The New Military Humanism: Lessons From Kosovo

In March 1999 NATO forces, mainly British and American, began their 11-week onslaught from the air on Yugoslavia, supposedly to forestall Milosevic in his campaign against the Albanian Kosovars. According to the once reputable Vaclav Havel NATO's avowed intent to protect the underdog was appropriate in an age when `it is simply not permissible to murder people, to drive them from their homes, to torture them and to confiscate their property'. The intervention thus signified a radical, top-to-bottom reappraisal of moral values, a great sea-change in the human condition, no less. Wars could after all be waged for altruistic ends, it was claimed, and the New Humanism's morally cleansing effect would be so far-reaching as to invite comparison with the abolition of slavery in a former age. When even journalists of the calibre of The Guardian's Polly Toynbee can fall for this nonsense we have to wonder how. Here it is subjected to Professor Chomsky's customary razor-sharp analysis, to eye-opening effect.

The New Humanists' claims to the moral high ground can be judged fairly if we note, with Chomsky, how selectively the principle has been applied. Vaclav Havel's evocation of a parallel moral universe which we should all ideally inhabit rings hollow when contrasted with his belief in facing down the so-called communist threat by fair means or foul, even when the means are as foul as the US-supported death squads in El Salvador during the Reagan years. Likewise, when Madeleine Albright sanctimoniously proclaimed `in 1999 we cannot have this kind of ethnic cleansing' we were, and should still be, reminded of her edifying declaration that the deaths of thousands of Iraqi children were `a price worth paying' for maintaining the pressure on Saddam. As one other glaring example of the double standard Chomsky analyses in some detail the case of Turkey; despite the torture, ethnic cleansing and destruction of some 3,500 Kurdish villages - all of this documented by Human Rights Watch - US arms shipments were not withheld from the Turkish military. Meanwhile, over here the Blair Government fell into step with the New Humanism, seemingly oblivious to the contradiction between Robin Cook's much-vaunted `ethical foreign policy' and a willingness to sell arms to Indonesia despite its appalling human rights record.

Turning to the conflict in former Yugoslavia, `The New Military Humanism' shows how the Western powers regarded Serbia as the least worthy recipient of their philanthropic largesse. The 1995 Dayton Accords, which partitioned Bosnia-Herzegovina between Croatia and Serbia, gave rise to the violent expulsion of thousands of Serbs from the region of Krajina at the hands of Croatia's Franjo Tudjman. As events unfolded the Kosovan Liberation Army, a bizarre rag-tag assortment of old Stalinists in the pay of Albania's Enver Hoxha and Nazis looking back to the glory days of the Third Reich, became useful in drawing out Serbian forces into the line of US fire. That the KLA's methods might earn it the standard designation as a terrorist organisation was, in the obvious circles, too embarrassing to contemplate. Chomsky's familiar theme of news being filtered through a largely craven and unquestioning media gets another airing with quotations included from columnists Thomas L Friedman and William Pfaff to illustrate an utter lack of compunction about demonising the Serb population. Having elected a leader like Milosovic they were presumed to be fair game, a deserving target of NATO's onslaught, precisely the rationale espoused by those who masterminded and carried out the London bombings of July 2005.

Another deliberate obstruction of the information flow concerned the 1999 Rambouillet Agreement which effectively called for total military occupation of Kosovo and the rest of former Yugoslavia by NATO. It was so brazen that it was certain to be rejected, which the Serb National Assembly duly did on March 23, calling upon the UN to facilitate a peaceful diplomatic settlement. Predictably there were no negotiations and on March 24 the bombing began. Chomsky's account contains the disquieting revelation that these two proposed agreements were not even presented to the American public, and in the same chapter (`The Diplomatic Record') he notes the bombing of Serbian radio and television for their refusal to parrot NATO propaganda.

It is conceded that Serb atrocities in Kosovo were real. However, according to the UN High Commissioner for Refugees and other sources the Blair/Clinton bombing caused more mass slaughter and population displacement than it prevented, both in its immediate effect and through Milosevic's bloody response to the provocation. Moreover, internal opposition to Milosevic was undermined. The Vojvodina region, once a hotbed of resistance, effectively changed sides after the NATO aggression put paid to any pro-Western sentiment among the population. As usual, Chomsky's historical perspective ranges far beyond the subject immediately under discussion. The sheer scale of the terror and destruction caused by NATO's `humanitarian intervention' puts him mind of other episodes where benign motives have been claimed, including Mussolini's invasion of Ethiopia, Hitler's occupation of parts of Czechoslovakia and President McKinley's 1898 invasion of Cuba.

