Bodljikave maslinove grane i jastrebovi mira

  Priznajrem. „NATO deca ćveća“ kako nas je nazvao Đorđe Vukadinović me slatko nasmejalo. Bez obzira što je u isti koš strpao i one koji su uvek i generlalno protiv svakog ratnog sukoba i nas koji smatramo da su vojne humanitanre i druge intervecije nekad nužne i opravdane. U pravu je u jednom-bili smo ujedinjeni u stavu da je izbijanje sukoba na Balkanu, krvavi raspad bivše Jugoslavije bio induciran i nepotreban. Da je postojalo političke volje mogao se preduprediti. Bili smo protiv oružanih građanskih i verskih sukoba u njemu, agresije Vojske Jugoslavije na već međunarodno priznate BiH i Hrvatsku. Bili smo šokirani razmerama zločina nad civilima. Od početka smo uočavali „outsourcing“ to jest institucuinalno i vaninsticuionalno pravljenje „privatnih“ ili „specijalnih“ naoružanih struktura formalno van lanaca komadovanja u kojima bi civilne državne strukture morale imati glavnu reč, i  upozoravali na sve pošasti koje donosi samoautorizacija na upotrebu sile.

Za dalje ne mogu da tvrdim, šta apsolutne pacifiste misle kako se sukob mogao zaustaviti,ali smatram da je EU pogrešila što nije brže i efektnije intervenisala. Smatram da su obe NATO intervecije, i ona u Bosni i ona na Srbiju zbog Kosova bile opravdane iz jednostavnog razloga što ni danas ne vidim drugačiji način da se zaustavi ono što je rezultiralo Srebrenicom i Batajnicom, što ne isključuje debatu šta se moglo poduzeti ranije i da li je bilo i još nekih namera.  I da, mislim da su nedopustivo  duge godine gledanja kao  se i zašto u onolikom broju umire u Dafuru. Darfur je sve značajniji i kao tužni dokaz koliko postojeći mandati UN i regionalnih mirovnih miisja nisu u stanju da zaustave nasilje, a broj vojnika koji gine i u takvim misijama je sve veći.  Jedna od razloga oklevanja zapadne međunarodne zajednice nije više moralnog karaktera ili zbog nedostatka konsenzusa o potrebi reakcije već pre svega zbog nedostatka ljudstva i unutrašnjepolitčkih zahteva i očekivanja da se intervecije izvedu bez ljudskih  gubitaka vlastitih vojnika, što je nažalost nemoguće. Kao što su izgleda nemoguće i intervecije bez kolatralne štete po civile na terenu. Vrlo teška dilema koja zahteva i generalni stav ali i praktično promišljanje od situacije do situacije.  Pogledajte na sličnu temu   i odličan tekst Američko oklevanje Vilijema Montgomerija u vikend Danasu.

 Meni  skoro neosporni  autoritet  Erik Hobsbom,*  u  fascinantnoj knjizi The New Century ( napisana kao razgovor sa italijanskim publicistom Antoniom Politom,  objavljena  2000.)  kojoj se vrlo često vraćam,  kaže:“  In my opinion, the US even saw Bosnia crisis as an oportunity to give a new role to NATO, to give it a new purpose and meaning following the end of the Cold War, an aspiration which I havent yet completely understood......You mast not forget that when Clinton listed the reasons for his decision to commence the bobmbing of Serbia, the first was to defend NATO credebility, and therefore that of the US. I don’t  believe that it did very well or with great results, but it is clear that NATO felt the need to do something . In order to resolve the humanitarian crisis, there were many other kinds of action which could have been taken. “

Posle  su se desili  9/11. Madrid. London. Bali.....  

