by Noam Chomsky
Again, the example illustrates (1): act to escalate the atrocities.
Laos. Every year thousands of people, mostly children and poor farmers, are killed in the Plain of Jars in Northern Laos, the scene of the heaviest bombing of civilian targets in history, it appears, and arguably the most cruel: Washington’s furious assault on a poor peasant society had little to do with its wars in the region. The worst period was after 1968, when Washington was compelled to undertake negotiations (under popular and business pressure), ending the regular bombardment of North Vietnam. Kissinger and Nixon then shifted the planes to the task of bombarding Laos and Cambodia.
The deaths are from “bombies,” tiny anti-personnel weapons, far worse than land mines: they are designed specifically to kill and maim, and have no effect on trucks, buildings, etc. The Plain was saturated with hundreds of millions of these criminal devices, which have a failure-to-explode rate of 20-30 percent, according to the manufacturer, Honeywell. The numbers suggest either remarkably poor quality control or a rational policy of murdering civilians by delayed action. This was only a fraction of the technology deployed, which also included advanced missiles to penetrate caves where families sought shelter. Current annual casualties from “bombies” are estimated from hundreds a year to “an annual nationwide casualty rate of 20,000,” more than half of them deaths, according to the veteran Asia reporter Barry Wain of the Wall Street Journal—in its Asia edition. A conservative estimate, then, is that the crisis this year is approximately comparable to Kosovo, though deaths are far more highly concentrated among children—over half, according to studies reported by the Mennonite Central Committee, which has been working in Laos since 1977 to alleviate the continuing atrocities.
There have been efforts to publicize and deal with the humanitarian catastrophe. A British-based Mine Advisory Group (MAG) is trying to remove the lethal objects, but the US is “conspicuously missing from the handful of western organizations that have followed MAG,” the British press reports, though it has finally agreed to train some Laotian civilians. The British press also reports, with some annoyance, the allegation of MAG specialists that the US refuses to provide them with “render harmless procedures” that would make their work “a lot quicker and a lot safer.” These remain a state secret, as does the whole affair in the United States. The Bangkok press reports a very similar situation in Cambodia, particularly the eastern region, where US bombardment after early 1969 was most intense.15
In this case, the US reaction is (II): do nothing. And the reaction of the media and commentators is to keep silent, following the norms under which the war against Laos was designated a “secret war”—meaning well-known, but suppressed, as was also in the case of Cambodia from March 1969. The level of self-censorship was extraordinary then, as is the current phase. The relevance of this shocking example should be obvious without further comment.
President Clinton explained to the nation that “there are times when looking away simply is not an option”; “we can’t respond to every tragedy in every comer of the world,” but that doesn’t mean that “we should do nothing for no one.”16 But the president, and commentators, failed to add that the “times” are well defined. The principle applies to “humanitarian crises,” in the technical sense discussed earlier: when the interests of rich and privileged people are endangered. Accordingly, the examples just mentioned do not qualify as “humanitarian crises,” so looking away and not responding are definitely options, if not obligatory. On similar grounds, Clinton’s policies on Africa are understood by Western diplomats to be “leaving Africa to solve its own crises,” for example, in the Republic of Congo, scene of a major war and huge atrocities: here Clinton refused a UN request for $100,000 for a battalion of peacekeepers, according to the UN’s senior Africa envoy, the highly respected diplomat Mohamed Sahnoun, a refusal that “torpedoed” the UN proposal. In the case of Sierra Leone, “Washington dragged out discussions on a British proposal to deploy peacekeepers” in 1997, paving the way for another major disaster, but also of the kind for which “looking away” is the preferred option. In other cases too, “the United States has actively thwarted efforts by the United Nations to take on peacekeeping operations that might have prevented some of Africa’s wars, according to European and UN diplomats,” correspondent Colum Lynch reported as the plans to bomb Kosovo were reaching their final stages.17
I will skip other examples of (I) and (II), which abound, and also contemporary atrocities of a different kind, such as the slaughter of Iraqi civilians by means of a vicious form of what amounts to biological warfare—”a very hard choice,” Madeleine Albright commented on national TV in 1996 when asked for her reaction to the killing of half a million Iraqi children in five years, but “we think the price is worth it.” Current estimates remain at about 5,000 children killed every month, and the price is still “worth it.”18 These and other examples might be kept in mind when we read admiring accounts of how the “moral compass” of the Clinton administration is at last functioning properly, in Kosovo.19
Kosovo is another illustration of (I): act in such a way as to escalate the violence, with exactly that expectation.
