Permanent Humanitarian Catastrophe

Feral Tribune, Split, Croatia, May 17 1999

by Viktor Ivancic

It is not accidental that the rhetoric of the western politicians is overflowing with lamentations about "responsibility". The ease with which a destructive missile can be launched is proportional to the force with which the responsibility behind that act is emphasized. Thus, the ideology of fake responsibility has become the ruling ideology of the Western political and military alliance. Without such an industry of consciousness, assisted by the modern war technology and sophisticated media propaganda, the results achieved by the North Atlantic alliance in the "prevention of a humanitarian catastrophe" would be morally intolerable.

Do you hate Serbs strongly enough? Do you believe that their guilt is such that their country should be destroyed? Do you sympathize with Albanians in practice? Do you believe that they should be allowed to contribute the necessary sacrifice - expressed in thousands of human lives, tens of thousands of burned houses and hundreds of thousands of expelled persons - in order to earn the right to their own state, even if under an international protectorate?

Such questions do not have any legitimacy any more, because the answers to them will have to be affirmative. Everything else would today be equivalent to a look into an abyss.

The effects of the NATO military intervention against Yugoslavia so far are twofold: they are catastrophic and irreparable. More than 700,000 Albanians deported from Kosovo; so far unknown, but definitely impressive, number of dead; economy and infrastructure of a state destroyed; internal support for the Milosevic's dictatorship strengthened, chauvinism inflamed; the last arguments for the common life in Kosovo canceled... - that is the balance sheet of two months of efforts in the realization of the sacred goal of "the prevention of a humanitarian catastrophe". Since they are irreparable, these results are already defended as "the only possible".

However, even a spectacular defeat of Serbia will only provide the West with an opportunity for a victory parade over a tragedy, which can be later politically and geographically shaped in some future Rambouillet. The other certainty is that the belligerent logic with which Slobodan Milosevic has decided to take his compatriots from a hell on earth - the strategy of a collective suicide - will be pushed to its limits. The greatest son of the Serb people, whose true parents both committed suicide, is only consistently following his family tradition.

Now, when it seems that Serbia is on her knees, it appears almost inappropriate to return to the very beginning (of course, we are going to do exactly that) and consider the credibility of the very motives which led to the most far reaching use of military resources in the recent past and a definite choice of war as a method of legalization of a final solution. That motivation is contained in the term with which the Western political elite rinsed its mouth during the last two months with inappropriate intensity; the term which made nations march in step with military music and drew awed sighs from global consumers; namely, responsibility!

Shoulder for Lying

"The North Atlantic Alliance has the moral obligation to defend our values once diplomatic efforts fail. We are doing that decisively!" asserted NATO secretary general Javier Solana. Thus, a moral imperative was a shining key which fired the first missile. But, how did the North Atlantic alliance envision to actually distribute that heavy burden in case of the military intervention in Yugoslavia?

The responsibility for expulsion and mass murder of Albanians was given to the Serbs. There is no doubt that the crimes against Kosovo Albanians have multiplied after the start of "the prevention of a humanitarian catastrophe", but that does not endanger the vision of responsibility which NATO has envisioned for itself. Moreover, the increased responsibility of Serbs because of the multiplied crimes against Albanians requires even greater "responsibility" of the Western military alliance to "persevere in attacks" and thus, consequentially, increase suffering of the initial victim. That vicious circle completes a total moral perversion. One of the unsaid reasons could be that apparently Kosovo Albanians are not one of "our values", solemnly invoked by Javier Solana.

The usual justifications are that "the violations of human rights would in any case reach the same scale, but in a longer time frame". Of course, that argument is extremely cynical, at least to the extent of propriety of asking a person condemned to death whether he would rather live for a few months longer and then sending him to an electric chair.