Priznajem. U susretu sa Batajnicom, ne znam koje su to druge efikasne mere. Kad ovo kažem, podsećam, sve vreme sam sa decom bila u Beogradu.  Ne znam način niti argument kojim bi opravdala, niti pokušavam,  Grdelicu ili bilo koju drugu ljudsku kolateralnu štetu.   Spomenutu knjigu  Gardijan je ocenio  kao „Excellent....Hobsbawm’s characteristic erudition and charm underwrite his bracingly provocative viewpoints on subjects ranging from Kosovo war to globalisation, “ a u vezi koje je Independent napisao sledeće:“ Hobsbawm shows he possesses to an extraordinary degree the historian’s gift of identifying what is old and what is genuinely  new in the presen time.“ 

Sam Hobsbom smatra da je NATO intervencija u Bosni bila opravdana. Na pitanje:“ But what  then can  be done to stop dicttor who can do waht he wants with his people? Is military intervention to be excluded a prior?“ odgovara: „  There are exceptions, of course. Bosnia is clearly  a case in point. On the other hand, there are a few criteria which have to be followed. There have been two important examples of military intervention that have sucessfully halted crimes against humanity and expelled savage dictators. The first was Vietnam’s intervention of Cambodia to overthrow Pol Pot’s regime, and the other was Tanzania’s intervention in Uganda when it was ruled by Idi Amin. I think that they where both justified. But the real reason why  I don’t have any reservations abouth those two wars is that they  were sucessful and effective in reaching their objective, and they  where over in a relativly  short period of time. One of my  reservations about the intervention in Kosovo is that it was not only conducted in this manner, because it was clear from the begining that dropping bombs on  Serbia would have worsened and aggravitated the situation of the refugees.“ 

U spomenutim,  po Hobsbomu opravdanim i efktnim intervecijama, inače, bilo je i civilnih i vojnih žrtava.

Skoro osam godina kasnije, vidimo da je i politički deo koje je došao posle intervencije bio nedorečen, kao i sam Dejton par godina pre, usmeren da se situacija na terenu smiri pre svega  i postigne kompromis u datim okolnostima konstelacije snaga u SB. On  sa sobom nosi mnoge nedoumice i potencijal za novu krizu ako se proces odluke o novom  statuus Kosova  ne vodi vrlo pažljivo ali u skladu sa novim globlanim okolnostima. Vukadinović i VK, na žalost, ne poseduju ni analitičarsku, ni istoričarsku, ni državničku sposobnost da shvate šta je prevaziđeno a šata je to novo što suštinski oblikuje našu realnost. Otud smo mi pro NATO orijentisani postali „ratni huškači“ a zagovrnici ideologije krvi i tla ( Ne zanosite se,  spajanje elektrosistema i robnih rezervi samo  je nastavak projekta mirnim putem a na osnovama onoga što je Milošević počinio, ako ne i priprema za nastavak. Mirom za rat!- ni Marović ne bi bolje.) milosrdni anđeli čuvari našeg mira VIA „vojna neutralnost“. Koja, naravno, umanjuje   mogućnost uređenja sistema komandovanja, parlamentarne kontrole nad  vojskom  i drugog koje nameću NATO standardi o kojima priča ministar Šutanovac, a   koje naš novi bloger Jović sasvim opravdano naziva „vaspitnim merama „ za oružane strukture koje su donedavno učestvovale u ratovima sa tako velikim brojem civinih žrtava i izbeglica. Kome  takvi standardi mogu da smetaju? I šta je alternativa?

Amerikanci su u i oko  Iraka napravili mnogo  grešaka. NATO je, i zbog toga, ustezao sa podrškom, što po meni pokazuje snagu a ne slabost NATO. No, to je donelo veliku kolaterlanu posledicu-US lead „outsourcing“ rata, u kome ni  tada „pacifistička“ Nemačka i Francuska u stvari nisu zaostajale. Nedostatak ljudskih resursa, koje bi redovne i NATO trupe da su imale legitiman povod  za inteveciju verovatno mogle popuniti, kombinaovano sa jastrebovima u Vašingtonu doveo je presedana u svetskoj istoriji u smislu nevladinih i posrednih učesnika u jednom oružanom sukobu. Što itekako otežava nadziranje kršenja običaja rata ( i mimo onog što već  nove tehnologije i brisanje granica između spoljnjeg i unutrašnjeg sukoba  nose) i pozivanje na odgovornost za sve ratne zločine.   I to je jedna od razloga što je intervecija u Iraku u ćorsokaku. 

