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Pastimes : Let's Talk About Our Feelings!!! -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Chuzzlewit who wrote (34001)	4/7/1999 7:08:00 PM
From: epicure	Respond to of 108807

Do you not think, that perhaps because NATO is an alliance, its members are acting in this matter for many different reasons? None of the true reasons being articulated aloud for mass consumption. Germany for example could have very different reasons from being in on this than say, Greece, and our reasons in the US are different as well. I can guess at some of the hidden agenda and of course some of Clinton's hand wringing may be honest (or as honest as that man ever gets). But there have been far greater atrocities we could have intervened in(Africa), there have been atrocities where the morality was much clearer (Tibet, East Timor) and so I hate the whole thing. It is my opinion that we should not be there. Not with bombs, not with ground troops, not with anything but humanitarian aid available to all refugees (if that, and I am not even keen on that in the Balkans). I think to some extent that these civil wars must be allowed to be settled internally. We fought our own civil war here. Could an outside nation have come in and stopped it? I don't think so. Sometimes internal strife can only be settled by the big dog winning (as Ish put it- I believe). Now naked agression against another country (like TIBET) is completely different and deserves worldwide immediate action- but alas this does not happen.

To: Chuzzlewit who wrote (34001)	4/7/1999 8:47:00 PM
From: jbe	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 108807

If you believe that international politics is in flux as a result of two mutually exclusive principles --territorial integrity and self-determination-- do you mean to imply that you believe that realpolitik has been abandoned and the world (or at least NATO) has some principles upon which it is acting? 1) Just in case there is any misunderstanding here: I believe the conflict between the two mutually exclusive principles cited above is only ONE of the reasons why international politics is presently in flux. 2) Realpolitik and principles are not necessarily mutually exclusive, in any one particular case. They do tend to inhibit one another, without cancelling one another out altogether. In this century, for example, I would say that U.S. foreign policy has been an inextricable mixture of hard-boiled realism ("realpolitik") & Wilsonian idealism, which of course has led to all the large & small hypocrisies that set our teeth on edge. 3) Do I believe that the world has some principles upon which it is acting? Of course! Most people have principles, and most statesmen are people (except for the monsters among them). That does not mean that they always act on them consistently -- or even that they should! Here I can't resist citing from a chapter in Raymond Aron's Raymond "Peace and War: A Theory of International Relations", in which he analyzes the views of some theorists of "realpolitik": Robert E. Osgood, in his book Limited War, went so far as to declare immoral any war whose objects are or seek to he transcendent. "But military force is not only ineffective as an instrument for attaining transcendent moral ends: it is morally dangerous as well. It is dangerous because the use of force with a view to such grandiose ends tends to become an end in itself, no longer subject either to moral or practical restrictions, but merely to the intoxication with abstract ideals." To use force to make the world safe for democracy or to substitute the rule of law for that of power politics by the punishment of the guilty and the organization of a League of Nations is to engage in an enterprise which runs the risk of being all the more violent in that it professes its ultimate objective to be the elimination of violence and in that reality will never yield to these sublime dreams. Sound familiar? 4) What is NATO'S motivation here? Damned if I know. I don't pretend to be an expert on NATO, let alone on what goes on inside the heads of its leaders, who of course are the civilian leaders of all the member states. I can only speculate. Maybe it's just that they felt they had to do what America told them to do. Maybe they felt guilty about ignoring the previous conflicts in Yugoslavia for too long. (I brought that up earlier.) Maybe they are really worried about being flooded with refugees. Immigration is enough of a problem in Europe already. Maybe they just wanted to test their new weapons. (I don't buy that one.) Maybe they really believed, poor dolts, that Milosevich would immediately crumble, and they would get credit for their "firmness." (These leaders did not become leaders by being great psychologists.) Maybe what they say publicly about their motivation is true. etc., etc. jbe