------- Forwarded Message Follows ------- Date: Wed, 12 May 1999 15:06:26 -0400 Reply-to: [EMAIL PROTECTED] From: "Slobodan M. Pesic" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> To: WORLD SYSTEMS NETWORK <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Subject: Open letter to Tony Blair HUGH MACDONALD ASSOCIATES RESEARCH CONSULTANTS IN INTERNATIONAL AFFAIRS 19 NORTON CLOSE OXFORD OX3 7BQ Rt. Hon. Tony Blair 2 May 1999 Prime Minister 10 Downing St. London SW1 Dear Tony, This is an open letter to you. As a long-standing member of the Labour Party, and an expert in international security with direct experience of Milosevic's Serbia, I write about the unsustainable claims you have been making for a moral foreign policy; and the clear, measurable, damage to our national interests and to international security which are resulting. The inept military strategy NATO has adopted in the Kosovo crisis stems importantly if not exclusively from moral confusion and holy foolhardiness. This has hopelessly derailed the strategic and moral ends which the allies ought to have been seeking, namely a practical and effective political settlement. Irrespective of whether the alliance goes on to extort an absolute victory, or settles for a limited outcome, the attached paper estimates the consequences so far of the policy constructed by you. I am appalled by ethnic cleansing wherever it occurs. The UN Charter and Security Council should be reformed so as to make abuses under the Universal Declaration matters prima facie requiring the exercise of Chapter VII powers. Yet in twelve years since the effective end of the Cold War, no serious reform of the UN has occurred. The Permanent Members, including Britain, are locked in a protracted struggle over their national interests. And the most powerful Permanent Member, the US, absolutely refuses to subject any of its capabilities or interests to stronger forms of international law. 'New internationalism' therefore seeks to operate through an institution, NATO, that depends largely on the US and Britain. Such new internationalism is not deserving of the name, and it is profoundly silly of a British Prime Minister to propagate such a doctrine. In the first place it cannot hope to represent, and will therefore rightly be rejected by, the vast populations and societies that will never belong to NATO. Attaching a moral mission to NATO opens the world's most powerful military alliance to the leadership of fanatics, whether Generals, Foreign Ministers, Prime Ministers or Presidents. The rest of the world is bound to say 'Thanks, but no thanks'. And many NATO governments will quietly say the same. The conduct of this war has violently demonstrated what many of us have been saying for years if not decades: that NATO is a shambolic institution covering over important differences that naturally occur among sovereign states. As presently structured it is incapable of conducting a meaningful diplomatic-military strategy through the use of force, or of setting and pursuing military aims that are beyond the limits of consensus in advanced liberal-democratic societies. Your attempt to hijack that consensus through claims of 'genocide' is both a flop in the context, and a dangerous misappropriation of the most extremely sensitive word in the twentieth century lexicon. Genocide means, 'the systematic extermination of an entire people whether on grounds of its ethnic, religious or social characteristics'. You are well aware that this word acquired a special significance for the civilised world because of the Shoa; because of what Hitler's Reich sought to do to the Jewish people. What is happening to the Kosovo Albanians is terrible; but it is not genocide. NATO fulfilled a profoundly important purpose when it is focussed on a threat to all member states. But NATO acting as "Globocop" without UN Security Council endorsement is extremely dangerous. NATO might have been able to play a crucial role on behalf of the United Nations in many local and regional conflicts. The chances of that happening now have been heavily damaged. Historically, it was one of Britain's most useful if unheralded roles during the Cold War to counter ideological excesses by 'mad bombers' of whatever national stripe. It is particularly distressing, therefore, to witness a British Prime Minister pleading for war, for the continuation of war, for the widening of war, for NATO to go on pursuing its original, inappropriate, unsustainable war aims. And how far do you want to go on fighting? To the last American Marine Division? This is a war eagerly foisted on a reluctant and distracted American Presidentby irresponsible European leaders who convinced the White House that a victory would be rapidly delivered. Forty days later we hear NATO leaders telling us that, on the one hand, the military campaign is having greater success every day; and on the other that, unfortunately, the constraints placed on NATO military actions are reducing the efficiency of air power; by which we all know is meant, 'we cannot hit civilian targets'. Even this is a half-truth to cover a blatant