At the same time, the risk for enduring practical consequences of the military action (let us not forget that it was started because of the pressure of "responsibility") has been passed to the Albanian civilians for whose protection the whole aerial assault had been started. They were literally extradited as fodder for revenge to the regime for which it was known in advance that it was tyrannical. The claims that something like that could not have been anticipated (Madeleine Albright predicted that the "sacred goals" would be accomplished "in three days") could only be the result of stupidity or lack of responsibility. Since by definition there are not fools in the most powerful political and military institutions in the world, it was obviously a premeditated act: a responsible assumption of irresponsibility.

The application of that axiom, in very simplistic terms, makes sure that NATO cannot loose: moral responsibility for possible failure (in the "prevention of a humanitarian catastrophe") is in advance assigned to the Serbs, while the bearing of the consequences (normally a precondition for the true acceptance of responsibility for a certain act) is assigned to the Albanians. The ease and arrogance with which human lives are sacrificed in order to achieve a "final solution", naturally, totally destroy the high moral grounds of the initial motives. However, there is a universal catch used by expansionist ideologies: initial motives only serve to be forgotten along the way or even twisted into their opposites.

The powerful Western politicians, together with Slobodan Milosevic, without any doubt share responsibility for the catastrophe which is taking place in the Balkans. Obviously there are no mechanisms to force them to be held accountable for their acts, in spite of their verbal declarations of responsibility. Moral defect of their position is enhanced by the fact that they knew that from the start. To know in advance that you will not be held accountable for your actions, and order far reaching solutions because of "feeling of responsibility", doesn't that deserve nothing but scorn according to the Western moral principles?

Technological Anesthetic

The preparation of the public for the acceptance of the logic of responsible assumption of irresponsibility was achieved through ideological briefing and sophisticated propaganda. The advanced technology used in the most recent war, including the so far most complex technological symbiosis of military and information tools, makes it possible to dispense with the moral and psychological inhibitions which normally affect the public in the West and elsewhere. At regular NATO press conferences the "targets" are shown on satellite photos, destructive explosions look like convulsions of primitive organisms observed through a microscope, and even photos of mass graves elicit as much of an emotional response as photos of the surface of Mars.

The culmination is achieved with video recordings from the cameras placed on the missiles flying towards their targets. That is a close approximation of the direct broadcast of cynicism: once the means of destruction becomes the means for providing information the total alienation and total dehumanization in the mass perception of the "final solution" is guaranteed.

Let us imagine, for example, that high officers of the North Atlantic alliance in their daily press briefings in Bruxelles instead of geographic maps, diagrams and satellite photos, on a large screen next to every "degraded" target show at least one corpse. Even if the corpses were of dead lizards, the sensibility of the public towards the effects of the "responsible action" would undoubtedly radically change in an extremely short period of time. Because of that, the vision of the technological dehumanization of the war (such as the one promoted by CNN during the war against Iraq) is necessary for the psychological preparation of the public. The public is offered a release from inhibitions and moral unease in return for its open or quiet support.

The stability and obedience of the highly trained soldiers is secured in the same way. Each one of them must find it much easier psychologically to press a button and activate missiles that will kill ten, hundred or a thousand humans, than to kill even a single person after looking him straight in the eyes, or even after sneaking up on the enemy and killing him by striking a knife into his back. Although the murderous score of the first situation, as well as the possibility of killing civilians (which is categorized as a war crime) is much higher, for a modern warrior it is emotionally a much easier task. Technology, besides widening the reach of his will has also supplied the conditions for moral self-deception. Since others decide for him, the modern warrior lacks any responsibility, even for a massacre on the side, and the distance from the victim removes the stress and potential problems with his own conscience.

Another dramatic aspect of the NATO military action is also the fact that those who issue orders, namely the "responsible" ones, use a very similar type of protective measures, similar to a moral anesthetic.

