Message from Joe Clark, Leader of the PC Party of Canada


The Rt. Hon. Joe Clark on the Kosovo Crisis

* There are never simple choices. Innocent people were being killed before the intervention, as they are now. All avenues other than intervention were tried, and they failed. The question then became whether the world as to stand back and allow actions that were, at one and the same time, a genocide, the forced expulsion of people from their ancient homes, and a pattern of aggression that threatened the stability of a region whose instability has plunged the world into war before.

* There are always reasons not to act. To its shame, the world has found such reasons in Rwanda and Burundi, and elsewhere. That is not a precedent to be proud of, in terms either of humanitarian principles or regional stability. Nor is it a precedent which should bind our hands in circumstances where the prospects of successful intervention might be stronger.

* There is the question of state sovereignty but, as Mr. Milosevic has demonstrated, there are a multitude of ways to violate the sovereignty of one's neighbours. At the end of the day, the question became whether an Alliance, which had tried every other means, should simply stand back, and let events take their murderous course.

* There is no doubt it would have been preferable to act under the broader mandate of the United Nations, and we will want to know, in great detail, how Canada used its unique influence, as a member of the Security Council, and a close friend and ally of the United States of America, to advance that option. This Party formed the government of Canada in a comparable situation, in those critical days just prior to the Gulf War, and we were able to apply the unique influence of Canada to help achieve a United Nations mandate.. There were not the divisions then in the Security Council that prevail today, and a broader mandate may well have been impossible. The question is not whether it would have been easy to achieve such a mandate. The question instead is: how hard did Canada try to use our unique position to persuade both Washington and Moscow, and then Beijing, to achieve a UN mandate? Canadians have a right to know whether we mobilized our diplomatic and political influence with the same intensity in this case that we did so successfully in the conflict in the Gulf.

* There is one issue where it is clear that the Government of Canada has not been straightforward with Parliament and the people. That is with respect to the use of ground troops. It was either naïve or misleading for Canada, and its allies, to pretend we would launch an air campaign without being prepared to consider using ground troops.

* Armed conflict does not allow the luxury of making a qualified commitment -- of saying, "we will be there until the going gets tough, and then we will pull back". If that rule applies generally, it applies with particular force when one's adversary is known to be as ruthless as Mr. Milosevic is.

* The decision of principle was taken when NATO, including Canada, decided we could not stand back. It seems to us that, having made that decision, having made that commitment, NATO cannot rule out taking the steps necessary to honour that commitment. The government of Canada knew, when it agreed to air strikes, that ground troops could well be necessary if we were going to finish what we had decided to start. The Prime Minister and the government should have been more frank (and truthful) with Canadians at the time.