http://www.globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=va&aid=30114

From the Cold War to NATO's "Humanitarian Wars" - The Complicity of the United Nations

By Mahdi Darius Nazemroaya
Global Research, April 4, 2012


Humanitarian wars, especially under the guise of the “Responsibility to Protect (R2P),” are a modern form of imperialism. The standard pattern that the United States and its allies use to execute them is one where genocide and ethnic cleansing are vociferously alleged by a coalition of governments, media organizations, and non-governmental front organizations. The allegations – often lurid and unfounded – then provide moral and diplomatic cover for a variety of sanctions that undermine and isolate the target country in question, and thereby pave the way for military intervention. This is the post-Cold War modus operandi of the US and NATO.

In facilitating this neo-imperialism, the United Nations has been complicit in the hijacking of its own posts and offices by Washington.

Former UN secretary-general Kofi Annan has been appointed a “special peace envoy” with a mediating role in Syria. Yet, how can Annan be evaluated as an “honest broker” considering his past instrumental role in developing the doctrine of R2P – the very pretext that has served to facilitate several US/NATO criminal wars of aggression? Furthermore, the evidence attests that the US and its allies – despite mouthing support for Annan’s supposed peace plan – are not interested in a mediated, peaceful solution in Syria.

From the Cold War to Humanitarian Wars

As the Cold War began to wind down in the late-1980s and early-1990s, NATO saw the opportunity that would arise from the geopolitical vacuum following the collapse of the Soviet Union and the dissolution of the Eastern Bloc. Not only did NATO begin transforming from a defensive organization into an offensive military body, the US-led alliance began to embrace a supposed humanitarian mandate for this purpose. It is through this purported embrace of humanitarianism that the North Atlantic Treaty Organization was able to change into an offensive, interventionist military force – indeed the largest such force ever in the history of the world.

NATO’s biggest military operation up until a decade after the Cold War was the First Persian Gulf War following the invasion in 1991 of Kuwait by Iraqi forces under the command of Saddam Hussein. The invasion of Kuwait by Iraq, at the time a US ally, was mired in a territorial oil dispute over colonial-era borders to which Washington at first appeared to show cool indifference. Immediately after Iraqi forces entered Kuwait, however, a strident US government and media campaign was mounted claiming the sanctity of Kuwait’s sovereign territory and the “defence of small nations.” There were also lurid media reports – later shown to be fabrications – of atrocities committed by Iraqi troops, such as the butchering of babies taken from hospital incubators. The international public was successfully manipulated to accept a US-led war against Iraq to iconically liberate the Emirate of Kuwait only to reinstate an absolute and despotic monarch. 

Equipped with UN resolutions, the US-led NATO powers – along with a “coalition of willing” Arab states – launched a war on Iraq supposedly in the name of “humanitarianism.” Operations exlusively run by several NATO powers in Iraqi Kurdistan would also become the basis for NATO’s future humanitarian mandates. The precedent and tempo was now set for NATO’s subsequent “humanitarian” wars. The no-fly zones and legal semantics that were innovated by the Western powers to justify their intervention in Iraq were also applied by these same powers with regard to the former Yugoslavia. Variants of this humanitarian pretext for war included “upholding international law” and “international security” and were deployed for the invasion of Afghanistan in 2001 and again against Iraq in 2003 – the Second Persian Gulf War – this time to justify the all-out conquest of that country.  The same rhetorical justification for military intervention was used by NATO powers to u
nleash a seven-month aerial bombing campaign in Libya in 2011 that led to the overthrow of the government and to the murder of the country’s leader Muammar Qaddafi. The thematic R2P is currently being amplified to decibel levels by NATO state governments and mainstream media with regard to Syria, where a NATO-led intervention is also covertly underway.

Yugoslavia: Srebrenica’s Sacrifice for NATO Intervention

On July 11, 1995, the forces of the Bosnian Serbs would march into the so-called UN Srebrenica Safe Area. The official NATO narrative is that UN troops agreed to withdraw from Srebrenica and let the Bosnian Serb forces take care of the local Bosniaks, but that once the Bosnian Serbs entered the area they proceeded to slaughter 8,000 Bosniaks. This would be billed as the worst massacre in Europe since the Second World War.

