By Noam Chomsky

[excerpts]

There have been many inquiries concerning NATO (meaning primarily US)

bombing in Kosovo. A great deal has been written about the topic, including

Znet commentaries. I'd like to make a few general observations, keeping to

facts that are not seriously contested.

There are two fundamental issues: (1) What are the accepted and applicable

«rules of world order»? (2) How do these or other considerations apply in

the case of Kosovo?

(1) What are the accepted and applicable «rules of world order»?

There is a regime of international law and international order, binding on

all states, based on the UN Charter and subsequent resolutions and World

Court decisions. In brief, the threat or use of force is banned unless

explicitly authorized by the Security Council after it has determined that

peaceful means have failed, or in self-defense against «armed attack» (a

narrow concept)

until the Security Council acts.

There is, of course, more to say. Thus there is at least a tension, if not

an outright contradiction, between the rules of world order laid down in

the UN Charter and the rights articulated in the Universal Declaration of

Human Rights (UD), a second pillar of the world order established under US

initiative after World War II. The Charter bans force violating state

sovereignty; the UD guarantees the rights of individuals against oppressive

states. The issue of «humanitarian intervention» arises from this tension.

It is the right of «humanitarian intervention» that is claimed by the

US/NATO in Kosovo, and that is generally supported by editorial opinion and

news reports (in the latter case, reflexively, even by the very choice of

terminology).

The question is addressed in a news report in the NY Times (March 27),

headlined «Legal Scholars Support Case for Using Force» in Kosovo (March

27). One example is offered: Allen Gerson, former counsel to the US mission

to the UN. Two other legal scholars are cited. One, Ted Galen Carpenter,

«scoffed at the Administration argument» and dismissed the alleged right of

intervention. The third is Jack Goldsmith, a specialist on international

law at Chicago Law school. He says that critics of the NATO bombing «have a

pretty good legal argument,» but «many people think [an exception for

humanitarian intervention]

does exist as a matter of custom and practice.» That summarizes the

evidence offered to justify the favoured conclusion stated in the headline.

Goldsmith's observation is reasonable, at least if we agree that facts are

relevant to the determination of «custom and practice.» We may also bear in

mind a truism: the right of humanitarian intervention, if it exists, is

premised on the «good faith» of those intervening, and that assumption is

based not on their rhetoric but on their record, in particular their record

of adherence to the principles of international law, World Court decisions,

and so on. That is indeed a truism, at least with regard to others.

Consider, for example, Iranian offers to intervene in Bosnia to prevent

massacres at a time when the West would not do so. These were dismissed

with ridicule (in fact, ignored); if there was a reason beyond

subordination to power, it was because Iranian «good faith» could not be

assumed. A rational person then asks obvious questions: is the Iranian

record of intervention

and terror worse than that of the US? And other questions, for example: How

should we assess the «good faith» of the only country to have vetoed a

Security Council resolution calling on all states to obey international

law? What about its historical record? Unless such questions are prominent

on the agenda of discourse, an honest person will dismiss it as mere

allegiance to doctrine. A useful exercise is to determine how much of the

literature -- media or other -- survives such elementary conditions as

these.

(2) How do these or other considerations apply in the case of Kosovo?

There has been a humanitarian catastrophe in Kosovo in the past year,

overwhelmingly attributable to Yugoslav military forces. The main victims

have been ethnic Albanian Kosovars, some 90% of the population of this

Yugoslav territory. The standard estimate is 2000 deaths and hundreds of

thousands of refugees.

In such cases, outsiders have three choices:

(I) try to escalate the catastrophe

(II) do nothing

(III) try to mitigate the catastrophe

The choices are illustrated by other contemporary cases. Let's keep to a

few of approximately the same scale, and ask where Kosovo fits into the

pattern.

(A) Colombia. In Colombia, according to State Department estimates, the

annual level of political killing by the government and its paramilitary

associates is about at the level of Kosovo, and refugee flight primarily

from their atrocities is well over a million.

Colombia has been the leading Western hemisphere recipient of US arms and

training as violence increased through the '90s, and that assistance is now

increasing, under a «drug war» pretext dismissed by almost all serious

observers. The Clinton administration was particularly enthusiastic in its

praise for President Gaviria, whose tenure in office was responsible for

«appalling levels of violence,» according to human rights organizations,

even surpassing his predecessors. Details are readily available.

In this case, the US reaction is (I): escalate the atrocities.

(B) Turkey. By very conservative estimate, Turkish repression of Kurds in

the '90s falls in the category of Kosovo. It peaked in the early '90s; one

index is the flight of over a million Kurds from the countryside to the

unofficial Kurdish capital Diyarbakir from 1990 to 1994, as the Turkish

army was devastating the countryside. 1994 marked two records: it was «the

year of the

worst repression in the Kurdish provinces» of Turkey, Jonathan Randal

reported from the scene, and the year when Turkey became «the biggest

single importer of American military hardware and thus the world's largest

arms purchaser.» When human rights groups exposed Turkey's use of US jets

to bomb villages, the Clinton Administration found ways to evade laws

requiring suspension of arms deliveries, much as it was doing in Indonesia

and elsewhere.

