International Humanitarian Law and the Balkans: the Dilemma of a Superpower by John Sanderson
Trinity Papers Number
Trinity College
The University Of Melbourne
Lieutenant General John Sanderson is a former Chief of the Australian Army, who served in 1992-93 as Military Commander of the United Nations Transitional Authority in Cambodia. Chairman of the Paxiquest Group and a world authority on peacekeeping, General Sanderson delivered this paper as a Trinity Visiting Scholar in the early weeks of the 1999 Kosovo conflict. It makes a powerful case for the need to enforce internationally accepted standards of humanitarian law.
This paper represents the sixth in a series prepared by Trinity College which focus upon broad issues facing the community in such areas as education, ethics, history, politics, and science. Copies are available upon request from the Tutorial Office, Trinity College, Parkville, Victoria 3052 Australia.
2
Introduction by the Warden of Trinity College, Professor Donald Markwell. Distinguished guests, ladies and gentlemen – Here at Trinity we are honoured and delighted to have General John Sanderson with us as a Visiting Research Fellow from this month until late July, and it is a great pleasure for me as Warden to welcome you to his lecture and discussion on ‘International Humanitarian Law and the Balkans: the dilemma of a Superpower’. John Sanderson was born in Geraldton, Western Australia, in 1940, and educated at Duntroon and RMIT. In 1962, the year in which he graduated from Duntroon, he also married Lorraine, whom we are also delighted to have with us here in the College. John Sanderson served with the Royal Australian Engineers in Borneo during Confrontation, and commanded the 17th Construction Squadron in South Vietnam in 1970-71. He served from 1976 to 1978 as an instructor at the British Army Staff College, Camberley, and over subsequent years continued his impressive rise through the ranks of the Australian Army. He was, for example, charged with a number of Defence Force reviews, including the Army Reserve review in 1986, the review of higher defence structure in 1989, and the Defence Force structure review in 1991. In 1992-93, he served as Military Commander of the UN Transitional Authority in Cambodia, a peace-keeping operation overseeing the lead-up to elections in that country devastated by war, genocide, and foreign invasion. In his important study Conflict and Resolution: Peace-building through the ballot box in Zimbabwe, Namibia and Cambodia, the late Allan Griffith wrote that General Sanderson ‘showed marked skill in the management of a problem which grew in complexity as the Khmer Rouge withdrew its support from the [Paris Peace] agreement’. John Sanderson in fact launched Allan Griffith’s posthumous volume some months ago at Dyason House. So great was General Sanderson’s skill in his role in Cambodia, and so important his contribution to its success, that he was hailed – and I quote from one tribute – ‘as probably Australia’s greatest general since World War II … his leadership and courage under immense, sometimes intolerable pressure, saved the operation from collapse and allowed the UN to claim it as a model for future operations.’ General Sanderson was later made a Companion of the Order of Australia for his performance in those crucial 18 months as the commander of a force of 16,000 troops from 34 nations. Over subsequent years, General Sanderson has been much sought after as an analyst of UN peace-keeping and other operations, and he has, for example, spoken frankly on the problem of operations in Somalia and Rwanda, the need for a clear distinction between peacekeeping and peace enforcement and for major changes if the UN is to be effective in military operations, and on such related topics as human rights and international co-operation on refugees. From 1993 to 1995, General Sanderson served as Commander, Joint Forces Australia; from 1995 to 1997, as Chief of the General Staff, and in 1997-98 as Chief of Army. His concerns included reforms within the Army to form integrated task forces and give more emphasis to Commando and special force operations, and also responding to further centralisation of the defence force structure and related changes. General Sanderson is in great demand within Australia and abroad as a commentator on strategic issues; and we are, as I said at the outset, honoured and delighted that he is based here for these three months, in which he will continue his research and writing. We are very grateful for the contributions John and Lorraine Sanderson have already made to the life of this College, and it is a great pleasure now to call on General Sanderson to speak and then to answer questions. 3
4
International Humanitarian Law and the Balkans: the Dilemma of a Superpower What is it about 1989 that made it different to other years? Apart from the fact that it was 200 years after that most disruptive event in modern western history, the beginning of the French Revolution, is there any particular reason why we would attach any special significance to this year when we look back on the 20th Century? One reason why we might remember 1989 is that it was the year the Berlin Wall came down, an event that symbolizes the demise of communism as a global force, and the end of Russia as a super power. It was also the year that the Russians finally withdrew from Afghanistan and the Vietnamese withdrew from Cambodia. 1989 also saw the United Nations conduct an election in Namibia, the former German colony of South West Africa, mandated in trust since the First World War. This event had been in gestation for more than a decade while the South African government used the Soviet sponsored Cuban presence in Angola as an excuse to prevent an act of self-determination on the part of the Namibian people. Mikhail Gorbachev’s policies of Glasnost and Perestroika in the Soviet Union had also hastened the end of Aparthied in South Africa. The success of the United Nations in Namibia was closely followed by successes in Nicaragua and El Salvador, where warring factions were disarmed and elections were held. These were heady days for the United Nations in the wake of the subsidence of the Cold War, which had dominated international relations for almost half a century. At last the lofty determination of the international community as expressed in the UN Charter ‘to save succeeding generations from the scourge of war, which twice in our lifetime has brought untold sorrow to mankind’, seemed