The National Post Friday, March 26, 1999
ASHAMED TO BE A CANADIAN
By Michael Bliss
Canadian aircraft have bombed targets in Yugoslavia. Our
country has committed acts of war against a sovereign European
nation. We and our NATO allies are attacking a country that has
not attacked us or any other country. We are not acting under the
sanction of the United Nations or any other font of international
law. We, in fact, are acting in direct contravention of the UN
Charter. Nor has Parliament authorized our government to make
war on Yugoslavia. What in the world is happening to us?
NATO is trying to save lives in Kosovo; it is waging war in
order to bring peace to the Balkans, we are told in good Orwellian
doublespeak. It's true that a civil war is raging in a province of
Yugoslavia, as the government of the country tries to suppress an
armed insurrection. Led by the United States, NATO has insisted
that the fighting in Kosovo stop, and has developed a peace plan
that would involve stationing tens of thousands of foreign troops on
Yugoslavian territory. The Yugoslav government will not agree to
the terms of this foreign interference in what it deems a domestic
matter. So it is being pounded into submission.
Having no brief for Slobodan Milosevic and his policies, I
hope that he and other Yugoslavian leaders decide that the cost of
resisting NATO assaults is too high, that they return to the table,
and that the fighting, by all parties, ends quickly and permanently.
But even if that most desirable outcome takes place, the world is
going to pay a serious price for such a Kosovo settlement.
The price involves what we have done to NATO and what
we are doing to the rule of law. The North Atlantic Treaty
Organization was created in 1949 as a defensive alliance for mutual
protection against Communist aggression. Canada was a founding
member of NATO because we believed such an alliance was
obviously in our national interest. Without ever having to fire a
shot, NATO did help protect us through the remainder of the Cold
War. After the Soviet Union collapsed, there was no obvious role
for NATO to play, and from a Canadian point of view a case could
be made for winding down the military role of the grand alliance.
Instead, NATO is making war on a sovereign country to try
to enforce its view of how that country's internal affairs should be
arranged. It is acting as a kind of international police force, making
the rules as it goes. It does not have the sanction of the UN for
attacking Yugoslavia, only instructions from its members'
governments. A military alliance created for purposes of defence
against an obvious potential enemy has appointed itself global
enforcer.
Is this what Canadians believe NATO should be doing?
Canada has always and only used its military in accordance
with well-understood principles of international law. We declared
and fought a just war against Nazi Germany. We fought under the
UN flag in Korea and in the Gulf War. We made a point of staying
out of the undeclared war in Vietnam; we made a point of not
taking military action against Cuba in the 1962 missile crisis or
supporting American efforts to overthrow Castro. We have always
been proud of our support for the rule of law in international
affairs. Now we are complicit with our NATO allies in tearing up
the rule of law in the name of an allegedly higher principle.
That higher principle is not nearly as clear as that American
leader of vision and integrity, Bill Clinton, suggests. It was not clear
that the rebellion in Kosovo threatened other Balkan states. Only if
the Albanian rebels succeeded, either in winning independence or in
persuading other countries to widen the war, would the Balkans be
enflamed. Yes, much blood was being shed as Serbs suppressed the
Albanian revolt in Kosovo -- just as it has been shed putting down
rebellions in Russia, Turkey, the United States, and Canada, among
many other countries. Now that NATO has intervened, of course,
much more blood is being shed, the war has been enlarged, and if
the Russians decide to intervene the peace of the world might be
threatened.
And the rule of law in the affairs of nations has been
seriously undermined. The strong intervene where and when they
choose. Today it's NATO attacking Yugoslavia; tomorrow it might
be Iraq attacking Kuwait again, or Russia, or China, or whoever
has big guns and superficial moral certitude.
It's unprecedented and disheartening that Canada should be
part of a retrograde movement toward international anarchy. We
should disengage our forces from NATO and begin to ask why we
continue to be part of NATO.
Where is Parliament? Why isn't it debating these great issues
of war and peace? Why are we risking Canadian lives and why are
Canadians killing Yugoslavians?
When I heard the news about our fighter planes attacking
Yugoslavia I felt ashamed to be a Canadian. What bitter irony, to
think about Canadians' past enthusiasm for bringing war criminals
to justice. Well, we have joined their game. Maybe there is good
reason to bring Madame Justice Louise Arbour home.
Michael Bliss teaches history at the University of Toronto.
