for YOU, but if you so think then alos to WSN
g/
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
ANDRE GUNDER FRANK
250 Kensington Ave - Apt 608 Tel: 1-514-933 2539
Westmount/Montreal PQ/QC Fax: 1-514-933 6445
Canada H3Z 2G8 e-mail:agfrank@chass.utoronto.ca
Personal/Professional Home Page> http://csf.colorado.edu/archive/agfrank/
My NATO/Kosovo Page> http://csf.colorado.edu/archive/agfrank/nato_kosovo/
My professional/personal conclusion is the same as Pogo's -
We have met the enemy, and it is US
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
---------- Forwarded message ----------
Date: Mon, 14 Jun 1999 16:48:10 -0700
From: Sid Shniad <shniad@sfu.ca>
Subject: THE TWILIGHT OF THE EUROPEAN PROJECT (long, but very important analysis)
THE TWILIGHT OF THE EUROPEAN PROJECT
By Peter Gowan in CounterPunch
In the midst of the bombing campaign it is impossible for us to grasp
the full significance of the NATO war against Yugoslavia. This is
particularly true for those of us living in NATOland since the war, for
us, is purely synthetic experience, television images as part of our
daily, normal routine and images which are themselves increasingly
routinised and thus normal. Indeed for us the whole war is part of our
everyday routine: yesterday it was Iraq, some newsflashes about Sudan
and somebody with an exotic name in Afghanistan, today Kosovo,
tomorrow Taiwan -- all far away places which we naturally care deeply
about but about which we know little and need to know less.
But one of the significant consequences of the NATO attack on
Yugoslavia is almost certainly that it marks the end of the European
project as a political project for Western and Central Europe. That
political project could only have succeed if the member states of the
European Union had been prepared to stick to their words and
reconstruct the European political order as a norm-based rather than a
power-politics based system, becoming democratic and embracing the
Eastern part of the continent. This war seems certain to bring that effort
to an end. A gathering of intellectuals at the Marc-Bloc Foundation in
Paris on 29th May, entitled 'After the Emotion the Political Reflection'
began to tackle this question seriously. Claude Lanzmann, the producer
of Shoah, the documentary account of the Holocaust spoke. He said
that the NATO attack on Yugoslavia was a new Dreyfus Affair. It is,
but this time with a whole European nation, the Serbs, cast in the role
of Dreyfus. A handful of French intellectuals sensed quickly that the
whole case against Dreyfus was constructed out of lies. Millions upon
millions of people across Europe now see the Serb nation for what it is:
a victim of the power plays of Western powers which have constructed
this war on a foundation of lies, shattering the entire normative
scaffolding upon which the new Europe was supposed to be built.
Powerful States can and so wage wars rooted in fictions and
falsehoods, and get away with it. But attempts to build transnational,
post-nation state structures like the European Union, the Council of
Europe or the OSCE on a power politics that displays contempt for the
supposedly founding principles of such bodies are unlikely to be
sustainable.
The continuation of the European project as a form of political
development for Europe will be possible only if one of two conditions
are met: either the NATO Dreyfus affair in the Western Balkans can be
quickly forgotten in a rapid move to prosperity, peace and hope in a
reconstructed Western Balkans; or the political and intellectual
resources of Europe are mobilised to decisively repudiate the entire
aggressive war against Serbia and against a tolerable future for all the
peoples in that region. Neither of these two conditions seems a remote
possibility. As a result, the European project is likely to become a
Single Market project, harmonised with the requirements of American
business plus a currency under American tutelage. And the tendency
will be for the main West European powers to be constantly involved in
power politics manoeuvres on an American led agenda, manoeuvres
focused largely on mounting chaos in the Eastern and South Eastern
part of the continent.
The NATO attack on Yugoslavia was the result of, American
diplomacy, just as the war itself is essentially an American war
legitimated by the fact that it is run as a NATO war. For many months
during 1998, the West European powers did try to resist the American
drive for a NATO war. Their resistance was partly based upon the fact
that there strategic interests differed from those of the Americans but
the form of their resistance was that of attempting to resolve the
conflict in Yugoslavia by mediation and by peaceful means. But in late
January, 1999 the British and the French governments broke ranks and
lined up behind the Clinton Administration for war.
