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Imagining intervention without violence
By JOHN L. ALLEN JR.
NCR Staff
It is the hard question that grips the conscience of anyone faced
with TV images of mass graves and refugees, the question that has caused many
an erstwhile pacifist to shrink from condemning the NATO bombing of Yugoslavia:
If not military force, then whats the answer?
When members of a minority are being killed by a ruthless regime
using national sovereignty as a shield, when humanitarian pleas fall on deaf
ears, what do you do?
When the conflict opened, the peace community really
didnt articulate an answer to that question, said Jim Douglas of
Birmingham, Ala., a veteran activist and writer who has traveled widely in the
Balkans.
There are ideas out there, Douglas said. But we
have to get them into circulation.
As NATO and the Yugoslav authorities seem to near a settlement,
observers such as Douglas say the need to identify nonviolent alternatives will
lose none of its urgency. Whether in Kashmir, Kurdistan or some other hot spot,
the world has not seen the last of ethnic cleansing, and the question of how to
handle someone like Yugoslav President Slobodan Milosevic will recur.
The problem for critics of the bombing is that Kosovo isnt
Grenada, where assertions of an American rescue mission rang hollow
in many ears from the start. In Kosovo, people are being shot, raped and run
out of the country. If it takes bombs to combat such barbarism, many in the
West believe, then such humanitarian intervention is justified.
Opponents of the war thus face the burden of proof: If youre
against violence, what do you suggest?
The first lesson from Kosovo, war opponents say, is the insight
embodied in the Hippocratic oath: If you can do nothing else, at least do no
harm.
The one thing that is clear in this situation is that our
reaction to the brutality in Kosovo did nothing to stop what Milosevic was
doing, said Howard Zinn, a progressive historian and author of A
Peoples History of the United States. Instead it made things
far worse.
The flow of refugees, the destruction of villages multiplied
by five or six times after the bombing started, he said. Zinn, who
teaches at Boston University, spoke to NCR by telephone.
Cant justify the damage
Pacifist author Eileen Egan of New York agreed. Even if you
believe in a just war, she said, the proportionate response is not
to increase the suffering of the people we want to help. Referring to the
targeting of bridges, roads, water plants and other elements of the civilian
infrastructure in Yugoslavia, Egan said, Weve wreaked more damage
than we could possibly ever justify.
Although the Clinton administration argues that the bombing worked
-- that it brought Milosevic to the table -- Zinn says the basic conditions of
the settlement could have been obtained several months ago. In the meantime,
America has created the basis for future conflict.
Weve generated a deep resentment, Zinn said.
We terrorized the ordinary people of Yugoslavia -- when children cannot
sleep because of the incessant bombing, thats terrorism. We have sown
seeds of hatred which will endure, and were already seeing that in the
breakdown of our relations with Russia and China.
Eric Garris, a peace activist during the Vietnam era who is today
a Republican political consultant, and who runs www.antiwar.com -- the
leading antiwar site on the Internet -- echoed Zinns argument.
The logic of the bombing seemed to be: We have to do
something; this is something; therefore we have to do it. Its
absurd, he said.
Garris said he sees a convergence in American politics between
conservative neo-isolationists and liberals opposed to military engagement,
both joining forces in opposition to the war in Yugoslavia -- and the broader
policy of humanitarian intervention it represents.
The application of military force almost never accomplishes
what you think it will, Garris said. Its like a physical law
-- the more force you apply, the more people resist the solutions youre
trying to impose. You might be able to get short-term compliance, but unless
youre prepared to colonize, it wont last. Look at Iraq for
proof.
Even if thats true, however, the question remains: What else
might have worked? Some suggest that the United States and its NATO partners
need to show more confidence in the United Nations.
Follow existing laws
The first thing you do is follow existing laws, Ohio
Congressman Dennis Kucinich said in a telephone interview with NCR.
It isnt as if we have to invent some new means of resolving human
conflict -- we have one, and its the U.N. The question is whether
were willing to live up to our legal obligations to let the U.N do its
work.
If we work through the U.N., then Russia and China are a
part of the process, rather than separated from it, Kucinich, a Democrat,
said. We failed to do that. NATO instead took the law into its own hands
and transformed itself, without any authorization, from an organization
designed to defend liberty into one claiming the right to prosecute war
anywhere in the world.
Kucinich is among 26 members of Congress suing President Clinton
for violation of the War Powers Act, which requires the president to obtain
congressional approval for any commitment of American forces longer than 60
days. A federal judge threw out the lawsuit on June 8; Kucinich said he
expected that the decision would be appealed.
