I THANK JOANNE LANDY, BARRY FINGER, AND JULIUS JACOBSON for their thoughtful comments on my article. I think I share the political impulse behind their major criticisms of my piece, but believe that in the end it is my position, not theirs, that would best achieve our common goals and values.

Joanne wants the NATO countries to stop their military actions, and then arm the KLA, without gaining any influence over them. Barry asks, correctly, why would NATO do this? Instead, Barry wants NATO to stop its military actions and allow arms from others to get to the KLA. (I guess this means Iran and Saudi Arabia -- who else is there?) But how can arms from such countries shift the military balance in favor of the KLA? In particular, how can they do so in the short term, before the ethnic cleansing is completed.

Barry says that "under circumstances of impending and immediate disaster" we cannot demand of the KLA what we have the right to demand of them in "normal" times. But it is precisely because the Kosovars are "under circumstances of impending and immediate disaster" that proposals that cannot protect the Kosovars now must be rejected.

Julie says the KLA may not win today, but perhaps it can tomorrow. It is certainly true that the longer the NATO bombing goes on, the greater KLA prospects become. But my critics and I all want the NATO bombing to cease now. I believe that the longer the bombing continues, the greater the danger to the Kosovar population before any settlement. If the KLA can't win today but can tomorrow, then the incentive on the Serbs is to reduce the number of tomorrow's KLA fighters (which is a death warrant for those Kosovar males currently interned or within the reach of Serbian forces) and to minimize tomorrow's mass base of KLA support (which means further ethnic cleansing).

My critics insist that the question of whether to wage armed struggle is for the Kosovars to decide, not me. But many Kosovars call for NATO intervention, and my critics don't conclude that we must adopt the Kosovar point of view here. Of course, the Kosovars have no right to tell others they must risk their lives for the Kosovar cause, but my critics would rightly object even when NATO is eager to intervene; they object because they believe that, despite the Kosovar's opinions, NATO intervention will not lead to their salvation. The Kosovars might say to them, "Look, we hear your argument, we understand the dangers that NATO will sell us out or subvert our struggle, but we still want NATO intervention." Nevertheless, uncomfortably but rightly, the critics oppose NATO intervention. But the same logic applies to arming the KLA too. The critics don't clearly say whether they think the KLA alone - armed by NATO or Iran - can win and can do so before the national catastrophe in Kosovo is complete. I don't think they can. In my view, calling for arming the KLA leads to suicide, rather than justice. Negotiations and diplomacy, on the other hand, while selling the Kosovars out in many ways, is the most likely way to stop the disaster.

What do the people under siege actually want? The answer is not so obvious. By the nature of the situation we speak only to those who are out of danger (in the United States or in refugee camps or bases outside Kosovo). But the people who are at risk from various strategies, whether bombing, invasion, or arming the KLA, are within Kosovo. (I had a recent argument with an Albanian-American who was urging a NATO ground attack. When I warned of the disaster this could mean for the civilians in Kosovo, he replied that there's no risk since there's no one left there anyway, they've all been driven out. But when we spoke, the majority of the displaced Kosovars were still in Kosovo. I don't doubt his concern for his compatriots there, but I'm afraid his bravado outweighed his judgment.) My guess is that if we were able to poll those hiding and starving in the hills of Kosovo as to their preferences, most would choose survival over suicide. Accounts of forcible KLA conscription suggest caution before concluding the all Kosovars are eager to fight to the death.

The Kosovars have surely supported the KLA. They did so because they believed that it offered a hope of protecting them from Serbian depredations, not necessarily because they wanted to see it as their next rulers. (See, for example, Robert Marquand's report in the Christian Science Monitor, April 27; or the remarks of Baton Haxhiu quoted by Michael Ignatieff in the New Yorker, May 10, 1999.) But their belief that the KLA could protect them was wrong, disastrously so.

Eventually, some deal will be struck - perhaps before this issue of New Politics comes out, perhaps not for months. There is no doubt that the deal will short-change the Kosovars. But it will mean the end of the immediate calamity. What would calling for arming the KLA mean in that context? Obviously, the call will not be heeded, and it is put forward not with any expectation that Clinton and Milosevic will say "Oh, so that's what New Politics advises us to do." It is intended to make a political point. But the political point, I'm afraid, will not be understood by the public as my critics intend. The point will be seen as either a call for NATO to fight on for better terms or a call for the KLA to continue fighting, which means a call for the Serbs to continue fighting as well. The slogan "No to NATO! No Negotiations! No Cease-fire!" is a call for disaster, and no amount of Iranian weaponry will avert this disaster within any meaningful time-frame.

Barry says socialists don't have the same concern for stability as capitalists do. True enough. But regional war is not something to sneeze at. If NATO declares hands off but pours in weapons, a wider conflagration seems inevitable, what with the KLA based in Albania, and volatile ethnic mixes and refugee camps in Macedonia and Montenegro. "Turn the world war into a class war!" was an admirable left slogan. "Turn the Kosovo cease-fire into a regional war!" is rather less compelling. And why stop there? Should we call for arming the Kashmiris -- whose right to self-determination I support -- risking the setting off of a South Asian war? What about arming the guerrillas in Lebanon who -- rightly -- want Israeli troops out of their country? I must confess I was never a great fan of the view that we would "bring to birth a new world from the ashes of the old."

And how new that world would be after a KLA victory still worries me. The KLA statement on respect for minorities that Julie quotes (issued after my original article was written) was welcome, but I remain concerned, given their prior treatment of Serb civilians as documented by human rights groups.

The human consequences of strategies need to be thought through, and it is not enough to say "people have the right of revolution" before starting on a course of armed struggle. Of course, Joanne is right: our moral assessment of those wrestling with the question of how to find a path to freedom is different from that of those seeking to oppress others. But the justice of one's cause, it seems to me, does not eliminate one's obligation to think through the likely consequences of one's actions and accept the moral responsibility for those consequences.

I know, of course, that daily life under oppressive systems is violent, so that revolution, even a violent one, may represent less net violence. A successful movement for social change may need to defend itself by force of arms if it is to survive. For these reasons, I am not a pacifist. But a rejection of pacifism can't lead us to such faith in armed struggle that we reject the slower route -- with its compromises and retreats -- regardless of the human costs.

Calling for arming the victims of oppression is an appealing strategy: it can offer the prospect of obtaining justice by empowering people rather than depending on or becoming controlled by powerful and reactionary governments. But I think that we shouldn't treat this as an automatic principle to be applied in every case. Instead, we need to examine the particulars of a situation, and where it seems likely to increase, rather than decrease, the suffering of the victims and others, we need to support alternative options.

By all means, let us criticize the ways in which international agreements compromise justice. But, like it or not, calling for the arming of the KLA -- which has unfortunately now hitched its wagon to NATO -- will be seen as calling for the war to continue.

Contents of No. 27

Kosovo/a Discussion