Thus to understand the current war we have to understand the
character of American aims. There are broadly speaking two
approaches to this question. One approach says that the Clinton
Administration was reacting to events in the Western Balkans in
deciding to go for war. Its aims were governed by the plight of the
Kosovar Albanians. This line of argument then leads to the conclusion
that there was an extraordinary mismatch between US aims and US
methods, a mismatch which the European pundits supporting the war
explain by reference to supposed American stupidity. We will survey
the diplomatic background and the launch of the war to explore the
validity of this theory which we will call the Theory of American
Stupidity. In doing so we will show how the approaches of the US and
the West Europeans to the Kosovo issue in the run-up to war were not
complementary: they were directly contradictory. The US approach
undermined European efforts at mediation and peaceful resolution of
the conflict. The West European approaches constantly undermined the
US drive for war, until the Franco-British turn in January 1999. Those
who support the war need to address this conflict of approaches in
order to provide themselves with a consistent position. They can say
that the European approach was complicit with the Serbian
government; or they can say that the US approach was responsible for
much of the terrible sufferings of the Kosovo Albanians both before the
NATO attack and especially after it had begun. But they should not
evade these issues. But there is a second way of understanding US
aims in launching this war. This says that the Clinton Administration's
drive for war was dictated by US strategic political aims in Europe and
in the international arena and thus that a war against Yugoslavia over
Kosovo was simply an instrument in US geopolitical strategy: the
Kosovo Albanians' plight was a pretext and the Kosovar Albanian
political groups were simply pawns. This view is, of course, anathema
to the media pundits in NATOland, but it is overwhelmingly popular in
the foreign offices and state executives of the states of Europe and of
the entire world. On this view, the war demonstrates one central lesson:
the inability of the main West European powers to sustain a collective
political will in the face of unremitting US pressure. Thus, despite the
very strong political and economic interests of the main West European
capitalist states in maintaining a collective stance in the face of US
manoeuvres over European affairs, their rivalries and vanities can
always ultimately be exploited by the US to divide them. In essence
this gives us a theory of the current war in terms of the West European
states' stupidities. We will examine that theory, which we will call the
Theory of European Stupidity.
Of course, the word 'stupidity' is a polite one, it is a neutral, problem-
solving word, without significant ethical connotations. It is necessary,
perhaps to add that the word is used here in an ironical sense. The
moral and political consequences of this war for Europe are terrible to
contemplate. The hopes of a better future for the continent 10 years ago
are over. Never glad confident morning in Europe again, at least not for
decades. The next phase of European history will be marked by the
efforts of the United States to push further its drive for global
hegemony in Europe and elsewhere. As soon as it has finished its
bombing campaign in the Western Balkans it will switch its pitiless
gaze East towards the coming truly awesome confrontation with China.
Back and forth between Asia and Europe the US will move, attempting
to beat the world into shape for the next millennium. The really strong
arguments for the NATO war are actually the general arguments for
US global hegemony. These take two forms. First, those who actually
believe that US hegemony will produce a new world of global citizens
rights, global prosperity and global justice. Secondly, the pragmatists
argue that we cannot buck the trend, we must bandwagon with the
hegemon in order to subvert it later from within its secure security
zone. That subversion will take the form of transforming hegemonic
dominance into a cosmopolitan set of institutions of global governance
and justice. We will survey those arguments at the end of this article.
PART 1: THE THEORY OF AMERICAN STUPIDITY
The notion of American stupidity is really a British idea. It has been a
double-sided notion throughout the post-war period in Britain: on one
side it is a variety of Anti-Americanism much beloved in the British
upper classes (especially those on the Right); on the other side it is a
message of hope -- perhaps we can be cleverer than the Americans and
manipulate them to our advantage. Thus have the British upper classes
reconciled themselves to being constantly managed -- often for the
benefit of the world's populations, as in the case of Suez -- by
successive American administrations in an uninterrupted progress of
British decline. The notion of American Stupidity is now becoming a
European idea during the course of the present war. It has become the
absolutely central conceptual mechanism for overcoming the
contradictions in the efforts to justify the NATO air war against
Yugoslavia.
These contradictions derive from one single source: the attempt to
explain the origins of the NATO attack as lying in a reactive effort to
respond to the plight of the Kosovar Albanians. The contradictions
disappear if we explain the attack as an attempt involve the European
NATO members in a war to destroy the existing Serbian state. But that
latter explanation raises a great many new questions about this war
which NATO governments are seeking, so far very successfully, to
evade.
The distinction between seeking to help the Kosovar Albanians and
seeking to destroy the existing Serbian state may seem a fine one.
Common sense may suggest that the two goals are simply two sides of
a single coin: supporting one side in a local conflict against the other
side. But the NATO attack on Yugoslavia has involved much more
than support for one side against another. It has entailed a decision by
NATO to overthrow the normative cornerstones of the post-war
international order: the principle of state sovereignty and the outlawing
of aggression against a state without UN Security Council mandate. To
take that step, the NATO powers could not simply claim that they were
opposed to the domestic policies of the Yugoslav state. They had to
claim that they were taking drastic action to save the Kosovo Albanians
from a genocidal catastrophe. More, they had to claim that nothing
other than military aggression against Serbia could prevent the
catastrophe because all other methods had been tried and had failed.
