Commentary / PERSPECTIVE ON INTERVENTION :...

What are the moral considerations involved in American policy toward the political, ethnic and religious wars in Yugoslavia?

First, such a question about morality and foreign policy cannot legitimately be posed in abstract terms. Rather, it must be asked in an international context, especially if force is contemplated as an instrument of policy. If so, what is the context?

The persistence of historically rooted ethnic, religious and political differences and the easy accessibility of arms ensures that the killing and human-rights violations seen in Yugoslavia will recur throughout the ex-socialist and underdeveloped world. The United States cannot respond unilaterally to each of these instances, yet an amoral foreign policy would be corrosive to the foundations of our identity as a nation.

To relate morality and foreign policy, it is essential to multilateralize and institutionalize the procedures for defining the occasions that require intervention and the means for intervention. The current institutions relevant to the Yugoslav situation in these ways are the United Nations and the North Atlantic Treaty Organization. Both of these institutions are anachronisms from earlier times, devised to deal with security issues (that is, containment of communism, conflicts between sovereign states) central to international affairs when they were created.

The crime of the United States is its historically unprecedented failure to devise new international institutions appropriate to managing the new agenda of security and economic problems after “winning” the 45-year Cold War. It is in this broader context that the issue of morality and American foreign policy takes on its fullest meaning regarding the current situation in Yugoslavia.