Theres a sense in which NATO is like someone who
throws gasoline on a fire one minute, then rushes forward to douse it the
next, Kucinich said. Im not an absolute pacifist, but the
only application of force I can imagine that would have any positive effect in
a situation like this is one authorized by the Security Council, which reflects
a consensus among the world community.
For critics who protest that U.N. diplomacy is an endless process
with an uncertain outcome, Zinn has a simple answer: Sos
bombing.
Violence is never the quick and easy solution its
thought to be. This war dragged on for more than two months while the vast
majority of Kosovars were forced out. Would negotiations have made things any
worse? Thats hard to imagine, Zinn said.
California State Sen. Tom Hayden, who founded the Students for a
Democratic Society in the 1960s and helped lead the movement against the war in
Vietnam, agrees that negotiation was never given a chance to work in
Kosovo.
In the abstract, fighting against genocide is a higher value
than preserving national sovereignty, Hayden said. But its
such a drastic approach it would have to be a last resort, justified very
broadly in the world and not just by ones friends in NATO. Hayden
spoke to NCR by telephone.
So what was the road not taken in Yugoslavia? Instead of
marginalizing Russia, what if the International Monetary Fund had given Russia
the billions it promised on the condition that Russia be fully focused on the
tensions in the Balkans? Hayden said.
What if the European Union offered entry for Yugoslavia if
Milosevic pulled his forces out of Kosovo? What if we threatened to freeze all
the economic assets of Milosevic and his friends if he didnt pull
out?
Are these fanciful suggestions? I dont think so. In
any event, its clear there was a failure of imagination here. We simply
didnt try hard enough to find nonviolent means of resolving the
conflict, Hayden said.
Auxiliary Bishop Thomas Gumbleton of Detroit agrees.
Weve been conditioned to think of violence as realistic and
pacifism as naive, even though evidence to the contrary is all around us,
he told NCR. Gumbleton was arrested on June 4 along with other antiwar
protesters for attempting to deliver a letter to President Clinton at the White
House.
On that Tuesday after the shootings at Columbine High
School, President Clinton went on television to tell the nation that we must
teach our children not to solve problems with guns. The same night he ordered
up a new round of bombing of Serbia. That is so blatantly hypocritical that I
dont know how he even managed to get the words out, Gumbleton
said.
It speaks to the poverty of our imagination when it comes to
nonviolence.
One of the most creative proposals for a nonviolent solution to
the Kosovo conflict was authored by Karl Meyer, a Nashville activist and
longtime member of the peace movement. In the early stages of the Kosovo
conflict, Meyer and two others circulated a two-page plan called What
Might Have Been.
Credible alternatives
There are credible nonviolent alternatives, but no one in
power even seems to think of inventing them, the document asserts.
Specifically, Meyers plan called on the Security Council to
define the conditions for a just settlement. Then the secretary-general would
assemble a nonviolent army ... led by influential and persuasive figures
in the world community. Possibilities include: religious figures such as
Orthodox patriarchs, Islamic leaders and the pope or bishops acting as his
personal representative; Nobel Peace Prize winners such as former Costa Rica
President Oscar Arias and Anglican Bishop Desmond Tutu of South Africa; retired
world leaders such as Jimmy Carter and Mikhail Gorbachev; diplomats from Russia
and other European neighbors of Yugoslavia; and activists trained in the
practice of active listening and mediation, which might include veterans of the
U.S. civil rights movement such as Andrew Young and John Lewis.
The plan called for the nonviolent army to be split
into two brigades, one to go into Kosovo to stand between the KLA -- the
Kosovar Albanian rebels -- and the Yugoslav forces, and another to go into
Serbia to explain the Security Council principles and to carry out
negotiations.
The nonviolent army would approach not just Milosevic and the
Yugoslav government, but the people. You gotta get around Milosevic and
work with his constituency, Meyer told NCR in a telephone
interview. No dictator can survive without the support of at least a
large chunk of his people. Deprive him of that and a solution becomes
possible.
What happens if this nonviolent army is met with
force? The key is to have high-profile people involved, Meyer said.
Milosevic knows right away you cant meet Mikhail Gorbachev or Jesse
Jackson with guns. It just wouldnt happen.
But what about the lesser profile folks who fan out into hamlets
across the country to stand in the gap between the warring parties?
Of course it involves a risk to your own life, said
Gumbleton, who endorsed the insertion of a peace army in situations like
Kosovo. We ask military people to lay their lives on the line, and we
must be willing to make the same commitment. Gumbleton said he would be
willing to take part in such a nonviolent army.
Aside from specific proposals such as Meyers, critics of the
Yugoslav war say there are three other broad lessons to draw from the
experience.
The first is that issuing ultimatums -- which is what they say
happened at Rambouillet, the conference in France that triggered the war when
Milosevic refused to accept a settlement proposed by the West -- is not the
same thing as negotiating.