>From this stance come all the contradictions in the NATO position. For
during the 14 months up to the launch of the NATO war, the West
European and Russian governments were in continuous conflict with
the USA over Kosovo, the USA systematically tried to sabotage a
peaceful settlement of the conflict in Yugoslavia and the way in which
the Clinton Administration launched the war invited a genocidal
slaughter of the Kosovo Albanians.
The European variant says that for 14 months the 'International
Community' tried every possible means of resolving the conflict
peacefully. All efforts were thwarted by the Yugoslav authorities. So
there was no choice but to turn to US air power. The US variant claims
that for 14 months the US was struggling to gain agreement to a war
against Yugoslavia, but the Europeans and Russians were blocking
war. But finally, the US managed to push the Russians out of the
picture (along with the UN) and bounce the West Europeans into a just
war that they had been resisting.
These two variants may not appear incompatible, but a glance at that
14 month history shows that they were, because the failure of the
European-Russian efforts to gain a negotiated solution was the direct
result of the activities of the US State Department. Only for a brief
moment at the very start of the current phase of the Kosovo crisis did
the USA appear to be on the same line as the Europeans, in viewing the
KLA as a terrorist group. To search for the real origins of the war we
need to survey this history.
1. The US both encouraged the Serbian government to launch the
counter-insurgency and wanted war against the Serbian government
because of its counter-insurgency. From early March 1998, Albright
wanted war against Serbia on the grounds that the Serbian government
was genocidal. On March 7th, 1998, just after and in response to the
Serbian security force operation in the Benitsar region of Kosovo, she
declared: "We are not going to stand by and watch the Serbian
authorities do in Kosovo what they can no longer get away with doing
in Bosnia." Two days later she reserved the right for the US to take
unilateral action against the Serbian government, saying, 'We know
what we need to know to believe we are seeing ethnic cleansing all
over again.' This remained the US line right the way through from that
first Serbian counter-insurgency drive against the KLA in Benitsar:
Albright demanded war against Serbia. But the signal for the Serbian
government to launch its counter-insurgency in Benistar also,
intriguingly, came from Albright's own State Department. This signal
was given by the United States special envoy to the region,
Ambassador Gelbard. The BBC correspondent in Belgrade reported
that Gelbard flew into Belgrade to brand the KLA as a terrorist group.
' "I know a terrorist when I see one and these men are terrorists," he
said...At the time, the KLA was believed to number just a several
hundred armed men. Mr. Gelbard's words were interpreted in the
Yugoslav capital, Belgrade, as a green light for a security forces
operation against the KLA and the special police conducted two raids
in the Benitsar region in March.'
So the Clinton administration encouraged the Serbian counter-
insurgency in order to liberate the Kosovo Albanians from it through a
NATO war. The Europeans on the other hand, wanted the Serbian
counter-offensive against the KLA to result in an internationally
brokered a compromise peace granting Kosovo Autonomy within
Serbia.
2. The ''international community' tried for 14 months to broker a
peaceful solution, but the Clinton Administration did not. The UN (in
its resolution 1199), the West European powers and the Russians
sought, during 1998, to bring about a cease fire and a negotiated
solution in Kosovo, granting autonomy to the Albanians within Serbia.
The Serbian government, from March 1998 declared its support for
this, and there was support for this approach, as an interim solution,
from the Rugova shadow government in Pristina. Only two major
actors opposed this: Madeleine Albright and the KLA. Albright and the
whole Clinton administration gave massive political support to the
KLA, undermining the line of the other members of the Contact Group
and the line of UN resolution 1199.
Support for the KLA did not involve support for its aims: the Clinton
administration has always opposed the aims of both the KLA and the
Rugova leadership, both of whom demand independence for Kosovo.
The Clinton administration did, however, support the KLA's means --
guerrilla warfare against the Serbian state -- by repeatedly and
vigorously making demands upon the Serbian government which
strengthened and encouraged the KLA war.
This US support for the KLA became unequivocal by June 1998, by
which time NATO military planning for an attack on Yugoslavia was
completed. In that month, White House spokesperson Mike McCurry
asserted that Serbia 'must immediately withdraw security units
involved in civilian repression, without linkage to...the 'stopping of
terrorist activity.' In parallel, Pentagon spokesperson Kenneth Bacon
said: 'We don't think that there should be any linkage between an
immediate withdrawal of forces by the Yugoslavs on the one hand, and
stopping terrorist activities, on the other. There ought to be complete
withdrawal of military forces so that negotiations can begin.' In other
words, Washington was insisting that before any cease-fire or
negotiations on a Kosovo peace settlement, the Serbian authorities
must withdraw all their forces for Kosovo, handing over the territory to
the KLA's military forces despite the fact that the urban Albanian
population of Kosovo was far more pro-Rugova than the KLA. As
Gary Dempsey explains, the US was demanding that the Serbian
government 'effectively hand over one of its territories to an insurgency
movement.....This...led many ethnic Albanians to further conclude that
the Clinton administration-- despite its official statements to the
contrary -- backed their goal of independence....Although US policy
was officially opposed to independence for Kosovo, Washington would
not allow Belgrade to forcibly resist it.'
