POLITICAL ANTI-NATO WAR PRAXIS & PROGRAM

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Andre Gunder Frank, June  2, 1999

DISMEMBER NATO  FRANKENSTEIN AT ITS WEAKEST LINKS:
A Political, Moral and Legal Program to Rein in the NATO Loose Cannon


This  proposal  for political praxis has three related parts and their
national and international coordination:

1- Political: Attack and break the weakest link in and among  NATO member
countries and thereby weaken NATO itself

2- Moral: Take the moral high ground and deny it to NATO leaders  by
indicting them for war crimes in the courts and before public opinion

3- Legal:  Resuscitate the United Nations for peace and prevent NATO from
exercising military rule in the Balkans under the 'legitimizing' cloak of
the  same UN that NATO itself  has strangled.

1. POLIITCAL  OFFENSIVES AT THE WEAKEST LINKS

NATO is a  potentially fragile and breakable alliance of 19 states with
very different political circumstances, domestic political coalitions,
agendas and due to the war now also different political breaking points.
Moreover their differing geographical, logistic, military, political and
other circumstances warrant and permit different offensive tactics against
the NATO war. 

No doubt, domestic political forces  are already doing much to mobilize
their people, but they could and should do so more and more effectively
also to find and attack the weak political links at the most sensitive
moments in each country. Moreover political action in countries A and B
can also be  targeted and timed to weaken NATO interests at a critical
moments in countries B and C. Therefore, it is essential to increase the
INTERnational flow of information about these efforts [eg. through the
internet] and to coordinate them more through tactical alliances and at
least informal personal contacts.  Each country may well have its own
political agenda and calendar,  but having all been put  in the same boat
by this NATO war, the movement of any one marble in the NATO bowl can also
affect the position and possibilities of each of the others  - and perhaps
permit one or more to fall out of  or even to crack the bowl itself. For
instance, at the time of the crucial vote at the German Green Party
Congress whether or not to withdraw support from the coalition government
in which its member is Foreign Minister, there were some not very
coordinated e-mail appeals abroad to send other e-mail messages.
Coordinated political ACTION to shift the political balance and policy in
Italy or Greece might have had more effect on the Green vote in Germany,
and through it on the room for maneuver of the German government, and
thereby of NATO itself.  But if any such efforts at coordination for peace
exist, they seem  so far to be hidden behind the scenes  as well  as the
machinations of the war-mongers.

Would it not be possible to take advantage of e-mail and the internet to
MOBILIZE and COORDINATE  anti-war action, including its timing
and targets, among NATO and other countries? We  already have  a precedent
for very successful such action and coordination: The recent
e-mail/internet mobilization/coordination against MAI, which contributed
significantly to stopping it  [at least temporarily] . What are the
obstacles, and how can we overcome them,  to electronic and other
coordination of national anti-war and peace movements? How can we link up
with other public action groups including labor, environmental, women, and
others, and political parties or parts thereof  in each or at least some
countries and their parliaments? Indeed, a major 'collateral damage' of
this  NATO war machine is that it has been set in motion and has
steamrolled over civil and political society and institutions  alike with
only a literally handful of war-mongers in the drivers seat who did not
and did not have to consult anybody. What does that portend for Western
'democracy'?  Beyond protection of the peoples of the Balkans - and now
others farther East also threatened by NATO - we need to ACT also to
protect ourselves from NATO FRANKENSTEIN which  is now destroying society
at home inside the NATO countries as well as abroad 'out of area.' The
very least we could and should do is to set up and electronically
coordinate INTER-national COMMITTES FOR PEACE AND DEOMCRACY  [or PAX POLIS
Unless the police has appropriated the latter as NATO has the former].

These committees, and existing  political and other organizations and
movements must intervene to attack and break NATO's weak links, such as
the following:

--Italy now provides the principal staging and take off area for NATO war
planes to attack Yugoslavia. Italy also has a very strong anti-war
movement, which includes much of its parliament and government. NATO's
offensive would be significantly crippled  if Italy could be taken out of
the war or even deny the use of its air bases.

- Greece is now participating passively in the war,  but it offers an
essential  supply route into Kosovo, whose use NATO seeks to increase in
case of any escalation of military operations on the ground. According to
a poll, 99.5 percent of the Greek population opposes this war. Greek
workers have blocked NATO transports through and from the port of Salonika
and the Greek government has signified its opposition to the use of its
territory for any NATO ground offensive

- Hungary offers the only flat terrain across which it  would be most
logistically possible to launch a ground offensive across Yugoslavia
n and into Kosovo or even only into Yugoslavia itself, and that is the
route the Nazis used. Hungary became a member of NATO a few days before
the war started and has already cooperated by shutting off oil deliveries
across its territory  to Yugoslavia. But how palatable would a full scale
war be to Hungarians, several hundred thousand ethnic ones of whom also
live in Yugoslavia?
 
