File spoon-archives/bhaskar.archive/bhaskar_1999/bhaskar.9904, message 24


From: "John Game" <JG10-AT-soas.ac.uk>
Date:          Wed, 14 Apr 1999 17:32:48 GMT
Subject:       Re: BHA:International law a subset of critical morality (DP


Dear Tobin,

Here in Britain two kinds of position on the NATO bombing find 
expression in the media. One is that what we are seeing is simply a 
confrontation between the forces of good and evil. In this scenario 
any attempt to question the rational of the NATO intervention is 
treated as a gesture of support to Milosevic. As one columnist here 
put it debate is reduced to the juvenile level of "What's the matter? 
Fancy Milosevic do you?". The other position is that the former 
Yugoslavia is a place full of savages nurturing ancient hatreds and 
that "the West" should just stay out of it. The conflict is simply 
the product of "ethnic passions" repressed by Tito but unleashed in 
the aftermath of the fall of Communism. The role of "the west" in 
creating the structured context in which politicians like Milosevic 
and Tudjman could rise to power is completely ignored as is the very 
recent provinance of that context. Pseudo-learned essentialism 
replaces any kind of analyses of context, social forces, and 
political dynamics.

I would strongly resist the idea that these are the only two 
alternative interpretive paradigms. Further I would suggest that as is 
so often the case with such TINA formulations they have much more in 
common then is suggested by their surface polarity. When Zizek 
rubbishes the whole Serb opposition in a completely undialectical way 
he relies on a method of argument which is premised on the absence of 
any conception of social reality or social movements as complex and 
structured. He is also generating new essentialisms (many of which 
ironically the Serb leadership would be quite happy with) which can 
become exceptionally dangerouse in the current context. 

At one point you suggest that NATO is targeting only military and not 
civilian targets. You then attempt to strengthen your argument by 
rejecting any moral equivilance between the actions of NATO and the 
actions of Serb forces in Kosovo. Unfortunately your initial premiss 
is becoming increasingly flawed. There is mounting evidence that NATO 
is increasingly prepared to "risk" "collateral damage" in Serbia. In 
a particulerly chilling exchange between the diplomatic editor of a 
current affairs program and its host in this country it was pointed 
out that the lack of any public outcry over the 100 or so civilians 
estimated to have been killed in NATO attacks has emboldened the 
alliance to take such "risks". This is happy news for NATO for as the 
current stratagy becomes more and more "longterm" the targets 
selected are moving away from "degrading military capacity" to 
destroying the civilian infrastructure of the country. This is not 
suprising as the distinction in modern states is rather a nice one. 
Roads and railways have dual purposes for example. Food and clothing 
is every bit as important for mantaining "military capacity" as are 
munitions.The morale of populations is also an important element in 
military capacity. The evil technocratic jargon of the "final 
solution" as well as "the destruction of the congs population 
resources" is importantly related to the dynamics of modern state-
building and military competition as is "ethnic cleansing". I hasten 
to add that I am not implying any moral (or indeed structural)
equivilance to these in many ways very different crimes simply 
emphasising that they share a common biography. The political uses of 
moral language is very much part of this biography. 

One consequnce of uncritically accepting the 
jargon of humanitarianism for instance is that even if one opposes the 
direction of NATO escalation ("ground troops to Kosovo" rather then 
"Bombs on Belgrade" for example) one is left with a language which 
does not hook on to these structured realties at all but quite 
systamaticly obscures them. Part of my suprise at the discussion on 
the list and part, I think, of the moral and theoretical point my 
friend was making is that given a philosophical commitment to 
critical realism it seemed a little odd that most of the exchanges 
(and here I would include some of those which are closer to the 
position I would hold) restricted them-selves to the bandying about 
of this kind of surface language.       

Here I have to confess to a, perhaps unfair, animus against 
International Relations as a discipline. In the last academic year
in the politics department here at the School of Oriental and African 
Studies a number of academics from this field were invited to our 
Departmental seminars. It rapidly became apparent that there was a 
curiouse asymmatry in the arguments of those who considered them-
selves "progressive" or on the "left" which split neatly down 
disciplinary lines. 

Those engaged in studying International Relations 
believed that talk of the hierarchy of power between states on the 
one hand and any sensitivity to local context on the other were 
symptomatic of firstly a "crude realism" and secondly "cultural 
relativism". The answer to "crude realism" was not "critical realism" 
but what seemed to me to be a kind of sub-Kantian pother about human 
rights. This sub-Kantianism ("poor mans Kantianism" as one participant 
memorably put it) was absolutely defenceless against the real 
cultural relativists in the room (having only ever confronted 
windmills previously) at the same time as absolutely infuriating to 
anyone who has any familiarity and engagement with political 
struggles and social reality (as well as theoretical and 
philosophical arguemnts) in those countries which don't happen to be 
part of the West.

