What Kind of Military Intervention Into Other Countries Is Acceptable?

Economics Political Theory
21

I think we agree, so long that if you are wrong, you are legally liable for any aggression committed against the person you thought was the aggressor.

I imagine that in a private law society, people trying to resolve their disputes violently in public would probably be frowned upon, if not illegal (after all, you are resolving your dispute on someone’s property, and it isn’t yours). I don’t necessarily have any problem with stopping a fight, it’s just I wanted to clarify what you were saying. I think we agree.

Yeah, it sounds like we agree. I find it unlikely that fantasy rape would be common in public and would probably be taboo, but I just wanted to throw out a hypothetical.

Maybe we disagree after all, well maybe only a little. In principle, prying the man off the woman would be aggression if they had been involved in a consensual act. I agree with Walter Block on this type of issue, that your intent is irrelevant. You are liable for your actions. It just so happens that it’s probably worth the risk to pull the man off the woman and be held liable for the aggression (maybe even forgiven by the man). But, as I said earlier, fantasy rape or taking a watch back by force in public would probably be taboo for the most part, so maybe you could get off the hook for the minor aggression used to stop the perceived violence.

Yes and no. Any casualties that are directly caused by the immoral regime are the fault of the immoral regime (soldiers and rulers). However, some people would prefer to live in slavery than see their family dead, and who are you to start a war where these people will see their family dead? I’m mixed on the issue. On the one hand, it’s moral to liberate slaves. But on the other hand, is it moral to start a fight/war knowing that people will die, even if you are not the one directly responsible?

I am thankful for that. I think what would clean it up even faster would be to make soldiers legally liable for aggression. They might think twice about bombing in civilian areas if they knew they would be held responsible for the murder of civilians.

Yeah, I would vastly prefer private soldiers to do the liberating over government soldiers. I would prefer people who have a vested interest in the specifc areas than people who work for a massive bureaucracy that does not have a vested interest in the people who are being harmed.

22

That’s silly, Hotel Rwanda is a motion picture ie entertainment, it can’t show something to be a fact.

If you’re serious about knowing things — research them. You can start by reading Rwanda-themed articles at spiked: Rewriting Rwanda, Rwanda: obscuring the truth about the genocide, Who made a mess of modern Rwanda?, Shooting down the ‘truth’ about Rwanda and follow it by reading Robin Philpot’s work of revisionist history: Rwanda 1994: Colonialism dies hard. You can check out The Politics of Genocide for the wider context, ie to find out why and how genocide stories are useful for the powers that be. You may also glimpse at some of the back and forth surrounding Rwanda here, here and here.

You have enough starting points now to set you on your way, so no excuses.

23

One of the two incidents you refer to, the bombing of the refugee column on April 14th constituted the incident with the most civilian deaths in the entire war. It took place over two hours and killed 73 people. If you do some research on it you will find out it was against a tractor column of refugees who were returning to their homes. Do NATO bombs massacring Albanian refugees trying to get back home raise questions for you?

24

Actually the Army of Yugoslavia came out of the 1999 bombing essentially unschated (550 fatalities but of which only about 200 to NATO). The armistice was concluded not because the Serbian military was defeaded — it wasn’t. It was concluded because A.) NATO had lowered its demands from what they had been initially, and because of B.) the cost of bombing to Yugoslavia’s civilian population, their livelihood and their future.

So actually it was a very dirty war with NATO acting primarily against civilian targets.

25

That’s assuming that is what the US did. But did US really get involved (and help start) romantic conflicts which pitted “the people” against “opressive governments”? You are really able to belive truth is so simple?

Also ask yourself is it wrong of let’s say Libyan soldiers manning the AA guns to fire upon NATO aircraft bombing their country? They, and the NATO pilots fighting against them can’t be both right at the same time, so who is in the wrong here? The Libyan defending his sky, or the American dropping bombs on a place an ocean away from his home? What about a Chinese pilot dropping bombs on Texas, ostensibly to prevent American invasion of Iran? Would you be wrong to fire against it? And if it were OK for you to fire against him, can it be at the same all right of him to fire back at you and blow you to pieces?

