In 1938, Hitler used the grievances of ethnic Germans to justify his seizure of the Sudetenland from Czechoslovakia. The Russians claim to see a parallel between Chechnya and Kosovo. Even those who support the concept of just intervention disagree on how to define it. The chief prosecutor of the UN war crimes tribunal disclosed in December that she was evaluating evidence compiled by her staff that NATO commanders and pilots may have violated international law in conducting airstrikes against Yugoslavia. Press reports of the investigation led to its sudden termination.
Civil war is a major fact of life around the world.
According to the US Institute of Peace, about 95 ethnic groups are involved in some sort of violent conflict. The current total of refugees is 21.5 million. Indonesia's violent suppression of East Timor last August made headlines, but most of us have never heard of conflicts like the one in Sri Lanka that has claimed 60,000 lives so far. Intervention in more than a fraction of these struggles is not possible. In a culture that supposes there is a solution to every problem, this is a difficult proposition to accept.