to be taking on a tangible dimension. The possibility of all nations, east and west alike, cooperating to bring about peaceful solutions to problems that had endured and festered for most of the century became the subject of serious discussion. Cambodia and Human Rights Emboldened by these successes, and in order to resolve an imbroglio that had engaged all the major powers for almost three decades, the United Nations resolved to undertake the most intrusive act of its history with the assumption of the role of the Transition Authority in Cambodia. The objective was to conduct a free and fair election of a constituent authority, which would then establish a new foundation in law for Cambodian society. The reason why the Cambodians were constrained to accept an outside authority was that they could neither agree on a mechanism of their own for this purpose, nor continue the civil war that had debilitated the nation. They were at the mercy of the international community, which could demand adherence to democratic process and human rights protocols as preconditions for development assistance and membership of the important global and regional financial and trading institutions. While a Supreme National Council with membership from each of the Cambodian factions was to share power with the UN and represent Cambodian sovereignty during the transition, it never served its jurisdictional function, simply because it could never gain a consensus on any issue of substance. As a consequence, the Secretary General’s Special Representative and other UN officers, mandated by the Security Council, occupied a position not dissimilar to that of previous colonial administrations, except for one vital difference; they did not have jurisdiction over the primary instruments of justice, the courts and the internal security apparatus of the four factions. What they did have however, was the right to appeal directly to the Cambodian people over the heads of their leaders. By this means they were able to unleash a latent and passionate desire for enfranchisement and participation in governance, which became the well spring of United Nations success. Many of Cambodia’s faction leaders were alarmed and offended by this outcome, not simply because they did not gain the political success they had deluded themselves into thinking was their due, but also because Cambodians became aware of their human rights for the first time, 5
and therefore less susceptible to the paternalistic rituals which had governed their relationship with their leaders for centuries. Some other members of the United Nations were also concerned about the consequences of this outcome, holding that too much freedom inhibited economic growth, and expressing a preference on cultural grounds for forms of guided democracy. The issue of human rights versus so called economic rights was a subject of serious contention in 1993, as it was in 1945 when the UN Charter was written, and as it remains at the end of the 20th Century under the contemporary title of market forces. It is likely to be the main issue confronting the New World Order for at least the first decade of the next millennium. Human Rights and International Humanitarian Law Although the United Nations has always acknowledged its responsibility to ensure individual rights, it has never been seized of human rights as a fundamental pillar of international relations. There is realpolitik in the rather lukewarm second line of the Charter: To reaffirm faith in fundamental human rights, and in the dignity and worth of the human person, and in the equal rights of men and women and of nations large and small (my emphasis)
While this and the defining articles of the Charter have been the source of much legal and practical work to improve the human condition, the concluding paragraph of Article 2 is succinct in identifying the contradiction which has lain in wait for the end of the Cold War: Nothing contained in the present Charter shall authorise the United Nations to intervene in matters which are essentially within the domestic jurisdiction of any state or shall require the Members to submit such matters to settlement under the present Charter: but this principle shall not prejudice the application of enforcement measures under Chapter VII (my emphasis)
The Charter has been carefully constructed to ensure that the concern for human rights did not interfere with the bedrock commitment to the sanctity of state sovereignty under the nation state, which had been the emerging foundation of the international order since the American War of Independence and the French Revolution. It is not difficult to conclude that fostering the growth of nation states out of the colonial empires in furtherance of an international order based on liberal democratic principles, was the main objective of the Charter. As a measure of success of this objective, where only 50 states ratified the Charter in 1945, 54 years on United Nations membership now approaches 200. Under the guiding hand of the five principal powers, not all of whom were democratic, a zeal for human rights has never been allowed to interfere with this growth. It is also the idea of nation states accepting responsibility for the acts of their citizens which is the source of International Humanitarian Law, which are those laws with their origins in the Laws of War, designed to moderate the behaviour of nations towards each others citizens during times of interstate conflict. Without the willingness and jurisdiction of sovereign states to discipline the application of armed force in accordance with agreed international conventions, all conflict would quickly move to a level of barbarity that would inevitably result in warfare of a ‘fight to the death’ nature. Such was the case in the Second World War where the German State actually directed gross breaches of treaty based and customary international law. In the aftermath, an international military tribunal was raised at Nuremberg to try leaders of Nazi Germany for war crimes, setting a precedent, which has reverberated for the rest of the Century. A similar tribunal was established to deal with Japanese war crimes, but it is Nuremberg, which is cited as the precedent. After the Industrial Age horrors of the First and Second World Wars, the need to provide international mechanisms that could ameliorate conflicts between nation states had taken on a new urgency. The ill-fated League of Nations was one of the early responses, as was a reaffirmation of a commitment to the Hague and Geneva conventions that were an early 6
