The folowing article is from CAQ - Covert Action Quarterly.
Collective Guilt and Collective Innocence
by Diana Johnstone
As the Serbian people began to be bombed by NATO,
the Serbian people began to deserve it. The more they
were bombed, the more they deserved it.
This hadn�t been the case at first. The target, NATO
leaders stressed, was one man: Yugoslav President
Slobodan Milosevic. "We must stand hard against this
vile dictator," declared British Prime Minister Tony Blair
on March 25, at the start of his two and a half-month
impersonation of Winston Churchill keeping up morale
during the Battle of Britain, with the important
difference that this time Britain was not heroically
resisting being bombed but was bombing the country
that was heroically resisting.
The person probably most responsible for starting the
war in the first place, Secretary of State Madeleine
Albright, even beamed a broadcast in Serbo-Croatian to
the Serbian people to declare her affection for them,
singing a little Serbian lullaby her father had taught her
when her family took refuge in Belgrade from the
Stalinist takeover of her native Czechoslovakia half a
century ago.
In those early days, the Serbian people, apparently
believing that they were not NATO�s target, ironically
put on "target" buttons and gathered in their factories
and on bridges to prevent NATO�s humanitarian bombers
from wiping out the basis of their economic existence.
The factories were bombed anyway, and all but one of
the bridges over the Danube destroyed. As "collateral
damage" rose in the form of mangled bodies of children
and other civilians, the propaganda tune began to
change. It was admitted that NATO�s precision bombing
was not focusing solely on Milosevic and "his military
machine," as first declared. It was targeting the
livelihood of "his" people to get him to give in to NATO
demands.
During a "Meet the Press" broadcast on April 25, Senator
Joe Lieberman (Dem.-Conn.) declared: "I hope the air
campaign, even if it does not convince Milosevic to
order his troops out of Kosovo, will so devastate his
economy, which it�s doing now, so ruin the lives of his
people, that they will rise up and throw him out."
In his first wartime interview, NATO�s air commander
Lieutenant General Michael Short told the New York
Times in mid-May that his number one priority was
"killing the army in Kosovo." (1) This is already troubling;
in its new "no casualty warfare," the United States does
not "fight" an army, it "kills" it by long distance
bombing�meaning, in this case, the young men of a
small nation�s conscript army stationed on their own soil.
However, General Short added that he also needed to
strike at "the leadership and the people around Milosevic
to compel them to change their behavior" in hope the
distress of the public would undermine support for the
government. "I think no power to your refrigerator, no
gas to your stove, you can�t get to work because the
bridge is down�the bridge on which you held your rock
concerts and you all stood with targets on your heads.
That needs to disappear at three o�clock in the
morning."
Among those who were being bombed to compel
behavioral changes was, for instance, the pensioner
whose small flat on the ninth floor of an apartment block
in Novi Beograd was plunged into darkness by the U.S.
graphite filament bombs, whose food was rotting in the
refrigerator, who suffered from heart trouble, and whose
elevator was stalled. This person was less likely to
"overthrow Milosevic" than to quietly disappear at three
o�clock in the morning.
Now, it is well known that being bombed does not cause
people to "rise up" and "throw out" the leader of their
country. Indeed, quite the opposite effect has been
observed time and again. Bombing unites a people
against whoever is doing the bombing. The U.S.
government is in possession of a vast archive of studies
proving this fact. No informed person could seriously
expect bombing Serbia to cause the Serbian people to
"throw out" Milosevic.
After two months of bombing, the targeting of the
civilian economy was being openly acknowledged, but
the reason for doing so was blurred. "Increasingly, the
impact of NATO air strikes has put people out of work
and inflicted hardships in the daily lives of more Serbs.
Allied bombing this week went further than ever in this
direction by causing water shortages in Belgrade, Novi
Sad and other Serbian cities," the International Herald
Tribune reported on May 26. Helmut Sonnenfeldt of the
Brookings Institution observed that NATO strategy has
"quite a considerable economic element," emphasizing
the potential long-run impact of devastating the civil
infrastructure. In the same article, an unnamed German
official explained that "no non-governmental
humanitarian agency has the kind of money that will be
needed to rebuild bridges or even dredge the wrecks out
of the Danube." This was expected to provide "major
leverage for Western countries." (2)
Obtaining "major leverage" sounds more plausible than
trying to provoke revolution as a motive for destroying
textile machine, automobile, cigarette and other
factories.
Idealistic Versus Cynical Objectives
It is always reasonable to consider the hypothesis that
what a great power actually does is precisely what it
wants to do. There is a prevailing liberal attitude toward
the United States as great power that systematically
excludes this hypothesis, thus centering criticism of U.S.
actions on their allegedly blundering failure to achieve
their stated goals. Yes, but what if the stated goals
were only a diversion intended precisely to distract the
public, and especially the liberal critics, from what is
really going on?
Thus a contradiction, due to blundering, is perceived
between (1) the stated aim of preventing "ethnic
cleansing," and the massive flow of refugees from
Kosovo after the bombing started; and (2) the stated
aim of turning the Serbian people against Milosevic, and
the observed result that his power seemed to be
enforced by the bombing.
