The reduction of victims is the direct result of the ending of wars by proxy by the US and the USSR. Not some utopic rewrite of history and facts.

By keith on Mar 15, 2009 at 8:15 am

The author notes that the reduction of civilian deaths since 89 is a direct result of the fall of communism and yet still gives credit to the post-communist New World Order. A thing can’t be the cause of something else that happened before it.

I would argue that the fall in the number of interstate wars is also largely to do with the end of the Cold War that destabilized the globe – again, not the result of the post-89 order.

In fact the author gives next to no evidence that the relative stability of the last 20 years has continued because of, rather than in spite of, US adventurism. As a counter-example the EU has policed its own back yard very successfully using a different approach entirely.

Also missing from the analysis is the fact that since WWII wars have steadily become proportionally more dangerous for civilians, not less. Ratio of civilian deaths to military in WWII was 7:5. In Iraq (median estimate), 19:1.

By Greg on Mar 17, 2009 at 1:02 am

Rod Paschall Replies: As stated in the article, one of the chief reasons for successive U.S. post-Cold War administrations choosing an activist foreign policy was to preserve Cold War gains. Diminished civilian and combatant deaths in war during the last 20 years are the result of both Cold War gains and the policies to preserve them. Many wars during the Cold War were not proxy wars and some of them that were called were called proxy wars were begun and prosecuted for reasons far short of using third parties as substitutes. For an example, see “Reluctant Dragons and Red Conspiracies” in the Spring 2000 issue of MHQ. On numbers of civilian war deaths, they are almost invariably supplied by propagandists from opposing sides and cannot be trusted to any serious study. As for the EU policing its own back yard very successfully: The EU was unsuccessful in bringing about any measure of stability in the Balkans from 1992 until 1995. In that year, the EU stood by and helplessly watched hundreds of UN peacekeepers, soldiers the EU was depending on to bring about peace in Europe, taken hostage by Serbs. Stability in the Balkans began when the U.S. 1st Armored Division, spearhead of a 60,000-man deployment of American troops, enter Bosnia on December 31, 1995.

By Rod Paschall on Mar 25, 2009 at 1:12 pm

The Article indicates that President Bush started the New World Order with
his policy of intervening in international conflicts to promote democracy. I don’t see the link.
Yes, there is new World Order because the Cold War was over. I
think everybody realized it, not just President Bush. But his action do not justi
fy the opening statement of this article and its main conclusions.

The USA as
most countries with some political,economic & military power,
pursue a foreign policy that serves their geopolitical, strategic
and economic interests. They do NOT follow a policy towards democracy, rule
of law, human rights UNLESS it serves their interests. And I will not refer to
the long list of dictatorships the US government actively supported or even
brought to power to protect its interests. That was the Cold War era. In the
New World Order the US self-imposed itself as the World policeman (as the
author correctly states), which a lot of countries (including democratic ones)
find extremely dangerous. It ignores the UN when it needs to and desires
its moral support when it needs to. It supports totalitarian regimes such as
the ones in Vietnam (remember this country?) and China (even at the expen
se of Taiwan’s geopolitical interests) because they make cheap electronics
and plenty of consumer goods that the US public needs to buy. Let’s not forget
the hundreds of billions of dollars borrowed by the US consumers from the
Chinese. The list of examples is long.

By saying so I am not putting US in a different position than other countries:
Russia, China, India and definitely Japan/France/G.Britain/Germany do the
same.

Another conclusion of the article is that the military deaths over the last 2
decades have fallen, as well as the number of intrastate wars. The author
claims this is due to the policy of the US and their allies for intervening when
there is such an event. The example of Iraq invading Kuwait is given. Well
US intervened in Iraq because they have strategic (oil-associated) interests.
It is common knowledge that the US government which militarily supported
a dictator like Hussein in the 80’s (even though he was gassing the Kurds)
in his war against the Islamic clerics in Iran, was fully aware of the upcoming
invasion ahead of time. But they did not assembled their Fleet or troops to
prevent it. They let it happen and then intervened to give them an excuse
to allow for a far larger military presence in the Gulf. They did not even
remove Hussein from power although they could so how did they promote
democracy in the 1st Iraq war as the author claims?. How did they promote
democracy when they reinstalled a Sheikh in Kuwait who is not a
democratically elected leader and supresses free press?

The author claims that there has been a tremendous decrease in the number
of civilians dying through acts of genocide compared to the last 40 years
of Cold war. I don’t see the data to support this. What are the acts of
genocide that occurred during the Cold War? I also don’t see how the US
policies would have prevent genocides from happening.

