Nathan Newman wrote:
>In fact, on the basis of their position on Kosovo, I don't
>actually know what the anti-Kosovo-intervention Left has to argue for in
>calling for external interference in the "internal affairs" of Israel.
-The U.S. already intervenes in the "internal affairs" of Israel by -supplying it with money and weapons.
Doesn't quite work, Doug. Most of the rhetoric of self-determination essentially equate the people with the state, so aid to the state is not considered interference. That the Soviet Union was giving aid to Cuba or Nicaragua did not mean that their self-determination had been violated, so support for the Bay of Pigs or the Contras was not therefore justified.
Now, I've never bought the whole rhetoric of "self-determination"-- it's always seemed that you look for justice in all its complexity and decide what is possible to do to support that justice. Milosevic or Israel, with the most ironclad history of sovereignty over either Kosovo or the West Bank, would not have the right to oppress and deny rights to their peoples.
US intervention has been often (mostly) wrong around the world not because it was intervention or a violation of self-determination, but because it was supporting the wrong side. On the rare occasions when that intervention has been on the just side of a conflict -- Haiti and Kosovo being decent examples -- I think the left should support it, since I actually don't think opposition makes it less likely it will be used in the wrong situation (which may be a strategic point on which we disagree). I think the best way to create a grassroots check on wrong uses of US power is to articulate a moral vision of justice in the world and fight to make sure that US power follows that vision.
Pure anti-interventionism mostly taps into the base instincts of "let them rot" isolationism (of the antiwar.com variety) in America and is unlikely to create a real sustained moral foreign policy.
The intervention in Kosovo has actually ended up being far more successful in moral terms than I expected -- democratic elections in both Serbia and Kosovo, the return of Serbian refugees to Kosovo, and the general end to the mass murders that had been running across the Balkans for a decade. That is an admirable model for intervention that I don't expect to be repeated often, but I will support it when it comes up as a possibility.
And I think a moral vision supporting interventions like Kosovo is actually more likely to restrain immoral interventions in places that don't match that likely outcome. People around the world and in the US rightly look at our intervention in Kosovo and demand a similar standard in our dealings with the Middle East.
-- Nathan Newman