[Nebojsa Malic ripercorre un quarto di secolo
di forzature del diritto internazionale da
parte degli Stati Uniti e dei loro complici. Il
passaggio jugoslavo, e bosniaco in particolare, è
stato cruciale in questo percorso che ha infine
portato alla cancellazione tout court
dello stesso diritto internazionale, sostituito
dall'esercizio arbitrario della violenza quando
come e dove garba.]
From
Srebrenica to Syria: How the US replaced the UN
as ‘world police’
Published time: 14 Apr, 2018
After
President Donald Trump tweeted “missiles are
coming,” the US, UK and France launched
airstrikes on Syria. There was no international
investigation of the alleged chemical attack, or
UN authorization. How did it come to this?
The
US likes to present itself as the foremost
guardian of the “rules-based
international order,” blaming Russia
and China for flouting these rules or seeking
to change them. Yet in practice it is
Washington and its allies that trample on the
rules at nearly every occasion. Friday’s
strikes are but one example.
Earlier
this week, US envoy
Nikki
Haley told the UN Security Council that
Washington intended to act in Syria “
with or
without” the UN. Russia’s Vassily
Nebenzia responded with a reminder that the UN
has all too often been used as a fig leaf for
Western military adventurism. He specifically
cited the example of Libya in 2011, when UNSC
Resolution 1973 that authorized a “
no-fly zone”
was used by NATO as a license for regime
change.
George
W. Bush flouted the UN entirely in 2003, when he
invaded Iraq after basically telling the
Security Council he intended to do so no matter
what. Before that, Bill Clinton launched
NATO’s
78-day war against Yugoslavia in 1999,
also without bothering with the UN.
Such
behavior would’ve seemed unimaginable in 1991,
when the US made sure to have full Chapter VII
UN authority to drive Iraqi forces out of
Kuwait. So what happened in those eight
intervening years? For the answer to that, we
must revisit the Bosnian War.
In
early 1992, a political arrangement between
Bosnia’s ethnic Serb, Croat and Muslim
communities fell apart as Germany and the US
backed the factions seeking independence. Open
warfare broke out in March or April (depending
on whom you ask) along ethnic and religious
fault lines. Public relations firms in the West
busily churned out accusations of “genocide”
and “ethnic
cleansing” to push narratives about the
war. Newly inaugurated US President Bill Clinton
believed a combination of airstrikes and weapons
shipments to the Bosnian Muslims (“lift and strike”)
to be the solution.
Over
the next three years, NATO gradually took over
the leading role in the former Yugoslavia from
the UN through a series of steps, the
justification for each being ostensibly
humanitarian grounds. Many of the details of
this creeping usurpation were described by
Phillip Corwin, the American who served as the
UN political officer in Bosnia in 1995, in his
memoir ‘Dubious Mandate.’
The
process began earlier, however. On April 16,
1993, the UN Security Council passed Resolution
819, establishing the town of Srebrenica in
eastern Bosnia as a “safe area, free
from any armed attack or any other hostile
act.” The concept of “safe areas”
was expanded on May 6, 1993, with Resolution 824
adding the cities of Sarajevo, Tuzla, Goražde
and Bihać and the village of Žepa to the list.
All were held by the Bosnian Muslims.
Aside
from the thorny issue of openly siding with one
of the factions in the war, the UN had a more
practical problem: its mission in Bosnia
(UNPROFOR) was in no way equipped to actually
patrol or secure these areas, having been
originally deployed to police the January 1992
armistice in the neighboring Croatia.
So
the UN turned to NATO for enforcement. On April
12, 1993, NATO was asked to patrol the skies
over Bosnia, enforcing the October 1992
resolution banning all military flights -
ostensibly for humanitarian purposes. Operation
Deny Flight served as NATO’s back door into the
Bosnian War: the alliance’s first air engagement
ever was in February 1994; the first-ever
bombing mission followed in April.
Under
US pressure, the Security Council passed
Resolution 836 in June 1993, authorizing NATO to
provide close air support for UNPROFOR upon
request. Under the so-called “dual key”
arrangement, any NATO strikes had to be
authorized by civilian UN officials.
That
requirement was removed in July 1995, after
Bosnian Serb forces took Srebrenica and Žepa.
Srebrenica would become identified with claims
of “genocide,”
but those would come later. At a conference in
London on July 21, UN Secretary-General Boutros
Boutros-Ghali gave the UN military commander,
General Bernard Janvier, the direct authority to
request NATO airstrikes.
On
August 4, 1995, Croatia launched an all-out
attack on Serb-inhabited regions protected under
the 1992 peace deal. UN peacekeepers did nothing
to stop the attack. No airstrikes were called
in. Quite the contrary, on August 30, NATO
launched Operation Deliberate Force against the
Bosnian Serbs. Croatian and Bosnian Muslim
forces launched their own offensive on the
ground. In the course of the three-week
operation, some 400 aircraft dropped over 1,000
bombs.
At
that point it seemed perfectly normal that the
US, not the UN, would oversee the peace talks in
Dayton, Ohio that ultimately produced a peace
agreement that
somehow
still survives to this day.
“Even those who
chafed at the reassertion of American power
conceded, at least implicitly, its necessity,”
wrote Richard Holbrooke, the US diplomat tasked
with organizing the talks, in his 1998 memoir
‘To End A War.’ He also described US foreign
policy after Dayton as “more assertive,
more muscular.”
The
enforcer had thus usurped the roles of judge,
jury, prosecutor and executioner. The UN did
nothing in March 1999, when the US led NATO in
attacking what was left of Yugoslavia and
occupying Serbia’s province of Kosovo, in open
violation of the US Constitution, NATO’s own
charter, and that of the UN.
Only
afterward was the world body brought in, to
legitimize the occupation through UNSC
Resolution 1244. Yet NATO did not care a whit
that the resolution guaranteed Serbia’s
sovereignty over the province and provided for
the eventual return of Serbian security forces.
Instead, Washington backed the 2008 declaration
of independence by the ethnic Albanian
provisional government and has pressured more
countries to follow along ever since.
It
is hardly surprising that almost all proposals
for US intervention in Syria during the Obama
administration focused on establishing “safe areas”
and conducting airstrikes. Why change the script
if it worked in Bosnia so well?
After
Iraq, however, the rest of the world is not as
willing to take anything at just the word of US
media or Washington officials. Russia in
particular insists on evidence over assertions,
and points out its troops are fighting against
terrorists in Syria at the request of the
country’s legitimate government - unlike the US
troops currently operating there.
Nebojsa Malic
for RT