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. --- from list bhaskar-AT-lists.village.virginia.edu ---
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