File spoon-archives/bhaskar.archive/bhaskar_1999/bhaskar.9904, message 19


From: "Tobin Nellhaus" <nellhaus-AT-gis.net>
Subject: Re: BHA:International law a subset of critical morality (DP
Date: Tue, 13 Apr 1999 20:15:23 -0400


Folks--

It doesn't particularly bother me that people disagree with me on NATO's
intervention--people have disagreements on this list all the time, what else
is new.  But Carrol's half-call for a "cease and desist" order from the
moderator, John Game's half-threat to unsubscribe over it (and depicting
support on this one issue as wholesale redescriptions of U.S. imperialism),
and this notion that raising the topic was a mistake, are I think
over-reactions.  Until these most recent posts, the discussion had I think
been conducted far more temperately and patiently than many others that
we've had.  Carrol, you especially should be ashamed of yourself: now,
finally, I too must wonder--is diversity of opinion allowed here or not?

I respect the anti-NATO position quite deeply, and have come to my own
opinion neither comfortably nor easily.  It's certainly not my normal
stance, and I may yet be swayed by counter-arguments when they are offered.
But it seems some of you have read my comments as though I gave
*unqualified* support for NATO, when I said both times that I have my
criticisms, and that I definitely would prefer some other body (most likely,
the UN) to have undertaken this intervention.  Even so, I feel strongly that
*someone* needed to intervene.  I'm not thrilled that it was NATO, but
no-one else seemed to be willing, and the most practical hope now is that
reservations and criticisms both within the U.S. and (especially)
internationally will help to make NATO act a little more responsibly than it
might otherwise.

But let's not oversimplify either the situation in Yugoslavia or the players
in it.  Carrol wrote:

> For 55 years, without a single exception, every U.S. intervention
> outside its own borders, economic, political or military, has resulted
> in death, destruction and (usually permament)  misery for the area
> concerned. Every military action by *other* nations which the U.S.
> has supported directly or indirectly has resulted in death, destruction,
> and misery.

This is sort of a truism, since military intervention by *anyone* leads to
death, destruction and misery.  Has the U.S. usually been on the wrong side
of the struggles?  Decidedly, yes.  But are there really *no* exceptions of
any sort?  At least on the political level, it seems to me that the U.S.
played a part (whatever the size) in fostering the (obviously still
tentative) peace in Northern Ireland, in the still-holding peace between
Israel and Egypt, and in occasionally dragging Israeli leaders into
negotiations with the Palestinians--not to mention trying to get Milosevic
to negotiate.  Are these examples of pure, selfless good?  No.  But on the
whole, I think it's better these events happened than not, and if the U.S.
helped any of them to occur, then we as critics should take a fuller, more
complex, and more nuanced view of it.

I'm also not particularly swayed by Carrol's criticism of NATO in terms of a
"criminal attack ... on a sovereign state."  Serbia's attack on Kosovo is
somehow not the same thing, or somehow less criminal?  And are sovereign
states such a holy thing?  If so, then an intervention by the UN would be
criminal as well.  Indeed, by these lights the Allies' war against Nazi
Germany was also a "criminal attack on a sovereign state," and the Soviet
Union became a thug for U.S. imperialism when (eventually) it worked with
the Western powers against Germany.  Frankly, there's ample cause for
thinking that notions of national sovereignty helped create the Serbian
campaigns in the first place.

As I see it, we're living in a thoroughly international milieu, and the
sovereignty of nations needs to be moderated by forms of international
governance, and ultimately supplanted by a democratic order with a
completely different structure.  But in the here and now, if we're going to
pay more than lip-service to the notion of human rights, at some point we
must allow someone to intervene against its violations.

This brings me to Howard's quotation of Chomsky:

> Noam Chomsky offered a simple analogy at Columbia last Friday.
> Suppose you walk out the door and you see one person
> committing a crime on another.  He proposed these alternatives:
> you can try to seek help, you can do nothing, or you can spray the
> scene with an AK-47, killing the criminal,  the victim and
> bystanders as well, claiming you could not do nothing.

