First Critical Analysis

Julien Benichou
September 13th, 2007
Tom Laichas
The Other Side of History
Constant Tension

We can break down the world into three levels of analysis: the individual, the state, and international systems. The individual rules over himself, and the state rules over the individual. However, international systems (though meant to) do not rule over states. The state still has a certain amount of sovereignty which the international systems cannot fully control (we can get into the debate that the state doesn't have full control over the individual in a democracy. However, though some may disagree with me, it is the Democratic state which allows for the individual to have the right to do what he wants). Of course the international systems have laws which affect everybody like the Geneva laws or the genocide laws. But the international system has no control of the choices of the autonomous state. This means that in essence our world is anarchic: we have no leviathan (overarching supreme power). With nobody in charge of all the states, that also means no moral code can be considered universal. Every state has its own morals, and that means that one state cannot interfere with another state (even though literally they could). Here we find ourselves at the root of the norm of none-intervention (the other root being not wanting to use the recourses required in intervention). States and international systems find themselves reluctant to interfere because of this norm. In Safe Area Gorazde, Joe Sacco takes on a very liberal view of the conflict. Not only does he present the history but he also presents in some ways his opinions on the conflict. Sacco, depicting horror story after horror story, blames NATO/U.N/U.S. for not intervening sooner and with more force, but at the same time gives no solution for the obvious tension which still exists and may explode if international troops leave.

Sacco doesn't understand the idea that morals change depending on the state. Crossroads' philosophy promotes a certain amount of individuality in its students. When a state has autonomy, it can also decide for itself what it wants. It doesn't have to listen to anybody else. My old school, Le Lycee Francais de Los Angeles, promoted uniformity. The founders of Crossroads might find this promotion of uniformity completely outrageous. In the Crossroads perspective: it hurts the students' future. Students at the Lycee believe uniformity helps them be more studious. Crossroads also outnumbers Lycee by about ten to one. Why shouldn't Crossroads simply take over the Lycee by sheer force of numbers and change its policies? It would be a simple and easy way to change their policies. The Lycee kids obviously have been misled by the evil administration at their school. Yet, right when Crossroads invades, they don't find the basketball court full of cheering Lycee students. Instead they find the Lycee students fighting with all their might to push Crossroads out. This example seems foolish and childish, but it still rings true to a certain extent. Crossroads just couldn't understand why Lycee kids would like uniformity, so they decided that the Lycee kids hadn't seen the light of individuality. At the same time lets mix it up a little bit. A minority of the Lycee students, 30% to be exact, hate uniformity and want individuality. This minority finds themselves oppressed by the 70% majority. The 30% revolted, and took over half the school. Once Crossroads intervened, it created an administration with half uniformal and half individual employees. With tensions still high, xrds decided to leave good ol' Roger Weaver to make sure everything stayed under control. Yet, once Roger Weaver retired, chaos broke out again. Both these situations show a Crossroads with strict moral ideas which it willingly pushes onto others who don't agree. Soon enough Liz would be in charge of Harvard Westlake, Morgan would be in charge of Brentwood, and we would hire a new guy to make sure New Roads didn't get any ideas. Being stretched so thin, all the schools revolt against Crossroads. They don't believe in our morals, and who can blame them? How can we ever know if we've stumbled upon the correct morals? Better yet: can there be universal morals? Sacco seems to believe so. But who, as Americans, are we to tell who's wrong and who's right. With the fall of the Soviet Union, we've shift from a Bipolar world, to a Unipolar world. That means that the “bad guys” can be harder to spot. During the cold war choosing sides became easy: whoever fought against the Soviets would automatically become the allies of the U.S. and vice versa. Now the U.S. and the allies have no superpower to focus on. The U.S. cannot just look at which sides doesn't want Communism anymore. This has left the United States crippled to a certain extent on the international scene. We've lost our reasoning to intervene in countries. It probably wouldn't threaten U.S. security if South Africa decided to go Fascist. In some sense, the fall of the Soviet Union has left countries more free to choose their own path. It took a while for NATO and the U.N. to intervene because they couldn't take sides. We already know that the U.N. denied or overlooked claims that Genocide was occurring with the statements of Lieutenant Rose, “The situation was a lot better than I had been led to believe...the town had not been destroyed to the level which I expected. “ (Sacco 187) “Later, an unidentified Senior U.N. military officer—who was later identified as Lt. General Rose---claims that Gorazde's casualties had been inflated 'in order to shame the world into doing something'” (Sacco 187) This meant that the U.N. could only enter in order to create safe zones. “the U.N. top military commander in Bosnia the battle for Gorazde had endangered his peace keepers and brought the U.N. perilously close to taking sides in the war.” (Sacco 186) The U.N. couldn't take sides in the war because that meant that they considered their morals or beliefs of more importance their others'. The U.N. had to keep a certain amount of impartiality until one side committed genocide, broke with the Geneva convention, or attacked U.N. peace keeping troops. The U.N. didn't come to Bosnia to fight the Serbs (as many Bosnians thought was the case), they came to protect civilians. The U.N. couldn't fight the war for the Bosniaks, that just wouldn't be right. Until NATO came and started bombing Serb forces, the U.N. focused mainly on bringing supplies and help to those who needed it. The U.N. focused on things like the Blue Road, “Why did NATO armies, readied through the same decades to launch a thermonuclear war on a moment's notice, find it inconvenient to face down a flimsy roadblock manned by a rabble of drunken racists?” (Hitchens) They didn't find it inconvenient, the Blue Road opened because the Serbs let it open. (it was surrounded by Serb territory) At any moments notice the Serb army could have taken it over, with NATO troops completely overwhelmed. Why should the U.N./NATO have the right to say that the Serb's cause was unjust? “They're not all Chetniks, there are good people there, too” (Sacco 161) Even in the U.S. constitution it says we have the right to revolt if we feel compelled to.

How long will NATO/U.N. peace forces stay in Bosnia? Will a window for leaving ever appear? Sacco never answers the question, and I think he doesn't know the answer. Edin gave his opinion on the matter, “If this war was over, and he wasn't sure it was, then there'd be another war within 50 years, he said” (Sacco 227) Edin's view basically shows that the Dayton Accords can only impede the inevitable fate of another war. The problem lies with the actual ethnic problem, in the chapter titled “Can you live with the Serbs again?” Most answers fell along the lines of, “The Serbs can't be trusted, they lie” (Sacco 160) or “generally I don't want to see the people who've done this for another 20 or 40 years.” (Sacco 161) Sacco criticizes the U.N. and NATO for doing nothing, but what could they do that would stop the war? Even the Dayton Accords seem like a temporary peace for Bosnia. International forces understood that getting involved in the conflict could really do nothing. U.N. and NATO forces can stop the fighting, but they can never relieve the tensions. No outside force can do that, Bosnia has to figure out its own problems. I'll give an example using an Act Utilitarian perspective. Let's go back to 1992 when the war just began. The U.N. has to look at the consequences of its entering. If the U.N. enters now and stops the war, will the amount of civilians they save now, make up for the amount that will die if war breaks out later because the conflict hadn't resolved itself (which seems probable). If the conflict looks like it will start up again if international peace keepers leave the country, how long can we or should we control their affairs? How long can we expend our resources for a country which seems ready to revert to civil war? Sacco can criticize all he wants, but the Bosnians had to figure out their own problems, the U.N. couldn't force anything because that wouldn't achieve anything permanent. I understand why the U.N. felt reluctant to enter Bosnia and feel that waiting a few years to end the war, may have helped Bosnia's chances of not reverting to a civil war.