exceptions, the essential
contents of both positions were kept from the public eye, apart from dissident
media that reach few people.The Serb National Assembly Resolution, though reported at once on the wire
services, has remained a virtual secret. There has been little indication
even of its existence, let alone its contents. The Resolution condemned the
withdrawal of the OSCE monitors and called on the UN and OSCE to facilitate
a diplomatic settlement through negotations “toward the reaching of a
political agreement on a wide-ranging autonomy for [Kosovo], with the securing
of a full equality of all citizens and ethnic communities and with respect
for the sovereignty and territorial integrity of the Republic of Serbia and
the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia.” It raised the possibility of an
“international presence” of a “size and character” to
be determined to carry out the “political accord on the self-rule agreed
and accepted by the representatives of all national communities living in
[Kosovo].” FRY agreement “to discuss the scope and character of
international presence in [Kosovo] to implement the agreement to be accepted
in Rambouillet” had been formally conveyed to the Negotiators on February
23, and announced by the FRY at a press conference the same day. Whether these
proposals had any substance we cannot know, since they were never considered,
and remain unknown.
Perhaps even more striking is that the Rambouillet ultimatum, though universally
described as the peace proposal, was also kept from the public, particularly
the provisions that were apparently introduced in the final moments of the
Paris peace talks in March after Serbia had expressed agreement with the main
political proposals, and that virtually guaranteed rejection. Of particular
importance are the terms of the implementation Appendices that accorded to
NATO the right of “free and unrestricted passage and unimpeded access
throughout the FRY including associated airspace and territorial waters,”
without limits or obligations or concern for the laws of the country or the
jurisdiction of its authorities, who are, however, required to follow NATO
orders “on a priority basis and with all appropriate means” (Appendix
B).The Annex was kept from journalists covering the Rambouillet and Paris talks,
Robert Fisk reports. “The Serbs say they denounced it at their last Paris
press conference—an ill-attended gathering at the Yugoslav Embassy at
11 PM on 18 March.” Serb dissidents who took part in the negotiations
allege that they were given these conditions on the last day of the Paris
talks, and that the Russians did not know about them. These provisions were
not made available to the British House of Commons until April 1, the first
day of the Parliamentary recess, a week after the bombing started.In the negotiations that began after
the bombing, NATO abandoned these demands entirely, along with others to which
Serbia had been opposed, and there is no mention of them in the final peace
agreement. Reasonably, Fisk asks: “What was the real purpose of NATO’s
last minute demand? Was it a Trojan horse? To save the peace? Or to sabotage
it?” Whatever the answer, if the NATO negotiators had been concerned
with the fate of the Kosovar Albanians, they would have sought to determine
whether diplomacy could succeed if NATO’s most provocative, and evidently
irrelevant, demands had been withdrawn; the monitoring enhanced, not terminated;
and significant sanctions threatened.When such questions have been raised, leaders of the U.S. and UK negotiating
teams have claimed that they were willing to drop the exorbitant demands that
they later withdrew, but that the Serbs refused. The claim is hardly credible.
There would have been every reason for them to have made such facts public
at once. It is interesting that they are not called to account for this startling
performance.Prominent advocates of the bombing have made similar claims. An important
example is the commentary on Rambouillet by Marc Weller. Weller ridicules
the “extravagant claims” about the implementation Appendices, which
he claims were “published along with the agreement,” meaning the
Draft Agreement dated February 23. Where they were published he does not say,
nor does he explain why reporters covering the Rambouillet and Paris talks
were unaware of them; or, it appears, the British Parliament. The “famous
Appendix B,” he states, established “the standard terms of a status
of forces agreement for KFOR [the planned NATO occupying forces].” He
does not explain why the demand was dropped by NATO after the bombing began,
and is evidently not required by the forces that entered Kosovo under NATO
command in June, which are far larger than what was contemplated at Rambouillet
and therefore should be even more dependent on the status of forces agreement.
Also unexplained is the March 15 FRY response to the February 23 Draft Agreement.
