|
NATO
War Over Yugoslavia:
Civilian
Control in Focus
By Dr. Biljana
Vankovska
Skopje University, Macedonia
TFF Adviser
February 2000
1. Democratic Control of a Military
Alliance: Challenges and Problems
The recent NATO military intervention in FR Yugoslavia
(24 March - 11 June, 1999) underlined an urgent need for
addressing some very significant theoretical and
political issues the two most important ones being: 1)
the issue of legal use of military force in international
relations, or more precisely on legitimacy of
humanitarian interventions; 2) the issue of democratic
control of a military alliance in action. Obviously, the
first question is relatively old, while the second one
emerged as a rather new one. However, in the light of the
Kosovo war they appeared to be deeply interrelated. The
NATO intervention over Yugoslavia should not be
considered as the main reason for theoretical
deliberation of this relationship, but rather as an
appropriate occasion for bringing the discussion up.
From a theoretical and a political point of view, the
relationship between NATO and the democratic control of
armed forces has usually been analyzed in terms of
civil-military reforms in the post-communist countries as
a condition for their future integration into the
Alliance. It is widely thought that NATO has a strong
influence on the promotion of the principle of democratic
control in the post-communist societies of Eastern
Europe, especially within the activities of PfP program.
The governments of the PfP countries have
enthusiastically accepted this principle, which is one of
the criteria for joining the Atlantic Alliance.
Comparative studies, however, proves that this process is
mainly implemented on a formal level, while the
substantial civil-military reforms still wait for better
times.
At the same time, the existence of democratic control
of both NATO military power and of the armed forces of
member states isusually taken for granted, and nobody has
really opened this issue. It is widely held that the
Western democratic countries have achieved full
implementation of this principle within their national
settings over the centuries. In spite of the application
of a firm set of norms and mechanisms for dealing with
military power, the cornerstones of which are civilian
supremacy and parliamentary accountability, the Western
model has still manifested some deficiencies, especially
regarding the public control over defence/military
affairs. First of all, foreign and defence policies are
far less transparent to the wider public than it is
believed. Western citizens are very often apathetic and
stay aloof from public issues on these matters, mainly
concerned with domestic politics and their private lives
and welfare. Despite the emphasized significance of a
vital civil society, there is a kind of alienation of the
citizens from public affairs in Western states. The
legitimacy, or wide public support, of the government
usually includes confidence in the affairs that are seen
as crucial for defending national interests of a certain
country. On the other hand, there were several occasions
when the repressive apparatus of the state was used to
suppress emerging public anti-war protests, even by the
use of force. The most well-known case concerns the
public protests in the USA in the 1960s against the
Vietnam war.
In the political sphere, deficiencies or tensions have
sometimes occurred in the relations among the three
branches of power. The military is everywhere a powerful
interest group in industrialised countries, claiming huge
resources and having the economic and political leverage
to influence defence and foreign policies. Scholars admit
that military involvement in political decision-making
process on foreign policy and national security policy is
due to the information monopoly the military services
have, and that this is an accepted role, albeit not
publicly proclaimed. As Abrahamson rightfully stresses,
"the fears voiced are not primarily that the military
deliberately upset constitutional rules, but rather that
they within the framework of those rules have acquired
considerable political and economic power". Democratic
control of the military is without doubt one of the major
values of Western democracy, but at the same time, one of
the most idealized ones.
It is, however, disputable whether the criteria valid
for an evaluation of democratic control of the military
on a national level are also applicable to such a robust,
complex and multinational institution as NATO. At a
national level, there is complex organizational and
functional relationships between civil and military
services, but also between them and the public. We may
furthermore expect that a military alliance of 19
(democratic) countries presupposes an extremely complex
pattern of civil-military relations comprising a myriad
of committees and bodies to determine military, political
and economic relationships and consensus among the member
states. This, however, is a limited and a formal scope of
analysis, which only focuses on what is going on at the
seat of the Alliance in Brussels. NATO is a bureaucratic
organisation, the structure of which includes a civilian
and a military segment. Each of them is hierarchically
layered, with a strict division of responsibilities and
clearly regulated inter-relations.