Any armed conflict leading to genocide has to be recognized as such
to be counted in those statistics. The recognition can be easily blocked by the
perpetrators if they have the economic/political power to do so (see Turkey
with Armenians, Indonesia with East Timorese, India/Pakistan and the
Kashmiris, Iraq and the Kurds, Sri Lanka and Tamils, etc.). It’s also confusing
because some acts of violence against civilians are not categorized as genocide
because they are not explicitly targeting an ethnic minority
(in the case of Cambodia
the Khmer Rouge were targeting civilians of certain social classes).

Another example:
USA did not interfere with Rwanda not
because their policy was not to interfere in the continent’s internal affairs (see
Somalia & Liberia where the send troops as well as Egypt, Nigeria and lots
more where they actively support politically, economically and sometimes
provide military aid). They did not interfere because the genocide happened
right after the Somalia disaster and the US public would not like to send
troops again fearing a new disaster. The US also did not have any significant
interests in Rwanda at the time. Interestingly enough, they blocked UN effor
ts to send troops to end the genocide because they did not want to spend
more money to support the troops (the US is the biggest contributor of funds
to the UN).

US government does NOT care about those acts
except if it hurts their interests (by saying so I don’t refer to the US public’s
sensitivity to these acts).

The article wants to portray the policy of the 3 presidents (Bush I
Clinton and Bush II) as more or less cohesive and following the principles set
by G.Bush in 1989. I disagree. G.Bush II changed the policy and instead of
being reactive he advocated a proactive foreign policy where the US would
intervene WITHOUT provocation or acts of aggression from another country.
Despite the US/Allies intervention in Iraq, Rwanda and Somalia’s civil wars
did happen with huge loss of life. Yugoslavia’s civil wars also happened. How
come those policies did not prevent those from happening? Loss of life in
Kashmir continues even though it’s not always in the news. And I am not
referring to the civil wars in the Central/South African countries,
funded by the diamonds and the other resources.

The author also claims that due to in-part of the US wars in the last 20
years there are more democratic governments in the world. I don’t see the
link to that either. The US government does not always try to reinstate
a democratic government. It did not do in the 1st Iraq war. In the 2nd Iraq
war. the government has been elected but is supported by
the US as long as it serves the US interests.
In Afghanistan there is really no
government (the US-backed president has served as an executive
in the consortium that was negotiating with Taliban before 2001 to build
a gas pipeline through Afganistan). In Serbia there was a democratically elec
ted government (they did help the Bosnian Serbs commit the atrocities of
course). I don’t have to refer to Somalia but you can look at Liberia. A civil
was erupted in the middle of the New World Order. The US intervened but
it did not stop the civil war from erupting and I bet it won’t stop it from
erupting again if the social/economic conditions don’t improve.

You might have more countries being electoral democracies now but a lot
of them are democracies on paper or pretty fragile.

US has been against pretty much every International court that has the
power to indict heads of states as well as criminals guilty of violating Human
Rights. As the author notes it’s because it does not want any of the members
of their Armed Forces to be indicted. Why is that? Why would the US soldiers
generals and politicians be excluded? Isn’t Clinton guilty of murdering a few
thousands of Serbian civilians because US pilots were flying high to avoid get
ting shot down and thus were releasing bombs with no guidance system?
Isn’t any of the Bush presidents and generals responsible for the death of
hundred of thousand of Iraqi civilians because bombings in Iraq used repeate
dly free-fall bombs (and not laser guided ones) thus sometimes missing their
targets? Even the % of bombing success in Iraq War I have been published
and they are pretty low (I forget the actual number).
Colin Powell acknowledged that a few years after Iraq war I but
nobody cared. Has anybody counted how many people have died because
of the real-politik of the US government during the Cold War? Has any US
politician or military officer has been indicted or convicted?

This is why US does not want any of these courts. Yes, these
courts have indicted several heads of states but only from the
ones which don’t have the economic/political and military power to
resist. This is partially why Kim Jong-Il does not want to give up nuclear
weapons. It’s a step forward but people from all over the world will
still wonder why the US and the other big countries should be excluded.
At least in Europe, the European court of Human Rights had prosecuted
cases and forced the change of policies in pretty much every EU country
including G.Britain, Germany, Italy, France, etc.

UN, in my opinion, is one way to resolve issues and pursue punishment of
governments guilty of genocide and other crimes according to
International law.
But not in its current state. It will only happen when more countries partici-
pate in the security council, when nobody has veto and all countries accept
responsibility for their actions including the superpowers. When the UN reso
lutions are enforced by military force without waiting for approval from the
country whose government is at fault. I recognize that a lot of times people
outside the US expect the US military to intervene and then accuse it of
atrocities. That’s unfair as well. The US has to consult the UN and push it
for intervening. US can definitely help militarily since it’s the most powerful
military power today but it has to let the UN handle the rebuilding of the
country. Too many limitations exist today that stem from the sovereignity of
each country.

By SB on Jun 23, 2009 at 5:45 pm