Letter from Belgrade
The war seen from the United States
War in the catechism of the Church
Niebuhr: the destiny of America

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Letter  from Belgrade

Dear friends,
Someone just read to me over the telephone-the phones are working for the moment, even those cellular phones that in Italy are a curse and here transmit wonderful words-the flyer bearing our name: Communion and Liberation. And here, inside the war, this name coincides with judgment and hope.
Communion: it is just this that is thought to be impossible. This war began and goes on because of a certainty that any form of coexistence is impossible between persons belonging to different nations. The practice of ethnic cleansing on one side is replaced on the other by the same equal and opposite criterion. The flag, national origin have become the supreme criterion dividing good from evil, being human or non-human. I am not alluding only to the Serbs, Albanians, Americans. I am also thinking about us Italians. We see the refugees from Kosovo on television and it is as though, luckily still with the ability to be moved, we had to identify someone as the bad guy: a people who by its nature and history is necessarily evil. In this case, the Serbs. We would never do the bad things that are attributed to them, would we? And so we confine this evil within this niche of humankind. We put this people into a sack to get rid of them, like a cat. Then we will be able to live in peace, and order will prevail, through the Pax Americana which, in the last analysis, is not so bad: it gives one a certain amount of freedom, it doesn't slit the throats of children. Because it is always someone else who slits children's throats, the Serbs. At the most, the Albanian guerrillas.
The war is then seen as a response that was given to re-establish well-being and order, to make up for the bad deeds of others, thus to put the balance of the universe right again. And so the people killed on the train in Grdelica, or the children burned in Aleksinac, are "errors." What the Serbs committed are crimes, what NATO did is simply statistical aberrations. In the end, this is the way we all think, even those who-like me-are against the bombing. We feel that we are good. As though Communion and Liberation were the outcome of our original goodness. But no: it is a miracle, something that happened.
I understand this as I meet people in Belgrade. All over Belgrade on the bridges, in the streets there are people exactly like us. Their culture is Slavic-European-American, with hamburgers and dreams of travel and metropolitan skyscrapers, just as it is in the rest of the West. They aren't "the bad guys." We are. We, to whom an encounter could happen that could change the course of our lives. Even talking with the leaders of this regime I could not help being moved by these people who are so unfortunate and living under such illusions. The leaders in Belgrade are idealists who in the name of their own personal world view are willing to sacrifice their people. Then at night, suddenly, a siren blows. An invisible hand strikes the factories and central heating plants with bombs. And these boys and girls become willing to do anything to defend themselves-they too!-from evil, which is NATO, America, us.
War-this war-forces each person to consider the other as a concentrate of evil, a non-person.
Seen from Belgrade, the situation is absolutely desperate. I have the feeling that no one will give in. That there is, there has to be, American leadership of the world is in the course of things. Every epoch has its dominating power. And in the idea itself of a broad empire and its outposts there is the perception of breathing room. You can get away from the emperor, but not from the prince, except at the cost of exile. But this emperor today is denying himself, the Christian ideal that moved the Pilgrim Fathers to set out on their adventure in a foreign land. If the Americans renounce-as they are doing now, and I mean in this very moment-this heritage of values which they bear within them almost without realizing it, they could end up destroying themselves and the world. Not because they are worse than the Serbs or us Italians. But because, I don't know how deservedly, they have de facto all the power and force and technology and arms and the mass media: everything. And yet, not all the force in the universe can produce love, meaning, beauty, human feeling. These demand to be recognized. The most powerful must have the courage to honor what is not his but has been handed down to him by a tradition, come to him from someone else. But if this American master of the world claims the right to redraw the borders of nations and cultures, of ethnic groups and religions on the basis of an idea of dominion to be imposed with arms, then what could happen here is disaster. These weapons have a logic all their own that overwhelms the reason of the men who handle them. It can overwhelm the Americans, and the world with them.
We have to find a way for all sides to recognize that none of them has justice totally on their side: Serbs and Kosovar Albanians, NATO and Russia. They must reason about the possible coexistence of different ethnic groups. This can happen if the Americans accept the invitation pronounced by the Pope: "I renew my appeal dictated not only by faith, but even more by reason: may the arms be silent and the dialogue be taken up again!" My thoughts go to what Father Giussani asked: that the Virgin bring about a miracle in Yugoslavia. It is possible, it is the thing that is most reasonable.