- Germany is both a major military and political part of NATO, but there
is significant  opposition to the war in its ruling Social Democratic
party, and its government is resolutely opposed to a ground war. In
addition  of current political opposition thereto in Germany, there may 
be additional reasonsthat lie both in the past and in the future: 
Germany's popularity in Serbia is already compromised  by the bombing of
Belgrade and the 30 German divisions that the Serbs tied down in World 
War II.  German industry and commerce has vital interests in Serbia and 
elsewhere in the Balkans which would not be well served after the war by
ground war now and destruction that is still more brutal than the present 
one. The argument can and should also be made that Germany's participation
in this war is in abject violation of its own Constitution

- France has never been a very reliable member of NATO and Gaullist as
well as other political tendencies have never been enthusiastic about
being an American handmaiden in Europe or elsewhere.

- In Canada, the Prime Minister has avoided consulting Parliament about
n Canadian participation in the war because, as he said himself, public
dissension  within that House would give the wrong signal. Indeed! And
that was a couple of weeks into the war. Since then, increasing
dissatisfaction  has been voiced against the government in Parliament and
in the country, as well as even in the media, for this violation of
elementary democratic procedure.

- In the United States, its initiation and continued participation in this
war violates both the Constitution that accords war making powers only to
Congress and the War Powers Act of 197x, which allows the President
ambiguous leeway to act on his own up to a maximum of 60 days, which have
long since expired. A Congressional group is suing the President in a US
Court for  usurpation  of Congressional power and violation of the law and
the Constitution. Moreover, the entire Congress has already voted to deny
the President funds for any ground war [although the additional war funds
that have been approved might be re-directed through inventive accounting
at the Pentagon and White House]. Nonetheless,  there is  strong
opposition to this war in the United States, particularly in parts of the
right wing of the Republican Party, both inside and outside Congress.

- As demonstrated by  the intervention of Russia and popular mobilization
in other countries,  political action elsewhere also has a bearing on this
NATO war, which now threatens interests around the world.

2. TAKE THE MORAL HIGH GROUND ON WAR CRIMES

Humanitarianism, human  rights, and their promotion and protection is a
good thing, and the better  the better.  But it can not be done through
the "we have to destroy them to save them" policies that the United States
used in Vietnam or the methods of 'selective' extermination used to
control rabies and hoof and mouth disease.  Even less will human rights be
furthered when any power or powerful group can and does arbitrarily select
itself as their self-appointed 'guardian' where and when it is in the
self-interest of that power to do so, and to do nothing - or even the
opposite - when that  is in the power's self interest.  For that option
and procedure only converts 'humanitarianism' and 'human rights' into yet
another force of the powerful to use against the weak, and therefore
increases rather than  decreases  the  systemic and systematic violation
of human rights. The mere say so that we are or go there . My intervention
in your affairs cannot be based on , let alone legitimized by, even my
best - let alone my worst - intentions to protect your human rights.
After all, nobody would try publicly to justify aggression or even
intervention on  grounds of wanting to do harm, and everybody has always
said that they intervene only  to do good.  Hitler started World  War II
by invading Czechoslovakia  on the grounds that he had to do so to protect
the human rights of the Sudeten Germans there. 

That is why previous generations have labored and sacrificed to set up
norms, codes and whole systems of  both  national and international
humanitarian law, with rather elaborate rules for how the entire community
and its authorized representatives can intervene to protect its members.
In international law, a goodly number of codes and procedures  [some
mentioned below] have been set up; and to  enforce these, so have some
legal instruments of the United Nations and the International Court, as
well as recently some special international tribunals. It is true that
these codes and institutions are insufficient. Therefore, there are still
attempts to improve them and to broaden their scope. For instance, 1998
finally saw the acceptance  in Rome of an International Criminal Court
[ICC] under whose statutes individuals  like officials of a state such as
Milosevic and Pinochet can be held personally accountable for violations
of human rights. Unfortunately,  the ICC is not yet ratified and even the
initial proposals had to be considerably watered down to please the
delegation of the United States, which then  refused to sign the document
anyway.  That makes it all the more ironic - and it would be useful to be
able to point that out to the public - that only a few months later this
same US administration  appointed itself as champion of human rights in
Yugoslavia with the promise now of bringing its President  to justice - by
bombing his people. That is a tragic illustration of the fact that, more 
important even than the protection of the human rights of one or many
individuals and groups, is the protection  of  the very system of laws and
of the legal procedures necessary to sustain  the protection of these human
rights.  NATO bombing of Yugoslavia is not only violating the human rights
of its people, including those of the ethnic Albanian Kosovars, by 
destroying their means of livelihood, not to mention their right to life
itself for those that die in or from the process. 