strategic blunder. What prevented NATO from striking Yugoslav military forces in the field in Kosovo at the outset? It was the knowledge that there would be heavier military casualties on the NATO side. The wrong military strategy was adopted on wrong-headed military reasoning. Experimenting with the use of force in the Yugoslav crisis, with the underlying purpose of establishing a new intra-western balance between the US and EU, is irresponsible almost beyond belief. Yet that is the thrust of the Report carried by the IHT on Friday 30 April. NATO, unable to bargain its way through a crisis of the use of force, is consequently unable to adjust its objectives to changing possibilities. This directly causes escalation and irrationality. We all watched American leaders struggling with the same phenomenon in Vietnam. Run by what one (Israeli) commentator terms 'dime-a-dozen generals, diplomats and politicians' (or what you call 'the mature generation of 1968'), NATO is capable of bankrupting even the greatest economic boom the world has known. Requiring $30-40 billion to destroy and then necessarily rebuild a renegade state of 12 million people, as Serbia is deemed to be, and with as many as 50 such situations arising now or in the foreseeable future, it will not take long for the new internationalism to need a very big overdraft. Two other of the many problems with your moral stance are as follows. Firstly, it is open-eyed to some outrages, and blind to others. NATO's figure of 2,000 casualties on all sides in Kosovo during 1998 demonstrates that the civil war was not larger and worse than, for example, the ongoing civil wars in eastern Anatolia or Colombia. And it was far less bad than the situation in Algeria, or many others further south in the African continent. Is it then purely coincidental that you choose to focus on a relatively weak nearby regime you happen to oppose for entirely different, highly political, reasons? Let us recollect that various of your Ministers, including notably the Foreign Secretary and the Secretary of State for Overseas Development, agitated persistently to 'bomb the Serbs' during the civil war in Bosnia. I have today gone through all of the main documents published by the OSCE-KVM during the period October 1998-March 1999. These suggest that the violence against civilians in Kosovo did not increase and actuallydiminished as the verification Mission increased is size and scope. Official figures, put out by the OSCE-KVM and cited by the State Department, show that there were virtually no deaths of civilians not directly implicated in military actions in Kosovo during the early months of 1999. The average daily number of deaths may have been 15-20. This is unacceptable, and deserves the attention and involvement of international agencies. But it is not by any means an unparalleled situation, even in post-war Europe. What did increase during this period was the scope and power of the Yugoslav Army's operations against the Kosovo Liberation Army. As you know, and history will not hide this, the KLA's military actions grew not because it was the most representative voice of the Albanian people; nor because Milosevic's repressive regime became more violent in Kosovo. They grew because Albania collapsed in 1997, becoming more and more dependent on the US; and because Croatia, sustained and financed by sources in various western countries, became an ever larger and more flagrantly open conduit of arms and advice to the KLA. Hence actual conditions in Kosovo, however tense and with whatever potential for exploding, cannot in any way morally or legally justify putting down an ultimatum to a sovereign government; cannot justify resorting to bombing without warning or declaration of war; cannot justify taking military action against areas and installations completely unconnected to the province experiencing the civil and military emergency; and, to repeat, cannot justify action by a military alliance with no juridical locus standi in the conflict, and without reference to the UN Security Council. The second main moral issue can be stated in this question; how do you propose translating 'fighting for a new internationalism' beyond European parochial bounds? Most NATO countries, especially America which believes that it invented and has a natural monopoly on the concept, are not interested in this. Britain has no capacity to do it alone. The EU lacks a constitution for 'moral foreign policy' in CFSP. After the present debacle it is less rather than more likely it will be able to agree such an ambitious framework. So, when, for example, Indonesia shortly falls into a far worse orgy of killings than anything seen in Kosovo before NATO began its campaign, what action will you insist the international community takes? This is a terribly serious question. Even in the Kosovo war Britain's operational military capabilities have been shown to have decisive shortcomings. The strategic understanding may be there. The experience of history and the willingness to take greater risks and losses may be there. The desire to see a radically reformed world may be