Morality of Politics and Election Technologies

News about the resignation of the Dutch government headed by Willem Kok was one of the most impressive last week. One might say that the Western countries’ policy is becoming more responsible, that unwritten laws of morality are beginning to prevail there. This is because the government resigned following a report by the Institute of Military Documentation of the Netherlands saying that the Dutch military contingent on a UN peacekeeping mission to Bosnia and Herzegovina had not stopped the Serbs on their way to the town of Srebrenica, which had been declared a UN security zone. While the Dutch peacekeepers stood neutral, the Serbs slaughtered about 7000 Moslems. After the Srebrenica tragedy, many spoke about an end to international peacekeeping initiatives and to the United Nations as their bearer and executor. There were even photographs that showed a Dutch unit commander having a drink with the Serb force commander Mladic who has been declared wanted by the Hague Tribunal.

Is this really what they call a triumph of morality in politics? The report was published now, a few weeks before the May 15 parliamentary elections. In any case, this government, only one minister of which could bear responsibility for the events of 1995, should step down. The press has kept silent for seven years — not quite the way it normally works, for declaring free access to information is its top priority. Nobody is even going to raise the issue of responsibility of those who were directly involved in the 1995 events in Srebrenica. Nobody is going to raise the issue of responsibility of the officials who approved NATO’s plan of operation against Yugoslavia in 1999, when almost every second smart bomb or missile hit houses, China’s Embassy in Belgrade, passenger trains, crowds of refugees — everything but military targets. Nobody is responsible for Western Europe’s failure to realistically appraise the situation in the Balkans and the former USSR in order to work out a preventive policy, for wars in Europe at the end of the twentieth century ought to have become nonsense.

No, unfortunately, the Kok government’s resignation only demonstrates new techniques of election campaigning. Any real responsibility of the UN, the EU, the OSCE, or NATO is not on the agenda today. Nor is morality. And it looks like this story will be forgotten very soon.