In reality, the events of Srebrenica would be used and warped to justify a massive NATO response on the basis of public outrage. Bosniak leaders would also refuse to give the Red Cross the names of people who had fled Srebrenica, thus resulting in an inflated number of missing people. The number of the dead would later turn out to be significantly lower than originally reported. Media estimates also changed over time. The most senior UN official inside Bosnia-Herzegovina, Philip Corwin, would also lend his voice to those saying that the events in Srebrenica were distorted for political gain and military intervention by NATO.

Then US President Bill Clinton had actually instructed Alija Izetbegovic that 5,000 Bosniaks would need to be sacrificed to bring NATO into the war as a combatant. Surviving members of the Bosniak delegation from Srebrenica have stated on the record that Izerbegovic said that NATO would militarily intervene against the Republika Srpska if at least 5,000 dead bodies could be produced. The Fall of Srebrenica, a UN report issued on November 15, 1999, casually mentions this in paragraph 115. The Bosniak police chief of Srebrenica has also confirmed Clinton’s demand for a “sacrifice” from Izerbegovic to open the doors for NATO attacks against the Bosnian Serbs.

In the Bosnian War, all sides committed horrific atrocities. But the crime of the Bosnian Serbs that appeared to rouse NATO was not ethnic cleansing. The crime of the Bosnian Serbs was that they were fighting to preserve Yugoslavia. Even Croats and Bosniaks in both Croatia and Bosnia-Herzegovina who wanted to preserve Yugoslavia and inter-ethnic peace were targeted, demonized, or killed. For example, the Bosniak Fikret Abdic was charged as a war criminal in Croatia after he fled Bosnia-Herzegovina, and Josip Rejhl-Kir, the Croat police chief of Osijek, was murdered by Croat nationalists for working to preserve the harmony between Croats and Croatian Serbs.

NATO intervened in Bosnia-Herzegovina to change the balance of power. The Bosnian Serbs were up until then the superior military force. Had NATO powers not internationalized the fighting and intervened, the Bosnian Serbs would have taken control of the country and maintained it as an integral part of Yugoslavia. This would have crippled or halted Euro-Atlantic expansion in the Balkans.

On January 15, 1999, the fighting in Racak between Serbian forces and the outlawed Kosovo Liberation Army (KLA), which the US State Department itself labelled a terrorist organization, would be used to paint a similar picture of genocide and ethnic cleansing to justify war. By this time, the Serbs had successfully been demonized by NATO and the media as the perpetrators of ethnic cleansing in the former Yugoslavia, so NATO’s efforts to vilify the Serbs were made relatively easy. It is a matter of public record that US Secretary of State Madeline Albright and the KLA leadership were working to create a humanitarian pretext for intervention. It was in this context that the US and NATO had pressured the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia to accept an arrangement where their military forces would leave Kosovo, but allowed the KLA to continue its attacks. This stoking of tensions is what NATO has tried to replicate in Syria through the so-called Free Syrian Army, which in reality is a terro
rist organization linked to NATO and the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC).

In the Arab World: Libya and Syria

In 2011, the humanitarian card would be played again by NATO, this time in the North African country of Libya. Colonel Qaddafi was accused of massacring his own people in Libya, particularly in Benghazi. Packaged with unverified claims of jet attacks and foreign mercenaries, this prompted the UN to permit the US and its NATO allies to impose another no-fly zone, as in Iraq and Yugoslavia. Illegally, the NATO powers arrogated the no-fly zone provision of UN Security Council Resolution 1973 to mount an aerial bombing campaign. The massive onslaught involving over 10,000 bombing missions was conducted in concert with NATO special forces and proxy militias on the ground. NATO warplanes targeted civilian population centres and civilian infrastructure, such as food stores and water and power utilities – acts that are war crimes under international law. Such a blatant campaign of state terrorism – obscenely in the name of “protecting human rights” – was instrumental in overthrowin
g the sovereign government in Tripoli and installing a proxy regime composed of an extremely volatile amalgam of opportunist para-militaries, terrorists, NATO intelligence operatives, and fractious tribal warlords. Recent reports of internecine bloodletting and revenge killing erupting across Libya, “post-NATO liberation,” attest to the real criminal enterprise of NATO’s regime change in Libya that was cynically perpetrated under the guise of protecting civilians.

