A seminar for editors sponsored by The Crimes of War Project and The Freedom Forum

Day One, Panel One: What Will the Next War Look Like and What Will the International Community Do About It?

Moderator/Discussant: Michael Ignatieff, Author

d) Discussion

MR. IGNATIEFF: So I'm wondering whether we could get some comments, questions from the audience, as sharply and pertinently put as possible? Tony Borden first.

MR. BORDEN: I remember calling from Sarajevo on April 5 and I was told, look, call us back when there's a real war. It was the next day, for heaven's sake, and, of course, it was a lot of frustration for journalists that the situation in Kosovo was quite emerging and evident. But over the ten year period it was very difficult to cover it as an ongoing story while the story was the same and it was static and it hadn't moved.

So it's really the civil society gap, the democratic gap, and the transition societies, more than the borders themselves which are a result of that problem anyway, and the difficulties in working that out.

MR. PETERS: While borders are just the practical, tangible manifestation of this legacy, it's a practical problem, as you so well articulated. But our borders, our concepts of sovereignty, much of our international law, this is all legacy from European empires. And as Americans it baffles me that we don't question it, that we just accept the legacy.

Now I'm not taking the maximalist position that all borders are bad. Some are pretty good. And if we could look forward 50 years into the future and see the Rand-McNally map 20/50, you might have to look hard to see the changes because the changes- with some exceptions where countries just break up- the changes are in the peripheries. But the peripheries are historically where the massive bloodshed happens between civilizations. But right now it's really between cultures. For now he's pitched his comfort level too high.

Wars in the 20th Century were between winners about who would be the big winner. Since 1991, they're between losers, about local spoils, and sometimes between losers or wannabes and the winners, but they're unlikely to be between the winners- not that you can predict anything with absolute certainly.

So in terms of borders--sovereignty sometimes is a good thing. But some states will be around, some will muddle through, and some are going to break up. I think Nigeria's going to go, Indonesia's going to go -the question is when- and to argue against them breaking up is like going out and shaking your fist at the sky and saying, we want sunshine and we demand sunshine. We don't want any rain. You can't fight against the forces of history. It's just ludicrous. And I think that's what we've been doing.

MR. NEIER: Let me just give an example to illustrate why I think this discussion of borders takes us down a false path. And the example is the horn of Africa.

The only place in Africa since the colonial powers abandoned the continent that there has been an internationally recognized change in borders is in Ethiopia, where Eritrea became a separate state. So Eritrea became a separate state, a different ethnic group, and now we've had this, you know, horrendous border war between Ethiopia and Eritrea. Nobody knows quite what it's about. It's about apparently a tiny strip of land that is disputed between the two countries. At least 50,000 people have been killed in that war between Ethiopia and Eritrea. We thought Eritrea was one of the most promising countries in Africa, and it's absurd that it should be engaged in this horrendous war.

But if you look elsewhere on the horn of Africa, the one place or one of the few places in Africa where you could say that there is a more or less homogeneous state -- that is, everybody's from the same linguistic group and so forth, is Somalia, and that's the country that has disintegrated beyond any other.

So it seems to me that just looking at that tells us that borders are not the issue. There's a famous work on France. Eugene Webber (phonetic) has a classic work, Peasants into Frenchmen. And it's about what happened in France between 1870 and 1914. And essentially, the story is that here is a country of diverse ethnic groups, diverse traditions, diverse languages which over a period of time came together and people no longer thought of themselves in terms of their own village, their own commune, their own region. They began to identify with a larger, national state and they thought of themselves as Frenchmen.

We have a reverse process that is taking place in many parts of the world today. But there are aspects of state performance and legitimacy, which go to these issues, and France acquired legitimacy as it came together as a nation.

What has happened in states that enjoyed some legitimacy, even if they were colonial constructs, is that they have come apart and it's because of corruption, it's because of authoritarian rule, it's because of brutality. Those are the things that are tearing states apart. It's the Milosevics, it's the Abachas in Nigeria, it's the Suhartos that are tearing states apart. But it isn't necessarily a great thing to encourage that process.

MS. BURGESS: This question is for Colonel Peters. I'm Lisa Burgess. I'm a Freedom Forum fellow. Colonel, could you please address the influence of transnational players on upcoming conflicts. Do you see them more as a disruptive force or destabilizing force? And perhaps you could frame it in terms of either the Caucasus or Latin America. I know you have a lot of experience in both regions.