The Rambouillet peace conference was a fait accompli from an
angry, petulant, frustrated Madeline Albright, Hayden said. It was
doomed from the start.
The Yugoslav authorities were given a nonnegotiable demand
that they surrender sovereignty over Kosovo, and were told that if they
didnt do it they would be bombed, Kucinich said. No nation
would have accepted those terms.
You either negotiate in good faith, without forcing a
predetermined scheme on people, or you dont do it at all, Hayden
said.
The second broad lesson is that when we can see trouble coming --
and obviously, no one was shocked by conflict in the Balkans -- the West should
find those who stand for peace in the region and support them.
The tragedy is that there was a powerful, broad-based peace
movement in Yugoslavia that has been almost totally marginalized by the
bombing, Douglas said.
Theres a group called the Women in Black, for example,
whose members held vigils in Belgrade to protest what was happening in Kosovo
and who formed links with other democratic opposition to Milosevic. They had
Milosevic on the run -- he was floundering, Douglas said.
These groups have seen their political credibility all but
destroyed because of the bombing, Douglas said. It is extremely
difficult for people to maintain a distinction between their government and
their country in the face of bombs that do not discriminate.
Jesuit Fr. Daniel Berrigan said, Orthodox, Catholics,
Muslims all asked to to be part of the peace process. But there was no attempt
to organize the resources that were available to get some type of a
settlement.
Berrigan, who spoke by telephone with NCR, said one peace
activist in Yugoslavia had written him: Now we have NATO above and the
tyrant below, and were being exterminated.
Egan said, Ibraham Rugova [Kosovar moderate leader], for all
his faults, had been holding back the more militant Kosovars from responding in
kind to harassment from the Serbs. He was given very little role at
Rambouillet. Instead it became our policy to support the KLA.
New category of war
Third, advocates of nonviolence say Kosovo should give the world
pause about the new category of war NATO seems to have invented:
humanitarian intervention.
Barbara Ehrenrich, author of Blood Rites: Origins and History
of the Passions of War, warns that rescue missions too easily metamorphose
into wider military engagements, a process she calls mission
creep.
While the bombs rained down on Serbia, the humanitarian
crisis that originally inspired the whole operation was relegated to a purely
propagandistic role, she wrote in a column on the war. She notes that the
United States budgeted only $58.5 million for humanitarian aid in the Balkans,
less than the cost of a single days bombing sorties.
Zinn says the noble language of humanitarian
intervention must evoke skepticism. The history of American foreign
policy puts into great doubt that this is a humanitarian venture, he
said. We claimed we were going into Vietnam to help the oppressed South
Vietnamese, for example. Zinn suggested that giving NATO a new lease on
life, diverting attention from domestic politics, and crass wartime
profiteering have to be taken into consideration alongside humanitarian
motives.
Every time I say I dont want to attribute crass
motives to people, it turns out Ive underestimated the crassness of those
who are making policy, Zinn said.
But even assuming the noblest of motives, other critics warn that
humanitarian interventions of the sort that NATO carried out in Yugoslavia set
a dangerous precedent.
Massachusetts Institute of Technology professor and social critic
Noam Chomsky, in a widely-distributed essay on the war, quotes international
law expert Louis Henkin:
Violations of human rights are indeed all too common, and if
it were permissible to remedy them by external use of force, there would be no
law to forbid the use of force by almost any state against almost any other.
Human rights, I believe, will have to be vindicated, and other injustices
remedied, by other, peaceful means, not by opening the door to aggression and
destroying the principal advance in international law, the outlawing of war and
the prohibition of force.
Kucinich agrees, arguing that humanitarian intervention does
not have to mean military force.
We have to evolve into a world where war is archaic, where
we cant believe people once settled their differences that way,
Kucinich said. We have to believe that peace, not war, is inevitable. We
must exert a collective consciousness and create new circumstances -- this is
the only way we can live.
Role for Catholics
In terms of that new consciousness, Egan said Catholics could play
a pivotal role. We have to get over our need to prove that as immigrants
we are equal citizens, and learn to refuse to comply in large numbers,
she said. We have to bring our leaders up short, let them know they
cant count on us when they resort to violence.
Responding to those who say that a more sophisticated analysis
might lead to a conclusion that military intervention is sometimes acceptable,
Berrigan would not budge.
Every time a war breaks out we have all kinds of former
pacifists, he said. Ive seen this since Vietnam. Now we have
a good war, now we have a just war, a necessary war. So we demonize the enemy
and start the war. A pacifist between wars is like someone who is a vegetarian
between meals.
National Catholic Reporter, June 18,
1999
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