26

How does this in any way contradict what I said? There were zero…that’s right, zero combat-related casualties on the Allied side. The Army of Yugoslavia was absolutely useless in this entirely air war. NATO didn’t even need to target the AoY, they just needed to hammer at its military-industrial power until it gave up. The hope was that this would bring Yugoslavia to heel and stop the ethnic cleansing but, as I stated earlier, the cleansing was basically finished by the time of the armistice.

No, it wasn’t a “very dirty war”…your sense of proportion is distorted. Of the very few wars that have fewer casualties than this one: the Falkland War, Grenada, etc…none of them were of a proportional commitment. Regardless, NATO v Yugoslavia ranks on the low end of casualties for any war (let alone a war fought to surrender).

Given that you think that this was a “very dirty war”, what would you call WWII, the Chechen Wars, the Korean War, Vietnam, the Balkan Wars, etc? Very very very very dirty, very very very dirty, very very dirty, very dirty, dirty etc?

Context and proportion… I was indicating that even when all the aces are on the side of the intervening powers, successfully putting a stop to the ethnic cleansing in question has never been the result.

27

Dirtiness and cleanliness of a war have nothing to do with its scale. NATO’s war in 1999 was incredibly dirty in that it was fought against civilians rather than against the military. It was for the most part a campaign of state terrorism against civilian infrastructure. There are very few examples of a side in a war concentrating such a proportion of its effort to combating civilians as NATO did here. Against 200 military fatalities caused by NATO there were 2000 civilians killed by the bombing, a ratio of 1 to 10.

You are talking about things which you do not know. You even manage to be wrong in calling it an “entirely air war”. The war, which begun in 1998, featured significant fighting between VJ and the KLA, before and during the bombing, which accounted for well over one half of VJ’s fatalities in the war. If you have failed to comprehend even this I wonder what further we have to talk about.

VJ was useful in keeping NATO at attitudes beyond 15,000 feet and in maintaining control of the whole of Kosovo for the duration of the bombing, all the while preserving its strength so as to make the proposition of a land invasion politically untennable for NATO. VJ was not useful in thwarting NATO efforts against its civilians, which unlike the efforts against the army could be safelty conducted from attitudes beyond 15,000 feet. In other words, the very requirement that NATO should not suffer losses required that NATO go after Yugoslav civilians, because they could be attacked without hazard to oneself, whereas the VJ could empathically not be.

The reason for concessions on the Serbian side had nothing to do with the state of their military, or their “military-industrial power” (I wonder if you are actually able to define this term, or do you just like throwing it around). It had to do with the price the bombing was exacting on civilians and the threat it represented to Yugoslavia’s economy and its existance as an industrial country at a time when the country was under international embargo. Cut off from imports and foreign capital it would face incredible difficulties in rebuilding anything that would be destroyed. The fear was that if the bombing continued Yugoslavia would end up in a situation approaching that of Iraq which needlessly lost hundreds of thousands of people due to UN’s sanctions which came in the wake of the short, but devastating bombing in 1991.

The idea the outcome had something to do with desctruction of Serbian military industry is bizarre. This was never going to be a WWII-style war to be won by the side which could equip the greater number of soldiers or produced the most tanks and aircraft. The Serbs understood full well that as long as NATO leaders thought something would cost them significant casualties they would not have the resolve to go forth with it. This being the case it was totally beside the point if the entire Yugoslav military industry was destroyed to the last bolt. VJ already had all the weaponry it needed to inflict casulties in its posession already — if NATO had not fought asymetrically and employed terrorist tactics against its civilians rather than offered battle to the VJ.

28

I disagree.

Really? I can think of half a dozen off the top of my head: Chechnya, WWII (civilian casualties far exceeded military casualties and yes, they were targeted: Allied firebombing and strategic bombing, Soviet “cleansing” operations all across its own empire and the countries it invaded, Hiroshima/Nagasaki, Japan all over the Asian Rim, etc), the Balkan Wars pre-WWI, Turkey pre-WWI (v the Greeks) and during WWI (v the Armenians), the Korean War, Vietnam, etc etc.

