From: Technotranscendence (neptune@mars.superlink.net)
Date: Tue Aug 15 2000 - 20:08:11 MDT
On Tuesday, August 15, 2000 5:59 AM Michael S. Lorrey retroman@turbont.net
wrote:
> > Both present excellent analyses of the war and its outcome (to date,
that
> > is). Also, in Posen's article, he cites the "Rambouillet Agreement:
Interim
> > Agreement for Peace and Self-Government in Kosovo" at
> > http://www.state.gov/www/regions/eur/ksvo_rambouillet_text.html
> >
> > During an exchange on this list with Michael Lorrey, I also cited it,
but,
> > sadly, the above URL was not active at the time. (I'd read the
agreement
> > on-line, but could not find any government web pages with the agreement,
> > save for those of the Serbian government. The above source is the US
State
> > Department.) Now it's back up. Please read, especially, "Appendix B:
> > Status of Multi-National Military Implementation Force." This was the
> > agreement before the war began and some believe that this particular
section
> > was put into the agreement -- along with several others -- to make sure
> > Serbia (FRY, or whatever you want to call it) would not sign the
agreement,
> > thereby giving NATO, especially the US, a chance to bomb.
> >
> > Of course, other parts of the agreement might have also pushed Serbia's
back
> > to the wall. It's also interesting to note in what key ways the current
> > situation differs from that of the original agreement, if one is to
judge
> > the success for any side of the war.
>
> The thing is is that the conditions set forth in Appendix B are not very
> different from the agreements that all NATO member nations have to sign
> to host NATO troops.
FRY/Serbia is not a NATO member. NATO is a defensive alliance. Originally,
it was only intended to last about a decade, and then was mainly as a
counter to potential Soviet invasion of Western Europe. Yugoslavia was
never a member of this alliance.
> The differences being there specifically because
> Serbia was, in fact, an agressor nation in opposition to NATO.
An aggressor nation is generally defined as one that attacks other nations.
Since Kosovo was (and de jure still is) part of FRY, this claim falls flat.
Also, before the war began, it's still arguable whether the aggression was
more than counter-terrorist operations. (Arguable, though not certain.)
The same applies to Kosovar Albanians, the KLA, and even Albania.
> Being
> given the opportunity to cooperate prior to the bombing
The cooperation was limited to accepting the agreement or being bombed.
That's not much more than pure coercion. Notably, neither the Kosovar
Albanians nor the FRY had input into the drafting of the agreement. This
was "take it or leave it" diplomacy. (You might argue that the Serbian
government deserves no better, but the cost of such a stance is not only the
effort spent bombing, but also innocents being killed, both Serbian and
Albanian, etc. Also, one might ask, did American negotiators really want an
agreement all sides could agree to that would protect Kosovar Albanians AND
address Serbian concerns about the KLA or was the goal to push Serbia into a
corner then bomb?)
> is markedly
> different from the options Serbia gave the other republics when they
> declared indiependence. Serbia just started bombing and shooting
> non-serbians by the thousands.
Also, some of this is expected behavior. Secessions on the whole are not
tolerated by whatever they are seceding from. Note the cases of the
American Colonies seceding from Great Britain, the CSA seceding from the
USA, East Timor seceding from Indonesia, Chechnya seceding from Russia, and
the Kurds attempting to seceded from Turkey, Iraq, and Iran. In all of
these cases, violent methods were used to suppress the rebellions.
This does not make such suppression good or right, but it's considered
natural behavior for nation states. Ones that can't or won't do that,
generally, do not continue to exist for long.
(I'm generally pro-Secession, even in this case. I'd like to see a
libertarian-minarchist government arise, not one that is merely ethnically
pure and oppresses whatever minorities exist within its borders. No side
promises that. Such a government would be ethnicity neutral, of course. I
don't think the UN or NATO can make that happen. I offer no plan for making
it happen, though I stress American taxpayers should not be used to pay for
such things anyway.)
> You really don't have much to stand on
> here trying to make Milosevic look like the victim.
I'm not trying to make Milosevic or the Serb government look like victims
here. My goal is merely to give more evidence in this discussion. I'm not
pro-Serb or pro-Milosevic. At the same time, I do think the US and NATO got
involved in a basically counterproductive war where many innocents suffered.
Many more Albanians and Serbians died during the war.
I think NATO member populations were propagandized into accepting the war.
Surely, Milosevic and the Serbian government are not nice, good, just, etc.
But, at the same time, there are much worse problems in the world (Turkish
treatment of Kurds being perhaps the most glaring one, since Turkey is a
NATO member and a US client state) and I feel this was more Monica's War
than anything else.
But to be more constructive here: how would Extropians in general deal with
such problems? One would hope our bright technological future would make
ethnic rivalries less a problem, yet the 1990s seemed like a time when both
technology progressed and ethnic rivalries and even wars increased.
Cheers!
Daniel Ust
http://uweb.superlink.net/neptune/
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