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INKYTEXT 286 Part I
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THE WAR: WEEK 3
Issue No 286 Monday 12 April 1999
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Editorial correspondence should be sent to InkyText@lancaster.ac.uk
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AGENDA
Minutes, Amendments, Matters arising
1. Editorial: "Sentimental Twaddle"
2. News: Birth, Auditing, CETAD, Tony Cann, Empty shops, Conference Centre.
3. "The Current Bombings: Behind The Rhetoric" by Professor Noam Chomsky
(edited reprint with acknowledgments to Znet and Zmag.)
PART II FOLLOWS SHORTLY
and contains
4. Small Ads: Illustrators wanted, Staff visiting Oz, Childrens'
paraphernalia, Springsteen tickets, Marathon sponsorship, Introduction
to rowing, Spotlight Club, House to rent.
5. Readers' Letters: Kosovo, Teaching and Learning, Search engines,
Ollie Burton.
MINUTES, AMENDMENTS, MATTERS ARISING
------------------------------------
NEW VIRUSES: There have been eight Melissa type viruses reported on
the Internet over Easter. Here is the link to the new Dr. Solomons
Extra.drv
http://www.lancs.ac.uk/users/isstrain/a-virus/extra.htm
W97M/melissa is known to have arrived on campus but has been stopped
(this time). Feedback to Dave Bleasdale at ISS please.
THE NEW UNIVERSITY SECRETARY has become a subscriber to InkyText.
1. EDITORIAL: "SENTIMENTAL TWADDLE"
-----------------------------------
"It frankly isn't helpful to speculate about what might or might not
happen in the months ahead". So the Prime Minister told David Dimbleby
on the 9 o'clock news last Thursday.
Not helpful to him perhaps, but surely essential to any who wish to
evaluate the quality, the morality or merely the sanity of our
so-called 'strategy'. Or who simply want to plan their summer holidays.
True, no one 'knows' what is going to happen. To claim that one did
would be to accept a sense of Greek or presbyterian fatalism, to
neither of which Mr Blair would pretend, not even when he claims "we
had no alernative".
Perhaps 'Love your neighbour or I'll bomb you' is an example of what
is meant by 'muscular Christianity'. Alas, bombing people who don't
bomb you back certainly seems to be acceptable to a majority of our
citizens, Christian or not, at least when they believe such violence to
have a virtuous motivation. It is however unlikely to endear one or
one's cause to those who are being bombed. Ask your friends in Ulster.
This should give pause for thought to anyone serious about 'raising
educational standards' (which, alas, means to people outside the
cabinet and current educational establishment). When even leading
citizens haven't learned that bombing is wrong, then clearly we haven't
taught them much worth knowing.
True, the cruelty of the Serbian military shows they have even more to
learn.... All we are currently teaching _them_, however, is that might
is right... something which (a) they already believe and (b) is surely
not a doctrine we wish to uphold.
Mr Blair's insistent sub-Churchillian rhetoric claims that "we" have
the iron resolve to go on bombing "for as long as it takes". Such
patronising comment ignores economic, geo-political and psychological
realites as much as it obscures thought.
To what does that 'it' refer? Destroying the Serbian economy may
eventually change policies in Belgrade but most certainly not attitudes
across Serbia and its neighbours. The idea of partition or an
'independent' Kosovo was rejected by his own strategists right up to
last week. It is a dangerous delusion that could be sustained only by a
generation of occupying forces and no doubt subsequent generations of
martyrdom and unrest. Even restoring displaced persons to homes now
destroyed and families martyred is scarcely an end in itself.
Views will no doubt change further with the first act of terrorism or
martyrdom, be it Serbian, Albian or other, in a NATO capital. Are our
strategists discounting this, or are they already determined to present
it as the "terrible price we have to pay for {freedom/justice/peace/
democracy/insert_your favourite abstraction or age-old cliche}?
