Re: NATO, Kosovo, Russia

 BOMBING SERBIA NOT THE ANSWER
 By Stephen Zunes, Univ. of San Francisco

The ongoing threats of NATO air strikes against Serbia to end the
Milosevic
regime's repression against Kosovo's
Albanian majority is a prime example of the wrong policy
at the wrong time.

The cause is certainly just: The Serbian authorities have imposed
an apartheid-style system on the country's ethnic
Albanian majority and have severely suppressed cultural and
political rights. However, this suppression has been
ongoing since Milosevic revoked Kosovo's autonomy in 1989.
Until a year ago, the Kosovars waged their struggle
 nonviolently, using strikes, boycotts, peaceful demonstrations, and
alternative institutions--indeed, it was one of the
most widespread, comprehensive and sustained nonviolent campaigns
since Gandhi's struggle for Indian
independence earlier this century. However, the world chose to
ignore the Kosovars' nonviolent movement.

Only after a shadowy armed group known as the Kosovo Liberation
Army emerged about a year ago did the
world media, the Clinton Administration and other Western
governments finally take notice..

By waiting for the emergence of a guerrilla group before seeking
a solution, the West gave Slobodan Milosevic the
opportunity to crack down with an even greater level of savagery
than before. The delay has allowed the Kosovar
movement to be taken over by armed ultra-nationalists who are far
less ready to compromise or guarantee the
rights of the Serbian minority in an autonomous or independent Kosovo.

It is a tragedy on which the West squandered a full eight years
when preventative diplomacy could have worked. It
has also given oppressed people around the world a very bad
message: in order to get the West to pay attention to
your plight, you need to take up arms

There are problems with current NATO strategy that run deeper
than its belated response to the problem.

The threatened bombing has led to the withdrawal of the unarmed
OSCE monitors, which served as at least a
partial deterrent to the worst Serb atrocities. As predicted, violence
against the civilian population has dramatically
increased with their departure. Unable to effectively challenged
NATO air power, the Serbs will likely take their
vengeance on the unarmed ethnic Albanian population
should the bombing commence.

The root of the Kosovar crisis, as was the root of the Bosnian
tragedy, is the extreme Serb ethno-nationalism that
 emerged from the collapse of Yugoslavia. The paranoid view of
Serbia as a besieged, isolated, and threatened
nation put forward by Milosevic and other Serbian demagogues
has brought untold tragedy to a once peaceful--if
mildly autocratic--multi-ethnic federated system. The best way
to undermine such dangerous ideologues is through
supporting the growth of a more pluralistic Serbian society, such
as encouraging Serbia's burgeoning
ro-democracy movement.

Instead, the threat of military action only reinforces the Serb's
self-perception that they are a people under siege,
playing right into the hands of Serbian ultranationalists.

Furthermore, as any authority on conflict resolution can attest,
workable conflict resolution cannot come from a
pre-packaged "settlement" imposed from the outside through
threat of force. True conflict resolution can only come
from the interested parties themselves. At best, an imposed
Western formula on Kosovo will result in an uneasy
 truce in a badly divided society that will not heal the wounds,
encourage democracy, or lead to real peace.

There are also questions about the Clinton administration's motivations.

One does not have to be a Serb apologist
to wonder why the U.S. so forcefully pushes for the same rights for
Kosovars in Serbia that they oppose for the
imilarly suppressed Kurds in Turkey. Indeed, the record of both
the current and previous U.S. administrations of
supporting repressive armies against occupied and indigenous peoples is
scandalous.

This has led to uncharitable speculation that Clinton may be motivated
less
out of concern for human rights than by
a desperate search for a post-cold war mission for NATO or perhaps even
an effort to destroy what remains of
Yugoslavia, one of the last European holdouts to an neo-liberal global
order.
This has prompted some on the
American and European left to make an unfortunate alliance
with Serbian ethno-fascists.

 There are still other choices besides bombing and doing nothing.

There could be the deployment of a large-scale, unarmed multinational
force to both monitor the situation and
physically intervene to discourage bloodshed. Direct contact between the

Albanian and Serbian communities within
Kosovo could be facilitated to work out a settlement that would meet the

legitimate needs of both. Greater support
could be given to democratic forces within Serbia. A more creative and
flexible, yet rigorous, enforcement of
economic sanctions against Serbia could be imposed, as well as
re-enforcing the arms embargo against both sides.

On the eve of a new century, the people of the United States and
Europe should not be forced by their
governments to choose between abandoning an entire people to
terror and repression or the unwise utilization of
military power.

Stephen Zunes, recent author of In Focus briefs on Morocco and
Western Sahara and International Terrorism, is
an assistant professor of politics and chair of the Peace & Justice
Studies Program at the University of San
Francisco.
*******************

Dave McReynolds on NATO/Kosovo

Now that NATO has given authorization for the bombing of Yugoslavia,
the question is what response
do socialists and pacifists have to this?

The first problem is that we are not dealing with "good guys".
I know parts of the Left will try to explain
away the NATO action as a steady effort to eliminate the last bastion
of socialism in Europe. I know
that parts of the peace movement will downplay what Milosevic has
done. And I also know - perhaps
most important at these times of crisis - that those of us ten thousand miles
from where the bombs
 are going to fall really don't know all sides of the conflict.
We deal with what the media gives us.
Things always look different when you are standing on the
ground, either in Serbia or in Kosovo.

