Ratko Mladic and International Justice

[malasadas.livejournal.com]

One of the world's longest standing manhunts ended today with the arrest of Ratko Mladic, the former head of the Bosnian Serb Army during the war between Bosnian Serbs, Croats and Muslims in the 1990s. General Mladic will be now turned over to the International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia which indicted him in 1995 for genocide, war crimes and crimes against humanity. Among the many brutal actions he is accused of, Mladic is alleged to have ordered and overseen the Srebenica massacre in 1995, widely regarded as Europe's worst massacre since World War II.

While some in Belgrade still regard Mladic as a hero of the Serbian people, observers in the capital note that the general feeling among people is one of relief. Cynics may also note that Mladic's arrest and transfer to the Hague clears the way for Serbia to join the E.U. and perhaps finally normalize its relationship with the rest of Europe, a process that has included the arrest and trial of Slobodan Milošević and Radovan Karadžić, and which may have never gotten to Mladic without the enticement of EU membership.



I suppose it is true that any monster can be convenient until he is no longer so. Western powers were slow to insist upon the departure of Hosni Mubarak earlier this year until it became clear that his own army had turned against him and would not protect the regime with violence. While Colonel Gaddafi's military HAS protected his regime with violence, he has no honest friends in the international community and the Arab League gave NATO plenty of cover to take a case for the no fly zone to the UN by condemning Gaddafi's response to Libyan protests. I remember when the Rwandan genocide took place in 1994 that western leaders tripped over themselves to not call it a genocide lest anyone remind them that they had all signed on intervene in cases of genocide.

Mladic is certainly inconvenient to Serbia with dwindling supporters willing to take up the cause of Greater Serbia compared to greater ties to the rest of Europe. It is, I suppose, fair to assume that cynical self interest is more at work than justice.

But how much does that ACTUALLY matter? When the Allied Powers convened war crimes tribunals against the defeated Axis leaders, they were in a familiar and powerful place: they had crushed their enemies in conventional war and were holding them account for atrocities and in that case, atrocities that blanched even the indelicate sensibilities of the recent Colonial and Imperial powers of Europe. Had the Allies conducted atrocities themselves? No doubt, but I think it is also undoubted that their enemies had perpetuated genuine evil and they were on the right side of the war, even including Stalin in the equation.

Today's war crimes tribunals operate in a different sense altogether. They are rarely convened by conquering powers in the wars -- Rwandan and Yugoslavian war criminals are tried not because a victorious army has captured them but because agreements have been made to empower a tribunal outside the war zone altogether. The only reason the tribunal can do any of its work is not through force but through agreement that it can -- agreement that parties harboring the accused can rescind at any time.

The same applies to the befuddling choices in the face of multiple regimes commiting multiple bad acts against their own people in very different political situations. The Arab League is not lining up to condemn Syrian violence against protesters, and Saudi Arabia is more or less directing Bahrain in its crack down. It is not convenient to do more than vigorous diplomacy to try to dial these atrocities down. That inconvenience is not a spectacularly moral ground to play from, but I am not clear about alternatives. Since no justice can be had in these kinds of cases without cooperation, the best way forward seems to be to acknowledge that...and live with it.

But that also doesn't seem to bode well for the Serbian people as a whole. The Serbs that I have known tend to take a very long view of history -- in the 1990s they were quick to point out Serbia's role in turning back the Ottoman Empire in Europe and that it was Serbians who took it on the chin under Nazi occupation. I have to wonder how helpful it is for SERBIA at this time for a monster like Mladic to be taken off of their hands for trial by people not at all connected to the atrocities he commited. Will Serbia's remaining Black Shirts simply fade into the background...and wait for another time when Greater Serbian nationalism and ambitions have a more receptive audience? Will Serbians just turn the page on this chapter, enjoy the benefits of joining the E.U. and be able to say "It wasn't us -- it was him?"

Is there, in short, a better way forward for societies like this other than to turn their monsters over to the Hague?

Comments

[anfalicious.livejournal.com]

I think the ICC, ICT and ICJ are great examples of humans trying to rise above our base instincts, and yes, it is vital that there is cooperation and agreement around these things; it would be nice if the USA got on board, but we all know Americans are special little snowflakes who are more important than the rest of us lower life forms living on the rest of the planet, but anyway...

I'd also prefer we got over this Axis = bad, Allies = good bullshit narrative of WWII. The Nazi's were evil. Stalin was evil. The bombing of Dresden, Hamburg, Tokyo, Nagasaki and Hiroshima; all brutal mass murders of civilians, were evil. It's time to stop letting the winners of WWII get a free pass.

[malasadas.livejournal.com]

I wouldn't argue in favor of a "free pass" -- atrocities happened on the Allied side.

I am unapologetic that the side fighting to end the Fascist European and Imperial Japanese regimes and what they had already wrought by 1939 was the RIGHT side.

[telemann.livejournal.com]

I am unapologetic that the side fighting to end the Fascist European and Imperial Japanese regimes and what they had already wrought by 1939 was the RIGHT side.

Amen to that.