This seems plausible to well-intentioned people who can
relate to such aims, as the sort of motives they might
have themselves. The opposite hypothesis, that the
bombing deliberately both provoked the refugee flow
and tightened Milosevic�s grip on power is too cynical for
such good people to contemplate. At least, it is too
cynical for them to contemplate on the part of "their"
side. Ascribing equally or even more cynical purposes to
the "other" side, for example to Milosevic, credited with
wanting to wipe out ethnic Albanians for the sheer
pleasure of it, is not beyond their tender imaginations.
(But in this case, it may be that tender-hearted
Yugoslavs can more easily ascribe such cynical motives
to NATO than to their own leaders.)
� The perfectly predictable�and predicted (3)�refugee
exodus after the bombing started provided the ex post
facto moral justification for the NATO air strikes that
provoked it. Television focus on images of human misery
in chaotic refugee camps along the Kosovo borders
distracted from NATO�s ongoing destruction of
Yugoslavia.
� Since the presence of Milosevic is established as the
best operational pretext for continuing to carve
Yugoslavia into NATO-occupied protectorates, and the
job is not yet finished�after Bosnia and Kosovo come
Montenegro, Vojvodina, and eventually Serbia itself�it
may be best to keep him at the helm until the ship is
definitively sunk.
And the final goal? For the cynical hypothesis to be
entertained, some motive must reasonably be
suggested. The liberal critics of the "blundering giant"
school cannot imagine any, and tend to insist on the
absence of any selfish U.S. economic or strategic goals
in the Balkans. There is, however, ample published
material to show that the U.S. does indeed have
strategic interests in and especially beyond the Balkans,
and that securing NATO bases in a fragmented
Yugoslavia can be considered a step toward securing
these interests. (4)
Because of their crucial geostrategic position between
Western Europe and the Middle East, between the
Mediterranean, Turkey and Eastern Europe, the Balkans
are the most appropriate theater for easing NATO "out
of area" (out of its legal Treaty area, that is) and
asserting its new global role. Transforming a troublesome
country into a strategic outpost that can be used to
establish subsequent NATO control of the Ukraine, the
Caucasus, and Caspian Sea oil is a worthy project for
cynical geostrategists of the Brzezinski school.
Establishing NATO�s new mission "out of area" benefits
the vast military-industrial complex and solidifies U.S.
influence over the European Union, whose subservience
to Washington was eloquently confirmed by the choice
of NATO�s heavily compromised wartime Secretary
General, Javier Solana, to take charge of the EU�s
embryonic foreign and defense policy.
Thus a motive that could explain the cynical hypothesis
is that bombing Yugoslavia, setting off a temporary
exodus of ethnic Albanians from Kosovo and destroying
the Serbian economy are all means to the end of
securing NATO�s control of the Balkans. The hatred
between Serbs and Albanians, roused to fever pitch by
the bombing and the resulting expulsions, has made
coexistence between the two communities virtually
impossible, apparently necessitating a permanent NATO
occupation. The ruin of the Serb economy has crippled
the Serbian nation, considered the historic center of
resistance in the Balkans to foreign takeover, while
greatly increasing the incentive of peripheral parts of
Yugoslavia (Montenegro, Vojvodina, and perhaps
Sanjak) to leave the sinking ship. It has delivered an
eloquent message to neighboring countries such as
Romania and Bulgaria not dissimilar to the message
delivered to the whole block when mafia thugs trash a
recalcitrant merchant: This could happen to you, unless
you do what is necessary to ensure NATO protection.
Higher Justice, or Hired Justice?
Few doubt that the NATO air strikes against Yugoslavia
initiated on March 24, 1999, were in flagrant violation of
international law on numerous counts. The real question
is: Can any semblance of a neutral, independent,
impartial international law be salvaged from the United
States� drive to impose its own "law of the strongest" on
the entire world under cover of lofty moral imperatives?
On May 7, a team of lawyers from Canada and Europe
submitted a brief to Louise Arbour, the Canadian chief
prosecutor at the International Criminal Tribunal for
Former Yugoslavia (ICT), accusing U.S. and other NATO
officials of war crimes including "wanton destruction of
cities, towns, or villages, or devastation not justified by
military necessity, attack, or bombardment, by whatever
means, of undefended towns, villages, dwellings, or
buildings." One of the lawyers, Professor Michael Mandel
of Osgoode Hall Law School of York University in
Toronto, where Ms. Arbour herself once taught, argued
that "charging the war�s victors, and not only the losers,
would be a watershed in international criminal law,
showing the world that no one is above the law."
This and a number of other initiatives by international
jurists pointing to the illegality of the NATO action were
widely ignored by mainstream media. Instead,
considerable space was given to pundits developing the
notion of "humanitarian intervention" which henceforth,
it was said, superseded the outworn notion of "national
sovereignty."
In fact, there is absolutely nothing new about appeals
to a "higher justice" to excuse violating the law.
