From Free Life, Issue 30, May 1999
ISSN: 0260 5112

Further Thoughts on the Serbian War
Nicholas Dykes


Just before the war over Kossovo broke out, The Cato Institute, a libertarian think tank in Washington DC, posted an article on its website entitled "Bill Clinton, Aggressor" by Ted Galen Carpenter, Cato's Vice President for Defence and Foreign Policy Studies and the author or editor of 10 books on international affairs.  Mr Carpenter wrote:
 

 There are some occasions when one should not mince words, and the spectacle of US-led air strikes on Serbia is one. Put bluntly, if President Clinton orders an assault on Serbia, the United States will be guilty of committing a flagrant, shameful act of aggression. US forces will be attacking a country that has not attacked the United States, a US ally, or even a neighbouring state. That is the very definition of an aggressor.
 Belgrade is guilty of nothing except attempting to put down a secessionist rebellion in one of its own provinces. Nearly a dozen other countries have done the same thing in this decade alone - often with far greater bloodshed. Russia's war in Chechnya, Sri Lanka's conflict with Tamil rebels and Turkey's suppression of the Kurds are merely a few examples.... A country cannot commit aggression in its own territory any more than a person can commit self-robbery.
Mr Carpenter went on to say much more in the same vein.  But while his remarks no doubt made valid points about realpolitik, I found his views, coming from an American, quite peculiar. I couldn't help reflecting, for example, that King George III could have said quite truthfully in 1776 that he was merely putting down a secessionist rebellion in some of his own provinces. The clear implication of Mr Carpenter's statement seems to be that the American Revolution was illegitimate.

I thought, too, of New York's famous Statue of Liberty.  That was erected in 1876, I believe, partly in memory of military aid given to the Thirteen Colonies by France, one of the most powerful nations in the world at the time of the colonists' secessionist rebellion.  On Mr Carpenter's view, the statue must be a monument to France's "flagrant, shameful act of aggression".

I also immediately remembered two earlier protests by US libertarians: one when the province of Katanga sought to secede from the Congo, and its secessionist rebellion was put down with help from the United Nations; the other when England and Russia co-operated to help a military dictator put down a secessionist rebellion in the Nigerian province of Biafra.  On Mr Carpenter's view, these libertarian protests were totally out of order.

Contemporary US libertarian protests over Kossovo, posted on the Internet, have referred to the vast cost in stolen money, or asked "Why didn't we simply send in James Bond, or his equivalent?"  Good points.  But I think the worst immorality in Kossovo lies in the impracticality of the operation.

I have always thought that one of most profound insights of the Russian-American philosopher-novelist Ayn Rand, was that the moral and the practical are the same thing.  And what has happened in Kossovo is that NATO's "help" has led to the slaughter of untold Kossovars, while in Serbia, the population which a year ago was protesting in the streets against Mr Milosevic, is now dancing in the streets in his favour.

NATO's clumsy policy of force, like virtually all government action, has had the reverse effect of the one intended.  The immorality, of course, centres on the fact that the Serbian reactions were entirely predictable.