Estimates range from 1200 to 5700 according to Wikipedia, though only 500 have been confirmed. So your confirmed ratio is 2:5 (200 military to 500 civilian) totalling 700 total deaths. For a war. Fought to surrender. War is brutal and sucks. But as far as wars go, I don’t think calling this a dirty war is justified. I think the military “opportunity cost”: lives to be lost on all fronts in the best alternative scenario, was much, much higher. Again, I’m not saying this worked or that this war was wonderful, I’m arguing that, as wars go (relying on historical precedent) this was likely the least nasty option (even though it didn’t succeed in stopping the cleansing). You keep forgetting the basis of my point so I’ll repeat it again: “even when all the aces are on the side of the intervening powers, successfully putting a stop to the ethnic cleansing in question has never been the result”.

The fact that throughout this thread I’ve only ever been talking about NATO as it turned on the ethnic cleansing point should have clued you in to where I was coming from. Last time I checked, no Yugoslav forces were part of NATO. On that I would’ve suspected that you would at least have given me the benefit of the doubt in acknowledging that I clearly wasn’t talking about the domestic forces acting in opposition to the AoY. There’s no reason for this level of hostility.

First off, I didn’t say that it did. Re-read my post,

I said that “the hope was that this” would be the result, not that it was the result. That’s different, right?

As for defining their military-industrial power, I was referring to it in the sense of: their capacity to manufacture and support (the fielding of) war materiel and any infrastructure faciliating their military operations. I don’t feel as though that’s a cunning or duplicitous use of the term. And I’d appreciate if you laid off the ad homs.

I could here cite General Clark (SACE) who swore that it was the highly publicized planning for a ground invasion that pushed Milosevic to surrender (I could also point out that this is diametrically opposed to your assertion that the VJ and its command of Kosovo kept a ground force off the table, and that on top of that it was international opposition–making the US realize that it would essentially have to go it alone on the ground–that kept this off the table more than the VJ), or note that Russia’s sudden defection to the NATO side in calling for his surrender likewise had a tremendous impact, etc etc. I could also point out that these are only a few of the more relevant factors comprising a multi-causal basis for the surrender. But I won’t because it’s very possible that you were speaking in a much more limited context and that you already knew all this, even though you didn’t explicitly state it.

29

I’m sorry, but I’m not sure of what you are trying to say. Could you rephrase?

30

I say when the threat of another’s country’s tyranny significantly affects the freedom of my country, like Bastiat says, I would have every right to use all my force and cunning to defeat the plunderer. For instance, the moment I discovered that Nazi Germany were headed for the U.S. and posed a significant threat, I would use all my forces to join other country’s and defeat him. Otherwise, if I have another country as an ally, and we made an agreement to protect each other’s freedom, I’d gladly invade the country to free my ally; of course, only if we had an established agreement.

This is an interesting question. I’m curious to see the responses, specifically to my take on it as I’m sure many on here will disagree.

31

You can help a group of people defend themselves against aggressors. The problem comes when you force innocent third parties into the battle. A is defending themselves against B. If A forces C to help then A becomes an aggressor. If C voluntarily helps, then there is no problem.

32

True, but if that consensual act had been presented outwardly as a rape, it’s hard to blame someone for involving themselves in stopping what appears to be an aggression.

That’s what I’m saying, sure.

Sure. It would be a de facto aggression, because the true facts are that it’s consensual, but the actors have contributed to the interference of the onlooker by making it appear a rape, thus I don’t think he could be held to the same level of responsibility as a true aggressor, which I why I raised the manslaughter vs murder analogy.

I think it is. It’s like the question of terrorism, where we say we do not negotiate with terrorists. That means many hostages will be killed by those terrorists when we don’t give in. But we don’t say that the politicians who didn’t negotiate are responsible for those deaths. We accord guilt to the terrorists.

Any such policy would need to take into account whether the soldier’s actions were reasonable. Which, in war-time, very difficult. I’d certainly like to see war raised to that standard tho.

That’s exactly the scenario I’m proposing, private soldiers motivated primarily by moral outrage, held to the highest ethical standards, in black-ops style surgical strikes to right wrongs, such as sex trafficking, on individual basis. Sex slavery in SE Asia would be particularly susceptible since the practice relies on foreign-patronage, and thus is open to outsiders.

33

I think it makes a huge inherent difference because the government would be violating the non-invasion (except in self-defense) provision of limited government libertarianism. As Walter Block put it here:

If secession is always and everywhere justified, what, then, is the proper libertarian response to the existence of suttee, slavery, clitorectomy, etc., in other countries (e.g., in seceding territories)?

