[PEN-L:5745] (Fwd) NATO's unjust war

[ts99u-1.cc.umanitoba.ca [130.179.154.224]]

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Date sent:              Wed, 21 Apr 1999 15:08:12 -0700
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From:                   Sid Shniad <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Subject:                NATO's unjust war

The Globe and Mail                                      Wednesday, April 21, 1999
 
NATO's unjust war

                By Marcus Gee

        Can the killing of innocent people in war ever be justified? That was the
question that came to mind after NATO accidentally bombed a convoy of
unarmed refugees in Kosovo last week.
        In a just war, the answer has to be yes. Countless civilians died when the
Allies invaded France to free Europe from the Nazis, when the cause and the
war were undeniably just. Can the same be said of the war in Kosovo? Is
this a just war? To that question, the answer has to be no.
        St. Augustine and St. Thomas Aquinas each wrestled with the idea of a just
war. Over the centuries, scholars have refined their thoughts and come up
with five basic criteria: Is the cause righteous? Are the intentions good?
Was the war declared by a proper authority? Is there a reasonable chance of
victory? Are the means proportionate to the ends?
        Let's be generous and concede points one and two to NATO. The stated aim
of this war -- the protection of Kosovo Albanians from Serbian attacks --
is hard to question. The intentions, too, are essentially good. This is not
a war of conquest or a war of revenge or a war for resources. The North
Atlantic Treaty Organization's unselfish motive is to rescue civilians and
stop a thug: Serbian leader Slobodan Milosevic.
        But on the other three points, NATO loses hands down.
        Declared by a proper authority? Not one of the 19 NATO countries had the
honesty to declare war when the alliance began raining destruction on
Serbian cities four weeks ago today. In Canada, the government has not even
allowed Parliament the chance to vote.
        Worse, NATO has completely bypassed the United Nations. Article 53 of the
UN Charter says the UN Security Council is the proper authority to approve
a collective police action such as the NATO bombing. Yet Canada and its
allies never even asked the Council's opinion. Why? Because Russia might
have voted against us. So we simply ignored the UN, and 50 years of
Canadian support for the rule of international law has gone down the drain.
        Even NATO's sanction of the bombing is suspect. The NATO charter describes
the organization as a defensive alliance that is committed to use force
only when one of its members is attacked. No NATO member has been attacked
by Yugoslavia.
        A reasonable chance of victory? There was always a chance that Mr.
Milosevic would fold his tent as soon as the bombing started. But from the
early days, it was clear that this was not going to happen. Instead of
folding, he attacked Kosovo and forced hundreds of thousands of Albanians
to flee. NATO should have known this might happen. Intelligence reports
before the war showed that he might unleash his troops on Kosovo if he
thought the rebels there had forged an alliance with NATO, which is how
Belgrade, with its acute victim complex, was certain to see it. Yet, with
feckless optimism, NATO bombed away.
        Is there a reasonable chance of turning back Serbia's assault on Kosovo
with the means currently being used? No. If the political end we are
seeking is the total withdrawal of Serb forces and the occupation of Kosovo
by foreign troops, it seems highly unlikely that NATO will achieve it with
aerial bombing alone. Yet the bombs keep falling. NATO's only response to
the failure of its bombing campaign is to drop more bombs on more places.
Which brings us to the fifth and final criterion.
        Are the means proportionate to the ends? This is perhaps the most
important measure of a just war. If we are to use violence justly, we must
be sure that the violence inflicted is less severe than the violence it is
trying to counteract, and that the ultimate gains outweigh the losses. Is
this so in Kosovo?
        The violence Mr. Milosevic has inflicted on Kosovo is awful, but what NATO
is doing is pretty awful, too. Belgrade claims that the bombing has killed
1,000 people in Serbia. If this is true -- and given the number of deadly
mistakes that NATO has admitted, it could be -- it is possible that NATO's
bombing of Yugoslavia has already killed more people than Yugoslavia's
ground attack on Kosovo.
        As NATO steps up the bombing, pummelling Serbian cities day and night,
more and more innocent civilians will die. In the end -- whenever that will
be -- it seems inevitable that the number of dead will exceed the 2,000
killed in Kosovo before the war began.
        To NATO, that doesn't seem to matter. Convinced that their cause is just
and their motives pure, its leaders are determined to prosecute this war to
the bitter end. But as St. Thomas acknowledged, good intentions and a just
cause do not alone make a war just. A just war must also be fought under
proper authority, with a reasonable expectation of success, by
proportionate means.
        Is this a just war on those grounds? It is not.