 Kako kaže Piter Singer u svojoj sjajnoj analizi Banned In Baghdad: Reactions to the Blackwater License Being Pulled : "But those are the terrible cards we have in our hands right now. Again, we can't blame anyone else.  When it comes to military outsourcing: We dealt these cards to ourselves. As we now see in Iraq and elsewhere, the privatized military industry is a reality of the 21st century.  This entrance of the profit motive onto the battlefield opens up vast, new possibilities, but also a series of troubling questions – for democracy, for ethics, for management, for law, for human rights, and for national and international security. At what point do we begin answering them? " ( Stavila sma ceo tekst i na kraju teksta, smatram ga izuzetno bitnim i dobrim)

Pitanje je da li će predstojeća mirovna konferencija o Bliskom istoku biti u stanju da da odgovore na sve izazove, i ispravi bar nešto od spomenutih grešaka. Pitanje je i da li će se kosovsko pitanje rešiti pre nje, kao primer, ili posle kao posledica, ali je neupitno da su sva ta dešavanja  povezana  i da je sve teže tražiti izolovano rešenje. Već i predizborne trke  za nominacije svojih stranka za predsedničkog kandidata u SAD govore da će ove teme i odnos prema njima biti među prelomnima u predstojećoj kampanji  2008.  i da će dobrano odlučivati o novom američkom predsedniku.

 No nekoliko  stvari su već sada sasvim jasne,  a ja bih istakla tri najbitnije. Jedna je da se na globalnom nivou promenila sama priroda ratovanja, druga je da je bez obzira na svu sofisticirnaost ratne mašinerije  ljudski faktor na terenu ostao najbitniji, a treća je da je  rat protiv terorizma otovrio konstruktivnu globalnu debatu o granicma ljudskih sloboda i merama potrebnim zarad kolektivne sigurnosti.  Veliki je problem Srbije što se spin doktori vladajuće koalicije ne gledaju svet i Srbiju u njemu i na osnovu  ovih  parametara. (Toplo vam  preporučujem novi serijal u The Economist na tu temu. )

 Hobsbom kaže:“ I think that it is more important to anlalyse the manner in which the genral nature of the war and peace has changed at the end of the twentieth century. The genral  nature of the war is a much more significant problem than its specific reasons. It is, for example, more important than asking oureslves wheter or not Kosovo  was a just war which clearly  appared as an enormous and urgent problem while the war was raging in the spring of 1999. ....The thing that most interests me is how war has changed, both in political and technological sense. Is it still posible to have a war between the great world powers? The answer is no, as long as America is the only  superpower. It is possible that sooner or later, China will reach a military cpability to rival effectively the USA. .....Second, is a nuclear war possible? On the one hand, the unlikelihood of a world war makes nuclear war improblable. However, the use of nuclear arms in a war is, in my  opinion, possible and not improbable......I believe that what is new about the situation in the Balkans is that line which distinguishes internal conflicts from international conflicts has dissapeared or is tending to dissapear. This means that difference between war and peace, and between the state of war and state of peace has also diminished.....Since the end of the Cold War, we have seen the end  of the the self-limitation ( prelazak granica druge suverene države JM) Central Africa, Yugoslavia, Kosovo , Iraq; it is not at all clear whether these were wars or not. The very  fact that there was a great deal of debate about whether they  were just or unjust was another way  of expressing our perplexity, faced with a completely new phenomenon............... Now the world is full of arms, and this creates a new situation i which „freelance“ armed groups appear. They  are not necessarily  linked to a government, but they  are ready  for war. I see this as  another sign of change: the realtionship which is emerging and connects wars between states or organised movements to private wars between private individuals or organisations. Potentialy, it is a fundamnetal change. ....Today  we have a return to private enterprise in the war. This is  very  clear in parts of the world where states are disintegrating, as in Africa, and where mercenary  bands are used sometimes by  warring factions and sometimes by  goverments.“ 

Uvek me kad čitam ove redove fascinira koliko su primenljivi  i za periog globlanog rata protiv terorizma mada su pisani godinu dve pre 9/11,  ali pre svega koliko su primenljiiv u ovoj drugoj fazi kada se liberlane demokratije već uče na vlasitim greškama i analizirajukoliko je štete i na unutrašnjem planu taj rat doneo, mimo haosa u Iraku, te razmišljaju kako dalje da ga vode. Ne da odustanu. Kao što, nadam se, neće odustati ni od koncepta humanitarnih intervecija kada je to potrebno. Gordon Braun je pre neki dan burmanskim generlaima poručio da je prošlo vreme nekažnjivosti za masovno kršenje ljudskih prava. Argument koga odavno nije bilo na zpadnoj političkoj sceni.

