I think many people felt that, reactively. The left interventionist position, with sanctions, peacekeeping troops, and if necessary, peace making ie offensive ground troops, was not a reactive position but was a proactive one.
Not all situations can be changed, but I would have to put it to you and others that if you did not want a repetition of Bosnia and Srebenica, had you been in any position to influence the response of a western government, or to campaign in a western country, what would you have tried to do?
>I stated the rather obvious, but often overlooked and dismissed (though
>not by you), spectacle of Turkish pilots, seasoned ethnic cleansers who
>could give the Serbs and Albanians some solid tips, dropping bombs on
>another country to "stop" ethnic cleansing. While some see this as
>hypocritical, I view it as the logical extension of imperial power.
Absolutely this is a feature of imperialist politics. Divide and rule, and don't mind about the principles. Quite right that this is another imperialist feature of the war that they did wage. But how to mount any defence for the Kurds of Turkey? Surely not by muffling the justice of the demand for self determination for oppressed people in a geographically coherent area? If you do not do that the politics of your resistance is primarily that we are in favour of Serbia despite the fact that they are oppressing muslim minorities because they say they are socialist; we are against Turkey because it is right wing and allied with our government but clearly not because they are oppressing the Kurds, because that principle is trumped by the more important principle of the character of the regime.
That does not seem to me to be a very convincing way to encourage people overseas to defend the rights of the Kurds not to be oppressed.
>The same holds for East Timor. Clinton, the great humanitarian warrior,
>allowed the Indonesians to run riot after the referendum and engage in the
>same violent manner that he and his allies said they were against, and
>would use force to stop. Only in the Timor case, no bombing would be
>needed. A simple phone call would bring the terror to a halt; and after
>letting the Indonesians go crazy, Clinton did eventually say that perhaps
>this was not a good idea. And with the introduction of Aussie troops, it
>stopped (though after the purpose was served). Again, logical imperial
>policy. If the US really was against the Indonesian action, the violence
>would not have reached the level it did.
Well here there may be important differences of detail of interpretation. I do not think imperialist power, even that of the US, in the world today is one that can change a situation with just one telephone call. First of all they had to decide whether after decades of appeasing Indonesia's oppression of the people of East Timor they would intevene with a mandatory signal. Then that signal, of withdrawal of even conditional IMF support to the already tottering economy, had to be correctly read by Indonesia's capitalists and politicians.. Then, above all, that signal had to be correctly read by the army. A phone call from the US president cannot be as immediately persuasive as a thousands rifles in the locality.
General Wiranto in fact made great play of resisting the call for withdrawal, and if I recall correctly, praised the fascist muslim militia that had terrorised the East Timor people. He dismissed the idea of atrocities and made a prominent show of singing songs with army soldiers. It was in fact touch and go whether there would be a coup against the new democratic Indonesian government.
But in your last sentence in this paragraph you suggest that if the US was really against the Indonesian action the violence would not have reached the level it did. They should have intervened earlier. This is a vital point. When should intervention take place, assuming we think it progressive. Before the genocide or after it? It has to be before it. That it the point. That is why for all the imperialist nature of the war that the west did wage against Serbia to make it withdraw its troops from Kosovo, it is enormously relevant that in Kosovo and Macedonia, there were vastly fewer deaths than in Bosnia.
>Allowing imperial governments to define what is and is not "humanitarian"
>action, merely because you feel that your arguments will be taken
>seriously, is a losing proposition, in my view.
This argument is a fundamental mistatement. Imperial govenments will define themselves anyway they want. It is not a question of us "allowing" them. Often they will try to define themselves in enlightened terms. This is the dual nature of the state. On the one hand it is an instrument of coercion, indispensibly relying in the final analysis on bodies of armed men. On the other it must *appear* to stand above class, national and other conflicts, to apparently represent a moral order of things, and win the acquiescence of the majority of the population.
Despite the redneck callousness of US public opinion to events overseas, that is even true of the USA. It is essential to US imperialism to have a story about how it is the champion of liberty and democracy in the world. With the fall of communism as an effective bogy man to drive lesser states under its wing, now it is even more important that the US polishes its image. The intervention in Kosovo was partly because Blair and Clinton did regard muslim Albanians at least nominally as human beings with civil rights, but also because as imperial representatives they needed a moral mission to justify their forces.
So whether the left thinks it has any chance of its arguments being taken seriously does not affect whether we can "allow" imperialists to take stances that claim to be humanitarian. All we can do is to expose those actions which are not humanitarian. And - this is where I differ from the majority of discussants - but we do not know about the majority of subscribers - the left also has the option of challenging the imperialist powers proactively to prevent humanitarian atrocities.
Chomsky made that challenge in the case of East Timor. And won the campaign. The IMF intervened, the Indonesian army handed over to a coalition army from a number of capitalist nations, and the East Timorese were in position to enjoy formal democracy.
>There can be humanitarian intervention, and in certain cases there should be.
Quite. So there should.
>But the NATO bombing served nothing save US global designs, at least as
>seen by Clinton.
One of these is to show that Pax Americana is a just peace, the other was to stabilise the falling dominos of one boundary and population change in the Balkans after another. At least the boundaries have been stabilised.
>We'll see what Bush's and Powell's definition of "humanitarian" action is,
>assuming they bother to use the term.
Bush may be less interventionist unless he sees an easy victory, and more content to make himself impregnable behind the missile defence system. He may be happier to let people like the Chechens groan for the sake of compromise with Russia.
An imperialist power may be interventionist or not interventionist, in both cases for imperialist reasons.
Nevertheless I believe we must struggle internationally, as we struggle nationally, to challenge regimes to live up to the ideals they proclaim.
Those slaughtered in Rwanda have just been remembered in the Hocaust ceremonies in London.
Chris Burford
London
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