The FRY response goes through the Draft Agreement in close detail, section
by section, proposing extensive changes and deletions throughout, but includes
no mention at all of the appendices—the implementation agreements, which,
as Weller points out, were by far the most important part and were the subject
of the Paris negotations then underway. One can only view his account with
some skepticism, even apart from his casual attitude toward crucial fact,
already noted, and his clear commitments. For the moment, these important
matters remain buried in obscurity.Despite official efforts to prevent public awareness of what was happening,
the documents were available to any news media that chose to pursue the matter.
In the U.S., the extreme (and plainly irrelevant) demand for virtual NATO
occupation of the FRY received its first mention at a NATO briefing of April
26, when a question was raised about it, but was quickly dismissed and not
pursued. The facts were reported as soon as the demands had been formally
withdrawn and had become irrelevant to democratic choice. Immediately after
the announcement of the peace accords of June 3, the press quoted the crucial
passages of the “take it or leave it” Rambouillet ultimatum, noting
that they required that “a purely NATO force was to be given full permission
to go anywhere it wanted in Yugoslavia, immune from any legal process,”
and that “NATO-led troops would have had virtually free access across
Yugoslavia, not just Kosovo.”
Through the 78 days of bombing, negotiations continued, each side making compromises—described
in the U.S. as Serb deceit, or capitulation under the bombs. The peace agreement
of June 3 was a compromise between the two positions on the table in late
March. NATO abandoned its most extreme demands, including those that had apparently
undermined the negotations at the last minute and the wording that had been
interpreted as calling for a referendum on independence. Serbia agreed to
an “international security presence with substantial NATO participation,”
the sole mention of NATO in the peace agreement or Security Council Resolution
1244 affirming it. NATO had no intention of living up to the scraps of paper
it had signed, and moved at once to violate them, implementing a military
occupation of Kosovo under NATO command. When Serbia and Russia insisted on
the terms of the formal agreements, they were castigated for their deceit,
and bombing was renewed to bring them to heel. On June 7, NATO planes again
bombed the oil refineries in Novi Sad and Pancevo, both centers of opposition
to Milosevic. The Pancevo refinery burst into flames, releasing a huge cloud
of toxic fumes, shown in a photo accompanying a New York Times story
of July 14, which discussed the severe economic and health effects. The bombing
was not reported, though it was covered by wire services.It has been argued that Milosevic would have tried to evade the terms of an
agreement, had one been reached in March. The record strongly supports that
conclusion, just as it supports the same conclusion about NATO—not only
in this case, incidentally; forceful dismantling of formal agreements is the
norm on the part of the great powers. As now belatedly recognized, the record
also suggests that “it might have been possible [in March] to initiate
a genuine set of negotiations—not the disastrous American diktat presented
to Milosevic at the Rambouillet conference—and to insert a large contingent
of outside monitors capable of protecting Albanian and Serb civilians alike.”At least this much seems clear. NATO chose to reject diplomatic options that
were not exhausted, and to launch a military campaign that had terrible consequences
for Kosovar Albanians, as anticipated. Other consequences are of little concern
in the West, including the devastation of the civilian economy of Serbia by
military operations that severely violate the laws of war. Though the matter
was brought to the War Crimes Tribunal long ago, it is hard to imagine that
it will be seriously addressed. For similar reasons, there is little likelihood
that the Tribunal will pay attention to its 150-page “Indictment Operation
Storm: A Prima Facie Case,” reviewing the war crimes committed by Croatian
forces that drove some 200,000 Serbs from Krajina in August 1995 with crucial
U.S. involvement that elicited “almost total lack of interest in the
U.S. press and in the U.S. Congress,” New York Times Balkans correspondent
David Binder observes.The suffering of Kosovars did not end
with the arrival of the NATO (KFOR) occupying army and the UN mission. Though
billions of dollars were readily available for bombing, as of October the
U.S. “has yet to pay any of the $37.9 million assessed for the start-up
costs of the United Nations civilian operation in Kosovo”; as in East
Timor, where the Clinton administration called for reduction of the small
peacekeeping force. By November, “the U.S. Office of Foreign Disaster
Assistance has yet to distribute any heavy-duty kits and is only now bringing
lumber” for the winter shelter program in Kosovo; the UNHCR and EU humanitarian
agency ECHO have also “been dogged with criticism for delays and lack
of foresight.” The current shortfall for the UN mission is “the
price of half a day’s bombing,” an embittered senior UN official
said, and without it “this place will fail,” to the great pleasure
of Milosevic. A November donors’ conference of Western governments pledged
only $88 million to cover the budget of the UN mission in Kosovo, but pledged
$1 billion in aid for reconstruction for the next year—public funds that
will be transferred to the pockets of private contractors, if there is some
resolution of the controversies within NATO about how the contracts are to
be distributed. In mid-December the UN mission again pleaded for funds for
teachers, police officers, and other civil servants, to little effect.
