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STEPHEN R. SHALOM is a member of the NEW POLITICS Editorial Board.
IF BY OUR ACTIONS WE CAN SAVE LARGE NUMBERS OF LIVES, we have a moral obligation to do so. This principle is accepted by almost everyone, but it doesn't get us very far because in the real world there are often countervailing considerations. Sometimes, for example, an action can save lives in the short run but cost more lives in the long run: say that by encouraging a U.S. military intervention that stopped some atrocities today we made more likely other U.S. military interventions tomorrow, interventions that might lead to the deaths of many innocent people.
This example is not just an obscure hypothetical. Weakening the UN or international law, which check to some small degree the arbitrary power of leading states, makes future interventions -- maybe next time in Colombia -- more likely. Promoting military solutions to a current crisis increases the likelihood of a military solution in the future. (Already the European members of NATO have concluded from the Kosovo conflict that they need to modernize their militaries, while in the U.S. large hikes in the defense budget have encountered minimal resistance.) So those concerned about moral outcomes will want to carefully weigh both the long-run and the short-run human consequences of the actions they urge -- a weighing all too rare among left interventionists.
Some argue -- correctly in the abstract -- that extreme circumstances may override other considerations. In the case of Kosovo, however, this argument seems especially inappropriate because there is no reason to believe that a single life was saved by NATO's "humanitarian" intervention. Many point to the horrific ethnic cleansing carried out by Serbian forces during the NATO bombing, but this ethnic cleansing wasn't prevented by NATO's actions; on the contrary, the bombing precipitated the wholesale forced deportations. NATO bombing, of course, does not absolve Serbian forces from moral responsibility for these atrocities -- just as hostage takers are not blameless for killing their hostages when under attack -- but surely NATO by its actions contributed to the gruesome outcome and it must share in the responsibility (just as would those who recklessly attack hostage takers without due consideration for the well-being of the hostages). In the year before the bombing, some 2,000 people had been killed in Kosovo -- some KLA fighters, some Serbian police, but mostly ethnic Albanian civilians. After the bombing, on the other hand, the toll will almost certainly turn out to be much higher.
(Some on the left have lately been arguing that the post-war estimate of 10,000 dead Kosovar Albanians is a gross exaggeration. The numbers are not yet known, but I'd be extremely wary of promoting this claim. The International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia has reported more than 2,100 bodies recovered so far, with more than half the known sites left to examine. Many people remain missing and there is good evidence that at least some bodies have been burned or removed, precisely to make it more difficult to press war crimes charges. The same situation obtains in East Timor, where despite much refugee testimony of massacre some have been quick to cite the relative lack of corpses as proof that no large scale killings occurred. Given the possibility that many bodies may have been dumped at sea, burned, or removed to West Timor, declaring the absence of a massacre seems premature, certainly until a careful population count is undertaken.)
THERE WERE, TO BE SURE, KILLINGS AND REFUGEES IN KOSOVO before the bombing began, but their scale and character differed markedly from that which followed the bombing. As the U.S. State Department noted, "In late March 1999, Serbian forces dramatically increased the scope and pace of their efforts, moving away from selective targeting of towns and regions suspected of KLA sympathies toward a sustained and systematic effort to ethnically cleanse the entire province of Kosovo."
Of course, if what followed the bombing was going to happen in any case or was going to happen on an even larger scale, then the bombing had no negative effect. But despite the special pleading of interventionists, there is no compelling evidence that the ethnic cleansing that occurred after March 24 was going to happen anyway, and there is good reason for doubting it. I examine the relevant evidence elsewhere (Z magazine, Sept. 1999), and there is no room to repeat the details here. Suffice it to note the inadequacy of the two main arguments offered as "proof" that the ethnic cleansing was inevitable.
First, there is the observation that the expulsions of a large fraction of the ethnic Albanian population were apparently methodically planned. This is probably true, but it tells us nothing about whether the ethnic cleansing would have taken place under any circumstances. All military organizations develop contingency plans. That they carry out these plans under some circumstances does not demonstrate that they would have done so under others. There is no reason to disagree with the assessment of Dejan Anastasijevic of the London-based Institute for War & Peace Reporting (IWPR) on May 12, 1999: "It is now clear that Belgrade prepared the ethnic cleansing of Kosovo . . . months in advance. It was to be executed in the event of NATO bombing."
The second "proof" of the inevitability of the large-scale ethnic cleansing is said to be the fact that Milosevic was responsible for similar crimes earlier in Bosnia. It is certainly true that Milosevic's previous record was horrendous and criminal. From this one can reasonably conclude that the Serbian leader was morally capable of massive ethnic cleansing in Kosovo. But this is a far cry from proving that therefore he intended to do what he did even in the absence of the bombing. Consider an analogy. Is Clinton morally capable of murdering a political opponent? No doubt: if he is indifferent to the deaths of hundreds of thousands of Iraqi civilians as a result of U.S.-imposed sanctions, then killing an additional political opponent would not present a moral dilemma. But showing that an actor is morally capable of an action is hardly proof that the actor will carry out the action. One needs to look at all the circumstances and judge assessments of costs and benefits.
In determining how many innocent lives were saved (or not saved) by the NATO intervention, we need to add in: (1) increased infant and maternal mortality rates (already abysmal) among displaced Kosovars; (2) the deaths of civilians in Serbia caused by the bombing -- more than a thousand people were likely killed, many of them children; and (3) the long-term civilian deaths that will surely result from NATO attacks on Serbia's economic infrastructure.
So, yes, there may be times when humanitarian intervention is appropriate, even obligatory, even by the United States, and even unilaterally. When huge numbers of lives are at stake, normal cautions may be overruled. But what kind of humanitarianism is it where the results of the intervention are more not fewer deaths?