attempt to respond to the lethality and broader effects of modern weaponry. At the same time, the potential of the new air power technology and its accompanying philosophy of application as espoused by the Italian theorist Douhet, held out the tempting possibility that the stalemate of the First World War could be avoided by developing deep strikes against an enemy’s means of waging war rather than grinding away at his front line troops. By its non-linear nature, this appealing prospect not only changed the nature of warfare, it also ensured that civilians were more broadly engaged, either directly as the targets of bombing, or as hostage to the strategic targets identified for destruction. War became too important to leave to the Generals. Civilians began to take a more involved hand in directing operations. Long range bombing became essentially war between civilians, with targeting being subjected to political oversight and, in the ultimate, civilian fingers on the trigger which fires the weapon. The Second World War defined a new level of civilian engagement, with the fire bombing of cities full of innocents, and, at the most extreme level of aerial indiscrimination, the destruction of whole cities with nuclear weapons. While there has been a tendency to attribute these acts to the military, there should be no doubt that they were politico-civilian initiatives. It was a natural stepping stone from there to long range intercontinental ballistic missiles with nuclear warheads and a strategy of mutually assured destruction. The response to this high technology madness on the part of those who did not have strategic weapons was to revert to new forms of warfare in which the manipulation of people by a combination of propaganda and terror provided much success against the forces of developed nations. Fighting while negotiating has become the only sensible strategy. Using light guerilla forces in direct contact with the population was seen as the only cost effective way of gaining advantage at the negotiating table with a technologically superior enemy. In recent times therefore, International Humanitarian Law and human rights have come into conjunction, for the principal difficulty now lies in the fact that most problems likely to threaten the peace and the international order are either internal to those unstable states where there is little or no consensus on the form or process of government, or increasingly, they are to do with the inability of states to influence the global corporate arrangements that control the flow of money in and out of national economies. Since 1945 the overwhelming majority of conflicts have been internal to states, and the overwhelming proportion of casualties have been civilians who have been subjected to massive breaches of human rights and International Humanitarian Law in the process. The international community’s response to these breaches has been erratic and confused. One source of this confusion is the fact that nations that deny their own people their human rights often have difficulty supporting sanctions against those external forces who commit crimes against humanity, primarily because the line between the two has become blurred. There should be nothing suprising in this to those legislators who have set about embracing a legal approach to the abolition of conflict. Because the Enlightenment was essentially western and liberal, it was never going to be easy to transpose these ideas across broader and culturally variable boundaries. While some nations might ratify the conventions and protocols in order to join the international fraternity, their commitment did not necessarily extend to risking their often fragile internal cohesion to join in the pursuit of justice for foreigners. The tactics used in internal warfare have ensnared civilians even further in conflict, either as reluctant participants, or as refugees fleeing the terror imposed by the opposing sides. In more recent times, the evidence suggests that these refugees have themselves become an instrument of the conflict, with refugee movement being manipulated for strategic advantage, using the media to focus on the need for a negotiated solution of a favorable nature. Vietnam and Afghanistan have been the most noted theatres for this type of strategic response, the former dramatically impacting on the United States willingness to engage on the ground in internal conflicts without clear and limited objectives, and the latter bringing the Soviet Union 7
to its knees and destroying it as a rival for the Americans. In both cases, the remote and debilitating nature of the conflict caused the erosion of commitment of the home populations, and was deeply divisive. By way of contrast, the populations in the war zones had nowhere to go and became more committed in the face of the humiliation of their opponents. As the underdogs, they attracted the romantic support of the Western press, but became less attractive as the transformation of their leaderships’ humanity was revealed in the way they denied their people appropriate participation in the post-conflict environment. In these and other conflicts the victors have invariably engaged in massive denial of human rights to sustain the prerogatives, both economic and political, of wartime leaders. The international response to these new realities was, in 1978, to add two protocols to the 1950 Geneva Conventions; one dealing with the protection of victims of international armed conflict, and the other more relevant protocol, with the protection of victims of non-international armed conflict. This latter document is essentially an exhortation for nations with internal conflicts and their allies to maintain the human rights of all their population in accordance with the human rights conventions, while they conduct their internal security operations. The difficulty is that the source of these conflicts generally lies in the intolerable denial of human rights to a substantial part of the population. Like all such conventions however, its most precise wording is devoted to the assurance in Article 3 that the nation state sits above these concerns: 1)
Nothing in this protocol shall be invoked for the purpose of affecting the sovereignty of a state or the responsibility of the government, by all legitimate means, to maintain or re-establish law and order in the State or to defend the national unity and territorial integrity of the State.
