APPENDIX 25
Memorandum submitted by Lord Kennet and
Mrs Elizabeth Young
We enclose a copy of a letter from one of us to the
RUSI Journal, and reconfirm the points made in it in August 1999
(when it was written). We would re-emphasise
1. the dubious legality of the military
operation;
2. the uncertainty at the heart of the concept
of "humanitarian necessity";
3. the danger of Governments determining
unilaterally, or in partial groupings, what is "lawful".
4. the danger, now confirmed, of any one
Government providing secret undertakings and support to one side
in a conflict that is the subject of possible multilateral intervention:
Mrs Albright's undertakings to the Kosovo Liberation Army, as
reported publicly in February 1999 by the Foreign Minister of
Albania.
5. the danger, now confirmed, of any one
Government making self-evidently unacceptable proposals to one
side in a conflict that is the subject of multilateral negotiation:
Mr Holbrooke's proposal for the de facto occupation of
Serbia by NATO.
The claim that the eventual settlement of the
immediate conflict was on the terms put to Milosevic by Holbrooke
out of Rambouillet is false. The eventual settlement restored
the position of the United Nations; depended on the support of
Russia; and did not reinforce any of the new claims made for NATO
in some interpretations (especially the United States' interpretation)
of NATO's New Strategic Concept.
We hope the Committee may devote part of its
report to the consideration of this Concept in relation to Kosovo,
where military action was commenced in the expectation that it
would be completed before the Washington NATO meeting at which
the New Strategic Concept, ambiguities and all, was to be adopted.
The US construction is that the Concept allows
the breaching both of the UN Charter and international law generally
in that it announces NATO's willingness to bomb and invade other
countries without the approval of the Security Council. This construction
has been brought to the North Atlantic Assembly by its US members,
put to the vote, and carried. On the other hand, various European
Governments do not accept it, and point out it was the return
to the Security Council and the covering Security Council Resolution
1244 that ended the military action.
Further points and questions:
1. Who supposed, and on what evidence, and
why were Governments persuaded, that Milosevic would give in within
three or four days? General Ralston, speaking at the RUSI last
month, said he for one had not supposed this. Strobe Talbott's
speech to the RUSI NATO at 50 Conference gave some indications
of thinking in Washington.
2. FCO Answers to Written Questions have
implied that "unanimity" within the NATO Council for
targeting remained the practice throughout the operation. This
was not so. Specifically, US bombers operating from the United
States were not under NATO control, nor, we understand, were UK
cruise missiles.
3. The US argument that its massive financial
expenditure on ordnance, etc, justifies it refusal proportionately
to fund the restoration of the damage it unilaterally chose to
inflict is a thoroughly bad argument; it should not be accepted
now, lest it become a precedent.
4. There is confusion concerning the right
to allocate targets. The committee will no doubt have followed
the testimony of US Generals before the US congress, objecting
to the original requirement for NATO Council unanimity, and especially
to French objections to their targeting proposals.
5. The war some US Commanders envisaged
(and would throughout hostilities have preferred) seems to have
been outwith the Geneva Conventions: was this discussed in the
NATO Council? And was the language to be used by NATO spokesman
about attacks on primarily civilian targets decided in the Council?
6. Who decided that bombs not dropped on
a prescribed target should be dumped in the Adriatic?
7. The use of Depleted Uranium appears to
have been a unilaterally determined, US-only, practice, and the
UNEP/UNCHS officials examining environmental damage resulting
from the action have been refused information by NATO about where
DU was used. Even if, as appears to be the case, DU is not as
nasty as some have supposed (see Steve Fetter and Frank von Hippel,
When the dust settles, Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists,
November-December 1999), this cannot be right. Divergence of practice
in interpreting and observing the Geneva conventions can only
be harmful to the position of the European NATO countries in the
world.
8. It is noticeable that both the Gulf War
and the Kosovo action were triggered by United States officials
last minute activities. Thus:
— The Gulf War: US Ambassador April
Glaspie in Baghdad informed Saddam Hussein that the US was not
concerned about inter-Arab boundary disputes, and immediately
went on leave. Saddam invaded Kuwait, and later published a tape
of the conversation.
— Kosovo: it was the combined effects
of Mrs Albright's unrefusable proposals to the KLA (known to Milosevic
by way of the Albanian Foreign Minister's 24 February interview
with an Albanian newspaper) and Mr Holbrooke's symmetrically unacceptable
proposals to Milosevic which produced the occasion for military
action.
There was not, in either case, a serious search
for a diplomatic solution. Rather a short cut to the desired conclusion
was chosen, making use of the military means assumed by some decision-makers
to be more effective. This last assumption is not universally
shared, even within the present Administration, and General Ralston
SACEUR-elect, said at the RUSI on 13 November last, that we [the
US Armed Forces] don't like to see the US military being the first
option.
The Committee can hardly get to the bottom of
these wars without examining the scale of influence of the Arms
Industry Lobby in the United States. The New York Times
reported it spending more than $40 million on NATO expansion in
the hope (unfulfilled) of large orders in Eastern Europe. The
Arms Industry has used both the Gulf War and the Kosovo action
to test new products. Any regular reader of Aviation Week
and Space Technology, for example, will confirm that the
Industry has found both the opportunity to test and the using-up
and subsequent replacement of the existing inventory very rewarding.
In both conflicts, and in the regular (also dubiously lawful)
bombing of Iraq, the principal beneficiaries appear to be the
industry.
General Eisenhower, stepping down as President
of the United States on January 19th 1961, warned his fellow-citizens
of the dangers presented to them all by the Military-industrial
Complex and the Scientific-Bureaucratic Elite: we urge the Committee
to refer to this remarkably far-sighted speech.
| 
