Thinking the unthinkable: Could human life have a price?

What price human life? For most, the question is academic. Dying, we cannot buy life; alive, we cannot sell it, yet yesterday, today and tomorrow we set a price.

Yesterday in Europe, Jews were slave labor. To the Nazis, Jewish lives held no more worth than their labor, and even that small value belonged to the SS, not the laborers. In "Schindler's List," Oskar Schindler contracts with German officials to hire labor for his factory. In the beginning, he values his workers for the profit they bring. Time passes, Schindler prospers and the Nazis decide to kill all Jews in the city where Schindler's factory operates. Now a rich man, Schindler can return home to a life of luxury. Instead, he buys the lives of his workers from the commandant of the labor camp where they are interred. For Schindler, this transaction, unlike his initial contract hiring Jews from the SS, represents neither the desire to purchase cheap labor nor the desire to profit, but rather a newfound belief that Jewish lives have a value beyond labor, beyond money.

Today in Europe, war has claimed the former Yugoslavia, and lives are once again bought and sold. Today, the unit of currency is neither marks nor labor but national prestige and national interests. The western democracies have the strength to end the war but do nothing. The United States has determined that unless national interests are at stake, then the price of a Bosnian or Serb is too dear--we aren't in the market.

Tomorrow in Europe, the world must make a decision. Eastern Europe has been the cradle of world conflict. Both world wars began there; some of the world's oldest ethnic rivalries still remain. With increasingly strong right-wing movements gaining influence in countries such as Poland, Russia and Lithuania, the possibility for conflict has escalated; the nationalist tensions repressed by Soviet domination have once again appeared as planks in right-wing platforms, and history has shown that strong nationalistic tendencies have the incendiary capability to bring underlying ethnic conflicts to full-fledged confrontations. If ethnic strife surfaces in other countries of the former communist bloc, the West must have a coordinated policy. To waiver and vacillate as it has done in Yugoslavia would devastate western credibility. From a policy standpoint, then, the West must soon decide: What price human life in Eastern Europe?

The question is blunt but accurate. Every time we decline to prevent genocide, we set a price on human life. Unfortunately, the decision to "buy" lives is not as easy for a government as it was for Schindler. Because of limited resources, the U.S. cannot prevent conflict everywhere. Were the government to declare it our moral obligation to intervene in the former Yugoslavia yet not simultaneously intervene in the Sudan, Syria, Cambodia or any other nation that routinely butchers its populace, then our government would implicitly be declaring itself immoral. At the same time, were the U.S. to act only to further concrete national interests, then it would deny itself opportunities to make the "right" decisions. Somehow, we must walk a difficult path between immorality on one side and the freedom to make the "right" decisions on the other.

Last month, I would have instinctively argued, "The problem is easily solved: Governments must protect their citizens' interests first and right international injustices second." I still believe a government's primary obligation is to its citizens, but after seeing "Schindler's List," I must ask myself, "What price human life?" Honestly answering that question makes a realpolitik solution to international affairs difficult. Life is, to use a hackneyed phrase, beyond price.

Unthinking, I might assuage my conscience by arguing for government intervention to correct international wrongs. My voice is weak, my opinions irrelevant to policy considerations. I could demand the government do "something"; I could proclaim my support for bombing runs. Secretly in my heart, however, I would know the falsehoods. As much as I deplore the conflicts, a government must have other interests besides international justice.

In the two weeks since I saw "Schindler's List," I've asked myself and any friends who cared to listen, "If it is not in the national interest to intervene in the former Yugoslavia and we cannot intervene by claiming that intervention is the moral thing to do, how can I reasonably argue for intervention, which I know to be the `right' action?" Unfortunately, I have no answer; perhaps an answer doesn't exist; perhaps foreign policy is, at best, a game of amorality rather than "rights" or "wrongs."