2)
Nothing in this protocol shall be invoked as a justification for intervening, directly or indirectly, for any reason whatever, in the armed conflict or in the internal or external affairs of the High Contracting Party in the territory of which that conflict occurs. (Article 3)
What then is NATO doing in the Balkans? What has occurred since 1989 to draw the world’s remaining Superpower into the seemingly intractable problems that awaited the cold war victors east of the old inner German border, and where is it all likely to end up? The United Nations and The Balkans Many new nations have taken their place at the United Nations since Perestroika, some from the breakup of the Soviet Union itself, and some from other constructs which owed their existence to the East-West conflict. Under Tito, the federated state of Yugoslavia had imposed peace on the Balkans for more than 40 years – the longest period of peace in Balkan history. Tito had done this through the combination of pan- Slavic patriotism, a coercive state structure, and a form of armed neutrality, which gave Yugoslavia standing in the Non-aligned world, and deterred interference from outside. There could be no other short-term way of holding together a mixture of Roman Catholic, Orthodox and Islamic peoples who nurtured a bitter and deep aversion to each other. To most people’s disappointment, but to few people’s surprise, Yugoslav unity was the first European casualty of the end of the Cold War. In mid-1991 Croatia and Slovenia, followed closely by Macedonia and Bosnia-Herzogovena declared their independence. There has been much criticism of the fact that other European nations were too hasty in recognising this precipitate act, and therefore bear much of the responsibility for the crisis, which followed. The principal problem lay in the fact that there were various combinations of different cultures living in territories over which each of these breakaway nations made historic claims. In typical Balkans fashion, because the climate was not one of mediation or compromise, war and the accompanying ethnic cleansing were inevitable. Serbs, Croats and Muslims of all types were cast into refugee status, the total magnitude of the problem representing World War Two 8
proportions with the accompanying tales of atrocities of medieval character. Quickly recognising that nothing could be done to reverse this situation, the Security Council was seized by the need to bring about an atmosphere in which negotiation and mediation was feasible in accordance with Chapter VI of the UN Charter. The generation and supervision of a cease-fire between the Serbs and Croats using a United Nations peacekeeping force was the logical and legitimate step. UNPROFOR under command of an Indian General, Satish Nambir, was raised in 1992 for this purpose, and after a slow start, began to fulfil its truce observance role. All the humanitarian agencies of the United Nations and many nongovernment organisations became involved to help with the problem of displaced persons, raising the profile of the conflict and the plight of the Yugoslavs to unprecedented levels. Unfortunately, the major problem of Bosnia was only just beginning. The Bosnian Serbs and the Bosnian Croats, supported by Serbia and Croatia, began to carve away large pieces of this former central Yugoslav territory. In a now very famous step, the French UN Commander in Bosnia, General Morillon and his Deputy, Canadian Major General Mackenzie decide to move UN troops into Sarajevo before gaining Security Council approval for this very strategic move. They were met there and encouraged by President Mitterand, giving the impression that the French were trying to draw the international community into a problem for which the Security Council would have great difficulty in generating a consensus. As events turned out, this move probably saved many lives in the appalling siege of Sarajevo which followed, but it also cast the United States and the United Nations onto diverging paths, creating an impasse between Secretary General Boutros Ghali and The United States Administration. America was still recovering from a humiliating experience in Somalia where they had just led an ill-conceived enforcement action mandated under Chapter VII of the Charter. Bewildered by their lack of understanding of United Nations operations, the seeming perfidy of other UN members, and their lack of success in cowering a ramshackle group of armed clans, the United States Congress and Administration had begun to blame the United Nations for their loss of face. Their withdrawal from Somalia contrasted sharply with the success they had claimed for themselves in the war with Iraq, and this was put down to a lack of objectivity within the United Nations. An initial consequence of this experience was a malaise in the UN at Security Council level. When in 1994 it was unable to respond effectively to predictions by the commander on the ground of a genocidal disaster in Rwanda, the United Nations no longer had the appearance of an organisation, which could solve the post-Cold War problems of the world. Closer to home, the problem of Haiti was addressed by a disproportionate show of force, and an American led operation which, while ostensibly UN peacekeeping, had all the outward signs of the United States using the UN for its own strategic purposes. This contrasted badly with the belated response in Central Africa. In this atmosphere the Europeans had begun to plan for a regional response to the Balkans problem. Prompted by the French, they had initiated Western European Union consideration of a non-NATO action, which would exclude the Americans. Wiser heads concluded that there was little chance of success of such an option, and so the die was cast for a peculiar arrangement whereby the United Nations, with heavy European presence but no Americans, conducted a very large peacekeeping operation throughout the Balkans, while NATO backed this up with the use of force in the form of airpower. There is much debate about the Security Council resolutions which mandated this relationship. Unquestionably, because of its confused nature, the conflict could be construed as war between states, as opposed to being internal, and therefore lent itself to enforcement action. But, the arrangement excluded United States forces from United Nations command, and placed them in the role of chief critic of the force in which they refused to serve. Time and again, United States political and military leaders were moved to deride the lack of resolve of UN leaders while they themselves refused to place United States soldiers in harms way. From a military perspective, the arrangements whereby the lightly armed 9