[devil-ad-vocate.livejournal.com]

Ditto.

[paedraggaidin.livejournal.com]

Thirded.

[anfalicious.livejournal.com]

I think you're arguing from a privileged position; you clearly know far more about history than is the norm. Look at how WWII is taught in High School. Dresden is often mentioned in text books, but it usually just that, a mention.

I think it's wrong to believe that any side was good in WWII, it leads to mistakes like thinking that burning hundreds of thousands of innocent people to death is justifiable. It was a specific strategy, there was an option of destroying military infrastructure and making the military less effective, or firebombing cities to create terror and break the will of the German people; let's not make the mistake of saying this was the "right" thing to do just because Hitler was evil. After all, Hitler (for a brief while) saved many Germans from slavic subjugation.

Imperial Japan effectively ended European Colonialism in Asia. Sure, they replaced it with Japanese Colonialism, but they were just as much liberators as Americans and Russians were in Germany.

I guess the whole point of this is that it's ridiculous to have a "good" side and a "bad" side in a war if we're talking about international justice. There are sides, often many. Sometimes, people on all sides do things that as a species we've decided is too far. However, it's only if you're on the "bad" side of the war that you're held accountable for that. How about we just start calling war criminals war criminals, rather than war criminals and anglo-saxons.

[underlankers.livejournal.com]

I think that it's entirely inaccurate to see "nobody is good" as "both sides were equal." The Axis were aggressors that began Big Damn Wars and sought wars of annihilation followed regimes built on force that showed they could not be trusted. The USSR did adhere to treaties it signed, albeit mostly in a Literal Genie fashion. Nazi Germany did not adhere to any treaties.

Imperial Japan ended colonization in Asia.....by an example that made it impossible to hold onto the colonies *after the war.* Had the Axis won, Japanese colonialism would have brought the fruits of Unit 731 to Asia to replace that of the colonial empires.

Both sides did wrong, and both sides had their military slaughters, but only one of them had death camps.

[anfalicious.livejournal.com]

Yes, exactly. I'm not sure why you think I was suggesting they were equal. I wasn't measuring atrocities so much as criticising the historical narrative surrounding the war.

[usekh.livejournal.com]

I have to say though, if you cannot call the Nazis evil, then the term has no meaning.

[anfalicious.livejournal.com]

As long as we can say the same about the rest of the European colonial empires and their respective genocides.

[rasilio.livejournal.com]

While it is true that the fire bombing of Dresden was every bit the war crime that you say it is you are incorrect that there was an option of "destroying military infrastructure".

The technology that existed at that time rendered such a strategy completely ineffective and the allies did try it with their strategic bombing campaigns for 2 years and it was largely ineffective.

The real reason why Dresden is so problematic is that the war was already effectively over by that point, sure an argument can be made that the allies were not totally convinced of this fact and it could be argued that the effect of the Dresden Raid did hasten the end of the way by about 3 - 6 months but given where the war was in it's progress there was no reason to target a civilian center that way.

[underlankers.livejournal.com]

I don't think the Allies get a free pass. If anything Allied atrocities these days overshadow the Axis atrocities, people know of Dresden, Cologne, Hamburg, Tokyo, Nagoya, Sapporo, Hiroshima, and Nagasaki, but not of Warsaw, Rotterdam, London, Coventry, Moscow, Leningrad, Lidice, Nanking, Chungking, Unit 731, and other such Axis atrocities.

The Soviets were definitely the most morally ambiguous of the Allies, but even before the war they were seeking a military alliance against Adolf Hitler, and during the war they did vacillate between being an Axis Power and an Ally, yet without Zhukov and Konev the Allies would not have won WWII, nukes or no nukes.

I think that there's a difference between recognizing Allied armies did bad things and claiming that the Axis and Allies were moral equals. If you mean the latter, then I will agree with Masaladas that there is no remote degree to which Hitler, Tojo, and Mussolini were moral equals to Churchill, Roosevelt, and Stalin.

[anfalicious.livejournal.com]

How many allies were tried for crimes against humanity again?

[underlankers.livejournal.com]

None. How would it have been possible to do that when the Soviets made sure to try Germans for a massacre their own soldiers committed? The whole crimes against humanity thing always had some element of victor's justice in it. I might as well ask if Australians intend to hold crimes against humanity trials for those who participated in the atrocities of the Lost Generation but I doubt that such things would be forthcoming.

[mrsilence.livejournal.com]

The fact that someone was not brought to justice for their crimes, does not equate to making their crimes comparatively worse.

In other words, if I kill one person and you kill five (and hence are a "badder" person than me), the fact that I got off doesn't mean I'm just as bad as you.

[mrsilence.livejournal.com]

Of course it should go without saying that no-one gets a free pass.

[a-new-machine.livejournal.com]

I had always thought of this differently. The fact that the perpetrator is punished by a relatively impartial tribunal of non-interested actors is a good thing. In most justice systems, one of the hallmarks of a just process is an impartial judge, prosecutor, and jury.

