Going extinct on the pain of missing the reality

Dear Misters, Comrades, Brothers, Citizens, My Lords and Reverends as well!
 (to use the highly inclusive way in which Russian beggars and peddlers
addressed the passers by in 1917)

We face here a problem slightly more grave and urgent than establishing the
correct link between class analysis and the world-systems perspective or
establishing whether Immanuel Lazarevich Wallerstein indeed qualifies for
Monthly Review.  We might be going extinct because we are missing the
reality which is grim indeed. We are fast becoming irrelevant.

There is a totally new geopolitical realignment emerging right at the
moment, in the painful cataclysms. Kosovo is not a repetition of  1912,
1914 nor 1917 in any respect (even though Proschyanie Slavyanki -- the
Fairwell of Slavonic Maiden -- the Russian preeminent military march
composed for the Balkan wars of 1910-1912 is rapidly becoming Russia's
national tune).
The situation is fundamentally new, and it looks very much like an instance
of chaotic fluctuations which sets an enduring pattern. Chaos is
unpredictable, we hear from the specialists, and things may turn out in
several very different ways. So far, however, a rather clear mid-term
trajectory emerges.

Miloshevich has been arguably winning. His regime was mightily
reconcolidated for the moment, the fate of his democratic opposition is
sorrowfull, the UCK is evidently smashed (what esle did these breaknecks
expect?), the Kosovo Albanian population was reduced to  thoroughly
intimidated and controllable minority. Russia, visibly failing in her
"market transition", was finally made an overt Serbian ally (something that
Miloshevich could not achieve with Yeltsin in 1992-1996).

Miloshevich's next logical step is to put the Nato in a situation when they
cannot refuse to stop the bombing. That is, to demand the resumption of
talks.
Then he can drag his feet almost forever on returning the Albanian refugees
or introducing domestic "reforms".  (Just like the Abkhazian leadership has
been doing with allowing the Georgian population to return to their homes
in the Gali district of southern Abkhazia where Georgians used to make 99,8
per cent of the population before October 1993). After this failure the
Nato will not gather momentum for another bombing, least of all for a
ground invasion. Miloshevich will stay in power for as long as he can
prevent an internal coup likely coming from either warlords and/or more
pure radical nationalists.

The next logical step for Miiloshevich is to unleash a "terrorist" campaign
against the American troops stationed in Macedonia and Bosnia. Successfully
truck-bombing some US barracks would suffice. Abducting a patrol with the
help of an angry crowd of "common citizens" might do it. A prominent
warlord in the Caucasus told me bluntly that "Americans are essentially
heavily armed whimps. What one needs to do is capture a couple of their
soldiers and drag them on a rope down the street making sure that the CNN
is around to broadcast  the images".

Of course, Miloshevich may turn out to be a bad politician  (he is ruthless
and cunning but he is also very provincial).  Of course, the Nato may
ignore his forthcoming  pleas for talks and resort to ground troops out of
sheer panic, the sense of institutional self-preservation and they may even
win militarily while inducing a sufficient taming patriotic effect at home
(chem chort ne shutit -- devil can play jokes when God is asleep) It is a
chaotic moment as I said.

But so far we observe something quite markedly different.

What we observe is not a resurrgence of imperialism or a partition of the
world along the lines of Lenin's analysis. We witness a massive failure of
the once and would-be hegemonic institutions to support the globalization
of financial capital with coercive, political, and ideological mechanisms.

We observe the beginning of a major mess systemwide (The coercive failure
in Kosovo is just one instance though a signalling one. There was and still
is Saddam's Iraq. What is next?).

We also observe the emergence of the potential alliance of the excluded
states (Serbia-Russia and its sattelites like Belorussia -Iraq-Libya-North
Korea-Cuba ... ?)

Furthermore, it is evident that the previously anti-systemic forces are in
complete disarray. On the one hand, the political credentials of the
current Nato leadership are clearly Leftist -- all socialists, and even
some Greens (recall the jeans-clad bundestag memeber Joschka Fischer, to
many the big hope of the previous decade). Where does Javier Solana come
from? These progressives have a point -- Miloshevich is a political beast
with a very disgusting record -- haven't they? They are desperate to make
Europe safe for democracy and minority rights, aren't they? Precisely
because Miloshevish doesn't seem to be a new Ho Chi Minh or Tito. The stern
father of Yugoslavia or the Vietnamese leader were despotic rulers in their
own right, but they lived in far better historical times when their
political interests could be associated with the state-building
developmentalist projects and therefore many of their Macchiavellian acts
could be absolved by participants and observers alike as serving some
higher noble purpose.  Miloshevich is in trouble because it is hard to
conceive these days such an all-excusing noble grand project. It is
therefore very hard to imagine an anti-war movement in the West resembling
the anti-war protests of the 1960s.

The Serbia of Miloshevich is not alone. It has allies on the far right --
and the neo-Communists of Zyuganov are a conservative party (positionally
-- as a party of nostalgia and strong order) with largely xenophobic
localist rhetoric, deeply ambiguous about the fact that Marx was a Jew.
This alliance is growing very rapidly these days.

We are in the 21st century by all indications.

Yours,
Georgii Derluguian




Georgi M. Derluguian
Assistant Professor
Department of Sociology
Northwestern University
1812 Chicago Avenue
Evanston, Illinois 60208-1330
(847) 491-2741 (rabota)