as soon as he says that this is. what i've been trying. to teach began the journey. where did it take the. eleven thirty am in moscow the zero r.t. headlines thousands of greeks unite in protest after the government passes another round of austerity measures individual looming economic disaster and this comes after the greek prime minister held talks with the german chancellor and an attempt to restore confidence that often is on the right track. nato peacekeepers in kosovo have been injured seven serbs in clashes at a border area the alliance says it used rubber bullets but a local news agency claims live rounds were fired as well as the x. rays that it says show the gunshot wounds of the victims. and the international

community slams israel's decision to build new settlements on occupied territory the palestinians say the israeli move rules out any chance of bilateral peace stop . thanks peter lavelle asked his guest on cross talk whether intervention by the west and other countries can ever be justified and if such action ever brings up positive outcomes for the people on the ground state. can. follow in welcome to crossfire gun control of all western liberal interventionism is it ever justified for such military interventions within the confines of international law is there a case where western inspired force regime change has worked as its plan and in such interventions generate positive outcomes for people on the ground. can.

cross talk liberal interventions i'm joined by name ocean isle beach in washington he's a historian and columnist for antiwar dot com in new york we have ian williams he's a journalist and author and in geneva we cross the east gloomy he is a professor of middle eastern balkan history at georgia state university all right gentlemen this is crosstalk i mean you can jump in anytime you want you have different points of view and i want my viewers to see it all right and the bush if i can go to you and i know you're an expert on the balkans so let's go all the way back to i kosovo to the present and looking at libya why events are playing out in countries like libya but not bahrain not in yemen not in somalia etc etc what is the track record in your opinion of western military intervention since the end of the cold war. abysmal i think the first in terms of the first and only intervention that actually followed the rules was the desert storm or does rather desert shield in iraq in one thousand nine hundred ninety one everything after that has been just

a total mockery of international law from the gradual escalation in bosnia to the outrage illegal war in kosovo to the outright illegal invasion in iraq and now libya which has completely dispensed with even a fig leaf of u.n. authorization and simply went to the resolution to submission or fly zone and then proceeded with regime change right away ok what do you think about very enemy abysmal track record a dismal history since the end of the sort of the cold war well look the intervention in iraq was nothing to do with liberal interventionism nothing to do with the international community it was a unilateral push and surprise. so it's unequivocal thing now being revealed but the intervention in both me it was too late. because. if the international community apart a division of paratroopers on the river dream at the beginning then the loss of each one of the regime would have collapsed two hundred thousand people would still

be alive stripper needs or would not have happened the intervention in kosovo you might remember followed a whole string of un resolutions telling the last of its regime in belgrade to stop killing the albanians in kosovo he ignored it the intervention when it eventually came and i just refresh my memory about the resolution was voted for by the security council including russia and china provided for un military intervention for nato military intervention and occupation in effect of kosovo it set out the terms of it all and incidentally it's riffraff runs the round here cause which provided for a conference to discuss self-determination within three years stop the killing in kosovo it's allowed most of the cost of us to go back home when they've been thrown across the border so i think kosovo was successful but carried out in the wrong way it shouldn't have been done by bombing they should have actually threatened ground troops at the beginning of

a lot of it would have surrendered ok devotion no you know i know you don't grant resolution one thousand seven hundred three roll call is very clear one thousand seventeenth right now i want you to the winner right there into legally sorry go go ahead go ahead. yes i would suggest to all your listeners and to the other two participants in this debate that things do evolve and transform over time and i would suggest that we don't have any evidence of a plan a going to straits trajectory to try and be in the case of intervention in these conflicts in the balkans or north africa or anywhere else in the world and for that matter indeed the international players as they constantly are doctoring through the conditions on the ground are forced their hands are forced often by events with the case of interventions in the balkans for instance i suspect there's been quite a deal of collusion between certain players in so-called members of member nations

and the nato alliance with some of the key players on the ground including the most of his regime we often forget that there are some strong indications and very strong opinions voiced by various players in both the united states and in western europe in regards to protecting the sovereignty of the sovereign claims that serbia had an intervention intervening first in northern balkans in one thousand nine hundred ninety one ninety two and then later on ninety seven ninety eight ninety nine in kosovo similarly in north africa i suspect that there was a great deal of hedging there was and waiting it out and see how things were turned out i don't think i don't think the international players actually appreciated what was happening on the ground they were caught by surprise ok and indeed intervention in libya let me go back to the end then and it is part of a lot of my part of my introduction here i mean this is the law of unintended consequences i mean if the decision is made in depending on how legal it is and in