Air War supporters thus have a choice of interpretations on these
matters: either the US was right to back the KLA and sharpen the
internal conflict in preparation for a NATO attack, in which case the
Europeans are the Russians were presumably covert supporters of the
dictatorial, genocidal Milosevic regime. Alternatively, they can argue
that the European-Russians-UN were right to seek an internal cease-
fire and negotiated solution and the US was wrong to try to sabotage
this. But Air War supporters cannot embrace both variants.
3. Sabotaging the October 13th Cease-Fire:
On 13th October, Albright's rival in the Clinton administration, Richard
Holbrooke, negotiated a cease-fire agreement with Yugoslav President
Milosevic. The cease-fire would be monitored in Kosovo by OSCE
observers. Milosevic agreed on the basis that the US administration
would ensure that the KLA did observe the cease-fire.
But the Clinton administration sabotaged the whole operation. The
OSCE monitors did not enter Kosovo for a whole month after the
agreement. During that time, the KLA did not respect the cease-fire,
continued its operations and extended its reach in Kosovo. During the
delay, the Clinton administration took control of the OSCE, placed
William Walker, a key organiser of the Contra operation in Nicaragua
and the blood-bath in El Salvador, in charge of the OSCE monitoring
force. Some 2,000 trained monitors waiting in Bosnia to be sent into
Kosovo were blocked by the US, who put US ex-military personnel in
as the monitoring force and from mid-November they surveyed every
bridge, cross-roads, official building, security force billet and barracks
-- every item that could be relevant to a future NATO-KLA joint
offensive.
At the same time the European-Russian-UN line continued to be to
seek an internal solution and blamed the KLA for the failure to achieve
it. Thus, for example, at their General Affairs Council on 8th
December, 1998, Cook and the other foreign ministers of the EU
assessed the situation in Kosovo. The report of the meeting in the
Agence Europe Bulletin of the following day stated: 'At the close of its
debate on the situation in the Western Balkans, the General Affairs
Council mainly expressed concern for the recent 'intensification of
military action' in Kosovo, noting that 'increased activity by the KLA
has prompted an increased presence of Serbian security forces in the
region.' ' Thus, the EU saw the KLA as the driving force undermining
the possibility of a cease fire and a compromise solution. They were
simply on a different line from Albright. And they continued to be right
through January.
4. Turning the Rambouillet Negotiations into an Ultimatum, while
overthrowing the Rugova Leadership:
The two variants continue into the Rambouillet process. The idea of
bringing the two sides together into face to face negotiations under
international auspices came from the French government. The Clinton
administration had been against such an idea, favouring a straight move
towards bombing. But on this occasion, the differences were overcome
in favour of the French getting their way on the form while the US
would get its way on the substance. This was a turning point. The
French and British switched over to the US position at a meeting of the
contact group in London on 29th January, 1999, exactly a week before
the opening on 6th February of the Rambouillet 'negotiations'. From
that moment on the NATO attack on Yugoslavia was a virtual
certainty. We can see why when we appreciate that the Rambouillet
'negotiations' were not negotiations at all: they were an ultimatum to the
Serbian government which was drafted in such a way as to ensure that
it would be rejected.
The Serbian government wanted face to face negotiations at
Rambouillet with the Kosovo representatives. This the Americans
absolutely refused, presumably with British and French support since
they were formally supposed to be in charge of the process. It is also
fairly clear that there were some on the Kosovo side who were
interested in discussing with the Serbian authorities. Why else would
be Clinton administration have decided to overthrow the elected
Rugova government of Kosovo and replace it with a KLA-led
government, there and then, at Rambouillet?
The Serbian side was then required to agree to the 'Agreement' without
changing it, or face NATO attack on Yugoslavia. If the Serbian
government had signed the 'Agreement' the agreement would have had
no status in international law, since treaties signed under threat of
aggression have no force in international law. But the Serbian
authorities, probably wisely, did not have any confidence in their ability
to rely upon international law, so they refused to sign.
Most people assume that the Serbian government refused to sign,
because the 'Agreement' would lead to the independence of Kosovo.
