Millennial Visions and Selective Vision Part Two
By Noam Chomsky
In fairness, it should be mentioned that the chorus of self-adulation that
closed the millennium was disrupted by some discordant notes. Questions were
raised about the consistency of our adherence to the guiding principles: the
"new doctrine" that "universal standards of human rights were putting at
least some limits on sovereignty," as illustrated by Kosovo and East
Timor -- the latter an interesting example, since there was no issue of
sovereignty except for those who accord Indonesia the right of conquest
authorized by the guardian of international morality.
These topics were brought forth in the major think piece in the New York
Times Week in Review, a front-page article by Craig Whitney (Dec. 12). He
concluded that the "new doctrine" may be failing its "harshest test": the
Russian assault on Grozny.
Apparently Whitney is not convinced by the explanation offered by President
Clinton four days earlier: our hands are tied because "a sanctions regime
has to be imposed by the United Nations," where it would be blocked by the
Russian veto. Clinton's dilemma was illustrated shortly before, when, by a
vote of 155-2 (US, Israel), the UN once again called for an end to
Washington's sanctions against Cuba: the harshest in the world, in force
since 1962, but becoming much more severe, with a brutal human toll, when
the "monolithic and ruthless conspiracy" finally faded away. These are not a
"sanctions regime," however. They are "strictly a matter of bilateral trade
policy and not a matter appropriate for consideration by the UN General
Assembly," the State Department responded. So there is no contradiction. And
furthermore, the UN vote was yet another non-event, at least for those who
receive their information from the national press, which did not report it.
Let's defer the two convincing illustrations of the "new doctrine" and turn
to other tests of our dedication to the high ideals proclaimed, more
instructive ones than the Russian assault in Chechnya, which does not pose
"the harshest test" for the "new doctrine" or in fact any test at all --
perhaps the reason why it is constantly adduced, in preference to serious
tests. However outrageous the Russian crimes, it is understood that very
little can be done about them, just as little could be done to deter the US
terrorist wars in Central America in the 1980s or its destruction of South
Vietnam, then all Indochina, in earlier years. When a military superpower
goes on the rampage, the costs of interference are too high to contemplate:
deterrence must largely come from within. Such efforts had some success in
the case of Indochina and Central America, though only very limited success
as the fate of the victims clearly reveals -- or would, if it were
conceivable to look at the consequences honestly and draw the appropriate
conclusions.
Let's turn, then, to more serious tests of the "new doctrine": the reaction
to atrocities that are easily ended, not by intervention but simply by
withdrawing participation, surely the clearest and most informative case.
The end of the year provided several such tests of the noble ideals. One,
which requires separate treatment, is the move to escalate US-backed terror
in Colombia, with ominous prospects. Several others illustrate with much
clarity the content of the "new doctrine," as interpreted in practice.
In December, there were many articles on the death of Croatian president
Franjo Tudjman, a Milosevic clone who enjoyed generally warm relations with
the West, though his authoritarian style and corruption "drew scathing
criticism from American and Western European officials." Nevertheless, he
will be remembered as "the father of independent Croatia," whose "crowning
achievement came in military operations in May and August 1995" when his
armies succeeded in recapturing Croatian territory held by Serbs, "sparking
a mass exodus of Croatian Serbs to Serbia" (Michael Jordan, Christian
Science Monitor, Dec. 13, fairly typical). The "crowning achievement" also
received a few words in a lengthy NY Times story (Dec. 11) by David Binder,
who has reported on the region with much distinction for many years: Tudjman
reluctantly agreed to take part in the US-run Dayton negotiations in late
1995, after "he had all but accomplished his goal of driving ethnic Serbs
from what he viewed as purely Croatian land" (Krajina).
