Kosovo

DRAFT: 3.30.99
WHY KOSOVO?
By Majid Tehranian

The NATO attack on Yugoslavia has lent itself to many conflicting
interpretations.   Which of these interpretations is closest to the mark?

Is the war essentially a humanitarian operation, as NATO claims, to save
Kosovo from ethnic cleansing by the Serbs?   If yes, why doesn't NATO act
to deter its own member, Turkey, from its systematic oppression of its
Kurdish population.  Why were the genocides in Cambodia, Ethiopia, and
Rwanda-Burundi ignored?

Is the war essentially a grand NATO strategy to contain a declining yet
dangerous Russia that is still armed with weapons of mass destruction?
Poland, the Czeck Republic, and Hungary have already been incorporated
into NATO as full members.   Other Eastern European countries are
observers in NATO as Partners for Peace.  Yugoslavia is the most
recalticerant state in the region and must be subdued if  NATO expansion
is to succeed.

Is the war part of a grand scheme to pacify the Balkans as a route for the
transport of Caspian oil to the European markets via a pipeline through
Turkey that would lessen Western dependence on the Persian Gulf oil
supplies?

Is the war an age-old struggle between Muslims and Christians for which
Albanians and Serbs are acting as surrogates now with Turkey and Greece
edging toward war? 

Is the war a grand strategy of the foxy Russians to trap the United States
in two un-winnable air wars at the same time in Iraq and Yugoslavia in
order to demote the U. S. as the single most powerful superpower? 

Is the war part of an emerging new world order led by global capitalism,
call it Pancapitalism if you will, that cannot tolerate the kind of
political stability that ethnic politics is generating in many parts of
the world? 

Or finally, is the war the fuel that a military-industrial complex needs
to keep its weapons up-to-date and its profit margins high, all in the
name of national security?    

These conflicting interpretations are not mutually exclusive.   They may
be all true in various degrees.   What is clear is, however, is that an
opportunity for peaceful resolution of international and inter-ethnic
relations is tragically being lost.   Instead of Anglo-American bombing of
Iraq or NATO attack on Yugoslavia, the world could have by now established
a credible United Nations peacekeeping force to intervene in cases of
outright state aggression or genocide.  That course would have been far
less costly and far more legitimate and humane.   However, in a globalized
world, we do not seem yet to have reached that level of political wisdom
to exchange narrow national interests with broader global objectives by
establishing an effective rule of international law.
______________________
Majid Tehranian is professor of international communication at the
University of Hawaii and director of the Toda Institute for Global Peace
and Policy Research.  His latest books are Technologies of Power:
Information Machines and Democratic Prospects (1990), Restructuring for
World Peace: At the Threshold of the 21st Century (1992), and Global
Communication and World Politics: Domination, Development, and Discourse,
(1999).