peacekeepers on the ground were at the mercy of both the way in which NATO applied force from outside and the forces of the Bosnian Muslims and Serbs alike, was simply untenable. After atrocities of the most horrifying kind, particularly at Gorazde and Srebidnicia, the war began to turn against the Bosnian Serbs. The combination of this reality, plus displays of the destructive properties of US airpower, and the application of economic sanctions against Serbia itself, resulted in an agreement at Dayton Ohio in late 1995 to allow a NATO led Implementation Force into Bosnia. The purpose of IFOR was to supervise the transition of Bosnia and Herzogovina into a federated state of two republics, Bosnia and Herzegovina and Republica Srpska. Although this arrangement was mandated for one year only, and despite the fact that there has been a prolonged period of NATO enforced peace, there is little sign of it being able to terminate its presence without a return to full scale warfare. By 1995, the United States of America was lodged firmly in the Balkans for the first time in its history, and can now find no way out without bringing the opposing factions to the realisation that there is less to gain from war than there is from peace. To do this it has to overcome centuries of blood debt and hatred. Perhaps it has to bring Serbia itself to its knees? The Dayton accords would not have been possible if Slobodan Milosevic, the Serbian leader had not concluded that it was in Serbia’s interest to terminate overt support to the Bosnian Serbs. Clearly, Russian pressure had much to do with this realization, which in turn was influenced by Russian dependence on Western aid and long term credits. Lurking in the background were many other Balkan problems including Macedonia in which the UN had established a presence from the early days of UNPROFOR. And defying any easy solutions, was the historical problem of Kosovo, a province of Serbia proper, and an issue of passionate historical significance to the embattled Serbs. Perhaps of even greater concern however, was the problem of war criminals. In 1993, the United Nations mandated an International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia for the purpose of bringing those accused of crimes against humanity to justice. That the tribunal was raised during the conflict rather than after it as was the case with Nuremberg, is an indication that a principal purpose of the initiative was deterrence. While there are many indicted war criminals who have not been handed over for prosecution, nor arrested by IFOR’s successor, SFOR, the tribunal continues to see itself as enhancing international law by hearing cases and building precedent. The fact that most if not all, the Tribunals targets are Serbian is an indication of the nature of the Serbian predicament, in which Kosovo is the final desperate battleground. And here is the global dilemma; if the Serbs are to commit gross breaches of human rights law and international humanitarian law to cleanse and hold Kosovo, and the international community is not prepared to bring those directing and committing these acts to justice, then the sum totals of the precedents which are set will be negative. Ethnic cleansing is likely to be seen as a worthwhile strategy in a climate of overpopulation and diminishing resources, and the idea of international tribunals to deter crimes against humanity will probably require conflict of even more disastrous proportions to take hold. The Dilemma of a Superpower The United States of America has been a superpower for most of the 20th Century. After the First World War, in which Europe had been bled dry and exposed to forces of extreme nationalism, America had played a leading role in promoting concepts of international jurisdiction, but then found itself unable to join the League of Nations. This rejection of international controls on United States prerogatives has been an underlying constant in American politics, and reflects the deep contradictions which lie in this most democratic of nations, and which serve to confuse its friends and enemies alike. America’s full potential was not realised until after the Second World War, when it was forced to engage with the rest of the world to fulfil its responsibilities as the principal victor, and in realization of the fact that there was an equally powerful economic and ideological force abroad 10
