Explanation is not justification (though it is for Hegel -- I disagree with Hegel on historical necessity). The Yugoslav civil wars did not necessarily have to happen (history is contingent, and we can think of many "what if" scenarios here -- what if Yugoslavia had chosen not to follow the path of devolution?), and practically no murder that has been committed in the course of it -- including Srebrenica -- is morally justifiable. _Nor are capitalism & imperialism_.
My simple position is that one must accept being objective, not subjective, supporters of the enemies of the evil empire, for the short term. (Otherwise, we can't even join an anti-war demonstration, for instance.) What matters is your objective action, not your subjective opinion. (Opinions are like ass holes, as Americans say; everybody has one.) In the long term, though, your objective opposition to the evil empire would help bring down the "lesser evils" later as well. (It's easier to overthrow the enemies of the evil empire than the evil empire itself; therefore, we should never foist the latter on peoples on the periphery in the vain hope of protecting them from the former.)
***** From: Apsken at aol.com Date: Tue, 30 Mar 1999 15:40:29 EST To: lbo-talk at lists.panix.com Subject: Revolutionary Defeatism
Revolutionary defeatism is a phrase from Lenin referring to the duty of Marxists in imperialist countries to oppose the war efforts of their own governments (and thus in effect to encourage the defeat of their countries' armies by their imperialist opponents, although the actual slogans of the Soviet of Workers and Soldiers were "Turn the guns around!" and "Turn the imperialist war into civil war!"; Lenin used the term defiantly and provocatively, to stiffen his comrades' resolve in the face of the Second International's collapse into national patriotism). Naturally revolutionary defeatists also hope for the rest of what Doug wrote, but those points are beyond the usual meaning of the term. Hal Draper as a Shachtmanite leader once wrote an article titled "The Myth of Lenin's 'Revolutionary Defeatism'," which was a tortured argument that Lenin didn't really mean it, that it would have been contradictory for German workers to advocate the defeat of Germany; British, the defeat of Britain; Russians, the defeat of Russia, and so forth, as though those outcomes were mutually exclusive of one another and of the revolutionary project. Hal's real problem was his anti-Stalinist discomfort in calling for the defeat of the U.S. in a hypothetical war with the USSR; his article was a fundamental text for the Third Camp, shortly before the main Third Camp leaders abandoned their pretense and declared themselves in support of U.S. military conquests. As a consequence of Hal's tutelage, many otherwise radical Third Campers had great difficulty in taking a positive view of a Vietnamese victory over U.S. forces, because they regarded both Ho Chi Minh and the NLF as surrogates of Soviet "imperialism," against which they were holding out their Third Camp alternative.
Ken Lawrence <http://nuance.dhs.org/lbo-talk/9903/2082.html> *****
In other words, "revolutionary defeatism": it is "the duty of Marxists in imperialist countries to oppose the war efforts of their own governments," as Ken Lawrence reminded us a while ago. The leftists who have failed to do so energetically in the case of the Yugoslav affairs, in my opinion, are beautiful souls (if they are not cruise-missile liberals, that is).
Yoshie
P.S. BTW, Machiavelli has a better position on necessity and morality than Hegel, William Blake, etc. What Machiavelli says is that what is necessary may be nevertheless unjust (whereas, for Hegel, what is historically necessary is rational and justifiable). This is about moral & political responsibility. There is no excuse for not accomplishing your duty; but there is no excuse for accomplishing your duty either. Do your duty without hoping that historical necessity, political necessity, etc. would cover your ass, or so says Zizek, in my interpretation.
P.P.S. Thanks for giving me an occasion to say what I have been thinking.