Game with Superfluous People

The same logic which led to the decision to start the aerial bombardment of Yugoslavia could have been used to reach the decision for a ground troops intervention. However, the intervention with ground troops would have included a direct risk and implied real responsibility instead of verbal protestations of the same: that risk is expressed in possible, even likely, death of one's own compatriots. The fact that the consideration of such a possibility hadn't even been put on the agenda of national parliaments of the NATO members testifies about sincere doubt that such an action could receive the support from the majority of democratically elected representatives. Even if a decision to embark on a ground troop invasion is finally made, it would definitely be reached outside parliamentary procedure, a supposed cornerstone of Western democracy.

It is easy to understand that decisions whose consequence may be the death of one's own compatriots are hard to make; however, that implies that, in moral sense, it should be equally difficult to make decisions which expose the lives of others to danger, those who do not make such decisions, nor belong to the privileged nations with representatives in powerful global institutions. The fact that this decision was made and made with unbelievable ease demonstrates that a cynical imperialistic hedge according to which one should fight for the application of "universal values" using all means available as long as the likely price for such a struggle is payable only in "local" currency of human lives hides behind a touching phrase about "responsibility".

(Let us repeat that banally obvious fact: NATO's aerial intervention knowingly exposed to risk lives of Albanian and Serb civilians, and in significantly higher numbers the former ones, while a ground troop intervention would expose the lives of Western soldiers to danger, but also include the possibility of protecting the lives and homes of Kosovo Albanians. Of course that was too high a stake to literally apply the sacred idea of international solidarity.)

That idea of other, or second class human beings, actually presupposes the same mental source which in the final consequence may result in ethnic cleansing, for which the West has earmarked Slobodan Milosevic as the Great Inventor, punishing him like its own bad conscience. To use even the trump card of the "sacrificed people", the other, second class people, isn't that exactly the same approach as the one used by NATO in Kosovo?

The Belgrade dictator would not expel Albanians from Kosovo if they obediently accepted to fit in with his demonic visions and didn't turn out to be superfluous in the project of the Serb state. Western democracies, lacking demonic visions but, on the contrary bureaucratically assembled in a coalition of entities, are also having problems with their own "minority questions"; however, that effort boils down to trying to solve the problem of the superfluous. By allowing Slobodan Milosevic to, under punishing patronage of NATO, complete the project of ethnic cleansing, the West appears to observe the achievement of its secret and unacknowledged dreams.

The same imperialist arrogance finally decided that the highest representative institutions of the "global village" (after NATOs use of force, U.N. and Security Council were demoted into a sad impotent decoration of the so called world order) were sidelined, which means that the responsible assumption of irresponsibility didn't spare the values which until yesterday were lauded as he only guarantors of the international rule of law.

Removal of Nausea

The role of personal risk is not negligible. The readiness to assume personal risk is a detector of the true belief in the principles used to justify a war. Especially in a "sacred war" which NATO allocated to itself by invoking "our values" which demanded that jet engines be started. In some better times that implied a romantic effort to protect the victim at all costs, even by sacrificing one's own life.

Desperate logic used during the last few weeks by the citizens of Serbia fired up by the war mongering propaganda, which in its basest form sounds like "why so cowardly from high above? Get down here and we'll see how brave you are!", sounds, of course, primitive and stupid. However, exactly the possibility that that "knightly" dimension of the war is totally excepted, the possibility that it is fully removed from the traditional idea of "fighting a war" has crucial influence on the ease of responsible assumption of irresponsibility. The lack of risk always results in the lack of scruples, and even the lack of subsequent nausea which could pollute the in advance determined sacred nature of the completed act.

It is not an accident that the rhetoric of the western leaders is overflowing with laments about "responsibility". The ease with which a destructive missile can be launched is proportional to the force with which the responsibility behind that act is emphasized. Thus, the ideology of fake responsibility has become the ruling ideology of the Western political and military alliance.

In practice this rhetoric has most fully been unmasked by a U.S. administration official: "Civilian victims are unavoidable in bombardment, because we must act from 5,000m altitude, since it is unacceptable that even a single allied pilot dies."

