Christopher,
First let me remind you that UN General Secretary Kofi Annan has agreed with NATO's initiative in the Balkans: he stressed the point that Human Rights are of a higher order than nations's sovereignty when the latter is nothing more than a blank cheque to brutalize ethnic, religious, or whatever minorities.
You are talking of NATO as of some gang of outlaw countries and you hint that China, the US, Russia, India, Brazil, Iran, you name it, are all interchangeable countries when it comes to ethical values or democratic standards. That's a gross error. A good bench mark to accurately pinpoint NATO on a scale of values is to picture the anti-NATO crowd: extreme right parties in Western Europe, jingoistic leaders in Russia, and... Ariel Sharon in Israel! Wanna get lumped together with this mob??! No thanks.
Arabophobic Sharon and jingo Chinese leaders want NATO to stop the bombing campaign and to withdraw from sovereign Serbia... Fine! But what are their motives, after all? Obviously, China and jingo leaders from Israel to Russia to France don't give a shit about Muslim Albanians, so what's their agenda? Are they sincerely committed to work out a fair and peaceful settlement for the Balkan people? Or are they just playing chess with the US on some other issues?
Actually, a great country such as China might even be pursuing some mischievous objective: the geopolitical ruin of Europe! By stubbornly obstructing a UN/NATO compromise solution, China is knowingly stirring up the Balkans. Furthermore, China has likely anticipated the strategic mismatch between the US and the other European NATO members regarding the ground war. This Europe/US divide will help China in killing two birds with one stone: isolating the US as a boorish world sheriff and tarnishing the public image of Western Europe as a club of impotent, white, Christian technocrats who no longer have the willpower to fix their own backyard...
Gustave. |