Some suggestions are made in Chapter 6 (`Why Force?') as to the genuine underlying reasons for the conflict. Blair's rhetoric about NATO credibility could only have made sense if it referred to Big Power geo-political aims and the danger of the one rotten apple, Serbia, spoiling the entire barrel and compromising US dominance of the region. The strategic location of the Balkans in relation to Europe and the Middle East seems to have been decisive, and the European Union's decision to follow a more independent defence policy may have caused concern among US planners. (Mark Curtis in his excellent, Chomsky-approved `Web of Deceit' focuses on NATO's attempts to expand eastwards while the former Soviet bloc countries pursued a neo-liberal economic ideology, thereby being useful to Western business.) Chomsky admits that this is largely speculation, but when fantastical scenarios are conjured up by Vaclav Havel and others to explain major crises extreme scepticism is in order along with the need to consider more plausible explanations. Far from being magnanimous in intent NATO's action is seen as one more cynical exercise in realpolitik which would probably never have been contemplated if, like North Korea today, Belgrade had possessed an effective deterrent against outside interference.

The New Military Humanism, Noam Chomsky
Chomsky's take on the situation in the former Republic of Yugoslavia is the most successful rejection of NATO's intervention I have read thus far, yet it is still a superficial and ultimately unsatisfying work of political science. Chomsky insists on rehashing earlier work from his political writings in which he simply cites his own books as evidence; he devotes an entire chapter to investigating entirely irrelevant US military intervention in Indochina and Central America, pointing out the cruel imperialistic motivations of the campaigns while failing to appropriately relate them to the FRY. Unfortunately, just because the US has acted with illegitimate intentions in the past (and it certainly has), it doesn't mean that NATO's intervention in the future is necessarily motivated by imperialism, hence "the New Military Humanism," but Chomsky fails to reconcile this fundamental dilemma, and the chapter seems to imply that the Albanians should have been killed in higher numbers to necessitate NATO intervention. This section of the book simply does not work.

However, Chomsky does provide fair evidence (far better than Parenti or Johnstone), that NATO was totally aware that military air strikes were going to escalate the intensity of the atrocities. He cites General Wesley Clark (about a dozen times), to the fact that the bombing's consequences "were entirely predictable." But more importantly, Chomsky investigates a US State Department which reveals that higher level planning circles were aware that NATO's bombing was likely to make Serbian aggression more aggravated. His scholarship in this section is good, keeping to totally mainstream publications like the New York Times, the Wall Street Journal, and the State Department Document in question. It appears as though NATO intervention was in fact quite reckless, though Chomsky seems to believe the conflict would have been resolved through diplomacy while providing little evidence that it was a possibility.

Chomsky's scholarship in the New Military Humanism is generally good, although he does rely way too heavily on his own writing, usually on irrelevant military campaigns. And he does make some citations which are a bit curious. For example, on page 106 he discusses the illegitimacy of the Rambouillet Agreement and cites a document (footnote 6), without an author or organization and simply states that it is "widely circulated on the internet." Also, he cites the ultra-left wing Z magazine on page 69 (footnote 63), which is very unreliable. As a final qualification, Chomsky's book didn't include much of the context of the Balkans which is crucial to our understanding of the situation there; instead he preferred to rehash old US crimes which tell us little about the people, history, and culture of the various peoples in the FRY. The New Military Humanism does begin to strike at some of the problems with NATO and the US's proclamations of moral intervention, mostly in the examination of NATO's expectations of bombing and the diplomacy that followed as described above. But it is far from a complete study of the situation there, and Chomsky doesn't adequately make the case that intervention was motivated for the sake of the business elite as he was so able to do in the past.

This book should not be approached as a history or an account of the Kosovo conflict. There is little background to the wars in the former Yugoslavia. That is for other works to present. The focus here is the 'new military humanism' of the West as an idea, and as a practice, with the Kosovo war of 1999 serving as the example. The examination takes into account the Orwellian notion that in free societies, it 'wouldn't do' to mention certain facts, namely the facts that contradict the lofty ideals we profess to be upholding.

The book is not an outright condemnation of the intervention in Kosovo, and it does not propose hard solutions or alternatives. This is an examination of the conflict, and of the implementation of a 'new military humanism'. Given the impressive amount written about the war, and the support it was given by intellectuals (from across the spectrum), this is a serious look at whether or not our aims and justifications really hold up. There are few works that actually explore the conflict from this angle, challenging the canned version of the events.

Chomsky asserts that the humanitarian aims and effects of the Kosovo war do not hold up to any scrutiny. Chomsky's position is thus: in a crisis, we can choose to do nothing, choose to mitigate it, or choose to escalate it. He believes that NATO, in fact, chose to escalate the crisis through the bombing campaign. Did we choose to engage the army on the ground, and the forces committing atrocities in the province? No. The bombing escalated the crisis, and indeed, after Milosevic failed to cave in, the civilian population was targeted, and of course, devastated, as an already impoverished country was made to pay for the crimes of its corrupt leaders. Did Milosevic have to put a 'horseshoe' operation into action, once the bombing commenced? No, he didn't. But when you bomb someone, you don't expect them to throw flowers at you, you expect them to react, and the reaction here was cynical, and 'entirely predictable', in the words of Wesley Clark.

Chomsky examines the 'official' version of the events, challenging the chronology while exploring how a certain depiction of current events will morph into a story that supports certain actions, particularly when those actions and interventions are undertaken by the 'enlightened' states of the West.

