Chomsky: Sovereignty and World Order
John MacDougall
By Noam Chomsky
Kansas State University Manhattan, Kansas
September 20, 1999
Transcribed by James R. Benkard
The topic for tonight - "Sovereignty and World Order" - was actually
selected over a year ago, maybe more, but the choice was prescient.
These have been the catchwords of 1999 - "sovereignty" and "world
order" - in very instructive ways.
The concern for sovereignty has gone through two phases. The first
phase was in the first part of the year when the focus was on the
US/NATO bombing of Yugoslavia, and the second phase is in the past few
weeks - in connection with the renewed atrocities in East Timor.
During the first phase there was "extreme exuberance" that we were
entering a new era in human history in which the "enlightened states"
will use force when they believe it to be just, disregarding
old-fashioned concepts of sovereignty and international law. No more
restrictive old rules. The "enlightened states" will act on their
traditional principles with "the defense of human rights as their
mission." Secretary of State Albright proclaimed, reported with awe by
the New York Times.
The mission is defined, according to folks like Albright, only for some
parts of the world - namely, the "rogue" states. Cuba today. Or
Nicaragua, before it was returned to the free world. Or Iraq, since
1990, when Saddam Hussein disobeyed orders, and Iraq became a "rogue
state." But not before 1990, of course, when he was a favored friend
and ally, and a recipient of massive aid while he was just gassing
Kurds, and torturing dissidents, and in fact committing by far the
worst crimes of his awful career. For which he was rewarded by an
increasing flow of military and other aid by the enlightened states.
Well, that's the first half of the year. We were deluged with ecstatic
pronouncements from leading moralists and political figures, scholars,
and so on, about this remarkable era that we're entering under the
leadership of the enlightened states, no longer encumbered by
old-fashioned notions of sovereignty and international law.
The second phase is the past few weeks. The tune changed very
radically, as attention shifted to East Timor, where there was a
resurgence of the terror and violence and massacres that have been
going on for twenty-five years.
That's actually the worst slaughter, relative to population, since the
Holocaust. Now, it turns out that the sovereignty of Indonesia has to
receive delicate and exaggerated respect in this case, even when there
is no sovereignty.
Because, of course, Indonesia has no claim to sovereignty in East
Timor, apart from the claim that resides in the support given to its
aggression by the great powers, in particular the enlightened states,
in particular the leader of the enlightened states, the U.S.
So here we have to have very great concern for sovereignty and it turns
out that human rights don't matter. We have to put aside our broader
mission, established in phase one. We have to ask for the invitation of
the invaders before any move can be made, like withholding military
aid, because such moves would be intervention in a sovereign state, and
we can't think of doing that.
So, suddenly, the picture is exactly the opposite. From total disdain
and contempt for sovereignty, in the case of Serbia - which by accident
happens to be the only corner of Europe that's resisting U.S. plans for
the region - we move to a client state, one of the major mass murderers
of the modern period, and in this case concern for sovereignty is so
exalted that we have to delicately observe it, even when there's no
sovereignty at all.
Well, it's an interesting transition, and it does raise some
questions:
what happened? What's the difference?
One difference that might come to mind is the one I just mentioned. In
one case, the state whose sovereignty doesn't matter happens to be an
enemy state. In the other case, it happens to be a client state. That
suggests a hypothesis, but let's put it aside for a moment, and ask
some other questions.
The first question is - I mentioned that the first half of the year was
a period of enormous exuberance about the remarkable new age " well,
what was the attitude outside the enlightened states? Incidentally, who
are the enlightened states, and how do you gain the rank of enlightened
state? What are the criteria for membership in the club?
Well, criteria for membership in the club turned out to be very easy.
It's done by definition. You become an enlightened state not by virtue
of your record; in fact, the record is declared irrelevant and if
anyone were to look at the record, it would hardly provide the right
qualifications. It's just true by definition. The United States is an
enlightened state by definition. Its attack dog, Great Britain, is an
enlightened state as long as it follows orders. And anyone else who
enlists in a crusade is an enlightened state. Everyone else is a rogue
state. So it's very easy to make the distinction.