Renato Farina
Correspondent of the Italian daily Il Giornale

What errors in judgment led the United States to attack the Federation of Yugoslavia? And what could be the consequences of a decision considered irrational not only by the Pope, but also by many others in the world?

BY RODOLFO CASADEI

"The thought is intolerable of an America so powerful as to be considered responsible for the great historical events in every part of the globe, beyond its capabilities of knowledge and planning. For a powerful nation, nothing is more dangerous than the temptation to hide the limits of its power. It would be our ruin if we considered ourselves the lords of contemporary history." Reinhold Niebuhr's words on the "limits of American power," written almost half a century ago by the leading Protestant theologian in America, resound just as dramatically current in these days at the end of the millennium which coincide with an unprecedented NATO military initiative in the Balkans under American leadership. In Korea (when Niebuhr was writing), in the Persian Gulf and in Somalia the United States intervened with a UN mandate, in Vietnam and Bosnia at the request of the local governments, no matter how fragile: at times they have violated the sovereignty of certain countries (Libya, Grenada, Panama, Iraq, Afghanistan, Sudan), but always for limited goals or precise reprisals. The air campaign against the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia in which the United States has involved NATO represents a completely unprecedented event for a series of reasons: it constitutes interference, without UN authorization, in the internal affairs of a nation; it makes NATO, which is a regional military defense alliance, an instrument for peace enforcement in a geographical area that does not pertain to it; it represents objectively an act of support of a separatist guerrilla offensive. Never has the United States gone so far; never has it acted with so little formal authorization; never has it distorted the nature of NATO in such a blatant manner; never has it given such open and massive support to armed secession.

A consensus that is hardly unanimous
The European reactions to the NATO intervention in Serbia and Kosovo are well known: A part of the political class and public opinion have embraced the political and humanitarian justification of the operation, which is to "impede" the genocide, or ethnic cleansing, in act of Kosovar Albanians and to pacify the Balkans by defeating the dictator Milosevic. Another part, extremely varied from political, cultural, and religious points of view, has denounced a military intervention that is having the opposite effects of its declared aim (hundreds of thousands of Kosovars are being expelled and almost certainly massacred and the Balkans are on the verge of a general explosion), and accuses the United States of pursuing instead some secret goal, that of weakening and dividing Europe in order to reaffirm its own hegemony over the world.
What many Europeans don't know (and the few who do know are not doing anything to point it out) is that the NATO intervention in Kosovo is far from enjoying unanimous consensus in the United States, where the apparent rock-solid unity of public opinion and the political world surrounding the decisions of President Clinton is only a result of a political reflex, similar to the one that led the Serbs to rally around Milosevic despite the contempt that many of them feel for him. Raising doubts and criticisms are not only far right Republican isolationists like Pat Buchanan or far left intellectuals like Noam Chomsky; from the Senate to the New York Times and the Washington Post, from Henry Kissinger to Edward Luttwak, the heart itself of the American establishment in its most irreproachable components is expressing irritation at the way in which the war was decided and serious worry about the unfathomable prospects that are opening up. It should be recalled that Congress's full support of Clinton's policy came only after the bombing started; in fact, the Senate voted on the evening of March 23rd in favor of the planned air offensive with only 58 votes in favor and 41 against. Once the initiative began, the House voted the next day almost unanimously (424-1).

