Mocking
Tradition and Practice
NATO'S WAR
& WORLD SECURITY
By Prof. Raju G. C. Thomas
www.globalresistance.com
The taking apart of Yugoslavia between 1991
and 1999 is unique in terms of
principles applied, policies adopted, and its short and
long term consequences. It shows few parallels with other
secessionist movements in the world in the post Second
World War era. The disintegration of the Soviet Union in
1991 was different in many respects. Some dangerous
precedents were set in the Yugoslav case. Traditionally,
the situation was as follows:
1. When the right of self-determination is
invoked by secessionist ethnic groups, the state almost
always invokes the principles of the territorial
integrity of the state and the inviolability of its
borders. It is a violation of international law to
recognize unilateral declarations of independence by
secessionist groups and territories against the wishes of
federal or central governments who are engaged in
resisting the separatists.
2. Internal boundaries of a state do not have
any legal validity under international law. They are
subject to change in accordance with domestic politics
and/or law. These boundaries cannot automatically become
external boundaries if the secessionists manage to break
away through consent or force.
3. The notion of state sovereignty in the past
always meant that other states do not have the right to
interfere in its internal matters. While multilateral
economic and arms control treaties, signed voluntarily
for the mutual benefits they provide, have increasingly
placed limitations on state sovereignty, such
self-limitations do not extend to the right of external
interference in the internal struggle between the state
and the secessionists.
4. The state's "standard operating
procedure" in dealing with secessionist demands and
accompanying insurgency or terrorism is the attempt to
crush it through counter-insurgency and counter-terrorist
means. The level of violence by the state then invariably
exceeds that of the separatists.
5. The formation of new states from an
existing state, occurs through successful separatist
violence aided by outside powers, or through mutual
agreement between the state and the secessionists. The
primary exception to the above traditional practice, has
been the end of empires. The reference to the right of
self-determination in the United Nations Charter applies
only to this demand of decolonization.
6. When a state attempts to crush secessionist
movements through military force, the term
"aggression" as defined by the United Nations
Charter does not apply. This is civil war, and not war
among states. The state has the legal right to preserve
its territorial integrity by force with a moral
obligation to minimize human rights violations. While the
state may be accused of "crimes against
humanity" under conditions of civil war, this does
not give outside powers the right to dismantle and
destroy the state.
7. The state's invocation of legal rights and
use of force within its own frontiers may contrast with
the state's inability to achieve political legitimacy
over the people inhabiting the province that wish to
secede. Political legitimacy involves obtaining the
consent of the governed.
8. According to the Guidelines of the
Montevideo Convention of 1933, new states are to be
recognized on the empirical evidence that they possess
clearly demarcated territorial boundaries, a stable
population and a government in control. Preference and
moral considerations are less relevant.
9. If parts of an existing state eventually
manage to secede, the rights of the old state is retained
by the remnant state, if this part still remains the
equal or greater part than the single or each of the
several parts that seceded from the old state. There are
precedents establishing this rule.
10. Secession may be considered immoral where
it leads to the denial of past benefits to the rest of
the country; when it compels other units also to secede
leading to state disintegration; and where such actions
lead to war, chaos and human tragedy.
Virtually all of the above principles or
practice were violated by the "international
community" in the case of the former Yugoslavia.
International response was different in the case of
Nigeria's crushing of the Ibo secessionist movement in
Biafra; China's suppression of Tibet's secession; India's
suppression in Kashmir, Punjab and Assam; Pakistan's
crushing of secessions by Baluchistan and Sind, and its
unsuccessful attempt to do the same in East Pakistan; Sri
Lanka's war against Tamil separatists; Philippines in the
Muslim Moro areas; Indonesia in East Timor; Turkey in
"Kurdistan;" Britain in Northern Ireland; and
Spain in the Basque areas. On the question of successor
state following breakup, precedents were established when
Pakistan seceded from India in 1947, Bangladesh from
Pakistan in 1971, and 15 "republics" from
Russia in 1991. The consistent principle applied in these
three comparable cases, was denied to the remnant
Yugoslavia.
The pit of the West's violations of
traditional precepts and international laws was reached
when NATO launched its attack on the remnant Yugoslavia
in violation of a slew of international laws that
included the UN Charter, the Vienna Convention on the Law
of Treaties, the prohibition of attacks on civilian
targets that have no military value, several laws
regarding the environmental protection and the protection
of cultural sites, and the domestic laws of several NATO
members that prohibit going to war except in self
defense. The claim of humanitarian intervention is plain
dishonesty since there was no humanitarian crisis until
NATO attacked causing it. NATO's decision to attack had
everything to do with the failure of Belgrade to submit
to a diktat presented to Yugoslavia at Rambouillet in
February that it be willing to allow NATO forces to be
deployed throughout Yugoslavia, and that it be willing to
allow a plebiscite eventually that would allow the
Albanians of Kosovo to secede. It had nothing to do with
the humanitarian crisis in Kosovo which was caused by
NATO's decision to attack.
Historical
Precursors of War
In the 20th century it has become a habit for
the victors of war to claim that God and morality were on
their side, and that they are incapable of committing
crimes during war. Only the vanquished are war criminals
deserving of all the punishment that can be meted out.