Targeting of Civilians

When the basic infrastructure objects, as those used to supply electricity and water, are bombed, as has been done over the past weeks, then it is certain that the action has entered the phase when its targets are civilians. Citizens who collect water in canisters, wait in a line for bread, or in panic search for an generator to which they can connect their dialysis machine become the desired outcome of a military operation. "It is important that we can do that to them at any moment," said British minister of defense George Robertson. Missiles which hit buses, trains, refugee convoys, embassies or apartment buildings, causing twenty dead on average, are now delivered daily.

Therefore we are witnessing, despite grotesque apologies, "the punishment for Serbia", execution of reprisals (so far still of a relatively limited type) against the whole nation, treatment of a nation as a living being and straightforward execution of a punishment for collective guilt. Current excuses state that "they did the same to others in the past", and that "their leader, whom they elected and still overwhelmingly support is responsible for their suffering". In other words: if a victim is worthless, we shouldn't worry about being violent towards it. What is the reason for the inclusion of that moral fuse for the step into a total war?

It is valuable to remember that in the first weeks of the action it was consistently emphasized that only military objects are the targets of NATO missiles (now that rhetoric is only used when the missiles hit the Chinese embassy, but not when they hit the hospital in Nis), Madeleine Albright kept repeating in the tongue understood by the natives that "NATO has no quarrel with the Serb people". On the contrary, NATO wanted "to help the Serb people" with its intervention and to pull it out of the claws of tyranny. Ease with which that principle was abandoned - and even the fact that no questions were raised in the process - indicates that in reality there are no principles and that they will be modeled according to the needs of the total victory.

The explanations that such an outcome is "the only possible" are becoming disgusting because they contain the well known "logic" of the ideological type; they contain an element of faith in Manifest Destiny which, at the end of a dance with wolves, is the only way to guarantee clear conscience.

There was no need to watch extreme chauvinists since the beginning of the NATO intervention, the "ordinary" citizens of Croatia were sufficient. For example one could observe fake outrage (hiding barely concealed gloating) with which they commented actions of until yesterday "ordinary" Serbs, fierce critics of the regime, who suddenly expressed solidarity with Slobodan Milosevic's suicidal policy and "stepped up on the ramparts of the homeland's interests". It was a confirmation of the comforting thought that "all of them are the same". Such a relief!

Elite in Sand

Representatives of the so called intellectual elite who with the first wave of supersonic jets hailed the bombing of Yugoslavia, today refuse to discuss the only legitimate topic: about the real effects of that actions, about the realization of the initial goals of the action. Those who are ambivalent about the NATO intervention are quickly written off as the silent sympathizers of the Serb fascism, and given an essential label: Pascal Bruckner in the lack of support for the NATO intervention recognizes crazed americanophobia, and Chris Cviic callous russophilia.

However, the discourse of militant guardians of "universal principles" is exclusively moralist: after the start of the intervention a huge pile of pathetic pamphlets which claimed that "something had to be done" because "Serb tyranny could not any more be tolerated" was published. Following the same logic, the seriousness of the situation demanded that much more thought be given to "something" that needed to be done, in order not to incite Serb tyranny and multiply victims. A rejection of that type of moral-intellectual view points at a miraculous paradox: exactly the "responsibility" for prevention of a tragedy is used as an excuse for a de facto participation in a catastrophe. Since, to bring into question the results of a "humanitarian military intervention" - having in mind that it is the result of alleged group "responsibility" - would mean the questioning of the decision to start the intervention (and hail its start), that would demand the reconsideration of the true nature of that fluid heavy burden. Such reconsideration could spoil the image of every participant in the applause [to the NATO intervention] as a person who does not incite violence.

If only moral, therefore "universal", principles of world justice guided the decision to attack Serbia, military intervention would have started seven years ago and there would not have been enough pragmatic reasons to prevent it. Every belated reaction is by definition hysterical, because it includes a burden of piled up frustrations and rage because of past failures to act. This is also an attempt to endow the whole endeavor with the "primal" moral purity, and to protect it from doubts by the alleged force of principles that initiated the action. However, the NATO action is much more pragmatic than NATO would like to admit. Consequently it is typical that only a pragmatic type of discussion about the action is rejected.