Opposite results
The objections do not arise only from the obvious observation that the military action has up to now produced opposite results from what was declared. Strategists and diplomats, who have never believed in the pre-eminence of humanitarian and idealistic motives for the war, are critical and concerned for eminently political and strategic reasons. The most complete summary of these arguments was made by Henry Kissinger for Newsweek: "The administration, using symbols which have a strong appeal to public opinion, proposed three kinds of argument. The most convincing is that the agony of Kosovo is so intolerable to our moral sensibility that, in order to bring it to an end, we have to use force, even in the absence of traditional considerations of national interest. But since this leaves unanswered the question of why we are not intervening in eastern Africa, in Sri Lanka, Kurdistan, Kashmir and Afghanistan-to cite only a few of the places where the number of victims is infinitely superior to that in Kosovo-the President evoked historical analogies or current threats which leave one extremely perplexed; Slobodan Milosevic is not Hitler, but a Serb criminal. Neither Milosevic nor any other Balkan leader is in a position to threaten the international balance, as the President continues to maintain. I understand the humanitarian reasons for the intervention, but this does not exempt democracies from the obligation to propose an acceptable solution. The Rambouillet accords do not satisfy this need. Conducting negotiations on the basis of agreements drawn up exclusively in foreign chancelleries and trying to impose them by the threat of bombs have only exacerbated the crisis in Kosovo…. Since the war goes on, the administration must redefine its goals. NATO cannot survive if it abandons the campaign now without achieving its aim."

A war which started as a "test"
Among the many reasons for perplexity, what upsets Kissinger and, for example, the analysts from the highly authoritative Center for International and Strategic Studies in Washington, is precisely this risk that NATO will fall apart. The strategic paradox of the military intervention in Serbia and Kosovo lies right here: a war born, according to Ambassador Sergio Romano, as a "test" of "the validity of the American plan to transform a defense alliance into an organization for collective security" and as an instrument to allow the United States to "preserve NATO because it guarantees them a presence in Europe and guarantees that Europe will never have its own military policy," is placing in danger the very existence of NATO and American leadership in Europe. For this reason President Clinton and Secretary of State Albright are forced to undergo increasingly fierce criticism: their "miscalculation" (believing that Milosevic would give in after the first bombing raids, believing that wars can be won without the loss of even one man in ground operations), risks damaging the United States more than can be imagined.
Naturally the question arises as to how this was possible. Up to now the most accurate answer has been given by an Italian observer, La Stampa's editorialist Pierluigi Battista: "There is a reason deriving from the cultural anthropology of the current world leaders-from Bill Clinton to Tony Blair to the Socialist leaders, all of whom came of age in the cultural turmoil of 1968-according to which political behavior must be inspired by motives of goodness, moving always in defense of rights that have been oppressed. Convinced that they are doing good, they are in a Weberian sense far removed from an ethic of responsibility, and they do not see the devastating effects of their decision: 60,000 refugees before the bombing, a million afterwards. Idealism… is not resigned to the end of ideologies, and wants to replace them with a universalization of ethics, with absolute values. The ethics of absolute principles marks the end of any form of realism, it excludes every rational calculation between cost and benefit. It is not that politics must be separated from morality, but making ethics and politics coincide is dangerous, because it can produce a virus that infects the whole world, fomenting the mad idea of freeing the world from evil. This is not only culturally unacceptable, but politically destabilizing. The first micro-ethnic group that felt itself to be oppressed could appeal to NATO and drag it into an unending conflict."
The looming danger is precisely this one defined by Battista: it is not so much a conspiracy, which has to be proved, of America against Europe, as a fatal mixture of imperial presumptuousness (as denounced as early as 1952 by Niebuhr) and '68 realpolitik, which replaces the real with the virtual. This cultural mixture, eminently anti-realistic and thus irrational, is not capable of looking at reality as a whole, but renders one aspect absolute and undertakes its initiatives on the basis of its relative prejudice. The consequences risk being catastrophic, for America and for Europe.