Claims during the Yugoslav conflict between 1991 and 1999
have been no different. And when the victors emerge and
proclaim themselves without sin, the rest of the world
rush to jump on their bandwagon. Those who once condemned
NATO's attack may soon be expected to concede that it was
the right thing to do in the name of the greater good of
mankind. The pain, suffering, losses and grievances of
the defeated become buried permanently. Moreover, history
is written by the victors, a history of self-serving lies
and distortions. NATO and its supporters have already
flooded global information outlets with their version of
events in order to overwhelm all opposing viewpoints.
The constant historical invocation during the
Yugoslav crisis was to the Second World War and the
holocaust. "Never Again" is the shrill
nonsensical cry. These are the wrong analogies and
lessons. Instead, the real historical analogy may be the
First World War. Examine the following. Serbia had
accepted all of Austria's diktats in 1914 following the
assassination of the Archduke Ferdinand of Austria at
Sarajevo, although there was no official Serbian
involvement in that incident. Austria attacked Serbia
anyway launching the First World War. Serbia accepted all
the political terms of the Rambouillet diktat in 1999
except to insist on its territorial integrity. NATO
attacked Serbia anyway in violation of the UN Charter.
NATO declared military victory although there appeared to
be no victors. The outcome was a negotiated cease fire
produced by Russian Foreign Minister, Viktor
Chernomyrdin. The cease fire terms conceded the Serbian
demands made at Rambouillet that its territorial
integrity including Kosovo will be preserved, that NATO
forces will not have access to all of Serbia, and
essentially an international force with a substantial
NATO presence will be stationed in Kosovo.
Apart from the destruction of Serbia's
civilian infrastructure, its factories and other means of
civilian livelihood, the Serbian military came out
unscathed, especially in Kosovo. Some 50,000 Serbian
soldiers filed out in orderly fashion with nearly all
their weapons and equipment intact and looking as fresh
and clean as the NATO forces that marched in. However,
Serbia and Serbians have been asked to acknowledge and
accept all blame and guilt, and are being punished
severely with economic sanctions. While having reduced
Serbia to almost rubble and its people to impoverishment,
the US and the West claim that they did no wrong. All
allegations of war crimes have been attributed to Serbian
political and military leaders, but none to NATO's
political and military leaders The UN was weakened.
Likewise, during the First
World War, Britain, France and
the United States declared victory although much of
Germany was not defeated or occupied. Indeed, Russia was
defeated in the east and collapsed into anarchy giving
rise to the Bolshevik revolution. However, Germany was
forced to take all blame and guilt, and was punished
severely in the Versailles Peace Treaty, while the
Britain, France and the United States claimed that they
had done nothing wrong. The self-proclaimed victors
declared themselves moral judges, the alleged vanquished
was declared deserving of all punishment. War crimes were
directed at the Kaiser and 19,000 German political and
military leaders, but none attributed to the members of
the Triple Entente and the US, although no war crimes
tribunals were established. German bitterness at such
unjust punitive measures led to the rise of Nazism and
the Second World War. The League of Nations collapsed.
While small countries such as Serbia may not have the
same capacity to start a war machine like Germany did
during the inter war years, there is the possibility--as
Chinese military strategists have proposed--of resort to
"Unrestricted Warfare" against America's
ability to fight wars without casualties. This form of
warfare would include organized biological and chemical
terrorist attacks, the spread of drugs in Western
societies to destabilize their societies, and the
spreading of computer viruses as part of broader
cyberwarfare, thus taking the pain and suffering into the
territorial heart of the self-proclaimed military and
moral victors.
As during the inter-war years,
NATO's assault on Yugoslavia in 1999 has undermined the
United Nations, just as the League of Nations was
undermined in the 1930s. The League was destroyed by
three of its members, Japan, Italy and Germany, who
eventually forged a triangular alliance known as the
"Axis Powers." Like the United States, Britain,
and Germany operating under the NATO alliance today, the
Axis powers either disregarded international norms and
the clauses of the League's Covenant, or bypassed the
League altogether, or claimed they were acting in
accordance with the Covenant. None of them publicly
declared that they were acting illegally or immorally,
although Mussolini's Italy came close to declaring that
the League and international law did not matter when it
attacked and annexed Ethiopia without provocation in
1935. Japan's earlier attack and annexation of the
Chinese province of Manchuria in 1932 was claimed to have
been undertaken within the boundaries of International
Law and the League Covenant. Japan claimed it was acting
in self-defense to enforce its extra-territorial rights
in Manchuria, although the belated Lytton Commission of
Inquiry determined otherwise.
When Hitler's Germany annexed
the Sudetenland region of Czechoslovakia in 1938--in the
prelude to the Second World War--the protests by this
small state were determined by Britain to be
unreasonable, considering that for the most part it was
Germans who lived there anyway. The parallel is not that
Milosevic is like Hitler--a grossly absurd comparison
made by various Western leaders--but that Kosovo is to
Serbia in 1999 as the Sudetenland was to Czechoslovakia
in 1938, despite ethnic minority populations constituting
the majority in those regions. The assumptions in the
West that Milosevic's Serbia is the equivalent of
Hitler's Germany, and that NATO's military onslaught is
equal to the action of Allied forces during the Second
World War determined to end evil, are misplaced. Serbia
did not invade, say, Hungary in 1999 the way Germany
invaded Poland in 1939. First, in Croatia and Bosnia,
Serbia sought to retain as many Serbs and as much
territory as possible within a disintegrating Yugoslavia,
and then it fought to keep its historic and religious
territory, Kosovo, which was indisputably part of Serbia.