From a formal point of view, NATO's structure looks
very well designed and organized. The highest political
authority is the North Atlantic Council (NAC), which is a
"forum for confidential and constant inter-governmental
consultations" of the member states. Depending on the
importance of the issue that is to be discussed, the
representatives might be the heads of states that meet
periodically, the ministers of foreign affairs (or
defence) that gather at least twice a year, or the
permanent representatives (with the rank of ambassadors)
that meet weekly. NAC is thus the principal
decision-making body within the NATO structure. More
importantly, NAC together with the Defence Planning
Committee represent the highest authority that has
control functions over the military part of NATO's
structure, mainly the Military Committee. In addition,
there are several committees and a General Secretariat
with the Secretary General as its head. The decisions of
NAC are made by consensus and are binding for each member
state. The competencies of the Council are as follows: to
discuss and define basic political and military
directions; to establish, replace and terminate political
and military bodies; to appoint leading officials that
are heads of the political and military bodies; to decide
on financial matters; to exercise full control over the
implementation of the Treaty in general as well as its
own decisions. The General Secretariat is also a civilian
body with wide responsibilities. It consists of five
departments with separate domains of work, such as:
political affairs, economic and financial affairs,
production, logistics and infrastructure, science and the
executive secretariat. The Secretary General is the most
visible individual in this structure, representing the
Alliance in its external relations with other
international organizations and governments.
The supreme body of NATO's military structure is the
Military Committee, which comprises the Chiefs-of-staff
of the armed forces of every member state (except Iceland
and France, for different reasons). It provides
recommendations and advice to the NAC and the Defence
Planning Committee on all military issues. The
international military staff is in charge of the
preparation and implementation of its decisions. NATO is
geographically divided into two commands, Europe and the
Atlantic, led by two major NATO Commanders who work under
the guidance of the Military Committee. Their main
responsibility is the safeguarding of their respective
areas and conducting NATO exercises and other operations.
Member countries allocate national units to each of these
commands, which, taken together, constitute the military
force of NATO.
In addition to these two main pillars of NATO´s
internal structure, there are some other fora for
promoting dialogue and cooperation between member states,
PfP countries and other non-member states, in particular
Russia. They include, e.g., the North Atlantic Assembly
and the Euro-Atlantic Council (that replaced the old
North Atlantic Cooperation Council). There are various
forms of cooperation and exchange of ideas, in particular
between member and non-member states, with the purpose to
promote acceptance of Western (NATO) values and standards
without necessarily including all these interested
countries in the NATO family of 19 states. The entire
actual decision-making power, however, lies strictly
within NATO structures (and not necessarily on a
multilateral basis); there are no other channels or
forms, whether institutionalized or not, of social or
public influence on this process.
The analysis of the formal structure of the Alliance
leads to the question of its basis for legitimacy. The
point of departure is that NATO is an alliance of 19
nation-states; as a consequence, its political structure
assures the control of NATO bodies by its member states,
i.e. by their political and military elites. We may also
see some kind of "check-and-balance" system as
functioning within NATO - each state is in a position to
control the others as well as the entire structure: the
consensus principle guarantees equality among the
members, at least in formal terms. In practice, hovever,
the best a state can do in a situation when it does not
agree completely with the majority of member states, is
to make "a footnote", i.e. to explain the arguments for
its disagreement while not voting against the decision
and thereby blocking it. Usually, "The most equal among
the equal members", the USA, usualy sees to it in advance
that there is full agreement, if necessary by intensive
bilateral consultation with a potentially disobedient
government. In sociological terms, the NATO as a
political and military organization draws its
decision-makers and staff from the upper-class and top
brass of each member state. The member states are well
and equally represented, but we cannot speak of any
representation of citizens or civil society. Many groups
are thus excluded from influence, because people from
low-status social groups, from ethnic, political and
other minorities, or from NGOs cannot take part in the
decision-making process on very important political and
security affairs.
One long-standing central issue in the concept of
democratic control of the military for many decades turns
out to be irrelevant when analysing the multinational
alliance NATO: there is no basis for talking about any
praetorian inclinations whereby the military power would
get into over the political power. In Nato, political as
well as military power is distributed among many centres,
actually in each of the member states. There is thus no
unified political or military entity that can be called
NATO; it is basically a conglomeration of many political
and military interests stemming from the national
policies of 19 different countries. NATO´s political
and military decisions and actions are supposed to be the
final articulations of a complex process of discussions,
coordination and bargaining at a national level that
takes place in each member state. On the other hand, NATO
does not have at its disposal any military force of its
own, its military structure consisting of national
military units allocated to the Alliance. Soldiers do not
swear any oath to the NATO structure, but to their own
constitution and country. Any (non)institutional pressure
from NATO military circles on a national government in
order to influence domestic politics is therefore
unlikely. Neither political, nor military structures can
be suspected of being more loyal to such an ambiguous
entity as NATO than to their own governments and
countries.
