Editor's Page
Cohen, Mitchell
"PLEASE LEAVE your threat after you hear the beep." This was the message on Slobodan Milosevic's answering machine as rendered by a French cartoonist back when Bosnia was being "ethnically...
...n Even if the official aims of the war are just, it has been conducted in a morally ambiguous way by an organization—NATOthat has been more in a rush to increase its members than to define its post–cold war purpose...
...The Third Way in war seems as slippery as it is in domestic policy...
...the rest is secondary...
...Incoherent Republican foreign policy has its counterpart in a bankrupt—though zealously pursued—domestic agenda, which Sean Wilentz scrutinizes...
...This is the internationalism of fools...
...Instead, there is still post–cold war flux...
...assimilate them all into the wickedness of the world and you merely relieve yourself of tough moral choices...
...n Look back at copies of Dissent during and after the Gulf War, and you will find a wide range of views, pro and con, all argued from left-wing premises...
...n The left is leery of the use of American power for very good reasons...
...Yet it is vexing (for me, anyway) to find part of the left more agitated about any use of American force than about a profoundly menaced population—and speaking as if there is nothing Milosevic could do that is not the fault of Washington...
...A good thing...
...n President Clinton has provided ample cause for doubt...
...We have seen its abuse a little too often in this half of the century...
...But not all bad guys and bad acts are the same...
...M.C...
...n "Ethnic cleansing" trumps a lot of other considerations, at least for some of us on the left...
...If you have a complex worldview, the answer must—sometimes—be "yes...
...Not that the Republicans are better...
...James K. Galbraith dissects this consensus in our Brave New Globe series...
...Bush's Gulf War slogan was a "New World Order," but no such thing exists...
...We will pursue the same pluralism now, beginning with James B. Rule's vigorous criticisms of left support of American commitments abroad...
...Some support the NATO intervention, some waffle on it, but at least their right wing has invented something original: anti-interventionists for huge defense budgets...
...Clinton furnishes no coherent vision of America's role in this world—except when it comes to economic globalization, where the "Washington Consensus" continues Bush's "free" market fundamentalism...
...It ended the murderous reign of the Khmer Rouge...
...After all, when Vietnam invaded Cambodia, Hanoi broke international laws, violated its neighbor's sovereignty, and did so for self-interested and not humanitarian reasons...
...Doubt, however, can be deployed intelligently—or simplistically...
...Yes, there is always the caveat: "We don't like Milosevic either, but there are so many like him around...
...How, one wonders, would this president respond to Michael Walzer's query: "Are countries with armies whose soldiers cannot be put at risk morally or politically qualified to intervene...
...The sorry point of this witticism finally became moot with NATO's attack on Serbia this past spring—just as Belgrade readied to do to Kosovar Muslims what it had done elsewhere...
...This was the message on Slobodan Milosevic's answering machine as rendered by a French cartoonist back when Bosnia was being "ethnically cleansed...
...n Here's a hard call: can you favor an action though you are suspicious of the actor...
Vol. 46 • July 1999 • No. 3
