给战争一个机会爱德华-N-卢特瓦克

给战争一个机会

爱德华-N-卢特瓦克Edward N Luttwak

外交事务》，1999年7月/8月；78，4；ABI/INFORM全球第36页。

给战争一个机会

爱德华-N-卢特瓦克

过早建立和平

一个经常被忽视的不愉快的事实是，尽管战争是一个巨大的罪恶，但它确实有一个巨大的优点：

它可以解决政治冲突并导致和平。

当所有交战方都筋疲力尽时，或者当一方取得决定性胜利时，就会发生这种情况。

无论哪种情况，关键是战斗必须继续，直到达成决议。

战争只有在经过暴力的高潮阶段后才能带来和平。

军事成功的希望必须消退，才能使和解比进一步的战斗更具吸引力。

😀

然而，自从联合国成立并将大国政治写入安理会以来，较小国家之间的战争很少被允许进行其自然进程。

相反，它们通常在早期就被打断，在它们自己燃烧殆尽并为持久解决创造前提条件之前。

停火和停战经常是在安全理事会的主持下实施的，目的是为了停止战斗。

北约对科索沃危机的干预也遵循这一模式。

但是，停火往往会阻止战争引起的疲惫，让交战方重组和重新武装他们的部队。

一旦停火结束，斗争就会加剧和延长，而停火通常会结束。

1948-49年的阿以战争就是如此，如果不是安全理事会规定的两次停火让交战方休养生息，这场战争可能在几周内就结束了。

最近在巴尔干地区也是如此。

强制的停火经常打断克拉伊纳的塞尔维亚人和克罗地亚人之间的战斗，打断前南斯拉夫联盟的部队和克罗地亚军队之间的战斗，以及波斯尼亚的塞尔维亚人、克罗地亚人和穆斯林之间的战斗。