MR. PETERS: I'll try to keep this really short because that's really a subject for a great conference, and next time you can pay me more. But yesterday, great example of a transnational threat. But we're missing some of the key things. The I Love You virus. Thank God for it. Wonderful. Thank God for the Melissa virus. Imagine the shape we'd be in if there were no hackers out there attacking our system in peacetime. They're training us. And believe me, ladies and gentlemen- the Pentagon isn’t going to figure this one out for you- we can't afford the talent.

Civil society, Silicon Valley, et cetera. In the words of our great American populist, Marxist philosopher of 1980, Cindy Lauper, money changes everything. But very seriously, I think transnational threats are increasingly important. Every single day they get more important. I just would hog all the time if I tried to answer it in more detail. They're various, they're rich, and Michael Ignatieff has written brilliantly about them.

MR. IGNATIEFF: Can I just add here really a footnote reference. It's Blaine Harden's pieces on Angola and Sierra Leone and the constitutive role of transnational companies in putting a revenue stream on-shore in the societies in the throes of a civil war in such a way that it's oil revenue that sustains the civil war on the dos Santos side in Angola. It's diamond revenue that sustains the civil war on the Savimbi side of a conflict, which has gone on since 1974.

What the American public persistently fails to understand about a lot of these conflicts is that they occur not in societies that are poor and desperate, but societies that are extremely rich. The problem is the misappropriation of resources to fuel civil wars and keep them going. And there is a collusive, a deeply disturbing collusive role in which American and British and European multinational corporations, often unwillingly- I'm not a Marxist conspiracy theorist here- find their revenue streams
funding civil wars and ethnic conflicts in ways that are entirely perverse. And Blaine Harden's pieces in the New York Times, if I was handing out Pulitzer Prizes, he'd get one for simply those bits of reporting.

And also it's clearly a hook, because I think one of the things that's making reporting of these things so difficult is just the simple sense they're so far away. What's the American agenda here? What's the American interest? What's the connection?

And Harden and other people are showing that time and again the resources that sustain ethnic civil war are being provided to these societies by transnational corporations. And transnational corporations have a tremendous difficulty dealing with the human rights implications and the best of them are in dialogue on this issue because does BP-Amoco feel real comfortable about funneling revenue streams into the bank account of either Savimbi or dos Santos? You must be kidding, because
the public relations cost raised by ladies and gentlemen like you is extremely high for these corporations.

So it's another place where the press is deeply involved.

A PARTICIPANT: (Inaudible) the media in Kosovo. I work with the OSCE. I'm intrigued that no one has mentioned in any form sheer banditry, sheer thuggery, black marketeering. Now I realize you can take borders as a cause or effect in such a thing, but in some cases I think the decline of states, the Kaplin (phonetic) theory, is because of internal banditry, thuggery, and banditry that, as we see in Sudan, Uganda, increasingly recognizes no borders.

As the Somalia conflict degenerated in the early '90s there was a real element of sheer banditry beyond the clan and sub-clan alliances. And this is tearing at the very fabric. And as I think beyond the ICRC offering to bring in humanitarian assistance because the eight agencies find that they are in danger themselves, there is no recognition of international law. And increasingly, I suspect, this becomes a struggle for all of us. As journalists, we can be easily killed. As humanitarian, we can be easily killed. And the very fabric of society is being destroyed for the essence of sheer banditry.

A PARTICIPANT: Just a quick comment on that. I think one of the reasons why the Chechnya human rights violations were not covered is simply that the banditry had killed so many journalists, and kidnapped so many aid workers, that nobody in their right mind, nobody running an agency, no editor with concern for their personnel, would send people in there. And so it has become that one of the responses to banditry and state dissolution is just to stay the hell out, which then in a curious way exacerbates the problem, because there are no canaries in the mine. The canaries stay out.

MR. PETERS: I absolutely agree. That's what I was getting at with the rule of law about redemption. The hard fact is- and it's a fact- when you go to a Kosovo or Bosnia or Sierra Leone, if you're not willing to kill some people and put the other bad hombres in jail and give the rest of the population, the vast majority, a chance, you're just keeping the world safe for black marketeers, as we are doing in the Balkans.