“Humanitarian Intervention”
To find examples illustrating (III) is all too easy, at least if we keep to official rhetoric. The most extensive recent academic study of “humanitarian intervention” is by Sean Murphy, now counselor for legal affairs at the US Embassy in the Hague. He reviews the record after the Kellogg-Briand pact of 1928, which outlawed war, and then after the UN Charter, which strengthened and articulated these provisions. In the first phase, he writes, the most prominent examples of “humanitarian intervention” were Japan’s attack on Manchuria, Mussolini’s invasion of Ethiopia, and Hitler’s occupation of parts of Czechoslovakia, all accompanied by uplifting humanitarian rhetoric and factual justifications as well. Japan was going to establish an “earthly paradise” as it defended Manchurians from “Chinese bandits,” with the support of a leading Chinese nationalist, a far more credible figure than anyone the US was able to conjure up during its attack on South Vietnam. Mussolini was liberating thousands of slaves as he carried forth the Western “civilizing mission.” Hitler announced Germany’s intention to end ethnic tensions and violence, and to “safeguard the national individuality of the German and Czech peoples,” in an operation “filled with earnest desire to serve the true interests of the peoples dwelling in the area,” in accordance with their will; the Slovakian president asked Hitler to declare Slovakia a protectorate.20
Another useful intellectual exercise is to compare those obscene justifications with those offered for interventions, including “humanitarian interventions,” in the post-UN Charter period.
In that period, perhaps the most compelling example of (III) is the Vietnamese invasion of Cambodia in December 1978, terminating Pol Pot’s atrocities, which were then peaking. Vietnam pleaded the right of self-defense against armed attack, one of the few post-Charter examples when the plea is plausible: the Khmer Rouge regime (Democratic Kampuchea, DK) was carrying out murderous attacks against Vietnam in border areas. The US reaction is instructive. The press condemned the “Prussians” of Asia for their outrageous violation of international law. They were harshly punished for the crime of having ended Pol Pot’s slaughters, first by a (US-backed) Chinese invasion, then by the US imposition of extremely harsh sanctions. The US recognized the expelled DK as the official government of Cambodia, because of its “continuity” with the Pol Pot regime, the State Department explained. Not too subtly, the US supported the Khmer Rouge in its continuing attacks in Cambodia.
The example tells us more about the “custom and practice” that underlies “the emerging legal norms of humanitarian intervention.”
Another illustration of (III) is India’s invasion of East Pakistan in 1971, which terminated an enormous massacre and refugee flight (more than 10 million, according to estimates at the time). The US condemned India for aggression; Kissinger was
particularly infuriated by India’s action, in part, it seems, because it was interfering with a carefully staged secret trip to China. Perhaps this is one of the examples that historian John Lewis Gaddis had in mind in his fawning review of the latest volume of Kissinger’s memoirs, when he reports admiringly that Kissinger “acknowledges here, more clearly than in the past, the influence of his upbringing in Nazi Germany, the examples set by his parents, and the consequent impossibility, for him, of operating outside a moral framework.”21 The logic is overpowering, as are the illustrations, too well known to record.
Again, the same lessons.