Čini mi se da nova uloga NATOa može biti da se isprave neki od propusta u Iraku, u slučaju potrebe za nekom novom  intervecijom. Mislim da je NATO ustezanje pokazalo i koliko je netačna percepcija NATO kao agresivne mašinerije, te da SAD u doglednoj budućnosti trebaju NATO i kao kontrolora i kao partnera i kao legitimizatora. Haos u Afganistanu daće, verovatno, NATO vladama povoda da i same  razmisle o smislu i  dometima intervecija ako u njima nema i dovoljno ljudstva, bez obzira na tehnološku superiornost.

Što nas vraća na početak priče. Ko koga i zašto šalje u rat. Koncet demokratija o kome sam već pisala, kao mesto gde se odluke zajednički donose, standardizovane vojske pod jasnim lancem civilnog komandovanja,  sa jasnim načinom regrutacije o kome suvereno odlučuju zemlje članice saveza svaka za sebe unutrašnjim demokratskim procedurama, jasna priprema operacija i opis i stepen učešća svih koji se dobrovoljno odluče,  ako je ispunjen preduslov-konsenzus o potrebi i izvedena studija i izvodljivosti- te jasan međunarodno-pravni kontekst i plan za posle intervecije su nešto što mi se ne čini tako neizvodljivim. Komplikovano da, ali šta je alternativa?  Čini mi se da ministar Šutanovac pokušava da od Vojske Srbije napravi respektabilnu i transparentu instituciju koja bi, ako i Srbija postane demokratska i neuplašena od spoljnog sveta već ravnopravan  aktivan deo političkog zapada, mogla da doprinese kolektivnoj borbi protiv globalnih izazova, na tim novim osnovama. (Još ako postane i profesionalan a ne obavezna za sve regrute! ) Što je mnogo, mnogo  bolje od onoga što smo nasledili od Miloševića a šta pokušava da konzervira Koštunica.  Imajući u vidu i to koliko možemo realno promeniti, meni se to čini i realnijim i boljim nego generalni antimilitaristički i total-pacifistički  stav. No, to je već pitanje i unutrašnjepolitičkog sistema opšteprihvaćenih vrednosti i vanjskopolitičkog kursa zemlje i svesti građana o tome šta je ispravno a šta ne,  i kako se prema ozbiljnom kršenju HR  odnositi u budućnosti, što je nemoguće uskladiti u koaliciji sa DSS.

Za one najupornije, u prilogu je tekst o pošasti privatizacije rata u Iraku objavljen na Wired Blog Netwoork  ali i na sajtu Brookings institutiona jednog od najuglednijih  američkih think-tenkova ( Ovo umesto odgovora  svim dobronamernima koji me pitaju zašto blog a ne nešto „ozbiljnije“. Od nas zavisi i na šta će blog da liči.)   

*Hobsbom je izgovor prezimena slavnog istoričara kako ga on sam kaže na ne Hobsbaum kako ga često izgovaraju

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 Banned In Baghdad: Reactions to the Blackwater License Being Pulled

