Posted on 10/18/2004 8:13:30 AM PDT by LjubivojeRadosavljevic
One of the curious features of the Iraq war last year was the serious split across the Atlantic. And what seemed to puzzle as much as infuriate Americans was why the major European powers, having signed on to war without U.N. authorization in 1999 against Slobodan Milosevic, "the butcher of Belgrade," refused to do so in 2003 against Saddam Hussein, "the butcher of Baghdad."
On balance, the Americans would appear to have just cause for their complaint of double standards. To be sure, there are important differences. But in some respects the differences are exaggerated and, in other respects, important similarities overshadow the differences.
In 1999, on the one hand, there was compelling television footage of the humanitarian tragedy in Kosovo that outraged an internationalized human conscience. But just as the claims of weapons of mass destruction have been shown to have been greatly exaggerated and amplified through a surprisingly gullible media, so were the claims of mass murders of up to 200,000 people in Kosovo.
On the other hand, there was every prospect of prompt and effective military action being vetoed in the U.N. Security Council. So NATO launched a "humanitarian war" -- a war over values, not interests -- without U.N. authorization.
"Humanitarianism" was thus married to "war" in a clever and successful ploy that labeled opponents of the war as anti-humanitarian. Few noticed that the intervention was confined to bombing, leading to the logically absurd "humanitarian bombing."
The justification for a regional organization bypassing the international organization to wage an offensive war was as problematic then as last year. The Kosovo precedent remains deeply troubling for having posed a fundamental challenge to the normative architecture of world order.
The Independent International Commission on Kosovo concluded that NATO's intervention was illegal but legitimate. The intervention was illegal because the use of force is prohibited by the U.N. Charter except in self-defense or when authorized by the Security Council.
The intervention was legitimate, nevertheless, because of the scale of human rights atrocities by the Milosevic regime, the failure of other means used to try to stop those atrocities and the political stalemate in the Security Council created by Russia and China. Proponents of this argument clearly believe that legitimacy is on a higher plane than legality. Thus opposition to the perfectly legal apartheid regime in South Africa was fully justified: illegal, but legitimate
There is a problem, nevertheless. Suppose I have witnessed a murder by a rich celebrity. Suppose further that, for reasons having to do with expensive trial lawyers who exploit every technicality, the murderer is acquitted. Can I claim legitimacy in inflicting vigilante justice on the murderer on the grounds that society is better off without him?
A normative commitment to the rule of law implies a commitment to the principle of relations being governed by law, not power. It also implies a willingness to accept the limitations and constraints of working within the law in specific instances of an illegitimate outcome.
The U.N. Security Council, as the core international law-enforcement system, has a monopoly on the legitimate use of coercive measures in international affairs. The best that can be said of the NATO actions was that they fell into "gray area" between lawfulness and legitimacy, where the use of force is neither condemned nor condoned, but tolerated.
Critics argued that NATO acted illegally in terms of its own constitution, the U.N. Charter and state practice. Supporters turned the normal process of reasoning upside down. The war was illegal, yet necessary and justified. Therefore the war highlighted defects in international law, not shortcomings in NATO action. The (anticipated) failure of the Security Council to authorize the war was a reflection on flaws in the Council's functioning, not on the invalidity of NATO bombing. The moral urgency underpinning NATO's actions, and the military success of those actions, would in due course shape legal justification to match the course of action.
In Kosovo, in 1999, a draft resolution to condemn NATO bombing was defeated 3-12, despite two permanent Council members voting for it. Many interpreted the failure to flash the red light as tacit authorization. Therefore NATO neither flouted international legitimacy nor challenged Security Council authority. Rather, the Security Council failed to meet the challenge of international moral authority.
Put like this, the essential structural continuity from Kosovo in 1999 to Iraq in 2003 is at once apparent. For this was precisely the challenge posed to the U.N. by London and Washington: Act to enforce your own resolutions and your own authority, or suffer a decline in your authority and become irrelevant.
It could be argued that the case against Iraq was not framed in terms of the humanitarian argument, but in terms of weapons of mass destruction, which have fallen apart completely.