每一次，对手都利用暂停的时间来招募、训练和装备更多的部队进行进一步的战斗，延长了战争，扩大了战争的杀戮和破坏范围。

同时，除非有谈判达成的和平协议，否则强行停战也会人为地冻结冲突，并通过保护弱势一方免受拒绝为和平做出让步的后果而使战争状态无限期地延续下去。

冷战为两个超级大国的这种行为提供了令人信服的理由，它们有时合作胁迫实力较弱的交战国，以避免被卷入其冲突和直接冲突。

尽管强加的停火最终确实增加了较小国家之间的战争总量，而且停战确实使战争状态长期存在，但这两种结果显然比核战争的可能性要小一些（从全球角度来看）。

但今天，美国人和俄罗斯人都不倾向于竞争性地干预较小国家的战争，所以中断战争的不幸后果持续存在，而没有避免更大的危险。

对所有各方来说，让小规模的战争自己烧掉也许是最好的。

维和人员的问题

今天，停火和停战是通过多边协议强加给较小国家的--不是为了避免大国竞争，而是出于本质上的无利害关系，甚至是无意义的动机，比如电视观众对战争的惨烈场面感到厌恶。

但反过来说，这也会系统地阻止战争向和平的转化。

代顿协议是这种类型的典型：

它使波斯尼亚继续分裂为三个敌对的武装阵营，战斗暂时中止，但敌对状态却无限期延长。

由于没有任何一方受到失败和损失的威胁，因此没有任何一方有足够的动力去谈判一个持久的解决方案；

由于甚至没有看到通往和平的道路，主要的优先事项是为未来的战争做准备，而不是重建被破坏的经济和被蹂躏的社会。

不间断的战争肯定会造成更多的痛苦，并从某种角度导致不公正的结果，但它也会导致一个更稳定的局势，让战后时代真正开始。

只有当战争真正结束时，和平才会稳固。

现在，各种多边组织把干预其他国家人民的战争作为自己的工作。

这些实体的决定性特征是，它们在拒绝参与战斗的同时将自己插入战争局势中。

从长远来看，这只会增加损失。

如果联合国帮助强者更快、更果断地击败弱者，它实际上会增强战争的和平潜力。

但联合国维和特遣队的首要任务是避免自己的人员伤亡。

因此，部队指挥官习惯性地安抚当地较强的部队，接受其指令并容忍其滥用职权。

这种安抚在战略上是没有目的的，就像站在强国一边一样；相反，它只是反映了每个联合国单位避免对抗的决心。

最后的结果是防止出现一致的结果，而这需要有足够的力量失衡来结束战斗。

对暴力保持警惕的维和人员也无法有效地保护被卷入战斗或被蓄意攻击的平民。

分在最好的情况下，联合国维和部队是暴行和屠杀的被动观众，如在波斯尼亚和卢旺达；

在最坏的情况下，他们与暴行合作，如荷兰联合国部队在斯雷贝尼察的陷落中帮助波斯尼亚塞族人将军龄男子与其他人口分开。

同时，联合国部队的存在抑制了濒临危险的平民的正常补救措施，即逃离战斗区。

处于危险中的平民被蒙蔽了，以为他们会受到保护，所以一直留在原地，直到逃离时为时已晚。

在1992-94年围攻萨拉热窝期间，绥靖与保护的幌子以一种特别反常的方式互动：

联合国人员检查了飞出的航班，以防止萨拉热窝平民在遵守与当地占主导地位的波斯尼亚塞族人谈判达成的停火协议的情况下逃跑，而塞族人经常违反该协议。

对于一场激烈的战争，更明智、更现实的反应是穆斯林要么逃离城市，要么把塞族人赶走。

欧洲联盟、西欧联盟和欧洲安全与合作组织等机构甚至缺乏联合国的基本指挥结构和人员，但它们现在也在寻求对战争局势进行干预，其后果可想而知。

由于缺乏理论上能够作战的部队，它们通过派遣非武装或轻型武装的 "观察团 "来满足成员国的干预主义冲动（或自己的机构野心），这与联合国维和特派团有同样的问题，只是更加严重。

