folks,
I thought this might be an interesting piece. To intervene or to let 'them' fight to the end!!!! Hmmm.
FROM THE ECONOMIST (July 31st-Aug. 6th)
OTHER PEOPLE'S WARS ON THE face of it, this has been a good season for peace, and a good one for intervention. Over the past few weeks,
agreements have been reached to end three of Africa*s nastiest wars*in Congo, in Sierra Leone and between Ethiopia and Eritrea. Sense and restraint have prevailed,
with some help from outsiders, in the dispute between
India and Pakistan over Kashmir. And in Kosovo the West
has put a stop to Serb ethnic cleansing. All of a sudden the
world looks quieter. Those who have worked to end the
violence*whether by diplomatic means, as in Kashmir,
Congo, Ethiopia and Eritrea, or by military intervention, as
in Kosovo and Sierra Leone*may feel encouraged. Blessed are the peace-makers. Or are they? Confounded yes, saintly no, some
would say. The peace they bring is usually a false peace*a temporary affair that reverts to violence when the
mediators turn away. In Congo, the fighting has never stopped, however many bits of paper may have been signed. It would be
little surprise if Ethiopia and Eritrea resumed their pointless war, and even less if Sierra Leone slipped back into primordial conflict. No one should imagine that Pakistan and India have settled
their long-running dispute over Kashmir; their next exchange could come at any time, and involve nuclear bombs.
As for Kosovo, the *peace* that NATO has secured there is still punctuated by massacres*of Serbs now, not Albanians*and
even optimists admit that full-scale blood-letting will resume unless outside troops keep the combatants apart, certainly for years, maybe for decades. These days, when few wars have the potential, if left unchecked, to lead to the sort of East-West clash that could
have destroyed the world, would it not be better to let the belligerents fight to the finish, thus settling their dispute once and for all?
An eloquent case for this is made in the current issue of Foreign Affairs by Edward Luttwak, of the Center for Strategic and
International Studies in Washington. Mr Luttwak takes no delight in war. On the contrary, his concern is to promote peace. But too often, he argues, peace-makers, by imposing ceasefires and other agreements (such as the Dayton accords for Bosnia), *artificially freeze
conflict and perpetuate a state of war indefinitely by shielding the weaker side from the consequences of refusing to make concessions for peace.* America, he says, should oppose multilateral interventions
instead of leading them. And do-gooders, whether in UN agencies or in
unrelated non-governmental outfits, should stay away: by impeding the progress of the stronger side towards a decisive victory, they frustrate *the sole useful function* of wars*to bring peace*and turn escaping civilians into lifelong refugees. Best to leave minor wars
to burn themselves out.
It is a beguiling argument, but wrong. The first problem is in recognising a minor war. A cross-strait argument between China and
Taiwan, that little local difficulty in Kashmir, a trifling incursion by North Korea into South Korea*s waters*should all these be left to take their natural course? Perhaps these examples are unfair. So how about former Yugoslavia? Perhaps, as Mr Luttwak seems to think, all its vile wars would indeed have ended by now had the combatants been left to fight to the finish, as Nigeria*s were in the Biafran war of
1967-70. Yet fully 1m people died in that war. Awful as the death toll has been in the Balkans in the 1990s, it has not reached even
120,000. Was Biafra*s decisive defeat really a better outcome?
Moreover, Nigeria*s civil war was not the only one where (most) outsiders sat on their hands. Foreigners have stayed well away
from Colombia*s continuing fratricide, whose origins can be traced back through la Violencia of 1948-58 (about 200,000 dead) to unmediated wars a century ago. In Rwanda in 1994, the world watched while the Hutu majority slaughtered some 700,000 Tutsis. But that
genocide did not end the killing*any more than Pol Pot*s ended it in Cambodia. And supposing it had, would the world really be a
better place? A fight to the finish may sometimes produce peace, but it will often be an unjust peace (and the first world war, the *war to end all wars*, showed what that can lead to). A just
intervention, by contrast, if it produces a less unfair outcome, may, just may, produce a lasting settlement. Bitter ends breed bitter starts So does the future look bright for intervention?
As our survey argues, the post-communist, post-Kosovo world now taking
shape will not be an end-of-history sort of place in which all good
democrats can put their feet up. It will be a world of clashing interests and outrageous atrocities, in which democrats
will have to get involved not merely if they wish to
defend their interests, but also if they wish to sleep easy at night and look themselves in the eye in the mirror come the morning. It is far from clear, though, that Kosovo has prepared the way
for more frequent western intervention. The Kosovo war was not fought for conventional reasons of national interest, nor
yet was it quite the humanitarian venture that western leaders proclaimed it to be. Rather it was a war they stumbled into by
miscalculation when their diplomacy failed; it then became not just a war to end Serb injustice, but also a war to preserve NATO*s credibility. Next time, it must
be hoped, the West will either be less free with its threats of force, or make sure it can live up to them. But, for a
while at least, an overstretched NATO will be in no position to undertake more interventions of the Balkan kind.
That is a pity. Pace Mr Luttwak, the world will continue to need the busybodying of outsiders. Armed intervention by the West will
necessarily be rare*undertaken only when the case for it is strong, when the risks are limited (but God forbid that this should mean, as in Kosovo, no risk of allied casualties), and when it can be
carried out successfully. Other, regional or UN,peacekeepers will often have to step in. And prevention will always be a better
option if it can be achieved. But the need for intervention, and for peace-making in general, will not go away. Better to
strive for a less violent world and fail, than to stand back and watch the killing continue.
LINKS
Edward Luttwak*s article, *Give War A
Chance*, is available from Foreign
Affairs. The Center for Strategic and
International Studies analyses
international security issues. The War, Peace and
Security server maintains a
database of contemporary conflicts. Details of
the current activities of the
United Nations and NATO can be found at their
sites.
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