Serbia's response to the West
parallels that of Vietnam, a small state determined not
to be dictated to and dominated by great powers. Just as
the Vietnamese fought against the Japanese, the French
and then the Americans, the Serbs have fought against
Turks, Germans and now Americans to maintain their
freedom and independence. As expected, Vietnam has
opposed the war. A Hanoi communique declared: "The
U.S. and NATO should have learnt a lesson from the
Vietnam War as they continue their genocidal military
operations against Yugoslavia... It is regrettable that
the U.S. and NATO have not learnt any lessons from the
Vietnamese victories against the soldiers of France in
1954 and America in 1975 which has led them to commit
their errors today."
Just as the events that led up to the Second
World War were in part the result of a collapsing League
of Nations and the rising arrogance of the Axis powers,
while the other major powers, Britain, France and the
United States offered feeble resistance, the current
crisis, which has not led to a Third World War, is in
large part the result of a weakening United Nations and
the rising arrogance of the NATO alliance, while the
other major powers, Russia, China, and India, have
offered feeble resistance. Moscow, Beijing, and New Delhi
have protested vehemently, but to no avail. NATO's
rampage against tiny Yugoslavia was conducted with the
conviction that God, morality, and overwhelming military
power are on their side.
Perspectives and
Interpretations of War
During the war over Kosovo, NATO claimed that
it represented the "international community"
although Russia, China, India, Vietnam, Philippines, much
of Latin America opposed the attack and called for an
immediate cease-fire. Indeed, NATO's unity might have
collapsed if the war had continued another month or so.
Except for the British and Canadian governments (the
English speaking members of the alliance who are not part
of continental Europe), the European member's support for
NATO's military actions, which were almost exclusively
conducted by the US military, was shaky. An Indian
newspaper editorial during NATO's attack on Yugoslavia
claimed that the real victims (the Serbs) were being
portrayed as the villains, and the real villains (NATO
and the US in particular) were being projected as honest
interventionists.
The Clinton administration's spokesman, David
Leavy attributed this phenomena to the fact that
``President (Slobodan) Milosevic has an extensive
propaganda machine. We've worked very hard to try to
counteract that propaganda machine..." The White
House spokesman claimed that Kosovo was the best recent
example of how the United States needs to fight a
propaganda war in concert with military strikes.
Accordingly, a new International Public Information has
been set up to prevent (presumably) countries like India
from coming to conclusions that support the Serbian point
of view. Likewise in Britain, Downing Street was locked
in an extraordinary battle with the British media on the
issue of fair reporting. Prime Minister Tony Blair's
spokesman, Alastair Campbell, accused British journalists
of being duped by the Serb "lie machine" and of
being too lazy to cover the Kosovo conflict properly.
However, much of the rest of the world saw the
crises and wars of the former Yugoslavia differently,
perhaps because of parallel conditions within their own
states. On the other hand, Western media and government
officials had became locked into a particular syndrome
where perceptions of good and evil had become indelibly
carved. During the first half of the Vietnam War,
Americans were convinced that the war was a struggle
between the forces of monolithic international communism
led by the Soviet Union and China, and that of the free
led by the United States and Western Europe. There was
hardly any other interpretation provided in the US in the
years before 1968 other than this. It was only after the
disastrous Tet Offensive in 1968, that American
perceptions began to change. Amidst the growing anti-war
movement, various writers began to claim that this was a
war of Vietnamese nationalism against foreign forces--the
Japanese, the French and then the Americans. A
revisionist history of the Cold War began to emerge
thereafter, and issues were no longer interpreted as
strictly ideological, and starkly black and white.
Similarly, would a different interpretation of
the crisis in Yugoslavia have emerged if NATO's attack on
Serbia had continued a few more months with severe
American and West European casualties? Similarly,
interpretations of Yugoslav events were made in the
context of a new US dominant global structure following
the end of the Cold War. There no longer existed
countervailing power especially where Russia had become
wholly dependent on the West for its economic survival.
Under these circumstances, the Yugoslav situation was
seen in the context of good versus evil, where the Serbs
were evil and every other ethnic group were considered
good, no matter what they did. With the help of a
colluding and conspiratorial Western media, all facts
were made to fit this American sponsored image. Yet there
were too many inconsistencies in US and Western policies,
and too many contradictions in the eventual outcomes of
policies adopted. For example, it was deemed acceptable
to take Yugoslavia's long-standing international
frontiers apart, but not that of the former internal
provinces of Croatia and Bosnia. It was deemed not
acceptable to give Serbian Krajina independence in order
to preserve the territorial integrity of Croatia, but it
now seems acceptable to give Kosovo independence thereby
violating the territorial integrity of Serbia.
With reference to policy outcomes, while the
goal of maintaining a multiethnic Yugoslavia was
discarded in cavalier fashion when Slovenia and Croatia
were allowed unilaterally to declare their independence,
Serbian efforts to carve out an ethnically pure state was
disallowed. Multi-ethnicity was a good thing, and Serbs,
Croats and Muslims who supposedly could not live together
in Yugoslavia must do so in a smaller Bosnia. And having
attempted to maintain multiethnic states in Croatia,
Bosnia and Kosovo, we have now ended with ethnically pure
states in Croatia, Bosnia and Kosovo. Attempts to create
a Greater Serbia out of the territories of the former
Yugoslavia was determined to be aggression and therefore
not permissible. However, we now have de facto Greater
Croatia and Greater Albania, but no Greater Serbia. Such
inconsistent policies carry implications and lessons for
the rest of the world.