The 'Agreement' did involve a de facto NATO Protectorate (not, by the
way, a democratic entity. The Chief of the Implementation Force could
dictate to the Kosovo government on any aspect of policy he
considered relevant to NATO (i.e. US) concerns.)
But the real sticking point for the Serbian government seems to have
been the threat that the 'Agreement' posed to the rest of Yugoslavia.
The NATO compliance force would have complete control of Kosovo
deploying there whatever types of forces it wished: ' NATO will
establish and deploy a force (hereinafter KFOR) which may be
composed of ground, air, and maritime units from NATO and non-
NATO nations, operating under the authority and subject to the
direction and the political control of the North Atlantic Council (NAC)
through the NATO chain of command. The Parties agree to facilitate
the deployment and operations of this force.' Thus, if the US wished to
use Kosovo as a base for the invasion and occupation of the rest of
Yugoslavia it could do so.
This was threat enough. But the so-called 'Appendix B' added to the
document at Rambouillet itself and kept secret until it was leaked and
eventually published in the French press, insisted that NATO forces
could move at will across the whole of Yugoslavia. Thus: 'NATO
personnel shall enjoy, together with their vehicles, vessels, aircraft, and
equipment, free and unrestricted passage and unimpeded access
throughout the FRY including associated airspace and territorial
waters. This shall include, but not be limited to, the right of bivouac,
manoeuvre, billet, and utilisation of any areas or facilities as required
for support, training, and operations.' NATO could also alter the
infrastructure of Yugoslavia at will: 'NATO may.... have need to make
improvements or modifications to certain infrastructures in the FRY,
such as roads, bridges, tunnels, buildings, and utility systems.' It could
thus move around investigating all Yugoslav infrastructures with a
view to destroying them (in an attack) later. And the Yugoslav
authorities 'shall provide, free of cost, such public facilities as NATO
shall require.' The Yugoslav authorities 'shall, upon simple request,
grant all telecommunications services, including broadcast services,
needed for the Operation, as determined by NATO. This shall include
the right to utilise such means and services as required to assure full
ability to communicate....free of cost.' 'NATO is granted the use of
airports, roads, rails, and ports without payment of fees, duties, dues,
tolls, or charges occasioned by mere use.' The Yugoslav authorities
must not merely tolerate this: they must facilitate it:' The authorities in
the FRY shall facilitate, on a priority basis and with all appropriate
means, all movement of personnel, vehicles, vessels, aircraft,
equipment, or supplies, through or in the airspace, ports, airports, or
roads used. No charges may be assessed against NATO for air
navigation, landing, or takeoff of aircraft, whether government-owned
or chartered. Similarly, no duties, dues, tolls or charges may be
assessed against NATO ships, whether government-owned or
chartered, for the mere entry and exit of ports.'
And in all such activities in the whole of Yugoslavia, NATO shall be
completely above the law: 'NATO shall be immune from all legal
process, whether civil, administrative, or criminal.' And again: 'NATO
personnel, under all circumstances and at all times, shall be immune
from the Parties' jurisdiction in respect of any civil, administrative,
criminal, or disciplinary offences which may be committed by them in
the FRY. ' And again: ' NATO and NATO personnel shall be immune
from claims of any sort which arise out of activities in pursuance of the
operation'.
This threat to move from Kosovo to the overthrow of the entire Serbian
and Yugoslav regime was underlined by the fact that NATO claimed
the right to dictate the fundamentals of socio-economic policy within
Kosovo, with the Yugoslav and Kosovo governments completely under
the diktat of US policies. Thus:' The economy of Kosovo shall function
in accordance with free market principles.' And: 'There shall be no
impediments to the free movement of persons, goods, services, and
capital to and from Kosovo.' And again: 'Federal and other authorities
shall within their respective powers and responsibilities ensure the free
movement of persons, goods, services, and capital to Kosovo,
including from international sources. There must also be complete
compliance with the IMF and World Bank. Thus: 'International
assistance, with the exception of humanitarian aid, will be subject to
full compliance with....conditionalities defined in advance by the donors
and the absorptive capacity of Kosovo.' The Yugoslav government
must also agree to handing over economic assets to foreign interests.
Thus: 'If expressly required by an international donor or lender,
international contracts for reconstruction projects shall be concluded by
the authorities of the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia.'
These statements made it perfectly clear that NATO was out to destroy
the existing character of the Serbian economy. The ultimatum also
demonstrated that NATO was determined to wage war against the
Serbian media. It demanded 'Free media, effectively accessible to
registered political parties and candidates, and available to voters
throughout Kosovo.' And it said that 'The IM shall have its own
broadcast frequencies for radio and television programming in Kosovo.
The Federal Republic of Yugoslavia shall provide all necessary
facilities.....'