Despite the desperate efforts of ideologues to prove that circles are square, there is no serious doubt that the NATO bombings further undermine what remains of the fragile structure of international law. The US made that clear in the debates that led to the NATO decision, as already discussed. The more closely one approaches the conflicted region, the greater the opposition to Washington’s insistence on force, even within NATO (in Greece and Italy). Again, that is not an unusual phenomenon: another recent example is the US/UK bombing of Iraq, undertaken in December 1998 with unusually brazen gestures of contempt for the Security Council—even the timing, which coincided with an emergency session to deal with the crisis. Still another illustration, minor in context, is the destruction of half the pharmaceutical production of a poor African country (Sudan) a few months earlier, another event that does not indicate that the “moral compass” is straying from righteousness, though comparable destruction of US facilities by Islamic terrorists might evoke a slightly different reaction. It is unnecessary to emphasize that there is a far more extensive record that would be prominently reviewed right now if facts were considered relevant to determining “custom and practice.”
The Rules of World Order
It could be argued, rather plausibly, that further demolition of the rules of world order is by now of no significance, as in the late 1930s. The contempt of the world’s leading power for the framework of world order has become so extreme that there is little left to discuss.22 While the Reaganites broke new ground, under Clinton the defiance of world order has become so extreme as to be of concern even to hawkish policy analysts. In the leading establishment journal Foreign Affairs, Samuel Huntington warns that Washington is treading a dangerous course. In the eyes of much of the world—probably most of the world, he suggests—the US is “becoming the rogue superpower,” considered “the single greatest external threat to their societies.” Realist “international relations theory,” he argues, predicts that coalitions may arise to counter-balance the rogue superpower.23 On pragmatic grounds, then, the stance should be reconsidered. Americans who prefer a different image of their society might have other grounds for concern over these tendencies, but they are probably of little concern to planners, with their narrower focus and immersion in ideology.
Where does that leave the question of what to do in Kosovo? It leaves it unanswered. The US has chosen a course of action that, as it explicitly recognizes, escalates atrocities and violence; a course that strikes yet another blow against the regime of international order, which does offer the weak at least some limited protection from predatory states; a course that undermines-perhaps destroys—promising democratic developments within Yugoslavia, probably Macedonia as well. As for the longer term, consequences are unpredictable.
One plausible observation is that “every bomb that falls on Serbia and every ethnic killing in Kosovo suggests that it will scarcely be possible for Serbs and Albanians to live beside each other in some sort of peace.”24 Other possible long-term outcomes are not pleasant to contemplate. The resort to violence has, again predictably, narrowed the options. Perhaps the least ugly that remains is an eventual partition of Kosovo, with Serbia taking the northern areas that are rich in resources and have the main historical monuments, and the southern sector becoming a NATO protectorate where some Albanians can live in misery. Another possibility is that with much of the population gone, the US might turn to the Carthaginian solution. If that happens, it would again be nothing new, as large areas of Indochina can testify.
A standard argument is that we had to do something: we could not simply stand by as atrocities continued. The argument is so absurd that it is rather surprising to hear it voiced. Suppose you see a crime in the streets, and feel that you can’t just stand by silently, so you pick up an assault rifle and kill everyone involved: criminal, victim, bystanders. Are we to understand that to be the rational and moral response?
One choice, always available, is to follow the Hippocratic principle: “First, do no harm.” If you can think of no way to adhere to that elementary principle, then do nothing; at least that is preferable to causing harm. But there are always other ways that can be considered. Diplomacy and negotiations are never at an end. That was true right before the bombing, when the Serb Parliament, responding to Clinton’s ultimatum, condemned the withdrawal of the monitors and called for negotiations leading “toward the reaching of a political agreement on a wide-ranging autonomy” for Kosovo and on “the size and character of the international presence” in Kosovo for carrying out the accord.25 The proposal was immediately available on international wire services, but scarcely reported in the US and generally unknown. Just what the proposal might have meant we cannot know, since the two warrior states preferred to reject the diplomatic path in favor of violence.