The Realities of
Power in the Post Cold War Era
The territorial outcome in the former
Yugoslavia demonstrates one of the basic dictums of
international politics theory, viz., that the lack of
countervailing power (or a balance of power) in the world
will not guarantee the sovereignty and independence of
states, especially states that are small. Small states
become vulnerable if the dominant powers in a unipolar
world acting in concert, seek to destroy their
territorial integrity. American actions in the Yugoslav
conflict reinforce the Machiavellian maxim that morality
is the product of power, especially in international
society. The collapse of the USSR left the US and Germany
with unrestrained power to dictate the new order in the
Balkans. Washington and Berlin have declared their
actions to be morally justified.
If Serbian military power was about to
determine the territorial boundaries of the new states
out of a disintegrated Yugoslavia unfairly and through
violent means, German and American politcal and military
power changed those equations in favor of their proteges,
especially the Croats. The new territorial order imposed
in the former Yugoslavia through American military
intervention, both covert (Iranian arms) and overt
(bombing of the Serbs), is not morally superior by any
means over that which the Serbs were about to impose in
the region to their advantage. The Serbs sought what they
probably could have had for the asking at the end of the
First World War, a Greater Serbia. This was the historic
mission of the Serbs in the 19th century and was no
different from the uniting of Italians and Germans into
the consolidated states of Greater Italy and Greater
Germany in the 1860s and 1870s. If Croats and Slovenes
had not agreed to join the South Slav Union, these states
in 1918 would have been very small while the
"victorious Serbs would undoubtedly have succeeded
in enlarging the territory of pre-war Serbia to include
sections of Croatia and Bosnia where many hundreds of
thousands of Serbs had lived under Austro-Hungarian
rule." Instead, the quest for a Greater Serbia out
of the territories of the former Yugoslavia--not out of
the bordering territories of independent states such as
Hungary, Romania, Bulgaria or Albania which would be a
case of irredentism and aggression--was declared to be
unacceptable by the United States.
The denial of the historic goal of a Greater
Serbia for the Serbs in 1991-92, and the creation of a d
facto ethnically pure Greater Croatia for the Croats in
1995 and Greater Albania in 1999, were not coincidences
or accidents. It was the natural outcome of great power
politics and a preponderance of power at the end of the
Cold War. In particular, the US was left standing as the
sole superpower. The fall of the Berlin Wall and the
reunification of Germany--a reunion that had been
prevented by East and West for 45 years because they
feared for the security of Europe--gave the new Germany
confidence to act forcefully in Yugoslavia--immature,
inexperienced and well-meaning as these actions may have
been. Occasional protests and resistance by Russia,
Britain and France against German and American policies
and actions were feeble and futile. Russia is truncated,
faced with internal ethnic secessionist wars, on the edge
of bankruptcy and political chaos, and dependent on
American and German economic assistance for its survival.
Britain and France did not want to undermine the unity of
the European Union or of NATO. So they acquiesced to the
destruction of Yugoslavia and the bombing of the Serbs,
their traditional allies and that of the US in two world
wars.
In choosing between the principle of the right
of self-determination and the principle of the
territorial integrity of sovereign states, the Western
powers have now established the following
self-contradicting and dangerous precedent and
principles: (1) The internal boundaries of a sovereign
state will automatically become international frontiers
without change if that sovereign state is taken apart
through new state recognition policy. (2) These newly
recognized international frontiers of the newly-created
sovereign states that have been recognized, will be
preserved and enforced at any price, thus contradicting
the earlier decision to take the international frontiers
of the pre-existing sovereign state apart based on the
right of self-determination and secession. The exception
is Kosovo which the Clinton administration has already
declared will become an independent state following the
bombing and destruction of Yugoslavia.
Self-Determination
and Democratic Rights
In dealing with the various conflicting
demands and rights of self-determination and territorial
integrity in the former Yugoslavia, the international
community embarked on a confused and contradictory set of
goals and policies which, if applied to other parts of
the world, could be even more disastrous. Hurst Hannum
writes: "Perhaps no contemporary norm of
international law has been so vigorously promoted or
widely accepted as the right of all peoples to
self-determination. Yet the meaning and content of that
right remain as vague and imprecise as when they were
enunciated by President Woodrow Wilson and others at
Versailles."
In 1995, Allen Buchanan warned against
confusing democratic rights with secessionist rights
based on the principle of self-determination. He pointed
out the need to view the two concepts and their
objectives together to understand its distinctions and to
avoid the likely adverse consequences of confusing the
two concepts. While there is "widespread,
unambivalent endorsement of the goal of
democratization," there are serious doubts about
destroying the state itself through secessions in
advancing this goal of democratization. "There is
good reason to be apprehensive. Attempts at secession,
and the efforts of states to resist them, have frequently
led to severe economic dislocations and massive
violations of human rights. Ethnic minorities have won
their independence only to subject their own minorities
to the same persecutions they themselves formerly
suffered."