Rambouillet was thus an ultimatum for a war against Serbia and the
terms of the ultimatum demonstrated that if the Serbian government
accepted Rambouillet they would very likely face a crushing attack in
the future from NATO forces on Yugoslav soil.
5. The Launch of the War and the Need for Stupidity
With the 'failure' of Rambouillet, the Clinton Administration took open
charge of the preparations for war. And it is at this point that the
analysis of those who support the NATO Air War faces absolutely
irreconcilable contradictions. For the way in which the war was
launched is, on the face of it, absolutely inexplicable.
The bombing campaign was launched in 24th March. But President
Clinton announced on the 19th of March that the bombing campaign
would be launched and nothing now could block it. The US
administration thus gave the Serbian government 5 days in which they
could do as their pleased in Kosovo. And when the bombing started, it
was organised so that the Serbian authorities could continue to have a
free hand in Kosovo for more than a week. The air war's first phase
was directed largely at targets outside the Kosovo theatre itself for a
full week.
And this military side of the attack was combined with an absolutely
contradictory set of explanations for NATO's aggression. On one side,
the attack was justified as an attempt to prevent the genocidal threat to
the Kosovar Albanians from the Milosevic regime. But on the other
side, the attack was simultaneously justified by the claim that the
Milosevic regime had no such genocidal intentions and indeed wanted
the bombing campaign in order to use it to sell Rambouillet to the
Serbian people.
These contradictions cannot be explained away by haste, improvisation
and confusion on the part of the Clinton administration. We know that
the US National Security Council and the State Department had been
planning this war in detail for 14 months before it started. We know
also from the Washington Post that the experts in the US
administration spent those 14 months running over, day after day, all
the variants of the course of such a war, all the scenarios of possible
Yugoslav government responses to the air attack. We know that they
foresaw the possibilities of mass refugee exits from Kosovo. The
Pentagon foresaw a long air war: the notion that Milosevic wanted the
bombing attack was political spin put about by General Wesley Clark:
it was nonsense. So why did they plan the start of the war in this
particular way?
There is only one serious explanation: the Clinton Administration was
giving the Serbian authorities the opportunity to provide the NATO
attack with an ex post facto legitimation. The US was hoping that the
five days before the launch of the bombing and the first week of the
war would give various forces in Serbia the opportunity for atrocities
that could then be used to legitimate the air war.
This was a rational calculation on the part of the US planners. They
knew that the main political opponents in Serbia of Milosevic's
Socialist Party -- the Radical Party of Seselj and various Serbian fascist
groups -- supported the ethnic cleansing of Kosovo, though the
Socialist Party did not. They knew also that Yugoslav military forces
would pour into positions in Kosovo as the OSCE personnel left,
clearing strategic villages, driving forward against KLA-US
supporters. They could predict also that there would be a refugee flow
across the borders into Macedonia and Albania.
And the US planners were proved right. Extremist Serbian groups did,
it seems, go on the rampage in Pristina for three days after the start of
the war. Refugees did start to flood across the borders. And the
resulting news pictures did indeed swing European public opinion
behind the war. As for the Serbian government organising a genocidal
mass slaughter, this did not happen: the Clinton administration
organised the launch of the war to invited the Serbian authorities to
launch a genocide, but the Milosevic government declined the
invitation.
It is simply impossible to argue that the US military campaign was
designed to stop the brutalities against the Kosovo Albanians. It would
be far easier to demonstrate that this thoroughly planned and prepared
war was designed to increase the chances of such brutalities being
escalated to qualitatively higher levels. The way that the war was
launched was designed to increase the sufferings of the Kosovar
Albanians in order to justify an open-ended US bombing campaign
against the Serbian state. The technique worked. But this success
cannot be acknowledged. Instead it must be hidden by the notion of
Clinton administration stupidity.
And to this stupidity the European pundits of NATO can add many
other supposed American stupidities. The stupidity of trying to save the
Kosovar Albanians with an air war instead of a ground war. The
stupidity of killing so many Albanian and Serbian civilians. The
stupidity of not swiftly admitting such killings when they occur.
And then there is the most fascinating stupidity of all: the bombing of
the Chinese Embassy in Belgrade. This particular stupidity must have
been a defining moment for the European powers, a moment for hard,
focused thinking, for one very simple reason: stupid or not, the
governments of Western Europe know that it was not a mistake. They
know that the US military attaches in Belgrade had dined more than
once at the Chinese Embassy compound in the city before the war
started. They know very well how prominent the compound is and how
professional the US intelligence operation for targeting is. They know
that the Embassy was hit on a special mission by a plane from the
United States. And they noted Clinton's casual response: no press
conference to make a formal public apology. Just an aside about an
unfortunate mistake in a speech about something else. They know too
that China is by far the most important issue in the entire current US
foreign policy agenda.