In a narrow sense, civilian control of NATO is no
problem at all; but if we focus on the question of
democratic control, this turns out to be more neglected
and ambiguous, involving several questions. How
legitimate are the governments of NATO countries in
regard to their own citizens? How much support they can
get in certain situations where NATO interests get
priority over national ones? Differently put, do
collective or national interests come first? Can a
government get into conflict with its own public because
of supporting a decision made in favour of NATO security
policy, especially in matters of peace or war? Each
government derives its legitimacy from its own citizens
and is responsible before them (and the national
constitution). Disrespect for voices from its society
might lead to a deep domestic political crisis, widening
the gap between citizens and political power-holders.
NATO has no source of legitimacy of its own, except the
assumed legitimacy of the governments of the countries it
brings together; yet NATO legitimacy cannot be seen as
the aggregated legitimacy of the governments of each of
the 19 member states. The NATO structures are deeply
aware of this fact and are therefore in constant search
for their own source of legitimization of its existence
and its operations. Even if it is legitimate within the
realms of its member states, the question of its
legitimacy in the international arena is definitively
very moot.
Having in mind that a democratic model of civilian
control of the military at a national level always
includes so-called formal and informal aspects, it is not
difficult to pinpoint NATO´s main weakness in this
regard. As a multinational alliance it has succeeded in
providing a well-designed and defined network of
relations and control of its political over its military
"part". The question is how to provide transparency and
an informal control over NATO's decisions and actions
that would mainly stem from civil society or even the
so-called strategic community in NATO countries. Public
debate is possible only if NATO's relevance and
democratic character are not questioned. The best example
of this attitude was to be seen at the press conferences
held in Brussels during the Kosovo war. Public relations
appeared to be at an extremely low level of quality, even
showing great disrespect for the independent media.
Public support and dialogue on NATO policy is commanded
from a high level and established through the use of the
services of the so-called global media, which finally
take the form of propaganda and brainwashing instead of
an open debate and dialogue among all interested actors
from societies inside and outside NATO countries. What
primarily concerns NATO structures is not a lack of a
direct source of legitimization for its actions, but
providing wider public support. The first issue calls for
a much deeper re-consideration of NATO's raison
d'être, while the second one is much easier to
resolve. Public support can be easily achieved by a
well-prepared media campaign that turns the attention of
tax-payers away from a very concrete debate on the
allocation of the money they provide from their incomes,
and moves it in a more transcendental direction, such as
humanitarian concerns. What the NATO policy really need
in order to be efficient is enthusiastic people with a
highly emphasized sense of self-righteousness, not
ordinary citizens that are curious and suspicious.
What keeps the political and military elites of the
NATO countries together is a common interest in foreign
and defence policy realm. This does not mean the absence
of opposite interests or tensions over some specific
issues in the functioning of the Alliance and especially
in the decision-making process; on the contrary, they are
part of its everyday life. NATO brings together countries
that share basically identical ideological, political,
economic and security concerns. Perceiving their common
area as a security community, the member-states regard it
as inconceivable that even major disputes among them
would be settled by other than entirely peaceful means.
The military establishments are de facto deprived of much
of their classical function, to serve as deterrence and
defence capability against powerful potential enemies -
and the deprival became virtually complete after the end
of the Cold War. Redefining their major common interests
to cover a wider geo-political arena, "out of area", the
political and military elites found a new excellent basis
for mutual respect and subordination of NATO military
structure to the political one, at the same time as the
NATO countries rely heavily on the military structures
and their advice in their policies. This relationship
provides great opportunities for the military circles to
push for more financial support, technical research on
new weapons, secret experimental projects. However,
neither the political nor the military elites inside are
always united and compact, and in both segments the
influence of US politicies and military are more visible
than anyone else´s. During the Kosovo war, US
officials dominated in the political decision-making
process, the whole operation was led by American
generals, and after the war the European allies were
advised to take urgent measures for technical and
armament improvement of their armed forces, which had
manifested military disadvantages in regard to conducting
the air campaign.