On that grounds, I'm a bit puzzled by the idea that a conquering army was in a better place to dispense justice than a group that has no stake in the conflict. Isn't that the point? If these disinterested parties can be convinced of his guilt, without prejudging him, then doesn't that add legitimacy to the judgment? Certainly if we found out that the judge in a criminal case had threatened the defendant, and was good friends with the victim, or whatever, we'd be skeptical of the worth of that verdict. Same for the jury members. So what's the better alternative? Have NATO generals try him?

[malasadas.livejournal.com]

I'm more wondering if it would be healthier for societies that emerge from genocides and other crimes against humanity had to take the responsibility of telling a Mladic that he did evil in their name and they had to hold him to account for it. It isn't that conquering armies are better -- it's that they hold more clear authority having won the war and "owning" the vanquished.

For Mladic, now the "good Serbs" get to hand it off to the Hague in return for a big economic reward. It is probably the only way it would happen today, but will Serbia be healthier for it or will they get to go on and shop and never come to account with the Black Shirts?

[a-new-machine.livejournal.com]

A part of me sees your point, but... I dunno. That sort of blame and name-calling can be poisonous, too. I'd lean more towards a Truth and Reconciliation model, to be honest. It removes antagonism, makes the wrong-doers admit their crimes in their own words, and demands of us - the "good" people in whose names, or with whose passive approval, these acts were taken - an understanding of what happened. It robs us of justice, because it recognizes that justice for monumental crimes is impossible, and the better way forward is to heal.

But then, I suppose that requires also an opposing side that, as a group, recognizes their defeat and that they were properly defeated. TBH I don't know enough about Serbia to say if that's a realistic proposition.

Compare: Iraq's trial of Hussein and rapid execution of him were widely criticized. What's the difference?

[meus-ovatio.livejournal.com]

Eh. The ICC, like all European organizations, operates according to an arcane game of European politics, favors and agendas that is no different than anything else. Western Europe, quite simply, has an unjustified place of honor in the realm of international justice, especially when it comes to the Balkans. This isn't going to strike me as justice served, this is just foreign policy by another means.

[paedraggaidin.livejournal.com]

Yep, my feelings exactly.

[the-rukh.livejournal.com]

The only reason the tribunal can do any of its work is not through force but through agreement that it can -- agreement that parties harboring the accused can rescind at any time.

At the cost of great political damage. They work because we've agreed they should, just like civilization at its very fundamental level. I don't think that's necessarily a bad thing. It's the natural evolution of culture. We start bashing each other with clubs until we decide we'd rather work together and have shared expectations, then our tribes conquer each other until we decide to work together, then our states conquer each other until we decide to work together, etc.

[terminator44.livejournal.com]

You think we're moving towards a world government?

[underlankers.livejournal.com]

Thing is that the Nuremberg Trials and the Tokyo Trials came from a Soviet idea, not the one of the democracies. And the Soviets just wanted to repeat the Show Trials of the 30s, not to set a serious precedent (as was shown by the conviction of Wehrmacht personnel for the Katyn Massacre during the actual trials). And even then the Allies did not try anything equivalent to a serious attempt to dismantle either the German or Japanese systems of governance and military power that existed before the war, Operation Paperclip and the Gestapo torturers who found employment in the Eastern Bloc serving as the fate of Hitler's villains.

In some ways the ICC is a far greater system than that set up at Nuremberg because there's at least a pretense of impartiality.

[telemann.livejournal.com]

Thing is that the Nuremberg Trials and the Tokyo Trials came from a Soviet idea, not the one of the democracies.

This seemed wrong at face value, and I checked around. Sure enough Wikipedia:

British War Cabinet documents, released on 2 January 2006, showed that as early as December 1944, the Cabinet had discussed their policy for the punishment of the leading Nazis if captured. British Prime Minister Winston Churchill had then advocated a policy of summary execution in some circumstances, with the use of an Act of Attainder to circumvent legal obstacles, being dissuaded from this only by talks with US leaders later in the war. In late 1943, during the Tripartite Dinner Meeting at the Tehran Conference, the Soviet leader, Joseph Stalin, proposed executing 50,000–100,000 German staff officers.

US Treasury Secretary, Henry Morgenthau, Jr., suggested a plan for the total denazification of Germany;[4] this was known as the Morgenthau Plan. The plan advocated the forced de-industrialisation of Germany. Roosevelt initially supported this plan, and managed to convince Churchill to support it in a less drastic form. Later, details were leaked to the public, generating widespread protest.[clarification needed] Roosevelt, aware of strong public disapproval, abandoned the plan, but did not adopt an alternate position on the matter. The demise of the Morgenthau Plan created the need for an alternative method of dealing with the Nazi leadership. The plan for the "Trial of European War Criminals" was drafted by Secretary of War Henry L. Stimson and the War Department. Following Roosevelt's death in April 1945, the new president, Harry S. Truman, gave strong approval for a judicial process.[citation needed] After a series of negotiations between Britain, the US, Soviet Union and France, details of the trial were worked out. The trials were to commence on 20 November 1945, in the Bavarian city of Nuremberg.