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Noah Alexander Barshop

ENGW 2325
Pentadic Analysis
30 October 2014
A Just and Necessary War: Where Dramatism and
Geopolitics Meet
Introduction
By May of 1999, Eastern Europeans had seen nearly
a decade of horrors incited by the ethnic conflict between
Christian Serbs and Croatian Muslims in the former
Yugoslav republic. In response to this conflict, and the
accompanying decade of failed NATO solutions that ran
parallel to it, in March of 99 the United States took
charge and directed a more aggressive NATO strategy: an
airstrike campaign against the Serbian army. The
American populace struggled to comprehend the rationale
in this highly televised, destructive campaign, deemed
humanitarian bombing. With domestic criticism rising,
President Bill Clinton had to take helm in reporting on the
conflict and shaping the American publics understanding
of it.
Applying the theories of Kenneth Burkes
dramatistic pentad, I will analyze Clintons essay on the
War in Kosovo to identify the rhetors underlying motives
for this speech act. My analysis will focus the purpose-act
ratio and reveal Clintons intention to reduce a complex
religious, political, and ethnic conflict into a simple tale of
good versus evil, as well as to frame the aerial
bombardment as necessary to save Europe and defend
civilization.
Presentation of Artifact
A month before the War in Kosovo concluded,
President Clinton released an Op-Ed via the New York
Times entitled A Just and Necessary War. In it, Clinton
reports on the aerial campaign in the Balkans, and
explicates on why it is the most viable NATO option.
Though he had spoken on the conflict before, with a
minute long declaration of U.S. support on March 24th,
1999, and many press updates in the month between that
and this essay, A Just and Necessary War is Clintons
culminating piece of justification for the war. The essay

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was clearly written to address the mounting public
criticism; however, it does so in an oblique way,
emphasizing some factors while marginalizing others for a
particular motive.
The introduction frames the entire spectacle: we
are in Kosovo with our allies to stand for a Europe
peaceful, undivided and free. Here the presidents usage
of we ambiguously implicates everyone from the
American people, to NATO, to even the Kosovar Liberation
Army (K.L.A.). This framing continues, And we are there
to stand against the greatest remaining threat of that
vision: instability in the Balkans, fueled by a vicious
campaign of ethnic cleansing. In the next paragraph
Clinton attributes this campaign and its consequences to
a sole agent in the sentence The intolerable conditions
are the result of a decadelong campaign by Slobodan
Milosevic to build a greater Serbia by singling out whole
peoples for destruction because of their ethnicity. Here,
Clinton reduces the agency of thousands of prejudiced
Serbians to one leader, shaping Milosevic as a Stalin-type
persona. The following paragraph explains in depth this
tyrants terror in arming paramilitaries to harm and
expulse ethnic rivals, using Holocaust imagery of murder
and expulsion, and attributing Nazi tendencies of
Eradicating the culture, the heritage, the very record
of his victims to the hell-bent will of Milosevic.
The next crucial section focuses the past eight
years of the conflict, specifically how NATOs neutrality
led to weak compromises that were ultimately broken by
Milosevic another subtle allusion to Nazi Germany that
we should be haunted by. Clinton states the grave
consequences of this passivity: 250,000 people dead,
and no choice but to airstrike.
The remainder of the essay focuses this notion that,
given Milosevics lack of past compliance and what is at
stake (the peace and unity of Europe), the only option is
an aggressive airstrike to aid the victims of his atrocities.
Additionally, Clinton describes the conflict as already won,
with the only variable being the extent to which
Americans support the NATO airstrike campaign and resist
Milosevics attempt to outlast us by dividing the
alliance.
Method of Criticism

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Put simply, the overall role of pentadic criticism is to
ask then answer the question: What is involved when we
say what people are doing and why theyre doing it?
Based in Kenneth Burkes theory of dramatism, pentadic
criticism posits that all attempts to construct meaning
and map symbolic action require the same elements as
dramatic productions or theatrics. The critic analyzes a
particular artifact, and then ascribes the symbolic action
within it to the five main elements of drama: act, agent,
agency, scene, and purpose. These five elements form the
pentad. After the elements of the pentad are assigned, it
is the critics job to uncover how certain elements are
marginalized while others are emphasized, and how the
lens of the situation is expanded or contracted by the
rhetor (which is explored through ratios). Pentadic critics
compare each element of the assigned pentad to the
others in order to reveal how the speaker shapes how
some elements interact with each other and how some
dominate the others. Burke asserted that the ratios
between the elements of drama compose a grammar of
motives which informs the rhetors decision to shape the
story in the way that they do and for the reasons that
they do.
Analysis of Artifact
My analysis of Clintons A Just and Necessary War
yields a pentad featuring the following elements:

Act Standing together and uniting Europe

against Slobodan Milosevic and his genocidal
campaign to establish a greater Serbia
Agent NATO as transnational resistance to
Milosevic
Agency Airstrikes
Scene A Europe divided by the genocidal
dictator Milosevic
Purpose Defeat Milosevic so that Europe
can finally have peace

Clintons essay emphasizes the Purpose-Act ratio.