Under limited government libertarianism, the government of the north would take no steps to rid the sovereign Confederacy of its slavery (or India of its suttee). The purpose of the state in this philosophy is to protect its own citizens. Period. And, on the (historically accurate) assumption that the Confederacy showed no indication of invading the north, but merely wanted to be left alone to its own devices, that would be the end of the matter as far as the northern government was concerned.

However, even under these assumptions individual abolitionists would be perfectly free, and, indeed, justified, in going in to the Confederacy, guns in hand, with the intention of ridding the south of this evil institution of slavery. But if things went poorly for them, they could not then scurry back to the north, tails between their legs, hiding behind their mama’s skirts, because that would necessarily bring in the northern government into the fray. It would violate the non-invasion (except in self-defense) provision of limited government libertarianism, or minarchism.

34

@Anenome

It looks like we agree on your earlier points, so I’ll start here:

Terrorism is a different type of scenario. Terrorists are the aggressors, so any deaths at their hands are their fault. My question was in regards to someone else starting the war. Sure, the home government aggresses against its people, but a lot of the government’s power is just from vague threats of violence. It rarely has to resort to blunt, direct threats against its own population. If you take the logic that it is always just or moral to start a war with a government (as governments do aggress, directly or indirectly), then you must say that the Canadian or Mexican or any other government is justified in starting a war with the USA. As it stands now, I would not like such a war to happen. Maybe someday the circumstances would be so bad that I would prefer it, but I certainly do not want another government invading the USA in order to “liberate” me. If another government invaded the USA, I would not agree that all resulting deaths would be the fault of the USA, only the deaths that are directly caused by the USA.

My problem is that I don’t think that just because someone is being aggressed against, that it necessarily means that stopping that aggression is the moral thing to do. Probably most of the time it is. But I don’t agree that it always is, especially in regards to war.

I still think that soldiers should be held to strict unlimited liability. If they don’t want to operate under such conditions, then they shouldn’t be a soldier. The point about stopping a fight in a public area is that it is almost certain that those fights are not allowed. Even if the seeming aggressor is actually a victim trying to regain his watch, I doubt that the owners of the property would be okay with people fighting on their property. In regards to truly public property, I imagine most communites would not tolerate such behavior. Maybe they would under specific circumstances.

But a soldier is not operating under similar conditions, especially if he is part of the invading force. As long as the soldier is held to the same standards a civilian would be held to, then “reasonable” as a standard is fine by me.

Perhaps someday the people in the west will actually have true moral indignation in regards to these crimes. Until then, it looks like nothing will be done.

35

You said that there were at least two incidents where NATO aircraft killed Albanian civilians. I just brought in some additional information regarding one of these two incidents. I said the Albanian refugees slain were actually returning to their homes. This information is readily avaliable and is not to the best of my knowledge controversial.

The reason I introduced this information was to try to spark some interest in the topic and maybe move someone, to look more into these matters for themselves. I can write tons of lines about that war here, but I’m just a guy saying something on the internet forum — it isn’t really effective way of changing attitudes or deepening understanding. It sticks far better when someone looks into things on their own.

It is for the most part conjecture, but it has been asserted the incident in which 73 Albanian refugees were slain was not a NATO error, but that the KLA may have marked the column in question with a laser designator for NATO aircraft to attack. NATO’s official line was that its bombing was not in the support of the KLA, but in fact it is uncontroversial that KLA acted as NATO’s ground force as best as it could and that it was issued NATO laser designators.

It should also not be controversial that KLA had an incentive to make sure as many Albanian would leave Kosovo as possible, and that these people would not return while the Serbs were stil in control. A few days after the bombing begun the river of Albanian refugees from Kosovo had became the stated justification for NATO bombing of Yugoslavia, so by returning to their homes, the civilians in question were in a sense threatening the viability of the foreign intervention on behalf of the KLA.

The problem with these sort of interventions is they give all kinds of players all kinds of extremely screwed-up incentives. And it is illusiory to expect no one will ever act on these incentives.

Another thing of course is how come the people in this column felt safe to return if Albanians were simultaneusly being expelled in such numbers? Would this not point there were other factors besides Serb threats that drove such number of people to flee? This group of Albanians at least must had been reasonably sure that after reaching home they would not be harmed by Serb forces, who were after all stil fully in control of the province. If what NATO had said about the Serbs were true this shouldn’t have been possible.

