state to the membership paid to its admission. on friday. next cross-talk panel a question of whether foreign intervention is ever good for the people whose countries are being overrun. and. billowy and welcome to cross talk on peter lavelle western liberal interventionism is it ever justified for such military interventions within the confines of international law or is there a case where western inspired forced regime change has worked as it's planned and can such interventions generate positive outcomes for people on the ground. and. cross-talk liberal interventions i'm joined by now botia my leech 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 esau bloomy he is a professor of middle eastern balkan history at georgia state university all right gentlemen this is crosstalk that means you can jump in anytime you want to have different points of view and i want my viewers to see it all right now 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 like 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 of bosnia to the outrage the illegal war in kosovo to the outright illegal invasion in iraq and now

libya which has completely dispensed with even the figure leaf of u.n. authorization and simply went to got the resolution to establish a no fly zone and then proceeded with regime change right away ok what do you think about very and i mean abysmal track record in abysmal history since the end of the second and 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 blair bush and surprise. so it's unequivocal a bad thing is now being revealed but the intervention in bosnia was too late because. if the international community a put a division of paratroopers on the river dream at the beginning then milosevich one of the regime would have collapsed two hundred thousand people would still be alive stripper needs or would not of happened the intervention in kosovo you might

remember followed a whole string of un resolutions telling the milosevic regime in belgrade to stop killing the albanians in kosovo he ignored it the intervention when it eventually came and i've 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 riffraff once the runway accords which provided for a conference to discuss self-determination within three years stop the killing in kosovo it 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 and the loss of it would have surrendered no you know i know you don't agree resolution one thousand seven hundred three will cause barry clear nine hundred seventy three and i don't want you to know when i am in there

until anybody you saw him go go ahead in any regard had. 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 planned a going to straight trajectory to plan b. 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 to 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 a great deal of collusion between certain players and so-called members of member nations in 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 and indeed intervention in libya let me go back to and it is part of my part of my introduction here i mean this is the law of unintended consequences i mean if the decision is made to depending on how legal it is and in many cases it is the most you pointed 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 it can go and

people are cheering something might have happened ok in libya but it's far from over far far from over going. well resolution one thousand nine hundred seventy three is not completely illegal the russian. what was interpreted when salami 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 there and you know the bad there's a lot of game playing here the russian the russian delegation is making the protest but that gadhafi was the most unpopular person in the neighborhood that was one of the reasons why this intervention was a toll possible in the security council he had very few friends apart from those he talks to her and visited libya six times i think he was a very popular. you know. what do you want a letter to rise to do with danny what are you going to school if you can't let me go let me go to negotiate here because i think the really the saudi royal family are very popular either ok go ahead the voice. well i mean popularity oughtn't have

anything to do with this one way or another but we're talking apples and oranges first of all i'd like to correct ian about the whole brigade on the dream 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 my hands with the propaganda nonsense but secondly but secondly. 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 that bag of h. 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 let'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 in one thousand nine hundred seventy three he said let's establish a no fly zone by any means necessary so the u.s.

and nato to it by any means necessary toss the wrestler a solution like they did with twelve forty four b. which they selectively apply because when they have to apply something that obligates them to put a reservation for example doesn't exist. i had jump and this was crosstalk. no the defense of the civilian population that bill i know said. 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 does 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 the regimes and i think that's now been vindicated he is gone and nobody is shedding tears in their hair and i'm going to geneva go ahead you some go ahead how about 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 the one nine hundred seventy s. that continue on into the one nine hundred eighty s. and one nine hundred ninety s. kind of these mis messages or a misinterpreted messages that often that often evolved into 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 opponents and we recall that could offer he was caught voting with the cia for until couple of months before the uprisings and then ghazi in the east so there is some complicity there and there's 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 british eams 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 before i see it understood i see devotion trying to jump in here go right ahead of bush go ahead go ahead comment well i actually agree i'm actually agreeing with this line of reasoning as you want to ask a couple of questions are you implying that holbrooke and 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 you know when you use relations although they had very strong and go ahead go ahead yes you just if you if you if you trace back the kind of interaction they go on to before it even the conflicts explodes and listen to the language of the

international community often of course is bush war bush number one swore in the beginning and they were very conservative in dealing with the breakup of the eastern bloc and they kind of gave mismatched mixed messages there they were taken advantage of by all sides and then of course once the clinton administration comes into power a very influential figure like holbrooke who has long term relations with all kinds of players in the east which you know you can you just have to look at the backgrounds and and skim very read 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 early attempts 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 and then indeed in ninety seven ninety eight ninety nine there is just going back and forth and i would i don't i've i've written about this and and easy to

find parallels in many other so-called crises around the world are you going to jump in here we're going to short break we're going to lose your freedom after that short break we'll continue our discussion and western intervention stay r.t. . if you. still. want to. lose. i've i've

. ok.