Nineteenth century imperialist conquests were usually
undertaken "to defend" some group or other, and Hitler
(the real one) marched into Czechoslovakia and invaded
Poland, setting off World War II, in order to rescue
allegedly abused German ethnic minorities. Respect for
national sovereignty and territorial integrity were
incorporated into international law after World War II
precisely in order to protect weaker nations from
humanitarian crusades of this sort. Apparently Clinton
administration policy-makers feel that U.S. monopoly of
fearsome power is now so unchallenged that any such
rules can only get in the way.
A few liberals timidly criticized the NATO bombing on the
imaginary grounds that it might provoke Serbian
"terrorism." In reality, throughout the air strikes there
was never the slightest hint of any propensity on the
part of Serbs to take up terrorism. On the contrary,
Serbs were notably shocked by the flagrant violations of
the legal order constructed primarily by the very
western powers who were now violating it, and a
number of Yugoslavs both in Serbia and in the diaspora,
have tried to seek legal redress. The Yugoslav
government itself tried on April 29 to institute
proceedings at the International Court of Justice in The
Hague against NATO governments for a broad range of
war crimes and crimes against humanity. Western media,
in brief reports, let it be known that such an initiative
was "not serious." It was finally thrown out of court
because the Genocide Convention, the legal basis for
Belgrade�s suit, has never been recognized by the United
States as applying to itself, although Washington is
willing to let it apply to others. (5)
The big news was, of course, the indictment of
Milosevic. On May 27, Ms. Arbour, who had failed to act
on the May 7 complaint against NATO leaders, initiated
proceedings against Milosevic and other senior officials
in the Yugoslav and Serbian governments for crimes
against humanity and war crimes allegedly committed in
Kosovo. Some of the charges were substantially
identical to those filed earlier against the officials
responsible for the NATO bombing, to wit: "the
widespread shelling of towns and villages; the burning of
homes, farms and businesses, and the destruction of
personal property."
The indictment of Milosevic and the others was hardly
the act of an impartial body, rising above the conflict
between mighty NATO and little Yugoslavia. Ms. Arbour
signed warrants for the arrest of Milosevic and the
Serbian leaders on the basis of material turned over to
her the day before by a party to the conflict, the United
States government. The information leading to the
indictment of Yugoslav leaders was provided by a
special U.S. intelligence unit called the "Interagency
Balkan Task Force," housed at the CIA with input from
the Defense Intelligence Agency, the National Security
Agency, and the State Department. (6)
Part of Arbour�s job as chief prosecutor has been
fund-raising in the "international community," notably
among the governments of NATO member states. She
and chief Judge Gabrielle Kirk McDonald (a former federal
judge in Texas) frequently appear in public with
Madeleine Albright ("the mother of the Tribunal," in the
words of Judge McDonald, who before the war had
already judiciously branded Yugoslavia "a rogue state")
and praise the U.S. for its financial and other support to
the Tribunal. (7) When asked on May 17 what would
happen if NATO itself were brought before the Tribunal,
NATO spokesman Jamie Shea retorted that without
NATO countries there would be no such tribunal, since it
was the NATO countries which had been in the forefront
of getting it set up and which funded and supported its
activity on a daily basis. The International Criminal
Tribunal gets material as well as political support from
the United States government, other NATO
governments, financial tycoon George Soros, and even
private corporations. If the Clinton administration cannot
count on "higher justice," it may get a helping hand from
hired justice.
Serbian opposition leader Vuk Draskovic has pointed to
the fact that the ICT indictment serves to tighten
Milosevic�s grip on power. With his popularity plummeting
to new lows, the chances of persuading Milosevic to
resign for the sake of his country are seriously reduced
by the prospect of being turned over to the
U.S.-dominated war crimes tribunal. The ICT has further
complicated the task of easing Milosevic out of office by
also indicting his most likely successor, Serbia�s elected
President, Milan Milutinovic. This indictment, based
solely on the notion of "command responsibility," without
any evidence of having desired or ordered the crimes
cited, only confirms the widespread impression that the
tribunal is a political instrument manipulated by
Washington.
In July, the Connecticut-based International Ethical
Alliance also filed charges against President Clinton and
Defense Secretary William Cohen for "non-defensive
aggressive military attacks on former Yugoslavia." At the
same time, IEA general counsel Jerome Zeifman called
for the dismissal of prosecutor Arbour, charging her with
"selective prosecution by intentionally failing to consider
and act on evidence which incriminates defendants
Clinton and Cohen, ... conflicts of interest, or the
appearance thereof, in receiving compensation from
funds contributed in whole or in part by governments of
NATO; and bias in favor of the attacks by NATO on
former Yugoslavia." Zeifman called for replacement of
the prosecutor and recusal of five judges, including
McDonald, and selection of a truly independent
prosecutor as well as new judges and staff from
non-NATO countries who would not be compensated
directly or indirectly by funds from NATO countries.
Such a truly neutral tribunal, suggested the IEA, could
then go on to weigh the charges against leaders on
both sides, including Milosevic, Clinton and the rest.
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