there (at least in the heads of a handful of temporarily powerful social democrats). But where is the military delivery capability? Where are the bombs and the planes and the divisions? Where is there evidence that if the Americans were not paying ninety per-cent of the cost, and digging deep into their stockpiles of the most advanced weapons, Britain and the other European NATO members would be able to successfully challenge, let alone defeat, lowly, backward Yugoslavia? Britain's standing in the NATO alliance, and the worldwide interests ofthis country, are being profoundly damaged by your administration. The cause is clear: it lies in hyperbole of language; persistent lobbying for things that we are unable to perform on our own; unwillingness to recognise that failure to attain goals effectively means there is something wrong with the way such goals are being pursued; and arrogant insensitivity to the way that 'ethical foreign policy', as practised in India, Israel, Africa or Yugoslavia, rides roughshod into cultural and political sensitivities, creating appalling messes that officials need months (or years) to rectify. At the recent NATO Summit you came close to suffering, and may yet suffer, the worst humiliation a Prime Minister has suffered at the hands of an American President since Suez. You should be distressed by this, but hardly surprised: every situation your know-all Foreign Minister and visionary amateur advisors engage with will crumble in their hands. If you truly believe the policy you are following in Yugoslavia has a moral foundation, then you ought to state clearly and consistently that the aim of Britain's moral foreign policy is to employ coercive means against ALL obdurate governments in the Balkan region of Europe, so as to reverse ALL of the ethnic cleansing that has occurred since 1990; and explicitly include in your strictures notice to Croatia that it must fully reverse the ethnic cleansing of all Serbs from Croatia (600,000-800,000 people); and to Bosnia-Herzegovina that it must fully reverse the ethnic cleansing of Serbs, Croats and Slav-muslims from Sarajevo, districts around Sarajevo, and other territories controlled by the Croat-Muslim Federation, as well as reversing the ethnic cleansing undertaken in the territories of Republika Srpska (1.5-2.0 million people in total). This would be very popular with vast numbers of Serbs. It would more effectively diminish support for the Milosevic regime than all the bombs in NATO's arsenal. On the issues of its prudence and attainability, I trust you will seek and take advice on from your most experienced professional foreign policy advisors. In this dreadful moral and strategic shambles I recognise that power and leadership are not easily exercised; and far prefer an honest and open society to any alternative. Hence if I might be able to assist in elaborating a constructive and peaceful way through this situation, to something better for all of us on the other side, I trust you will feel able to approach me. Yours sincerely, Hugh Macdonald ======================================================= ATTACHED PAPER FOLLOWS The Kosovo crisis: law, morality and strategy NATO has found itself without a sound and prudent interpretation of international law. This makes it inter alia inordinately difficult to operate effective sanctions against Milosevic in the context of ethnic cleansing in Kosovo. It strengthens the argument that states can resort to the use of force outside the constraints of the UN Charter. It raises the question whether NATO would have played so fast and loose with a country in possession of stronger defences, and, most importantly, medium-range or intermediate-range SSM. In the security perspective of the prosperous societies in Europe the most dangerous arms proliferation trend is via these technologies. The UN Security Council has been bypassed, which establishes a precedent other great powers will use in future, conceivably to the great detriment of western security. China vis-a-vis Taiwan is one likely instance. The Secretary General has been insulted, whilst his muted remonstrances and diffident actions make him appear as a catspaw of NATO's will. The sense in which the NATO allies can speak on behalf of the international community, politically or morally, has been vitiated. It is clear they do not speak for Russia or China or India or Indonesia, which, leaving aside the rest, constitute well over half of humanity. This runs a coach and horses through repeated assertions that, "In this conflict we are fighting for a new internationalism where the brutal repression of whole ethnic groups will not be tolerated". The Russians have been deeply alienated. This will affect their domestic politics and their international conduct in Europe and in other regions. Yeltsin's capacity to influence his own succession is reduced. Nationalism increases. Military influences in foreign relations grow. Collaboration with the west is cramped. There will be a renewed search for distinctive interests in the Balkans, the Middle East, Central Asia and other regions. Collaboration with