While the military of the NATO states are subject of
democratic control within their national settings, the
moment they act as a part of NATO military force some
other principles appear to be more relevant. Civilian
control of the most powerful alliance the world has even
seen is not even perceived as a problem. It is considered
to be resolved. Yet the essential point is that it is no
longer a question that concerns NATO states only, but has
become an urgent issue more relevant at a regional and
international level, since NATO, while supposed to be
primarily a multinational alliance of (only) 19
countries, de facto behaves as a supranational
organization.
2. New Military Missions of NATO:
The Search for a Basis for Legitimacy and Reflections on
Civil-Military Relations
For the purposes of this paper, NATO is seen both as a
security community based on some political values and as
a security institution that is supposed to be a part of
the new European security architecture. These are in fact
the two predominant self-perceptions NATO has about its
own position and role in the world community. The NATO
intervention over Yugoslavia happened at the eve of its
50th anniversary, approximately a decade after the end of
the Cold War and the beginning of what was announced to
be a New World Order. Quite apart from international
concerns, from NATO's own point of view the age of 50
appeared to be a critical moment of self-evaluation of
its prior achievements and future prospects. The problem
was not as much the age of its institutional existence as
its urgent need to find a new raison d'être. Since
the dissolution of its main opponent, the Warsaw Treaty
Organization, NATO has been facing an identity problem.
Suddenly, NATO structures had to find answer to the
following children´s riddle: if there are two
military blocs confronting each other, and all at once
one of them disappear, how many blocs will remain? One
would have expected a very simple and reasonable answer:
there will be no need for any military alliance at all.
However, the Western countries, and especially the US and
NATO itself, opted for a different solution, follow the
simple arithmetical logic whereby two minus one is equal
to one. The motivation behind this argumentation is the
wish for prolongation of NATO's existence and
geo-political relevance in the post-Cold War period.
This premise leads to a crucial aspect of
civil-military relations - the question of the military
mission. At the moment, the main theoretical discourse is
really focused on the issue of new military missions,
which is equally interesting for the Western and the
post-communist countries. While the latter are more
concerned about the classical distinction between
external and internal military missions, the Western
countries make significant attempts to define the
military missions in a way they see as more appropriate
for the post-Cold War era. Dilemmas about the military's
missions is the most critical determinant of
civil-military relations in the Western developed
countries. Not surprisingly, there is a clear divergence
between the values and attitudes held by higher military
circles and those held by civilian elites (in particular
the influential elites in power), which is most visible
in the American society. Therefore, the most important
question in this context is who define the new security
agenda and military mission? Whose preferences will
prevail?
In this regard, skepticism is manifested from both
sides. For instance, the American military is concerned
about its expanded mission, because it is expected to
demonstrate its capability and effectiveness in
undertaking a wide range of non-combat operations at the
same time as it is obvious that it cannot solve all new
global and domestic problems. Its main concern is defence
spending, which has been going down significantly for
several years, as well as the force reductions after the
Cold War. The costs as well as the differing perceptions
of military and civilian leaders as to the importance of
non-combat missions cause increasing civil-military
tensions. Under such conditions of controversy, the
promotion of so-called humanitarian interventions and
conflict-management actions was seen as a "Solomonic"
solution acceptable to both elites.
According to some scholars, an external military
mission is a decisive factor that contribute to healthy
civil-military relations. The NATO countries can find no
threat within their own security community, nor are they
likely to be attacked from outside due to their military
superiority and the dependence of other countries on
Western economic aid. Under such circumstances, the
background of the so-called internationalization of the
Western military forces is to be found in their search
for new military missions that would give them a sense of
purpose in the post-Cold War environment. NATO has long
claimed that it is "out of area or out of business". The
Yugoslav turmoil offered several opportunities for NATO
to be engaged under the previous authorization of the UN
Security Council, but this clearly did not satisfy the
NATO structures. At the Washington summit in April, 1999,
NATO adopted its new Strategic Concept that introduces
new missions, for the undertaking of which a prior UN
Security Council authorization is desirable but not
always necessary. According to this document NATO has
become a self-appointed conflict-manager in situations
that NATO itself considers to be important.