Despite the limited aid, the appeal of a disaster that can be attributed to
an official enemy, and exploited (on curious grounds) “to show why 78
days of airstrikes against Serbian forces and infrastructure were necessary,”
has been sufficient to bring severe cutbacks in aid elsewhere. The U.S. Senate
is planning to cut tens of millions of dollars from Africa-related programs.
Denmark has reduced non-Kosovo assistance by 26 percent. International Medical
Corps is suspending its Angola program, having raised $5 million for Kosovo
while it hunts, in vain, for $1.5 million for Angola, where 1.6 million displaced
people face starvation. The World Food Program announced that it would have
to curtail its programs for 2 million refugees in Sierra Leone, Liberia, and
Guinea, having received less than 20 percent of requested funding. The same
fate awaits four million starving people in Africa’s Great Lakes region—whose
circumstances are not unrelated to Western actions over many years, and refusal
to act at critical moments. UNHCR expenditures per refugee in the Balkans
are 11 times as high as in Africa. “The hundreds of millions of dollars
spent on Kosovo refugees and the crush of aid agencies eager to spend it ‘was
almost an obscenity,’ said Randolph Kent,” who moved from UN programs
in the Balkans to East Africa. President Clinton held a meeting with leading
aid agencies “to emphasize his own enthusiasm for aid to Kosovo.”All of this is against the background
of very sharp reductions in aid in the United States, now “at the height
of its glory” (Fromkin), the leadership basking in adulation for their
historically unprecedent “altruism” as they virtually disappear
from the list of donors to the poor and miserable.The OSCE inquiry provides a detailed record of crimes committed under NATO
military occupation. Though these do not begin to compare with the crimes
committed by Serbia under NATO bombardment, they are not insignificant. The
occupied province is filled with “lawlessness that has left violence
unchecked,” much of it attributed to the KLA-UCK, OSCE reports, while
“impunity has reigned instead of justice.” Albanian opponents of
the “new order” under “UCK dominance,” including officials
of the “rebel group’s principal political rival,” have been
kidnapped, murdered, targeted in grenade attacks, and otherwise harassed and
ordered to withdraw from politics. The one selection from the OSCE reports
in the New York Times concerns the town of Prizren, near the Albanian
border. It was attacked by Serbs on March 28, but “the overall result
is that far more damage has been caused…after the war than during it.”
British military police report involvement of the Albanian mafia in grenade
attacks and other crimes, among such acts as murder of elderly women by “men
describing themselves as KLA representatives.”The Serb minority has been largely expelled. Robert Fisk reports that “the
number of Serbs killed in the five months since the war comes close to that
of Albanians murdered by Serbs in the five months before NATO began its bombardment
in March,” so available evidence indicates; recall that the UN reported
“65 violent deaths” of civilians (Albanian and Serb primarily) in
the two months before the withdrawal of the monitors and the bombing. Murders
are not investigated, even the murder of a Serb employee of the International
Tribunal. The Croat community “left en masse” in October. In November,
“the president of the tiny Jewish community in Pristina, Cedra Prlincevic,
left for Belgrade after denouncing ‘a pogrom against the non-Albanian
population’.” Amnesty International reported at the year’s
end that “Violence against Serbs, Roma, Muslim Slavs and moderate Albanians
in Kosovo has increased dramatically over the past month,” including
“murder, abductions, violent attacks, intimidation, and house burning…on
a daily basis,” as well as torture and rape, and attacks on independent
Albanian media and political organizations in what appears to be “an
organized campaign to silence moderate voices in ethnic Albanian society,”
all under the eyes of NATO forces.KFOR officers report that their orders are to disregard crimes: “Of course
it’s mad,” a French commander said, “but those are the orders,
from NATO, from above.” NATO forces also “seem completely indifferent”
to attacks by “armed ethnic Albanian raiders” across the Serb-Kosovo
border “to terrorize border settlements, steal wood or livestock, and,
in some cases, to kill,” leaving towns abandoned.