Giraudoux's undervalued but perennially pertinent inter-war satire
'The Trojan War will not now take place' shows with gently irony how
easily, quickly and perhaps inevitably our private gods, pride and the
need to save face, transform the initial "causes" of conflict. Even
allies and enemies can seamlessly swap roles. It's already happening in
Greece and Macedonia.
"Sentimental twaddle" was how Ron Davies MP, former Welsh Secretary,
described on Any Questions the Pope's call for an Easter truce, a
phrase one hopes his more devout electors will not forget. Others might
feel those terms a better description of the aptly acronymed OAF
(Operation Allied Force). It was born from allegedly humanitiarian
motives yet can scarcely be shown to have prevented Serbian forces from
murdering and expelling as many as they wished.
"Men never do evil so completely and cheerfully as when they do it
from mistaken conviction", wrote Blaise Pascal. It applies to all
sides.
Even the 6.5 million raised by well-meant public donations represents
far far less than the cost of Cruise missiles used on the first night
of bombing alone. Curiously though finance for once does not seem to be
an obstacle and Treasury spokespeople bide uncommonly silent.
That leaves, as guides to the future, the gnostic fans of Nostradamus,
who are already rampaging through his cryptic but jaw-dropping verses
afresh, especially those long assumed to relate to the seventh month of
1999, the end of this millennium, the great eclipse, Macedonia, Illyria
and neighbouring areas. Even we sceptics end up admiring the sage's
puissant Renaissance understanding of geographic determinism and
history's cyclical character.... And if, as forecast 400 odd years ago,
the Pope or Mr Yeltsin, or both, should die around July... you might be
tempted to buy a copy yourself. You first read it here :-)
Meanwhile, if you were thinking of a trip to Greece, Turkey, the Black
Sea or the Adriatic this summer, it might be an idea to delay your
booking... just for the moment. Or to check the small print in your
travel insurance.
2. NEWS
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EVERY BEST WISH to Dr Francesca Gibson (Italian Studies), who has
retired for health reasons and is currently in hospital.
BEST WISHES TO ALLYSON FIDDLER (German) whose daughter, Kirsty, was
born in Westmorland General Hospital, Kendal yesterday.
UMAG MET ON 24 MARCH. It amended the report of its previous meeting by
adding the intention to include a section in the corporate plan on
administration and management
IELE: John McGovern introduced a report on the financial position of
IELE following the decision of the Malaysian government to cancel
UK-based ELT programmes, the ending of a main Japanese government
training programme and significantly reduced recruitment on other
courses of students from these and other Asian countries. Without
reduction in expenditures, IELE was forecast to move from a surplus of
income over expenditure in 1997/98 of 115k, to a deficit of 135k in
1999/00 and 159k in 2000/01.
UMAG agreed that the VC would appoint a group headed by a PVC to
extend the internal review of options considered to date by the
Director and staff of IELE to assess whether there are opportunities to
help within a wider University perspective. This group will report
before the end of April, and its findings will be made available to
staff and unions.
MR SEAN RYAN OF UNIAC (you remember: the external Internal Auditors)
introduced the report he had already presented to the Audit Committee.
He stressed, with admirable honesty, that, according to national
benchmarking, Lancaster was currently over-audited with a proposed
schedule of ca 320 days compared with ca 180 days for comparable
universities. This has cost implications for the budget for
administration.
He also outlined the intention of UNIAC to continue to develop audits
with a high level of staff participation and to involve "line
management" in agreeing where there are problems and how solutions are
to be achieved. He felt that Audit should be seen to reassure
management and staff that mechanisms and procedures are a) properly in
place and b) working. He believes a "culture shift" is still necessary
to remove the old image of the 'inspector calls' and replace it with an
activity which yields and is seen to yield genuine benefits.
CETAD: UMAG also agreed to recommend (to APC) that CETAD should be
added to the new Board for continuing professional development and
training along with Management Development Division and the
Professional Development Unit.
[NOTE: outsiders might feel a priori that there is scope for some
rationalisation here. (Ed.)]