So NATO  and its arbitrary self-appointment of its 'right' to bomb whom
and whenever it pleases is also destroying the very system of civilized laws
and conventions that it has taken human ages to build up. It is  therefore
of the greatest and most urgent importance that NATO's initiative in this
regard be reversed, and ultimately only the United Nations can do that.
Moreover,  for these  crimes not just against the Yugoslavs whom they are
bombing but against humanity whose protection of the rule of humanitarian
law  NATO is also destroying, its  leaders and spokespersons must be held
personally  politically, legally, and morally accountable. That should
occur  under the very same international law that NATO is trying to
abrogate for itself, but invoke over others. 

So far only Yugoslavian President Slobodan Milosevic and  his immediate
aides have been indicted for commission of war crimes at the special
tribunal for such crimes committed on the territory of the former
Yugoslavia [ITC-Y]. Western leaders have publicly welcomed this indictment
as further proof that they occupy the moral high ground in this war. But
calling their opponent a devil does not make angels out of  NATO leaders.
On the contrary, the indictment of the President of Yugoslavia and his
closest aides places the indictment  of all responsible others for whom 
there is evidence of war or other crimes against humanity on puts on the
agenda and order of the day as well.  

We must counter their campaing to win the hearts and minds of ordinary 
people
and capture the moral high ground, and we can do so without resorting to
the lies of NATO and its member states' leaders, other spokespersons and
media.Beginning with the President of the United States and the Prime
Minister of Britain, we must also pose legal challenges to the total
illegality of  NATO leaders' actions in the courts and before the public.
Moreover, we must publicly  expose  not only that illegality but also,
indeed  even moreso,   their systematically cynical  violation of  truth,
morality, common decency and fundamental humanity, thus to convert the 
holier than though halos with which they present themselves to the public
into crowns of thorns instead.

A number of initiatives to that end have already been taken:  Yugoslavia
itself has charged 10 NATO countries with crimes of aggression and is
suing for economic damages before the International Court in the Hague..

[Stop press June  2: " THE HAGUE (Reuters) - The United Nations' top court
Wednesday rejected Yugoslav requests to halt NATO air strikes on its
territory, but expressed concern about the legal basis for the bombing.
Judges at the International Court of Justice declined to impose an interim
ruling to halt the air strikes, saying Yugoslavia's complaints against
eight NATO members did not fall under the Genocide Convention. But
Presiding Judge Christopher Weeramantry said the court was troubled about
the legal foundation for NATO's action. `The court is profoundly concerned
about the use of force in Yugoslavia. Under the present circumstances such
use raises very serious issues of international law,'' he said".]

Norwegians proposed the indictment of their foreign minister before the
special International Criminal Tribunal on War Crimes in  Yugoslavia
[ICT-Y] established  by Security Council Resolution 808 of 22 February
1993.  Lawyers in the  UK submitted a brief to the same  ICT-Y Court in
the Hague charging the Prime Minister and the Foreign and 'Defense'
Secretaries of the UK with several war crimes.  A group of Canadian
lawyers at the former law school  of the Chief Prosecutor at that court
for crimes in Yugoslavia , Louise Armour, sent her a detailed brief for
the indictment of 60 heads of government, foreign and defense ministers of
all 19 NATO countries and several NATO officials. A number of individuals
have sent letters, and others including myself have long since written
articles urging such action. The Greek lawyer   Alexander Lykourezos has
filed a similar suit there and has invited anyone who so wishes to be a
co-signatory by e-mail at 
     http://www.nato-warcrimes.gr/cgi-nato-warcrimes/natowar/mail2_en
and by end May about 5,000 people had done so.  He has also spoken  about
the same with Chief Prosecutor Armour in The Hague. Indeed, Louise Armour
herself and  Mary Robinson, the head of the UNHCR,  have made references
to the possibility of indictment and culpability of  some NATO personnel.
Not surprisingly, these references have been exceedingly circumscribed
both regarding possible procedures and possible charges. A similar brief 
has been filed by JURIST a legal association in the United
States at      http://jurist.law.pitt.edu/icty.htm     and  an  e-mail
initiative has been started in the United States by     fisk.icty@un.org
and  inviting anyone to file a complaint with Mrs. Armour, since  within
the ICT-Y statutes anyone is allowed to do so and she is obliged to
consider all denunciations, independent of their origin. And after all.
even President Clinton  said that the Milosevic indictment shows that
those who have [positions of] responsibility must be held responsible.
Well, what is good for the goose must also be good for the gander.

It is therefore high time to coordinate an international effort , within
and outside of NATO countries, to personally charge identifiable  people
in positions of responsibility with the widest range of war crimes
appropriate under international law [and national law as well, e.g. Jimmy
Carter said on CNN that when he was President of the United States he
outlawed the use of cluster bombs! Did Bill Clinton change the law?]. To
begin with after World War II, the Allies led by the United States at
Nuremberg  and also in Tokyo enshrined the personal responsibility and
accountability of ALL war makers in international law, which personalized
the prohibitions against making war already specified by the
Kellogg-Briand Pact of 1926 ,signed by most now NATO members  and which is
also still international law. Moreover, the Nuremberg trial ruled that "to
initiate a war of aggression... is not only an international crime, it is
the supreme international crime." And the Nuremberg Tribunal was very
specific that responsibility for the supreme and other crimes is PERSONAL:
"Crimes against international law are committed by men, not by abstract
entities, and only by punishing individuals  who commit such crimes can
the provisions of international law
be enforced". 