What is the attitude outside the enlightened states toward the
remarkable new era? Well, outside of the self-defined enlightened
states, there was shock and dismay over the contempt shown for
sovereignty and international law.
So, if you go to say, India or Thailand or Latin America, the reaction
was pretty uniform: fear. Most of the world's attitude was pretty well
expressed by the Archbishop of San Paulo, who asked after the Gulf
War:
"Who are they going to attack next, and on what pretext?" There was
considerable talk throughout much of the world about the need to
develop deterrence. Nuclear weapons, or some other deterrent, to defend
oneself from the enlightened states, who now apparently feel free to
rampage at will, having no deterrent at all.
In fact, if you look across the world fairly generally, I think an
accurate description would be that - the more that a state had the
capability to use violence at will, the greater was its contempt for
sovereignty, that is, for the sovereignty of others. The United States
overwhelmingly had far more capability to use violence than any other
competitor, and here the exuberance was maximal. And it declines as you
move down in power, until you get to the traditional victims.
In fact, the break was very close to what's nowadays called the
"North-South" division. That's a euphemism for the distinction between
the old imperial countries and their old colonies. In the former
colonies, there was shock, fear, and dismay. In the imperial states,
particularly in the more powerful of them, enormous exuberance over the
end of any barriers to use of violence, such as musty old notions of
international law and sovereignty.
That's a pretty general conclusion; I think you'll find an accurate one
if you look at commentary around the world, here and elsewhere. And,
again, it suggests some hypotheses about what's going on.
This nevertheless requires some further qualifications, because the
attitude toward sovereignty in the leader of the enlightened states,
the United States " the self-defined leader of the enlightened states,
that is - its attitude toward sovereignty was more nuanced than what I
just suggested. It's true that for the others, sovereignty can be
dismissed with contempt. In other words, we can use force at will, as
we believe it to be just, because we define ourselves to be
enlightened.
On the other hand, our own sovereignty - and that of our client states
- that has to be guarded as a precious treasure. In our own case, the
point is obvious. In fact, it's pretty hard to ignore. Just not long
ago, for example, the United States refused to accept establishing an
international criminal court that would prosecute war crimes and crimes
against humanity.
And the reason was pretty straightforward, if we accepted the existence
of such a court, we would be surrendering our sovereignty. And
obviously we can't do that, because our sovereignty is sacrosanct.
That was brazen enough to receive some comment, but what is less
noticed is that that's pretty uniform. The United States has a terrible
record, one of the worst in the world, in signing and ratifying
international human rights conventions - conventions to implement the
provisions of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. So, for
example, in the case of the Convention On Rights of the Child, it's
been ratified by every country in the world except two: the United
States and Somalia. Somalia didn't ratify it because it doesn't have a
government.
And that's fairly general. In fact, it's even worse than that. In a
strict sense, the United States has ratified no covenant. The reason is
that every one that is ratified, and there aren't very many, has a
reservation which says, in effect: "inapplicable to the United States."
So some conventions are ratified, not too many, but then doctored to be
inapplicable here.
There was an interesting example of that early this year, during the
period of euphoria about the new enlightenment. Again, it didn't
receive huge headlines, but if you were looking carefully, you noticed
that there was a case brought to the World Court charging the United
States and the other NATO powers with war crimes. And the World Court
turned down the case on technical grounds. Not because the charges were
wrong, but on technical grounds. The technical grounds were that the
United States presented an airtight legal argument to show that the
case could not be brought. And the Court correctly accepted this
argument. What was the argument?
Well, the case was brought under the Genocide Convention. World Court
rules require that both, all parties to a dispute accept jurisdiction.
Otherwise, the Court can't adjudicate. And the U.S. argument was that
the United States doesn't accept jurisdiction. Because, even though it
did sign the Genocide Convention - after a delay of, I think, about
forty years - it signed it with a reservation saying "inapplicable to
the United States, without U.S. agreement," which of course is not
given.
So, therefore, the United States can't be brought before the Court on
these charges, so it doesn't matter what their merit is. And that's a
correct argument, so the Court dismissed the case. As I say, that's
typical.
Sovereignty has to be very carefully protected, like a precious jewel,
when it's our own sovereignty. It's only the sovereignty of various
enemies that means nothing.