ADMITTEDLY, LIVES SHOULD NOT BE OUR ONLY CONCERN. If they were, no one would ever fight for freedom. And certainly many Kosovar Albanians seem to be glad that NATO intervened, despite the consequences. So let us consider whether justice and freedom have been served by the intervention.
Most Kosovar Albanians say they want independence. But NATO bombs were never a very good means of achieving such a goal given that the NATO powers oppose independence for Kosovo. NATO Secretary General Javier Solana told reporters in September that Kosovo Albanians have to abandon hope of gaining independence from Yugoslavia. "We've been very clear," said U.S. National Security Adviser Sandy Berger on November 22, "that independence is not something we support, it's not our policy."
Has the bombing brought the goal of a multiethnic, democratic Kosovo any closer? Since mid-June most of the non-Albanian population of Kosovo has been displaced. Some simply fled, perhaps fleeing justice, but many have been driven out. Serbs and Roma have been especially targeted, and Muslim Slavs (Bosniaks) and people of mixed ethnicity have been victimized as well. Scores of people have been killed, and dozens of Orthodox churches and monasteries have been destroyed or damaged. According to the Special Rapporteur of the UN's Commission on Human Rights, "The situation in Kosovo can be summarized as follows: the spring ethnic cleansing of Albanians accompanied by murders, torture, looting and burning of houses has been replaced by the fall ethnic cleansing of Serbs, Roma, Bosniaks and other non-Albanians accompanied by the same atrocities."
Of course, the Kosovar Albanians have been through a nightmare and that there would be a strong desire for revenge is not surprising. But it is important to note that though there are certainly random individual acts of revenge, the "most serious incidents of violence," according to Human Rights Watch, "have been carried out by members of the KLA," though the extent of central coordination of these actions is unknown. Noting that "the KLA has been linked to earlier abuses," Human Rights Watch reported that while some of those killed since June may have committed atrocities, "many of the Serb victims were innocent civilians." And the intent behind the violence "appears to be the expulsion of Kosovo's Serb and Roma population rather than a desire for revenge alone." With regard to the Roma, "current tensions are reinforced by historic discrimination." Ethnic Albanians watching Serbian forces retreat on June 13 cursed the troops with one word: "Gypsies!"
The intolerance in Kosovo is palpable; as Janez Kovac wrote for IWPR, "even foreign diplomats, aid workers and journalists find themselves in danger if they dare speak a Slav language." This intolerance is in no small measure a result of the NATO bombing: first because the bombing unleashed the Serbian ethnic cleansing and second because it taught the lesson -- approved in NATO capitals -- that it is permissible to kill Serb civilians in behalf of the Albanian cause.
The bombing had another unfortunate consequence: it reduced the prospects for democracy within the Kosovar Albanian community. Military solutions always strengthen the hands of those with the guns, and the KLA still has the guns. KLA leaders have been reported to have eliminated internal rivals by assassination (NYT, June 25, 1999). When Veton Surroi and Baton Haxhiu, two leading Kosovo Albanian intellectuals, criticized the organized violence against Serbs and warned of the fascism behind this violence, Kosovapress, the press agency linked closely to the KLA, published a denunciation of the two as traitors to the Kosovo Albanian cause and warned that they were at risk of "eventual and very understandable revenge."
In the prevailing atmosphere, it is hard to know what most Kosovar Albanians think; a recent western poll is said to have found that 90 percent of respondents indicated that in an election they would vote for pacifist leader Ibrahim Rugova. Janez Kovac quoted one ethnic Albanian woman who, fearing for her safety, asked not to be named: "Albanians like me, who don't think like the street mob, are in as much danger as the Serbs. We don't dare to go out at night." Many "politically suspect" Albanians have been attacked.
WAS THERE AN ALTERNATIVE TO NATO'S WAR? Some claim that negotiations were tried and failed. But the Rambouillet accords, which Washington demanded Milosevic sign or else be bombed, included the insistence that the international force in Kosovo belong to NATO, rather than the UN, and gave NATO access to the entire territory of Yugoslavia. Might a peaceful settlement have been achieved had NATO dropped these demands? No one knows, but the fact that it wasn't tried necessarily undermines the argument for war.
Serbia did propose a plan offering substantial autonomy for Kosovo -- in effect restoring the autonomy withdrawn in 1989. Would the plan have led to Kosovo's independence? No, but bombing wasn't intended to lead there either. Would it have allowed real autonomy? Again, no one can know, because NATO never pursued the matter. But in any event, the question is not whether negotiations would have led to a perfectly just outcome, but whether they would have enhanced -- rather than detracted from -- the cause of justice and humanitarianism.
Would a negotiated settlement along these lines have satisfied the KLA or Kosovar Albanians more generally? Perhaps not. But it is one thing to save a people facing slaughter; it is another thing entirely to intervene on behalf of those who insist on fighting until their maximalist demands are met.
Advocates of military intervention in Kosovo often insist that there was genocide going on, even before the bombing. Genocide, they argued, is not a matter of the number or proportion of people killed, but the interference with the national life of a people, and genocide so defined obligates nations to intervene. I find this definition of genocide hopelessly broad, but let's use it and ask what is happening to the Serbs and Roma of Kosovo. Has their national life been disrupted? Does this mean that the advocates of intervention are now calling on Russia to intervene militarily -- indeed, insisting that Russia is morally and legally obliged to intervene -- in order to prevent genocide? Of course not. Such a call would be ludicrous (even apart from the fact that the United States would level Moscow). There is no way such a military intervention could possibly improve the situation.
If only that same astuteness were applied to NATO's war.