welcome back to crossfire computable to remind you we're talking about western backed interventions. ok. ok and i'd like to go back to you is i think is quite curious because a lot of this program has been discussing international law but when western powers go into countries like libya i found that the discussion is they think about the feasibility 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 at a resolution one thousand seventy three was brought up yeah yeah it was it was the what he said was to to use the have a no fly zone and to use whatever means to protect the civilians but that 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 a 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 thought i think nine hundred seventy three was legal and they stretched the legality props but it was within the look the other parties rushed out and shine a sophisticated players i've been watching them in the security council for twenty years they knew of the implications and what i think everyone agreed was that 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 i don't think it would i don't think it's a double game going to saying is that hard and why should it then you would have destroyed by support for the but you know but and also that is the whole issue of sovereignty and if the entire purpose of having a united nations in the first place is to protect the legal rights of sovereign states the bushy what do you think about that because look if you just get

a good view look at the resolution we've job raising we've both agreed it was a slippery slope here what do you think about the botia about that one well that i mean we're not looking at 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 in the other to install in power a shadowy movement that we don't really know much about except that it's composed of al qaeda veterans which you aren't supposed to which isn't supposed to bother us

at all but there's sort of a no not the point we're not it 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 going on we're going to die. because of your principles. that that's just when people have died because you live in a cold principles that's the problem. they have the principles you're going to build saw that you don't let dictators kill people if you can possibly be killing people in terms of you gentlemen we'll talk about good dictators and bad dictators in a second but. we're going to know now what i mean by my implication. when i get listening 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 bad was he said what do you think about this whole discussion i don't know spokesman when i get really you take your script of my record on the air you need to we need to we need to just step back

a little bit and consider to scale that we actually adopt in talking about the world again i insist what is happening with regular human beings has 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 could office regime interferes in local local politics and my god and 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 that many of them believe they were fighting for and this is going to be very interesting and 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 not going to react very poorly to a new regime that is very exploitive and of course this respectful of international law you're going to see a pillaging of natural resources of libya very much like the pollution of natural

resources and go saw in central asia and indeed 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 since. southern arabia let alone behind which is considered to be students or is it really 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 we go into it now 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 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's it's a very good point and i want to go back and hear about good dictators and bad dictators

ok bahrain was mentioned the saudi royal family was mentioned these are not very nice people on the saudi royal family as a matter of fact they show no i mean well i mean then then how do you say they did an ally of the u.s. they're now ally of the west so he's joined by no i just they do their what they do in bahrain which is completely blacked out right now not a peep coming out and western media criticizing a very very little i mean it's duplicity. it's duplicity 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 saudi's behavior the point is that you can't intervene everywhere that there are particular conjunctions and if you are so in this way and so if you intervene and you intervene that you and your interests are so you intervene because there is an oil next to me intervene because there is zero zero for example is not

a good reason to intervene because of i had no oil cost of i have to take i have to take accept the wrath of iran and. the six major problems with libya so i think major reason regime says i why you loss of insurance are in reality he was in on duty here by the gadhafi regime ok ok i'm going this week not going to christine nationalist or is he going to geneva go ahead ahead go. well the guards of the balkans who are one 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 and 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 you know control of a potential gas line. pathways but also the minerals themselves in the ground so

let's not be naive about that the council is not or any other places where there is indeed international events and of course there is x. so she'll 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 either i and 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 can you bush or you want to jump in go ahead. 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 even though he may i actually respect your position milosevic and khadafi and

saddam hussein have failed to convey contain some of their own domestic continues that they created because of domestic politics i mean most of its kind of joint jumped into bed with the devil in many ways and he became very unpopular in serbia he got involved with these militias have gone 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 held on to power by often just firing generals and firing officers and i don't i didn't i did some of your i mean 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 that i could meet and i wanted to i want to be is that all right do you think that you know whether to address the endo or go ahead and jump in. that milosevic 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 it 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 and that became clear even to the serbs and if you look it was indeed true holbrooke was dealing with him because he was that guy who could deal with we're talking close rates here the final cause of the present mess in bosnia is due to a deal cooked up between holbrooke and milosevic the republican go was given territories to think had previously included lots of bosnia x. and croats and that was a cynical deal done by holbrooke they felt this was a guy they could deal with could our feet get their feet was. very fair 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 duffy was investing that money in london his sons and investing in geneva and in london with

the money they stole not to let me jump in here we're almost out of time zones we're almost out of time here in geneva go ahead you have the last word go ahead. it is this is exactly my point that even with the case of khadafi they if you just go back a little bit they waited a month and a half before they actually decided they collaborated to start intervening with an air war campaign in support of what they would call the rebels there the events into libya evolves over time it took about a month and a half for the international community to decide well again i guess because of it has to go because he cannot contain there if 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 it can actually then he can continue as business as usual with the western powers and that's the danger for any degree general you could have suggested here for thank you with their job i 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. see you next time and remember cross talk rules. you can. still. want to.

beast soon which brightened if you move the song from phones to permissions. these firms don't totty dot com.

the greek a new sets time sins of fear is crowds clashed with police a very new house levy to pay towards the debt while the president warns the blog faces its biggest challenge ever. wish here on syntagma square which last night was the scene of clashes between riot police and the protesters as great people united in their opposition of the government's new austerity measures. nato brings in more troops to reinforce the contested pulled over tween serbia and breakaway call survey on their fresh violence details talks between the two stars. and the wave of global disapproval heads israel which has greenlit more satellite homes in east jerusalem just as the un's most powerful body refers palestine statehood bid to its admission.