in the form of the Soviet Union. Having given a new constitution to Japan, begun the rebuild of Western Europe through the Marshall Plan, established a ring of alliances around the communist bloc, and set up the United Nations, America was engaged with the rest of the world in a way which was a source of great pride to its liberal establishment, and a source of great concern to those reactionary conservatives who trended towards isolationism. Twice during the period from the end of the Second World War until the end of the Cold War in 1989, America engaged in major conflict to fulfil its western leadership role. The first was in Korea in the 1950s, where it led an international coalition under the UN flag. The second was America’s longest war, fought in Vietnam from 1962 to 1975, where it led a coalition of free world forces, initially established by an invitation from South Vietnam issued under the auspices of the SEATO Treaty. There have been other engagements of a more minor nature, and, at all times throughout this period, America and its allies had forces at very high levels of preparedness to fight World War III. They have also encouraged and supported resistance to communist regimes and movements, sometimes at the expense of their reputations as proponents of liberal democracy. There can be little doubt that America’s willingness to apply the extraordinary power of its economy to this end, is the primary reason why the Eastern Bloc collapsed, and capitulated its grip on many of the world’s more enduring troublespots. Victory in the Cold War has brought with it responsibility for all of these problems, just as the Second World War brought responsibility for Western Europe. Unfortunately, the deep and enduring tribal, religious and racial nature of these problems makes the ideological character of the Cold War look relatively simple by comparison. Added to this complexity is the fact that all modern day interventions will be conducted in the full glare of the Media. America had an early experience of this during the war in Vietnam, where the first instances of almost real time coverage brought the conflict into the living rooms of the nation. Led to expect that operations could be quickly brought to fruition, the American people became jaded as images of bombed out villages, child casualties, street executions and dying soldiers were burned into the national psyche. The fallacious nature of the body count, and the fact that the burden of the conflict was increasingly being carried by those from the lower rungs of the social ladder, became obvious from press reporting and thus divided the nation. This experience was a spur for deep reflection on the part of the military establishment, where a sense of shame mixed with a sense of recrimination at the way the war had been directed became a catalyst for the so-called revolution in military affairs of the 1990s. During the remainder of the 1970s and the early 1980s much intellectual and research and development effort was focused on defining a new doctrinal basis for strategic and tactical operations, which excluded deep engagement of the Vietnam kind. While the Americans supported guerilla wars against Soviet sponsored states in Afghanistan, Nicaragua, Cambodia and southern Africa, most of their military effort was given over to the strategic defence systems of star wars, and a new deep manoeuvre concept of land warfare called the Air/Land Battle. The air/land battle was characterised by the use of advanced technologies to allow high mobility and highly lethal army units to flow across the battlefield, supported by deep precision strikes of the air forces aimed at breaking up and preventing the manoeuvre of the enemy. In a move away from the unacceptable concept of mutually assured destruction, the complementary addition to the stars wars defence concept was the use of high lethality, conventional precision weapons of the smart bomb and cruise missile type. The technology for the tactical concepts of the air/land battle, and the strategic concepts of precision strike thereby became complementary. Apart from the fact that emerging American technology in this area was far in advance of the rest of the world, a massive infusion of funds for defence systems during the Reagan Administration flung the American Defence organisation on a path away from heavy land forces of the old attrition warfare type, and increased their dependence on the quick solutions of the lightning war. Of course, competition between the Navy, Air Force, Army and the Marines 11
for funding continued to influence the balance of capital investment, using alliances with various industries and associated politicians who were interested in jobs for their electorates. Despite this, there is substantial evidence that strategic policy and associated technology development made a significant contribution to the end of the Cold War. Was all this investment in military systems relevant to the post cold war environment? Foolishly, Sadam Hussein provided a timely opportunity to give one possible answer to this question. In terrain ideally suited to deep manoeuvre and the use of precision weapons, he made the mistake of thinking that he had the resources to deter the United States on the basis that the American people would not accept significant numbers of casualties. As events emerged, the new technology allowed an almost casualty free campaign in which all the concepts of a just war, strategic interest and United Nations enforcement mandates under Chapter VII of the UN Charter could be brought into play. Despite the conjunction of all these fortuitous circumstances, the temptation to take broad strategic lessons about the nature of future warfare was difficult to resist. Various interest groups were quick to suggest that the successes of the Gulf Campaign not only confirmed the development emphasis on their particular capability, but also demand even greater investment. Lurking behind the scenes of the Gulf War were two realities, which did not gain much early recognition. The first was that the coalitions which were an essential aid to consensus at home, were very difficult to put together, and even more difficult to sustain in the face of the imperatives of American domestic politics. The realities of this fact emerged even before the conventional phase of the Gulf War had ended when the ease with which Iraqi forces were destroyed and humiliated became counter-productive, and explains in part why Sadam Hussein’s administration and Republican Guard remain intact to this day. It