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all. He [Solzhenitsyn\ also said that he saw no difference in the behav–
ior of NATO and Hitler."
Perhaps the greedy multinational corporations were seeking new
markets behind the military action; but they were already marketing
their products in these regions. Did NATO or the U.S. seek some geopo–
litical advantage? New bases? NATO troops were already in Macedo–
nia and Bosnia-Herzegovina, and Albania would have welcomed NATO
troops without the Kosovo crisis. Hungary is already a NATO member
providing military bases; Bulgaria and Romania are anxious to join.
None of these possibilities carried much conviction. In the end,
implausible as it might be, one is left with a preponderance of indica–
tions that moral-humanitarian considerations best explain the NATO
involvement.
It
appears that both public opinion (or large parts of it)
and the political elites in the U.S. and other NATO countries reluctantly
and belatedly came to the conclusion that the large scale of methodical
mistreatment of the Kosovar Albanians justified military action even if
no such action took place in other parts of the world on corresponding
occasions. These idealistic motives were somewhat tainted by the deter–
mination not to risk any NATO lives for the good cause.
My TRIP TO HUNGARY in late May, with the airwar still in high gear,
provided both new perspectives and confirmation that responses to the
moral outrages of our times are highly patterned and influenced by fac–
tors other than the magnitude of the outrages in question. While in
Budapest I took every opportunity to discuss Kosovo with the natives–
intellectuals and public figures as well as people of no such distinction,
including taxi drivers, old friends, and members of my family. I also read
the press and listened to radio and television news. Certain parallels in
the attitude of Hungarians and Americans on different sides of the issue
became immediately apparent.
In Hungary, as in the U.S., those opposed to the ruling (right-of-cen–
ter) government were opposed to the war because it was supported by
the government they disliked. In Hungary, too, the liberals were deeply
and unpredictably divided. Agnes Heller, the philosopher and former
disciple of Georg Lukacs, strongly supported NATO and its airstrikes,
while Gyorgy (George) Konrad, the well-known writer and prominent
dissident during the communist regime, objected to them vehemently.
Among the Hungarian critics of NATO, intellectuals or not, one sen–
timent dominated: firm disbelief that such a military campaign could
