Kosovo Exposes US-NATO Hypocrisy
The US and NATO use their "Rules-Based Order" to trump International Law and further US hegemony.
I am old enough to remember when there was a country called “Yugoslavia”. It was a sovereign socialist country in the Balkans and it had a famous leader named Marshall Tito.
We learned about Tito in school because he was something of a poster boy for US hegemonic propaganda during the Cold War. We all learned that Tito “stood up to Stalin” and Yugoslavia was socialist, but had an anti-Soviet posture diplomatically, figuring prominently in the so-called “Non-Aligned Movement” that existed at that time.
During the Cold War, the US and the USSR were like two competing suitors — each one trying to cajole the non-aligned countries into joining their sphere of influence. Yugoslavia was able to play this game to its advantage diplomatically and economically when it came to trade.
They even managed to export automobiles to the USA at a time when Ronald Reagan was railing against the Soviet “evil empire”. A friend of mine actually bought a Yugo in the 1980's.
“A viable nation and an economic success”
Michael Parenti, who authored the authoritative book, To Kill a Nation: The Attack on Yugoslavia, encapsulated the country as follows:
“Yugoslavia was built on an idea, namely that the Southern Slavs would not remain weak and divided peoples, squabbling among themselves and easy prey to outside imperial interests. Together they could form a substantial territory capable of its own economic development.
“Indeed, after World War II, socialist Yugoslavia became a viable nation and an economic success. Between 1960 and 1980 it had one of the most vigorous growth rates: a decent standard of living, free medical care and education, a guaranteed right to a job, one-month vacation with pay, a literacy rate of over 90 percent, and a life expectancy of 72 years.”
A “mini USSR”
Like the Soviet Union, Yugoslavia was an ethnically diverse country made up of multiple “socialist republics”, each with its own identity and a modicum of political autonomy, but joining together to form a “substantial” economic entity capable of delivering the social benefits that Parenti describes.
A socialism that was “tolerated” by the West
Although Yugoslavia rejected the Soviet system and refused to join the Warsaw Pact, it was still a socialist state with affordable public transportation, housing, and utilities. It operated a not-for-profit economy that was mostly publicly owned.
Parenti continues:
“This was not the kind of country global capitalism would normally tolerate. Still, socialistic Yugoslavia was allowed to exist for 45 years because it was seen as a nonaligned buffer to the Warsaw Pact nations.”
“Allowed to exist”
Parenti’s choice of words is important: the West “allowed” Yugoslavia to exist in its socialist form because it served US interests to have an independent Slavic state opposing Russia on the southeastern flank of NATO.
Once the USSR collapsed, however, there was no need to “play nice” with non-aligned countries like Yugoslavia.
In Yugoslavia, Western hypocrisy showed itself on two fronts
What happened to Yugoslavia in the 1990’s and then in Kosovo in 2008–9 demonstrate with embarrassing clarity just how hypocritical and, in fact, “lawless” the US and the West act when it comes to imposing their will on other states around the world.
“Territorial integrity” versus “self-determination”
First, it is important to note that there are two fundamental precepts of international law that form the basis of global treaties between nations.
The first is the concept of territorial integrity —as defined by the Conference for Security and Co-operation in Europe (CSCE), this means ”the principle under international law that nation-states should not attempt to promote secessionist movements or to promote border changes in other nation-states, nor impose a border change through the use of force”.
The second pillar of international law is the right to self-determination — namely, the concept that people “have the right to freely choose their sovereignty and international political status with no interference”.
These two precepts have been included in all manner of international frameworks, in particular the United Nations Charter and the CSCE (also known as the Helsinki Accords).
It should also be noted that the nation of Yugoslavia was a signatory to BOTH the UN Charter and the Helsinki Accords.
“Dismembering” Yugoslavia
As noted above, the fall of the Soviet Union meant that the West no longer needed to curry favour with non-aligned states, and the dissolution of the Warsaw Pact meant that Yugoslavia’s role as a buffer on NATO’s southeastern flank was no longer necessary.
That U.S. leaders have consciously sought to dismember Yugoslavia is not a matter of speculation but of public record. In November 1990, the Bush administration pressured Congress into passing the 1991 Foreign Operations Appropriations Act, which provided that any part of Yugoslavia failing to declare independence within six months would lose U.S. financial support.
This extreme pressure on the various regions of Yugoslavia were, of course, in direct violation of the Helsinki Accords declaration that “nation-states should not attempt to promote secessionist movements”.
The US Appropriations Act went even further:
The law demanded separate elections in each of the six Yugoslav republics, and mandated U.S. State Department approval of both election procedures and results as a condition for any future aid. Aid would go only to the separate republics, not to the Yugoslav government, and only to those forces whom Washington defined as “democratic,” meaning right-wing, free-market, separatist parties.
