From: "Walsh, Philip" <Philip.walsh-AT-daiichi-pharma.co.uk>
Subject: Re:  BHA:International law a subset of critical morality
Date: Tue, 20 Apr 1999 08:42:47 +0100


I'm not sure if Tobin Nelhous has been taking the backlash for my rather
glib intervention on this matter, so I should probably clarify my initial
point and also elaborate.  

The issue was originally whether the NATO bombing was illegal under
international law as it currently exists.  Obviously it is not.  However,
this is a quite different issue from that of its legitimacy.  Clearly,
illegal acts may still be legitimate and vice versa.  The discourse of
mainstream legal theory is probably inadequate in recognizing this
distinction.  Perhaps critical realism is in a better position to do so.  I
would not feel competent to comment on this matter, except to say that while
legitimacy is not equivalent to legality, it is also not equivalent to
morality.    

My point was that reducing the issue to the private motivations of Clinton,
or NATO or US imperialism, or any individual agent involved in this matter
is a Kantian step, in that it implies that the normative content of an
action resides exclusively in the agent's purpose.  This type of thinking
should be instinctively resisted by socialists for a number of reasons.
Primary among these is that if socialism means anything, it means that all
theory in the human sciences must recognise the mediation which affects not
just social action but also the consciousness of agents involved.
Therefore, the problem should not be reduced to an extremely undialectical
view of US interests versus all others.

In stating this point, I am not, of course, claiming that such questions
have no role to play in this issue, but the point is, as Tobin said, that we
are dealing with an extremely complex situation here and to interpret all
dissenting opinions as masks for US imperialist hegemony is to return to the
kind of vulgar Marxism which, it is to be hoped, Bhaskar has played a role
in finally disposiing of.

This brings me to a reappraisal of my initial comment, which was the point
that in some cases what is carried out for the `wrong' reasons may in fact
still coincide with what is legitimate.  In the context of the present
debate, I have absolutely no doubt that NATO and the various interests
represented by it or through it (especially defence manufacturers and
suppliers) are pursuing this war primarily for reasons of 1) military R&D -
it provides an opportunity to test the latest technological breakthroughs,
2) simple monetary profit on the part of the defence industry, 3) personal
political gain on the part of various leaders involved.  These are all goals
pursued by powerful agents with vested particular interests, and fairly
obviously these specific ones interests do not in themselves coincide with
the universal interest, where this is understood perhaps as the interests of
humanity as a whole - leaving aside the complex question of whether they
coincide with Europe, the US or the West etc. (and if they do, to who's
detriment?).  However - and this is the point - the question of the
legitimacy of NATO intervention in Kosovo is a separate issue from the
motivations of the agents involved.  The issue of how the intervention is
being pursued, in terms of both technical and political strategy, is also a
separate issue.  As such, it is entirely rational to, for example, applaud
the intervention but be critical of the strategy, or, indeed, the motivation
of the intervening agent.

Events continue to occur and overtake my thinking on this matter, and I grow
less confident of my initial position as the situation progresses.  However,
I wish to respond to a couple of points that have been raised by the various
protagonists in this dispute.  First, Carrol claims that "the issue is not
Yugoslavia..., but the US and its worldwide role."  This kind of thinking in
fact reinforces what it intends to criticise by implying that, whether you
demonise it or cheerlead for it, it's what is happening in America that
counts.  In other words, history is made by the victor.  Second, Yoshie and
John G raise serious questions regarding the `facts' and the form in which
they have been presented to the public.  This is a certainly a legitimate
concern.  However I am not persuaded by Yoshie's assertions that the
atrocities carried out by Yugoslav forces in Kosovo have been either
invented or wildly exaggerated by the Western media.  This is partly because
I think there are too many journalists there `on the ground' for them all to
be simply duped by NATO and partly because the military and paramilitary
groups operating in Kosovo have a fairly well-documented history of terror.


Which leaves the issue of the stance of critical realism toward the current
conflict.

One thing I like about Bhaskar is his rigour and his tendency to argue from
a theoretical base to then address practical questions - the original stance
of RTS, it seems to me, remains integral to his thinking.  This means that
he manages to evade the moralism that tends to pervade a lot of contemporary
socialist thinking in general, without embracing the cold
collectivist-realism of Althusser or Lukacs for example.  With respect to
the current conflict, it seems to me easy to lose sight of the fact that
there are `real people' involved amidst all the talk of imperialism and
structures of agency.  Therefore, while it is important, as John G. says, to
recognise the historical and social forces at play in bringing about this
situation in the first place, this does not actually deliver, in itself, a
rational decision on what is to be done at present.  Personally, I do not
believe a) that NATO will now stop short of a ground invasion force, b) that
this is preventable by, for example, mass anti-war action in US and European
cities, or indeed that this will occur, c) that theory can actually provide
us with a set of `ethical tools' that, correctly used, will then provide the
correct answer within this political quandary.  With respect to this last
point, I might add that I do not think that the strength of a sophisticated
theory such as Bhaskar's lies in its applicability to such immediate and
continually changing events.  Rather, its material influence on culture and
society is a more graduated process, as it is absorbed (or not) into the
hierarchies and structures of institutions.  This is not advocate quietism,
but to identify appropriate targets for an intelligent socialist agenda.

Philip W.



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