In and after 1949 in Geneva, a number of conventions were  signed,
prohibiting and defining genocide and unwarranted 'collateral' damage to
civilians and their sources of livelihood,  such as bridges, supplies of
water and electricity, hospitals, etc. all of which are being deliberately
destroyed by NATO.  They also prohibit the use of  weapons of mass
destruction from which civilians must suffer, which today are likely to
include  deliberate massive pollution of land, water and air as well as
cluster bombs and depleted uranium, which  spreads and leaves
radioactivity for generations to come. 

These and other NATO actions  also violate several  statutes of the same
special ICT-Y  tribunal that has already indicted President Milosevic. 
For instance Articles 2 and 3 of the ICT-Y statute expressly  prohibit the
willful killing of civilians and infliction of great suffering or serious
injury to the body and health of civilians, the wanton destruction of
property not justified by military necessity and the wanton destruction of
cities, towns and villages and devastation not justified by military
necessity. [ For instance on the bombing of a small bridge on a religious
holiday , the NATO spokesman, Mr Jamie Shea, said: "Our policy hasn't
changed. Everything we attack is a military target. Just because there
wasn't a tank on the bridge, doesn't mean it wasn't a military target."
But the bridge was too narrow for a tank to cross. Villagers said. The two
NATO aircraft flew low. They believe that NATO planned to kill the maximum
number of people]. 

The use of poisonous weapons and weapons calculated to cause  unnecessary
suffering also is in violation of Article 3 of the ITC-Y statute. NATO
leaders and commanders have publicly admitted and themselves have provided
video evidence of NATO violations of each of these violations hundreds of
times over.  Moreover in a statement to the Washington Post,
Lieutenant-General Michael C. Short of the United States Air Force
graphically explained this NATO deliberation:

"If you wake up in the morning and you have no power to your house and no
gas to your stove and the bridge you take to work is down and will be
lying in the Danube for the next 20 years, I think you begin to ask, 'Hey,
Slobo, what's this all about? How much more of this do we have to
withstand?' And at some point, you make the transition from applauding
Serb machismo against the world to thinking what your country is going to
look like if this continues."

The very recourse and use of war, whatever its forms, also violates
international - and  in many countries national - law. The 1980 Vienna
Convention prohibits the use of war or even the threat of war to exact
signature of any treaty, which is ipso facto legally null and void if it
is signed under such duress. Therefore, anything signed at Ramboulleit
would already have violated international law and  so will whatever may be
agreed to bring this war to an end. However, long before that the UN
Charter itself prohibited any and all recourse to war in its Articles 1,
2, 42, 43, 51. These and other prohibitions were reinforced again by the
Helsinki Conference that set up the OSCE, of which all NATO member states
are also signatories and under whose aegis the unarmed but under-manned
observer mission kept a modicum of order in Kosovo before they were pulle
d out by the member countries that wanted to start bombing. 

An ironical but tragic historical footnote that NATO was founded as and is
allegedly only a DEFENSIVE organization, and that its present aggressive
offensive is in total violation even of its own charter, which also
prohibits all of its present actions, to wit:

        The North Atlantic Treaty Washington D.C., April 4, 1949
        The Parties to this Treaty reaffirm their faith in the 
        purposes and principles of the Charter of the United 
        Nations and their desire to live in peace with all 
        peoples and all governments....

        Article 1
        The Parties undertake, as set forth in the Charter of 
        the United Nations, to settle any international dispute
        in which they may be involved by peaceful means in such
        a manner that international peace and security and justice
        are not endangered, and to refrain in their international
        relations from the threat or use of force in any manner
        inconsistent with the purposes of the United Nations."

And the  Declaration of Brussels [9 Dec 1983]  issued by the Foreign
Ministers  at the North Atlantic Council Meeting  solemnly declares:

        We, the representatives of the sixteen member countries of the North
        Atlantic Alliance, reaffirm the dedication of the Allies to the
        maintenance of peace in freedom.  Our Alliance threatens no one.
        None of our  weapons will ever be used except in response to attack.
        We do not aspire to superiority.

