http://www.post-gazette.com/forum/20010826edkelly26p7.asp THE PITTSBURGH POST-GAZETTE, Sunday, August 26, 2001 Jack Kelly: Imperialism redux NATO moves into Macedonia because it can Before we can figure out how much we should spend on the military, we need to ask ourselves what we want a military for. Is it to defend our nation? Or is it to impose our will upon others? With the dispatch of 3,500 NATO troops to Macedonia, the United States has begun a peacekeeping mission in yet another Balkan country. Only about 500 of these troops are Americans, and NATO's military commander, U.S. Air Force Gen. Joseph Ralston, expects NATO's role in Macedonia to be short and uneventful. But it might not work out that way. When he sent U.S. troops to Bosnia in 1995, President Clinton said they'd be there only a year. There are more than 3,000 U.S. troops in Bosnia today, and they won't be coming home anytime soon. Nor, says President Bush, will the 5,400 U.S. troops in Kosovo. Macedonia, the poorest of the former Yugoslav republics, is about the size of Vermont, with a population of a bit more than 2 million. About 70 percent are Slavs, about 23 percent ethnic Albanians. The mission of the NATO troops is to disarm Albanian rebels pursuant to a peace agreement imposed upon the warring factions by NATO and the European Union. This could be tricky. The rebels have been receiving arms from their ethnic co-religionists in Albania and Kosovo. In the two months they've been attempting to interdict the flow of weapons from Kosovo, U.S. troops have confiscated 600 rifles, 45 machine guns, 658 mortar shells and more than 1,000 anti-tank weapons. A U.S. official told Los Angeles Times reporter Alissa Rubin that he thinks this amounts to no more than 15 percent of the arms being sent to the rebels. The new peacekeeping mission has attracted remarkably little attention from a press and public that couldn't care less about foreign policy. A few sceptics have expressed doubts about its practicality. But maybe the question we should ask first is about its morality. Macedonia is a democracy, with a (for that region) pretty good record on human rights. Macedonia sided with us in the Kosovo war. The Macedonian government did not seek, and Slavic Macedonians do not like, the peace agreement, which effectively dismembers their country. Macedonia is not a member of either NATO or the European Union. By what right do these outsiders meddle in Macedonia's internal affairs? To advance the cause of peace, say supporters of intervention. "Peace is important in Macedonia because the country is a linchpin to the stability of the entire region," said the Dallas Morning News in an editorial. "If the civil war were to continue, a wider war might erupt." "Only the United States has the diplomatic power to lead what everyone recognizes will be a long and difficult effort to build peace in the Balkans," said the Louisville Courier-Journal. We should intervene because we are the big dog on the block. Only we can bring civilization to the barbarians, can show the heathen the path to salvation. In earlier times, this was called "imperialism." "Imperialism" and "isolationism" are emotionally laden terms which opponents in this debate hurl at each other like stones. This is unfortunate, because imperialism is by no means all bad. It could be argued that British imperialism -- we are a product of it, as are the Canadians and the Australians -- is the best thing that ever happened to the world. Though a few of us believe the United States should lead by example rather than by force, we're a minority. President Clinton intervened militarily in more countries than any other president in peacetime. President Bush has largely continued those policies. The chief difference between Democratic imperialism and Republican imperialism seems to be that Democrats favor intervention only when it has no clear connection to U.S. national interests, and Republicans favor it only when it does. Before we pick up the contemporary version of the White Man's Burden, we should recall that it was heavier in the past than its advocates imagined it would be. If we're going to intervene in other people's quarrels, we'll need a larger military, and we'll use it more often, because we'll be making more enemies than friends. [EMAIL PROTECTED] Serbian News Network - SNN [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://www.antic.org/
