Mr. Speaker, the weight of the words spoken today in the Chamber must not be diminished in any way by the participants in this debate.
As politicians we might at times engage in rhetoric that resonates with lofty ideals or would be aspirations, but when we debate the committing of Canadian lives to an action as grave as the conflict in the Balkans it is incumbent on each of us to weigh heavily the views we express, the words we employ, the actions we promote, for we are inputting a decision making process with grave implications for the present and future of the international community and for the jurisprudence which encompasses the actions of sovereign states.
That is so irrespective of whether we endorse or question the continued involvement of this country in the battle to alleviate the suffering of the people of Kosovo.
We are witnessing intense images of horrendous suffering by the Kosovar people. The information available and the intelligence gathered indicate that President Milosevic is engaged in wholesale efforts to ethnically cleanse Kosovo of the large majority of Albanian muslims. He is doing so in the most vile manner, utilizing barbaric methods that defy imagination and contravene the conventions of war. The result of these atrocities has led the member states of NATO to do all possible to protect the Kosovars and prevent this tyrant from attaining his goals.
The discussion in the media and elsewhere has queried the role of NATO in this action instead of the United Nations. While the response has openly acknowledged that Russia and China would have vetoed and therefore forestalled unacceptably a UN military action, we must consider the ramifications of the alternate route we have employed.
As a collective security organization NATO should respond defensively and not offensively, but events in the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia have twice provoked the intervention of NATO to protect its citizens from their unscrupulous leaders.
The argument that the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia is a sovereign state is not to be taken lightly but compels us to consider, as I stated at the outset, whether a state's claim to sovereignty is sufficient to allow that state to engage in actions against its people which contravene the rule of law and deny the very basics of human security.
At what point does Canada and the countries with which we have formed alliances decide that sovereignty is no shield from responsibility, that the very raison d'être for a sovereign state is its obligation to provide for the well-being of its citizens.
Sovereignty cannot be used as an excuse to permit an atrocity or to engage in ethnic cleansing that borders on genocide. When a country engages in such activities the analogies of history intrude. We are compelled to risk acting outside the precepts of international law as it has to date been applied and take the action we have engaged in thus far, and actions that may be proposed, to stop the possible destruction of a people.
We cannot continue to be baffled by the definitions of the past. Nor can we fail to heed the past and like Chamberlain in 1938 believe that monsters like Hitler and Milosevic can be appeased and peace in our time purchased. It cannot because they will break every value we hold basic and every human norm we hold as minimal.
We are by the very definition of our democratic societies compelled to do all that is possible and effective to assist the people over whom they hold power.
Let us recognize the turn in the road we have taken. The cold war is no more and the relative security that a two bloc world and a nuclear umbrella provided is likewise no more. We have entered a considerably more destabilized international landscape. We are today debating the Baltics, a region of Europe that has rarely enjoyed any long term stability and has frequently been the centre of racial foment and hostilities.
We must look very seriously at the consequences of this military action. Are we redefining our foreign policy strategies? Are we motivated, as Henry Kissinger might contend, by the compelling need to be partners with our allies to preserve equilibrium? Are we moving toward an unqualified support for ethnic self-determination as promoted by Woodrow Wilson? The implications of supporting these principles either alone or within coalitions such as NATO are far reaching and of considerable consequence.
We move into an uncharted legal landscape on the international plane, a landscape of foreboding future entanglements with no clear exit strategies. While the humanitarian dimension of the Kosovo quagmire is paramount, the legal precedent of this engagement will survive after the conflict and our remedy are concluded.
The Canadian government's intention to further the goal of human security at the security council and within our bilateral and multilateral alliances is legitimate from every perspective. It is the essential component that African leaders like President Konnare of Mali have defined as vital to the economic and social development of the wartorn countries of that continent.
The violation of human security in Kosovo is unacceptable. The total lack of regard for the rule of law is unacceptable. One had merely to watch in astonishment last week on Canadian television as Milosevic's henchman Arkan Raznatovic told viewers that he had no concern over Louise Arbour's charges against him of horrendous war crimes as he refused to accept the legitimacy of the international court and the War Crimes Tribunal. These are leaders for whom power is the arbiter, not the law. As Hitler demonstrated, in the world of diplomacy a loaded gun is often more potent than a legal brief.
Milosevic's reign of terror in Kosovo did not just precede the peacemaking efforts at Rambouillet by a matter of months. I was in Belgrade and Sarajevo nine years ago with the Canadian Bar Association. We were hosted by Yugoslavian lawyers. In Belgrade I met a woman lawyer who through great personal courage, I learned, acted for the Albanian Kosovars and did so often through the vehicles of the international jurists and Amnesty International.
She related incidents of chronic discrimination and denial of human rights. She described a visit there as a visit to the 15th century and despaired of anything but a steady worsening of their plight. We have witnessed such a decline culminating in the horrors we are now debating. There comes a time when we too take some risks in coming to the Kosovo defence.
The decisions before us cannot be relished and seem almost contrary to every precept I hold integral. Thirty years ago many of us fought not to engage an enemy but to halt a war that could not meet the bar for a bellum justum by any acceptable definition. As a young graduate student in 1966 in Halifax I carried a placard in Joe Howe Park, a little uncomfortable with this new role but convinced as we all were that the war in Vietnam, predicated as it was on a theory of containment and dominoes and as flawed strategically as it was bankrupted morally, had to end and such jingoistic ventures never embarked on again. As Dylan maintained, God was on no warrior's side.
The times were to have changed but the horrendous suffering we are seeing in Kosovo is witness to the fact that much has not changed. The people of the international community must accept and promote the application of force in containing a demagogue like Melosevic who knows no bounds and knows no morality.