True, but the case against Serbia in 1999 was not framed in humanitarian language either. People overlooked then that NATO's case was equally dubious: They went to war because Milosevic rejected the Rambouillet ultimatum. Had the Rambouillet diktat been given as close a scrutiny in 1999 as the WMD argument in 2003, it would likely have met with matching skepticism.
NATO succeeded in 1999 in diverting attention from Rambouillet to the humanitarian liberation argument. British Prime Minister Tony Blair and U.S. President George W. Bush have had more difficulty trying to shift the chief justification from WMD to humanitarian outcomes in the case of Iraq.
The differences were that the ethnic cleansing by Milosevic was much closer in time to the 1999 war, not 15 years in the past. No NATO power had been complicit through diplomatic and material assistance to Serbia in the perpetration of those atrocities at the time that they were committed. The European powers collectively were simply sick and tired of Milosevic's deceit, evasions and atrocities being committed in Europe itself.
The Rambouillet diktat reflected the trans-Atlantic horror at Milosevic's record, and there was no oil that could be pointed to as the main motive for intervention. The humanitarian motive stood out far more clearly as the main driver of the intervention for most countries that went to war. Because of this, the major Western allies stood solidly united at the level of both people and governments in 1999, whereas the democratic alliance was deeply fractured last year.
Hussein's alleged links to international terrorism and al-Qaeda have also turned out to be based on deceptions and flawed conclusions drawn from heavily qualified, faith-based intelligence. Instead of policy being influenced by intelligence, a predetermined policy shaped the collection, analysis and interpretation of intelligence.
In the case of Serbia, one wonders how much closer scrutiny would have been given by NATO to the links between al-Qaeda and Serbia's main military opponents in Kosovo, the Kosovo Liberation Army, after 9/11?
The majority of developing countries were strongly opposed to the NATO intervention in Kosovo at the time. Their strongest opposition was grounded in the violation of the norm of nonintervention without U.N. authorization. Most NATO countries insisted that their action did not set a precedent. The Iraq war proves that claim to have been false.
In world affairs we do not have the luxury of "cherry-picking" parts of international law and norms. International do-gooders, like their domestic counterparts, must accept responsibility for the unintended but predictable consequences of their actions.
For nongovernment organizations, countries and international groups, including both NATO and the U.N., choices today have consequences on the morrow.
Ramesh Thakur is senior vice rector of United Nations University in Tokyo. These are his personal views.
It is all the "double standards" that are applied by the media and the liberals.
If it is proposed and done by liberals, it is legitimate even if illegal.
If it is perceived as being done by Bush, it is both illegal and illegitimate so they can defeate Bush.
It is also all about the Money. There was no money to speak of in Kosovo, but there was a lot of money used to buy protection for Sadam.
Also, it seems that it is ok for radical islamicists to wage any kind of war they want, including beheading inocent people on TV. Any self defence put up by anyone is "illegitimate" and "illegal".
It's simple, When leftists bomb other countries, it's humanitarian. When Republicans do it, they're racist warmongers.
The Kosovo precedent remains deeply troubling for having posed a fundamental challenge to the normative architecture of world order.
Oh no! We must save normative architecture of the world order! Every loyal American patriot is dedicated to preserving the normative architecture of the world order. Not.
It could be argued that the case against Iraq was not framed in terms of the humanitarian argument, but in terms of weapons of mass destruction, which have fallen apart completely.
Only with regards to the UN. WMD is the only reason for war the left cares about because it is the one which was considered by the UN, which they respect more than their own representative government. When the president went to war, he did it to protect the national security interests of the United States. Congress consented.
Hussein's alleged links to international terrorism and al-Qaeda have also turned out to be based on deceptions and flawed conclusions drawn from heavily qualified, faith-based intelligence.
More commie anti-Americanism. Soon we will deal a unilateral preemptive faith-based death blow to the International Socialist enemy known as the United Nations.
In world affairs we do not have the luxury of "cherry-picking" parts of international law and norms.
There is no international law. There is no international government. There are only treaties. We do what we want to.
International do-gooders, like their domestic counterparts, must accept responsibility for the unintended but predictable consequences of their actions.
All you have to do to try our soldiers for war crimes is defeat us in war and conquer us. Come and get it.
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