"NATO's Shame"

[Carl Remick]

[From today's Guardian.]

Nato's Shame

-- Amnesty says we committed war crimes in Kosovo. British ministers come 
perilously close to shrugging it off --

By Isabel Hilton

Nato's intervention in Kosovo, the House of Commons foreign affairs select 
committee has ruled, was illegal under international law, but justified on 
moral grounds. Even in the age of the new imperialism, this is a pretty 
breathtaking conclusion. We are being asked to accept that it is morally 
fine to break international law, as long as we do so with good intentions. 
This is because we are the good guys - so although we do things that may 
look wrong, they are not wrong really. If Slobodan Milosevic breaks 
international humanitarian law, which we could certainly argue that he did, 
we are entitled to break international law to teach him what's what.

It is the sort of argument that, were it to be put by anyone not quite as 
nice or pure in heart as we are, might make me a touch uneasy. But it gets 
worse.

Nato's actions were illegal under Nato's own treaty, which does not permit 
it to undertake aggressive military action without a UN mandate. The foreign 
affairs committee's solution to this is to propose that Nato rewrite its 
charter. It's a brilliant solution, as long as the only part that bothers 
you is Nato's breach of its own rules. If, like me - and a stream of expert 
witnesses who testified to the committee - you are also bothered by the fact 
that international law does not permit the alliance to bomb Kosovo on its 
own recognisance, however worthy the intention, then changing Nato's rules 
will not reassure you.

The inconvenience, of course, is that a UN mandate requires us to sign up 
the awkward squad - the Russians and the Chinese - or at least, to persuade 
them not to veto any action we might wish to take. Certainly this is 
difficult, but it hardly supports Nato's claim to be on the side of 
democracy, justice and the rule of law if it ditches the rules when they do 
not suit.

Also, according to Amnesty International, the way the military campaign was 
conducted involved Nato forces in the commission of a series of war crimes. 
As the Amnesty report points out, aspects of the rules of engagement - 
specifically the requirement that Nato aircraft fly above 15,000ft - 
actually made full adherence to international humanitarian law virtually 
impossible. Direct attacks on civilians, attacks that do not attempt to 
distinguish between military and civilian targets and those with a 
disproportionate im pact on civilians are prohibited. Given the disparity 
between civilian and military casualties in the bombing campaign, it would 
be interesting to hear Nato's argument that these rules had not been broken.

A close reading of the select committee's report reveals a twinge or two of 
unease on this front, though, given the general tone, it is no surprise that 
it stops short of endorsing Amnesty's comments.

You could take the robust view that a war crime committed by men with pure 
hearts and high moral purpose (ie our side) is not a war crime. George 
Robertson, indeed, has come perilously close to such a position. Or you can 
acknowledge that the fact that Milosevic is a very bad man does not in any 
way diminish Nato's responsibility to respect the laws of war. It is from 
the observance of such laws that Nato derives its claim to moral superiority 
over men like Milosevic and Saddam Hussein and its right to sit in judgment 
on them. Once you throw that thought away, rather an important baby 
disappears down the plughole.

If we no longer feel that a UN mandate is necessary in order to intervene 
militarily in another country, could we perhaps have a new set of rules that 
will govern future interventions? I ask because it would be nice to know how 
we are to judge which of the 30 or 40 armed conflicts that rage around the 
world at any moment in which we might get involved on this unilateral basis. 
Secondly, if we accept that we are allowed to commit acts of doubtful 
legality in pursuit of our noble ideals, do we continue to support the 
international community's right to prosecute other individuals for war 
crimes and crimes against humanity?

And thirdly, if we are content to violate one of the most basic principles 
of the UN charter, does this mean that we regard the organisation as fatally 
flawed? If so, what does that mean for our continued membership? Would we 
support other members of the security council who decided to dispense with 
the irksome restraints represented by international law? If the Chinese 
decided to invade Taiwan, for instance, would we slap them on the back and 
say "welcome to the club"? Or would we tut-tut and threaten a boycott of 
soft toys until they came round to our point of view?

Surely the point of the post-Nuremberg effort to build international law - 
painfully slow and flawed though it has been - was to provide a universally 
agreed measure by which the actions and misdeeds of states could be judged 
and through which they could be sanctioned. Of course it is irksome to have 
to persuade one's fellow states, many of whom act out of ignoble motives. 
But the alternative is to sacrifice the principle of international law while 
claiming (as scoundrels might) to be acting in defence of humanitarian 
principle.

[end]

Carl

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