Meanwhile, in Syria, the US and its cohorts have sought to replay the city of Homs like another Srebrenica, Racak, and Benghazi. They have sought to use the same tactic for inciting sectarian tensions and then blaming the government of President Bashar Al-Assad for conducting a “brutal crackdown.” The US and its allies are demanding that the Syrian Army stops fighting while the insurgent forces of the Syrian National Council’s Syrian Free Army are given a free hand to launch attacks, just as the NATO power demanded of the Yugoslav military while giving a green light to the KLA. Russian and Chinese demands that both sides observe a ceasefire offset this strategy.

What stands in the way of yet another NATO intervention is a firm resolve by Moscow and Beijing at the UN Security Council as well as the alliance between Syria and Iran. Damascus and its allies, however, should be wary of more traps to tie Syria down politically and legally through one-sided agreements. Nor should the Syrians place their trust in the United Nations to act as an “honest broker.”

Kofi Annan and the Responsibility to Protect (R2P)

Much praise is being given to Kofi Annan as the special envoy of both the Arab League and United Nations. There should, however, be caution applied when dealing with Annan. In this regard, his history with regard to humanitarian interventions needs to be assessed.

According to American diplomat Richard Holbrooke, who was intimately tied to the balkanization of Yugoslavia, Annan was one of the most supportive figures for US foreign policy in the Balkans. Annan was actually instrumental in helping to put together the R2P doctrine with Canadian diplomats. Furthermore, the Ghanian-born career diplomat owes his rise to power to senior Washington connections and specifically to the events of Srebrenica and the fighting in the former Yugoslavia. Secretary-General Boutros Boutros-Ghali was pushed aside by Washington to make way for Annan as the head of the United Nations.

Kofi Annan is also openly supportive of R2P. He participated as a panelist in a discussion about R2P (The Responsibility to Protect – 10 Years On: Reflections on its Past, Present and Future) held at the University of Ottawa on November 4, 2011. A week prior to this event, Allan Rock, president of the University of Ottawa and former Canadian ambassador to the UN, together Lloyd Axworthy, president of the University of Winnipeg and former Canadian foreign minister co-authored an article about R2P in the Ottawa Citizen (October 25, 2011). Both Axworthy, who was on the panel with Annan and Allan Rock, praised the war in Libya, calling it a victory for R2P.

At the panel, Annan was joined by the decidedly pro-NATO Canadian parliamentarian Christopher Alexander. Alexander is the parliamentary secretary to Peter MacKay. Mackay is the current defence minister of Canada and has voiced support for open wars against Syria and Iran. Christopher Alexander was also a Canadian diplomat in Russia for several years, the former Canadian ambassador to NATO-garrisoned Afghanistan, and the deputy special representative of the United Nations Assistance Mission in Afghanistan (UNAMA). The R2P panel was moderated by Lyse Doucet, a correspondent for the British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC) and a friend of Alexander.

What is important to note about the R2P Ottawa panel is that it was largely supportive of R2P. Kofi Annan also voiced his support for NATO’s military intervention in Libya. When asked about using R2P in Syria, no firm answer was given by Annan. He did, however, appear to give his tacit support to intervention against Syria. Finally, both Annan and Axworthy proposed that regional organizations be given R2P mandates. For example, the African Union should be able to intervene on the behalf of the international community in African countries, such as Uganda and Sudan, or that the Arab League likewise be given an R2P mandate in countries, such as Syria.

These points are key factors. They should not be overlooked. Annan’s impartiality with regard to his latest pivotal task in Syria should be questioned, especially in light of his stated position on Libya and his generally supportive views for NATO military interventions.

