sure is that so much ally people are curious will there's an old we're trying to twist truth to bring engineers or is it ever justified for such a military interventions within the confines of international law is there a case where. it's healthy now i hear a mosque a this is saucy that's begin with a reminder of operation nice eight people including an eleven year old girl have been killed by a car bomb the doctor's son and southern russia six policemen were severely injured an explosive was planted in a car parked at a road crossing in the central nervous since the district's. in other news greece is bracing itself for more streets clashes at a crucial vote in germany over the next bailout it could see the eurozone rescue package increase pull fold the heart of greece's debt written up. maisie sends in

more troops to reinforce a contested border crossing between serbia and great quake also go on to fresh violence to twin the to sides russia's foreign ministry wants peacekeeping forces to remain neutral and stick to the un resolution. and a wave of global disapproval hates israel which says it will build eleven hundred new satellites in disputed east jerusalem it comes as the un's most powerful body refers callus time stated a membership it to its admission committee which will literature on friday and account next year aussie peter viles crosstalk tunnel question whether foreign intervention is ever good for the people these countries up being overrun that's next. can i start.

slowly and welcome to cross talk on people about western liberal interventionism is it ever justified for such military interventions within the confines of international law 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. came. across not liberal interventions i'm joined by name 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 gloomy 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 you have different points of view and i want my viewers to see it all right negotiating 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 death rather desert shield in iraq in one thousand nine hundred ninety one and 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 defeated 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 that the enemy abysmal a track record business history since the end of the start 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 you think that now being revealed for the intervention in bosnia it was too late. because. if the international community a part of the vision of paratroopers on the river train at the beginning then the loss of each one of the regime would have collapsed and 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 them a lot of which regime in belgrade to stop killing the albanians pain cause of 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

riffraff runs the round accords 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 our server 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 a lot of it would have surrendered ok moshe i know you only i know you don't granholm resolution one thousand seven hundred three roll call is very clear in one thousand nine hundred seventy three and i don't want you to know minority anywhere into lisa go ahead anyway 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 client a going to straits treasury 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 darting to the conditions on the ground are forced their hands are forced often by events with the case of interventions in the balkans for as a. i suspect there's been great deal of collusion between certain players and so-called. members member nations and 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 another 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 created what was happening on the ground they were caught by surprise ok and indeed intervention in libya let me go back and then again 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 in depending on how legal it is and in many cases it isn't a bush appointee that is just completely legal 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 happen to 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 our seats are always interpreted when saddam 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 but then 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 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 is your letter to your eyes if you would anyone raise your hands let me go let me get in a poster here because i think the saudi royal family are very popular either ok go ahead your voice or. well i mean popularity oughtn't have anything to do with this one way or another war so we're talking apples and oranges first of all i'd like to correct ian about the whole brigade on the trina 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 joann's was right and you're going to answer but secondly but secondly if the international community so-called was involved in

bosnia from the get co-opt 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 let's just not mix 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 took by any means necessary toss the wrestler solution like it did with twelve forty four b. we selectively apply because when they have to apply something that obligates them to produce a resolution malaysians are examples and so it doesn't exist. i had jump and this is crosstalk. the russian lingo did the fence of the civilian population i'm sure i know say you know he's darling but they this did not go past unnoticed they view the consequences and the hope was but it 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 moderately 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 a little here here let's go to geneva go ahead you some go ahead. how about this two kind of fit because this is the 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 who holbrooke as a banker and milosevic in his the one nine hundred seventy s. they continue on in the one nine hundred eighty s. and one nine hundred ninety s. kind of these mis messages or a misinterpreted message is that often that often evolved into the point where it got to the point of no return where did he abuse of the oppressed 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 our opponents and we recall that could our feet was caught reading with the cia for until couple of months before the uprisings and then ghazi 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 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 right how internet i see it understood i see devotion trying to jump in here go and wash your head for a 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 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 yes he just if you if you if you trace back to kind of interaction they go on that before even the conflicts explodes and listen to the language of the international community often of course this 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 mr met 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 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 what some of the statements that holbrooke is making both privately and publicly as a representative of the state department you can find it 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 say i've written about this and and easy to find parallels in many other so-called crises around the world are you going to be here when you go to a short break we're going to lose your freedom after that short break we'll continue our discussion and western intervention see r.t. . if you. still. want to be.