北约或西非维和部队（ECOMOG，最近在塞拉利昂工作）等军事组织有能力阻止战争。

他们的干预仍然具有延长战争状态的破坏性后果，但他们至少可以保护平民免受战争的影响。

然而，即使这样的情况也经常发生，因为参与无私干预的多国军事指挥部倾向于避免任何战斗的风险，从而限制了他们的有效性。

例如，在波斯尼亚的美军多次未能逮捕通过其检查站的已知战犯，以免引起对抗。

此外，多国指挥部发现很难控制成员国部队的质量和行为，这可能会使所有参与的部队的表现降低到最低的共同标准。

本来优秀的英国部队在波斯尼亚和尼日利亚海军陆战队在塞拉利昂都是如此。

外部观察员很少能发现部队退化的现象，尽管它的后果在这种干预行动中出现的大量死亡、残缺、强奸和折磨的受害者中非常明显。

罕见的例外情况说明了事情的真实情况，比如在波斯尼亚的丹麦坦克营，他们对任何攻击的回应都是全力反击，迅速停止了战斗。

第一次 "后英雄主义 "战争

然而，北约目前为了科索沃而对塞尔维亚进行的干预，使所有以前的无利害关系战争的例子和其残缺的局限性都蒙上了阴影。

北约仅仅依靠空中力量将北约的伤亡风险降到最低，对塞尔维亚、黑山和科索沃的目标进行了连续数周的轰炸，却没有损失一名飞行员。

这种看似神奇的对南斯拉夫高射炮和导弹的免疫力是通过多层次的预防措施实现的。

首先，尽管所有的噪音和图像都表明这是一次大规模的行动，但在最初的几个星期里，实际飞行的攻击架次非常少。

这降低了飞行员和飞机的风险，当然也将轰炸范围限制在北约潜力的一小部分。

第二，空袭行动首先针对的是防空系统，最大限度地减少了现在和未来的盟军伤亡，尽管代价是非常有限的破坏和任何冲击效应的丧失。

第三，北约避开了大多数防空武器，不是从最佳高度而是从15,000英尺或更高的超安全高度释放弹药。

第四，联盟大大限制了其在不太完美的天气条件下的行动。

北约官员抱怨说，浓密的云层阻碍了轰炸行动，常常将夜间行动限制在对已知位置的固定目标进行几枚巡航导弹的打击。

事实上，云层上限所禁止的并不是所有的轰炸--低空攻击很容易发生，而是完全安全的轰炸。

在远在高空飞行的飞机下面的地面上，一小群塞族士兵和警察驾驶着装甲车正在恐吓数十万阿族科索沃人。

北约有一系列专门用于寻找和摧毁这种车辆的飞机。

所有的大国都有反坦克直升机，其中一些装备可以在没有基地支持的情况下作战。

但在种族清洗开始时，没有一个国家提出将它们派往科索沃，毕竟它们可能被击落。

当驻扎在德国的美国 "阿帕奇 "直升机最终被派往阿尔巴尼亚时，尽管多年来为它们的即时 "准备 "投入了大量开支，但它们需要三个多星期的 "部署前准备 "才能完成旅程。

战争开始六周后，"阿帕奇 "还没有飞出它们的第一次任务，尽管有两架已经在训练中坠毁了。

导致这一短暂延迟的不仅仅是官僚主义的拖延：

美国陆军坚持认为阿帕奇飞机不能单独行动，而是需要重型火箭炮的支持来压制塞尔维亚的防空武器。

这就造成了比阿帕奇单独行动大得多的后勤负担，以及额外的、显然是受欢迎的延迟。

甚至在阿帕奇传奇开始之前，北约已经有部署在意大利基地的飞机，可以同样完成这项工作：

美国的A-10 "疣猪 "战机使用了强大的30毫米反坦克炮，英国皇家空军的 "鹞 "式战斗机是近距离低空轰炸的理想选择。这两种飞机都没有被使用，同样是因为它不能在完全安全的情况下进行。