MR TONY CANN, chair of the University Finance Committee and a trustee
of the Ruskin Foundation, was listed in the Sunday Times magazine
yesterday as 600th richest in the land (equal!), with a worth estimated
at 40 million. The report read: "A Lancashire industrialist, Cann sold
his Presspart and Decopart packaging firms to Rockware in 1988 for
shares. Rockware was taken over in 1991, valuing his stake at 20m. We
have now found other interests, such as a 20m hardware wholesaler,
Swiss Cutlery (UK). (1998: 22m, 862nd)"
EMPTY SHOPS: Both the former Robinson's Gift Shop on the corner of the
Spine and the second Student Bookshops' premises in the 'old Spar' on
the south spine have both been empty for a year. Not only is this
losing potential income, but their neglected and run-down appearance is
causing adverse comment among visiting students and parents.
Their location is too prominent for this to be healthy. There was much
talk of possible tenants but even this seems to have evaporated.
Catering were rumoured to be producing a business plan for one site but
no news of how long a decision will take. If nowt else, perhaps visual
arts could cover the windows with posters of the kind judged to be good
PR on building sites.
CONFERENCE CENTRE: Increasing comment on the low level of use of the
new "Conference Centre" (formerly Lonsdale-Bowland joint refectories)
and the number of its bookings that are internal. You recall that this
initiative was approved by APC without most of its members realising
they had done so. Several can now be heard referring to it as doomed to
be a 'white elephant', if only because during term-time it can
accommodate only day visitors or hotel residents. The charges are said
not to be noticeably lower than more lavish establishments elsewhere.
At the least it should surely be made available to internal users for
internal academic purposes (i.e. teaching students) at no charge.
[NOTE: full building and refurbishing costs haven't been widely
publicised but are estimated to have been of the order of 280K. (Ed.)]
NICK BARDSLEY, regular correspondent and former deputy SCAN editor,
takes up a London publishing post with Key Note later this month, but
assures us he he hopes to attend assiduously to his Court duties during
the next three years.
3. "THE CURRENT BOMBINGS: BEHIND THE RHETORIC" by Noam Chomsky
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[Professor Chomsky of MIT, a giant among linguistic theoreticians of
his or any other generation, is a prominent radical thinker and critic
of American policies. He is a regular contributor to Zmag and its
associated online site Znet, which also maintains a Chomsky archive.
Zmag is the leading US independent magazine for people concerned with
social change. An edited version of an article that first appeared in
Zmag is printed below with acknowledgments to Zmag.
(http://www.Zmag.org./) (Ed.)]
There are two fundamental issues:
(1) What are the accepted and applicable "rules of world order"?
(2) How do these or other considerations apply in the case of Kosovo?
There is a regime of international law and international order,
binding on all states, based on the UN Charter and subsequent
resolutions and World Court decisions. In brief, the threat or use of
force is banned unless explicitly authorized by the Security Council
after it has determined that peaceful means have failed, or in
self-defense against "armed attack" (a narrow concept) until the
Security Council acts.
[...] Thus there is at least a tension, if not an outright
contradiction, between the rules of world order laid down in the UN
Charter and the rights articulated in the Universal Declaration of
Human Rights (UD), a second pillar of the world order established under
US initiative after World War II. The Charter bans force violating
state sovereignty; the UD guarantees the rights of individuals against
oppressive states. The issue of "humanitarian intervention" arises from
this tension. It is the right of "humanitarian intervention" that is
claimed by the US/NATO in Kosovo [....]
The question is addressed in a news report in the NY Times (March 27),
headlined "Legal Scholars Support Case for Using Force" in Kosovo
(March 27). One example is offered: Allen Gerson, former counsel to the
US mission to the UN. Two other legal scholars are cited. One, Ted
Galen Carpenter, "scoffed at the Administration argument" and dismissed
the alleged right of intervention. The third is Jack Goldsmith, a
specialist on international law at Chicago Law school. He says that
critics of the NATO bombing "have a pretty good legal argument," but
"many people think [an exception for humanitarian intervention] does
exist as a matter of custom and practice." That summarizes the evidence
offered to justify the favored conclusion stated in the headline.