Current indications are that Kosovo
under NATO occupation has reverted to what was developing in the early 1980s,
after the death of Tito, when nationalist forces undertook to create an “ethnically
clean Albanian republic,” taking over Serb lands, attacking churches,
and engaging in “protracted violence” to attain the goal of an “ethnically
pure” Albanian region, with “almost weekly incidents of rape, arson,
pillage and industrial sabotage, most seemingly designed to drive Kosovo’s
remaining indigenous Slavs…out of the province.” This “seemingly
intractable” problem, another phase in an ugly history of intercommunal
violence, led to Milosevic’s characteristically brutal response, withdrawing
Kosovo’s autonomy and the heavy federal subsidies on which it depended,
and imposing an “Apartheid” regime. Kosovo may also come to resemble
Bosnia, “a den of thieves and tax cheats” with no functioning economy,
dominated by “a wealthy criminal class that wields enormous political
influence and annually diverts hundreds of millions of dollars in potential
tax revenue to itself.” Much worse may be in store as independence for
Kosovo becomes entangled in pressures for a “greater Albania,” with
dim portents.The poorer countries of the region have incurred enormous losses from the
blocking of the Danube by bombing at Novi Sad, another center of opposition
to Milosevic. They were already suffering from protectionist barriers that
“prevent the ships from plying their trade in the EU,” as well as
“a barrage of Western quotas and tariffs on their exports.” But
“blockage of the [Danube] is actually a boon” for Western Europe,
particularly Germany, which benefits from increased activity on the Rhine
and at Atlantic ports.There are other winners. At the war’s end, the business press described
“the real winners” as Western military industry, meaning high-tech
industry generally. Moscow is looking forward to a “banner year for Russian
weapons exports” as “the world is rearming apprehensively largely
thanks to NATO’s Balkans adventure,” seeking a deterrent, as widely
predicted during the war. More important, the U.S. was able to enforce its
domination over the strategic Balkans region, displacing EU initiatives at
least temporarily, a primary reason for the insistence that the operation
be in the hands of NATO, a U.S subsidiary. A destitute Serbia remains the
last holdout, probably not for long.A further consequence is another blow to the fragile principles of world order.
The NATO action represents a threat to the “very core of the international
security system” founded on the UN Charter, Secretary-General Kofi Annan
observed in his annual report to the UN in September. That matters little
to the rich and powerful, who will act as they please, rejecting World Court
decisions and vetoing Security Council resolutions if that becomes necessary;
it is useful to remember that, contrary to much mythology, the U.S. has been
far in the lead in vetoing Security Council resolutions on a wide range of
issues, including terror and aggression, ever since it lost control of the
UN in the course of decolonization, with Britain second and France a distant
third. But the traditional victims take these matters more seriously, as the
global reaction to the Kosovo war indicated.The essential point—not very obscure—is that the world faces two
choices with regard to the use of force: (1) some semblance of world order,
either the Charter or something better if it can gain a degree of legitimacy;
or (2) the powerful states do as they wish unless constrained from within,
guided by interests of power and profit, as in the past. It makes good sense
to struggle for a better world, but not to indulge in pretense and illusion
about the one in which we live.Archival and other sources should provide a good deal more information about
the latest Balkans war. Any conclusions reached today are at best partial
and tentative. As of now, however, the “lessons learned” do not
appear to be particularly attractive. Z
From the Afterword to the French translation of The
New Military Humanism (Common Courage, 1999; Page Deux
Lausanne, 2000).