Buchanan further points out the misleading
parallels between democratization and secession.
"Both democratization and secession, it may seem,
are exercises of the right of self-determination. If
democracy is popular sovereignty--participation in
government by the people--then secession may be seen as
the effort of various peoples to govern themselves, to be
politically self-determining, in the most literal sense,
by forming their own independent, fully sovereign
states." Buchanan continues:
"There are two reasons, however, why
our enthusiasm for democracy may quite outstrip our
enthusiasm for secession. First, secession can and has
produced massive violation of human rights, "ethnic
cleansings," and wholesale destruction of economic
resources. Second, as Abraham Lincoln argued, secession
can pose a lethal threat to democracy: If a discontented
minority can exit the polity whenever it is outvoted by
the majority on an issue it deems of great importance,
then the majority does not rule. In addition, if
secession is considered as a real option, then a minority
group may use the threat of "exit" as a form of
"voice" that serves as an effective veto on
majority rule. In either case, recognition of a right to
secede can undercut the exercise of the right of
democratic self-government."
The problem in the case of the former
Yugoslavia was that the moral justification for secession
was questionable compared to other parts of the world
where secessions have been denied. Some logical
explanation must be provided as to why the principle of
the right to secede was applied selectively to Slovenia,
Croatia and Bosnia, but not (for example) to Tibet,
Kashmir and Kurdistan. Ultimately, power and ability
prevailed in the former Yugoslavia. Those states who
secede are: those who have the independent power to do so
(Ireland); are assisted by external powers to break free
(Bangladesh); are voluntarily allowed to so by the Union
(Singapore and Slovakia); or because the federal
authorities have become too weak to resist secession (the
ex-Soviet republics and Eritrea). The initial support to
the secessionists in Slovenia and Croatia by a German-led
West, backed later by the US, made the difference in
allowing these two Yugoslav republics to secede. Morality
and justice were less relevant in determining the
outcome.
In the more liberal interpretation of freedom,
subject ethnic groups within a state are considered to
have the right to hold referendums to determine whether
they wish to remain part of the state or secede from it.
This right of national self-determination is, however,
mentioned only obliquely and in passing reference in
Article 1 (2) of the United Nations Charter which reads:
"To develop friendly relations among nations based
on respect for the principle of equal rights and
self-determination of peoples, and to take other
appropriate measures to strengthen universal peace."
Articles 73 to 91 essentially deal with
"Non-Self-Governing Territories" and the
"Trusteeship System" but have nothing to do
with granting self-determination to peoples within
existing sovereign independent states.
The 1970 "Declaration on Friendly
Relations" elaborated on the Charter and went beyond
to declare that the principle did not only apply to
colonial territories, but also to "all peoples"
"the right freely to determine without external
interference, their political status." The principle
was emphasized in Article 1 of the "International
Covenant on Civil and Political Rights" passed in
1976 and ratified by 113 by the end of 1991. However, the
rights of minorities to self-determination, according to
the Covenant, did not include the right to secede. It
implied the right of peoples in all states "to free,
fair and open participation in the democratic process of
governance freely chosen by each state." A 1990
meeting of the Conference on Security and Cooperation in
Europe (CSCE) in Copenhagen went far in affirming
democratic rights and human rights of peoples but did not
go as far as to endorse the right to secede.
Self-Determination
Versus Territorial Integrity: Cases
There are several cases which
demonstrate that the right of self-determination with the
purpose of seceding from the state does not exist--except
by mutual consent, or with the consent of the majority,
or with the consent of the federal or central government.
Unilateral declarations of independence and territorial
secession by ethnic groups are illegal under
international law. Donald Horowitz, a leading American
specialist on nationalism and ethnic conflict, noted
appropriately that the secessions of Slovenia, Croatia,
Macedonia, Montenegro, Bosnia, and Serbia followed the
violent patterns of state dissolution elsewhere. He
pointed out that states with no history of independence
such as Bosnia were swiftly recognized without
considering the consequences. Stated simply, the right of
self-determination does not extend to the right of
secession. Democratic rights stop at the international
frontiers of the state.
Kashmir and
India: India
insists on its own territorial integrity and will not
tolerate secession by any of its constituent parts. There
will be no more "Pakistans" out of India. But
Kashmir continues to pose a problem While there are
several parallels between the Yugoslav situation and
India, the parallels between "Kosovo and
Metohija" and "Jammu and Kashmir" (to use
the full names of these provinces), are even greater.
Kosovo is 90 percent Albanian, mainly Muslim, with a less
than 10 percent Serb minority. NATO's military actions
and occupation and the return of the Kosovo Liberation
Army have resulted in the flight nearly all Serbs from
Kosovo, a major demographic transformation. Note, that in
the 1930 Yugoslav census, the population of Kosovo was
only 60 percent Albanian.
The Kashmir Valley, the main bone of
contention between India and Pakistan, is 90 percent
Muslim with a 10 percent Hindu minority. Nearly all of
this 10 percent Kashmiri Hindu Pandits have fled their
homes in Kashmir since the Muslim separatist movement
began in 1989. Unlike Kashmir which remains disputed
territory with Pakistan on the U.N. agenda, Kosovo was
not disputed territory with Albania. Both Serbia and
India have declared that the secessionist movements in
these provinces are internal matters. Since the outbreak
of the violent secessionist movement in Kashmir in 1989
led by the Jammu and Kashmir Liberation Front (JKLF),
estimates of the number of people killed vary between
25,000 and 60,000. The Indian government declared the
JKLF and other groups to be terrorists. Similarly, since
the violent secessionist movement broke out in Kosovo in
March 1998 led by the Kosovo Liberation Army (KLA), the
Yugoslav government has declared the KLA to be a
terrorist group.