The August phase of the military campaign, Operation Storm, was the largest
single ethnic cleansing operation of those years. The UN reports that
"approximately 200,000 Serbs fled their homes in Croatia during and
immediately after the fighting," while "the few that remained were subjected
to violent abuse." A few weeks afterwards, Richard Holbrooke, who directed
Clinton's diplomacy, "told Tudjman that the [Croatian] offensive had great
value to the negotiations" and "urged Tudjman" to extend it, he writes in
his memoir _To End a War_, driving out another 90,000 Serbs. Secretary of
State Warren Christopher explained that "We did not think that kind of
attack could do anything other than create a lot of refugees and cause a
humanitarian problem. On the other hand, it always had the prospect of
simplifying matters," in preparation for Dayton. Clinton commented that the
Croatia's ethnic cleansing operation could prove helpful in resolving the
Balkan conflict, though it was problematic because of the risk of Serbian
retaliation. As reported at the time, Clinton approved a "yellow-light
approach" or "an amber light tinted green," which Tudjman took to be tacit
encouragement for the "crowning achievement." The massive ethnic cleansing
was unproblematic, merely a "humanitarian problem," apart from the risk of
reaction.
Reviewing the Croatian operations in a scholarly journal, Binder observes
that "what struck me again and again...was the almost total lack of interest
in the U.S. press and in the U.S. Congress" about the U.S. involvement:
"Nobody, it appears, wanted even a partial accounting" of the role of "MPRI
mercenaries" (retired U.S. generals sent to train and advise the Croatian
army under State Department contract) or "the participation of U.S. military
and intelligence components" ("The Role of the United States in the Krajina
Issue," _Mediterranean Quarterly_, 1997). Direct participation included
bombardment of Krajina Serbian surface-to-air missile sites by U.S. naval
aircraft to eliminate any threat to Croatian attack planes and helicopters,
supply of sophisticated U.S. technology and intelligence, a "key role" in
arranging transfer to Croatia of 30% of the Iranian weapons secretly sent to
Bosnia, and apparently the planning of the entire operation.
The International War Crimes Panel did investigate the much-admired
offensive, producing a 150-page report with a section headed: "The
Indictment. Operation Storm, A Prima Facie Case" (Ray Bonner, NY Times,
March 21, 1999). The tribunal concluded that the "Croatian Army carried out
summary executions, indiscriminate shelling of civilian populations and
`ethnic cleansing'," but the inquiry was hampered by Washington's "refusal
to provide critical evidence requested by the tribunal," and appears to have
languished. The "almost total lack of interest" in ethnic cleansing and
other atrocities committed by the right hands persists, illustrated once
again at Tudjman's death as the Times Week in Review pondered the problem of
our consistency in upholding the "new doctrine," revealed by the Chechnya
quandary.
A still "harsher test" of the doctrine was the reaction to the acceptance of
Turkey as a candidate for membership in the European Union in December. The
ample coverage succeeded in overlooking the obvious issue: the huge terror
operations, including massive ethnic cleansing, conducted with decisive U.S.
aid and training, increasing under Clinton as atrocities peaked to a level
far beyond the crimes that allegedly provoked the NATO bombing of Serbia.
True, some questions were raised: a New York Times headline read: "First
Question for Europe: Is Turkey Really European?" (Stephen Kinzer, Dec. 9).
The U.S.-backed atrocities merit a phrase: Turkey's "war against Kurdish
rebels has subsided," just as Serbia's far lesser "war against Albanian
rebels" would have "subsided" had the U.S. provided Belgrade with a flood of
high-tech weapons and diplomatic support while the press looked the other
way. Shortly before, Kinzer had described how "Clinton Charm Was on Display
in Turkey" (headline) as he visited earthquake victims, staring soulfully
into the eyes of an infant he held tenderly, and demonstrating in other ways
too his "legendary ability to connect with people" -- revealed so
graphically in the huge terror operations that continue to elicit "almost
total lack of interest" while we admire ourselves for dedication to human
rights that is unique in history.
An explanatory footnote was added quietly in mid-December, as Turkish and
Israeli naval forces, accompanied by a U.S. warship, undertook maneuvers in
the Eastern Mediterranean, a none-too-subtle warning to "prod Syria to
negotiate with Israel" under U.S. auspices, AP reported; or else.
