Is a humanitarian war an oxymoron? The concept has apparently been invented by what Tony Blair, in Newsweek, called "a new generation of leaders, in the US and in Europe, who were born after the second world war, who hail from the progressive side of politics". This generation, it is suggested, will fight as passionately for human rights and self-determination as previous generations fought for colonial territory or national honour. It will wage war with moral purpose. It shall not rest, nor shall its sword sleep in its hand, until it has banished tyranny and all its works from the Earth - or at least from the sight of CNN cameras.
It was precisely because Slobodan Milosevic presented no military or economic threat to western Europe, still less to the US, that Nato's political leaders felt able to intervene as they did. Strategic considerations - How might Milosevic react? Was this the right moment to strike? Were there resources to back up the initial action? Should we have done nothing until we had adequate ground forces in the vicinity? - become irrelevant against a moral imperative. The point was to make a gesture, any gesture, to show our disapproval, to allow us to watch the evening news with a clear conscience. That it was a rather demeaning gesture - dropping bombs from a very great height or firing missiles from a very great distance - was beside the point. Even the effect on the Kosovar Albanians wasn't much to the point. We wanted to be able to tell our children that we had not averted our eyes from a terrible atrocity - a matter of great importance to a continent haunted by the Holocaust. We had done everything we could.
But we have not done everything we can. This is where the concept of a humanitarian war becomes questionable. The concept of limited (as opposed to total) war is a familiar one. It has highly specific aims, usually accompanied by precise military means. Here, the aims are unspecific, the means imprecise. As we go deeper into quagmire, the rhetoric comes closer to that of total war: Milosevic cannot remain politically intact, his army and police must withdraw completely from Kosovo. But when does our concern for the welfare of Serb civilians in Belgrade override our concern for the welfare of Kosovar Albanians? Are we prepared to risk the lives of western servicemen and, if so, how many? It is said that we could have done nothing directly to prevent the ethnic cleansing. That is not strictly true. We could have dropped a rapid reaction force into Kosovo before the main Serb army arrived. We did not do so, presumably because it was judged too risky or too costly or both. It is said that a war has never been won from the air. That is not strictly true, either. The war against Japan was won by just two bombs. Nobody is suggesting that we nuke Belgrade, but we do not know the effects of prolonged and severe conventional bombing on a moderately affluent, technologically advanced and relatively open European country. What did not work in London in the 1940s or in Hanoi in the 1960s and 1970s may turn out to work in Belgrade in the 1990s. But would the western democracies inflict even a tenth of the damage that the allies did to Dresden in the 1940s?
The proposal that we should pursue this war with Churchillian single-mindedness (and remember that Churchill was prepared to disregard even the fate of the Jews) invites ridicule. But it is the supporters of the war who constantly ask: what is the alternative? At each stage, they get their answer: it is to pursue the war more fully, more vigorously, more ruthlessly and with fewer humanitarian qualms. Where does it stop? We are now told that the war has become a test of Nato's survival. How important is that to us? We were told that, if we did not intervene, it would give the green light to every tyrant on earth to do as he liked. What does it say if we intervene and then fail? The questions go further and deeper, as John Lloyd (page 8) and Antony Beevor (page 11) suggest. For example, do those on the left who support humanitarian war understand that, if the Nato countries are to act as the world's moral policemen, defence spending must rise, not fall?
The bombing of Yugoslavia began less than a month ago. Since then, at least 500,000 have been expelled from their homes and unknown numbers of others raped or murdered. Albania and Macedonia have been drawn in. Russia has been humiliated, with incalculable consequences. The UN has been marginalised so that it is now being compared with the prewar League of Nations. We can argue about the precise operation of cause and effect. But that is the record, and it is the humanitarian warriors who need to find an alternative, not those who always said we should stay clear.
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