also goes some way to explaining America’s preference for NATO operations rather than UN operations under Chapter VII of the Charter. The second reality was that most conflicts occurring in the world were internal and much less tidy than the response to the Iraqi invasion of Kuwait. The United States had an early reminder of this fact when it was constrained to intervene with a UN mandated enforcement operation in Somalia to help humanitarian agencies feed a starving population. As has been suggested earlier, American casualties and a lack of UN objectivity caused a salutary withdrawal from Somalia and an erosion of confidence in the UN itself. Apart from the Haiti operation close to home, the United States has since shown a marked reluctance to intervene on the ground, reaffirming its post Vietnam preference for short wars of high technology and manoeuvre. Like it or not, their successful leadership of NATO has now made America the guarantor of European security up to the Russian border. Most Europeans understand that if the Americans do not continue to carry this burden, there is a high probability that the primary nations of Europe will have to re-arm, including the acquisition of weapons of a more significant strategic nature. Always conscious of this possibility, Great Britain is the most fervent supporter of American engagement, and is always the first to lend its military support to America’s European initiatives. There are other nations equally clear on this issue and these include the most recent members of NATO, Hungary, Poland and the Czech Republic, all of whom have had bitter experience of Europe’s territorial problems. All these trends, the aversion to a ground war and their leadership role, have come to a head in the Balkans, and have brought to life once again the ambiguities of America’s relationship with Europe. America has attempted to avoid deep engagement in the problems of Bosnia by sponsoring with great patience the United Nations presence up to the time that it became clear that NATO had to become involved to drive home and then deliver the Dayton Agreement. Hoping against all the odds that IFOR and then SFOR would be the path that would allow an early transition of the problem back to the UN, the United States has found instead, that it is being drawn deeper into a dilemma.
12
With the magnitude of the issues at stake, there would be those who suggest that America should avoid becoming any further involved in what can be construed as the internal problems of the Balkans. If such an option was ever a reasonable thought, it can now only be included in the category of wishful thinking. There is substantial evidence that the Serbs have moved affairs into a state of gross crimes against humanity, which are impossible to ignore. Was there an attempt to do so, there is little doubt that it would resound through Western society for many years to come, trying the liberal democratic foundation of most nations and corrupting the emerging international order. From a NATO nations’ perspective, there was a powerful affirmation of this reality at its 50th Anniversary Congress on the 23rd April 1999, when justification of its offensive action against Serbia on the grounds of the destabilising effect of its abuse of human rights dominated the proceedings. One ray of light in this dark picture is the fact that young Serbs have demonstrated an impassioned desire for liberal democracy, and have demonstrated a distaste for the Serbian form of fascism offered by Milosevic and his colleagues. Admittedly, this sentiment does not extend to giving up Kosovo for which most Serbs of all ages have a fierce and patriotic attachment. What it does point to however, is an avenue of appeal of which Milosevic has shown his keen awareness, and devoted much effort to closing off. The question then is ‘is the selective bombing of infrastructure and military targets the most appropriate way of opening this avenue?’ Everything points to the fact that the answer to this question is a resounding NO! But the other half of this answer is a question. What else could NATO do? The rush to reap the returns of the Cold War victory, and the emphasis on light high tech to the detriment of heavy forces has left them unprepared for a ground war against such a fierce enemy as the Serbian Army. General Klaus Naumann, the retiring head of the NATO Military Staff enunciated the problem in his retirement speech in Brussels on the 5th May 1999: We need to find a way to reconcile the conditions of a coalition war with the principles of military operations such as surprise and overwhelming military force. We did not apply either to Operation Allied Force, and this cost time, effort and potentially additional casualties. The net result is that the campaign will undoubtedly be prolonged. (my emphasis)
General Naumann did not suggest the unthinkable, that the campaign could be lost. And such could undoubtedly be a possibility if NATO did not mobilise sufficient military power to guarantee that it could achieve its objectives with relative ease and in a short time. Clearly, deep attrition of Serbia’s capacity to resist would also aid this outcome, and NATO would also have to ensure that it had sufficient airpower remaining from its air campaign against Serbia to aid the rapid manoeuvre of its ground forces. It is clearly speed which gave the greatest possibility of a decisive move to defeat and capture those guilty of crimes, rather than the chosen option of punishing a whole people for the acts of criminals, and driving a nations youth into the hands of a reactionary leadership. The pretensions of the air power theorists has become even more seductive to political leaders as the technology has created weapons that are more discriminating and precise, but in the case of Serbia it has probably had the opposite effect to that desired. There are signs that the Serbs have always been one step ahead of NATO’s decision making in this respect. Conclusion In the ten years since the Berlin Wall came down in 1989 much has happened to move the world along the path to a greater internationalism. In this environment there are bound to be incandescent outbursts of nationalism as the problem of a fair distribution of resources becomes even more pronounced, and people develop a sense that their culture is threatened by these developments. Many of the international agencies that have been set up to address these problems deserve great credit for the way in which they have approached their mission. Those 13