36

Aye, aren’t we just oozing the White Man’s Burden today? I think there is entirely too much indignation in the West over the rest of the world already and what the West needs to do is take a good long look in the mirror, and stop saving everyone from themselves. Yes, lets have Westerners organize armies for the liberation of sex workers in SE Asia — just how patronizing can you get? What if trainloads of worried SE Asians came over to war for the liberation of sex workers in the US? SE Asia doesn’t need your saving, stop imagining that it does. You aren’t champions and the rest of the world isn’t composed of equal parts pathetic victims and satanic opressors.

37

Several of your examples are untrue. Western Allies conducted the great majority of their war effort in WWII against the German and Japanese militaries. Strategic bombing campaigns which targeted civilians were sideshows by comparison. A minority of their effort was directed against civilians, mayority against the military.

Soviet cleansing operations were not part of the war effort against the Axis enemy. They begun in mid 1930s and had to do with internal security not with dealing blows to Nazi Germany.

The First and Second Balkan Wars were one of the more cleanish wars mainly fought between conventional armies out in the field. So was the Greek-Turkish war of 1897. The Macedonian Insurrection of 1904-1908 was a dirty war, particularly from the Turkish side. WWI-era Ottoman repression against the Armenians, the Greeks and the Assyrians was not a war.

Also I can not agree with the Korea War assertion. Probably greater proportion of the American war effort there went against fighting the armed forces of the enemy than was the case in the Kosovo War.

Anyway I withdraw my statement. The war was not remarkable in that so much of US’ war effort was directed against the civilian population. It was remarkable that so much effort when into battling civilians even though this was a war between two states both in posession of a conventional military. It wasn’t that Serb fighters were guerrilas who could not be traced in the forrests or could meld into the civilian population — it was just that US could not substantially harm their uniformed army from above 15,000 feet but would not come lower for fear of own casulties.

The 500 figure is a HRW figure. Seeing HRW is the instrument of the US government their numbers aren’t worth crap.

You keep bringing this up, the third time now, only demonstrating your ignorance. Regardless the offical American propaganda the war did not end with a surrender. It ended with an armistice, in which US dropped a number of its demands it had put forth at the beginning. After withstanding 78 days of bombing the Serbs had also brought NATO in a difficult position (politicaly) and as a consequence won a settlement that was far different from the one they would have been signing on if they had bowed at the onset of the war.

1.) NATO dropped Appendix B of the Rambouillet Agreement
2.) NATO dropped a provision according to which an independence referendum would have been called in Kosovo after 3 years, the result of which Belgrade would have to recognize
3.) NATO now agreed the force entering Kosovo would not formally be a NATO occupation force, but a UN force that would include a Russian contingent
4.) US had to vote in UNSCR1244 formally reaffirming Yugoslavia’s soverignity over Kosovo and envisioning the eventual return of hundreds of Serbian police to the province — the Serbs would not sign the armistice until the resolution had been voted in

The extent of NATO concessions were such that some commentators had suggested NATO would have probably been able to get an agreement like this in the beginning, without a war. I do not personally share this view, but I do think it is not far off.

Situation in Kosovo today is indeed such as if Serbia had suffered a straightforward defeat in 1999, but this is not a consequence of the substance of the 1999 agreement. It is the consequence of the fall of Milošević in 2000 in a color revolution, which gave rise to successive pro-Western governments in Belgrade that sought to undermine the Serbian position on Kosovo and to give away even what had been successfully defended in 1999.

I intentionally ignored this because it is science-fiction just like the surrender theme you keep bringing up, that I also actively sought to ignore until this post.

Just that you are framing this as a matter of stopping ethnic cleansing is ridicilous. In fact there was no ethnic cleansing until after the bombs started falling. NATO intervention did not just fail to stop ethnic cleansing, but made it possible and inevitable.

Before the bombing there were refugees, most of them internal, but these were people who fled the fighting as such, not the one or the other belligerent. Ie, they evacuated in the same manner people flee before announcements of hurricanes.

