NATO AS THE LEFT HAND OF GOD.
The NATO-Yugoslav conflict is a political example of the famous drawing in which we recognise the contours either of a rabbit head or of a goose head, depending on our mental focus. If we look at the situation in a certain way, we see the international community enforcing minimal human rights standards on a nationalist neo-Communist leader engaged in ethnic cleansing, ready to ruin his own nation just to retain power. If we shift the focus, we see NATO, the armed hand of the new capitalist global order, defending the strategic interests of the capital in the guise of a disgusting travesty, posing as a disinterested enforcer of human rights, attacking a sovereign country which acts as an obstacle to the unbridled assertion of the New World Order.The NATO intervention in Yugoslavia is not simply the result of some particular failure of strategic reasoning. It depends on the fundamental inconsistency of the very notion on which this intervention relies. The problem with NATO acting in Yugoslavia as an agent of `militaristic humanism' or even `militaristic pacifism' (Ulrich Beck) is not that this term is an Orwellian oxymoron (reminding us of `Peace is War' slogans from his 1984); neither is it that, obviously, the targets of bombardment are not chosen out of pure moral consideration, but selectively, depending on unadmitted geopolitic and economic strategic interests (the obvious Marxist-style criticism).
The problem is rather that this purely humanitarian-ethic legitimisation (again) thoroughly depoliticises the military intervention, changing it into an intervention into humanitarian catastrophe, grounded in purely moral reasons, not an intervention into a well-defined political struggle. In this way, the `militaristic' intervention (into the social struggle) is presented as a help to the victims of (ethnic, etc.) hatred and violence, justified directly in depoliticised terms of universal human rights. Consequently, what we need is not a `true' demilitarised humanism/pacifism, but a `militaristic' social intervention divested of the depoliticised humanist/pacifist coating.
Even the large majority of those who opposed the NATO bombing, silently accepted this moralistic logic, merely complaining that this logic was not fully implemented, that other interests (strategic, geopolitical, etc.) were behind it. The typical stance of a moralist opponent to the NATO bombardment of Yugoslavia was that he or she supports the moral consideration for human rights, but deplores the concrete way in which NATO militarily intervened (bombing bridges and civilian objects, etc.).
What I am tempted to do is to reverse this commonplace position. The NATO intervention ultimately did bring about some good results -- refugees are returning, the Milosevic rule is for the first time seriously threatened. What was problematic about it was precisely its depoliticised humanitarian legitimisation. So, in this perspective, every actual act is bad. When Serbs cleanse Kosovo of Albanians, it's bad; when NATO intervenes to prevent it, it's bad; when the KLA strikes back, it's bad. On the other hand, every excuse is good, since it allows us to claim that, of course, we await and want an act, but a proper moralistic act, the conditions for which are just never here -- like the proverbial falsely enlightened husband who, in principle, agrees that his wife can take lovers, but complains apropos of every actual lover she chooses `Okay, you can have lovers, but not this one, why did you have to pick up this miserable guy!'
The ultimate cause of this moralistic depoliticisation is, of course, the retreat of the great leftist historico-political narratives and projects. In this constellation, rationally convinced that the radical change of the existing liberal-democratic capitalist system is no longer even imaginable as a serious political project, but nonetheless unable to fully renounce their passionate attachment to the prospect of such a global change, the disappointed Leftists invest the thwarted excess of their political energy that cannot find satisfaction in the moderate changes within the system, into the abstract and excessively rigid moralising stance. So the choice is: either we resignedly renounce this `excessive' stubborn attachment to the prospect of global change and `maturely' accept our post-political universe of particular pragmatic solutions, or we risk a thorough repoliticisation that would translate the false moralist zeal back into a radical ethico-political commitment.
To get a taste of this falsity, it is sufficient to compare this recent moral tone with the great emancipatory movements based on the universalist moral appeal epitomised by the names of Mahathma Gandhi and Martin Luther King. Gandhi and King led movements directed not against a certain group of people, but against concrete (racist, colonialist) institutionalised practices. Their movements involved a positive, all-inclusive stance that, far from excluding the `enemy' (whites, English colonisers), made an appeal to their moral sense and asked them to do something that would restore their own moral dignity.
By contrast, the predominant form of today's moralism is the fake gesture of the disavowed politics, of assuming a `moral', depoliticised stance in order to make a stronger political case. This stance is not assertive, but controlling, leveraging, bridling. What we saw in NATO's intervention in Kosovo was a perverted version of what, in the good old days of dissidence, Vaclav Havel
called the `power of the powerless': one manipulates one's powerlessness as a stratagem in order to gain more power, in exactly the same way that today, in our politically correct times, in order for one's voice to gain authority, one has to legitimise oneself as being some kind of a (potential or actual) victim of power.
A report by Steven Erlanger on the suffering of the Kosovo Albanians in the New York Times renders perfectly this logic of depoliticised victimisation. Its title is telling: `In One Kosovo Woman, An Emblem of Suffering'. The subject to be protected (by the NATO intervention) is from the outset identified as a powerless victim of circumstances, deprived of all political identity, reduced to the bare suffering. Her basic stance is that of excessive suffering, of traumatic experience that blurs all differences:
She's seen too much, Meli said. She wants a rest. She wants it to be over.
As such, she is beyond any political recrimination -- an independent Kosovo is not on her agenda, she just wants the horror over:
Does she favor an independent Kosovo? `You know, I don't care if it's this or that ... I just want all this to end, and to feel good again, to feel good in my place and my house with my friends and family.'
Her support of the foreign (NATO) intervention is grounded in her wish for all this horror to be over:
She wants a settlement that brings foreigners here `with some force behind them'. She is indifferent about who the foreigners are.
Consequently, she sympathises with all the sides in an all-embracing humanist stance:
`There is tragedy enough for everyone,' she says. `I feel sorry for the Serbs who've been bombed and died, and I feel sorry for my own people. But maybe now there will be a conclusion, a settlement for good. That would be great.'
Here we have the ideological construction of the ideal subject-victim to whose aid NATO intervenes. Not a political subject with a clear agenda, but a subject of helpless suffering, sympathising with all suffering sides in the conflict, caught in the madness of a local clash that can only be pacified by the intervention of a benevolent foreign power, a subject whose innermost desire is reduced to the almost animal craving to `feel good again' ...
In short, while NATO was intervening in order to protect the Kosovar victims, it is at the same time well taking care that they will remain victims, not an active politico-military force capable of defending itself. The strategy of NATO is thus perverse in the precise Freudian sense of the term: it is itself (co)responsible for the calamity against which it offers itself as a remedy. What we encounter here is again the paradox of victimisation. The Other to be protected is good insofar as it remains a victim (which is why we are bombarded with pictures of helpless Kosovar mothers, children and elder people, telling moving stories of their suffering). The moment it no longer behaves as a victim, but wants to strike back on its own, it all of a sudden magically turns into a terrorist/fundamentalist/drug-trafficking Other.
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| Title Annotation: | NATO-Yugoslavia Conflict of 1999 |
|---|---|
| Author: | ZIZEK, SLAVOJ |
| Publication: | Arena Magazine |
| Geographic Code: | 4EXYU |
| Date: | Aug 1, 1999 |
| Words: | 1377 |
| Previous Article: | SKIN TAUNTS. |
| Next Article: | RESPONDING TO KOSOVO. |
| Topics: | |