China, Iran, Iraq and other states actively opposed to the western-dominated international order will become less accessible to influence. Loans from the IMF will not affect that significantly. The Balkans have been seriously destabilised. On one hand the genie of great-Albanian nationalism is now out of the bottle. On the other, twelve million Serbs and whatever government they live under in future will enter a stage of socio-economic and political alienation from which only evil powers intent on the further long-term undermining of Europe may benefit. Quite apart from Milosevic's so-called "Samson option" (which is frightening), Serbian national opposition to America and NATO will increase. No "puppet regime" will endure in Belgrade. This vanquishes the central if unstated goal of US strategy towards Yugoslavia since the demise of Titoism, which has been to re-subject Serbia to control by the western powers. The humanitarian disasters of ethnic cleansing which have scarred the region since 1990 have been further exacerbated, with little realistic prospect that the process can be more than minimally reversed. Nor is it clear that NATO leaders want to reverse earlier stages of ethnic cleansing, which affected some 2.5-3.5 million Slav-muslims, Serbs and Croats. That casts doubt on the sincerity of the claim that NATO is not directing its power exclusively against Serbia or the Serbian nation. The operational military strategy followed by NATO is setting a series of examples from which both terrorist-backed independence movements and repressive dictatorships can draw inspiration (pace the mounting civil strife in Indonesia). Estimated military costs of the war so far range upwards from $10 billion. Economic damage and loss of trade may amount to as much again. Long-term reconstruction in the region, if the EU carries through on its recently stated aim, is thought to require $30 billion. These costs will be measured in the foregoing of other more productive economic and social goals in NATO countries in the near future. Having destroyed Serbia, if it comes to that, the western powers will be obliged to promptly rebuild it; otherwise, there will be a further twist to the development gulf that has turned low levels of living in so many countries Romania, Macedonia, Albania, Kosovo, Bosnia (and now also Serbia?) into proximate causes of ethnic nationalist hatred and war. An alienated, destroyed and impoverished Serbia, having lost Kosovo, may be a far more serious "renegade state" than it supposedly is today under Milosevic. In those conditions what is to stop Hungarians from pressing for independence for Vojvodina? What is to discourage Croatia from renewing its never-lost historic mission of dominating Bosnia? Even if all the Balkan states are brought into the EU and NATO, how are their conflicts going to be less severe than, say, those between Greece and Turkey? If the western powers build up Serbia again, as a necessary foundation of regional balance, will Serbian nationalism be diminished rather than strengthened? Nobody who understands the Serbs would predict so. And anyway, it will be asked, what did we go to war for in the first place? To replace Milosevic with a stronger nationalist? To give Kosovo independence to become the core of an unstable new Albania? Despite effective temporary alliance solidarity it is clear that NATO has absolutely no idea what its objectives are or ought to be. Beyond blindly insisting that its initial unrealistic political conditions for a "settlement" (which would have settled nothing) are met, what is the alliance hoping to achieve by this war? This question has no clear answer, let alone one agreed by all countries. Alliance solidarity is therefore unreal and figmentary. Moral hectoring of public opinion in alliance societies, particularly on the issue of widening the war to involve large-scale ground forces, has failed to gain sustainable support. While bearing the brunt of snatching Europe's folie de grandeur from the brink of defeat, the United States will not sacrifice its military men and women in large numbers for a cause that has no electoral significance. At the core of what NATO tried doing on 24 March were two incredibly flawed strategic assessments, namely that air power alone could stop Yugoslavia from subjugating Kosovo's territory and people to its military will; and that Milosevic's political control and social support inside Serbia would be decisively weakened by bombing Belgrade. Whatever rhetoric accompanies this assessment, by way of justifying a surprise attack on a sovereign state and the absence of any recourse to a mandate from the UN, the use of force itself must be justified by a probability of success in achieving its aims. Indeed that is one of the stipulative conditions for a war to be a just war (ius ad bellum). The history of air power gives no example of air power alone overwhelming a sovereign power, other than when it is used deliberately against a civilian population as an instrument of imposing final defeat. The history of warfare in conditions of industrial society shows that surprise attack