And that extends much more broadly. The United States is practically
destroying the United Nations by refusing to pay its legally obligated
debts. The debts are required by treaty, but the United States doesn't
pay them, because that would be a sacrifice of sovereignty. Why should
we allow some organization we don't control to function, at the expense
of our own freedom to act? So the U.S. just doesn't pay its debts.
In fact, by the 1990's, U.S. violation of international treaties has
become so extreme that the professional society of international law,
American Society For International Law, in a recent issue had an
article called "Taking Treaties Seriously" - condemning the
increasingly brazen U.S.
refusal, to adhere to treaty obligations.
The grounds are always the same - they're an interference with U.S.
sovereignty, which has to be sustained. The same is true of the World
Trade Organization - a particularly interesting case, because it's a
U.S.
creation. But it does have rules. And the U.S. blatantly violates the
rules when it chooses to.
So, for example, the European Union recently brought charges to the
World Trade Organization that the U.S. was violating its rules by its
quite murderous embargo of Cuba, which violates the World Trade
Organization rules because it involves secondary extra-territorial
restrictions against other countries. And, of course, it's grossly in
violation of international humanitarian law, with its provisions
barring food and, even effectively, medicine.
Well, the U.S. responded to that by declaring a national security
exemption. The survival of the United States depends on making sure
that Cuban children starve or die in hospitals from lack of medicine.
So, therefore, we can't accept the authority of the World Trade
Organization, our creation, in the case of the embargo of Cuba.
The idea that this is a national security issue is perhaps too idiotic
to discuss, but it illustrates the extreme dedication to our own
sovereignty - our right to do anything we want - right in the midst of
the period when we're hailing the new era in which sovereignty doesn't
matter any more, because the enlightened states will lead the world on
their mission of preserving human rights.
For years, the attack against Cuba had been justified on Cold War
pretexts.
Cuba is a tentacle of the evil empire, threatening to strangle us. That
was always complete nonsense. The formal decision to overthrow the
government of Cuba was made secretly in March 1960, when there was no
significan connection between Cuba and the Soviet Union. After the Cold
War ended, the attack against Cuba got harsher. These facts alone
undermine totally the Cold War arguments, but it's more interesting
when you look at the real arguments, which have now been declassified.
When the Kennedy administration took office, one of its first acts was
to extend the attack against Cuba. President Kennedy had a Latin
American mission, which surveyed the situation in the hemisphere. Its
report was transmitted to the President by historian Arthur
Schlesinger, and of course it discussed Cuba, and described the threat
that Cuba posed to the United States. The threat was, I'm quoting
Schlesinger, "the spread of the Castro idea of taking matters into
one's own hands" - a serious problem in a region like Latin America,
where wealth is very highly concentrated - quoting again: "and the poor
and underprivileged, stimulated by the example of the Cuban revolution,
are demanding opportunities for a decent living."
Well, that's a threat. So you obviously have to defend against it, and
carry out terror, an embargo, and invasions and so on, to block the
threat.
Incidentally, there was a Cold War element. Schlesinger adds that
"Russia is hovering in the background, offering development loans and
presenting itself as a model for industrialization in a single
generation." So that's a real Cold War issue.
Incidentally, if you think this through, you get a good understanding
of what the Cold War was about since 1917. Those models and efforts at
independence cannot be tolerated, because they undermine a world system
which has to be organized on different grounds. It has to be organized
in the interests of the privileged and the wealthy and the powerful,
the ones whose sovereignty has to be protected and respected, while
everyone else's can be dismissed and ignored.
I should add that the contempt for sovereignty is nothing new in the
early part of this year. It just reached extraordinary exuberance as
part of the justification for bombing a European country. But contempt
for sovereignty is as old as American history.
So, the sovereignty of others is of no account if they're in our way -
if they're what are called "rogue" states, meaning not following
orders. But our own sovereignty, and that of our client states, and
those that join with us, that has to be protected. None of this is new,
but, also, none of it matters. It's all, remember, declared irrelevant.
It's just facts.
This contempt for others, and for international law, alongside
insistence on respecting the sovereignty of clients and, of course, our
own sovereignty - this is often expressed in very crude and crass ways
publicly - which you should attend to; they're important.