very first verses of the bible that all human beings are created to sell another came in god's image and it doesn't say just jews or not it is. sixty to seventy percent of what i did. as a combat soldier in the occupied territories. doing what we call making our presence felt we go out. here knock on some doors run to the other corner hit another house religion or nationalism not as judaism have been a part of the problem they've been part of what leads to. bloodshed if you want to bomb guys and kill. a thousand four hundred people in a month and you want to expect that this will have no effect then there are a few you have to be either extremely naive or extremely stupid to come here a few are religious jew calling another joe a not a not the way they really got to

the money. wealthy british style sign it's time to. market finance come to. find out what's really happening to the global economy with mike's concert for a no holds barred look at the global financial headlines tune into kinds a report on our cheek. to cheek. and. welcome back to cross talk if you're all about to mind you're talking about western backed interventions. and. stood.

up and i'd like to go back to what 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 i think about the future. believe 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 it we're looking at resolution nine hundred seventy three was brought up yeah yeah the what he said was to juice the have a no fly zone and to use whatever means to protect 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 it'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 and i think i think nine hundred seventy three was legal and

they stretched the legality props 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 with look at that we have to be dealt with but return 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 we're i don't think it's a double game vocal in saying this is that and why do you think this would have destroyed my support for that but you know but and also that is the whole issue of sovereignty and it's the entire purpose of having 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 i think it's the you can't see it if you look at the resolution we've job it will be great and we both agreed it was a slippery slope what do you think about the basha about that. well that means we're not like the way things are functioning today it's almost as if we're living in the world the george lucas envisioned there's this because there's

a quote from one of the extra ball people the star wars is this legal how they 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 intervention six celebrated to hyperspeed 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 at which you are supposed to which isn't supposed to bother a sort all but they're the sort of the 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 look at the die because of your prints of both but that's just where people go because you live in

a cold principles that's the problem you're doing ok you have the principles are you going to have all that you don't let dictators kill people if you can possibly . kill people in terms of if you don't mind we'll talk about good dictators and bad dictators in a second but he sighed so you're going to go now but i mean by is my implication. 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 do you think about this whole discussion i don't know spokesman over there where i can assure you to take my record on there you do we need to we need to just step back a little bit and considered a 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 this regime

interferes in local local politics the main guys the house where 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 the 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 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 going to react very poorly to a new regime that is very exploitive and of course this respectful of international law you can 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 is there is 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 students whose equally important for some countries leaving contemplate intervening on behalf of human beings who are suffering very very harsh tactics by not only the regime in bahrain 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 the events on the ground and listen 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 it's a very good way to 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 on the saudi royal family as a matter of fact show no honeymoon for well. well i mean then then how do you say that they they're an ally of the u.s. or now i have the west so just turn a blind eye to their what they do in bahrain which is completely blacked out right

now and people coming out and western media criticizing a very very little means to pussy it's duplicity on the part of the government certainly put 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 are right that there has condemned the inactivity over parker reign and many people have condemned the saudi's behavior the point is that you can't intervene everywhere that 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 it's annoying extent intervene because there's all for example as i did recently intervene possible had no well cost of i have to take i have to take accept the wrath of iran over. its major problems libya sell it on greater resources resources and i mean i why you see the richness the reality which is in a loop here i think it that the regime ok ok you say ok this is not going to christine

nationalist or is he going to geneva go ahead ahead go. 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 a friend since 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 which regime prior to the war and much of that has to do with the necessity control of 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 it is indeed international events and of course there's x. osho economic dynamics going on but there's also the financial world that has an interest in ghana stand 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 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 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 ian go he may actually respect your position milosevic and khadafi answer but we're saying have failed to convey contain some of their own domestic continues that they created because of of domestic politics i mean the most vicious kind of joint chop and there was a parable in many ways and he became very unpopular in serbia he got involved with these militias the governor of all of the smuggling organizations he got involved

with and indeed the military inserted 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 i did somebody really the people he fired the people he fired in ninety eight the people he for they 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 clearly had i wanted to i want to be is that all right do you think that you want to address the endo if you're happy and you jump in. 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 yugoslavia 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're lucky it was indeed true holbrooke was dealing with him because he was the guy who could deal with we're talking close mates here the final cover the present mess in bosnia is due to a deal cooked up between holbrooke milosevich the scare was given territories to think having previously included lots of positive acts and croats and that was a cynical deal done by holbrooke clay felt this was a guy they could deal with get their feet get their feet was literally i mean really only fair and everybody else this was not western intervention to get hold of natural resources they already had the natural resources they were buying that oil gadhafi was investing that money in london his sons and investing in geneva and in london with the money they stole enough to let me jump in here we're almost out of titles are almost out of time here in geneva go ahead you have the last word go ahead. this is 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

a half before the actual decided collaborates to start intervening with an air war campaign in support of what they would call the rebels if the events into libya evolved over time it took about a month and a half for the international community to decide well ok 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 can actually then he can continue with business as usual with the western powers and that's the danger for any direction really has just been here for i think you are going to thank you very much for a fascinating discussion many thanks and i guess 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 because. you can you can. still.