The Kosovo war is slipping down America's impressive memory hole; of course it's never discussed in the endless considerations on the 'War on Terror'. In fact, if we really cared about ending terrorism around the globe, we would explore our own actions. Milosevic claimed he was fighting terrorists. The KLA were considered terrorists by the US and the West, it was explicitly stated before our involvement. Acting to preserve our 'credibility', we armed and supported said terrorists, and demonized not only the Serbian government, but the whole people, wrecking a country that will take decades to recover, if it ever does.

Hmmm. Perhaps if the situation took place after 9/11, we would not only stand by, but would support and indeed laud Milosevic for his excellent efforts in fighting terrorism.

What is truly sad is that books like this have to exist. Indeed, apart from 'barking' about human rights abuses, if we look at Slobodan Milosevic clones, both Croatian and Bosnian, we notice that each side had blood on its hands. While Chomsky is never popular, this work should be self evident. How can we say the humanitarian mission on Kosovo was justified while NATO turned a blind eye to the biggest exodus of all previously: the ethnic cleansing of Serbs in Croatia.

The recent developments in Kosovo, with the escalating violence proves that things are never so simple. And while the media still pretends this can be explained by revenge, the truth is that the KLA was, and is, a terrorist organization of the al-Qaida vein.

Chomsky's assertions as regard the Bosnian war and the subsequent war in Kosovo are completely unfounded and in many cases highly outrageous. Like Diana Johnstone, Chomsky claims that these wars were civil wars and not genocides. As is well known, civil war implies collective guilt. This postulation is a flagrant misrepresentation of the actual events. The war in Bosnia was a clear and unequivocal case of a Serbian aggression, as was the war in Kosovo. Evidence refuting Chomsky's preposterous revisionism is overwhelming and indisputable; for rebuttal see books by Noel Malcolm, David Rieff, Roy Gutman, Michael Sells and the winner of the Pulitzer Prize David Rohde who in his book A Safe Area offers a brilliant account of the gruesome massacre in Srebrenica. In his analysis of the war in Bosnia, Chomsky deliberately overlooks many crucial facts. For example, the fact that it was Serbia that attacked Slovenia, Croatia, Bosnia and ultimately Kosovo is not even mentioned. As far as I recall, Serbia was not attacked by any of the neighboring countries. In light of this fact, how can anyone even begin to talk about collective guilt? Milosevic's principal objective was to create a "Greater Serbia" and in order to achieve that it was necessary to exterminate all non-Serbs. Milosevic was driven by ardent nationalism and an ancient hatred for the Turks (read Muslims), for corroboration see for example Michael Sells' The Bridge Betrayed. Sells explains how the Serbian propaganda played a pivotal role in enabling the genocide of the Bosnian Muslims. The Serbs were blinded by highly sophisticated propaganda, the goal of which was to depict Muslims as a grave threat to the very existence of the Serbian people. For a meticulous and elaborate analysis of the Serbian nationalism, see for example Tim Judah's The Serbs and Noel Malcolm's Bosnia. Another absurd assertion made by Chomsky is that the atrocities perpetrated by the Kosovars and the Serbs were almost identical in nature. Facing a much more powerful adversary, the Kosovars did not stand a chance. The war crimes committed by the Kosovars do not even come close to those by the Serbs. Once again, Chomsky makes no mention of the fact that it was Serbia that attacked and invaded Kosovo, thereby ignoring the very reason the war began. If one country invades or attacks another then it is an aggression, not civil war! Chomsky further holds that the NATO's intervention only escalated the atrocities and the ethnic cleansing. The only thing that we know for sure is that it stopped the aggression, this is irrefutable. Sitting in his cozy home somewhere in the U.S. it is easy for Chomsky to constantly advocate diplomacy and peaceful resolutions. Believing that all conflict can be solved peacefully is naïve. You cannot negotiate with everyone since certain individuals just do not want to negotiate. Known for his intransigence and malice, all negotiations with Milosevic were futile, it was either his way or no way at all. How many people have to die before we conclude that negotiations do not work? When in extreme danger, negotiation is hardly the first solution that comes to mind. If there is a reasonable chance to subdue the assailant then there is no need to negotiate, after all we all have the right to self-defense. Also, why should you reward a tyrant like Milosevic by negotiating with him? Give him an ultimatum and unless he complies, punish him severely. I am rest assured that the war in Kosovo would have lasted much longer if the NATO had not intervened. When negotiations fail as they did in Croatia, Bosnia and Kosovo then the use of force is morally justifiable and warranted. Those claiming otherwise have never experienced horrors of war. Even though I am a staunch opponent of unilateral and unwarranted military interventions, it would be naïve to think that we can always negotiate an end to every conflict. I agree with Chomsky about the Middle East and the U.S. foreign policy but he is entirely wrong regarding Bosnia and Kosovo. For honest and well-documented analyses of the wars in Bosnia and Kosovo, see books by Roy Gutman, David Rohde and Noel Malcolm.