And the West European states have learned more about the stupidity of
the bombing of the Chinese Embassy since it has occurred: it resulted
in the collapse of weeks of German-Russian diplomacy which had gone
into producing the G8 declaration agreed just before the Embassy was
bombed. That G8 declaration threatened to undermine the US's 5
conditions for ending the war and threatened to rebuild the central
authority of the UN over NATO: the Embassy bombing put a stop to
all that. More, it completely sabotaged Schroeder's planned business
visit to China: West European efforts to steal contracts with China by
taking a softer line than the Clinton administration were brought to a
standstill and the West Europeans are being brigaded into line behind
Washington's policy in a new confrontation with China.
All this, for the West Europeans is surely the height of stupidity. But
pennies have been dropping in the Chancelleries of Western Europe.
They are realising that even if there has been plenty of stupidity in the
NATO war against Yugoslavia, the stupidity may not lie in
Washington. It may lie in quite a different quarter, namely in the state
executives of Western Europe itself. To see why, we need an entirely
different take on the origins of the NATO attack on Yugoslavia.
PART 2: THE THEORY OF EUROPEAN STUPIDITY
The alternative take on the origins of the NATO war against
Yugoslavia starts from the fact that the war did not derive from big
power reactions to local events in the Balkans at all. Instead, this theory
starts from the premise that the Clinton administration was seeking a
war against Yugoslavia as a means for achieving political goals outside
the Balkans altogether. The conflict between the Serbian state and the
Kosovar Albanians was to be exploited as a means to achieve US
strategic goals outside the Balkans on the international plane.
This conception turns the cognitive map used by the proponents of
American stupidity on its head. Thus, for example, instead of thinking
that the US was ready to overthrow the norms of the international order
for the sake of the Kosovar Albanians, we assume exactly the opposite:
the US was wanting to overthrow the principles of state sovereignty
and the authority of the UN Security Council and used the Kosovo
crisis as an instrument for doing so. Instead of imagining that the US
was ready to shut Russia out of European politics for the sake of the
Kosovar Albanians, we assume that the Clinton administration used the
NATO attack on Yugoslavia precisely as an instrument for
consolidating Russia's exclusion. Instead of assuming that the US was
ready to abandon its policy of engagement with China for the sake of
the Kosovo Albanians, we assume that the Clinton administration used
the war against Yugoslavia to inaugurate a new phase of its policy
towards China. And last but not least, instead of assuming that the US
firmly subordinated the West European states to its military and
political leadership in order create a new dawn in the Western Balkans,
it used a number of ingenious devices -- especially the dilettantish
vanity of messieurs Chirac and Jospin -- to drag the West European
states into a Balkan war that would consolidate US hegemony over
them, the EU and the Euro's development.
This is where the European stupidity enters the theory. The one
strategic interest of the main West European states (Germany and
France) in the Balkans lies in maintaining stable and strong enough
states in the region to keep their impoverished populations firmly in
place. West European military intervention in the Balkans has
essentially been concerned with preventing mass migrations
Westwards when states collapse. Anglo-French military involvement in
Yugoslavia through UNPROFOR was essentially about that:
'humanitarian aid' in the war zone to ensure that the civilian population
did not leave the war theatre. Italian military intervention in Albania in
1997 was about the same thing: stanching the flood of humanity out of
Albania Westwards, by rebuilding an Albanian state while blocking
emigration and asylum rights. Anglo-French efforts in Macedonia and
Albania in the current war are similarly about caging the Kosovar
Albanians within the Western Balkans. Yet now the American air force
has, with European support, turned the Western Balkans into twenty
years (minimum) of chaos from which all the energetic younger
generations of all ethnic groups will rightly wish to flee West for
decades to come. This is the first European stupidity.
The second strategic interest of the West European states (especially
Germany) in Eastern Europe is to maintain stable, friendly
governments in Russia and Ukraine. That too can be ruled out as a
result of this war as far as Russia is concerned; Ukraine will have to
choose between Russia and the USA (the EU is not a serious
alternative. And both Russia and Ukraine could spiral out of control
with disastrous consequences for Central Europe Western Europe. This
is the second European stupidity.
The third strategic interest of the main West European states has been
to combine an effort to bandwagon with US power with preserving an
effective check on US efforts to impose its will on their foreign
policies, whether in Europe or other parts of the world. That too seems
finished now. The basic West European check on US power was the
French veto at the UN Security Council, restraining the US with its 2
votes (including that of the UK). Now that Chirac has chosen to
discredit the UN Security Council, he has undermined his own ability
to speak for Europe at the UNSC and to be a useful partner for other
states seeking to gain European help to restrain the US. That is a third
stupidity.
