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April 20, 2000 NATO’S
SHEER INCOMPETENCE:
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WE’LL TRAIN THEIR COPSThat same day President Clinton finessed the situation by signing a directive providing for $10 million for a US program to train foreign police forces. "In peacekeeping missions from the Balkans to East Timor," quoth Our Boy Bill, "establishing basic law and order has been among the most important – and formidable – challenges." Secretary of State Madeleine said the State Department would be setting up an office to run the program, saying it would improve US capacity to provide police overseas in coordination with the United Nations. Maybe the former commandos – er, commanders – at Waco could be called upon as instructors. They don’t seem to be doing much except standing by to participate as witnesses in a civil trial that might or might not go forward. Again, I might just have missed the part about how this appropriation originated in the House of Representatives, as the US Constitution requires all appropriations to do. Surely the executive branch doesn’t have authority to appropriate $10 million for a brand-new program that could have entangling long-term consequences for US relations with a host of others countries without first getting the go-ahead from Congress, does it? It’s only in empires, not in constitutional republics, that the emperor’s whim is law. Isn’t that right? SPRING REINFORCEMENTS, NOT REDUCTIONSBy March 13 Spring was just around the corner, but Admiral Venturoni’s hope that by Spring some troop reductions might be in order had hardly been fulfilled. Instead, the murmurings about possible additional troops being needed had become an official request from our pal, US General Wesley Clark, the NATO supreme commander. He needed several thousand more troops – maybe 2,000, maybe more – in three battalions. The French agreed to provide one battalion, but it wasn’t clear where the others would come from. US Defense Secretary William Cohen noted that "we have quite a contribution to date," with 5,500 of the 44,000 troops then in Kosovo being American. But he noted that there were 2,200 Marine personnel, including 1,150 combat troops, on US ships in the Mediterranean. WHAT HAPPENED TO UNITY?So the good admiral missed in his forecast that it might be possible to start thinking about troop reductions in the Spring. How accurate did his comment that the Kosovo war had improved unity among the NATO powers turn out to be? Well, not especially accurate. On March 13 Chris Patten, the last British governor of Hong Kong and now the EU’s commissioner for external affairs, was warning that strains over finding of Kosovo’s "reconstruction" could poison relations between Europe and America and lead to a serious transatlantic rift. Seems Madame Madeleine had made a comment in Sarajevo about the "need for pledges to be fulfilled," which was taken by most as a complaint that the Europeans weren’t kicking in enough money. Mr. Patten said the Europeans had done their share, "but it’s important to convince the [US] Congress." As Stephen Castle, writing from Brussels for the London Independent put it: "EU-US ties are already tense, with several trade disputes pending and America increasingly suspicious about Europe’s new defense initiative. Mr. Patten warned against opening another front that could ‘contribute to a serious problem for our relationship.’" OFFICIAL OPTIMISM DASHEDIn essence, then, Admiral Venturoni, the official NATO spokesman, was almost 180 degrees wrong in his anticipation last October of how things were going and how they would progress. He was guarded in his optimism, of course, but he expressed it. But by Spring NATO troops were being beefed up in Kosovo rather than drawn down. And NATO unity was in tatters. ENTER AMNESTY INTERNATIONALMarch 13 was a genuinely busy day for NATO. That was also the day Amnesty International accused NATO and the United Nations of failing to observe high human rights standards in Kosovo. During the late unpleasantness in Mitrovica, said the group, an Albanian had been killed by the NATO-led KFOR force. The circumstances were such, said Amnesty International, that an independent investigation into the incident was required. There was also the matter of 49 people detained by French forces in the aftermath of the violence in inhumane, cold and unsanitary conditions – an unheated small gymnasium when the temperature was around zero – and denied them basic rights like being told any reason for their detainment. "We are concerned that the violations we observed that day in Mitrovica are illustrative of a wider pattern of disregard for human rights by KFOR and UNMIK [U.N. Mission in Kosovo] while operating in the capacity of a law enforcement agency in Kosovo," said Liz Griffin, an Amnesty field worker in Kosovo who co-wrote the report. "We note at present that there is absolutely no accountability for the actions of KFOR and UNMIK in Kosovo," she noted a bit later. A ROGUE REGIME?It really should be considered, in light of the Amnesty International report, that NATO and UNMIK have become the kind of rogue regimes – systematically cutting corners to the point of abuse in carrying out what they conceive to be the mission – the administration is always warning us about when it requests new funds and new powers to do surveillance on the Internet to fight against terrorists. That raises a larger question yet. In light of the oft-demonstrated incompetence and malfeasance of NATO, a coalition of nation-states, has the time of that human institution started to run out? PERHAPS THE GOD IS DYINGAs Lew Rockwell put it recently, "The main political project of the century has been to exalt the state to a god-like status." Even as the kept intellectuals struggle to revive respect for the state as an essential institution under new labels or with new goals, like bolstering national greatness, however, the statist project is in tatters. Everybody but the kept intellectuals knows the state – at least the 20th century mega-state, whether expressed as a communist, Nazi, fascist or welfarist institution – is incompetent and increasingly desperate. The idea that sheer chaos would ensue if the state and its minions didn’t manage almost all aspects of human existence is being replaced by the dawning notion that state management produces more chaos than it ameliorates – even when the intentions are good, the cause is just (like peace in Kosovo) and the mission seems clear. The state is proving to be a bungler in almost all it undertakes. The modern nation-state assumed approximately the shape it still has in the 1600s. But all human institutions and empires eventually become bloated and fail, giving way to some new mode of organizing human activity. It might not be the twilight of the nation-state as such just yet. But the bloated monster that most nations have allowed to be built during the 20th century is overdue for a reassessment.
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