culture is that so much a lot of people at material that was an old were from the from western liberal me mentioned ism is it ever justified for such military interventions within the confines of international long is there a case where. a charmer veneer broadcasting live from washington d.c. coming up today on the big picture.

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market finance scandals find out what's really happening to the global economy with max concert for a no holds barred look at the global financial headlines tune in to the report on our key. can. follow in welcome to cross talk on q. to 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 force regime change has worked as its plan and and such interventions generate positive outcomes for people on the ground. taking steroids. across the uk liberal interventions i'm joined by an emotion

my leach 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 in the bush if i can go to you and i know you're an expert on the balkans so it'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 the 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 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 enemy bismo rather track record of dismal 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 a bad thing now being revealed but the intervention in bosnia it was true late. because. if the international community have put 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 anita would not have happened the intervention in kosovo you

might remember followed a whole string of un resolutions telling them a loss of its regime in belgrade to stop killing the albanians in kosovo he'd know that the intervention will 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 where 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 and the last of which would have surrendered ok devotion no you know no you know granulate resolution one thousand seven hundred three roll

call is very clear nine hundred seventy three right. there into legally sorry 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 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 darting 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 deal of collusion between certain players and so-called members of 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 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 and then and it is part of the montauk 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 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 how we see what was interpretation 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 that the bad the there's a lot of the game playing here the russian the russian delegation is making the protest but. 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'd pull out is sort of the current visited libya six times i think he was a very unpopular exactly you know. what do you formularies your eyes are you with me what are your friends let me go let me get in a potion here because i think the reload the saudi royal family are very popular

either ok go ahead the voice or. well i mean popularity oughtn't have anything to do with this one way or another but lord 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 focus on your hands with the propaganda nonsense but secondly but secondly if the international community so-called was involved in bosnia from that gets koala have eyewitness testimonies from people who were there when the american ambassador told the muslim leaders and beg 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 in one thousand nine hundred seventy three he said let's establish an authorized by any means necessary

so the us and nato took by any means necessary toss the wrestler solution like they did with twelve forty four b. which they selectively apply because when they have to apply something that obligates them to produce resolution malaysian close friends or doesn't because it's all relation he and i had jump and this was crossed. there are literally no defense of the civilian population i'm glad i know said i you don't taser. this did not go past unnoticed they use 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 so naturally 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 in liverpool 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's very strong relationships that meet 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 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 do the abuse of the approach perception that i should i have a green light to deal with my problems in a violent way or i you know i and 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 the 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 regimes that cause congo concert 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 you know the way forward i see understood i see the bullshit trying to jump in here go ahead great comic 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 enemies. well how you might know when your nation although they had a very strong. and yes if you 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 this 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 missed 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 look you just have to look at the backgrounds and. skin very well read very closely what some of the statements that holbrooke is making both privately and publicly as a representative of the state department can find that there's there's a very distinctive break between earlier times to work with most of which 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 going back

and forth and i would i don't i i've written about this and and i even find parallels in many other so-called crises around the world are you going to jump in here we're going to a short break we're going to lose your freedom after like short break we'll continue our discussion on western intervention stay r.t. . if you can. still.

wealthy british style. markets. 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 in to the report on our keep. a telemarketer broadcasting live from washington d.c. coming up today on the big picture.

and. welcome back you're all stuck on your lapel to remind you we're talking about western backed interventions. look. ok and i'd like to go back to you it is 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 i think about the fuse ability of the intervention the cost the risks and possible bad. clash 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 one thousand nine

hundred three was brought up yeah yeah it was the what he said was to to stab the no fly zone and to use whatever means to protect the civilians but if that entails really bombing the country 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 and 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 and 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 rested on trying not 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 that good that you have to be dealt with but return try and i 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 ok to saying this is the heart and why i should think this would have destroyed by support for that but you know but and also that is the whole issue of

sovereignty and it's the entire purpose of having a united nations in the first place is to protect the legal rights of sovereign states of motion what do you think about that because look i think it's the it gets a good you look at the resolution we've told you well let me bring a regime both agreed it was a slippery slope what do you think about the basha about that. well i mean we're not really 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 people the 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 your refugees to mistreatment of minorities