many cases it is the most you point out is just completely illegal without any legal foundation at all the fact of the matter is when you have an intervention like this you never know where i can go and people are cheering something might have happened ok in libya but it's far from over far far from over going idea. well resolution one thousand nine hundred seventy three is not completely illegal the russian city felt always interpreted when salaam it was interpreted is this is the is the issue at hand here ok i mean you go from a no fly zone to the interrogation is that the head there's a lot of the game playing here the russian the russian delegation is making the protest but let's get our feet was the most unpopular person in the neighborhood that was one of the reasons why this intervention was at all possible in the security council he had very few friends apart from those he told you so hard and visited libya six times i think he was a very unpopular exactly you know. what do you want a letter to rise or to do with any what are you going to school and we can't let me

go let me get in a potion here because i think the road the saudi royal family are very popular either ok go ahead the boys are. well i mean popularity oughtn't have anything to do with this one way or another well we're talking apples and oranges first of all i'd like to correct ian about the whole brigade on the train and nonsense and two hundred thousand dead when it's been known for at least six years that the final tally of the war was one hundred thousand people in all three sides i'm not trying to minimize anybody's suffering but let's show some hands with us dr again but secondly but secondly if the international community so-called was involved in bosnia from the get go i have eyewitness testimonies from people who were there when the american ambassador told muslim leaders a bag of if you don't like it don't sign it this was march one thousand nine hundred two this was before the war started so it's just not makes things up here again popularity has nothing to do with this i personally think russia made a mistake in approving one nine hundred seventy three because the night nine

hundred seventy three said let's establish a no fly zone by any means necessary so the u.s. and nato took by any means necessary toss the rest of the resolution like they did with twelve forty four but we selectively apply because when they have to apply something that obligates them to produce a resolution the nation for example doesn't exist and i had jump and this is crosstalk. no defense of the civilian population i'm glad i know say you do though he's not going to say this did not go past unnoticed they knew the consequences and the hope was that gadhafi would collapse a lot sooner than he did and we know one of the reasons he didn't collapse was because anyone who tried to please that was shot some out early i'm not saying the rebels are angels but gaddafi was a bad guy unpopular with his own people not just in great britain regimes and i think that's now been vindicated he is gone and nobody is shedding tears live here

let's go to geneva go ahead lisa go ahead. how about this to kind of fit with this theme of this of this discussion about the kind of relationships that very strong relationships that meter around for instance had with milosevic and richard holbrooke which we have some very interesting connections between holbrooke as a banker and milosevic in his in the one nine hundred seventy s. they continue on in the one nine hundred eighty s. and one nine hundred ninety s. but are these mis messages or are misinterpreted messages that often that often evolved to the point where it got to the point of no return where do the abuse of the perception that i should i have a green light to deal with my problems in a violent way or i have been encouraged in libya to deal with with my up opponents and we called it could our feet was caught with the cia for the until couple of months before the uprisings and then guards in the east so there is some complicity there are some serious problems we have to raise about about how the international

community and this includes russia and china how they how they interact with with many of these regimes that cars can cause events on the ground to transform very rapidly we're talking about human beings who resist tyranny whether it's in western china whether it's in north africa whether it's in detroit in michigan united states and if we continue. play his game that it's you know that we have a very hard hard break between what is right and wrong are you how internet for i see understood i see the bush is trying to jump in here go right ahead about your hand great comment well i actually agree i'm actually agreeing with this line of reasoning as you want to ask a couple questions are you implying that the whole group can milosevic were somehow in cahoots because this is the first time i've heard this thesis in the twelve years i've been writing about the balkans i have not seen more implacable enemy. well how you might know when you use relations although they had very strong and we

had and yes he just if you if you if you trace back the kind of interaction they go on to before even the conflicts explodes and listen to the language of the international community often of course is bush war bush number one's war in the beginning and they were very conservative in dealing with the breakup of eastern bloc and they kind of gave mr mixed messages there they were taken advantage of by all sides and then of course once the clinton ministration comes into power a very influential figure like hope roku has long term relations with all kinds of players in the east which you know you can look you just have to look at the backgrounds and and skin very very closely with some of the statements that holbrooke is making both privately and publicly as a representative of the state department you can find that there's there's a very distinctive break between earlier times to work with most of it in the ninety one ninety two and then of course after dayton accord so there is this kind

of law all over and then indeed in ninety seven ninety eight ninety nine there is going back and forth and i would i don't i think i've i've written about this then and easy to find parallels in many other so-called crises around the world are you going to jump in here you go to a short break we're going to carry them after like short break we'll continue our discussion on western intervention stay with r.t. . if you. still. want. to share. let me soon which bryson if you knew about song from feinstein question