Only a few days into the bombing refugees started to appear who reported being kicked out from their homes — as you would probably expect would happen in any similar case, for example in America to Muslims if China was dropping bombs on the United States explicitly on the behalf of the United States’ Muslim population. Even so such expulsions were not the only cause of the incredible increase in the number of refugees. Fighting between VJ and the KLA, the danger of NATO bombs, the fact Albanians were aware that by taking a trek to a refugee camp in Macedonia or Albania they were helping the Albanian cause in Kosovo probably all played a role.

Which means exactly jack shit. Clark doesn’t know the reasons Milošević acted as he did, he would not be beyond lying if he did and certainly has an incentive to just make whatever he thinks shows him in the best light.

If the Americans can not invade without the Germans at their side and the Germans won’t invade because VJ may shoot some of them, then the fact VJ is able to fight back is what is keeping the Americans away.

Of course the very reason US was not willing to go in alone is because they thought it could potentially turn messy. Then Clinton would have to eat all the crap from it rather than having it spread around with Chirac, Blair and Schroder. So again, if the VJ had not been capable of shooting back there would have been no obstacle to a stroll into sunny Kosovo.

38

@Marko

Thanks for the info and clearing it up.

For the most part, this is true. My point about “true” moral indignation (get ready for the no true scotsman fallacy!) was that I don’t believe that most white westerners really have moral indignation about many of the atrocities that occur throughout the world. As I said earlier in my conversation with Anenome:

Most westerners do not have a vested interest in other areas of the world. They can feel outrage at whatever they want, but they don’t have an interest in everything they are outraged at. Here is an analogy: when someone else has something of personal value stolen, we feel bad about it because we know it meant something to him and he is hurting about it. When it’s something of value to us that has been stolen, we don’t just feel bad, we feel the pain that the other guy had felt. It’s entirely different. Another analogy could be about police brutality. Sure, most of us here feel outrage when we read about or see videos on police brutality. But hell, if it happened to us, it becomes personal.

That’s what I’m talking about. Most westerners may feel moral indignation about whatever is going on in the world, but they are not connected to it. It’s an entirely different kind of moral indignation when these injustices happen to you or someone you know/care about.

We were not talking about armies.

And liberated whom? Are they voluntary sex workers? Then they don’t need liberating. If they are there because they are being forced to be there by gangs, then I don’t care who liberates them. The liberators could be from Ghana for all I care.

We are not talking about the entirety of SE Asia. Anenome brought up the sex trade in SE Asia, and I assume he is talking about women who are prostitutes because they are being forced to be prostitutes by gangs. Why is he interested in the involuntary sex trade in SE Asia instead of other areas of the world? I don’t know. Maybe he has a particular interest in that region that we are not aware of.

I beg to differ. I’m pretty sure that everyone who isn’t me is either a damsel in distress, a puny man who can’t help the damsels, or a villain.

39

No interventions are acceptable exept for:

  1. Protecting property you own in that nation from destruction or theft

  2. Defeating an enemy who is obviously and demonstrably preparing to attack you next

40

[quoteuser=“Marko”]
Several of your examples are untrue.
[/quote]

Which implies that the rest are true.

[quoteuser=“Marko”]
Soviet cleansing operations were not part of the war effort against the Axis enemy. They begun in mid 1930s and had to do with internal security not with dealing blows to Nazi Germany.
[/quote]

You may claim that the deportations of the 1940s had nothing to do with the war, but this is categorically untrue–and your assertion that these were just wrapping up the deportations of the 1930s is absolutely wrong. The mass deportations/liquidations that took place during the war on the Eastern Front were very clearly deemed militarily essential by the GKO (brutal military and security measures to better prosecute the war against Nazi Germany)…I’d love to hear you disentangle “internal security” from the military sphere in the case of the USSR during the war. In any case, that’s not to say that this wasn’t overkill, that they were right to do so, or that other factors didn’t play into how the USSR prosecuted the war in this respect. But that’s irrelevant considering that this was one of a half dozen direct counters to your statement:

[quoteuser=“Marko”]
There are very few examples of a side in a war concentrating such a proportion of its effort to combating civilians as NATO did here.
[/quote]

So even the question of whether they directly had to do with the war vs the Axis or not is actually irrelevant to the fact that this side (the Soviet side) concentrated a considerable proportion of its effort to combating civilians inside (and outside!) of its borders during a war (WWII) in which the USSR fought.