在北约民主国家的计算中，拯救数千名阿尔巴尼亚人免遭屠杀和数十万人免遭驱逐的直接可能性，显然不值得几个飞行员的生命。

这可能反映了不可避免的政治现实，但它表明了即使是大规模的无私干预也可能无法实现其表面上的人道主义目标。

值得思考的是，如果北约什么都不做，科索沃人的处境是否会更好。

难民国家

在所有的战争干预中，最无利害关系和最具破坏性的是人道主义救援活动。

最大和最持久的是联合国救济和工程处（UNRWA）。

它是根据其前身联合国救济和恢复机构（UNRRA）的模式建立的，该机构在第二次世界大战后立即在欧洲经营流离失所者营地。

近东救济工程处在1948-49年阿以战争后立即成立，为逃离前巴勒斯坦领土上以色列区的阿拉伯难民提供食物、住所、教育和保健服务。

难民营阻止 但近东救济工程处在黎巴嫩、叙利亚、约旦的难民营融合，抑制了移民，并使大多数阿拉伯村民以前享有的，怨恨的火焰。

通过让难民在简陋的条件下生存，鼓励他们迅速移民或在当地重新安置，近东救济工程处在欧洲的难民营平息了战后的怨恨，并帮助分散了民族团体的反叛集中。 

西岸和加沙地带总体上提供了比更多的饮食、有组织的学校教育、优越的医疗护理更高的生活标准，并且没有在石质的田地里从事艰苦的劳动。

因此，它们产生了相反的效果，成为理想的家园，而不是被急切抛弃的过渡营。

在几个阿拉伯国家的鼓励下，近东救济工程处将逃离的平民变成了终身的难民，他们生下了难民儿童，而这些儿童又有了自己的难民儿童。

在其半个世纪的运作中，近东救济工程处因此使巴勒斯坦难民民族长期存在，使其怨恨保持在1948年时的新鲜状态，并使反叛主义情绪的最初萌芽保持完整。

由于近东救济工程处的存在，它阻止了人们融入当地社会，并抑制了移民。

此外，巴勒斯坦人集中在难民营中，为武装组织自愿或被迫征召难民青年入伍提供了便利，这些组织既与以色列作战，也与对方作战。

近东救济工程处助长了半个世纪的阿以暴力，并且仍然阻碍着和平的到来。

如果每场欧洲战争都有自己的战后近东救济工程处参加，那么今天的欧洲就会充斥着巨大的难民营，收容数百万背井离乡的加洛-罗马人、被遗弃的汪达尔人、战败的勃艮第人和错位的西哥特人的后代，更不用说1945年后苏台德人（其中300万人在1945年被驱逐出捷克斯洛伐克）等更近的难民民族。

