Madam Speaker, I must admit it gives me no great pleasure to stand at this hour to speak to very complex issues. These issues are as involved, as profound and as complex as faced by any parliamentarian. I might mention as well that I will be splitting my time.
Literally we are debating the issue of whether we should or should not go to war, whether we should or should not operate within the treaty confines of our NATO alliance, and whether we can or cannot contribute to a resolution of an ethnic conflict that has been going on for centuries.
This area of ethnic and religious diversity has been a powder keg for years, going back to Suleman the Magnificent. Arguably it was the point of conflict that set off World War I. It was also a point of Nazi aggression in World War II when the Serbs actually fought the Nazis and the Albanians were the collaborators.
The participants in these ethnic conflicts have over time been either victims or aggressors. Yesterday's victims are today's aggressors and may well be tomorrow's victims. Indeed yesterday's aggressors are today's victims and may well be tomorrow's aggressors.
It is therefore in this historical context that NATO with the best of intentions has attempted to bring some ethnic peace and harmony to this arena. For the purposes of debate I am willing to concede that NATO and other interlocutors have made every attempt to bring the factions to the peace table. I would argue that there are no innocents in this debate and that all factions have in fact been guilty of ethnic cleansing, genocide and other horrible crimes against humanity.
NATO is not without its own difficulties as a prospective peacemaker. Its policies have not been clear and have not been consistent. For instance, in Croatia NATO was silent while the Serbs were ethnically cleansed from the greater Croatia area. In Bosnia-Hercegovina the Serbs were the protagonists in the hostilities and perpetrated some pretty awful things upon the other ethnic groups there.
This in turn led to some peacekeeping, but ultimately we bombed the Serbs to stay in a multi-ethnic state. In Kosovo we are bombing them to get out of a multi-ethnic state with the presumed aim of separating into an Albanian section and a Serbian section. This in and of itself has caused great difficulties for the population and lays bare our naive assumption that bombing will somehow or another lead to a resolution.
Our Turkish partners have their own ethnic cleansing going on. We are in a moral quagmire because we bring to the table contradictory principles. We are humanitarian hawks. We believe that if we wage war for humanitarian purposes somehow or another peace will be restored. I would suggest it is extremely naive to think that bombs will bring peace.
We are into a moral quagmire from which we will not easily extract ourselves. We are into a legal quagmire from which we will not easily extract ourselves. We are into a military quagmire from which we will not easily extract ourselves. The history of this area is fraught with inter-ethnic conflict and yields no easy solutions.
Arguably our use of force to date has done nothing but create more inter-ethnic conflict, floods of refugees and oceans of blood. It has heightened world tensions in an area of the world where tensions are high at the best of times. Have we learned nothing from history? Is one world war not enough?
For instance, at this point in time Macedonia is undergoing some of its own ethnic tension as the floods of refugees have disturbed its balance. When Macedonia gets nervous so also does Greece. When Greece gets nervous so also does Turkey. Most particularly, when Serbia gets bombed the Russians feel particularly affronted.
Entering into peace brokering arrangements with the Russians is dubious at best and fraught with its own level of difficulties. One would like to assume that in dealing with a secure person such as President Yeltsin we would somehow or another achieve a resolution. However any casual reading of the situation yields the conclusion that President Yeltsin has a tenuous hold on power at best. Lined up behind him are a bunch of nut cases who would be more than happy to do sabre rattling of their own and touch off possibly a larger conflict.
At this point in time we have rained bombs down on Yugoslavia for 21 days. We have something in the order of 250,000 extra refugees, possibly as many as half a million. We have destabilized the area which is fragile at the best of times and brought into play a former superpower. Increasingly at this point the American generals have said that this was all reasonably predictable. If this was all reasonably predictable, then why in heaven's name did we get into it?
Another consequence of this conflict is the erosion of our commitment to the United Nations and the rule of law. Canada has been a booster of the United Nations and has committed itself to peacekeeping operations whenever asked. In addition, we have politicked long and hard to obtain a seat on the security council, advocated soft power, advocated human security and advocated a number of other initiatives that are consistent with our role as a middle power.
However, as soon as the conflict came along we abandoned our principal position with the United Nations, we did not secure a resolution from the security council and we abandoned any pretence of the rule of law. In the course of our proceeding in this fashion we have, for want of a better term, kissed away the rule of international law.
We cannot have it both ways. We cannot, for many purposes, seek the rule of international law, seek to create international institutions, seek to obtain peace and security throughout the world through the role of international law and then, when asked by big brother to participate in NATO bombings, run off and abandon years of work at the United Nations. There have already been a lot of victims in this war and the rule of law may be one of the most significant.
We are well aware that the United States does not care about the United Nations, nor does it think anything of it. In our haste to fulfil our obligations to NATO we have bought into the American view that the United Nations is an irritating irrelevancy and not worthy of dignified dialogue among nations.
The final point I wish to make is with respect to our military quagmire. It is very easy to get into war; it is a great deal more difficult to get out. This so-called exit strategy about which many people have spoken is not as much strategy as a point of desperate departure.
We do not have an exit strategy and, of course, Mr. Milosevic cannot be counted on to accommodate us. Therefore, we are in the unenviable position of having to ratchet up our commitment to such an extent that we will have to virtually pulverize the nation of Yugoslavia into submission and then impose a peace settlement upon the nation of Yugoslavia. It echoes again of World War I when we imposed a settlement on the German nation.
There may be military analysts out there who can count that cost, but I as a parliamentarian have no idea what that cost might be and I defy my hon. colleagues to suggest otherwise.
I am therefore left to speculate. If I speculate on the basis of history, I would note that the Serbian resistance fighters in the second world war under Marshal Tito kept a very trained, well-equipped and very committed German army, under the Nazis, pinned down for years.
I think we would be foolish in the extreme to think we may have better military toys and therefore our side will win. I need only point to Vietnam as an example, where the Americans had far superior technology but little people in pyjamas won that war with 65,000 American dead.
I was in Vietnam last year. It is a dinky little country. It reduced a super power like the United States to abject humiliation through sheer force of will. Does anyone in the House or the government know that we are not just creating Europe's version of Vietnam?
We are entering into another nation's civil war which has been going on for centuries and from which we will not easily or gracefully extract ourselves. We are in a moral quagmire where there are no innocents. We are in a legal quagmire where the rule of law is a victim. We are in a military quagmire from which we cannot readily extract ourselves. This reflects very poorly on our values as a nation and compromises our standing among the nations.