together with limited aims strengthens support for a national leadership. The lame and vacuous claims that in the case of Serbia these things could not be known in advance, or that intelligence sources suggested otherwise, merely show that post-modern globalising leaders no longer read or understand history. While concentrating on the inscrutable depths of Milosevic's political machine, nobody took account of what the millions of Serbs who live in open societies in the west were telling anyone who spoke to them, which was that use of force against Serbia over Kosovo would be tantamount to an attack on the entire nation. The claim that the initiation of this war can be morally justified is negated by these facts. It was known beforehand that the risk of failure of Nato's strategic plan was very great. It was known beforehand that in the event of failure there would be a huge humanitarian catastrophe inside Kosovo. To the extent that such risks were discounted by political leaders the basis of NATO strategy is not only illegal and ineffectual; it is morally unacceptable as well. Widening the war against Serbia, as NATO feels compelled to do (with no additional moral reasoning), means an exponential growth of ethnic hatred between the Orthodox and Muslim worlds, in the Balkans and beyond. This risks spreading to Russia and Central Asia as well. Not to have a morally acceptable alternative strategy, other than to continue escalating the war in search of an absolute victory, is a second great violation of just war principles (ius in bello). Specifically, such just war rules as proportionality of harm and double effect mean that if the means adopted do not realise the envisaged ends it is not morally acceptable to continue inflicting unjustifiable harm on an enemy, still less on innocent civilians who are caught up in the struggle. Hence even if was genuinely but mistakenly thought NATO had a good moral position at the outset, it no longer has one. Moral reasoning requires NATO to change its strategy. Rejecting offers of mediation while continuing to exercise force against a wider set of targets shows that maintaining Nato's cohesion is a more important goal than any humanitarian consideration. Yet by this NATO also demonstrates that its military planning lacked any credible diplomatic accompaniment to a strategy of coercion. Blind insistence on unconditional fulfilment of five war aims through weeks of bombing, while hundreds of thousands of civilians have been driven from Kosovo or out of their homes, cannot be justified as a moral strategy. It is the antithesis of strategy; an elephantine return to the machtpolitik that the great powers employed in their colonial wars during previous centuries. To pretend that the use of force for political ends is motivated only or largely by moral aims only fools and confuses the western leaders who demand of their military servants a plan, without alternatives, for doing something that military force has never done in history before - to forcibly restore people to their homes, rather than forcibly evicting them from their homes. Despite NATO military intervention in Bosnia in 1995, the creation of today's SFOR, and the expenditure of several billion dollars, very few of those ethnically cleansed in previous years have returned to their homes. Nor will they: violence changes people, and things, whether it is intended for good or for evil. The self-confusion which this situation has created in the minds of the holy fools who direct NATO strategy is nowhere more vividly shown than in the oft-repeated assertion that in this "just war" NATO is not actually at war at all. A moral foreign policy cannot simply cut into a moral quagmire like this, determining what is "acceptable" and what is "unacceptable" ethnic cleansing. The argument that "you have to start somewhere" is NOT a moral argument. A moral argument has to start with a moral principle. If, "You have to start somewhere" is made into a moral argument (e.g. in moral pragmatism) then you must show that it is going to take you somewhere else that is morally preferable. The only sensible conjunction between force, politics and ethics is that of the great German military thinker, Clausewitz, whose formulation is that "nobody starts a war, or at least nobody in their right mind ought to start a war, without first knowing what he intends to achieve by it, and how he proposes to fight it". Knowing that the strategy NATO was adopting had a low probability of rapid success, and carried a high risk of catastrophic side-effects, where was the morally acceptable, pre-planned, alternative? Plan "B"? The "exit strategy"? The only answer given is that the alternative plan is the existing plan. The last time we heard that from a western government at war was when the people of Vietnam and Cambodia were being bombed into the stone age. Those who forget history are condemned to repeat it. Dr. Hugh Macdonald Senior Research Associate School of Economic and Social Studies University of East Anglia, UK Visiting Scholar BESA Centre for Strategic Studies Bar Ilan University, Israel 30 April, 1999