A phenomenon characteristic for praetorian regimes in
Latin America is now visible on the international scene:
NATO has a self-image as the sole defender of the
so-called New World Order, which can be compared with a
situation where the military perceives itself as the sole
guarantor of the constitutional order and protector of
the nation. Its sense of self-righteousness leads to the
creation of an image of an "international community"
supported by NATO countries and in particular by the only
super-power in the world, the USA, about which Johan
Galtung states that " Their sense of exceptionalism,
being above ordinary states and nations, is attractive.
To break that many international law paragraphs can only
be justified if you are above the law, in a direct
relation to a God of the universe who `created America to
bring order to the world´ (Colin Powell) or, in more
secular terms, `a global nation with global
interests´ (Shalikashvili). Smaller states flock to
the Exceptional one to reflect, like the cold moon, some
of the light, not to mention the heat, burning the
non-believers. An old Western tradition."
For many years, NATO based its legitimacy on being a
defensive institution; but since the end of the Cold War
it has clearly been engaged in the attempt to cast for
itself a more pro-active role in international relations.
In the Kosovo case, NATO loudly used an ethically based
justification for its use of disproportionate and
overwhelming military power against a small country, but
it could not hide the lack of any defensive aspect of the
engagement in Yugoslavia. Balkanization, however, might
have been defined as a threat. This "threat" is used as
"a tool for legitimizing an international order without a
(named) enemy". In that sense, former US President Bush
defined NATO as an alliance not against any particular
country, but against the threat of uncertainty and
instability itself. In some sense, the threat of
Balkanization was used in the Kosovo crisis as an alibi
for the NATO military intervention against Yugoslavia. It
was a case of securitization applied on a wider
international scene. What in a context of a state system
Ole Weaver defines in terms of security as a speech act
("a problem is a security problem when it is defined so
by the power holders"), one can also discover in the
behaviour of the NATO elite. By identifying something as
an international security problem, NATO claims special
rights and engages in behaviour above the (international)
law. By applying a we-must-do-something approach and
heating up the public opinion, NATO entered the war in
Yugoslavia. Its selective approach to the humanitarian
crises in the world was equal to hypocrisy, supposed to
hide the simple truth that in Kosovo NATO was trying to
stay in business and to accomplish some specific
geo-strategic interests.
With the rhetorical overstatement that the military
campaign over FR Yugoslavia was motivated by pure
humanitarian reasons, NATO de facto behaved as a moral
crusader. NATO countries no doubt hold a set of identical
values (such as free market, the rule of law, human
rights and freedoms) which are also included into the
codex of the alliance they have established. Yet the
emphasis on the political dimension of their organization
should not lead us to underestimate the fact that behind
those universal values there is a huge military machinery
that is not only concerned about the protection and
defence of these values from intruders from inside or
outside, but also takes charge of of their promotion in
the systems of the "others" that have not yet appreciated
them sufficiently. Despite its claiming to be based on
some universal values, NATO is not and cannot be a
politically neutral alliance. Yet NATO presents its
ideology as being a moral absolute rather than a matter
of a political preference, especially vis-a-vis the
non-NATO part of the world.
By engagement in a military intervention without legal
authorization by the UN Security Council, NATO has
demonstrated that its troops may engage in destruction
and perhaps even commit war crimes in order "to safe
lives and enforce liberal democracy" (in Yugoslavia and
Kosovo alike). The military intervention was de facto a
war of conquest in the name of certain claimed universal
values. This moral crusade was explicated in this
way:
This is a just war, based not on any territorial
ambitions but on values....No longer is our existence as
states under threat. Now our actions are guided by a more
subtle blend of mutual self interest and moral purpose in
defending the values we cherish. In the end values and
interests merge. If we can establish and spread the
values of liberty, the rule of law, human rights and an
open society then that is in our national interests too.