President Clinton himself said that those who are responsible for  the
planning and execution of these war crimes  in violation of international
law must be held personally responsible before . Therefore, that applies
first and foremost to William Jefferson Clinton himself. It also means
that he is fully aware of the importance of the international [and
national?] law whose violation  and violators he says must be prosecuted.
Logically as well as legalistically, in the United States these
indictments must therefore also extend to the President's  closest
collaborators [in Yugoslavia 5 have been indicted so far], that  is his
National Security Advisor, his Secretaries of State and 'Defense,' and how
many others?  Next in line are surely the self appointed most blatant
war-mongerer of them all, Britain's  Prime Minister Tony Blair and  his
willing and rabid executioners in the Foreign Office and 'Defense'
Ministry. And so on and on, of course including NATO's   Commanding
General Wesley Clark who has been demanding more and more weapons to hit
more and more targets and  to 'justify' it all its ubiquitous mouthpiece
Jamie Shea, who has that piker Goebbles turning in his grave.

An international commission of jurists and a network of national ones  can
and should prepare, share, and coordinate the preparation and submission
of briefs of indictment of as many people in positions of political and
military [and also media? - see below] responsibility  for whom there is
sufficient evidence of commission of war crimes.  It may be laborious and
time consuming to identify and certify people to so charge in and for
Yugoslavia.

But in  the NATO countries there are already so many individuals that  are
self-declared and  amply certified  by their positions and  their boasts
to the media, that their identification and indictment need take no time
at all, although there are so many of them that their  international trial
could be endless.  

However the British Law Lords are setting precedent  in ruling that the
Chilean General Pinochet can be tried in other countries for crimes
against humanity committed in Chile, and  the pertinent British minister
in Tony Blair's cabinet has declared himself ready to extradite Pinochet
for trial in Spain and possibly elsewhere.  Again, if  what is good for
the goose … then why not also indict and try Tony Blair et al in a
national courts outside of  their own countries  for war and other crimes
against  humanity? Indeed,  perhaps we should organize a serious game of
musical chairs in which the leaders of each NATO country are indicted
before the courts and public opinion in the next one both within and
outside NATO.  A large majority of Greeks already want to have Bill
Clinton indicted for war crimes, and a Greek court could  petition for his
extradition to Greece as a court in Spain  petitioned  for the extradition
of Pinochet for trial in that country.  However, the responsible
accusation of those responsible , as Bill Clinton publicly desires, must
be brought not only before the courts but also before the people.
Indictment for war and other crimes against humanity, not to mention
trial, in national as well as international courts could  help convert
some self-styled halos into publicly visible crowns of thorns. That is
where not only the newer electronic media have a role but also the more
established press, radio, and TV.

Indeed, the question comes to what extent and under what laws the media
themselves  should and can be held legally responsible for their part in 
Instigating,  inciting, covering up, and otherwise collaborating in the
commission of acts that are illegal under international and their own
national laws. Again, e-mail and the internet can and should be used to
share information on  national laws, precedent, and action to  help seek
out and invoke all legal means also to indict and prosecute the media war
under all pertinent national and international law and  before all
possible legal institutions and instances, which in itself can  also help
to protect public opinion from abuse. Moreover, a legal  indictment of a
media organization and or government leader can offer some inducement and
protection to those in media and other state and corporate organizations
who are inclined but otherwise unable to resist superior orders to commit
illegal acts. 

International law itself may already contain some statutes and instances
under which incitement to break the same or other international law
is indictable. Jurists should examine existing international law and
courts already established to exercise that might offer legal statutes
and/or precedent to indict  state and private organizations and
individuals,e.g. before the [old] International Court at the Hague as well
as the ad hoc one for Yugoslavia, not only for action and responsibility
for the action of others [a la Nuremberg and the Geneva Conventions under
which indictments have rightly already been proposed against NATO leaders]
but also for the systematic incitement to violate human rights and
international law through large scale lies and  defamation. 

Insofar as existing international law is insufficient to offer any
protection  against such practices by public media and leaders,
international lawyers should consider writing it and lobbying for it.  A
precedent is that the ICC assignment of  individual responsibility  for
criminal acts has been in part the result  of several decades of legal
and political lobbying to that effect. Hopefully it is now possible to 
accelerate a similar process regarding individual and corporate legal
responsibility for manipulating public opinion in violation of the law .

Notwithstanding guarantees of freedom of speech in the United States,
Germany, Russia, China and no doubt many other states, their domestic
constitutions, law and precedent also prohibit certain types of MISuses
of speech and  symbolic action to incite to violence, racism, hatred, etc.
with regard to target groups and defamation or libel with regard to
individuals. For instance in Germany and many other states, certain
evocation of Nazi symbols is illegal. Under which of  these laws could
government leaders and  [especially state!] publicly chartered media be
indicted and prosecuted for the BIG LIE about this and the next war? In
Germany, foreign ministry and court documents expressly deny the existence
of any campaign of ethnic cleansing in Kosovo before the war, which the
Foreign Minister himself and the media falsely invoke as the reason and
justification of their war.  Beyond exposing NATO's and its media stooges'
sins of commission, it can also be politically important to  expose their
many sins of omission:  They systematically fail to
report and account for the civilian, ecological and other casualities  of
tier war, and if forced to do so, they first try to shift the blame
for civilian deaths in trains, buses, camps, hospitals to the victims.
While showing an unending stream of refugees that NATO bombing itself has
generated. It and the media say little or nothing about the economic,
social, and human consequences of bombing  millions of people back into
the stone [rubble] age by destroying  the infrastructure and  means to
sustain contemporary  urban life and employment in the cities. For there
is virtually no mention in the media of the  significance for urban life
of destroying its   factories, bridges, and other means of transport, and
especially the  power plants that supply electricity to pump water
supplies, run the remaining factories and offices, elevators,
communications and computers, not to mention hospitals, schools and most
now elementary facets of urban life. 

