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Maria Urruzola
"We reaffirm our decision to act in ethnic and religious conflicts beyond
the territory of NATO members", stated without any euphemism the President
of America, Bill Clinton, on 25 April at the end of the summit meeting held
in Washington to celebrate NATO's 50th anniversary. This decision, definitely
changing the rules of the game of international relations in force since World
War II, not only had the support of the 19 members of the Atlantic Treaty, but
also the backing of the other 40 countries, members of the Euro-Atlantic Council
present at the Washington celebration. Furthermore, it benefited from omission
of the United Nations Security Council; the only forum legitimately entitled
to take decisions on war and peace up to that time.
Since the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989 and, more clearly since 1991, with the disappearance of the Soviet Union, uncertainty and hesitation have reigned over international relationships. Following the Western world's initial shortsighted and unintelligent euphoria (celebrating the triumph of the capitalist system), many believed - or at least insinuated - that it was time to bring the Atlantic Treaty to an end, or at least to change its rationale. Dead dogs (the East) don't bite and defensive measures against rabies (real or imagined) were no longer necessary.
This reasoning was to disregard the "American friend". In the midst of economic globalization, the dominating dynamics of the time, the United States urgently needed to prepare a new strategic security plan to continue benefiting from political primacy, provided up to then by its military powers. This is the only field in which the Europeans (and the Japanese) have to step back without any possible discussion.
Milosevic provided the motive and Kosovo was the opportunity
For the first time since its creation in 1949, NATO launched a war against a country -the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia- that had not committed an aggression outside its frontiers (as opposed to the war against Iraq, bombed because it had attacked its neighbor, Kuwait). For the first time since 1945, European forces in the name of "moral duty" bombed a European capital city supported by the existence of higher "humanitarian principles" regarding the sovereignty of States. Thus, new international jurisprudence came into being, establishing in NATO's new strategic concept adopted in Washington, that "NATO's security interests may be affected by other dangers from a wider context (than the geographical one), such as acts of terrorism, sabotage and organized crime and problems in the supply of vital resources" in addition to the "uncontrolled movement of very large population groups, above all as a result of armed conflict" and including "humanitarian emergency conditions". Translated, this means practically all present and future conflicts and practically all geographical fronts. The world is one and is not alien. This is the principle putting an end to the concept of "national sovereignty" -the hub of international relations since the French Revolution- and also the beginning of the end for the rationale of the United Nations Security Council and even perhaps of the United Nations itself.
Placing "Humanity's common values," that is Human Rights, as values above all others, is necessarily accompanied by various problems that are hard to solve.
One: the use of force to reestablish Human Rights in a third-party country implies the risk of losses, which may be hard to accept in the domestic policies of each of the NATO member countries. Thus another novelty arises in military matters, the doctrine of "zero deaths" among the participating forces, the sole guarantee that public opinion in each of the countries will swallow the pill. How do you convince the citizens of countries having no national interests at stake to police universal values, risking more - such as the life of their children - than theoretically what they have to gain? In this case, war is only possible under the aseptic conditions of computers, almost like a video game. According to Umberto Eco "in the neo-war, those who kill too much lose in the face of public opinion."
Two: Is there such a thing as "ethical" bombing? What account covers the "errors" and their civilian victims? Is there such a thing as a "just" war, causing an entire people to lose decades in their development effort? And, what happened to the Environment? How is the bombing of oil refineries made compatible with the struggle against the toxic clouds released? And, what will be the destiny of animals if birds prefer to break their eggs rather than hatch them in the midst of the bombing?
Three: Who decides when, where and how? Who decides when not? Referring to the thoughts of a prestigious German intellectual, Hans Magnus Enzensberger, the French Minister of the Interior, Jean-Pierre Chevènement stated his rejection of the war against Yugoslavia: "Universalist rhetoric does not differentiate between what is near and what is far. The idea of Human Rights imposes on each and every one of us an unlimited obligation by principle. Thus it shows the theological crux that has survived all laicization. Everyone is responsible for everyone else. This desire implies the duty to become like God because it is a desire implying omnipresence, that is, omnipotence. Objectively, phariseeism is soon achieved and universalism -morally - is shown to be a trap. Morality is the last refuge of Eurocentrism." Why not defend the Human Rights of the Kurds or of the Palestinians, or of the Tibetans? Or of the Sudanese dying of famine? Hypocrisy is hidden behind the new discourse of humanitarian interference.
Four: Defense of "universal values" becomes a prerogative of the strong. How can one practice it if one does not have sufficient military force? Is it possible to imagine an African or Central American country intervening in the United States to protect Colored or Latin people, victims of Human Rights violations? Or a North African country defending the rights of Maghreb emigrants on European territory? Thus, in fact "universal values" become the values of the strongest. This is the legal and justified return to the law of the jungle.
Five: The Human Rights Declaration has 28 articles, among which the right to work, to housing, to social security, to education...Why not practice a right to social interference? Within the European Union there are tens of millions of poor people. Isn't this a violation of Human Rights?
The war against Yugoslavia has launched a new age. Now we all know that the century started in 1914 with the First World War initiated in the Balkans and ended in 1999, with the first "humanitarian"war, that also took place in the Balkans. The big question still without a full answer is: who won what with this war?
No doubt the United States, which managed to strengthen NATO's role and widen its field of action to practically all "human issues". Perhaps very shortly it will be "discovered" that no UN "blue berets" of any kind are necessary -an old United Nations demand in order to achieve its peace mandates - because NATO is well able to be the UN armed force, under an umbrella of consensus, as a way of pacifying the doubts and misgivings of many European Social-Democrat leaders (former sixty-eighters, Trotskyists, Maoists, pacifists, etc) veterans of the Flower Power generation and violent opponents to the Vietnam war.
It is even harder to discern the gains that the European Union supposedly obtained with this action. Threatened since World War II by the economic, military, technological and cultural power of the United States, the Old World had so far managed to maintain primacy in the field of politics, in many fields imposing its independence and keeping at the forefront with its proverbial sense of diplomacy and negotiation. A role that was fought for and meticulously safeguarded by men such as Charles de Gaulle and Winston Churchill. They never imagined that their compatriots, such as Tony Blair and Lionel Jospin would abandon it so quickly. Perhaps what is only clear is that the European Union has managed to transmit to its poorer and unstable neighbors the conviction that a wall protects the land of development and that this wall is insurmountable. Persecuted for ethnic reasons, victims of violations of Human Rights or bombing, the inhabitants of underdeveloped countries can, at the most, benefit from "camps" in which to take temporary refuge. The new order has brought with it an invisible, insurmountable wall, protecting the world of the opulent that may only be admired on TV.
María Urruzola is an Uruguayan journalist.
Translation from Spanish to English by Victoria Swarbrick