Throughout NATO's action in Serbia, peace groups -- if they were mentioned at all -- were routinely blamed for having more than one opinion, for not agreeing about what actions to take, for being ineffective. I kept remembering American peace leader Jane Addams' words from World War I about nothing being more unpopular than working for peace in time of war. At a May board meeting, NATO's bombing of Serbia was condemned but in equal terms with the expulsion of Albanians from Kosovo. This was the dilemma peace groups faced: how to oppose the war without opposing the reasons for going to war. If we looked back, we could argue that the bombing campaign was the results of a failure to achieve by peaceful means what NATO undertook by military means. WAND had been part of campaign to prevent NATO expansion: we could say we had warned of the results.

But it was too late -- the bombing had begun. We as a group shared a sense of horror that our country was engaged in using our military against a small country with few defenses against our overwhelming air power. WAND had one very clear position: violence at home (the Columbine school shootings had just taken place) was connected with violence abroad; other ways of solving conflicts has to be found; it is hypocrisy to call for peace in our schools and streets while dumping bombs on civilians in foreign lands. WAND's statement went with me to the Hague Peace Conference a week later and seemed to be appreciated wherever we handed it out. Hundreds attending the conference met nightly in extra meetings to work out a statement the conference could issue. I heard many of the same arguments and soul-searching from people from all over the world including the Balkans. The legitimacy of NATO's action was challenged again and again in this city of the world court which was about to make its condemnation of Milosevic as a war criminal. The proposed Hague statement calls for an end to the war on the ground and in the air in Kosovo, Serbia and Montenegro, and the reintroduction of non-military groups to oversee safe return of the refugees. The Hague Conference, made up of NGO's (Non Governmental Organizations, such as WAND), ends its statement with a call to NGO's to work for peace and justice in the Balkan region.

The air war in Serbia is now over and has been called a victory by our president and secretary of state. Experts on military strategy have admitted to being wrong about air wars; evidently they can work. A Wall Street Journal article on Friday, June 4, "Kosovo Campaign Showcased Use of Air Power," describes the war as the first in history to succeed by air power alone and without the loss of a single pilot. Will the increased defense spending resulting from the war go to the Air Force they ask? What will happen to the Army if casualties are no longer permissible? The article cites a new argument for a fourth-generation "stealth" bomber; if true, a bad lesson for weary peace activists who have fought the B-2 bomber for years. Also boosted is the new Joint Strike Fighter: a 321 billion dollar program targeted by peace groups. A report from Boston recently spoke of big military profits for Massachusetts as new missiles are built to replace those used in Kosovo.

These are some American responses to the war. Around the world we hear very different ones. From Belgrade in Steven Erlanger's N.Y.Times article, June 6, the already much-quoted statement by a Serbian journalist: "In a way, I'm grateful to the Americans. They make it clear that the world is ruled by force. I'm almost sorry I don't live in North Korea, with a nuclear bomb. Because then they wouldn't dare to have done this to us."

Seconding this point of view, Serbian historian Aleksa Djilas, predicts that every small nation will be in a race to get "nuclear, biological, and chemical weapons in order to prevent this kind of war from the air." Of course, these are the voices of understandably disgruntled losers. But even the Wall Street Journal article ends with the suggestion that future foes of the U.S. may attack with "unconventional means such as terrorism or biological and chemical weapons."

Another criticism from Isabel Hilton in the Guardian Weekly in April cited the Pinochet case as a victory for the principle of international justice. She questioned U.S. disregard for international law: "Raining bombs on the nationals of another country in a campaign of dubious international legality has as its one sure result the fragmentation of international consensus."

In England a leading Tory peer, Lord Skidelsky, resigned after publishing an article also arguing against the bombing as a breach of international law. He asked: "Does the West have carte blanche to make its values prevail whenever it has the temporary power to do so?" He spoke about the effects on Russia "uniting all Russians, from liberals to communists, in opposition to the NATO action."

Victor Chernomyrdin said that the world had "never been so close as now to the brink of nuclear war."

In a regional French newspaper I read on May 23 of a Yugoslavian woman working with UNICEF who claimed that 30% of the 1200 civilians killed so far in the bombing were children, raising the question of a violation of U.N. statutes of international law. The same article reported on India's objections to the bomb damage of its embassy in Belgrade--this in addition to the catastrophic bombing of the Chinese embassy.

Le Monde reported on disturbing evidence of the environmental effects of the bombing: chemical factories destroyed, signs of acid rain on crops in neighboring countries. U.S. activists have claimed that depleted uranium added to weapons has been used and could result in the increased cancers and birth defects being reported on in Iraq where large amounts of that substance were used in tank-destroying missiles.

Another lesson unlikely to be learned or publicized in the U.S. is the enormous cost of this kind of high-tech war. Described in the N.T. Times as the "most expensive military campaign...in history", bombing from a distance involved the use of one million dollar missiles which might succeed in destroying one truck. The cost of flying missions from Missouri at almost six thousand dollars per hour was demonstrated by the world's most expensive planed, the two billion dollar B-2. Congress is now battling over the additional funding for the war in the face of budget caps which will mean that the money has to come out of domestic programs. It is not true that the U.S. comes out of this war unscathed: watch for the cuts in Head Start, education, housing and more -- the children and the poor will be paying for it.

Perhaps the most critical view was voiced by a retired Marine general at Harvard's Kennedy School when he asked if being the last superpower hadn't turned us into a bully and called our role in the war "humanitarian imperialism."

Peace groups have their role to play: to explain what happened, why it wasn't a victory, and how better ways of solving a conflict must be found.

Return to WAND Statement on Kosovo
WAND is part of the National Coalition for Peace in Yugoslavia.
For more information, see Peace Action's Promote A Lasting Peace in Yugoslavia page.
See also Rep. Cynthia McKinney's floor speech opposing the bombing.