To: Kosovo Talk
From: Phyllis Bennis
Subject: Question 2 This is perhaps the most difficult question, because it forces us to distinguish between the role we would like to imagine the U.S. playing in a world where the government was accountable to OUR (broadly defined) democratic agenda, and the role we think the U.S. should play given the reality of today's unipolar world.
I think the balance lies in multilateralism. In terms of the pressures we bring to bear on the U.S. government, we should be acknowledging the responsibilities or duties that arise from
- Being a nation of human beings like human beings anywhere, concerned about egregious human-rights violations, genocide, ethnic cleansing -- or whatever the euphemism du jour -- anywhere in the world.
- Being the wealthiest, strongest, most powerful nation on Earth.
The model of the genocide convention is a useful one: asserting that once a determination is made that genocide is threatened or underway, there is an obligation to act to stop it. What is not spelled out (along with identifying WHO is empowered to determine what constitutes genocide in a given scenario) is the question of WHAT must be done. Certainly the obligation cannot legally (let alone morally) be met by actions known or likely to exacerbate the situation for the victims of the genocide.
But given the propensity of the U.S. to act only for the narrowest, financially and/or politically driven motives, rather than for humanitarian reasons, along with its unwillingness (and sometimes inability) to determine what would actually help in a given situation, we should be very clear that the acknowledgement of U.S.-specific responsibility does NOT mean the right of U.S.-specific or U.S.-determined responses. In other words, while the U.S. has a particular responsibility -- because of its power in the world -- to respond to massive human-rights abuses or genocide, it also has the responsibility NOT to act alone in figuring out its response.
So what the U.S. SHOULD do is use its financial, technical, and political resources to strengthen key multilateral agencies -- most notably the U.N. -- that should be the lead actors in responding to international humanitarian crises. That means
- Pay its full complement of regular, peacekeeping, and voluntary U.N. dues in full and on time in the future. (It's an interesting comparison between the amount of U.S. arrears in peacekeeping dues and what the Pentagon is spending on bombing Kosovo.)
- Work to strengthen U.N. humanitarian and refugee-protection agencies, while abjuring unilateral domination over them, and encourage multilateral democracy while using U.S. power to shore them up.
- Provide political and financial support for new U.N. efforts toward preventive diplomacy -- again using U.S. money and expertise, but allowing democratic control over decision-making.
This all seems unrealistic in the morass of today's political culture, but at some point we have to at least START looking toward the future.
Two other related questions emerge: double standards and the "CNN factor." The failure of the U.S. to act, or to allow the U.N. to act (either by standing back, as in Sierra Leone, or by actively withdrawing existing agencies positioned for possible assistance, as in Rwanda), remains an ongoing horror of U.S. policy. This is true regardless of the level of U.S. responsibility (there is almost always at least SOME responsibility) for fomenting or setting in motion the original crisis. Certainly the saturation of television images of the victims of humanitarian disasters plays a crucial role in forcing Washington to act. If CNN correspondent Christiane Amanpour had been in Kigali instead of Sarajevo in 1994, it might have been more difficult for the U.S. to strong-arm the Security Council into withdrawing the already-stretched, but existing, U.N. protection force. The Rwandan genocide just might have been mitigated, if not averted; of course, the scenario in Bosnia might have changed as well, but for the better or the worse?
But for progressive critics of the U.S., the question remains one of how to respond to double standards. If the U.S. refused to respond to genocide in Rwanda, despite our efforts (and yes there was some, though insufficient, political mobilization demanding that Washington allow the U.N. peacekeepers to remain, and to expand their numbers), does that mean we should not attempt to force the U.S. to support multilateral actions to prevent humanitarian catastrophe in Kosovo? I don't think so. I think we have to fight EVERY time -- as internationalists who happen to live in the country most responsible over the last half-century for international crises -- for an appropriate response, one that will help stop, rather than exacerbate, the latest edition.
The fact that the U.S. and its European allies refused to prevent -- and even refused to acknowledge -- the expulsion of 750,000 Palestinians from Palestine in 1948, and another 250,000 in 1967, must continually be a wellspring of our work for Palestinian national rights. It should not lead us to ignore -- or allow the U.S. to exacerbate -- the expulsion of 300,000 or so Albanian Kosovars from their homeland decades later. Intervention in international crises demands multilateral response, not isolationism.