Humanitarianism: The Face of Modern Imperialism

The NATO military interventions in Yugoslavia, Afghanistan, and Libya were and are colonial invasions masquerading as humanitarian endeavours. Moreover, what NATO did in Yugoslavia was to intervene incrementally to divide and conquer the country. According to General John Galvin, the former supreme commander of NATO, this was done because NATO officials knew that an all-out invasion during the disintegration of the country would result in a massive guerrilla war with high costs for NATO. It can also be added that such a NATO intervention would have had the inverse effect of unifying Yugoslavia instead of allowing the federal state to dissolve.

At the start of 2011, both Libya and Syria were holdouts to NATO’s Mediterranean Dialogue and they also had reservations about the EU’s Union for the Mediterranean (UfM). This effectively means that they were both resistant to Euro-Atlantic expansion. While popular protests in Bahrain and Jordan went unnoticed, all public eyes were directed by NATO state governments and corporate media towards Libya and Syria. This is because of imperialist interests to subvert both the latter Arab states – while the former mentioned states are allies and therefore must be bolstered despite their well-documented repressive conducts.

Atlanticism is on the march. Both NATO’s operations in the Balkans and the Arab World are intended to expand the Euro-Atlantic Zone. Its involvement in African Union missions in East Africa are also tied to this. For all observers who take a detailed look at the restructuring of states vanquished by NATO, this should be clear. Humanitarianism has become the new face of modern imperialism.?? And former UN secretary general Kofi Annan is a man whose face fits the deceptive humanitarian agenda of modern imperialism.

The above text is an adaptation of an article from the Journal of the Strategic Cultural Foundation (SCF).


Mahdi Darius Nazemroaya is a Sociologist and award-winning author. He is a Research Associate at the Centre for Research on Globalization (CRG), Montreal. He specializes on the Middle East and Central Asia. He has been a contributor and guest discussing the broader Middle East on numerous international programs and networks such as Al Jazeera, Press TV, teleSUR and Russia Today. His writings have been published in more than 10 languages. He also writes for the Strategic Culture Foundation (SCF), Moscow. He is also the author of a forthcoming book about Libya, The War on Libya and the Re-Colonization of Africa (2012).

http://rickrozoff.wordpress.com/2012/04/07/nato-global-police-force-or-hegemonic-interventionist/

April 7, 2012

Submitted to WTTV


In the "NATO's Role in Global Politics" interview on the Chicago Tonight episode of April 5 moderator Phil Ponce posed more candid questions that might have been expected from a program that, in its online edition, opens with an ad for the Chicago Council on Global Affairs (formerly the Chicago Council on Foreign Relations) - the broadcast being "possible in part" because of its assistance - with a link to its page Know NATO. Generally he who pays the piper determines the tune, tone, tempo and timbre.

The show's two guests, Ahmed Rehab, executive director of the Chicago chapter of the Council on American-Islamic Relations, and Joshua Kleinfeld, assistant law professor at Northwestern University, did nonetheless differ in several significant ways in respect to the nature - legal, political and moral - of NATO's military campaigns of the past 20 years and even perhaps in regard to the military bloc's post-Cold War role as a whole, with Rehab taking issue with the latest of them (Afghanistan and Libya) and Kleinfeld applauding every pretext for a NATO war ever advanced, however contradictory and mutually exclusive they have been.

But neither took issue with the fundamental fact that the Western military alliance has at times been justified in exacerbating and eventually entering internal conflicts with the use of overwhelming military force those actions inevitably entail.

Rehab, for example, was frank enough to acknowledge NATO actions from Bosnia to Libya as what they were, aggression, but posited a distinction between "evil" aggression and a presumed more benign counterpart.

For Kleinfeld, however, every NATO bomb dropped, missile fired and combat unit parachuted into the Balkans, Afghanistan and Libya is a noble and justified act, the equivalent - his reference - to intervening against Hitler's Germany in the 1930s and 1940s.

For Rehab, NATO air attacks on behalf of his co-religionists in Bosnia was not a case of evil aggression, though those against fellow Muslims in Afghanistan and Libya were. He seems sharp enough to have realized that an injury to one is an injury to all and that he who conspires with you today may conspire against you tomorrow. A Christian Serb killed by a NATO cruise missile is no less worthy a victim than a Libyan Muslim suffering the same fate.