Colombia and Turkey explain their (US-supported) atrocities on grounds that

they are defending their countries from the threat of terrorist guerrillas.

As does the government of Yugoslavia.

Again, the example illustrates (I): try to escalate the atrocities.

(C) 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 from 1968, when

Washington was compelled to undertake negotiations (under popular and

business pressure), ending the regular bombardment of North Vietnam.

Kissinger-Nixon then decided to shift the planes to bombardment of 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% according to the manufacturer, Honeywell. The numbers suggest

either remarkably poor quality control or a rational policy of murdering

civilians by delayed action. These were only a fraction of the technology

deployed, including 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 analyses

reported by the Mennonite Central Committee, which has been working there

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 organisations 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 anger, 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 from early 1969 was

most intense.

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 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.

I will skip other examples of (I) and (II), which abound, and also much

more serious contemporary atrocities, such as the huge slaughter of Iraqi

civilians by means of a particularly vicious form of 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 5 years, but «we think the price is worth it.» Current estimates remain

about 5000 children killed a month, and the price is still «worth it.»

These and other examples might also be kept in mind when we read awed

rhetoric about how the «moral compass» of the Clinton Administration is at

last functioning properly, as the Kosovo example illustrates.

[...]

To find examples illustrating (III) is all too easy, at least if we keep to

official rhetoric. The major recent academic study of «humanitarian

intervention,» by Sean Murphy, reviews the record after the Kellogg-Briand

pact of 1928 which outlawed war, and then since 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 were accompanied by highly uplifting

humanitarian rhetoric, and factual justifications as well. Japan was going

PSD To HTML conversion is important to webmasters because they cannot use the PSD file as it is for their web pages. if you need PSD To HTML conversion service save yourself some time, effort and money and send it in to the professionals.

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 «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.

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

terminated Pol Pot's slaughters, first by a (US-backed) Chinese invasion,

then by 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.»

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 entirely clear in the discussions leading to the NATO decision. Apart

from the UK (by now, about as much of an independent actor as the Ukraine

was in the pre-Gorbachev years), NATO countries were sceptical of US

policy, and were particularly annoyed by Secretary of State Albright's

«sabre-rattling» (Kevin Cullen, Boston Globe, Feb. 22). Today, the more

closely one approaches the conflicted region, the greater the opposition to

Washington's insistence on force, even within NATO (Greece and Italy).

France had called for a UN Security Council resolution to authorize

deployment of NATO peacekeepers. The US flatly refused, insisting

on «its stand that NATO should be able to act independently of the United

Nations,» State Department officials explained. The US refused to permit

the «neuralgic word `authorize'» to appear in the final NATO statement,

unwilling to concede any authority to the UN Charter and international law;

only the word «endorse» was permitted (Jane Perlez, NYT, Feb. 11).

Similarly the bombing of Iraq was a brazen expression of contempt for the

UN, even the specific timing, and was so understood. And of course the same

is true of the destruction of half the pharmaceutical production of a small

African country a few months earlier, an event that also does not indicate

that the «moral compass» is straying from righteousness -- not to speak of

a record that would be prominently reviewed right now if facts were

considered relevant to determining «custom and practice.»

It could be argued, rather plausibly, that further demolition of the rules

of world order is irrelevant, just as it had lost its meaning by the late

1930s. The contempt of the world's leading power for the framework of world

order has become so extreme that there is nothing left to discuss. A review

of the internal documentary record demonstrates that the stance traces back

to the

earliest days, even to the first memorandum of the newly-formed National

Security Council in 1947. During the Kennedy years, the stance began to

gain overt expression. The main innovation of the Reagan-Clinton years is

that defiance of international law and the Charter has become entirely

open. It has also been backed with interesting explanations, which would be

on the front

pages, and prominent in the school and university curriculum, if truth and

honesty were considered significant values. The highest authorities

explained with brutal clarity that the World Court, the UN, and other

agencies had become irrelevant because they no longer follow US orders, as

they did in the early postwar years.

One might then adopt the official position. That would be an honest stand,

at least if it were accompanied by refusal to play the cynical game of

self-righteous posturing and wielding of the despised principles of

international law as a highly selective weapon against shifting enemies.

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 current issue of 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

counterbalance the rogue superpower. On pragmatic grounds, then, the stance

should be reconsidered. Americans who prefer a different image of their

society might

call for a reconsideration on other than pragmatic grounds.

Where does that leave the question of what to do in Kosovo? It leaves it

unanswered. The US has chosen a course of action which, as it explicitly

recognizes, escalates atrocities and violence -- «predictably»; a course of

action that also strikes yet another blow against the regime of

international order, which does offer the weak at least some limited

protection from

predatory states. 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»

(Financial Times, March 27). Some of the longer-term possible outcomes are

extremely ugly, as has not gone without notice.

A standard argument is that we had to do something: we could not simply

stand by as atrocities continue. That is never true. One choice, always, 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. There

are always ways that can be considered. Diplomacy and negotiations are

never at an end.

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 explicitly ruled on this matter

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 Leon

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 that the «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 principle advance in international law, the outlawing of war and the