to this and that in your other 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 assad all but they did sort of the not the point we're not even isn'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're going to we're going to die because of your prince of both but that's just well people have died because the only logical principles that's the problem. we have the principles you're going to build of that you don't let dictators kill people if you can possibly be killing people in terms of you know manage i don't know we'll talk about good dictators and bad dictators in a second but he's going to go now but i mean by as by implication you have this if you're in what 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 where i can assure you to take my record on there you do it we need to we need to just step back a little bit and consider to scale that we are actually a doctor and talking about the world again i insist what is happening with regular human beings and how does. 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 he's regime interferes in local local politics the main guys here 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 it's 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 only 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 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 is no discussion of intervention on behalf of suffering human beings for many years now and in southern arabia let alone buffering which is considered to be stupid too sickly important for some countries leaving cotton contemplate intervening on behalf of healing beings who are suffering very very harsh tactics by not only the regime in bahrain by 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 sometimes very difficult conditions if we refused 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 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 one you must really. well i mean then then how do you say to be they're an ally of the u.s. or now lie of the west so it's turn a blind eye to what they do there what they do in bahrain which is completely blacked out right now not a peep coming out of western media criticizing a very very little means to play city it's duplicity on the part of the government certainly but on the path of those of us that support intervention to stop these things there's no duplicity all of us you've read the guardian i write for the guardian quite often and many writers there has condemned the inactivity over park rain many people have condemned the saudis behavior the point is that you can't intervene everywhere there are particular conjunctions only who are so in this way

and so if you intervene and you intervene and you intervene to this is all you intervene because there's an oil extremely intervene because there's zero zero for example is not a good reason to intervene cost of i had no oil cost of i have to take after take accept the wrath of iran or. its major problems libya's always on greater resources easy work i mean knows i why you see a chance the reality was being on duty there by the gadhafi regime ok ok you say ok this week it's going to christine nationalist or is it going to geneva go ahead. we guards of the balkans you 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 of 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 strategic control of a potential gas line. cost ways but also the minerals themselves in the ground so let's not be naive about that they're going to the council is not or any other places where it is indeed international dimension of course there's actual economic dynamics going on but there's also the financial world that has an interest ganis than iraq you can take a very clear example of if there are multiple interest why intervention was necessary according to various different players and then the sara lee neat idea i on all things but they certainly agree on one thing that the regimes that they are typing error have to have to be removed for one reason or another can you for sure 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 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 doesn't make any sense i'm sorry and as far as he in no he actually respect your position milosevic could offie and saddam hussein have failed to convey contain some of their own the mass they continue to use that they created because of of domestic politics i mean most of it's kind of try to jump into bed with the burble in many ways and he became very unpopular in serbia he got involved with these militias to garner votes 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 to power by often just firing generals and firing officers and i don't i do in my days in the role when 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 where i could he had i wanted to i want to be is that all right do you think well if you're going to address the endo 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 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 are not became clear even to the serbs and if you look it wasn't be true holbrooke was dealing with him cuz he was the guy who could deal with we're talking klaus bits here the final cover the president met him personally is due to a deal cooked up between holbrooke of the loss of it the republican scare was given territories to think had previously included lots of positive acts and croats and that was a cynical deal done by holbrooke they felt this was a guy they could deal with hit our feet get tough he was. relieved it's there 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 duffy was investing that money in london his sons and investing in geneva and in london with the money they stole not even let me jump in you know montana traddles we're almost out of time here in geneva go ahead you have the last word go ahead. we 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 and a half before they actually decided to collaborate to start intervening with an air war campaign in support of what they would call the rebels if the events are in the libya evolves over time it took about a month and a half for the international community decide well ok i guess kind of he 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 here to go he made the fatal mistake of not being able to contain his problems within.

if a format that it can actually then he can continue on business as usual with the western powers and that's a danger for anything to just be here for i think you are going to take 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 are keep see you next time and remember rastafarians. you still. want to. if. it is a pizza. if you.

see. it.