Setting Precedent - Just Or Ill-Founded?

With peace apparently at hand closer in Kosovo, it’s time to ask a key question. What precedents have been set, and what lessons have been learned, from 11 weeks of war in the Balkans? Today, we offer two contrasting answers.

Steve: Give Clinton credit. Not exactly known for steadfastness and clarity, he has taken a position and stuck to it, even in the face of eroding public support. This is one of the few times in his presidency that he has chosen principle over popularity.

Yes, he miscalculated badly, thinking that Serb leader Slobodan Milosevic would cave in at the first sound of NATO bombs. But once the alliance was committed to battle, it had no alternative but victory. And Republicans who now begrudge Clinton his triumph, who seem almost sorry that their own country won, are making a big mistake.

Still and all, Clinton and his allies have set a precedent that could be deeply troubling in the future. For the first time, NATO has attacked a sovereign country on behalf of an ethnic minority living within that country.

In effect, NATO has declared that sovereignty is an outmoded concept, that the forces of light and justice have the right to fight a war for moral reasons, even when their own vital national interests are not at stake.

But how would this principle really work? What about the Chechnians and a dozen other ethnic factions seeking more autonomy from Moscow? Is the Western alliance now going to help Tibetans separate from China? Quebecois from Canada? Basques from Spain? Scots from Great Britain? Indian tribes from Mexico?

Then take Turkey, a NATO member, where a vast Kurdish minority has been battling the central government for years. Instead of helping the Kurds, as they did the Kosovars, the alliance has done exactly the opposite, encouraging Ankara to repress its own minority.

And how would Americans feel if other countries turned the principle back on us and defended the territorial claims of native peoples in Oklahoma, say, or Montana? What if foreigners argued that the high percentage of minority inmates on death row demonstrates a violation of international moral norms?

There is an old adage that hard cases make bad law - and Kosovo is a hard case, because Milosevic is so evil and his crimes so ruthless. I’m glad the Serbs have been defeated. I hope Milosevic is deposed soon. I think Clinton and NATO deserve a sizable share of credit. But the allies should think long and hard before enunciating a new principle that justifies moral intervention at other times, in other places.

Cokie: Nothing gets my goat more than someone telling me, “If I do it for you, I have to do it for everyone.” Wrong. We are intelligent beings who can make judgments. We don’t have to lay down hard and fast principles. We can look at each situation on its own merits and make common-sense decisions.

There’s a vast difference between the longings of some ethnic minorities for independence and the brutal “ethnic cleansing” practiced by Slobodan Milosevic and his paid henchmen in the Serbian army. The International War Crimes Tribunal has made that abundantly clear by its indictments of the Yugoslav head of state and many of his military men. That court, by its very existence, rejects the proposition that sovereignty is sovereign. It reaches across national lines in an effort to exact justice no matter what the law of a given land might be.

What was the alternative to militarily taking on the murderous Milosevic? Sanctions didn’t work, the indictments of his allies failed to faze him, repeated attempts at negotiated agreements simply gave him time to more completely carry out his campaign of terror. We could have done nothing, as we have done nothing in many other places. In some of those places, as in the Sudan, I think we should have intervened to halt the horror. But that’s not the relevant issue here.

What is relevant is only this case. Over the years we witnessed Milosevic’s single-minded power grab - Slovenia, Croatia, Bosnia, Kosovo - and we had the means to stop it. Here we had built the most effective military alliance in history with two goals in mind: stopping Soviet aggression and creating a Europe whole and free. Only the bully in the Balkans was standing in the way of declaring success on both fronts. Could it have possibly been the right thing to stand back and let him continue his crimes against humanity because the humans happened to live inside the boundary lines of Yugoslavia?

As a good Catholic girl, I grew up learning about the principle of a just war - the concept, contrary to pacifist belief, that some wars are morally justifiable. From the time St. Augustine formulated the principle, kings and cardinals and caliphs have used it to rationalize their bloody quests for territory, for riches, for religious domination. Even when the warring nations have a good case, as the Allies did in World War II, the justice of the cause usually takes a back seat to the vital national interests at stake. This war was different. And it was right for this time in that place.