I am glad to say that opinion in Britain seems to be more strongly behind the action than in the USA. Opinion polls in the Observer and Sunday Times today both give a lead of 2:1 in favour of the British government action.
Chomsky is an old moralist and his analysis is fundamentally idealist.
>
> (1) What are the accepted and applicable "rules of world order"?
>
> There is a regime of international law and international order,
>binding on all states, based on the UN Charter and subsequent
>resolutions and World Court decisions. In brief, the threat or use of
>force is banned unless explicitly authorized by the Security Council
>after it has determined that peaceful means have failed, or in
>self-defense against "armed attack" (a narrow concept) until the
>Security Council acts.
Laws, practice, and justice will be created by struggle. That will include old moralists criticising the big powers, but is not limited to that. There are no international rules of order in any eternal sense, except the pattern of behaviour that comes to be accepted as acceptable.
I realise it is hard for leftists in the belly of the beast to see any way forward except revolutionary cynicism. That is ultimately crippling. The problem is also the failure of any vigorous marxist left culture addressing the question of reforms.
It is easy to display to a captive audience how hypocritical a great imperialist power is. What is more difficult is to change the world. The action of the western powers on Kosovo is progressive, just as it would have been progressive if the western powers had stood up to Hitler in the first part of 1939. It is much more progressive than their current line on the Kurds.
Its weakness is a patronising top-down approach that does not look for the solution in a developing civil society in the former Yugoslavia, enhancing their civil rights movements. I am therefore glad that you have publicised the B92 radio station.
The western weakness is also connected that they of course do not have a plan to promote economic development except on laissez faire lines. The European Union might be a little better on this than the USA. But it is basically "condescending saviours" to quote the Internationale.
To come back to the original question, whether Western Europe is tailing the USA. Of course technologically that has to be so in view of the sophistication of air power and air defences. But I detect a growing European self confidence. The working relationship between Blair and Schroeder looks to me to have strengthened substantially in the last month. The British EU budget rebates have been smoothed over. Britain has come onside with financial arrangements to extend the EU to the east. Not to be forgotten in the last couple of weeks NATO itself has been enlarged with the accession of Poland, Hungary and the Czech Republic. The borders of western europe are being moved eastward and the situation in the former yugoslavia is an offense and an obscenity to the standards of governance they have set themselves. It will end.
Blair was not just giving a sound bite when he said of the Kosovans "These are our fellow human beings".
The Nato press briefing today was given by a British political spokesperson and military spokesperson. They emphasised increased determination despite the loss of the stealth bomber. The British defence secretary took the opportunity to pledge 12 more planes. He aslo published a photograph of the human rights criminal Arkan, who has been spotted in Kosovo. He hinted that others involved would be subject to war crimes trials. His logic did not exclude Milosevic. Bearing in mind the delayed departure of Pinochet from this island, the possibility is not fanciful.
Reading between the lines, there is an active debate going on within NATO about putting in ground troops. Although the US will not, it looks highly likely that the British will. They refused to deny that the SAS are in there.
British military experts are now working smoothly with New Labour. The mode of thinking is important and difficult for leftists to understand. It is about the conscious approximation of expectations. The military experts comment that of course the politicians would have expected the military to have contingency plans for intervention with ground troops. It then starts getting included in the frame of calculations. Pressure is building up rapidly for ground involvement.
The weakness is there is virtually no recognition or respect for the strength of the working people of Yugoslavia themselves. But if armed force goes in to stop armed force displacing up to 2 million people, that is a start to wider discussions.
Kosovo this year. Turkish Kurdistan by what? 2002?
It is clear that the social fascism of the Milosevic regime is being confronted with much of the impetus coming from Europe.
Now if you citizens of the USA could do something about your government's opposition to establishing a strong international court of human rights in Rome, we might be getting somewhere.
What Chomsky in his moralism overlooks is that world government is being created by these contradictory processes. Criticism is essential but we cannot, and we should not, try to put the clock back.
I regard moralistic revolutionary cynicism as a distraction from serious politics, and a parody of marxism. There is a lot of work to be done.
Chris Burford
London