A possible answer to that was recently offered by Hans Magnus Enzensberger: "I do not accept the argument which I have been recently been hearing here and there: 'Since they didn't help the Kurds, we shouldn't intervene in Kosovo'. What does that extremist or maximalist position mean? I do not have the right to help if I do not help the whole world? Would we say: 'I do not have the right to help a single beggar by giving him 10 Francs, if I can't help them all'? That is absurd."

Indeed, that would be absurd. But it is even more absurd that Enzensberger and many others, two months after the beginning of the bloody war, are refusing to talk about the way in which we have so far helped Albanians in Kosovo, how we gave them their 10 francs and whether we smashed their hand in the process. Even when he allows himself to slide into pragmatism Enzensberger does that in perspective with cynicism which deserves pity: "Instead of sending ground troops, we should arm Kosovars. They have the best understanding of the guerrilla type of war."

The ease with which others are sent to death (because we would like to express our solidarity with them) reveals the same type of responsible assumption of irresponsibility. That is a horrific type of solidarity, based on the absence of any true solidarity and it's cause is the very same hypocritical ill will of western democracies towards their own "minority problems" - hidden behind the wrapping paper of human rights ideology - that lasting thought that others are after all only others, that these are nothing but cries and scuffles of far away tribes and that it is possible to establish a moral principle which would exclude "personal experience".

Why do we then keep insisting on principles? Why is the moralistic discourse the only one in use? In order to in advance fill in black holes in the collective acceptance of a hypocritical application of force, whose outcome cancels its reasons.

Graveyard of Heroes

It seems to us that we are closest to the truth if we say that the true reason for the beginning of NATO's war adventure was an unbelievable whim, an attempt to - after being pushed in a diplomatic corner because of obvious mistakes - the honor and credibility of the North Atlantic alliance be saved. That motive is the real truth about "our values" invoked by Javier Solana. But, what does "honor" mean when the global military mammoth is concerned? If lacking a true moral authority we accept that justice is meted out by force, at least we shouldn't encourage illusions: the content of that justice will be adjusted to the ambitions of the force.

The key problem of NATO is that for the duration of the air strikes against Yugoslavia - while a pogrom of those whose suffering was supposed to be prevented takes place on the ground - the alliance has demonstrated the desire to be a victor, but not a protector. Of course, Kosovars didn't leave their houses because of NATO missiles, but because of Serb murderers who took their revenge against them; but Serb murderers plunged into their mass retaliation with far less scruples once they recognized a vengeful motive in NATO, once they recognized in NATO their executioner, but not a protector of their victims.

Without a global industry of consciousness, without ideology of fake responsibility, assisted with modern war technology and sophisticated media propaganda, the results achieved by the North Atlantic alliance in the "prevention of a humanitarian catastrophe" would be morally indefensible. Because of that, two months after the start of the intervention, NATO has been brought into the situation to wage a war exclusively for its own survival: the alliance is not even carried forward with the desire to achieve a victory in the traditional sense - since something like a victory in accordance with the initial goals is not possible any more. The main impetus now is a desire to inflict a defeat at all cost, that the force of NATO triumphs, to deliver a retribution for a humiliation, and the rigidity of Serb fascism will only serve for the casting off of all moral restraints for every "necessary" disgusting deed. Thus, "humanitarian" justifications become ridiculous even as an excuse.

After all, the end of WWII was marked in a similar way. Until today, western ideology is trying to convince us that such an ending was necessary. But until the vengeful orgy in Dresden and Hiroshima, that war contained a mass of examples of human heroism and true solidarity; this war, maybe the first one in history, totally lacks any of them. Unprecedented media spectacle which greeted the release of three American soldiers from a Serb jail, was a sad attempt to bring to the current war mythology that type of memories. But in this story, there is no "human factor". And that is truly terrifying.

Translated on 6/5/99