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welcome back to crossfire computer labelle remind you we're talking about western backed interventions. q. ok and i'd like to go back to you as i think it's quite curious because a lot of this program has been discussing international law but when western powers go into countries like libya i found the discussion is they think about the future ability of the intervention the cost the risks and possible backlash of arab public opinion but there's very little discussion if it's illegal or not and outside of the beltway that's a lot of people do talk about that we're looking for a resolution nine hundred seventy three was brought up yeah yeah it was it was the what he said was to use the have a no fly zone and to use whatever means to protect the civilians but if that entails really bombing the country to hell that's what i'm getting at about the the

the legal end of it because in western media they get along to go along support their governments most of the time but there's never really discussion of the legality of things and i think that's what outside of the security council that's what other people think about go ahead. no i think i think nine hundred seventy three was legal and they stretched the legality perhaps but it was within the terms and look the other parties russia and china are sophisticated players i've been watching them in the security council for twenty years they knew what the implications and what i think everyone agreed was the gadhafi had to be dealt with but russia and china wanted to keep clean hands in the international arena so they played this double game and i think well i don't i don't really think that we're i don't think it's a double game olcott is saying this is the heart and why we're in this would have destroyed by support for them but you know what and also that is the whole issue of sovereignty and if the entire purpose of having the united nations in the first place is to protect the legal rights of sovereign states the bush what do you think about that because look if you're deluded kids to give you

a look at the resolution we've told you will let me bring the race we both agreed it was a slippery slope here what do you think about the basha about that. well there were not the way things are functioning today it's almost as if we're living in the world of george lucas envisioned there's this because there's a quote from one of the extra ball sequels to star wars is this legal i will make it legal it doesn't matter what is it matters which can be created on the ground this is no way to run the world let alone you can't run a dog catching operation like this without it backfiring what happened in libya what we saw happening in libya was basically the entire cycle of balkans interventions accelerated to hyper speed within weeks instead of years and you ran through the whole gamut of excuses from refugees to mistreatment of minorities to this and that and you know there to install in power a shadowy movement that we don't really know much about except that it's composed of al qaida veterans which you are supposed to which isn't supposed to bother us at all but this is sort of

a no not the point we're not eat doesn't matter how this ended the outcome of it is frankly irrelevant it's the principle of the thing and the principle of the thing was wrong you know if we're going to die because of your principles. that that's just where people have died because he was a nickel principles that's the problem if you're doing this you know you have the principles are you going to build all that you don't let the haters kill people if you can possibly. kill people in terms of if you don't and we'll talk about good decatur's and bad dictators in a second but. if you are going to go now but i mean by yes by implication you have to say that you're in when i listen to you i think there are ok and then there is that's how it's practiced in the west there are good dictators and if i was you so what you think about this whole discussion i don't know spokesman over the way i do is really to take my record on there you do all you need to we need to just step back a little bit and consider to scale that we actually adopted in talking about the

world again i insist what is happening with regular human beings highest highs. significance to how we talk about in abstract terms international relations international law whether or not states intervene in other people other states affairs whether or not these regime interferes in local local politics the main guys are elsewhere and so this is where we are now at a time where libyans are going to find out very quickly that the people who are representing me and speaking on their behalf in new york are not the same ones who many of them believe what they were fighting for and this is going to be very interesting is the same thing that's happened in the balkans the same things happened in central asia and eastern europe throughout the one nine hundred ninety s. and people are going to react very poorly to a new regime that is very exploitive and of course disrespectful of international law you're going to see a pillaging of natural resources of libya very much like the collision of natural

resources and so on in central asia and indeed in in in other ways what's happening in the arabian peninsula whether there's there's no discussion of intervention on behalf of suffering human beings for many years now and in southern arabia let alone behind which is considered to be stupid to say equally important for some countries to even call contemplate intervening on behalf of human beings who are suffering very very harsh tactics by not only the regime in bahrain but by some of the neighbors who have actually intervened on behalf of the regime and how are we going to know interpret these events i think requires us to go back to looking at events on the ground and listening to people talking and responding to the sometimes very difficult conditions if we refuse to take this perspective that we're playing the game of the richard holbrooke's of the world of the bill clinton . and obama it's a very good way to be when you want to see and hear about good dictators and bad dictators ok bahrain was mentioned the saudi royal family was mentioned these are