这样的欧洲将仍然是一个由交战部落组成的马赛克，在各自的饲养营中未被消化和调和。

帮助每一个人可能会安抚良知，但它会导致永久的不稳定和暴力。

近东救济工程处在其他地方也有对应的机构，例如泰国边境的柬埔寨难民营，这些难民营顺便为大肆屠杀的红色高棉提供了安全庇护所。

但由于联合国受到各国吝啬的捐款的限制，这些难民营对和平的破坏至少是局部的。

现在援助战争难民的非政府组织(NGOS)数量激增，竞争激烈，但情况并非如此。

像其他机构一样，这些非政府组织对延续自己的利益感兴趣，这意味着他们的首要任务是通过在高能见度情况下的活跃吸引慈善捐款。

只有最引人注目的自然灾害才会吸引大众媒体的注意，而且只是短暂的；

地震或洪水过后不久，摄像机就会离开。

相比之下，战争难民如果集中在交通便利的营地里，就能赢得持续的新闻报道。

发达国家之间的定期战争很少，为这些非政府组织提供的机会也很少，所以他们把工作重点放在援助世界上最贫穷地区的难民上。

这确保了所提供的食物、住所和保健服务--尽管按照西方的标准是糟糕的--超过了当地为非难民提供的服务。

其后果是完全可以预见的。

在许多例子中，刚果民主共和国与卢旺达交界处的巨大难民营最为突出。

他们维持着一个胡图族，而这个民族在其他情况下会被驱散，使卢旺达的巩固成为不可能，并为激进分子提供了一个基地，使他们能够越过边界发动更多的图西族杀戮。

人道主义干预恶化了稳定、长期解决卢旺达紧张局势的机会。

让难民国家保持完整并永远保留他们的怨恨已经很糟糕了，但将物质援助插入正在进行的冲突中则更加糟糕。

许多在神圣的气味中运作的非政府组织经常向活跃的战斗人员提供物资。

在毫无防备的情况下，他们无法将武装战士排除在他们的供餐站、诊所和庇护所之外。

由于难民被推定为处于失败的一方，他们中的战士通常都在撤退。

通过干预帮助，非政府组织有计划地阻碍敌人取得决定性的胜利，从而结束战争。

有时NGOS，公正到一定程度，甚至帮助双方，从而阻止了双方的疲惫和由此产生的解决。

而在一些极端的情况下，如索马里，非政府组织甚至向当地的战争团伙支付保护费，而这些团伙则用这些资金来购买武器。

因此，这些非政府组织是在帮助延长战争，而他们表面上是想减轻战争的后果。

以战养战

如今有太多的战争变成了永远不会结束的地方性冲突，因为决定性的胜利和疲惫的转型效果都被外部干预所阻挡。

然而，与古老的战争问题不同，无利害关系的干预加剧了战争的弊端，这是一种新的弊端，可以得到遏制。

政策精英们应该积极抵制干预其他国家人民战争的情感冲动--不是因为他们对人类的苦难漠不关心，而恰恰是因为他们关心苦难，希望促进和平的到来。

美国应该劝阻多边干预，而不是领导这些干预。

应该为联合国的难民救济活动制定新的规则，以确保在立即救助之后迅速进行遣返、当地吸收或移民，排除建立永久性难民营的可能性。

尽管可能无法限制干预性非政府组织，但至少不应正式鼓励或资助它们。

在这些看似反常的措施背后，是对战争自相矛盾的逻辑的真正理解，以及对

让战争发挥其唯一有用功能的承诺：

带来和平。

Give war a chance

Edward N Luttwak

Foreign Affairs, Jul/Aug 1999; 78, 4; ABI/INFORM Global Pg. 36

Give War a Chance

Edward N. Luttwak

PREMATURE PEACEMAKING 

AN UNPLEASANT truth often overlooked is that although war is a great evil, it does have a great virtue: it can resolve political conflicts and lead to peace. This can happen when all belligerents become exhausted or when one wins decisively. Either way the key is that the fighting must continue until a resolution is reached. War brings peace only after passing a culminating phase of violence. Hopes of military success must fade for accommodation to become more attractive than further combat.

Since the establishment of the United Nations and the enshrinement of great-power politics in its Security Council, however, wars among lesser powers have rarely been allowed to run their natural course. Instead, they have typically been interrupted early on, before they could burn themselves out and establish the preconditions for a lasting settlement. Cease-fires and armistices have frequently been imposed under the aegis of the Security Council in order to halt fighting. NATO's intervention in the Kosovo crisis follows this pattern.

But a cease-fire tends to arrest war-induced exhaustion and lets belligerents reconstitute and rearm their forces. It intensifies and prolongs the struggle once the cease-fire ends-and it does usually end. This was true of the Arab-Israeli war of 1948-49, which might have come to closure in a matter of weeks if two cease-fires ordained by the Security Council had not let the combatants recuperate. It has recently been true in the Balkans. Imposed cease-fires frequently interrupted the fighting between Serbs and Croats in Krajina, between the forces of the rump Yugoslav federation and the Croat army, and between the Serbs, Croats, and Muslims in Bosnia. Each time, the opponents used the pause to recruit, train, and equip additional forces for further combat, prolonging the war and widening the scope of its killing and destruction. Imposed armistices, meanwhile again, unless followed by negotiated peace accords artificially freeze conflict and perpetuate a state of war indefinitely by shielding the weaker side from the consequences of refusing to make concessions for peace.

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The Cold War provided compelling justification for such behavior by the two superpowers, which sometimes collaborated in coercing less-powerful belligerents to avoid being drawn into their conflicts and clashing directly. Although imposed cease-fires ultimately did increase the total quantity of warfare among the lesser powers, and armistices did perpetuate states of war, both outcomes were clearly lesser evils (from a global point of view) than the possibility of nuclear war. But today, neither Americans nor Russians are inclined to intervene competitively in the wars of lesser powers, so the unfortunate consequences of interrupting war persist while no greater danger is averted. It might be best for all parties to let minor wars burn themselves out.

THE PROBLEMS OF PEACEKEEPERS

TODAY CEASE-FIRES and armistices are imposed on lesser powers by multilateral agreement-not to avoid great-power competition but for essentially disinterested and indeed frivolous motives, such as television audiences' revulsion at harrowing scenes of war. But this, perversely, can systematically prevent the transformation of war into peace. The Dayton accords are typical of the genre: they have condemned Bosnia to remain divided into three rival armed camps, with combat suspended momentarily but a state of hostility prolonged indefinitely. Since no side is threatened by defeat and loss, none has a sufficient incentive to negotiate a lasting settlement; because no path to peace is even visible, the dominant priority is to prepare for future war rather than to reconstruct devastated economies and ravaged societies. Uninterrupted war would certainly have caused further suffering and led to an unjust outcome from one perspective or another, but it would also have led to a more stable  situation that would have let the postwar era truly begin. Peace takes hold only when war is truly over.