Tamil Ealam and Sri Lanka:
There are even more similarities found in the violent
Tamil separatist movement in Sri Lanka and events in the
former Yugoslavia. The ruling and dominant Sinhalese
speak a language that belong to the Indo-European group
and are 95 percent Buddhist. They constitute 75 percent
of the population. The Tamil-speaking population (of
which 20 percent are Catholics) constitute 18 percent of
the population. About 7 percent are Muslim Moors who also
speak Tamil but do not identify with the Hindu and
Catholic Tamils or their separatist movement. Tamil
belongs to the Dravidian group of languages. Like the
Serbs whose identity is determined by language and
religion, the Sinhalese identity is determined by
language and religion. On the other hand, like the
Albanians whose identity is determined by race and
distinct language, Tamil separatism is determind by
language and culture and not religion. There is an
independent Albania across the border from Kosovo, and
there is an autonomous Tamil state called Tamil Nadu
across the narrow Palk Straits in India.
The demands of an independent Albanian Kosovo
and an independent "Tamil Ealsm" would appear
to be identical. But the treatment of the two cases have
been fundamentally different although allegations of
human rights violations by Sinhalese forces engaged in
the suppression Tamil separatism have been far more
serious than that of Serb forces in Kosovo before March
1999. But there appears to be no likelihood of
international recognition for Tamil Ealam. Indeed, the
Liberation Tigers of Tamil Ealam has been declared to be
a terrorist organization by the State Department.
However, this classification of the Kosovo Liberation
Army by the State Department has now been lifted. The
KLA's credentials have been upgraded to freedom loving
NATO allies.
Quebec and Canada:
In August 1998, the Canadian
Supreme Court, while acknowledging that Canada was not
indivisible, declared that Quebec could not secede
through a simple majority vote among its residents. The
terms of secession would have to be negotiated with the
rest of Canada as an amendment to the Canadian
constitution. The nine Canadian justices indicated that
while such a secession would theoretically feasible, it
would be difficult, painful and costly, suggesting that
it would be most unlikely. More importantly, the Canadian
Supreme Court (that included 3 judges from Quebec)
declared that under international law, there is no right
of unilateral secession except territories that are
judged to be colonies and specially oppressed peoples.
Quebec fulfills neither category. The court warned that
unilateral secession by French Canadians would likely be
rejected as illegitimate by the "international
community," presumably the same international
community, including Canada, that rushed to recognize the
unilateral declarations of secession by Slovenia and
Croatia. Indeed, the situation in the former Yugoslavia
was similar. The constitutional right of Yugoslavia's
internal "republics" to secede was countered by
the right of its various "nationalities" and of
the other republics to oppose it.
Biafra and Nigeria:
The principle that the Western
powers applied to Yugoslavia was diametrically opposed to
their position on Ibo demands for an independent Biafra
from Nigeria in the late 1960s. Like the Slovenes and
Croatians, the Ibos complained that their prosperity was
being used to subsidize the rest of the state. While the
Nigerian government had invoked the principle of the
territorial integrity of the state, the Ibos claimed that
the states and boundaries of Africa were artificial, the
illegitimate legacy of European colonialism. The OAU
recognized the fact that the boundaries of Black Africa
were colonial legacies with no moral standing, they felt
that allowing the principle of self-determination and the
consequent creation of new states and boundaries, could
lead to chaos and disaster. There would be endless
demands for new states based on tribes, languages and
religions that could unravel all of Africa resulting in
extensive bloodshed and refugee flows. The OAU determined
that while there may be no logic or morality to the
existing states and boundaries of Africa, except the
colonial legacy, that legacy must stand.
The Two Yemens:
The case of Yemen appears more
definitive. The brief civil war that broke out in Yemen
in May 1994 was triggered by the declaration of
independence by the south. The north proceeded to crush
the secession through armed force invoking the principle
of the territorial integrity of the state. But, the
merger of the north (Yemen Arab Republic) and the south
(the Peoples Democratic Republic of Yemen) had taken
place just four years earlier in 1990. Their historical
and political experiences were completely different. The
north was occupied by the Turks in 1870 and relinquished
control after World War One. The south was occupied by
the British in 1839 and granted independence in 1967. For
over a hundred years, the two Yemens had no common
history or political experience. Yet, there were no
allegations of "aggression" against the north
when it crushed by military force in a matter of days the
secession of the South which had agreed to a union only a
few years earlier. But here too, the territorial
integrity and sovereignty of the state prevailed.
Tibet and China:
Both the nationalist regime
(1911-1949) and the communist regime (1949-present) of
China have claimed that Tibet has been historically a
part of China under the Manchu (Qing) dynasty for
centuries. Manchu control over Tibet was weakened only
with the encroachment of the European powers in China,
and of the British in particular, with their rights of
extra-territoriality in China. The governments of China
under the Manchus and the Nationalists were weak and
subject to unequal treaties and unfair concessions. Hong
Kong, for instance, had to be ceded to the British Crown
under an unequal 100-year lease agreement.