not very nice people in the saudi royal family as a matter of fact they show no i mean thrilling. well i mean then then how do you think they did an ally of the us are now i of the west so just turn a blind eye to their what they do in bahrain which is completely blacked out right now people coming out of western media criticizing a very very little means to play city it's to play city on the part of the government certainly but on the part of those of us that support intervention to stop these things there's no duplicity all of us you are read the guardian i write for the guardian quite often and many a writer there has condemned the inactivity over bahrain many people have condemned the saudis behavior the point is that you can't intervene everywhere there are particular conjunctions of you who are so in this way and so if you intervene and you intervene and you intervene users or you intervene because there's employer it's going to intervene because there's all for examples of good reason to intervene possible had no well cost of i have to take i have to take accept the

wrath of iran and. the six major problems let me also and andre the u.s. or easy or good i mean i why you see a chance to reality which is being on duty here by they get their feet regime ok ok you some day this week let's go to christine nationalist or is he going to geneva go ahead. you know we got to the balkans we are what has to really think why why so much investment on the part of both sides if there is such a thing in sustaining and containing events in kosovo for instance of course kosovo is a very mineral rich country of it there's potentially hundreds of billions of dollars worth of mineral wealth that has been exported throughout the twentieth century and there are of course many western companies invested in partnership with the most of its regime prior to the war and much of that has to do with the necessity control of a potential gas line. pathways but also the minerals themselves in the ground so let's not be naive about that during the kosovo is not or any other places where there is

indeed international dimension of course there's x. osho economic dynamics going on but there's also the financial world that has an interest in ghana stan iraq you can take a very clear example of there are multiple interest why intervention was necessary according to various different players and they don't necessarily meet idea i on all things but they certainly agree on one thing that the regimes that they are attacking and have to have to be removed for one reason or another when you push or you want to jump in go ahead. but i don't necessarily disagree with what he said just said i but i do have a problem with that with the reasoning that this is going towards so you're saying that because the western world had good relationships with milosevic they intervened against him then that doesn't make any sense i'm sorry and as far as the end go he may actually respect your position milosevic and qaddafi and saddam hussein have failed to convey contain some of their own domestic continuously as

they created because of of domestic politics i mean most of this kind of joint chop and there was a terrible in many ways and he became very unpopular in serbia he got involved with these militias the governor of over the smuggling organizations he got involved with and indeed the military in serbia became very disgruntled with him and he had to go and he said he held on the power by often just firing generals and firing officers and i don't i don't like this only really the people he fired the people he fired in ninety eight the people he for the head of his security service and the chief of his general staff were later proven to be cia agents so i'm thinking that had something to do with their firing as opposed to some sort of popularity contest but clearly i want to i want to be is that all right do you think military whether it's risky and oh if you're happy in germany. but there were lots of it was a power hungry person he wasn't a nationalist he was an expedient nationalist he realized that he could harness the power of resurgence of nationalism to maintain his own power first of all in your

office love you then when it disintegrated in what was left and that's been his main aim i mean he swapped between the prime minister and the presidency he wanted to hang on to power and he used people not became clear even to the serbs and if you look it was indeed true holbrooke was dealing with him because he was the guy who could deal with we're talking klaus spirits here the final cause of a present mess in bosnia is due to a deal cooked up between holbrooke and milosevic the republican serbska was given territories to think had previously included lots of calls in the acts and croats and that was a cynical deal done by holbrooke they felt this was a guy they could deal with because their feet hit their feet was literally and he's relieved it's there and everybody else this was not western intervention to get hold of natural resources they already have the natural resources they were buying that oil get duffy was investing that money in london his sons and investing in geneva and in london with the money they stole right enough to let me jump in here

almost an entire those were almost out of time here in geneva go ahead you have the last word go ahead. because this is exactly my point that even with the case of khadafi they say if you just go back a little bit they waited a month and a half before the actual decided collaborates to start intervening with an air war campaign in support of what they would call the rebels did it the events in the libya evolve over time it took about a month and a half for the international community to decide well ok i guess kentucky has to go because he cannot contain the rift the events in eastern libya it's spreading to his within his military it's spreading in the western part of the country now he has to go he made the fatal mistake of not being able to contain his problems within. a format that can actually then he can continue as business as usual with the western powers and that's the danger for any degree general you have just been here for a thank you where they're going to thank you very much for a fascinating discussion many thanks to my guest today in washington new york and

in geneva and thanks to our viewers for watching us here r.t. so you next time and remember cross talk with us. to continue to stay.

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