Some of this was possibly the result of wounded academic pride. One 
of the visiting speakers prefaced his remarks by stating that whilst 
he wanted to bring philosophical sophistication he was aware that we 
might have a lot to teach him about "empirical reality" having a bit 
of factual knowledge about the world he was engaged in 
"theorising". He was of course absolutely savaged by a number of 
participants but sadly I suspect remains blissfully unaware of it. 
This kind of philosophy has two flaws. Firstly in refusing to 
acknowledge structures of power in the world it remains blind to its 
own position within those structures. These philosophical discussions 
about, for instance, whether intervention is ever a moral "obligation"
are all premissed on the fact that we happen to live in states that 
are capable of conducting such interventions in the first place. How 
this happy situation might have arisen and how it might structure the 
kinds of discussions we have does not enter into the picture.Part of 
the extraordinaryly cavalier attitude to "national sovreignty" is of-
course the result of fact that this discourse is produced in parts 
of the world where any direct threat to it is not even a remote 
possibility.For those of us studying what has come to be called 
"colonial discourse" there is something reassuringly familiar about 
this kind of  blindness. This explains the complete incomprehension 
many of these speakers expressed when confronted with arguments which 
did not move on the same level as theirs. 

Which brings me to the second problem that this conception of 
philosophy has which is perhaps more germane to the objections I have 
with your way of seeing the new "international concensus" which you 
see rising out of the ashes of Kosovo. Given the kind of "blindess" I 
have described it is not at all a suprise that attempts to describe 
the NATO intervention as a manifestation of imperialism seem 
unpersuasive. In my own area of disciplinary study much ink has been 
spilt attempting to prove that colonial authorities were motivated 
more by moral considerations then "material interests". The problem 
with this argument is not that those involved in colonialism where 
not always motivated by moral considerations but that these arguments 
have a very crude conception of the relationship between "moral 
considerations" and "material interests" and, one might add, a very 
crude conception of these two entities them-selves. Of course those 
involved in Colonialism (as in any kind of social practice) had a 
common sense, a set of attitudes and dispositions, which are not 
linked in any directly comprehensible way to cotton production in 
Aberdeen. But to reduce colonialism as a phenomenan to the self-
understanding of the actors involved is surely a disasterouse 
Winchian move which no-one on this list would countenance for a 
minute.

How then can we be so sure that we should interpret the structured 
context in which Clinton "intervenes in northen Ireland" (to take 
just one example) as exhausted by the moral content of the discourse 
that surrounds that intervention? The fact that you then show that 
you are ofcourse quite cynical to by throwing in variouse 
journalistic type comments in about the possibly that Clinton may "not 
be entirely disinterested" does not move us any direction away from 
the problem at all. For both the moral discourse and Clinton's "not 
entirely disinterested" motivations occur within a much larger 
structure of hierarchy and power which it is surely the business of 
those who call them-selves Critical Realists to uncover. Thus whilst 
I can't speak for anyone else when I use the term "Imperialism" I am 
not using it as a term of abuse but as an attempt to uncover a 
structure which has never been driven by individual interests or 
moral discourse whether disinterested or not. Nor am I simply 
referring to the United States. 


My grave worry about this discussion remaining only on the surface of 
things is not only related to a rather Kantian disregard for 
consequentialism restricting it-self only to allocating moral 
responsibility for those consequences to variouse "others" (as if 
that makes any difference at all to those who suffer the 
consequences) but what seems to be symptomatic of a wider drift to 
what might be called the worst type of reformism. Given that the pace 
of events is being set by forces over which we have no control the 
argument seems to be that the best thing we can do is to join up with 
them and try and "influence" them. Most people will be familiar with 
the arguments on the left about whether to join social democratic 
formations (given the polemical jibes about "purity" that is) and 
even the rather different argument about the Democratic Party. It is 
something of a truism that the dangers of such interventions is that 
it is not the institution that gets changed but the individual who 
goes in to change it. This process usually involves subtle shifts in 
the attitudes of these individuals and variouse types of wishful 
thinking. The constant entreaties not to "demonise" NATO are a case 
in point as one can hardly hope to influence a "demon". The use of 
such language is in any case simply an attempt to trivialise what are 
in fact terribly important disagreements. I have, I hope, managed to 
avoid such lampoon in what I have written. 

In response to the entreaty "What would you do if you were NATO?" my 
response is firstly that I am NOT of-course NATO. I mean two things 
by this. First of all that it is simply the wrong question. It does 
not at all address what Socialists ought to do, what position they 
ought to take up etc. When you suggest that it is "easy" to simply 
"oppose" you are of course quite wrong. It is hard both practically 
(in the sense of actually successfully stopping them) and politically 
(in the sense of arguing the case, presenting alternative stratagies 
etc). Much easier to support the action with reservations. 
Importantly it is hard to see how these reservations could have any 
impact at all. Which brings me on the second reason I respond in this 
way. "The worst kind of reformism" seems to me to be closely related 
to a deep pessimism about the impact of any kind of struggle from 
below. Some of this is reflected in the writing off of Serb 
opposition I have already referred to as well as I think a quite 
irresponsible demonisation of Serb civilians (partly related to 
substituting essentialism for social analyses; an easy temptation in 
the face of the horrors of the last decade one admits: but one that 
must be resisted) but the other is the collapse into TINA type 
arguments to justify this despair. We should understand that if the 
kinds of intervention that Socialists can make appears minimal 
"intervening" in NATO is no intervention at all. Nor is dreaming 
about "international organisations" which will somehow become 
disconnected from the generative mechanisms that sustain them. 
International organisations are the least likely arena for the 
emergence of any kind of "popular control" (Zizeks rather bizarre 
collapsing of "social movements" and "transnational institutions" 
seems a rather unlikely combination). In any case I've rambled on 
long enough. Suffice to say I hope I've explained my reasons for 
disquiet.

John Game







































































Importantly these technical matters do not exhaust the structured and 
complex nature of current events. 





































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