So, for example, Dean Acheson, who was a highly respected statesman,
and one of the creators of the postwar world, and a senior advisor to
the Kennedy administration; in 1962, at the time when the plainly
illegal embargo of Cuba was instituted, gave a public defense of it
before the American Society of International Law. And in that defense,
he pointed out that the propriety of a U.S. response to a challenge to
its "power, position, and prestige" is "not a legal issue." So, no
questions of international law arise when the prestige, position or
power of the United States is at stake. Because we're above all that.
He said international law has its "uses." Its "uses," he said, are to
"gild our positions" with pleasant verbiage when conditions permit us
to do so.
But other than that, if our own prestige, power or influence is at
stake, international law is irrelevant.
The United States didn't invent that position, of course. Every country
in the world, including Andorra, would take the same position if they
could get away with it, but the United States happens to be able to get
away with it. That's what it means to be the biggest thug on the block.
You can get away with such things. And you can also get away with
self-adulation for your magnificence, in being an enlightened state,
carrying out all sorts of wonderful missions.
An even more dramatic example, and one that would be taught in every
school in a society that valued freedom, was the reaction of the United
States - public reaction - when a case was brought against the United
States at the World Court by Nicaragua, in 1985. The United States
refused jurisdiction.
The World Court nevertheless condemned the United States for what it
called the "unlawful use of force," in other words war crimes, against
Nicaragua.
It ordered the United States to desist and to pay substantial
reparations.
Of course, that was dismissed with the usual contempt. The war was
immediately escalated, and reparations we won't bother talking about.
But what's interesting in this connection is the reasons. The State
Department legal advisor gave the official reasons why the U.S. would
not accept the World Court judgment. The reason is, that "the members
of the United Nations cannot be counted on to share our views, and
often oppose the United States on important international questions.
Hence we must reserve to ourselves the right to decide when Court
rulings apply, and will not accept compulsory jurisdiction by the Court
over any dispute involving matters essentially within the domestic
jurisdiction of the United States, as determined by the United States."
In this case, the issue within the domestic jurisdiction of the United
States was Washington's war against Nicaragua; what the Court condemned
as the unlawful use of force. Well, as I say, that should be taught in
school.
Everybody should know that by heart. And, in a society which valued its
freedom, it would be known.
Also known would be the declarations of [former] Secretary of State
George Shultz, who was regarded as 'Mr. Clean' of the Reagan
administration, explaining this. What he said is the following:
"negotiations are a euphemism for capitulation if the shadow of power
is not cast across the bargaining table." And he condemned those who
advocate "utopian, legalistic means like outside mediation, the United
Nations and the World Court, while ignoring the power element of the
equation."
Those remarks are not without precedent in modern history; you can
think of a few examples. They were delivered at the moment of the U.S.
bombing of Libyan cities; Tripoli and Benghazi, killing many civilians.
Incidentally, that was the first bombing in history which was planned
and executed for prime-time television. It was very carefully timed so
that it would begin right at the 7 PM Eastern Standard Time, which was
when the three television channels had their major news programs. And
by sheer accident, they all happened to have their crews in Libya -
where, of course, they are all the time - so that they could film the
exciting events as they happened and then give the administration the
first hour of control over television news, to give it a proper spin.
You're somehow not supposed to notice this.
It just kind of happened.
Well, all of these, again, are things that are worth knowing, teaching.
And they tell us a lot about the U.S. attitude towards sovereignty -
its own sovereignty. Sovereignty of others is treated with the same
contempt that it has been since the 1770's.
So, to take an example which is almost trivial by comparison with the
full record: it's just a year now since the United States - the Clinton
administration - decided to destroy half the pharmaceutical supplies of
a poor African country, killing nobody knows how many thousands or tens
of thousands of people. It's conceded that it was just a kind of a
random act of violence, but that's all right. Because what does their
sovereignty matter? It's our sovereignty that matters. That's during
the period of enlightenment - the first phase.
Well, let's go to the second phase. Here we see that it's not only the
United States that has this august position in which sovereignty has to
be treasured, but also client states. So, Indonesia, for example.