Ladies and gentlemen, most humans may or may not be inherently good, but there is a small minority that likes to kill, becomes addicted to violence, and thrives on the disruptions of violence. And if you go with all the wealth and majesty and might of the United States to country X, Y, or Z, and you're not willing to make the streets safe and impose a rule of law and kill, if necessary, and arrest that small minority that thrives on violence, you're wasting your time and effort.

MR. GUTMAN: I just have a question for Colonel Peters and the other panelists. If we're heading into a century now of conflict over boarders in this post-colonial era- leaving aside whether borders are really going to be the issue, but they could become the occasion- is there anything interesting in this for the American public, or the general public that is if it doesn't turn into a vast human rights violation, as we've been seeing in the last ten years? Maybe they'll even be curbed and maybe war will become a little bit more within the rules.

MR. PETERS: I don't think war is going to become more within the rules, because what we're doing is pushing the talented people without power to find alternative strategies. And as Michael talked about, those strategies vary from increasing the level of bloodshed, to computer viruses and everything in between.

So I just don't know how to respond to your question except to say that we're in for a pretty nasty century. Borders aren't the only problem, certainly. Human-- I go back to root cause as fundamental human hatred-- greed, corruption. We're really in violent disagreement on core things, I think. Human nature to me is a core problem. The human nature-- a fraction of 1 percent. Less than 1 percent of a population armed and dangerously determined can destroy a fragile country. That's the story of the 1990s. I'm afraid it's going to be the story of the 21st Century.

A PARTICIPANT: I would say that since corruption plays such a significant part in the conflicts in various parts of the world, I do think that there's going to be or there could be a high level of international interest, because so often there are international interests that in some way take advantage of the corruption or feed the corruption.

What Michael was saying earlier about Angola is an example of that, that the diamond industry and the oil industry do have a significant role. We directly benefit from those industries, and I think it does produce, or can produce, a sense of global responsibility for what is taking place in those circumstances.

Can I get Aryeh to engage a question that relates to this business about state sovereignty and human rights? I wanted to push you on one specific issue because Indonesia has come up. Huge archipelago, enormously important center of world population. 250 million people. This is a big, important place.

Are you saying that the human rights community perhaps didn't think through the implications of supporting self-determination for the East Timors? Because seeking self-determination for these East Timors, a noble cause, a good cause, the right cause, set in train an unintended set of consequences in which the struggle for self-determination will ripple through the archipelago and essentially sunder the sovereignty of the Indonesian state with potentially catastrophic consequences in human rights terms?

MR. NEIER: Well, first let me say in terms of the human rights community, Human Rights Watch did not take a stand on the question of independence for East Timor, nor did Amnesty International take a stand, nor, so far as I know, did any of the major human rights organizations take a stand on independence for East Timor. We documented the abuses of human rights. The abuses of human rights took place in the context of a struggle for independence, but we ourselves- that is, we speaking for the mainstream human rights community- never took a stand on the question of independence. And there might have been much greater legitimacy to a claim for independence in East Timor than in many parts of the world, but from our standpoint, if we were going to take a stand on East Timor, what were we going to say about Tibet? What were we going to say about Kashmir? What were we going to say about Punjab, Irian Java, Aceh. You go on indefinitely. And I don't know. I've never been able to figure out a set of principles that you can apply to resolve these questions about independence.

So in the absence of a set of principles, inevitably, one would have to make political determinations. And I think that the issue of independence is ultimately political rather than something that can be dealt with from the standpoint of rights.

A PARTICIPANT: But doesn't that open you to the charge from an inquiring journalist that you're just sitting on the fence on a crucial, moral issue. That is, that you're sounding like the ICRC in terms of a retreat into a kind of neutrality in which you denounce human rights violations, but don't presumably attribute responsibility for those violations. That's what you're saying. Both of you don't want to have conclusive neutrality.

MR. NEIER: Right.

A PARTICIPANT: But if you're not going to take a stand on the political issue of whether the East Timor should be free or not, then that's not much help to the East Timors, is it?

MR. NEIER: No, I don't think so, because I think that if you can stop the human rights violations from taking place, you do give people an opportunity to express themselves in ways where issues of that sort can be resolved in some reasonable manner. But if violence is used to suppress those who are protesting, then there's no way to have any resolution that is in some ways fair and in some ways decent.