However the NATO and media damage control is even tighter when it comes to
not revealing  damage to its own equipment and the related loss of life
among NATO personnel.  The media made big propaganda out of the Yugolsav
capture of three American soldiers - and President Clinton cynically
demanded their protection  under the very Geneva accords that he himself
is violating every day and especially night.  But  we have seen or heard
nothing about  NATO deaths or other losses except for the one Stealth
bomber that the Yugoslavs displayed and the one Apache helicopter that
allegedly crashed on a 'training mission' in Albania [contrary evidence
has it that it exploded in mid air because  was shot down by the
Yugoslavs]. However, the Yugoslavs claim to have inflicted losses of over
30 aircraft on NATO, and there are  politically more delicate reports of
NATO personnel deaths in the hundreds so far.  The failure of NATO to
account for and the media to investigate and report any such deaths of
course constitutes the grossest of  failures to exercise their most
elementary responsibility to their publics -  which might revolt if they
only knew.  So here is yet another politically most delicate weak link 
of NATO, that its opponents should attack and exploit not only politically
but in the name of the simple truth and basic morality that  is so foreign
to NATO, its leaders and spokespersons.

Returning to NATO sins of comissiopn, national groups in various of its
countries  could and should also examine their own state laws for possible
violations of the same on charges of defamation, libel, incitement to
hatred, etc. in connection with the NATO war, just as some leaders of
government are being indicted for their political actions in violation of
their own constitutions and laws.  And what national law/s offer legal
precedent/s for similar action under international law?  

For international law itself may already contain some statutes and
instances under which incitement to break the same or other international
law is indictable. Therefore opponents of this process should seek out and
invoke all legal means also to indict and prosecute the media war under
all pertinent national and international law and  before all possible
legal institutions and instances. That can in itself help also to protect
public opinion from  abuse by the media in making them hesitate more to
spread lies for which they can be sued. Moreover, a legal  indictment of a
media organization and or government leader can offer some inducement and
protection to those in media and other state and corporate organizations
who are inclined but otherwise unable to resist superior orders to commit
illegal acts. 

In short, to protect ourselves and  elemental standards of democracy at
home, not to mention the victims of its abuse abroad,  we must fight and
do all we can to turn the media war  for the hearts and minds of people
around  AGAINST NATO and its leaders and spokespersons whom the media
itself has made so visible and  therefore also vulnerable.

3. INVOKE INTERNATIONAL LAW AT THE UNITED NATIONS

In critiquing this NATO war and the US leadership role in the same,
President JimmyCarter points out that " the United Nations was designed to
deal with international conflicts, and almost all the current ones are
civil wars."  Carter goes on to record some of the  many recent
unsuccessful UN interventions and  subsequent withdrawals in these
conflicts as well as failures to intervene at all even without a cold war
to hamper them. But that is not an  argument for abandoning the UN. On the
contrary, that shows  how important and urgent it is to  reform the UN
Charter and re-design it and the Security Council to be better able to
intervene to keep the peace, help resolve major conflicts and  prevent
gross humanitarian abuses also within otherwise  sovereign  member states.
Indeed, Carter himself also argues  with  regard to NATO and Kosov that
"bypassing the Security Council weakens the United Nations and often
alienates permanent members who may be helpful in influencing warring
parties."  That is in the meantime,  however limited and flawed the UN and
its instruments undoubtedly are , they are also still the best we got and
must  be improved, but not discarded and trampled upon, as NATO is now
doing. Replacing the UN by the US and NATO is no improvement and instead
takes us back at least fifty years if not to Hobbes's war of all against
all. For as President Carter also explains 

        because of its dominant role in the United Nations Security Council
        and NATO, the United States tends to orchestrate global peacemaking.
        Unfortunately, many of these efforts are seriously flawed. We have
        become increasingly inclined to sidestep the time-tested premises
        of negotiation [provided for in Articles 42 and 43 of the UN 
        Charter], which in most cases prevent deterioration of a bad 
        situation and at least offer the prospect of a bloodless solution.  
        The approach the United States has taken
        recently has been to devise a solution that best suits its      
        own purposes, recruit at least tacit support in whichever forum 
        it can best influence, provide the dominant military force, 
        present an ultimatum to recalcitrant parties and then take 
        punitive action against the entire nation to force
        compliance. The often tragic result of this final decision is
        that already oppressed citizens suffer [even more].