Again — this sort of action is CLEARLY prohibited by both the UN Charter and the Helsinki Accords. But the US did them anyway, because US corporations wanted access to the minerals, resources and other wealth in the Balkans.
Slovenia, Croatia and other republics seceded from Yugoslavia knowing that the US would be there to pump them full of aid and arrange IMF loans, etc. — similar to what the US did for Ukraine when it overthrew Yanukovych.
Secession led to rapid “Westernisation” — i.e., privatisation of the economy that led to inequality and other neoliberal ills.
Kosovo symbolises Western “supremacy”
On February 17, 2008, the Kosovo Assembly unanimously (109 members present) voted to declare independence from Serbia.
Within four days of Kosovo’s declaration of independence, fifteen countries (including the United States, United Kingdom, France, Germany, Italy, and Australia) recognised the independence of Kosovo. By mid-2009, 63 countries around the world, including 22 of the 27 members of the European Union had recognised Kosovo as independent.
Indeed, the Western-friendly International Court of Justice recognised Kosovar independence in 2010.
Kosovo has applied for EU membership, and no doubt the USA and its Western allies want to see the break-away republic join the EU (and possibly even NATO) so they can have a solid foothold on the border of Russia’s main Balkan ally, Serbia.
Serbia has declared that the independence of Kosovo was illegal and Russia supported Serbia in that decision.
So you can see where this is going.
Why Kosovo matters so much to the West
As University of Westminster’s Aidan Hehir writes in the Journal of Intervention and Statebuilding:
“By the end of the 1990s faith in the capacity of the West to spearhead ‘progressive’ global change had begun to diminish…Questions about the utility of NATO abounded, and the idea that the spread of liberal values was irresistible — as famously predicted in the ‘End of History’ thesis — had begun to look less convincing. Thus, intervening in Kosovo, and thereafter creating a peaceful, ‘multi-ethnic’ democracy, came to be perceived as a means by which to redress this growing lack of faith in the capacity of the West.”
Kosovo was the cause célèbre needed to help NATO and the West “get its groove back”:
“The intervention, and subsequent statebuilding project, were less about Kosovo, and more about a determination to project a particular image of the West as both benevolent and powerful.”
And so NATO invaded.
On the March 24, 1999, NATO launched Operation Allied Force, the first full-scale NATO use of force. The military action was justified as a “humanitarian intervention” aimed at saving the Kosovo Albanians from the “thug” Milosevic and his Serbian “goons”.
Sound familiar?
In the aftermath of the intervention, the UN Security Council passed Resolution 1244 creating both UNMIK (United Nations Mission in Kosovo) and KFOR (NATO’s Kosovo Force), the most ambitious state-building apparatus ever.
It was an unprecedented move, a de facto invasion by a supposedly “strictly defensive” alliance.
The “New World Order” was born in Kosovo
As international law expert Marc Weller noted, many observers “have begun to see in the international response to the Kosovo crisis a new paradigm of international relations, a blue print for a new world order, in either a positive or a negative sense”.
In other words, Kosovo presented the first opportunity for the US to use its European proxies’ military (NATO) and diplomatic (EU) forces to project power in a combined exercise to “weaken Russia” by chopping up Russia’s biggest ally in the Balkans.
The Kosovo operation embodied, for the first time, what American diplomats have come to call “the international rules based order”.
Kosovo today
These days there are clashes in Kosovo, as the West’s “multi-ethnic statebuilding” chickens have come home to roost. Hehir observes:
“Over the past twenty years, the clash between the motivations of the external actors and the aspirations of Kosovo’s citizens have become more apparent catalysing a tension between the official Western narrative which presents Kosovo as a “success” and the reality on the ground.”
NATO is scrambling to address the issues bubbling up in the ethnic cauldron that is Kosovo. But to be clear: Kosovo, for the West, has already served its purpose.
NATO must be “out of area or out of business”
Kosovo laid down an important marker: it was the first time NATO took on an offensive mission outside its own territory, in utter and complete defiance of its purported “purely defensive” definition.
To be clear: neither Serbia nor Kosovo nor any of the former Yugoslavian states were members of NATO. Serbia had not attacked any NATO member. There was no reason for NATO to invade Kosovo to fight the Serbs.
Why did they do it?
As described above, the Kosovo invasion was seen as a way to preserve the prestige and “moral legitimacy” of the West. But for NATO, it was seen as being existentially necessary.
Indeed, the actions taken in Kosovo could be seen in the context of a 1993 RAND Corporation report that summarised the need for NATO to find a new raison d’être after the Cold War. The RAND study summarised the challenge in a way that US Senator Richard Lugar quipped in an address to the the Atlantic Council that NATO must be “out of area” or they will be “out of business”.
