Q. Was NATO right to intervene in Kossovo?
There are many ways in which humanitarian intervention is viewed as a quintessentially "liberal" foreign policy practice, from the fact that liberal-democratic states have the principle initiators and the important role accorded to international institutions and the traditionally liberal concern for human rights. The 1999 Kossovo crisis is not an exception. If you look at the military operations carried out by the English-speaking nations in the last twenty years, the successes have been those which were undertaken either to expel a foreign invader, as in the Falklands in 1982 and Kuwait in 1991, or to overthrow a dictatorship which had negligible public support, as in Grenada in 1983, Panama in 1989 and Haiti in 1994. Getting involved in a civil war is much more risky. For example, the United Nations intervention in Somalia from 1992 to 1995 was a total fiasco, which achieved absolutely nothing. When a civil war breaks out in a backward Third World country such as Somalia, Sierra Leone, Algeria or the Sudan, both sides are usually just as bad as each other, so it is not worth backing either of them. These countries are not likely to become stable democracies in the foreseeable future, no matter what the Western powers do. In thes
"The reply to those who argue that bombing was the only strategy that could ensure Alliance cohesion is that, by ruling out the ground option, NATO governments demonstrated that their commitment to defending the human rights of Kosovars did not extend to accepting the risks to soldiers' lives of deploying ground forces." However some journalists have recently argued that even if the NATO powers succeeded in occupying Kossovo, the Serbs could harass them for years with guerrilla warfare. I doubt this, because guerrilla warfare only works if there is a sympathetic local population to support the guerrillas. The Serbs only make up one-tenth of the population of Kossovo. When the refugees have returned, where is the support going to come from? So does the end out weigh the means, Contrary to what many political commentators believe, Kossovo is not just another Bosnia. The difference is that in Bosnia the population is split into three rival camps, none of which has an overall majority. The proportions are roughly two-fifths Moslem, two-fifths Serb and one-fifth Croat. In Kossovo before the ethnic cleansing, on the other hand, the population was nine-tenths Albanian. This means that an independent Kossovo would stand a much better chance of becoming a stable democracy than Bosnia. The trouble with Bosnia today is that the NATO powers are keeping it united by force. What they should be doing is allowing the three communities to partition it among themselves, and keeping them away from each other's throats while they reach an agreement on how to do it. Of course, that would mean that the Western powers would have to stop treating the idea of multiculturalism as a sacred cow and face the fact that multicultural states usually do not work. The future of Bosnia depends on whether realism can triumph over political correctness.
Some common words found in the essay are:
Kosovo Report, Nicholas Wheeler, Serbs Kossovars, International Law, Cold War, , Beating Serbs, Independent Commission, Security Council's, Bosnia NATO, international law, human rights, ethnic cleansing, jus ad bellum, intervene kossovo, ad bellum, political commentators, cluster bombs, jus ad, nato powers, humanitarian intervention, commitment defending human, defending human rights, breach international law, backward third world,
Approximate Word count = 2054
Approximate Pages = 8 (250 words per page double spaced)
|