Wired Blog Network, September 17, 2007

Peter W. Singer, Director, 21st Century Defense

Details are still fuzzy on the incident that led the Iraqi government to act against Blackwater.  But it may be almost irrelevant to the results.  Initial reports from the U.S. embassy are that a Blackwater USA convoy that was guarding State Department employees came under fire in the Mansour district in Baghdad. A vehicle was disabled and a lengthy gun battle broke out. Witnesses are reporting that it lasted at least 20 minutes. The Iraqi Interior Ministry is reporting that 8 Iraqi civilians were killed and 13 wounded in the crossfire. There will likely be lots of claims back and forth about whether the shootings were justified or not, whether who was killed were primarily insurgents or civilians, etc. and likely everyone will have their own spin.  It will be interesting to see whether any video finds its way out. The only thing we do know is that the Iraqi Government is not happy at all, with the Iraqi Prime Minister (who is Shia, so not pre-disposed to cover up for a Sunni attack) blaming the killings on the company's employees and describing it as a "crime." The Iraqi Interior Ministry says it is pulling the license of the company to operate in Iraq and will try to prosecute any foreign contractors found to have used excessive force in the Sunday shooting.Still, even before all the details come to light, a few things are clear:1) It was inevitable. Private military contractors have been involved in all sorts of questionable incidents, since the very start of the Iraq enterprise. U.S. military officers frequently expressed their frustrations with sharing the battlefield with such private forces operating under their own rules and agendas, and worry about the consequences for their own operations. For example, Brigadier General Karl Horst, deputy commander of the US 3rd Infantry Division (responsible for Baghdad area) tellingly put it two years back, These guys run loose in this country and do stupid stuff. There's no authority over them, so you can't come down on them hard when they escalate force. They shoot people, and someone else has to deal with the aftermath."No one has kept an exact count of the incidents, but some notable examples include:·                                 The Aegis "trophy video,"  in which contractors took video of themselves shooting at civilians, set it to the Elvis song "Runaway Train," and put it on the Internet.   ·                                 The alleged joyride shootings of Iraqi civilians by a Triple Canopy supervisor.  They became the subject of a lawsuit after two employees, who claim to have witnessed the shootings, lost their jobs.     ·                                 Armed contractors from the Zapata firm detained by U.S. forces, who allegedly saw the private soldiers indiscriminately firing not only at Iraqi civilians, but also at U.S. Marines. Again, they were not charged, as the legal issues could not be squared. Private military firms may be part of the military operation, but they and their employees are not part of the military, or its chain of command or its code of justice.·                                 Abu Ghraib, where reportedly 100 percent of the translators and up to 50 percent of the interrogators at the prison were private contractors from the Titan and CACI firms, respectively. The U.S. Army found that contractors were involved in 36% of the proven abuse incidents and identified six particular employees as being culpable in the abuses.   While the enlisted U.S. Army soldiers involved in the Abu Ghraib abuse were court-martialed for their crimes, not a single private contractor named in the Army's investigation report has been charged, prosecuted or punished. The Army believes it lacks the jurisdiction to pursue these cases, even if it wants to. The inevitable part was not just the shootings, but the government's reaction, which has been on the horizon for a while. The Iraqi government is supposedly a sovereign state, so it is not surprising that at some point it would start to act like one, trying to enforce its monopoly over violence against other armed organizations on the ground. 2) Pay attention to the politics. 2) The underlying politics to this are important to understand. Private contractors are a visible and especially disliked part of the US presence in Iraq. So a good way for Iraqi government officials, who are often depicted as stooges of the US, to try to burnish their nationalist credentials is to go after the contractors. They can make it look like they are standing up to the big bad outsiders, but not do so against U.S. troops. As AFP noted, "Monday's action against Blackwater was likely to give the unpopular government a boost, given the contractors' widespread unpopularity."3) That it was Blackwater is unsurprising. As illustrated by the examples listed above, Blackwater is not the only company working in Iraq. Indeed, the L.A. Times recently reported that there may be over 160,000 private contractors working in Iraq, as many as the overall number of US forces even after the "surge." However, Blackwater has been one of the most visible -- unusual for an industry that typically tries to avoid the limelight. This notoriety makes Blackwater a fatter target than, say, an unknown British or Bulgarian company. The  relationship between the Iraqi government and Blackwater is particularly tense -- and not just because armed Blackwater guards are the contractors that senior Iraqi government officials run into the most.   On Christmas Eve 2006, a Blackwater employee allegedly got drunk while inside the Green Zone in Baghdad and got in an argument with a guard of the Iraqi Vice President. He then shot the Iraqi dead. The employee was quickly flown out of the country.  Nine months later, he has not been charged with any crime. Imagine the same thing happening in the U.S.: An Iraqi embassy guard, drunk at a a Christmas party, shooting a Secret Service agent guarding Vice President Cheney.  You can see some potential for underlying tension there. In May 2007, there was another reported shooting of an Interior Ministry driver by Blackwater employees.  That led to an armed standoff and had Matthew Degn, a senior American civilian adviser to the Interior Ministry's intelligence directorate, describing the ministry as "a powder keg" of anger at the firm.4) This is what happens when government fails to act. The problems with the absence of oversight, management, doctrine, and even law and order when it comes to private military contractors have been known for a while. Heck, I wrote a book about it back in 2003, before the Iraq invasion. While the industry has boomed, the vacuum of policy and strategy has continued for years. In June 2006, for example, the Government Accountability Office reported that "private security providers continue to enter the battle space without coordinating with the U.S. military, putting both the military and security providers at a greater risk for injury." U.S. officers in the field are also complaining about the underlying harm created by this lack of policy. For example, Col. Peter Mansoor is one of the most influential military thinkers on counterinsurgency -- currently serving as Gen. David Petraeus' executive officer. In 2007, he told Jane's Defense Weekly that the U.S. military needs to take "a real hard look at security contractors on future battlefields and figure out a way to get a handle on them so that they can be better integrated -- if we're going to allow them to be used in the first place. If they push traffic off the roads or if they shoot up a car that looks suspicious, whatever it may be, they may be operating within their contract (but) to the detriment of the mission, which is to bring the people over to your side. I would much rather see basically all armed entities in a counter-insurgency operation fall under a military chain of command."