Having established a precedent in Kosovo, this axiom of projecting NATO power “out of area” was used to justify subsequent NATO actions in Libya, Afghanistan, Iraq and elsewhere. It is even being used to justify NATO expansion to the Pacific.
In Kosovo, legitimacy trumps legality
Not everyone was happy with what NATO was doing in Kosovo. Russia protested and even staged an armed confrontation with NATO forces at Pristina’s airport.
The United Nations set up a commission to look into what NATO did in Kosovo. They issued a report on their findings, aptly titled “The Kosovo Report” in October 2000.
The UN’s Kosovo Report concluded that the NATO attack and invasion of Kosovo was “illegal, but legitimate”.
“Ethnic cleansing” justifies military intervention
The legitimacy of the NATO invasion of Kosovo was bolstered by allegations of “ethnic cleansing” operations being conducted by Serbs against ethnic Albanians.
These allegations were enough, according to the UN, to justify military action by NATO to occupy Kosovo and thereby “protect” the Albanian population there.
Except that Albanians are the majority in Kosovo. Indeed, it was the very fact that Kosovars are overwhelmingly ethnic Albanian that the US and the West relied on to recognise Kosovo’s “need” for independence in 2008.
In fact, the OSCE issued a report in 1999 that showed it was the Albanian population that was persecuting the Serbs:
“Informed observers agree that there is a climate of violence and impunity, as well as widespread discrimination, harassment and intimidation directed against non-Albanians.”
In Kosovo, the US got its way, and NATO got its “out of area” mission
Moreover, the UN Commission concluded in its Kosovo Report that:
“the time is now ripe for the presentation of a principled framework for humanitarian intervention which could be used to guide future responses to imminent humanitarian catastrophes and which could be used to assess claims for humanitarian intervention.”
The UN subsequently created the “Responsibility to Protect” (R2P) doctrine, which declared that “military intervention to prevent large-scale loss of life and ethnic cleansing was justified, as a last resort, when states failed in their most basic duty to protect their own populations”.
This idea of a legitimate “humanitarian intervention” was later used to justify NATO’s intervention in Libya in 2011. even though we all know that the true motive was regime change and the “removal” of Gaddafi.
Likewise, NATO forces accompanied the US in their intervention in Syria in 2014 — ostensibly to avoid a humanitarian catastrophe — but in reality to overthrow the Assad government.
Thus the Kosovo conflict and the “illegal but justified” response by NATO gave birth to the “international rules based order” that the United States uses to justify its actions globally.
International Law versus the “Rules Based Order”
As I mentioned above, there are two pillars upon which the bulk of international law rests: sovereign territorial integrity and the right of people to self-determination.
There are many times when these two concepts come into conflict, and it has traditionally been up to the arbiters of international law — namely, the United Nations — to reach a consensus about which of those two precepts should take precedence in any given situation.
Such was the case in 1948, when it was decided that the need for the Jewish State of Israel to have a sovereign territory superseded the right of the Palestinian people to have their own state.
Western hypocrisy on parade
Starting with the fall of the USSR, the West, led by the United States, has arrogated to itself the right to make such “moral” decisions themselves. They have justified this unilateral right to decide by throwing away the rule of international law in favour of what they call an international “rules based order”.
This, in turn, allows the US and the West to choose, like Solomon, whose rights are more important than those of others.
As with Kosovo, they constantly claim the “moral high ground” while also claiming ultimate legitimacy — even if they are in breach of international law.
For example, they decided that Yugoslavia did not have a right to territorial integrity, because it was “multi-ethnic” and each ethnicity deserved its own sovereign state.
Then, they decided that Kosovar Albanians had a right to self-determination that superseded Serbia’s right to territorial integrity, because Kosovars were being “ethnically cleansed” by the Serbs.
They then decided that self-same right to self-determination does not apply to ethnic Russians living in the Donbas and Crimea, and that Ukraine’s right to territorial integrity should supersede the rights of the ethnic Russians in Eastern Ukraine to speak their own language, worship in their own church, and generally maintain their own ethnic Russian culture.
The ethnic cleansing that the Kiev regime perpetrated in the Donbas was somehow different than the ethnic cleansing that had provided justification for the NATO intervention in Kosovo.
And they have pronounced, with righteous indignation, that Russia “violated the international rules-based order” when they intervened to save the ethnic Russians living in Eastern Ukraine and Crimea.
The Russians, of course, have referenced international law and the Kosovo precedent as justification for their actions, but their arguments have been summarily rejected by the West, who have abandoned international law in favour of the US’s “rules based order”.
The West has lost all credibility with the rest of the world because they continue to showcase their hypocrisy in places like Ukraine and Kosovo.
#End
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Really good piece of work here!