who have framed, and become advocates for, international laws which moderate individual and national behaviour through these transitions will have developed an important legacy. But it is a proven fact that not everyone will see the work of the international agencies in this light. For many years to come, the world will need an enforcer whose behaviour in turn must be guided by standards that transcend national self interest. The United Nations owes much to the fact that the United States of America is a liberal nation with a powerful commitment to human rights and a dynamic form of evolving democracy. Its sometimes flawed approach to international affairs can be attributed to the contradictions engendered by liberal and conservative forces at work internally; this is an essential feature of a democracy. Despite the fact that it can never be said to have shirked its responsibility to the international community in the past 50 years, the dilemmas of the new age will make the task of defining its role doubly difficult. There should be no doubt however, that for the foreseeable future, nothing of a substantial nature can be done to enforce compliance with international humanitarian law, and to limit crimes against humanity, unless the world’s remaining superpower becomes engaged, and is supported in doing so by reliable coalitions of the highest order.
14
Closing address: Vote of thanks by Dr Damian Powell, Director of Academic Studies. It is really a very great pleasure, on behalf of the College and all of us here assembled, to offer a vote of thanks to General Sanderson for sharing his thoughts on the Balkans conflict, America’s role, and the way forward. While General Sanderson professes himself no academic, you have all seen tonight that he displays a clarity of mind, and directness of approach, that is found only in the most capable of scholars. We are particularly delighted that he and his wife, Mrs Lorraine Sanderson, have agreed to live here at Trinity over the coming months. In their short time here they have brought wisdom, honesty, and intellectual vitality to the College, for which we are very grateful indeed. In the introduction to his study of The Causes of War, Geoffrey Blainey remarks that for every thousand pages published on the causes of wars there is less than one page directly written on the causes of peace. Reflecting that one obstacle to studying international peace is, perhaps, the widespread assumption that peace is the normal state of affairs, Professor Blainey suggests that a proper understanding of the causes of peace and war should dovetail – yet few academics, or politicians, have displayed sufficient grasp of the issues involved in making war and making peace to pull these threads together. As a former Chief of Army, one might expect General Sanderson to know a good deal about the causes and realities of war – but what strikes one immediately is his knowledge of, and practical commitment to, an effective and just implementation of the mechanisms of peace. His work to promote peaceful and humane conditions for all through international co-operative effort is perhaps most powerfully demonstrated in his work as Military Commander of the United Nations Transitional Authority in Cambodia – arguably the most successful UN military action in its fifty years of operation – and continues in his support for international humanitarian agencies such as the Red Cross. Tonight, General Sanderson has shown us, with a deft hand, how emerging military realities have placed international humanitarian rights at the heart of conflict. He has shown that a tension between such rights and the rights of national sovereignty, unresolved in the UN’s own charter, shadow America’s involvement in the Balkans. Heightened by media impact, the Balkans crisis shows the dilemmas the international leadership, in which US domestic politics are themselves susceptible to shocks fuelled by the foreign battlefield. Air power, and a reliance upon military technology, has not solved the dilemma, and may well have heightened it – as the US weighs the cost of taking the role of enforcer in the name of international humanitarian standards. Trinity College has a long and abiding interest in international relations – the depth of which may be hinted at by mentioning such diplomats as Sir Reginald Leeper and Richard Woolcott, Foreign Minister Lord Casey, and amongst academic writers on international affairs, Sir Keith Hancock – all old members of the College. Dyason House, which the Warden mentioned earlier, the home of the Victorian branch of the Australian Institute of International Affairs, is named for a former Senior Student of the College who has been but one of many members of Trinity active in the work of the Institute. The present Warden, Professor Markwell, is a distinguished scholar of international affairs who has himself published on the causes of war and peace. In such an environment, we are particularly fortunate to have, in General Sanderson, a distinguished visiting scholar who has already shown that he is ever ready to engage with students, tutors and staff within the college and the wider university. Would you please join me in thanking General Sanderson for his thoughtful words tonight.
15