I remember the words of Bill Clinton not long ago, during a visit to Moscow, answering questions about the United States position on the brutal treatment of Chechnya at the hands of Russia; he justified Russia's attitude, saying something like "it's an internal affair, the Russians have the right to prevent by force a province from seceding, we the U.S. also had a civil war to prevent a secession and we wouldn't have accepted any kind of foreign intervention in our internal affairs", etc. Why then is the same Bill Clinton so anxious now to send its air force on a punitive mission against a country that is just (admittedly in a heavyhanded way, but not more so than any other country in the same situation throughout History) trying to keep in line a rebel province?
Finding an answer to questions like these, that should be nagging the most perceptive members of the public interested in foreign affairs (not to be confounded with members of Academia, quite content in this case as in others to find a credible rationale for justifying any kind of position held by the ruling circles of their own countries) is really quite simple - if we just manage to forget the brouhaha about "defending human rights and promoting our values abroad" with which the West is trying to hide the real reasons for its diktat on Serbia (please note that I am not denying that one of the byproducts of bombing Serbia might be an improvement in the terrible situation endured by refugees - I am just saying that this is not the main purpose of NATO's action).
In the former Yugoslavia the situation was very different. There we witnessed the implosion of a European country in a big civil war, and it would have been unthinkable for the west to leave the solution of the conflict to any allies in the region or even to the forces directly involved in the war. That would have constituted a confession of impotence, whereas the World's most powerful military alliance had to show its teeth - it could not refrain from action and allow others (including the warring factions) to have a decisive voice in a conflict right at the door of affluent Europe. Yugoslavia was "our little garden over there" (to use the expression once fashionable in the US to describe Latin America) and it was up to the NATO "gardener" and no one else to find a cure for the disease affecting the unruly subjects of that country.
So NATO hesitated in the beginning about how and when to intervene, but in the end it had to be done. You may remember that at a certain point the Iranians were thinking about a large scale intervention on behalf of the Bosnian Muslims; can you imagine the West allowing anything of that kind? The civil war in Bosnia had to be stopped the sooner the better, and so it was - thanks to NATO's decisive military and diplomatic intervention. The solution dictated to the parties was rather evenhanded - the Dayton agreements were relatively better for the Croatians, but a few crumbs were also left for the Muslims and even the Bosnian Serbs to take. Of course, no one was completely satisfied and the "Bosnians" didn't want to live with each other, a situation which forced NATO to send to that country an occupying force whose mandate does not have - and cannot have - an end in sight. But what was the alternative? Leave the warring factions to fight a long war to the death which would have destabilised the region and made the West the laughing stock of the world? Out of the question - and so we are stuck with Dayton for the foreseeable future.
Enter Kosovo, a Serbian province with a 90% Albanian "minority". The situation there was going to implode, everybody knew it. It was only a matter of time. The Albanians wanted independence - if Bosnians and Croats had the right to secede, why not them? the Serbs claimed the right to repress them in the name of territorial integrity of a sovereign country (remember Chechnia?) - and who could blame them? So the situation got out of control - Serb repression created hundreds of thousands of refugees, clashes between the Yugoslav army and Kosovar independence fighters got heavier and soon the situation was just as unstable as Bosnia a few years ago. The West - meaning NATO - had to intervene. It is now threatening air strikes against Belgrade, surely as a prelude to another dayton-type intervention in Kosovo proper. What have principles - like self determination or territorial integrity and sovereignty - got to do with it? Nothing: NATO is against both principles in this case- it does not want Kosovo to be independent AND it does not allow Serbia to rule its province as she wishes. Basically, it wants to keep the situation from running out of (its) control - a bit of autonomy here, a probable NATO occupying force there and, with luck, the trick will be done.
Of course the Serbs have blundered as usual. Apparently, they don't manage to learn the lesson that repression is only to be allowed when practised far from television cameras and that only important, powerful allies of the West may safely engage in it - Israelis in the occupied territories, for example. They fail to understand the absolute necessity of asking the advice of the rulers of the World (aka NATO) before engaging in large scale military action in geostrategically significant territory - the Americans were certainly not consulted when Milosevic decided to go against the KLA. That kind of uncooperative attitude may of course not go unpunished. Thus the threat of air strikes against Belgrade, that have the extra advantage of being of virtually no military risk to NATO, since the Serbian air force and defense is no match for the allied bomber fleet and cruise missiles - if Yugoslavia were a significant military power (even, say, a North Korea) the story would probably be rather different.
Will the refugees benefit from NATO's intervention? They might (no guarantees here), if military action is followed by western-dictated humanitarian intervention on the ground. The whole situation may of course eventually evolve at the expense of the rights of Serbs who live in Kosovo - but then NATO itself is not a humanitarian organization. Like all others military alliances in History, it serves the geopolitical interest of its (in this case, American and European) masters and its actions will necessarily benefit some (friends) and hurt others (enemies). Those who say otherwise and claim moral principles dictate the behavior of the West are just being useful propagandists for the World's largest military force.
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