Security Thinking in a Changing World and Region
by Zhang Yunling1
The ending of the Cold War has brought about great changes to the world order and international relations. However, the world is changing with lots of uncertainties. Military intervention by the US-led NATO in Kosovo raises questions for the international community: how to maintain the world and regional order? How to define and defend national security in such a changing and uncertain world? What are the implications for the security setting in East Asia and what is China's security strategy and policy?
I Implications of NATO's military intervention
The NATO bombing campaign in Serbia was a great shock to the Chinese since it was a regional military organization that attacked a sovereign state―without the authorization of the United Nations―in the name of"humanitarian intervention." The fundamental principle of the UN and international relations in the post-World War Two period has been the sovereignty of states. Article 2 of the UN Charter forbids member countries to use, or threaten to use force against another member. If this kind of collective intervention in a sovereign state becomes legitimate, "it provides a carte blanche to powerful countries to use force, or threaten to use force to make other countries change their domestic policies, their governments or their political systems."2 China worries that what happened in Yugoslavia yesterday may occur tomorrow in Asia, especially in China.
The US-led NATO military intervention against Yugoslavia is considered by China as "an important measure taken by the US to step up the implementation of its global strategy of seeking hegemony at the turn of the century, and a major indication of the new development of the US hegemonism."3 NATO's action against Yugoslavia raises many questions as to the legitimacy of waging war on a sovereign state, the principles of international relations, and the credibility of the United Nations.
Peace in the new century will continue to rest on maintaining international rules and laws passed by the UN members with respect to state sovereignty and equality. These rules and laws are not outdated.
NATO's action in Kosovo is supported by a doctrine of"new interventionism." The new interventionism is based on a "new justice" that "the major threats to stability and well being now come from internal violence," and "intervention has been deemed appropriate where the humanitarian costs of failing to intervene are too high."4 The first problem with this new doctrine is: who makes the judgment, who conducts the intervention―and in what kind of way? The UN Charter forbids member countries to use, or threaten to use force against another member (except when sanctioned by the UN under chapter 7 of the UN Charter). But NATO launched air strikes against Yugoslavia based on its own judgments ("ethnic cleansing") and conducted these by itself (without the authorization of the UN). By militarily intervening in a sovereign state, US-led NATO tried hard to rewrite international law based on its own rules and values, which is unacceptable to China and many others. Even Michael J. Glennon, who advocates a new interventionism, also worries that it is "dangerous for NATO unilaterally rewrite the rules by intervening in domestic conflicts on an irregular case-by case basis," and "justice, it turns out, requires legitimacy, without widespread acceptance of intervention as part of a formal justice system, the new interventionalism will appear to be built on neither law nor justice, but on power alone."5