A pretty analogy, but is it really suitable?  Individuals and nation-states
are not the same thing.  More to the point, precisely who is it to whom we
(whoever "we" are) should turn for help?  If the UN won't step in, what
next?  And aren't there more alternatives than these three, including varied
types of force?  Not only is Chomsky's analogy simple, it's simplistic.  I
do think NATO misjudged Serbia's and Milosevic's responses to attack, put
Yugoslavia's internal critics (particularly in Montenegro) in an untenable
position, and thoroughly screwed up by not anticipating that Serbia would
(again!) attempt a fait accompli by driving out Albanians, creating a flood
of refugees.  But to cast NATO's bombing campaign, which everyone (including
the Serbs) knows focuses on military targets, as somehow more brutal or
reprehensible than driving half a million people from their homes,
destroying their villages, massacreing people by the dozens, and conducting
a policy of rape ... come on, people, what *are* you thinking?  Do you
seriously prefer such activities to continue than to have NATO step in?  If
so, then John G's friend's comment needs to be turned toward yourselves: so
much philosophy promoting human emancipation, yet so little care for real
humans beings.

As I asked in my initial post on this issue, what exactly do you--any of
you--think should be done (or have been done) instead?

You want to oppose the hegemony of the U.S.?  Good, so do I.  So should all
socialists.  But the left has had *decades* of attempting analysis and
politics by simplistic sloganeering, "you're either completely with us or
completely against us," "no nuances."  And those decades have demonstrated
that this approach *doesn't work*.  It generates bad politics and bad
analyses (and that *is* a philosophical issue, BTW).  Further, it is deeply
tied to purism, which allows people a gratifying sense of self-righteousness
or even personal holiness (admittedly, no small thing!)--but if we're so
committed to and blinded by purism that we can't see the complexities of
real societies and consequently cannot respond to specific events at all
adequately, then if capitalism detroys the world, *we* will share in the
blame.  If we've learned anything on this list, it's the catastrophic
failure of reductive analyses.

And so I also think Carrol and John M are quite wrong to say that the issue
shouldn't have been raised on this list.  Quite the reverse: if critical
realism is to develop a viable ethical component (and not what some people
jeeringly call "Socialism with a Happy Face"), it must cut its teeth on
exactly this sort of troubling situation, and prove that its philosophical
complexities are worth more than the paper they're printed on by giving us a
sophisticated understanding of events and our options.  I think it can, and
I welcome this occasion for making a start.  Really, I'd *appreciate* being
proven wrong--I'd be much happier if I could withdraw my support for NATO's
intervention.

Once again: I'm far from enthusiastic that it was NATO intervening, and
easily acknowledge the reasons for the opposing point of view.  Indeed, I
may come to rue my support, grudging as it is.  If the outcome really is
awful, I'll have to bear a degree of ethical responsibility; it's a chance
that at this point I feel I have to take.

However, let's not kid ourselves: that knife cuts both ways.  You who oppose
intervention must, in principle, bear an ethical responsibility for not
stopping the Serbs' vicious campaign of "ethnic cleansing."  I say "in
principle," because NATO has relieved you from actually having to take that
responsibility.  And bearing no real responsibility, your blanket criticism
costs you nothing, while providing you with an opportunity to crow about
your righteousness before the Evil Empire America.  Consequently, you
*personally* benefit from NATO's intervention.  Which makes you as complicit
in its actions as anyone.

Do I exaggerate?  Yes, of course I do--though there's at least a grain of
truth to what I say.  But my underlying point (and the reason I freely
*announce* that I was exaggerating) is this: moral purity is no-one's
preserve.  So it's important to recognize each other as intelligent people
faced with a complex world in which there are extremely few simple answers.
More specifically, let's respond with real arguments about this specific
situation, not with aghast outrage that anyone on the left could possibly
hold an opinion differing from your own, indignation based on dogmatic
generalizations, or hasty withdrawals of the question itself.  And let's not
let ourselves off the hook too easily.

Thanks, T.

---
Tobin Nellhaus
nellhaus-AT-gis.net
"Faith requires us to be materialists without flinching": C.S. Peirce



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