I was right to oppose NATO intervention in Kosovo By Robert Skidelsky

http://www.dailystar.com.lb/article.asp?edition_id=10&categ_id=5&article_id=91432

LEBANON DAILY STAR

COMMENT

I was right to oppose NATO intervention in Kosovo
By Robert Skidelsky

Friday, April 25, 2008

Kosovo's recent unilateral declaration of independence brought back
memories. I publicly opposed NATO's attack on Serbia - carried out in the
name of protecting the Kosovars from Serb atrocities - in March 1999. At
that time, I was a member of the Opposition Front Bench - or Shadow
Government - in Britain's House of Lords. The then Conservative leader,
William Hague, immediately expelled me to the "back benches." Thus ended my
(minor) political career. Ever since, I have wondered whether I was right or
wrong.

I opposed military intervention for two reasons. First, I argued that while
it might do local good, it would damage the rules of international relations
as they were then understood. The United Nations charter was designed to
prevent the use of force across national lines except for self-defense and
enforcement measures ordered by the Security Council. Human rights,
democracy and self-determination are not acceptable legal grounds for waging
war.

Secondly, I argued that while there might be occasions when, regardless of
international law, human rights abuses are so severe that one is morally
obliged to act, Kosovo was not such a case. I considered the "imminent
humanitarian disaster" that the intervention was ostensibly aimed at
preventing, to be largely an invention. I further argued that non-military
means to resolve the humanitarian issue in Kosovo were far from being
exhausted, and that the failed Rambouillet negotiation with Serbia in
February-March 1999 was, in Henry Kissinger's words, "merely an excuse to
start the bombing."

This view was vindicated by the Organization for Security and Cooperation in
Europe's Report on Human Rights Violations in Kosovo, published in December
1999. The report showed that the level of violence fell markedly when OSCE
monitors were placed in Kosovo following the Holbrooke-Milosevic agreement
of September 23, 1998; and that it was only after the monitors were
withdrawn on March 20, 1999, in preparation for the bombing, that general
and systematic violation of human rights began.

Between March and June 1999 - the period of NATO bombing - the number of
deaths and expulsions in Kosovo shot up. The "humanitarian disaster" was in
fact precipitated by the war itself. Despite this, the term "genocide,"
freely bandied about by Western interventionists, was grotesquely
inappropriate at any time.

Without doubt, NATO air strikes and the subsequent administration of Kosovo
as a protectorate improved the political situation for Albanian Kosovars.
Without NATO intervention, they probably would have remained second-class
citizens within Serbia. Against this must be set the large-scale
deterioration in the economic situation of all Kosovars, Albanian and
Serbian (44 percent unemployment), widespread criminalization, and the fact
that under NATO rule, Kosovo was ethnically cleansed of half its Serb
minority.

Kosovo remains in political limbo to this day. Two thousand European Union
officials run the country, and 16,000 NATO troops guard its security. Its
"independence" is rejected by Serbia, unrecognized by the Security Council,
and opposed by Russia, China, and most multi-national states in Europe and
Asia, which fear setting a precedent for their own dismemberment. Indeed,
Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov was quick to blame the disturbances
in Tibet on Kosovo's declaration of independence.

A Serbian insurgency and de facto partition of Kosovo remain possible, and
we have yet to face the destabilizing effects of Kosovo's claim to
independence on other divided Balkan states such as Bosnia and Macedonia But
the balance sheet is even worse in terms of international relations. Kosovo
was a stalking horse for Iraq, as the doctrine of humanitarian intervention
morphed into President George W. Bush's doctrine of "pre-emptive war," by
which the US claimed the right to attack any state that it deemed a threat
to its national security. As then-UN Secretary General Kofi Annan rightly
argued, this opened the door to the proliferation of unilateral, lawless use
of force.

Not the least damaging consequence of the Bush doctrine is that it dispenses
with the need for public proof of aggressive intent. The Iraq invasion was
justified by the same use of fraudulent evidence as was displayed in Kosovo.

On balance, I believe that I was right to oppose the Kosovo war. It was a
regressive answer to a genuine international problem: how to hold together
multi-ethnic-religious states in a reasonably civilized way. Since 1999,
Kosovars have rejected Serbian offers of autonomy, because they were
confident of American support for independence.

Western countries must consider more seriously how far they should press
their human rights agenda on states with both the power and the will to
defend their territorial integrity. Under American leadership, it is the
West that has emerged as the restless, disturbing force in international
affairs. China should certainly grant Tibet more autonomy; but is pumping up
the Dalai Lama into a world leader or threatening to boycott the Beijing
Olympics the best way to secure a better deal for Tibetans, or to obtain
Chinese cooperation on matters that are far more important than Tibet's
status?

Activists, impassioned by the justice of their cause, will not consider
these questions. But world leaders should take them seriously.

Robert Skidelsky, a member of the British House of Lords, is professor
emeritus of political economy at Warwick University, author of a
prize-winning biography of the economist John Maynard Keynes, and a board
member of the Moscow School of Political Studies.