There are two problems with
such Chinese claims to Tibet.
First, like parts of the Czarist empire that controlled
large territories inhabited by Turkic Muslims, Tibet and
Tibetans were claimed to be part of the Chinese empire,
not China itself. The Tibetans, like the Turkic Muslims
of the Czarist Russian empire, were different from the
Chinese in their Tibeto-Burman race and unique Buddhist
religious practice. Second, even during the rule of the
Manchus since 1644, China had little control over Tibet.
There existed an occasional and small Chinese military
presence in Lhasa on the invitation of the Dalai Lama. In
1709, the Mongol prince Latsang Khan occupied Tibet
displacing the 6th Dalai Lama. In 1720, the 7th Dalai
Lama entered Lhasa backed by Chinese troops and displaced
the Mongols. In 1728, Chinese forces removed the 7th
Dalai Lama and then returned him to Lhasa in 1750.
Thereafter, between 1750 and 1904, the year of the
British expedition of Colonel Sir Francis Younghusband,
there was no Chinese presence in Lhasa. The British now
controlled Tibet and stationed a British
"Resident" in Lhasa, a situation not
fundamentally different from British Paramountcy over the
Indian Princely States. It should be apparent that Tibet
has justifiable claims to independence if the various
provinces and regions of the former Yugoslavia had the
right to do so.
Secessionism in the
Ex-Soviet Union. As
in the case of the former Yugoslavia, only previously
existing "republics" within the Soviet Union
were allowed to secede. No more, no less. The
declarations of independence by the Serbs of Krajina and
Slavonia in the republic of Croatia, and that of Serbs in
territories of the republic of Bosnia-Herzegovina, were
not recognized inspite of successful de facto secessions
between 1991 and 1996. Likewise, successful territorial
secessions by the Muslims of the Abkhazian region of
Georgia, by the Armenians of Ngorny-Karabakh in
Azerbaijan, and by the Muslims of Chechnya in Russia,
have not been recognized. Yet, Georgia, Azerbaijan and
Russia have all lost control of these regions. No
Georgians, Azeris or Russians live anymore in these
breakaway regions. Russian populated Crimea was denied
secession from Ukraine although it only became part of
Ukraine in 1954 because Kruschev transferred the
territory from the Russian S.S.R. to the Ukrainian S.S.R.
Indeed, if the Soviet Union had
inherited an empire from the
Czars, then other parts of current Russian federation
would have equal rights to secede as the republics. There
are still some 50 significant non-Russian nationalities
left in the new Russia. Separatist demands by Turkic
Muslims have been particularly acute especially in the
Volga-Ural region. Ten of 21 republics within the Russian
Federation are ethnically Turkic or their populations are
dominantly Turkic. There are some 11 million of these
Turkic Muslims who are kindred people of the newly
independent Central Asian republics who seceded from the
Soviet Union. Although these Turkic peoples are divided
into several groups, such as the Tatars, Bashkorts,
Cechens, Chuvashs, Ossetians, Ingushis and others, they
carry memories of oppression under the Czars and are
united in the desire to secede from Russia. The
fundamental problem in the former Yugoslavia was that the
West led by Germany and the US, discarded the principles
laid down in the 1975 Helsinki Agreements Final Act which
had guaranteed the boundaries of the existing states of
Europe. According to this agreement: "The
participating states will respect the territorial
integrity of each of the participating states.
Accordingly, they will refrain from any action...against
the territorial integrity, political independence, or the
unity of any participating state..." The former
Yugoslavia was a party to this agreement, not the new
states (which are now invoking the Helsinki principles to
preserve their boundaries) that were carved out from the
old state.
War, Morality
and Humanitarian Interventions
During NATO's total war against
Yugoslavia, a Times of India
editorial noted the dangerous new American-dominant
world, the American development of new missile defense
systems, the legitimization of wars of intervention
abroad on self-determined moral grounds, and being able
to fight them with very few or no casualties to Americans
because of the new high-tech weapon systems. "In
these circumstances two major trends are likely to
emerge. Independent powers like Russia and China are
bound to develop their own military capabilities to deter
US dominance to the extent possible and to defend their
own national interests and sovereignty. In this, the
nuclear weapons and long range missiles are bound to play
a crucial role. Secondly, the deep resentment against US
hegemonism is bound to unleash various terrorist
activities by non-state actors against US interests and
personnel in various parts of the world."
NATO's war prompted Chinese
military strategists to consider
new rules of "Unrestricted War" which include
the resort to terrorism, ecological destruction, the
spreading of computer viruses, and trafficking in drugs
to undermine the enemy population thereby bringing
destruction into the heart of the Western countries,
especially the United States. According to Colonels Qiao
Liang and Wang Xiangsui, the authors of
"Unrestricted War," this strategy was the only
viable method of balancing unequal military states.
"Unrestricted War is a war that surpasses all
boundaries and restrictions... It takes nonmilitary forms
and military forms and creates a war on many fronts. It
is the war of the future." In an interview, Colonel
Wang, declared: "We are a weak country. So do we
need to fight according to your rules? No. War has rules,
but those rules are set by the West. But if you use those
rules, then weak countries have no chance. But if you use
nontraditional means to fight, like those employed by
financiers to bring down financial systems, then you have
a chance." According to John Pomfret of the
Washington Post, the Chinese military strategists saw a
direct connection between Kosovo and Taiwan and Tibet.