Goldsmith's observation is reasonable, at least if we agree that facts
are relevant to the determination of "custom and practice." We may also
bear in mind a truism: the right of humanitarian intervention, if it
exists, is premised on the "good faith" of those intervening, and that
assumption is based not on their rhetoric but on their record, in
particular their record of adherence to the principles of international
law, World Court decisions, and so on. That is indeed a truism, at
least with regard to others.
Consider, for example, Iranian offers to intervene in Bosnia to
prevent massacres at a time when the West would not do so. These were
dismissed with ridicule (in fact, ignored); if there was a reason
beyond subordination to power, it was because Iranian "good faith"
could not be assumed. A rational person then asks obvious questions: is
the Iranian record of intervention and terror worse than that of the
US? And other questions, for example: How should we assess the "good
faith" of the only country to have vetoed a Security Council resolution
calling on all states to obey international law? What about its
historical record? [...]
How do these or other considerations apply in the case of Kosovo?
There has been a humanitarian catastrophe in Kosovo in the past year,
overwhelmingly attributable to Yugoslav military forces. The main
victims have been ethnic Albanian Kosovars, some 90% of the population
of this Yugoslav territory. The standard estimate is 2000 deaths and
hundreds of thousands of refugees.
In such cases, outsiders have three choices:
(I) try to escalate the catastrophe
(II) do nothing
(III) try to mitigate the catastrophe
[...] The threat of NATO bombing, predictably, led to a sharp
escalation of atrocities by the Serbian Army and paramilitaries, and to
the departure of international observers, which of course had the same
effect. Commanding General Wesley Clark declared that it was "entirely
predictable" that Serbian terror and violence would intensify after the
NATO bombing, exactly as happened.
Kosovo is therefore another illustration of (I): try to escalate the
violence, with exactly that expectation.
To find examples illustrating (III) is all too easy, at least if we
keep to official rhetoric. The major recent academic study of
"humanitarian intervention," by Sean Murphy, reviews the record after
the Kellogg-Briand pact of 1928 which outlawed war, and then since the
UN Charter, which strengthened and articulated these provisions. In the
first phase, he writes, the most prominent examples of "humanitarian
intervention" were Japan's attack on Manchuria, Mussolini's invasion of
Ethiopia, and Hitler's occupation of parts of Czechoslovakia.
All were accompanied by highly uplifting humanitarian rhetoric, and
factual justifications as well. Japan was going to establish an
"earthly paradise" as it defended Manchurians from "Chinese bandits,"
with the support of a leading Chinese nationalist, a far more credible
figure than anyone the US was able to conjure up during its attack on
South Vietnam. Mussolini was liberating thousands of slaves as he
carried forth the Western "civilizing mission." Hitler announced
Germany's intention to end ethnic tensions and violence, and "safeguard
the national individuality of the German and Czech peoples," in an
operation "filled with earnest desire to serve the true interests of
the peoples dwelling in the area," in accordance with their will; the
Slovakian President asked Hitler to declare Slovakia a protectorate.
Another useful intellectual exercise is to compare those obscene
justifications with those offered for interventions, including
"humanitarian interventions," in the post-UN Charter period.
In that period, perhaps the most compelling example of (III) is the
Vietnamese invasion of Cambodia in December 1978, terminating Pol Pot's
atrocities, which were then peaking. Vietnam pleaded the right of
self-defense against armed attack, one of the few post-Charter examples
when the plea is plausible: the Khmer Rouge regime (Democratic
Kampuchea, DK) was carrying out murderous attacks against Vietnam in
border areas. [...]
Despite the desperate efforts of ideologues to prove that circles are
square, there is no serious doubt that the NATO bombings further
undermine what remains of the fragile structure of international law.
The US made that entirely clear in the discussions leading to the NATO
decision.