Yet worse even than no  international legal and political institution and
mechanism like the United Nations or its total disregard  when it does not
serve the interests of power  as Jimmy Carter laments, is the MIS-
appropriation and MIS-use of this same institution and mechanism by this
same power.  That is what happened in the Gulf War , and that is what
threatens to happen again after this one. The UN Charter  in its Articles
42 and 43 specifically enjoins the UN and even its Security Council by
from  delegating war making powers to any member state or group of states
and requires that all military intervention in a member state or elsewhere
itself be under a UN command that it directly responsible to the Secretary
General and the Security Council . Of course the American led war against
Iraq did and still does no such thing and has therefore always been  in
direct violation of  the UN Charter in several respects. As the then UN
Secretary General said "this is a US war and not a UN war."  He should
have resigned  in protest, all the moreso since  those who made Desert
Storm falsely alleged that their illegal war was sanctioned by the UN.
That set a dangerous precedent at the beginning of the 1990s. In the mid
1990s the 'precedent' was taken a step further: The Western powers
declared the UN  incapable of dealing with  the crisis in Bosnia, which
was true but only because the Western powers themselves and especially the
United States systematically delayed and then sabotaged UN action in
Bosnia until the whole mess and international responsibility was handed
over to NATO instead, which then pursued a primarily US agenda, as
President Carter already noted. The logical but all the more so illegal
conclusion of this process [so far!]  is the replacement of  the UN and
all international law and  institutional mechanisms that were designed  to
provide for  protect the peace and human rights to by the NATO  war
machine. That is what has happened in the present war. God forbid what
that may lead to in the next one.

In the meantime,in an effort to extricate itself from an even much greater
Mess in Kosovo than they made themselves without the UN in Bosnia, NATO
and the United States now first  want  Russia to take the  chestnuts out
of the hot fire in Yugoslavia. The Russian envoy Chernomyrdin says he does
not like the role of being a mere errand boy between Washington and
Belgrade, nor does he wish  simply to do NATO's bidding there. Yet at the
G-8 meeting and agreement in Germany, That is precisely the role that
Russia played: But once the bombing stops, NATO would now like to go back
to the UN  Security Council for its blessing after the fact and especially
for  a UN umbrella under which to push through its post-war agenda. The
deal at the G-8 meeting was that Russia [and before the bombing of its
embassy, hopefully China]  would lend Security Council approval  and
'authorization' for an 'international security force' to go into Kosovo
and neighboring areas to pick up the pieces that NATO had bombed to
smithereens.  How would  that arrangement differ in 'peace'-time from what
Jimmy Carter described above for war-time ?  Recall that he said 
"the approach the United States has taken recently has been to devise a
solution that best suits its own purposes, recruit at least tacit support
in whichever forum it can best influence, provide the dominant military
force, present an ultimatum to recalcitrant parties and then take punitive
action against the entire nation to force compliance." 

The analysts at Stratfor Intelligence puts it this way:

"There can no longer be any evasion of the fact that Belgrade has accepted
the principles of the G-8 agreement.. [but]  the  precise meaning of G-8
is up in the air. NATO can  interpret the G-8 accords to mean nearly the
same as Rambouillet. Serbia can interpret them with much greater latitude.
It will be up to the Russians to bridge  the gap-and their skill and
interest in carrying out that task is open to question. "


It is bad enough for the United States  and its UK  yes man to [be able
to] do that under its own or NATO flag. It is still worse for the  US/UK
to be able to do the same under the flag of the United Nations if that is
where it then can "recruit at least tacit support in whichever forum it
can best influence" - and then claim to boot that it is only implementing
the general will. That would only emasculate and pervert the UN still more
than it has been already.

Ramboulleit of course means the US/NATO occupation of Kosovo that the  US
has been demanding and Yugoslavia has refused all along. Yugoslavia has
been and still is ready to accept an internationational force in Kosovo,
with as little NATO participation as it can hold out for.  Possible
compromises would be variations on two themes: 1. Apply the Bosnia model
to Kosovo by maintaining Yugoslav sovereingty and its integrity de jure,
while dividing  de facto it into a Serbian North and an Albanian South,. 
2. Composing an international force of  non-NATO countries stationed in
the North and  non-combattant NATO countries  stationed in the South of
Kosovo, while the combattant countries remain outside stationed around it.
But even that still does not settle who will chose  the tune and direct
the orchestra to play the variations on these themes.

Stratfor Intelligence thinks that it may not be primarily the United
States:

" The end game is being crafted by Germany, Italy, and Russia because the
United States simply locked itself into a  position from which it could
neither retreat nor go forward…The United States will be withdrawing from
its aggressive leadership position not solely because it wishes to do so.
It will be withdrawing because it has seriously lost the trust of many of
its NATO allies. Except for the UK, the rest of NATO has been simply
appalled by the U.S. management of the entire affair."