Indonesia has one of the most brutal and murderous records of the
modern period; but, as they renewed the atrocities in East Timor this
year, their sovereignty had to be very delicately respected - even
though it does not exist. Remember, their sovereignty in East Timor is
comparable to that of Saddam Hussein's in Kuwait, or of Nazi Germany's
in occupied France.
Exactly that amount of sovereignty exists, which is none, but it has to
be respected - treasured, in fact.
The official U.S. position has been that it is their responsibility -
Indonesia's responsibility - to keep order in East Timor, the country
that they have conquered and where they have massacred maybe a third of
the population. "It's their responsibility, we don't want to take it
away from them."
I'll come back to the details of this, but that remained the U.S.
position right through the period in the last few weeks, when it became
impossible to ignore the level of the atrocities, and when the Clinton
administration, in fact, was finally compelled by domestic pressure,
and particularly by Australian pressure, international pressure, to
make some pretty minor moves. Clinton did finally have to make a few
indications to the Indonesian generals that this wasn't nice, and that
sufficed for them to reverse course totally - which shows the latent
power that has been available throughout.
Incidentally, this continues while we're talking. While we're talking,
there are hundreds of thousands of people who were driven up into the
hills in East Timor, where they're apparently starving to death, as far
as anyone knows. There happens to be a country that could easily carry
out airdrops of food. And we know which one it is. It has the logistic
and technical capacity to drop food to people starving to death in the
mountains, where they've been driven by forces armed and trained by the
United States, and supported by the United States.
You don't see it happening. In fact, you don't even notice anybody
talking about it. Because it's out of the question. Remember, our
mission is to defend human rights - but not when human rights are being
trampled on in a horrendous fashion by a client state that we've been
supporting in its atrocities and massacres for twenty-five years; here,
and also in other places.
So there's no talk about the Air Force dropping food to starving
refugees.
The Air Force is quite capable of destroying civilian targets in a
country whose sovereignty doesn't matter. There, we can -apply pinpoint
bombing, destroy civilian targets, and so on - it's fine. But we"re not
capable of dropping food to starving people. That's not ancient
history, like last week, that's today.
Well, sovereignty is granted by the United States and denied by the
United States. These are among the prerogatives of power, and the
flatterers at the court have to explain to us why this is all noble and
elevated.
Well, what's the attitude of the United States and other self-defined
enlightened states towards human rights? Same answer. "Might is right."
Examples are legion; I'll just keep to 1999. Let's take East Timor.
I'll just quick give you a brief review of some of those "sound bites
and invective" that you're not supposed to know about, according to the
guardians of doctrinal purity.
In December 1975, Indonesia, a US-supported state, client state,
invaded the territory of East Timor, on which it had no claim
whatsoever. The invasion was carried out with U.S. arms, which by
treaty with Indonesia can be used only for self-defense. The U.S.
secretly expressed the hope that the invasion would be carried out
quickly, without too much attention to the fact that U.S. arms were
illegally being used.
The U.S. did declare an arms embargo, because there was a lot of
protest, but violated it at once by sending new arms under the cover of
the embargo, including vitally needed counter-insurgency equipment. The
Security Council of the United Nations acted. It condemned the invasion
unanimously, and ordered Indonesia to withdraw at once. But that had no
effect, and the reason why it had no effect was explained by the U.S.
Ambassador - again, in words that would be memorized by anyone who
valued the freedom that they enjoy, and who has an interest in world
affairs, international law, and human rights. And this is not some
right-wing reactionary. This is Daniel Patrick Moynihan, liberal
Senator from New York, who was then UN Ambassador. He wrote his memoirs
a few years later, in 1978. And in the memoirs, he explains why the
Security Council was ineffective. What he says is that "the United
States wished things to turn out as they did, and worked to bring this
about. The State Department desired that the United Nations prove
utterly ineffective in whatever measures it undertook. This task was
given to me, and I carried it forward with no inconsiderable success."
That's frank, and open. He also was aware of the nature of his success.
He goes on to say that in the next few months, about 60,000 people were
reported killed - about the same percentage of the population as the
numbers that Hitler killed in Eastern Europe during the Second World
War.
That"s his comment, not mine. And then, he says, well, after that the
matter disappeared from the press, so that the whole thing was
successful.
