Yiwu Zhang, An excellent guide to business principles too. I am looking at my copy of the Art of War right now:"If you know the enemy and know yourself, you need not fear the results of a hundred battles. If you know yourself but not the enemy, for every victory gained you will also suffer a defeat. If you know neither the enemy nor yourself, you will succumb in every battle."
The War Crime Gambit and the Negotiation Process
1210 GMT, 990527
There are two rules of warfare. The first is to place your opponent in a position in
which he feels psychologically overwhelmed and defeated. The second is to always
give your opponent room to retreat. There is a deep tension between the two. Giving
your opponent a sense of utter defeat could also give him a feeling that he has
nothing to lose. Despair can give way to suicidal resistance. Giving your enemy room
to retreat could give him a sense of hope, causing further resistance. Finding the right
mix between the two is critical in any situation in which a negotiated end is required.
NATO has been trying to create a sense of hopelessness in Belgrade while, at the
same time, providing it with a satisfactory line of retreat. All of this week's
discussions--of troop buildups, leaks of hidden plans for ground wars, the buildup of
aircraft in-theater, the attempt to create at least the appearance of solidarity within
NATO--represent attempts to create a sense of despair in Milosevic that will induce
him to retreat.
The apparent decision by a United Nations panel to indict Milosevic for war crimes is
partly an autonomous judicial process. We emphasize the term partly, since neither
the indictment nor the timing of the leak of the indictment would have taken place
without NATO's approval and oversight. It is part of the attempt to give Milosevic the
feeling that his world is imploding. It is not clear how Milosevic will respond to it
psychologically. What is clear is that it increases the likelihood that Milosevic will feel
that lines of retreat are being cut off. That has the real possibility of increasing
resistance to diplomatic efforts to end the war.
Everything that has been done in the past two months has been done in an attempt to
convince Milosevic that unless he retreats from Kosovo, NATO will deliver him a
crushing blow. An indictment for war crimes carries the message that even if he
retreats from Kosovo, a crushing blow will be delivered. From Milosevic's point of
view, therefore, what is the point of retreat? Having attempted to personalize the war
as a struggle between Milosevic and NATO, the United Nations indictment closes the
circle on him, making it personally irrational for him to pursue a war ending strategy.
The theory behind war crimes trials is that they serve as a deterrent against
genocide. The weakness of the theory is that even if they do serve as a deterrent
(and there is little evidence pointing in that direction) once the charge has been
leveled, the threat of war crimes punishments increases resistance and decreases
the incentives for war ending strategies that would limit genocide. In other words,
assuming that the indictment is true and Milosevic were guilty of war crimes, the
threat of punishment increases his interest in avoiding a negotiated settlement and
prolonging the war, while in no way limiting either his means or interests in continuing
the war crimes. In short, if he is going on trial for war crimes, Milosevic has absolutely
no personal interest in ending the war on any terms other than a Serb victory.
The underlying theory here, discounting the strange thought processes of
international lawyers, is that by focusing on Milosevic's guilt, the Serb public will be
motivated to distance itself from Milosevic. This view contains several major fallacies.
First, the Serbian people do not believe that they or their government have committed
crimes against humanity. Their view, one that is very sincerely held and for which
some evidence is provided, is that the claims of war crimes have been manufactured
by NATO powers as a justification for attacking Serbia. In other words, Serbia was
the target of NATO because it, alone among European powers, refused to be drawn
into NATO. NATO manufactured the war crime accusations in collaboration with the
KLA in order to justify the war. Whether Western publics agree or disagree with this
view, it is a widely held view in Serbia and it renders the Serbs impervious to a sense
of guilt. They do not think they have committed crimes. Thus, rather than driving a
wedge between Milosevic and the people, the charge will drive them closer together,
with a shared sense of victimization.
Second, the Serb view is that Serbia is being held to standards to which no one else
is held. The Serbs provide extensive evidence of some fairly horrendous crimes
carried out against Serbs by Bosnians and Croats, and note that the West has been
generally indifferent to those crimes. Indeed, their view in general has been that the
West has singled Serbia out for victimization. There is some truth to that. When
Serbs in Bosnia wanted to secede and form their own republic linked to Serbia, the
West intervened to stop them. When the Albanians wanted to do something similar in
Kosovo, the West intervened in order to permit it. The common denominator was not
the right of peoples to self-determination, but opposition to Serbian interests.
Finally, and most important, the Serb public sees the current air assault on Serbia as
a war crime in and of itself. They see Serbia, a sovereign state and a member of the
United Nations, under unprovoked air attack, including attacks on civilian
infrastructure, without United Nations sanction or declaration of war. Having filed suit
to stop the war in The Hague, their position is that the real war criminals are the
NATO political leaders.
In short, Serbia's view is that no atrocities happened in Kosovo, that atrocities
against Serbs are ignored, that Serbia is treated differently than anyone else in the
region and that the real war criminals are NATO's leaders. It does not matter whether
people outside of Serbia agree or disagree with this point of view. What is essential
is for them to understand that this is the perception of the situation inside Serbia.
Therefore, indicting Milosevic for war crimes will not weaken his position in Serbia,
but will in all likelihood confirm that, whatever his faults, he is being made the
symbolic victim for the real victimhood of Serbia. They will rally to him.
Indicting Milosevic is, therefore, a bad idea on two counts. Strategically, it decreases
rather than increases his motivation to make peace. Why should he make peace if
the next step is to be a defendant in a court made up of his enemies in The Hague?
Second, rather than causing the Serb public to turn on him, the indictment will cement
his position as not only a Serb leader, but also a Serb martyr. His indictment will
increase the probability that nothing short of a ground war will end Serb resistance.
And since we are still of the opinion that a ground war is not a practical option that
means that this indecisive misery could drag on indefinitely.
The issue of war crimes is a complex one. It is easy to indict a Himmler after the war
and surely Himmler was the war criminal par excellence. What we will never know is
how long the war against Germany was prolonged by Hitler's clear understanding that
there was nowhere to retreat and that no one would negotiate with him. Certainly a
negotiated settlement was possible in August 1944. How many millions of Hitler's
victims would have been alive at the end of war had Hitler been given personal room
to retreat?
The tragedy is that there are two types of justice. There is the justice for the victims
who are already dead and justice for those who are not yet dead. The problem with
the war crimes concept when put forward in time of war is that it can speak for the
dead, while massively increasing the numbers of the dying. Even if Milosevic were
guilty of the worst crimes he is accused of, the attempt to punish Milosevic could well
cost the lives of many innocent people on all sides.
The road to hell is paved with good intentions and it is not clear that everyone's
intentions in this affair are good. What is clear is that the simple morality of the
international lawyers, when applied in the midst of negotiations designed to end a
war, are likely to bring consequences that we assume are anathema to the lawyers: a
longer, more brutal war with many more victims. Cutting off Milosevic's room for
retreat to an acceptable peace may make sense in the arid world of jurisprudence,
but in the real world of bombs and blood, it is playing with countless lives.
In our view, regardless of the moral or legal merits, the indictment of Milosevic will
only serve to complicate the inevitable process of negotiations. We do not believe
that this is intentional on the part of either UN officials or NATO leaders. It simply
flows from a lack of clarity about what is possible and necessary at this juncture.
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