They are always more complex than they seem at this distance.
Milosevic is not a "good guy", anymore than Saddam Hussein is.
Yet in both cases we should
oppose any assumption that because Milosevic and Hussein are
not nice, therefore NATO is. Or that
because these men are not nice that we have some reason to bomb
hell out of their countries,
impose sanctions on their people, etc. After all, in the matter of "niceness"
what kind of country are
we, that supported Saddam during his long and bloody
war against Iran in the 1980's? Or that
supported the Shah in Iran when the secret police engaged
in torture at least as bad as anything in
Kosovo? How selective in the anger of our TV pundits and
our President, how short their memories.

NATO is taking exactly the position regarding Kosovo
that it opposes when it comes to Turkey,
where the Turkish Kurds are asking for precisely the same
thing as the Albanians in Kosovo - self-
determination. In Turkey we oppose the Kurdish demand
because Turkey is a NATO ally. In Kosovo
we support the drive for self-determination because the U.S.
wants to weaken Milosevic - and he
isn't in NATO.

Terrible tragedies have occured in both situations - but because Turkey is a
NATO ally we hear very
little about Turkish atrocities against the Kurds. Only on the Iraqi side has
the U.S. established a "no
fly zone" to help the Kurds - because in Iraq, we want
Saddam weakened.

The U.S. policy is terribly cynical, as, historically, all nations'
policies are. Cynical or not, the Yugoslav
army is engaged in actions which should be opposed by all reasonable
means short of engaging in
bombing, which has no sanction from the UN, and is applied to Yugoslavia
only because it is weak in
relationship to NATO - NOT BECAUSE THE CAUSE IS
MORE URGENT. All during the Russian
massacres in Cheneya there were no threats of Western bombing -
but I'm afraid the situation is the
same in Kosovo, it is a part of Yugoslavia, has been since close
to the turn of this century, contains
some of the monuments most critical to the Yugoslavs as part
of their history.

Yugoslavia and Kosovo got themselves into this mess when (a)
Milosevic engaged in ruthless
nationalism that rejected any reasonable arrangements for
moderate self-determination in Kosovo.
And (b) when the powerful and nonviolent mass movement in Kosovo,
which had won much Western
support and created a virtual parallel government,
was derailed by the violence of the Kosovo
Liberation Army. The KLA attacked Serbian police
and Serbian civilians. Yugoslavia
counter-attacked brutally.

The KLA took any peaceful accomdation off the table.
Do I support the right of the KLA to use
violence? Sure, any people has that right, just as I supported
the right of the Vietnamese to use
violence. But between supporting the right and thinking that
use of violence is reasonable there is a
huge gap. I should add that while I do support the right of self-determination,

I don't support
nationalism, not in the U.S., and not in Kosovo. In the case of the
Vietnamese it was not simply
self-determination, but also, as in India, an effort to remove a foreign
occupying force. The case for
that is less clear in Kosovo, where the present 90% Albanian population
was not a "steady historic
fact".

The NATO bombing may be painless (for NATO - not for the Serbs)
but it may also prove costly. It is
believed that Yugoslav air defenses are moderately efficient, which
means there may be loss of U.S.
jets. And then ground action to rescue the pilots. If the bombing proves
ineffective, will NATO troops
be sent in? If they are sent in (perhaps to arrest Milosevic) do we have any
sense of how long they
will have to stay, how fierce the fighting is likely to be?

Only in the past few days has the New York Times carried a story
about war crimes committed by
Croatia late in the Bosnian conflict. At that time the Croatian Army
drove tens and tens of thousands
of Serbs from their ancestral homes, killing many in the process.
The Times noted that the role of the
U.S. in training and supplying the Croatians had never been fully
probed and that charges that two
Croatian generals should be arrested for war crimes might embarrass
the U.S. At that time the
Croatian offensive was reported in the West, but with none of the anger
and moral fury that had been
felt when the Serbs had carried out similar ethnic cleansing. Had
the war already so changed us that
we had lost the ability to feel grief, sorrow, and anger when Serbian families
were murdered and
driven out? We were right to feel this about the Serbian attacks
on Muslims and Croats - what
happened to us? Will that happen again if we find NATO forces in
a door to door fight in Serbia?

Any democratic opposition in Serbia (and it does exist) will be largely
destroyed by bombing. The
same is true of any hope for nonviolent alternatives in Kosovo.

There are times when those of us who believe in peace cannot provide
answers. We can be as
truthful as possible, see as clearly as possible, but we may not have answers.

 The irony is that because the US (and NATO) is so heavily armed
there is a temptation to use the
 weapons to prove we need them and, more crucial, to fail to make
any of the concessions and
compromises we might make if we didn't have the weapons. One
reason for disarmament is that it
would make it more essential to pursue peaceful alternatives -
which the US won't pursue as long as
it is armed.

For the moment, beyond opposing the bombing, and opposing the Serbian
attacks on Kosovo, I
think we are without effective solutions. The serious problem is that I believe

Clinton and NATO also
are without effective solutions - but they have the ability to expand
an already disturbing level of
violence.

David McReynolds NYC / March 23, 1999 (I'd also recommend asking War Resisters
League for a
recent issue of the magazine, Nonviolent Action, which has a very good piece in

it by Howard Clark.
Send $l and mention that article to: WRL, 339 Lafayette St., NYC 10012.)