By Jan Oberg
TFF PressInfo 73 – July 14, 1999
“Now is the time to begin to reflect on what actually happened this spring in Kosovo and, thus, to the world. I believe that historians will agree that from March 24, 1999 international politics and relations as well as the global system has changed in a deep sense,” says TFF director Jan Oberg.
“Many consider NATO’s intervention a moral success, a just war, a victory for democratic values.
But I believe we need to look at it from a variety of angles to a) understand it more deeply and b) to work out ideas, concepts and policies so that anything similar will never happen again elsewhere. It is indeed peculiar that this war – conducted from a moral high ground and with the aim to promote the finest ideals of Western culture – has hardly been evaluated in just such terms. I am not a philosopher of ethics, but here are some points you may use in your own thinking about contemporary history and – if it exists – ‘moral foreign policy.’
• A high-ideals, low-risk war
The West has man and noble ideals. But when it comes to risking Western lives for them, they crumble. Both Albanians and Serbs have proved themselves willing to pay a price for what they believe in.
• David and Goliath
World history’s most powerful alliance attacks a small state, devastates it with 1100 planes during 79 days. NATO could do anything in Yugoslavia, but Yugoslavia had no capacity to hurt any NATO country. Whatever propensity to feel sympathy for David there may be in Christian values, it didn’t surface. Explanation? Ten years of demonization. In addition, cruise missiles are low-cost and promise destruction on the enemy’s territory without human or material costs on our side. Behind NATO’s boasting of success and determination hides a high-tech-based cowardice second to none. [Read more…]
Yugoslavia - What Should Have Been Done? 