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A variety of multilateral organizations now make it their business to intervene in other peoples' wars. The defining characteristic of these entities is that they insert themselves in war situations while refusing to engage in combat. In the long run this only adds to the damage. If the United Nations helped the strong defeat the weak faster and more decisively, it would actually enhance the peacemaking potential of war. But the first priority of U.N. peacekeeping contingents is to avoid casualties among their own personnel. Unit commanders therefore habitually appease the locally stronger force, accepting its dictates and tolerating its abuses. This appeasement is not strategically purposeful, as siding with the stronger power overall would be; rather, it merely reflects the determination of each U.N. unit to avoid confronta- tion. The final result is to prevent the emergence of a coherent outcome, which requires an imbalance of strength sufficient to end the fighting.

Peacekeepers chary of violence are also unable to effectively protect civilians who are caught up in the fighting or deliberately attacked. At best, U.N. peacekeeping forces have been passive spectators to outrages and massacres, as in Bosnia and Rwanda; at worst, they collaborate with it, as Dutch U.N. troops did in the fall of Srebenica by helping the Bosnian Serbs separate the men of military age from the rest of the population.

The very presence of U.N. forces, meanwhile, inhibits the normal remedy of endangered civilians, which is to escape from the combat zone. Deluded into thinking that they will be protected, civilians in danger remain in place until it is too late to flee. During the 1992-94 siege of Sarajevo, appeasement interacted with the pretense of protection in an especially perverse manner: U.N. personnel inspected outgoing flights to prevent the escape of Sarajevo civilians in obedience to a cease-fire agreement negotiated with the locally dominant Bosnian Serbs who habitually violated that deal. The more sensible, realistic response to a raging war would have been for the Muslims to either flee the city or drive the Serbs out.

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Institutions such as the European Union, the Western European Union, and the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe lack even the U.N.'s rudimentary command structure and personnel, yet they too now seek to intervene in warlike situations, with predictable consequences. Bereft of forces even theoretically capable of combat, they satisfy the interventionist urges of member states (or their own institutional ambitions) by sending unarmed or lightly armed "observer" missions, which have the same problems as U.N. peacekeeping missions, only more so.

Military organizations such as NATO or the West African Peacekeeping Force (ECOMOG, recently at work in Sierra Leone) are capable of stopping warfare. Their interventions still have the destructive consequence of prolonging the state of war, but they can at least protect civilians from its consequences. Even that often fails to happen, however, because multinational military commands engaged in disinterested interventions tend to avoid any risk of combat, thereby limiting their effectiveness. U.S. troops in Bosnia, for example, repeatedly failed to arrest known war criminals passing through their checkpoints lest this provoke confrontation.

Multinational commands, moreover, find it difficult to control the quality and conduct of member states' troops, which can reduce the performance of all forces involved to the lowest common denominator. This was true of otherwise fine British troops in Bosnia and of the Nigerian marines in Sierra Leone. The phenomenon of troop degradation can rarely be detected by external observers, although its consequences are abundantly visible in the litter of dead, mutilated, raped, and tortured victims that attends such interventions. The true state of affairs is illuminated by the rare exception, such as the vigorous Danish tank battalion in Bosnia that replied to any attack on it by firing back in full force, quickly stopping the fighting.