According to Colonel Wang, "If today you impose your
value systems on a European country, tomorrow you can do
the same to Taiwan or Tibet."
The United States and Great
Britain have argued that the
attack on Serbia was justified under the 1948 Genocide
Convention and/or other general humanitarian principles.
However, the internal Yugoslav republics of Slovenia,
Croatia, and Bosnia declared their independence with
promises of recognition by Germany and the Vatican before
any human rights violations or violence had occurred.
Those unilateral declarations of independence produced
the subsequent violence and the bloodshed. From March to
March 1998-99, before NATO's attack on Yugoslavia, the
total number of deaths of the KLA, Serb policemen, and
Albanian and Serbian civilians was less than 2,000, in a
ratio of about two-third Albanian to one-third Serb.
Serbian crackdown in Kosovo generated some 300,000
internally displaced people. NATO's war against
Yugoslavia led to the deaths of allegedly 10,000
Albanians, of 2,000 Serb civilians and about 600-1000
Serb soldiers in Kosovo. And if the bombing and
sanctioning of the Iraqi population that has led to some
1.7 million deaths of innocent civilians are any guide,
we may expect a similar outcome in Yugoslavia. There will
be no grief or outrage for these victims.
If NATO had the right to
intervene in Kosovo, does it now
have the right to intervene in Palestine, Kashmir, Tibet,
and Kurdistan, where human rights violations are also
taking place? NATO cannot unilaterally invoke the 1948
Genocide Convention , the 1948 Universal Declaration of
Human Rights, and other humanitarian laws, and proceed to
attack independent states. Only the Security Council can
do so, but NATO deliberately bypassed the Council knowing
that Russia and China would veto such an attack.
There was no humanitarian
intervention by the U.S. and the
West when the Nigerian authorities crushed the Biafra
separatist movement between 1967 and 1970 causing the
deaths of one million Ibos, when Pakistani forces killed
one million and drove out 10 million Bengalis during the
East Pakistani secessionist struggle in 1971, when the
Pol Pot regime killed one million Cambodians, to name
just a few cases. In the latter two cases, the US
condemned India and Vietnam for their military
interventions and threatened military action against
them. However, both India and Vietnam intervened AFTER
the human catastrophes had taken place. On the other
hand, NATO's rush to bomb CAUSED the human catastrophe in
Kosovo, as did Western interventions earlier in Croatia
and Bosnia by promoting and rushing to recognize Croatia
and Bosnia as independent states against the wishes of
the Serbian populations.
Three fundamental principles of Just War --
necessity, proportionality and discrimination - were not
met.
- (1) Necessity:
Serbia had agreed to all the political conditions
of the Rambouillet diktat and even an
international military presence but objected to
NATO occupation of Kosovo and the right of
occupation throughout Yugoslavia. This could
hardly be considered a failure of negotiations
and yet the bombing followed.
- (2) Proportionality:
Inflicting a combined "Dresden",
"Tokyo firebombing" and a
"Hiroshima" (many US weapons contain
Depleted Uranium) on a nation of 10 million
people was grossly out of proportion to the
problem that needed to be resolved.
- (3) Discrimination:
NATO's deliberate military strategy of destroying
Serbia's entire infrastructure including water
supply, electricity, fuel dumps, roads, bridges,
and other "collateral damage" such as
hospitals, schools and cultural-historic
monuments, was intended to terrorize and destroy
Serbia's civilian population in order to bring
about capitulation.
In the final analysis, acting
on moral principles is not
enough. We need to pay attention to the immoral outcomes
of acting on moral principles. Allowing the right of
self-determination among oppressed minorities may seem
like moral policy. But this may encourage minority
populations to provoke brutal crackdowns by the state and
thereby humanitarian interventions by the
"international community". The results of such
moralistic policies have usually been greater human
tragedies.
***
This article is a paper that Prof. Ragu
delivered at the Conference on "War and
Justice" sponsored by Dialogue
Magazine in Paris, October 25, 1999
Note # 1 - Here are four
articles with a lot of insight into what the
West did to Yugoslavia
* Click on Yugoslavia Seen
Through a Dark Glass by Diana Johnstone, or go to http://www.globalresistance.com/articles/Johnstone/1yugo.htm
* Click on Germany and the US in
the Balkans: a Careful Coincidence of National Policies? or
go to
http://www.globalresistance.com/articles/carr/carr.html
* Click on What does NATO Want
in Yugoslavia?
by Sean
Gervasi or go to http://www.globalresistance.com/articles/gervasi/why.htm
* Click on A Not-So-Nonviolent Debate on the
Nonviolence 'Board'
by Jared
Israel or go to http://www.globalresistance.com/articles/jared/nonviole.html
Enjoyed this article? Send it to a
friend!
To read more... please click here
or go to http://www.emperors-clothes.com
If you would like to help
Emperors-Clothes...
please click here or go
to http://www.emperors-clothes.com/howyour.htm to
use our secure server. All costs are covered by
donations. If you would rather send a check, please mail
it to Emperor's
Clothes, P.O.
Box 610-321, Newton, MA 02461-0321 Thank you.
|