"Let evil go unpunished"

[Carl Remick]

Very sensible editorial, from the current New Statesman:

Let evil go unpunished

Government, J K Galbraith once observed, is more often than not a choice
between the disastrous and the unpalatable. In Yugoslavia, western
governments rejected the unpalatable option, which was to stand aside.
They chose the disastrous course, with the results in death, exile and
destitution that we now see. This is not to excuse Slobodan Milosevic;
he and the Serbian forces in Kosovo bear the exclusive moral
responsibility for acts of appalling savagery, which are in some ways
even worse than those committed by the Nazis. Nor is it to deny that
ethnic cleansing on this scale must, to some extent, have been prepared
in advance. But that is not quite the same as saying that it would have
gone ahead without western intervention. The truth is that, once the
Nato action started, it was entirely logical for Milosevic to raise the
stakes, to get the Albanians out of Kosovo at the greatest possible
speed and in the greatest possible numbers, in the expectation that he
could then negotiate from a position of strength before the bombing did
too much damage. Further, he knew that the bombing would create
political cover for his behaviour, allowing him to suppress internal
opposition and to escape Russian censure.

None of this should be dismissed as hindsight; numerous commentators
made exactly these points as the first bombs were dropped and there is
substantial evidence that the military and intelligence advice to
western governments was on similar lines. But the
"something-must-be-done" school prevailed. Nato's reputation, the moral
comfort of western peoples, the political virility of their leaders, the
mission to teach tyrants a lesson (as though tyrants were members of
some intimate club who would say to each other "we'd better stop
tyrannising or Tony Blair will come and bomb us") - all these took
precedence over sensible strategic calculations or, for that matter, the
welfare of the Kosovar Albanians. Where western politicians can help in
such tragic circumstances is in financing and organising humanitarian
relief. Yet they have been so preoccupied with launching cruise missiles
that a refugee crisis unprecedented in Europe since 1945 finds them
almost comically unprepared, except in their certainty that Albanians
cannot possibly be better off in Dover, London or Blackburn than they
are in Skopje, capital of one of Europe's poorest countries. Thus, we
are asked to believe, people who recently threatened to swamp Britain
with false claims for asylum would now prefer to live in burnt-out homes
and razed villages inside Kosovo.

So a war that was supposed to make us feel good about ourselves is fast
becoming a cause for shame. But events move on and the Nato governments
face a new choice, this time between a prolonged ground war and a
negotiated settlement. Again, the choice is between the disastrous and
the unpalatable. The latter option involves partitioning Kosovo between
a Serb-populated north and an Albanian-populated southern protectorate,
guaranteed by both Nato and Russian troops. That some such deal will
soon be on offer from Milosevic is almost certain; it gives him most of
what he wanted to achieve in the first place, including new homes for
the Krajina Serbs (whose expulsion from Croatia seems somehow to have
been excused a place in the record of Balkan infamy). That is why it is
so unpalatable. Though western governments could easily spin the
creation of a free Kosovo as a victory, the tyrant could also claim his
triumph. Ethnic cleansing, so repugnant to the liberal mind, would be
legitimised. Evil would go unpunished.

Consider the likely alternative, however. A long and bloody ground war;
an intensification of the bombing, leading to thousands of civilian
casualties and a devastated Serbia that could destabilise central Europe
for years to come; a displaced Albanian population dispersed across
Europe with no immediate prospect of returning to its homeland; unrest
and possibly civil war in Macedonia; risks of a wider Balkan war,
drawing in Greece and Turkey; a significant worsening of relations with
Russia. Once more, we would choose a course for which the moral
arguments now seem overwhelming: a just war, but not one that could be
certain of achieving anything for the people we are supposed to be
rescuing. Once more, we would pursue humanitarian aims, but at a
terrible human cost, as we have done in the past 14 days. Once more, we
would prefer the disastrous to the unpalatable. We may wish to take the
honourable course, to "pay any price, bear any burden", in John
Kennedy's words, in defence of values we hold dear. Alas, in
international politics, such simple options are rarely available.

[end of text]

Carl Remick