I have said that I accept the legitimacy of anti-intervention positions, just not the associated downplaying of the murder and oppression the Kosovars have suffered at the hands of the Serbs.
But specific points:
From: Brett Knowlton <brettk at unica-usa.com>
> The reasons each individual has
>for opposing the bombing are no doubt different, but mostly include the
>following ones:
>1) Diplomatic channels were not exhausted
Or they were exhausted weeks earlier when the Serbs had deployed troops throughout Kosovo obviously with orders to begin mass ethnic clensing upon the cessation of negotiations. I just find it incomprehensible that Milosevic was seriously debating letting in any kind of security force - UN, Russia or other - and giving Kosovars some version of autonomy, even while he was deploying troops with orders for mass ethnic clensing.
Which leads to:
>2) The bombing has prompted the Serbs to accelerate their atrocities
>against the Kosovars
I will agree the bombing accelerated their atrocities, but the disagreement is over whether Milosevic had plans for slow ethnic clensing. Human rights groups had been documenting a slow process of large numbers of Kosovars fleeing the country, which was what prompted so much focus on Kosovo in the first place. A slow "frog boiling" of the Kosovars was not to be preferred over intervention, since such slow expulsions serve ethnic clensing by scattering refugees beyond ability to mobilize or regroup.
>3) NATO's motivations are not humanitarian in nature, so that even if the
>bombing campaign succeeds in the sense that Milosevic agrees to a NATO
>protectorate in Kosovo, this may not be in the long term interest of the
>Kosovars or the local Serb population (although it would stop the killing).
This is the most interesting argument (as has been discussed at length), but in this case - and I don't extend it to all cases - I side with the Marx and Engel's qualified approval of Bismarck's conquering of weaker principalities as serving the integration of regions into broader united labor markets. This goes to the whole European Union debate - whose integration I think is a good thing for the Left - so a Kosovo and Balkans integrated into it is likely to be a good thing in the long run, if labor unions and the left get their act together from the bottom-up.
Which is my basic view on all this. Top-down military intervention worries me very little if we organize economic revolution from the bottom-up. And such bottom-up organization gains over the long-term under economic integration, a fact that many on the left ignore in many debates over trade and military action.
>4) The bombing has threatened the stability of the region and our relations
>with Russia and China.
I doubt it, especially in the case of China. In fact, it will muffle a US-led chilling of relations that the Right was gearing to push over the recent evidence of Chinese spying. They steal military secrets; we bomb their embassy. You know, "Call it even and let's get enrich our respective elites through trade."
As to Russia, a little chilling of relations would be good, given the lapdog relationship of Yeltsin and company to the US. Maybe a bit of nationalism will lead the Russians to stop turning their country over to US/European multinationals and their own kleptocratic elite.
>5) NATO has flaunted international law, the set of guidelines and rules
>which the international community has agreed should govern international
>relations. In so doing, NATO is merely upholding the priciple of "might
>makes right."
Well, we followed international law in the Gulf War with a UN mandate and all that, but that action was mass murder on a grand scale. An international law without any kind of independent police force or real court system is a joke that mostly leads to cover for elites, with no mechanism for the powerless to protect themselves - ie. the Kosovars.
When we have an international law where the Kosovars can automatically sue for international intervention without facing Security Council vetos, we can speak of "international law" with a straight face. But law that gives ideological cover to the powerful, while delivering squat to the powerless lacks every aspect of what makes the rule of law at all a progressive force in society.
--Nathan Newman