The spread of our values makes us safer. As John Kennedy
put it "Freedom is indivisible and when one man is
enslaved who is free?" Similarly, President Clinton
called Kosovo a "big test of what we believe in" on the
Memorial Day at Arlington National Cemetery. Not just
leaders, but a majority in Western Europe believes that
the society in which they live is the only answer to the
absolute evil. Their leaders are ready to fight for this
belief, and the majority accepts this as legitimate
cause. Politicians used the phrase "we must stop this"
and the citizens were asked to trust their governments
and militaries to do what was right. NATO´s defence
mission has turned from an "enemy threat" towards "the
defence of values". By so doing, NATO identified itself
with the very values, the righteousness of the political
and military elites of the West became unquestionable,
and as a consequence they become "untouchable" by
international law even when they really violated it, both
as jus ad bellum and jus in bello. Unable to find any
other source of legitimization, NATO countries used
historical legitimizing myths by referring to Holocaust
(us-or-Auschwitz) as a substitute for traditional
legitimizations for the use of force by states. From
NATO's perspective, Kosovo was really a test - not so
much of moral beliefs as of its future missions. It was
to serve as a proof if its de facto (but not de jure)
shift of functions from a defensive (regional) alliance
into an all-purpose one that could be used for
interventions beyond NATO´s area of responsibility.
That the Kosovo intervention was not a pure coincidence
or an action provoked by the severity of how the Serb
forces maltreated the Kosovo Albanians in early 1999,
when NATO "had-to-do-something", is shown by a report
published by the president of North Atlantic Council in
October 1998. In his recommendations he anticipated not
only the Kosovo intervention, but the role of NATO in the
21st century:
"NATO's purpose is to defend values and interests, not
just territory...
NATO must preserve its freedom to act: The Allies must
always seek to act in unison, preferably with a mandate
from the United Nations or the Organization for Security
and Cooperation in Europe, the framework for collective
security in Europe. Even though all NATO member states
undoubtedly would prefer to act with such a mandate, they
must not limit themselves to acting only when such a
mandate can be agreed. All NATO actions should
nonetheless be based on appropriate legal authority."
These arguments are clearly included in the new
Strategic Concept that was adopted on the 50th
Anniversary summit in Washington on 23-24 April, 1999.
This document, as well as the NATO action in Kosovo
during and after the war, demontrate that the Alliance
does not respect international law or the present
international order where no institution but the UN
Security Council has the authority to mandate the use of
force in the international arena. In other words, NATO
behaves as an institution that stands outside the
international legal order, as a supranational alliance
that has usurped the right to represent the whole
"international community" in spite of having only 19
memmers with merely 15 per cent of the global population.
Lacking legitimacy and disrespecting the rule of
(international) law, NATO cannot be considered to be a
military or security alliance that is under democratic
control: neither by its member states, nor wider by the
other members of the world community.
3. NATO in a War Situation: the
Kosovo Lessons
The two and a half months of air campaign against
Yugoslavia ended without a clear answer to any one of the
serious question that had arisen before it started. Today
the world community faces a situation that can be named
after a futurist American movie on the world after the
nuclear catastrophe - "The Day After". The short question
"what after the Kosovo war?" implies a series of
sub-questions and dilemmas, the answers to which are
likely to illustrate the future of the world in the 21st
century. The two most urgent questions are the following
ones: How did NATO´s war contribute to conflict
resolution in Kosovo? What will international relations
and the world look like after this precedent? The
shortest answer to the first question can be seen in
daily reports from the Kosovo province demonstrating that
the conflict is far from being resolved and that Kosovo
and Serbia remain the most dangerous flash points in the
Balkans and in Europe.
The response to the second question calls for a more
analytical approach. The standard evaluation of this
event is that after March 24th, 1999, when the air
campaign over Yugoslavia began, the world will never be
the same. The decade that began with the actions in
Kuwait ended above the Yugoslav sky. Whether these events
will have a far-reaching significance for international
relations on a global scope is a matter for argument;
what is indisputable is that these two events signified
an interim phase that began with the Gulf War in 1991.
That war was expected to announce the beginning of the
New World Order as a new phase in the history of
humankind, a phase that allegedly ended the division of
the world into a West and an East bloc. During the decade
since then many changes occurred, including the
re-definition of the international position of some of
the great world powers and the creation of a new
Euro-Atlantic security architecture.
This period has brought especially great challenges
for the USA, seeing itself as being the "first, only, and
the last truly global superpower". It has been leading an
active campaign in order to prove its irreplaceable role
in the maintenance of world security and stability. It
was relatively easy to demonstrate its political/military
superiority, especially in the afterglow of the Gulf War
victory. By its leading role in the NATO military
intervention against Yugoslavia, USA showed the world
that they can "rule" in the air, and even the seas, by
using a high-tech military armament that the world has
never seen before. It is nevertheless clear that the USA
has drawn some new lessons from this military adventure.