And it did, indeed, disappear from the press, and was quite successful,
but the fighting didn't stop. Only the reporting stopped. What happened
after that is the Carter administration took over - the human rights
administration - and provided a new flow of arms to Indonesia, which it
immediately used to escalate the attack to near-genocidal levels. The
people had been driven to the mountains; the Indonesian army using new
arms - jet planes, napalm, and so on, supplied by the human rights
administration " to carry out a massive attack to drive the population
down to Indonesian control -- or as the Carter State Department put it,
a large part of the population has moved "to areas where they could be
protected by the Indonesian Government."
It's at that point that the church and other sources in East Timor,
tried to get the world to recognize what was going on. It's at that
time that the figure of 200,000 killed, which is now widely accepted,
was presented by the church as a plausible estimate. At that time it
was denied, now it's conceded.
And so it continues. It continues right up until the present. There was
a moment of hope early this year. In January the Indonesian interim
president proposed a referendum in which the people of East Timor could
decide between independence and autonomy. The Indonesian army reacted
at once by stepping up atrocities. They sent new units of their elite
special forces units - Kopassus units, which are trained and armed by
the United States, and are famed for their atrocities in East Timor and
elsewhere. They were sent to East Timor; they organized what are called
"militias" - paramilitary forces, consisting to a large extent of
Indonesians, according to the Timorese Nobel Peace Laureate Jose Ramos
Horta, which immediately started carrying out large-scale terror.
There was very little reporting of it here but it was going on - it was
building up; and everybody knew what was coming. The United States
temporized; it wouldn't do anything, it refused to react. In fact, I
should say that throughout this whole period, arms and training for the
Indonesians continued. Indeed, in 1997-98 government-licensed
commercial arms sales to Indonesia increased by a factor of five.
Training exercises - the Pentagon has just announced, about a week ago,
that training exercises continued until August 25th - about five days
before the referendum. This was called training in "humanitarian
training and disaster relief." Orwell couldn't have said it better.
What happened next? Right in the middle of the pre-referendum
escalations, in April, when atrocities were really peaking, the United
States did send a military mission. The head of the Pacific command,
Admiral Blair, was sent to talk to General Wirranto, the Indonesian
chief of staff; in theory, to tell him to call off the massacres.
It turned out, what he actually told him was that the U.S. would
continue to provide assistance and support. This was revealed recently
by Alan Nairn, an independent journalist who's done a fantastic job
there, and elsewhere, and in fact has been in an Indonesian jail
recently, without any report here - finally released, probably under
mostly Congressional pressure.
So Admiral Blair went to give this message just shortly after one of
the really ugly massacres - the killing of about sixty people in a
church in which they had taken refuge. A brutal murder, just one of
many.
Well, what happened? The population, in a remarkable display of
heroism, went to the polls. And despite large-scale terror,
intimidation, killings, tens of thousands of people driven into the
hills to hide, almost 99% of the population braved it and voted
overwhelmingly for independence.
The reaction to that was steps to virtually wipe the country out. In
the next couple of weeks - we're now in early September - nobody knows
how many people were killed - thousands, tens of thousands. And maybe
half the population, or more, was expelled from their homes - just huge
atrocities.
Finally, as I mentioned, the United States was compelled to take a
stand;
to register an objection, at which point the Indonesians called it off
- meaning they could have done that all along.
Well, to its credit, the New York Times ran an op-ed about this. Give
credit where credit is due. On September 15th, an Indonesia historian,
John Roosa, who was an observer at the elections, wrote a good op-ed,
in which he pointed out the truth. He said, "given that the pogrom was
so predictable, it was easily preventable," but Clinton "dithered" and
"refused to discuss" sending peacekeeping forces." That's true. That's
exactly what was going on all this year, as the Australians got more
and more furious at U.S. refusal even to consider a peacekeeping
force.
Those who have some historical memory would know that this is a replay,
an ugly replay, of almost exactly what happened twenty years ago.
Twenty years ago, after a huge massacre in which hundreds of thousands
were killed, finally Indonesia agreed to allow members of the Jakarta
diplomatic corps to make a brief visit to East Timor - they felt secure
enough to allow some in. One of them was Carter's ambassador -
Ambassador Masters. Ambassador Masters witnessed a disaster which those
who were with him compared to Cambodia.
