Date: Tuesday, April 20, 1999 4:27 PM
Subject: Questions/Thoughts


Hi Vladimir,

> But under the regulations of the very same
>Geneva convention we are talking about, aggression on a sovereign state
>is a _criminal act_, and it is widely known that one criminal act (bad
>things that might be happening in Kosovo) never justifies another
>criminal act (NATO aggression). Should highest authorities in NATO and
>allied countries be tried, then?

I went and looked up the Geneva Convention (and from the sections I could
find) it doesn't have anything about aggression vs. a sovereign state. It
has some very telling statements about attacks vs. civilians that are worth
reading (Part IV article 51- 57) http://deoxy.org/wc/wc-proto.htm in light
of the questions of the pilot who bombed the civilian convoy, his
responsibility and that of his superiors.

This does dodge the questions, which are 1) When does a country or
collection of countries have the right to invade a sovereign state? 2) Does
this apply to Serbia?
I don't claim to be even close to having an answer. I did a little looking
and I found that the U.N. doesn't have an answer either here is their
commentary: (Taken from a speech given by the Deputy Secretary General.
Sorry it's long it's taken from a very long and generally very boring
speech.)


---------------------------------
30 Mar 1999

"But if there is to be intervention, who is to do it? More important still,
who is to decide when it should be done? The obvious answer is the Security
Council, to which the Charter clearly assigns the primary responsibility for
maintaining international peace and security. But the Council itself at
present seems unclear, or divided, about the extent of its powers and
responsibilities when faced with an intra-State conflict.

In the case of the Kosovo conflict, which we are now witnessing, there were
very strong arguments for intervention, but no consensus among the permanent
members of the Council. Given that each of them has a veto, that meant it
was impossible for the Council to act. That in turn has led some Member
States to argue, at least implicitly, that in cases of grave humanitarian
emergency there is a higher law giving them not only a right but a duty to
intervene, without waiting for authorization by the Council. In other words,
they argue that the Charter cannot, or should not, be construed as
preventing them from doing what's right.

Mentalities have evolved since 1945, to the point where such concepts as
State sovereignty and the power of veto seem anachronistic to some, while to
others they remain the keystone of international order. This week there was
a lot of international support for the effort to save Kosovo's Albanian
population from mass killing and mass displacement. And yet all of us can
see the danger of treating international law à la carte. Can we really
afford to let each State or group of States be the judge of its own right,
or duty, to intervene in another's internal conflict?

Most of us would prefer, I think, to see such decisions taken collectively,
by an international institution whose authority is generally respected. And
most of us would wish to see the Security Council as such a body.

But there is a further problem. Even when the members of the Council agree
on what they want to do, they seem to have increasing difficulty in imposing
respect for their decisions on the rest of the world. Its appeals are too
often ignored and its threats seem to have limited impact on parties intent
on waging war. Arms embargoes, a standard Security Council tool, are
shamelessly flouted as weapons pour into conflict zones, apparently
unrestrained.

During this decade, economic sanctions, under Article 41 of the Charter,
have become the Council's weapon of choice. But in the last year or two we
have seen an increasingly open and widespread questioning of the Council's
moral right to impose such sanctions, which are perceived as unfairly
penalizing the people of the targeted States, yet ineffective in altering
their government's behaviour. Particularly troubling was the decision taken
last year by the Organization of African Unity that its members should no
longer enforce the sanctions imposed by the Council on Libya. If the Council
no longer commands world respect, and comes to be seen as irrelevant or
marginalized, we shall all find ourselves living in a more dangerous world.
How can it rebuild its authority?

Until the nations of this world, and especially the most powerful among
them, show that they have the political will to take collective action in
the global interest, rather than concerning themselves only with their own
narrow self-interest and their immediate neighbourhoods, the rule of
international law is sure to remain very imperfect, at best.

Yet if States do not live by international law, they are condemned to live
by the law of the jungle. That cannot be in the interest of even the
greatest Power on earth -- for all power has its limits, both in time and in
space. Least of all, I submit, can it be in the interest of a great
democracy, which in its domestic arrangements is surely the most firmly
attached to the rule of law of all Powers known to history.

The predominant influence of such a great democracy in today's international
order should be seen as a great chance for humanity, and for the American
people themselves, to establish the rule of law on a global scale. Ladies
and gentlemen, it will be tragic indeed if the chance is not seized. "
----------------------------



>Or, a bit more down-to-earth topic: who is going to pay for all the
>damage done in these raids? Are you Americans going to rebuild all the
>things you have destroyed, or are you going to leave ten million people
>in Serbia to live miserably because oil refineries, power plants,
>bridges, factories and so on are all destroyed? Is it still not a war
>against Serbian nation, but against evil tyrant?

My guess is yes, the American people/EU will pay to rebuild all the things
that we have destroyed. We have a strong historical precedent for it.

A couple of questions for you. What do you think about, what is going on
(politically) in Montenegro? What do you think will happen?

These letters are up online:

www.photobooks.com/~j/vladimir/

Let me know what you think,

-Jay