Yet, nothing much has happened. Indeed, the only real action was limited efforts in the Congress. In Fall 2006, Senator Lindsay Graham slipped into the 2007 Defense Bill a clause that could potentially place contractors and others who accompany American troops in the field under the U.S. military's Uniform Code of Military Justice (UCMJ). That is, he changed the law defining UCMJ to cover civilians -- not just in times of declared war, but also during contingency operations. Almost 10 months later, however, no Pentagon guidance has been issued on how this clause might be used by JAGs in the field. So, its impact so far has been like a tree falling in the forest, with no one around.More broadly, there have been several recent efforts at bringing some transparency and oversight to the U.S. side of the industry. Key players have been Representatives Jan Schakowsky and David Price, and Senator Barack Obama.  (His bill, the "Transparency and Accountability in Military and Security Contracting Act of 2007," essentially brings together the reforms sought by Schakowsky and Price on the House side.) These have not yet passed into law, but may during the upcoming debates. Whether the executive branch will use them, though, returns us back to the problem of inaction on Graham's bill. The point is that the U.S. government has paid for the industry for years, but had tried to ignore the accompanying responsibility for the consequences. In lieu of our own inaction, the Iraqi government has stepped in, perhaps in a way that we may not be happy with. Of course, there is an underlying irony. There are reports that the "license" that the Iraqi government is supposedly revoking doesn't exist. The Iraqi Interior Ministry is the entity that every contractor is supposed to register with, but it is also the organization that the recent panel led by retired General James Jones described as "dysfunctional" and "a ministry in name only."  So many companies have been unable to register, and many contractors have even had to resort to using their business cards as if they were official IDs. It will be interesting to see if this included the very company hired to guard senior U.S. leaders in Iraq.

5) Over outsource and you paint yourself into a corner.  This is what happens when you hollow out your operations. Blackwater has a contract to guard State Department employees. Now, the question must be asked: If the company cannot do so, what happens next? Tongue in cheek, one could say that we all learned last week that: (a) the U.S. has enough extra military forces in Iraq and (b) the security situation is getting better. So, if this is true, then what's all the fuss? Of course, we all know that the whole Kabuki play last week in Congress was false and that the security situation is atrocious and that State personnel still need to be guarded. Back in the day, all of these roles would have been filled either by military forces or State Department diplomatic security. But our military forces are stretched thin, and the government's diplomatic security force has been hollowed out at the same time that the need for it has expanded. (And just for the record: A consortium of companies, led by Blackwater, got a $1 billion contract to do the global State Department diplomatic security job last year. So it wasn't exactly a lack of money that caused the hollowing.)

So, in the short term following such a market failure, we have three likely choices: 1) ignore the Iraqis' wishes and just keeping on using Blackwater contractors as before; 2) find another company to step in and quick-fill take on these roles in lieu of the firm; or 3) negotiate with the Iraqis to find terms under which the firm might continue to carry out the operation (such as promising a joint investigation, payments to civilians, etc.). Obviously, none of these is a great solution in the short term.  None solve the long-term problems. But those are the terrible cards we have in our hands right now. Again, we can't blame anyone else.  When it comes to military outsourcing: We dealt these cards to ourselves. As we now see in Iraq and elsewhere, the privatized military industry is a reality of the 21st century.  This entrance of the profit motive onto the battlefield opens up vast, new possibilities, but also a series of troubling questions – for democracy, for ethics, for management, for law, for human rights, and for national and international security. At what point do we begin answering them?