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THE FIRST "POST-HEROIC" WAR

ALL PRIOR examples of disinterested warfare and its crippling limitations, however, have been cast into shadow by NATO's current intervention against Serbia for the sake of Kosovo. The alliance has relied on airpower alone to minimize the risk of NATO casualties, bombing targets in Serbia, Montenegro, and Kosovo for weeks with- out losing a single pilot. This seemingly miraculous immunity from Yugoslav anti-aircraft guns and missiles was achieved by multiple layers of precautions. First, for all the noise and imagery suggestive of a massive operation, very few strike sorties were actually flown during the first few weeks. That reduced the risks to pilots and aircraft but of course also limited the scope of the bombing to a mere fraction of NATO's potential. Second, the air campaign targeted air-defense systems first and foremost, minimizing present and future allied casualties, though at the price of very limited destruction and the loss of any shock effect. Third, NATO avoided most anti-aircraft weapons by releasing munitions not from optimal altitudes but from an ultra-safe 15,000 feet or more. Fourth, the alliance greatly restricted its operations in less-than-perfect weather conditions. NATO officials complained that dense clouds were impeding the bombing campaign, often limiting nightly operations to a few cruise-missile strikes against. fixed targets of known location. In truth, what the cloud ceiling prohibited was not all bombing-low-altitude attacks could easily have taken place-but rather perfectly safe bombing.

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On the ground far beneath the high-flying planes, small groups of Serb soldiers and police in armored vehicles were terrorizing hundreds of thousands of Albanian Kosovars. NATO has a panoply of aircraft designed for finding and destroying such vehicles. All its major powers have anti- tank helicopters, some equipped to operate without base support. But no country offered to send them into Kosovo when the ethnic cleansing began after all, they might have been shot down. When U.S. Apache helicopters based in Germany were finally ordered to Albania, in spite of the vast expenditure devoted to their instantaneous "readiness" over the years, they required more than three weeks of "predeployment prepara- tions" to make the journey. Six weeks into the war, the Apaches had yet to fly their first mission, although two had already crashed during training. More than mere bureaucratic foot-dragging was responsible for this inor- dinate delay: the U.S. Army insisted that the Apaches could not operate on their own, but would need the support of heavy rocket barrages to suppress Serb anti-aircraft weapons. This created a much larger logistical load than the Apaches alone, and an additional, evidently welcome delay. Even before the Apache saga began, NATO already had aircraft deployed on Italian bases that could have done the job just as well: U.S. A-10 "Warthogs" built around their powerful 30 mm antitank guns and British Royal Air Force Harriers ideal for low-altitude bombing at close range. Neither was employed, again because it could not be done in perfect safety. In the calculus of the NATO democracies, the immediate possibility of saving thousands of Albanians from massacre and hundreds of thousands from deportation was obviously not worth the lives of a few pilots. That may reflect unavoidable political reality, but it demonstrates how even a large-scale disinterested intervention can fail to achieve its ostensibly humanitarian aim. It is worth wondering whether the Kosovars would have been better off had NATO Simply done nothing.

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REFUGEE NATIONS

THE MOST disinterested of all interventions in war and the most destructive are humanitarian relief activities. The largest and most protracted is the United Nations Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA). It was built on the model of its predecessor, the United Nations Relief and Rehabilitation Agency (UNRRA), which operated displaced-persons' camps in Europe immediately after World War II. The UNRWA was established immediately after the 1948-49 Arab-Israeli war to feed, shelter, educate, and provide health services for Arab refugees who had fled Israeli zones in the former territory of Palestine.

Refugee camps prevent But UNRWA camps in Lebanon, Syria, Jordan, integration, inhibit emigration, and keep most Arab villagers had previously enjoyed, resentments aflame.

By keeping refugees alive in spartan conditions that encouraged their rapid emigration or local resettlement, the UNRRA's camps in Europe had assuaged postwar resentments and helped disperse revanchist concentrations of national groups. the West Bank, and the Gaza Strip provided on the whole a higher standard of living than with a more varied diet, organized schooling, superior medical care, and no backbreaking labor in stony fields. They had, therefore, the opposite effect, becoming desirable homes rather than eagerly abandoned transit camps. With the encouragement of several Arab countries, the UNRWA turned escaping civilians into lifelong refugees who gave birth to refugee children, who have in turn had refugee children of their own.