Furthermore, even during NATO's maiden military campaigns in the Balkans in the 1990s it was apparent to many observers that, having secured control of the remnants of former Yugoslavia, the alliance would extend its trajectory into the Eastern Mediterranean and the Middle East as well as the South Caucasus and Central Asia. There are historical precedents, after all.

With Kleinfeld, everything NATO does, from conducting an over decade-long war in the Hindu Kush mountain range to establishing a cyber warfare center in Estonia, which borders Russia, is a "defensive" initiative of "28 Western democracies." Without mentioning them, he necessarily includes NATO member states like Albania, Croatia, Estonia and Latvia - the latter two permit Waffen SS veterans to march in their capitals, though that creates no cognitive dissonance for Kleinfeld in regard to invoking the specter of Adolf Hitler to support NATO military interventions - which are in no geographical sense of the word Western and which are guilty of egregious ethnic cleansing, apartheid-style treatment of "non-citizens" and rehabilitation and celebration of World War II Nazi collaborators. But all four new NATO states have troops serving under NATO in Afghanistan, as does Bosnia incidentally.  

Rehab correctly questions the subjectivity of NATO armed interventions around the world, though better words would be arbitrary and self-serving, and Kleinfeld conceded, mercifully, that it is "impossible for NATO to intervene everywhere" - (solely?) because of limited resources; cruise missile arsenals, for example, take time and several million dollars to replenish - though expressed no opposition in principle to it doing so. A Washington Post editorial of three days ago calling for NATO intervention in the West African nation of Mali might suggest a delectable prospect for the law professor.

The demand that NATO abide by any standard definition of justification for military intervention is in his view "spurious logical consistency." Comments like that contribute in no small way to the negative image lawyers have in the popular imagination. The word spurious, then, applies to Kleinfeld's assertion itself, as do the words specious and sophistic.

He also asserted - this from a law professor at one of America's most prestigious universities - that the 78-day NATO air war against the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia in 1999 was "illegal" but "the right thing to do," further expatiating upon acts of military aggression that are in flagrant violation of international and humanitarian law but are "morally justified." Perhaps he should transfer from the law department to that of moral philosophy, though heaven preserve his students should he do so.

Ponce asked if NATO has evolved into the world's police force and described it as interventionist. Rehab described the bloc as pursuing its own interests, motivated by a policy of hegemony.

Never encountering a NATO war he didn't like, Kleinfeld responded that the "international alliance of democracies" was fully justified in pummeling Libya into submission - and detritus - last year, as United Nations Security Council Resolution 1973 "call[ed] for the use of force [and] NATO acted on it."

In fact the resolution, which permanent Security Council members Russia and China and fellow BRIC members Brazil and India abstained on, only called for a no-fly zone and an arms embargo, so it would be intriguing to hear Kleinfeld explain how it - http://daccess-dds-ny.un.org/doc/UNDOC/GEN/N11/268/39/PDF/N1126839.pdf?OpenElement - justified much less demanded that the U.S. and British launch 110 cruise missiles into Libya in the opening hours of what immediately became a full-fledged war and NATO fly over 26,000 air missions, among them almost 10,000 strike sorties, against several thousand non-air defense targets on the ground, culminating in bombs from a French multirole combat aircraft and a U.S. Predator drone hitting the convoy of deposed head of state Muammar Gaddafi outside Sirte, thus allowing NATO's allies on the ground to capture, brutalize and murder the almost 70-year-old former leader. In a pinch, the legal scholar could again conjure
up the horrors of Nazi Germany and resort to the plea of "moral justification."  

A mindset, a worldview, that permits the unqualified endorsement of unprovoked military aggression by a collective of most of the world's major military powers against small and defenseless counties far from any of its member states' borders is unavoidably accompanied by not so much compromise as capitulation on matters of justice, the non-use of military force, international law and basic bedrock notions of human morality. NATO enthusiasts have become what they have embraced. 


Rick Rozoff
Chicago
Stop NATO
http://rickrozoff.wordpress.com