But that also implies a Security Council 'mandate' for a NATO 'solution'
with three countries sharing the director's podium on stage, two of whom
that are not permanent members of the Security Council, and with the three 
NATO powers that are remaining in the wings during the performance but
in their seats at the Council .

Therefore another task is to prevent this further NATO takeover and to
rescue the UN from a fate worse than death. To do so,  the  UN's
other-minded members must now hurry to resuscitate it before it is too
late.This very real threat to the UN makes it all the more vital/ urgent
that  other forces and interests mobilize the United Nations before the US
and  UK do.  But they have a veto in the Security Council and the
Secretary General has  proven himself to be their docile instrument - or
he would have long since resigned and/or  used the power of his office at
least to put some obstacles in NATO's way and to denounce its usurpation
of power and violation of the UN Charter. Other members, at present
including Canada,  should at least call the Security Council into
emergency session, and  if the Western powers with a veto exercise it,
that would at least be a  dramatic show of the reasons for its paralysis.
That in turn should be used to dramatize the Secretary General's abject
failure even minimally to exercise the  peace keeping and making duties of
his office and thereby force his resignation or dismissal. But even without
that, it is urgent and important to  take all possible and necessary to
prevent further US/NATO occupation in the Balkans  with the tacit support
by the UN Security Council, again to quote President Carter. 

The real  place  now to rally and resuscitate the United Nations is in the
General Assembly. That is what Canadian Prime Minister Lester Pearson did
during the Suez crisis in 1956 when Britain and France invaded Egypt and
also used their vetoes to  paralyze the Security Council. So Pearson
turned instead to the  General Assembly, which at his instance created an
International Emergency Intervention Force, as also foreseen in the UN
Charter. Before it  was then sent to Egypt.  Britain and France asked to
participate and were told that as parties to the conflict [that is the
aggressors] they could not. For his efforts, Lester Pearson received the
Noble Peace Prize; and he would turn in his grave at the prospect of the
same two and other NATO countries now marching into Kosovo under a UN
flag. [My second modest proposal was that it is time for a repeat
performance by Canada, which then should  urge the General Assembly also
to vote to move the UN out of the US - no better time than now - and to
invite it to Canada, specifically to French/English Montreal].  The
provision of Russian, Ukrainian , Chinese and other Asian, yes and why not
once to turn the tables African, as well as other forces mandated by the
UN General Assembly would surely  find political support, although
economic support from the rich NATO countries  footing the bill is more
doubtful. Of course, they should also be made to pay for the post-war
reconstruction of all they destroyed. But who is going to make them? 

A genuine United Nations intervention that is not just NATO's water boy is
important not only to safeguard some of the interests of the Yugoslavs and
even the Kosovars themselves, but also to try to forestall and prevent
many other dangerous developments:  A NATO imposed KLA government in
Kosovo with  its Greater Albanian  ambitious to annex Albania and to carve
up Macedonia, Montenegro and even Greece would keep the region in turmoil
and offer NATO plenty  continuing opportunities for its 'humanitarian'
intervention  NATO's geopolitically and militarily dangerous 'out of area'
south-eastward projection in the direction of the Caucasus and the Caspian
Sea,  has  oil and pipe line attractions for the West and  political and
military threats to Russia. A settlement such as the G-8 one mentioned
above would enhance rather than reduce these dangers . The NATO war has
already generated a highly dangerous threat of a new cold - and even hot -
war with a Moscow, Beijing, Delhi alliance, each with nuclear weapons,
that Chernomyrdin already evoked  in his May 26 Washington Post article
[and AGF in my March 26 one]. And of course, there is the issue of
democratic  control over NATO in  its member countries itself. The United
Nations may not be up to the task of stopping NATO in its track, but it is
still the best international instrument we have, especially if it is
invoked in some coordination with the above urged [first]  political weak
link and  [second]  moral high ground tactics. 

PRAXIS IN LIEU OF CONCLUSION

All these developments and threats make it vital that as many forces as
possible mobilize and coordinate their attempts to WEAKEN NATO

1. Politically attacking NATO's weakest links both nationally and
internationally 

2. Taking the moral high ground by challenging NATO leaders' personal
violations of law  and morality, and

3. Taking the law into  peaceful hands by invoking and implementing United
Nations intervention independently of NATO before it perverts the UN as
well as the political future of the Balkans and the world.

4. Counterattack  NATO's media war  with coordinated popular and
electronic counteroffensives for peace that must oblige  even the
institutional  media to sit up and take as well as give notice of  the
illegal usurpation and immoral exercise of power by  our 'leaders', which
is undermining and burying not only our international institutions but
also the most elementary democratic decision making procedures at the
national level in each of the NATO countries. We must rise to cripple
the NATO[FRANKEN]STEIN MONSTER  before it cripples or even kills  us all.