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During its half-century of operation, the UNRWA has thus perpetuated a Palestinian refugee nation, preserving its resentments in as fresh a condition as they were in 1948 and keeping the first bloom of revanchist emotion intact. By its very existence, the UNRWA dissuades integration into local society and inhibits emigration. The concentration of Palestinians in the camps, moreover, has facilitated the voluntary or forced enlistment of refugee youths by armed organizations that fight both Israel and each other. The UNRWA has contributed to a half- century of Arab-Israeli violence and still retards the advent of peace.

If each European war had been attended by its own postwar UNRWA, today's Europe would be filled with giant camps for millions of descendants of uprooted Gallo-Romans, abandoned Vandals, defeated Burgundians, and misplaced Visigoths-not to speak of more recent refugee nations such as post-1945 Sudeten Germans (three million of whom were expelled from Czechoslovakia in 1945). Such a Europe would have remained a mosaic of warring tribes, undigested and unreconciled in their separate feeding camps. It might have assuaged consciences to help each one at each remove, but it would have led to permanent instability and violence.

The UNRWA has counterparts elsewhere, such as the Cambodian camps along the Thai border, which incidentally provided safe havens for the mass-murdering Khmer Rouge. But because the United Nations is limited by stingy national contributions, these camps' sabotage of peace is at least localized.

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That is not true of the proliferating, feverishly competitive non- governmental organizations (NGOS) that now aid war refugees. Like any other institution, these NGOs are interested in perpetuating themselves, which means that their first priority is to attract charitable contributions by being seen to be active in high-visibility situations. Only the most dramatic natural disasters attract any significant mass-media attention, and then only briefly; soon after an earthquake or flood, the cameras depart. War refugees, by contrast, can win sustained press coverage if kept concentrated in reasonably accessible camps. Regular warfare among well-developed countries is rare and offers few opportunities for such NGOS, so they focus their efforts on aiding refugees in the poorest parts of the world. This ensures that the food, shelter, and health care offered-although abysmal by Western standards exceeds what is locally available to non-refugees. The consequences are entirely predictable. Among many examples, the huge refugee camps along the Democratic Republic of Congo's border with Rwanda stand out. They sustain a Hutu nation that would other- wise have been dispersed, making the consolidation of Rwanda impossible and providing a base for radicals to launch more Tutsi-killing raids across the border. Humanitarian intervention has worsened the chances of a stable, long-term resolution of the tensions in Rwanda.

To keep refugee nations intact and preserve their resentments forever is bad enough, but inserting material aid into ongoing conflicts is even worse. Many NGOS that operate in an odor of sanctity routinely supply active combatants. Defenseless, they cannot exclude armed warriors from their feeding stations, clinics, and shelters. Since refugees are presumptively on the losing side, the warriors. among them are usually in retreat. By intervening to help, NGOS systematically impede the progress of their enemies toward a decisive victory that could end the war. Sometimes NGOS, impartial to a fault, even help both sides, thus preventing mutual exhaustion and a resulting settlement. And in some extreme cases, such as Somalia, NGOs even pay protection money to local war bands, which use those funds to buy arms. Those NGOs are therefore helping prolong the warfare whose consequences they ostensibly seek to mitigate.

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MAKE WAR TO MAKE PEACE

TOO MANY wars nowadays become endemic conflicts that never end because the transformative effects of both decisive victory and exhaustion are blocked by outside intervention. Unlike the ancient problem of war, however, the compounding of its evils by disinterested interventions is a new malpractice that could be curtailed. Policy elites should actively resist the emotional impulse to intervene in other peoples' wars-not because they are indifferent to human suffering but precisely because they care about it and want to facilitate the advent of peace. The United States should dissuade multilateral interventions instead of leading them. New rules should be established for U.N. refugee relief activities to ensure that immediate succor is swiftly followed by repatri- ation, local absorption, or emigration, ruling out the establishment of permanent refugee camps. And although it may not be possible to constrain interventionist NGOs, they should at least be neither officially encouraged nor funded. Underlying these seemingly perverse measures would be a true appreciation of war's paradoxical logic and a commitment to let it serve its sole useful function: to bring peace.