What came next was described in testimony at the United Nations by one
of the leading Indonesia historians in the world, Benedict Anderson, an
American historian on Indonesia. He testified that Ambassador Masters
delayed "for nine long months," refusing to request humanitarian aid
even internally in the State Department, until the Indonesian generals
gave him a "green light" - saying that they felt secure enough to allow
the Red Cross in, and to allow humanitarian aid in. In other words,
just what happened again in the last couple of weeks " the same story,
repeated.
Well, all of this, unfortunately, happens to be rather typical of the
attitude towards human rights, as do the reasons. As a senior western
diplomat in Jakarta, Indonesia, said, "Indonesia matters, East Timor
doesn't."
It was explained in more detail in a front-page story by two Asia
specialists of the New York Times, who pointed out, accurately, that
the Clinton administration had to make a calculation - in which they
compared, on the one side, the importance to U.S. of a resource-rich
country of a couple hundred million people, from which we make enormous
profits, and on the other side, a poor, impoverished country of 800,000
people. Well, you make that calculation, with their values, and it's
pretty obvious how to react.
It was put more graphically by high American officials, who said, in
East Timor, "we don't have any dog in that race." In other words, it
doesn't matter what happens there. Then just a few weeks ago, they
changed their tune. They said, yeah, we do have a dog in the race. A
big dog - namely, Australia. Australia's making a fuss, and they
matter. So now we have a dog in the race, so we have to change.
What about the population of the country, who have been tortured and
massacred, with our aid, for twenty-five years? They're not even a
small dog. Well, that's the way human rights really work.
Just go back the first phase of the year. Last April, right in the
midst of this euphoria about the grand new era and so on, there was an
anniversary - the fiftieth anniversary of NATO, in Washington. Widely
reported. It wasn't a joyful anniversary, because the meeting was under
the somber cloud of ethnic cleansing in Kosovo - and therefore, you
know, a lot of gloom and concern about ethnic cleansing. You have to
admire the commentators, journalists and others - who were able somehow
to overlook the fact that some of the worst ethnic cleansing of the
1990's was within NATO. Not across its borders, but within NATO.
Namely, in its southeastern corner.
In Turkey - NATO member, under the jurisdiction of the Council of
Europe, and the European Court of Justice, which regularly hands down
condemnations for ethnic cleansing and other atrocities - eight of them
last year. And that was no small affair. Way beyond Kosovo: two to
three million refugees, about 3500 villages destroyed - seven times
Kosovo. Tens of thousands of people killed - Kurds. All far beyond
Kosovo even after the bombing, let alone before the bombing.
How did it happen?
Well, it happened thanks to the Clinton administration. The Turkish
government uses approximately 80% U.S. arms. The atrocities mounted
through the 1990's, after the Turkish government rejected in 1992 a
peace negotiations offer from the Kurdish rebels, and the Clinton
administration sent an increasing flow of arms. In fact, Turkey became
the leading military importer in the world. And this is advanced
armaments - like jet planes, and napalm, and so on. And you look
through the record, and any imaginable kind of atrocity was carried
out.
All of this right within NATO, right in the 1990's - actually,
continuing now - ignored at the NATO anniversary meeting and, in fact,
throughout. Do a database search on the press. If you don't want to
bother, don't do it.
What you'll find is: essentially nothing - because this is a huge
atrocity, huge ethnic cleansing, terror, torture, everything you can
think of; but carried out by the enlightened states. In fact, by the
leader of the enlightened states, within NATO " so therefore it doesn't
merit comment.
Right at the moment when we are supposed to be overwhelmed with
compassion for the victims of ethnic cleansing in an enemy state -
namely, in Kosovo.
Finally, let"s take a look at that case.
Now we're back to the peak example, the one we're supposed to look at -
the atrocities in Kosovo. There's a kind of a mantra that's repeated
over and over, which says that in the case of Kosovo, for once we did
the right thing. Sure, we've done all sorts of bad things here and
there, but here we did the right thing. We acted on our principles and
values; we acted completely altruistically - in a total break with
history. The United States acted completely altruistically to defend
human rights, and that's why we had this wonderful euphoria about the
new era.