But take the Chechnya situation. Can you really imagine that the human rights community would take a position on whether Chechnya should be independent? I think that we don't have any special political standing to take a position on a question of that sort. We do have some capacity to apply certain principles that are recognized in international law to what is taking place in Chechnya, in East Timor, in Kashmir, in Tibet, in any of these places. And say that we also are going to document
and denounce the abuses of those who are engaged in the independence struggle, because they commit abuses as well, and aligning ourselves politically with one side in a dispute of that sort would undermine our ability to do our job.

A PARTICIPANT: May I ask Aryeh a question? Very quickly, Aryeh, or for anyone. One, if it was morally right to let the British, French, Belgian, other empires break up, why isn't it right to let the Indonesian empire break up? It is an empire. And isn't the logical end to the defense of sovereignty to argue that Hitler would have been just fine if he only killed German Jews?

MR. NEIER: Look, the question is what does it mean if Indonesia breaks up? Well, let me take off the human rights hat for the moment because I am not speaking as a human rights activist. This is difficult for me. But in terms of Indonesia, what does it mean for Indonesia to break up? You have two provinces at extreme ends of Indonesia- Irian Jaya and Aceh- where there have been independence struggles for an extended period. The independence struggles there have a number of factors. But I think there are two principle factors in those independent struggles.

One is those are resource-rich parts of Indonesia. Over time the resources of those areas have been used to enrich the Javanese elite. So the population of Irian Jaya and Aceh are tremendously resentful of the exploitation of their resources and the failure to have a significant portion of those resources returned to those areas. And then their protest over that has been met by terrible military abuses. So there is tremendous resentment against the government for those abuses and there's a
demand for accountability.

If you take the rest of Indonesia, there are a couple of other places where there are resources which happen to be sort of middle class areas which are not going to engage in revolutions. It is possible that Aceh and Irian Jaya will break away and it's possible that they will come out okay. But, unfortunately, for instance, in Aceh, the independence movement is an Islamic fundamentalist movement. And, for example, women's groups in Aceh are tremendously fearful of the Acehnese independence movement because already today in the streets in Aceh women have to wear hair covered and they don't like that. So they're not so happy with the prospect of an independent Aceh.

A PARTICIPANT: But what you're saying is that it doesn't necessarily follow that if you encourage self-determination in those two places that the whole archipelago has to go. Indeed that the self-determination struggles have a lot of human rights problems within themselves.

MR. NEIER: I don't think the whole archipelago has to go. But I was going to say part of what's happening in the rest of Indonesia is that you've got a military that is trying to preserve its power and its take, its corruption. And so in areas where there is no basis for an independence movement for revolution, they are stirring up conflict between Christians and Muslims in Amban (phonetic) and Lumbark (phonetic). There, where there's absolutely no basis for an independence effort and the country is in danger of falling apart mainly because of that activity to deliberately stir up trouble. And it's stirring up trouble taking advantage of what happened in East Timor, taking advantage of what is going on in Aceh and Irian Jaya, where there was some legitimate basis for independence movements. And that's what's threatening Indonesia.

And if Indonesia breaks up today, the level of human rights violations would be so out of proportion to anything that has taken place up to now. This is going to- I hate using terms like saying this is going to make Yugoslavia look like a picnic- but it will.

I mean this is Yugoslavia writ many, many times larger. But not fundamentally because there is ethnic conflict that is built into the situation, but because there are people who are exploiting a particular historic moment for their own purposes.

MICHAEL IGNATIEFF: Aryeh, I think we may be moving into another mode here. But two quick questions.

FRANK SMYTH: I have a question for Aryeh. Concerning the whole notion of human rights groups and their support for humanitarian intervention, and I support that effort, but it's quite different than the relationship human rights groups had with the Reagan administration, for example, over El Salvador only 10 or 11 years ago. And I'm wondering, how do you reconcile this new push in terms of backing the United States to take these kinds of actions with current and past actions by the United
States?

You mentioned, for example, Clinton's apology over inaction to stop the genocide in Rwanda. What about Clinton's apology not long after that in Guatemala City over America's actions in support of acts of genocide, according to the UN Truth Commission in Guatemala? And similarly, the same time the U.S. is championing human rights in the Balkans, the U.S. is still providing weapons and training to nations like Colombia and Turkey that are still violating human rights. So how does one seek to reconcile that tension?

MR. NEIER: With great difficulty. There are people in the human rights movement who can't get over the fact that they're on the same side as the United States government in certain situations. It makes them extremely uncomfortable. And there are great arguments that take place within human rights organizations over these issues. And there are some people in human rights organizations that are dead set against ever seeming to advocate military intervention or doing things, which seem to imply a military intervention.