The Purpose of defeating Milosevic - so that Europe may
finally find peace -shapes the act of standing together
and uniting Europe. It is important to note that most of
Europe and NATO were already behind this strategy at the

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time, and that the biggest opposition to it was domestic:
U.S. citizens.
The scene is set as a divided Europe, rife with
genocidal violence, with U.S., NATO, and the K.L.A. as the
protagonists for peace, and Slobodan Milosevic as the
barbaric antagonist. While this troubling scene informs
the purpose of defending Europe, purpose has more of a
dominant relationship over the other elements of the
pentad. For example, the purpose of defeating Milosevic
so Europe can be united and at peace determines the
necessity of the coalition dedicated to this regions
defense; it determines the appropriate response of
standing together and uniting Europe against the forces
tearing it apart; and it warrants the strategy of airstrikes
to accomplish this. The introduction paragraph sets the
stage of the essay: its us and our allies standing for
Europe against Milosevic and the violence and instability
his vicious campaign of ethnic cleansing is catalyzing.
Additionally, Clinton alludes to this concept of a unified
Europe, which has been dreamt of since before NATO was
even established. Situating the possibility of this utopian
Europe, long sought after but never achieved, as being
conditional on the eradication of the greatest remaining
threat to that vision (Milosevic) which is within our reach
for the first time (by standing united and supporting
airstrikes), Clintons narrative becomes hard to dissent
with. Just one year before the millennium, and Europe can
be united under peace? The dream that was dreamt
through the World Wars and the Cold War, its just a few
bombs over the rainbow? It seems as if we must proceed,
and at all costs.
Clinton defines the Act in the intro statement We
are in Kosovo with our allies to stand for Europe. The
ambiguous we rhetoric coupled with the justification for
the act is used to group not just the U.S. within NATO, but
also to group assistance from non-NATO supporters.
This groups America, NATO, the K.L.A., Russians and a few
unmentioned Muslim nations under one general banner,
without going through the difficulty of explaining the
realist merit of the support from these non-Western
nations. This all is done intentionally by the rhetor to
reduce the complexities of the relevant religious and
geopolitical issues to a simple us versus them fiction.
And in this case there is no them, but him: Milosevic.
Clinton claimed that when it comes to the act, the current
strategy has broad and deep support in the alliance and

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is working and will succeed. Additionally, when he
frames this drama that Milosevics strategy is not to
outgun the West, but to outlast us by dividing the
alliance, the audience begins to question what the value
of their dissent is. The accompanying details of the act
creates this scene where the war is already won by means
of military superiority, but the remaining battleground is
public opinion, which can divide the alliance and thus
allow Milosevics carnage to continue unimpeded. Clinton
uses we and our rhetoric to reinforce the act of
standing with Europe, and also to encompass what
America should do without ever explicitly discussing
America or the American people in the essay.
The message of the speech conveys that in taking a
united stand against Milosevic by supporting the NATO
airstrike campaign the forces of genocide and evil will be
suppressed in Europe forever, leaving in their wake the
long awaited golden era of an undivided, free and
peaceful Europe. The purpose could be defined in a
variety of ways, for example putting the humanitarian
values over the geopolitical ones and making the end of
genocide the primary impetus. However, and we still see
this today in Syria, rallying support around intervening
into a foreign regions affairs with no jurisdiction and the
intent to end a human rights catastrophe is just not very
popular. So, by conveying the purpose as defeating the
greatest remaining threat to the long sought after
paradisal Europe, Clinton weaves an appeal to bring
resolution to a century of violence, separation, and
economic inequality in Europe. And, by creating a drama
with a dominant ratio of Purpose-Act, Clinton leads the
audience to the conclusion that support is the only
answer without thoroughly discussing the agency, an
aggressive aerial campaign, or explicitly addressing the
significant actor in question, the American audience. This
pentad provides reasons why the war is just and
necessary without having to answer to the core of
domestic criticism, which revolved around concerns of
aggression and interventionism.
Conclusion
For A Just and Necessary Conflict, the PurposeAct ratio reveals that the motivation to weave the story
into this particular drama was to stifle domestic criticism
that the war was unjust and unnecessary, as well as to

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paint a picture of the status quo in which this airstrike
campaign was the only option. By constructing rhetoric
about a united stance amongst allies against the terrors
of the genocidal Slobodan Milosevic; positing a peaceful
Europe in reach; describing a scene in which a U.S. led,
NATO supported aerial campaign is the best (and only)
means of getting the job done; and conveying the conflict
as more a matter of coalitional support than of artillery,
President Clintons essay leaves an American dissenter of
the War in Kosovo with the thought, when Im not
standing with NATO for a greater Europe, who am I
standing with? And that question is answered by the
skewed claim, albeit convincing coming direct from the
presidents mouth, that Milosevics only means of
succeeding is dividing the alliance.
Ultimately, my analysis reveals how politicians and
leaders can weave a drama within rhetoric and highlight
the Purpose-Act ratio in order to create meaning from
chaos, shape identities of good ole us and villainous
them, and shape public perception in situations of moral
ambiguity.

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Artifact: http://www.nytimes.com/1999/05/23/opinion/ajust-and-necessary-war.html