There is a big difference between being the last truly
global superpower and being omnipotenct in the
international arena. Naked military force proved
unsuccessful in the action undertaken to wrest a
capitulation from a small and military inferior country
when the stake was perceived by it as one of fundamental
national interests. On the other hand, it is more than
certain that no military power in the world will retain
illusions that a war can be won merely by an air
campaign.
Several months after the end of NATO war, there
remains a dispute on how to qualify this campaign.
Scholars from different fields, let alone the
politicians, offer various argumentations for classifying
it as a war, a humanitarian intervention, a punitive
expedition against the Milosevic regime, or as a peace
enforcement operation. This issue will no doubt remain
open for some time, until the world gets enough courage
to say publicly what only some individuals have already
said - on 24 March 1999 NATO launched its first-ever war
of aggression against Yugoslavia. In addition to the
illegality of this action, which clearly indicates
immense problems in controlling the Atlantic Alliance in
the international arena as well as in civil-military
relations at a global level, another interesting aspect
deserves special attention. In spite of the official
paeans of victory, especially within NATO military
circles, there is no doubt that the Kosovo action was a
military debacle for the Alliance. The action
accomplished neither military, nor political goals.
Yugoslavia is now a severely devastated country, but its
military strength was not significantly weakened despite
the use of indiscriminate and prohibited weapons, such as
cluster and graphite bombs or depleted uranium shells,
and all the other high-tech means.
NATO military strategists will long analyze the
reasons for this inferior military effect of more than
two months of bombing. Whatever the final findings, one
obvious feature of this action was a specific
relationship between the political leadership and the
military officers. Politicians defined the military
mission in a vague way and limited the military options
for achieving it, ignoring military advice. There
appeared to be quite ambiguous relations between civilian
decision-makers and military leaders within the NATO
structures in face of the Kosovo war. The civilian
oversight of the military does not always imply strict
command and subordination of the military men to the
civilians. The political leaders of the NATO states began
an adventure without any clear political vision - and
even less of any military knowledge about how to wage and
win a war.
At the outset, they tried to justify the military
action by humanitarian reasons, naming it a humanitarian
intervention, which was supposed to be focused on human
rights and not on winning the war. After the first
indications that the war against Yugoslavia could not be
won by Blitzkrieg, the war got its own logic and the most
important thing became the defence of NATO's own
credibility. There is no single successful example in the
military history of the world of a war being won solely
from the air. The way in which the Kosovo war was
conducted made it clear that military advice had been
heavily neglected. For instance, the retired American
Army General Colin Powell criticized the Kosovo policy
led by his government. According to him, "one first has
to set clear political goals and then use overwhelming
force to achieve victory. Once you have clear political
objectives, then let your military people come forward
and give you a plan that will achieve those objectives in
as quick and decisive way as possible". The disputable
objectives of the military action inevitably aggrieved
and frustrated NATO military professionals, despite their
alleged support of the political leadership.
Any successful military operation inevitably needs
clear political directives, which is exactly what was
missing in Operation Allied Force. Post festum, the key
players have admitted that one of the biggest problems
within the Alliance was how to achieve a common approach
and how to maintain internal cohesion and solidarity. The
final decision to undertake the air campaign was a
compromise between "hawks" (demanding a full-scale
invasion) and "doves" (who wanted a pause in the
bombing). Clear military advice and prognoses from NATO's
military experts were ignored in the interest of
consensus. During the campaign, when several allies
(Italy, Germany, Greece) came close to trying to "pause"
the bombing, then, according to the Strobe Talbott, the
US Deputy Secretary of State, "America had to stop them
by fair means and foul".