Well, it's not a truth of logic. I mean, it's a question of fact; so
therefore facts ought to be relevant, so let's have a look at them.
Well, there's a standard version of this. Repeated last week by the
main foreign affairs specialist of the New York Times, Thomas Friedman,
who says that the U.S. intervention in Kosovo made a crucial difference
- it halted ethnic cleansing, and therefore it was legitimate.
There's only one problem with that statement, which is repeated over
and over again: the facts are the exact opposite, uncontroversially.
The massive ethnic cleansing was a consequence of the bombing, not the
cause of it. There is no dispute about this. Simply take a look at the
record of registered refugees across the border. Kosovo wasn't a
pleasant place the year before, by any means " though unfortunately,
comparable to many other places in the world - but the massive ethnic
cleansing came after the bombing.
The bombing started on March 24th. At that time, the UN High Commission
on Refugees, which takes care of refugees, had no registered refugees.
The first ones were about three days later. On April 1st, a week after
the bombing, it started giving its first daily reports on expulsions -
and thereafter it went up to the numbers you know about - six, seven
hundred thousand.
Furthermore, it was predictable. In fact, according to the U.S.
commander - NATO commander, U.S. General Wesley Clark - it was
"entirely predictable."
That was his words as the bombing started. What he said is that it is
"entirely predictable" that the bombing is going to cause a radical
escalation in atrocities - for pretty obvious reasons. When you bomb
people, they don't throw flowers at you. They respond. And they don't
respond where you're strong - they respond where they're strong. So
they don't send jet planes to bomb New York City. They respond on the
ground, where they're strong - escalating the atrocities.
Furthermore, General Clark went on to say that the NATO operation - I'm
quoting him - "was not designed as a means of blocking Serb ethnic
cleansing." Well, that's true. It couldn't have been, because the worst
ethnic cleansing, by far, was stimulated by the bombing. It was a
consequence, not a cause.
Furthermore, although the atrocities were predicted and predictable,
there was no preparation for them. In fact, worse than that, shortly
before, the United States had proceeded to defund the UN High
Commission on Refugees, which is responsible for taking care of
refugees. They had to cut their staff sharply in January because of
U.S. refusal to pay dues.
So not only did the United States and Britain refuse to make any
preparations for predictable carnage, they proceeded to de-fund the
organizations which would have to take care of the refugees that were
going to be generated - predictably, according to the commander - by
the bombing they were carrying out. Well, put all that together, and it
increases the criminality of Clinton and Blair by quite a substantial
measure.
Tand that only scratches the surface. We have no time to go into
further details, but I really urge you to take a closer look - you can
find the facts easily enough. They're not obscure. And what they reveal
is that even in this single chosen case, it is totally impossible to
believe a single word of the exalted rhetoric - let alone in all the
other cases that aren't discussed, like the ones I've been talking
about.
In fact, if you look a little bit further in history, you'll find that
all of this is completely familiar. It's a kind of a tragic - or worse,
maybe obscene - replay of what was going on a century ago. Just a
century ago, there was the same talk about how the enlightened states
must bring civilization to the backward people of the world, and must
disregard sovereignty or anything else, because they have their mission
of bringing civilization, Christianity, and human rights. As the U.S.
proceeded to do in the Philippines, to take just one example.
Well, we know exactly what the consequences of that were. We don't have
to wait to see; we have a century of history to show how that
enlightenment was brought to the world. Is there any rational reason
for expecting this phase of it to be any different? Most of the world
doesn't think so.
Outside the self-defined enlightened states, there's plenty of fear and
concern over the revival of some of the worst days of European
imperialism and the arrogance and self-adulation that went along with
it.
For people like us - that is, relatively privileged people in quite
free societies - none of this is inevitable. Terrible crimes are
committed if we allow them to be committed. It's as simple as that.
We're not talking about things happening on Mars, or crimes being
committed by Attila the Hun, but crimes being carried out by forces
that are, in principle, under our control, if we want to control them.
We're not confronting laws of nature. These are questions of will and
choice. We can't undo the past, but at the very least, we can face the
present. We can choose to look at it honestly, to learn lessons from
it, and to use those lessons to affect the future.