[quoteuser=“Marko”]
The First and Second Balkan Wars were one of the more cleanish wars mainly fought between conventional armies out in the field.
[/quote]

I love this, thank you.

[quoteuser=“Marko”]
So was the Greek-Turkish war of 1897. The Macedonian Insurrection of 1904-1908 was a dirty war, particularly from the Turkish side. WWI-era Ottoman repression against the Armenians, the Greeks and the Assyrians was not a war.
[/quote]

In the Greek case I was more specifically referring to the Lausanne case (post-WWI to 1923 period). But that was my mistake (I mistakenly put pre-WWI). In the case of the Armenians, the Turks took great advantage of the cover of war to deal with the Armenians, whom they labelled traitors to the Empire. War is very relevant in this context and the point is not negated by the fact that no formal, traditional declaration of war could possibly take place between the Turks and Armenians.

[quoteuser=“Marko”]
Also I can not agree with the Korea War assertion. Probably greater proportion of the American war effort there went against fighting the armed forces of the enemy than was the case in the Kosovo War.
[/quote]

Note the “probably”. By the way, I’m not arguing for equivalency, but rather for comparability.

[quoteuser=“Marko”]
It wasn’t that Serb fighters were guerrilas who could not be traced in the forrests or could meld into the civilian population — it was just that US could not substantially harm their uniformed army from above 15,000 feet but would not come lower for fear of own casulties.
[/quote]

These two things aren’t mutually exclusive, and I agree with both (that Yugoslav soldiers were brilliant at asymmetric warfare and that an air war could not hope to win against a ground army or to operate without casualties in that case).

[quoteuser=“Marko”]
You keep bringing this up, the third time now, only demonstrating your ignorance.
[/quote]

These ad homs are getting very old, very fast. And to me, they demonstrate that your arguments aren’t as strong as you’d like them to be.

[quoteuser=“Marko”]
Just that you are framing this as a matter of stopping ethnic cleansing is ridicilous. In fact there was no ethnic cleansing until after the bombs started falling. NATO intervention did not just fail to stop ethnic cleansing, but made it possible and inevitable.
[/quote]

There was no ethnic cleansing until after the bombs started falling? Really? So you’re denying that ethnic cleansing was one of the formal justifications used for intervention and you’re claiming that there would have been NO ethnic cleansing had NATO not intervened (per your argument that intervention made ethnic cleansing possible). Clearly then there was no ethnic cleansing in Yugoslavia (1991-99) prior to NATO intervention (in 1999) too because apparently foreign bombs are the magic trigger.

[quoteuser=“Marko”]
In fact there was no ethnic cleansing until after the bombs started falling. NATO intervention did not just fail to stop ethnic cleansing, but made it possible and inevitable…Only a few days into the bombing refugees started to appear who reported being kicked out from their homes — as you would probably expect would happen in any similar case, for example in America to Muslims if China was dropping bombs on the United States explicitly on the behalf of the United States’ Muslim population. Even so such expulsions were not the only cause of the incredible increase in the number of refugees.
[/quote]

Yes yes of course, because if the Chinese threatened to bomb US cities on behalf of Muslims and Muslim-Americans, the American military/government would first round up Muslim-Americans and, when the bombs started to fall, would then immediately rush out and massacre that ethnic group. Makes perfect sense to you at least.

[quoteuser=“NEPHiLiX”]
could here cite General Clark (SACE) who swore that it was the highly publicized planning for a ground invasion that pushed Milosevic to surrender…
[/quote]

[quoteuser=“Marko”]
Which means exactly jack shit. Clark doesn’t know the reasons Milošević acted as he did, he would not be beyond lying if he did and certainly has an incentive to just make whatever he thinks shows him in the best light.
[/quote]

Yes of course, you know better because you were Milosevic’s confidant.

[quoteuser=“Marko”]
If the Americans can not invade without the Germans at their side and the Germans won’t invade because VJ may shoot some of them, then the fact VJ is able to fight back is what is keeping the Americans away.
[/quote]

Are you assuming this or are you channeling all Germans now?

[quoteuser=“Marko”]
So again, if the VJ had not been capable of shooting back there would have been no obstacle to a stroll into sunny Kosovo.
[/quote]

Translation: if an opponent can’t fight back, you can move in and take the capital if you want. Well that’s revelationary. Glad we had this chat.