Another test of the doctrine was offered in mid-November, the tenth
anniversary of the murder of 6 leading Latin American intellectuals among
many others, including the rector of the country's leading university, in
the course of yet another rampage by an elite battalion of the U.S.-run
terrorist forces (called "the Salvadoran army"), fresh from another training
session by Green Berets, capping a decade of horrendous atrocities. The
names of the murdered Jesuit intellectuals did not appear in the U.S. press.
Few would even recall their names, or would have read a word they had
written, in sharp contrast to dissidents in the domains of the monstrous
enemy, who suffered severe repression, but in the post-Stalin era, nothing
remotely like that meted out regularly under U.S. control. Like the events
themselves, the contrast raises questions of no slight import, but off the
agenda.
Little need be said about the two examples offered as the conclusive
demonstration of our commitment to high principles: East Timor and Kosovo.
As for the Portuguese-administered territory of East Timor, there was no
"intervention"; rather, dispatch of an Australian-led UN force after
Washington at last agreed to signal to the Indonesian generals that the game
was over, having supported them through 24 years of slaughter and
repression, continuing even after major massacres in early 1999 and reports
from credible Church sources that the death toll of a few months had reached
3-5000, about twice the level of Kosovo before the NATO bombing. After
finally withdrawing his support for Indonesian atrocities, under mounting
domestic and international (mainly Australian) pressure, Clinton continued
to stand aside. There were no air-drops of food to hundreds of thousands of
refugees starving in the mountains, nor anything more than occasional
rebukes to the Indonesian military who continued to hold hundreds of
thousands more in captivity in Indonesian territory, where many still
remain. Clinton also refuses to provide meaningful aid, let alone the huge
reparations that would be called for if the fine principles were meant at
all seriously.
The performance is now presented as one of Clinton's great moments and a
prime example of the stirring "new doctrine" of intervention in defense of
human rights, ignoring sovereignty (which did not exist). Here amnesia is
not really selective: "total" would be closer to accurate.
On Kosovo, the current version is that "Serbia assaulted Kosovo to squash a
separatist Albanian guerrilla movement, but killed 10,000 civilians and
drove 700,000 people into refuge in Macedonia and Albania. NATO attacked
Serbia from the air in the name of protecting the Albanians from ethnic
cleansing [but] killed hundreds of Serb civilians and provoked an exodus of
tens of thousands from cities into the countryside" (Daniel Williams,
Washington Post). Well, not quite: the timing has been crucially reversed in
a manner that has by now become routine. In a detailed year-end review, the
lead story of the Wall St. Journal (Dec. 31) dismisses the stories of
"killing fields" that were crafted to prevent "a fatigued press corps [from]
drifting toward the contrarian story [of] civilians killed by NATO's bombs,"
for example by NATO spokesman Jamie Shea, who provided atrocity stories
based on KLA radio broadcasts, the Journal reports. But the report concludes
nonetheless that the expulsions and other atrocities that did take place
"may well be enough to justify the [NATO] bombing campaign" that
precipitated them, as anticipated.
The reasoning is by now standard: the U.S. and its allies had to abandon the
diplomatic options that remained available (and were later pursued) and
bomb, with the expectation, quickly fulfilled, that the result would be a
major humanitarian catastrophe, which retrospectively justifies the bombing.
A further justification is that if NATO hadn't bombed maybe something
similar would have happened anyway. That is the "new doctrine" in its purest
form, perhaps the most exotic justification for state violence on record --
even putting aside other consequences, including the effects of the
bombardment of civilian targets in Serbia and the "cleansing" of Kosovo
under the eyes of the NATO occupying forces, with worse to come, very
possibly.
The record does seem to reveal remarkable consistency, as one might expect.
Why should we expect inconsistency when the institutional factors that
undergird policy remain intact and unchanged, to bring up the forbidden
question? Talk of a "double standard" is simply evasion, in fact cowardly
evasion when we consider what is omitted under the principle of selective
amnesia, and what is offered as evidence that the high standards proclaimed
are at least sometimes operative.
(
geocities.com/CapitolHill)