Another argument, if one can call it that, has been advanced most prominently by Henry Kissinger. He believes that intervention was a mistake (“open-ended,” quagmire, etc.). That aside, it is futile. “Through the centuries, these conflicts [in the Balkans] have been fought with unparalleled ferocity because none of the populations has any experience with—and essentially no belief in—western concepts of toleration.” At last we understand why Europeans have treated each other with such gentle solicitude “through the centuries,” and have tried so hard over many centuries to bring to others their message of nonviolence, toleration, and loving kindness.26
One can always count on K. for some comic relief, though in reality, he is not alone. He is joined by those who ponder “Balkan logic” as contrasted with the Western record of humane rationality, and those who remind us of the “distaste for war or for intervention in the affairs of others” that is “our inherent weakness,” of our dismay over the “repeated violations of norms and rules established by international treaty [and] human rights conventions.”27 We are to consider Kosovo as “ a New Collision of East and West,” a New York Times think-piece is headlined, a clear illustration of Samuel Huntington’s “Clash of Civilizations”: “a democratic West, its humanitarian instincts repelled by the barbarous inhumanity of Orthodox Serbs,” all of this “clear to Americans” but not to others, a fact that Americans fail to comprehend.28
Or we may listen to the inspiring words of Secretary of Defense William Cohen, introducing the president at Norfolk Naval Air Station. He opened by quoting Theodore Roosevelt, speaking “at the dawn of this century, as America was awakening into its new place in the world.” President Roosevelt said, “Unless you’re willing to fight for great ideals, those ideals will vanish.” Cohen added, “Today, at the dawn of the next century, we’re joined by President Bill Clinton,” who understands as well as Roosevelt that “standing on the sidelines . . . as a witness to the unspeakable horror that was about to take place, that would in fact affect the peace and stability of NATO countries, was simply unacceptable.”29
One has to wonder what must pass through the mind of someone invoking this famous racist fanatic and raving jingoist as a model of American values, along with the events that illustrated his cherished “great ideals”: the slaughter of hundreds of thousands of Filipinos who had sought liberation from Spain, shortly after Roosevelt’s own contribution to preventing Cubans from achieving the same goal.
Wiser commentators will wait until Washington settles on an official story. After two weeks of bombing, the story was that they both knew an
d didn’t know that a catastrophe would follow. On March 28, 1999, “when a reporter asked if the bombing was accelerating the atrocities, [President Clinton] replied, ‘absolutely not.’”30 He reiterated that stand in his April 2 speech at Norfolk: “Had we not acted, the Serbian offensive would have been carried out with impunity.” The following day, Pentagon spokesman Kenneth Bacon announced that the opposite was true: “I don’t think anyone could have foreseen the breadth of this brutality,”31 the “first acknowledgment” by the administration that “it was not fully prepared for the crisis,” the press reported—a crisis that was “entirely predictable,” as the commanding general had informed the press a week earlier. From the start, reports from the scene were that “the administration had been caught off guard” by the Serbian military reaction. 32
The right of “humanitarian intervention” is likely to be more frequently invoked in coming years—maybe with justification, maybe not—now that Cold War pretexts have lost their efficacy. In such an era, it may be worthwhile to pay attention to the views of highly respected commentators—not to speak of the World Court, which ruled on the matter of intervention and “humanitarian aid” in a decision rejected by the United States, its essentials not even reported.
In the scholarly disciplines of international affairs and international law it would be hard to find more respected voices than Hedley Bull or Louis Henkin. Bull warned 15 years ago that “particular states or groups of states that set themselves up as the authoritative judges of the world common good, in disregard of the views of others, are in fact a menace to international order, and thus to effective action in this field.” Henkin, in a standard work on world order, writes:
[T]he pressures eroding the prohibition on the use of force are deplorable, and the arguments to legitimize the use of force in those circumstances are unpersuasive and dangerous. . . . Violations of human rights are indeed all too common, and if it were permissible to remedy them by external use of force, there would be no law to forbid the use of force by almost any state against almost any other. Human rights, I believe, will have to be vindicated, and other injustices remedied, by other, peaceful means, not by opening the door to aggression and destroying the principal advance in international law: the outlawing of war and the prohibition offorce.33