There are others who say that when you have genocide or when you have the prospect of genocide or when you have crimes against humanity on a very large scale, that military intervention has to take place. But there is no unanimity within the human rights movement on these issues. I think the human rights movement is painfully working out its positions on these issues and you will find the actual cases of pronouncements in favor of military intervention very, very few and far between.

Rwanda was a case where human rights organizations actually favored military intervention. But if you take Kosovo, as an example, you won't find a statement by Human Rights Watch endorsing military intervention in Kosovo. You certainly won't find it from Amnesty International.

TOM GJELTEN: I want to go back to the question of what this next war is likely to look like. I'm still thinking about the point that Michael and Ralph made about the diametrically opposing tendencies that are at play now. In the first case about civilian damage, the tendency towards looking for zero collateral damage versus the increased targeting of civilians. And also on the legal side, the lawyering that went into the air campaign in NATO versus what the ICRC in its most recent report called the deregulation of war. It’s easy to see these diametrically opposed tendencies charging ahead and I’m still wondering how any of you see that basic conflict being resolved or which of these tendencies is most likely to prevail? Are we going to see NATO, as Ralph is hinting, maybe being forced to fight dirty in the future in order to confront these, or will there somehow be a triumph of the international world that will result in the re-regulation of conflict? How will these diametrically opposed tendencies be resolved?

MICHAEL IGNATIEFF: I just have one quick comment on that, which is that I think there's a very substantial disconnect between the military means that we use and the military means used by the ethnic cleansers in Kosovo and the disconnect is contained in the slogan, “you can't stop ethnic cleansing at 15,000 feet”.

I think one of the huge items on the military agenda of western powers is how, first of all, to deploy combat-capable peace enforcers. This is a huge stretch for almost every country with a peacekeeping tradition, because it's peacekeeping with a blue beret and a sidearm, and it's not bolt up, heavy, close air support, assisted, armored, robust rules of engagement peace enforcement. And that stuff gives the ICRC the willies, it gives many human rights people the willies, but it may be on the mean streets the only way that we can respond adequately to create conditions of law, create conditions of order.

Last June in Kosovo it seemed to me what happened is that NATO came in, took over, and in about ten days turned it around before the disbelieving eyes of journalists with Bosnia experience, particularly Mitrovitsa (phonetic). That is, we had a very short, brief window to say this isn't Bosnia. This is Kosovo. We run this place. You pull that sidearm out in here, and you're out of here. I mean, toughness. I don't like macho talk, I don't believe in indiscriminate use of force, simply because it de-legitimizes itself.

The tough, credible, robust use of force, the checkpoints, searching, confiscation of weapons, establishment of clear, unequivocal forms of authority on the ground, we're not there yet. We don't have the combat doctrine.

At another level, if you ask why we fought a virtual war, I think we fought a virtual war in Kosovo because we couldn't fight a real one. It wasn't merely that the political will wasn't there. If you ask the army to put together a combat deployable, joint force involving navy, marine, army assets, fast, lethal, mobile, air-driven operation that will get out onto the ground, stop ethnic cleansing, move through, punch through corridors to rescue civilians.

You can define a whole series of situations which human rights activists may want to use combat power to rescue civilians in danger and protect them. And my sense- I'm not an expert, Colonel Peters might know much more about this than I do- is that the American army, the Western army's and the peacekeeping heritage have no combat doctrine to do that job.

And so all we've got is 15,000 feet against the guys with guns and knives and that disconnect is going to enfeeble stopping massacre, genocide, and mass civilian depopulation. That disconnect has to be closed if we're going to actually do something about the single thing that's happened in the last decade that makes me ashamed. We keep making human rights promises to civilians in danger which we do not keep. We can't go on like that.

A PARTICIPANT: Yeah, two points to make. One, the military and the rest of the government are slowly learning you can't do police work from 15,000 feet. Point two, reality will ultimately frustrate the desire of American elites for bloodless war.

MR. IGNATIEFF: I think on that note, although there were further questions, we now move into another mode. I thank you for your attention. I want to thank all the participants for contributing.

ROY GUTMAN: Thank you, Michael. I am really so happy that we have recorded this and that we'll have the pearls of wisdom available in some form in the future. I thought that was a terrific discussion. We’ll just take a brief break for now and the Secretary is on her way now and should be here in the next ten minutes.