All these affairs, sometimes having the character of
political intrigues among the NATO members, made very
difficult the position of the Supreme Commander of the
OAF, General Wesley Clark. As a military professional he
found himself faced with the demand to win the war,
hampered by tight and ambiguous political restrictions
and the rules of the military profession. Some NATO
military officers said that one could not fight wars by
committee. Shortly after the end of the campaign it was
announced that Gen. Clark would be replaced as NATO's
supreme commander three months in advance. This news was
followed by speculations that the decision came as a
punishment for his actions and behaviour in the Kosovo
conflict. It was said that Gen. Clark was criticized for
being "too political" because he wanted to "use his
authority to actually accomplish something". The problem
was, however, an exceptional one: he was the only
military commander in history that was supposed to forge
an efficient military strategy while taking orders from
19 separate governments. He consistently urged more
aggressive tactics, including the possibility of a ground
troops - which was the only rational military response to
the situation-, but was stopped, for various reasons, by
all his civilian superiors. He could not hide his
frustration and expressed publicly to the New York
magazine his dissatisfaction with what he called "the
only air campaign in history in which lovers strolled
down riverbanks in the gathering twilight ... to watch
the fireworks".
NATO´s intervention against Yugoslavia revealed
some interesting aspects of the internal relations
between the allies. Behind every legitimate action of the
Atlantic Alliance there is presumed to be consensus among
the NATO members. During the air campaign there were
several indications that the Alliance was not so
unanimous and united. Despite official statements, the
reality proved that the governments of several NATO
countries (Italy, Germany and Greece) faced deep internal
crises. The question posed by those situations is the
issue of the legitimacy of the military action from the
perspective of individual states and at the international
level. Whatever other changes occur, there is one
constant tendency in NATO history: the transatlantic
multilateral system is distinctly American. It presents
itself to the global public opinion as a "logic of
peace". According to some scholars, the application of
this "logic" involves the promotion of a "stable peace":
a system whereby member states address disputes without
resorting to extralegal or violent means. From this
premise they draw the conclusion that the outward
manifestations of the "stable peace" are the EU and NATO.
Moreover, in Huntington's view "a world without US
primacy will be a world with more violence and disorder
and less democracy and economic growth than a world where
the US continues to have more influence than any other
country in shaping global affairs". Having in mind the
current state of relations between the USA and its
European allies, the only way of establishing democratic
(international) control over NATO military and political
power is by controlling the USA, first within the
Alliance and then by the world community.
The essence of the principle of democratic control of
the military lies in the acknowledged necessity of
controlled and limited political power within the
boundaries set by law. The rule of law is therefore an
indispensable aspect of any model for democratic control
over the political as well as the military power in
society. In this regard, respecting of a set of rules,
norms and procedures within a regional security
organization is definitively not enough. In the Kosovo
case NATO has actually violated both its own Charter and
international law, primarily the UN Charter. The legal
basis lacking, this case of extensive use of force in
international relations cannot be justified by
humanitarian reasons alone. It is a precedent where a
group of nineteen countries "reached consensus to enforce
peace on warring parties in an intra-state conflict
outside NATO's zone of security, because allegedly it was
in the interest of the Alliance". NATO´s campaign
over Yugoslavia was a blatant violation of international
law, being merely "in the interest of Alliance".
NATO countries may have had very noble motives to
embark on the Kosovo adventure; they simply forgot that
the Alliance is only a regional security organization,
not a world saviour and policeman. They were entitled to
use their military capabilities only by prior
authorization from the UN Security Council, which lacked
in this case. Paradoxically, a UN Security Council
Resolution (1244) was required in order to implement a
"peace agreement" on Kosovo after the illegal military
campaign. The world is rapidly moving towards a
globalized society, but there must be respect for the
rule of law, or it will become a jungle where the only
thing that counts is might of the most powerful actors, a
world where the rule of naked military power supplants
the rule of law. "The fact that Milosevic's brutal ethnic
cleansing has earned his indictment by the Hague War
Crimes Tribunal does not diminish the seriousness of
NATO's violations of international law. How can NATO
encourage recognition of international law if the
Alliance itself views itself as above those
standards?"
Richard Haas, a top National Security Council official
in the Bush administration, states that "Kosovo is a
textbook lesson in how not to use military force". From a
military point of view, this is an undeniable truth, but
this attitude shows also something more important: this
world is still more ready to learn about winning wars and
the use of force than about how to achieve peace by
peaceful means. The first lesson on this path must
focused on establishing truly democratic control over
such a powerful alliance as NATO.
© TFF & Biljana
Vankovska 2000
Contact the author at biljanav@osi.net.mk
or bvankovska@hotmail.com
You are welcome to reprint, copy, archive, quote or
re-post this item, but please retain the source.
Tell a friend about this article
Send to:
From:
Message and your name
|