The
Milosevic trial
will embarrass America
By
Jonathan
Power
February 8, 2002
LONDON - The trial of Slobodan Milosevic, the former
strong man of Yugoslavia, set to open in The Hague next
week at the International Criminal Tribunal for the
Former Yugoslavia, may raise as many questions as it
answers. It is not just the double standards of the
United States in being the prime instigator of this trial
while it refuses to put itself under the writ of the
soon-to-be International Criminal Court established to
try all crimes against humanity, but also the many
underhand and compromised methods used by the Western
powers in an attempt to placate the demons of Belgrade
during the civil wars of the 1990s.
Yet the trial is a major marker in the development of
international jurisprudence. After the success of the
Nuremberg and Tokyo trials that convicted Nazi and
Japanese war leaders, and were conducted despite
Churchill's initial hostility who wanted them just to be
taken out and shot, the notion of international
jurisprudence flourished for an all too brief a period.
The Cold War made this kind of cooperation impossible and
the development of international law was put into a deep
freeze, as were so many of the bold, fresh ideals of the
new United Nations.
Fifty-five years later in the wake of the Pinochet
affair and with Milosevic about to be tried, it seems the
world is taking a fresh look. The media is primed to take
on board international war crimes as a serious issue.
Pinochet's tangle with British justice commanded enormous
coverage, despite the fact that his crimes were committed
almost a generation ago. Milosevic and Osama bin Laden,
the war criminals of our own age, are villains no one can
ignore.
Nevertheless, it is clear that if the Yugoslavia war
crimes court were to be created today Washington would
probably veto the attempt. The 1990s in retrospect were a
golden age of international legal improvisation when
President Bill Clinton was determined to lead the charge
to create a way, acceptable to a large UN majority, of
dealing with the punishment of crimes against humanity.
Yugoslavia and Rwanda by a unanimous vote of the UN
Security Council were given their own ad hoc war crime
tribunals. The latter has already convicted of genocide
an ex prime minister of Rwanda, Jean Kambanda, and the
former has sentenced a slew of lower level
functionaries.
In Clinton's mind- as in that of many of his
colleagues around the world- these tribunals soon became
but the first step towards an International Criminal
Court that could try crimes against humanity wherever
they occurred.In 1998 the statutes of the International
Criminal Court were agreed and, subject to being ratified
by 60 nations, the Court will become a permanent feature
of the judicial landscape. Although after a long internal
battle, Clinton signed America's name to the creation of
the Court he was outmanoeuvred by a Pentagon-led campaign
that sought quite publicly to insist that the U.S. did
not take any steps towards ratification.
Now the Bush Administration has made plain its total
opposition. It is backing an amendment proposed by
Republicans in Congress that breaks all ties to the
tribunal, forbidding all Americans from cooperating in
any way with the Court. It authorizes "any necessary
action" to free U.S. soldiers handed over to the Court
and refuses military aid to countries that ratify the
treaty (unless they be a NATO partner). Some commentators
have suggested that if America decides to fight the
creation of the Court in a determined way it could end up
scuttling it, frightening away enough countries from
ratification. Others believe that the European Union, not
least Britain whose prime minister, Tony Blair, has
devoted enormous energy to pushing forward the prospects
of the Court, will mount a major counter offensive. It
could well lead to the greatest transatlantic row of all
times.
For the present Mr Bush has no choice but to allow the
Yugoslav court to continue its business. An American
judge sits on the court- alongside a Chinese colleague-
and not a word is said to challenge the bench's
impartiality. And only last week the American Embassy in
Sarajevo, the Bosnian capital, plastered the city with
posters offering up to $5 million for information leading
to the arrest of the wartime Bosnian Serb leader Radovan
Karadzic and Ratko Mladic, his senior general, which
suggests that Washington's left hand is still engaged in
the pursuit in international justice while its right
seeks to smash the concept.
As the trial proceeds over the next two years,
Washington is going to find it hard to answer the
question "Why stop here?" Although the International
Criminal Court cannot work retrospectively it will
inevitably be pointed out that if the Court had been up
and running two decades ago it might not only have been
able to deal with Yugoslavia and Rwanda but also with
Jean-Claude Duvalier of Haiti, Idi Amin of Uganda, the
henchmen of the late Pol Pot in Cambodia, Mengistu of
Ethiopia and Suharto of Indonesia. Indeed, it might have
had some effect on deterring the more recent atrocities
in Yugoslavia and Rwanda. (There is some tantalizing
intercept evidence from 1993 that suggests that the
proposal for a court gave pause to some of the Serbian
commanders- until they realized that any such tribunal
would take years to establish.)
Yet the Bush Administration's determination to handle
itself the trials of Al Qaeda members, even bin Laden
himself, if captured, suggests that it is set on going
its own way. Never mind the outrage in the Muslim world,
never mind the deep reservations in Europe, it is
determined to plough its own furrow. But has it truly
weighed the cost? The Milosevic trial is going to bring
the argument home.
I can be reached by phone +44
7785 351172 and e-mail: JonatPower@aol.com
Copyright © 2002 By
JONATHAN POWER
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