Apart from the UK (by now, about as much of an independent actor as
the Ukraine was in the pre-Gorbachev years), NATO countries were
skeptical of US policy, and were particularly annoyed by Secretary of
State Albright's "sabre-rattling" (Kevin Cullen, Boston Globe, Feb.
22). Today, the more closely one approaches the conflicted region, the
greater the opposition to Washington's insistence on force, even within
NATO (Greece and Italy). France had called for a UN Security Council
resolution to authorize deployment of NATO peacekeepers. The US flatly
refused, insisting on "its stand that NATO should be able to act
independently of the United Nations," State Department officials
explained. The US refused to permit the "neuralgic word `authorize'" to
appear in the final NATO statement, unwilling to concede any authority
to the UN Charter and international law; only the word "endorse" was
permitted (Jane Perlez, NYT, Feb. 11).
[...] Under Clinton the defiance of world order has become so extreme
as to be of concern even to hawkish policy analysts. In the current
issue of the leading establishment journal, Foreign Affairs, Samuel
Huntington warns that Washington is treading a dangerous course. In the
eyes of much of the world -- probably most of the world, he suggests --
the US is "becoming the rogue superpower," considered "the single
greatest external threat to their societies."
Realist "international relations theory", he argues, predicts that
coalitions may arise to counterbalance the rogue superpower. On
pragmatic grounds, then, the stance should be reconsidered. Americans
who prefer a different image of their society might call for a
reconsideration on other than pragmatic grounds.
Where does that leave the question of what to do in Kosovo? It leaves
it unanswered. The US has chosen a course of action which, as it
explicitly recognizes, escalates atrocities and violence --
"predictably"; a course of action that also strikes yet another blow
against the regime of international order, which does offer the weak at
least some limited protection from predatory states. As for the longer
term, consequences are unpredictable. One plausible observation is that
"every bomb that falls on Serbia and every ethnic killing in Kosovo
suggests that it will scarcely be possible for Serbs and Albanians to
live beside each other in some sort of peace" (Financial Times, March
27). Some of the longer-term possible outcomes are extremely ugly, as
has not gone without notice.
A standard argument is that we had to do something: we could not
simply stand by as atrocities continue. That is never true. One choice,
always, is to follow the Hippocratic principle: "First, do no harm." If
you can think of no way to adhere to that elementary principle, then do
nothing. There are always ways that can be considered. Diplomacy and
negotiations are never at an end.
The right of "humanitarian intervention" is likely to be more
frequently invoked in coming years -- maybe with justification, maybe
not -- now that Cold War pretexts have lost their efficacy.
In the scholarly disciplines of international affairs and
international law it would be hard to find more respected voices than
Hedley Bull or Leon Henkin. Bull warned 15 years ago that "Particular
states or groups of states that set themselves up as the authoritative
judges of the world common good, in disregard of the views of others,
are in fact a menace to international order, and thus to effective
action in this field."
Henkin, in a standard work on world order, writes that the "pressures
eroding the prohibition on the use of force are deplorable, and the
arguments to legitimize the use of force in those circumstances are
unpersuasive and dangerous... Violations of human rights are indeed all
too common, and if it were permissible to remedy them by external use
of force, there would be no law to forbid the use of force by almost
any state against almost any other.
Human rights, I believe, will have to be vindicated, and other
injustices remedied, by other, peaceful means, not by opening the door
to aggression and destroying the principle advance in international
law, the outlawing of war and the prohibition of force."
[...] For those who do not adopt the standards of Saddam Hussein,
there is a heavy burden of proof to meet in undertaking the threat or
use of force in violation of the principles of international order.
Perhaps the burden can be met, but that has to be shown, not merely
proclaimed with passionate rhetoric. The consequences of such
violations have to be assessed carefully -- in particular, what we
understand to be "predictable." And for those who are minimally
serious, the reasons for the actions also have to be assessed -- again,
not simply by adulation of our leaders and their "moral compass."
PART II FOLLOWS SHORTLY