A fourth West European priority was to be able to claim that the EU is
an independent, West European political entity with a dominant say at
least over European affairs. Yet the current war demonstrates that this
is a piece of pretentious bluff: the EU has played absolutely no role
whatever in the launching or the management of this war. It will play
no role whatever in the ending of the war. It is simply a subordinate
policy instrument in the hands of a transatlantic organisation, the North
Atlantic Council, handling the economic statecraft side of NATO's
policy implementation. And within the North Atlantic Council the
United States rules: the way the war ends will shape the future of
Europe for at least a decade, yet that decision will be taken in the White
House: the West European states (not to speak of the EU institutions)
are political voyeurs with their noses pressed against the windows of
the Oval Office trying to read the lips of the people in there deciding
Europe's fate. This is a fourth stupidity.
To explain the background to these stupidities we must examine US
strategy since the collapse of the Soviet Bloc.
US GLOBAL STRATEGY IN THE 1990S
In some conditions the cognitive framework -- local actions, big power
reactions -- is useful. Such conditions exist when the superpower is
satisfied and secure that the structures which it has established to
ensure its dominance are safely in place. It is sitting astride the oceans
comfortably and it reacts now and again to little local blow-outs and
break downs.
Some might regard that as being the situation of the United States after
the collapse of the Soviet Bloc. If we look at the power of the United
States in the 1990s in resource terms, it has had no rival or even
potential group of rivals in the military field, it dominates the
international political economy, there is no power on earth remotely
able for the foreseeable future to challenge the United States for world
leadership.
Yet curiously enough, the United States has been far from satisfied
with its situation in the 1990s. It has felt itself to be facing a number of
important challenges in the two key traditional regions of the world
where it must exercise leadership -- Europe and the Pacific Rim -- and
the challenges there are linked to another big challenge: the battle to
ensure the preponderant weight of US capitalism in the so-called
'emerging markets'. Leadership of Europe and of the Pacific in turn
ensure that the United States can channel the activities of these states to
ensure that US interests predominate in designing regimes to open up
and dominate the 'emerging markets'.
These problems were all connected to another, deeper issue: concerns
about the basic strength and dynamism of the American economy and
American capitalism. When the Clinton administration came into office
it was determined to rejuvenate the dynamism of American capitalism
through an activist foreign drive to build a new global set of political
economy regimes accented to the strengths and interests of American
capitalist expansion. Getting leverage over the Europeans and Japanese
to achieve that was key.
To understand US policy in the 1990s, we must appreciate the double-
sided situation that it found itself in: on one side, its old way of
dominating its capitalist 'allies' had been shattered by the Soviet Bloc
collapse, giving lots of scope for these 'allies' to threaten important US
interests in their particular regional spheres. But on the other side, the
US had gigantic resources, especially in the military-political field and
if it could develop an effective political strategy it could convert these
military power resources into a global imperial project of historically
unprecedented scope and solidity. We must grasp both the challenges
and the great opportunities after the Soviet Bloc collapse to understand
the strategy and tactics of the Bush and Clinton administrations.
(a) The Post-Cold War Problems
The challenge to the US in Europe created by the collapse of the Soviet
Bloc has too often been ignored. That collapse not only made the USA
the sole global super-power. It also simultaneously destroyed the
political structures through which the USA had exercised its direct
leadership over West European capitalism. And it simultaneously
opened the whole of Eastern Europe for business with the West, a
business and political expansion opportunity which the West European
states, especially Germany, would spontaneously tend to control. What
if West European capitalist states threw off US leadership, forged their
own collective military-political identity, joined their capitals with
Russian resources and Russian nuclear capacity? Where would that
leave the USA in Western Eurasia outside of Turkey?
The central political pillar of US leadership over Western Europe
during the Cold War was NATO. The US-Soviet confrontation
positioned Western Europe on the front line in the event of a US-Soviet
war. This situation enable the USA to gain political leadership over
Western Europe by supplying the military services -- the strategic
nuclear arsenal -- to protect Western Europe. In return for these
military services, the West European states agreed to the US politically
brigading them under US leadership. The US could exercise control
over their foreign policy apparatuses, integrating the bulk of their
military forces under US command, imposing discipline of the dealings
of West European capitalism with the East and so on. And the US
could also exercise this political leadership for economic purposes,
especially to assure the free entry of US capitals into Europe, to ensure
that Europe worked with the US over the management of the global
economy etc. So NATO was a key military- political structure. The
hierarchy was: US military services give political leadership which
gives leadership on the big economic issues, those to do with the
direction of accumulation strategies.
But the Soviet collapse led to the redundancy of the US strategic
arsenal which led to the redundancy of NATO, the collapse of the
political leadership structure for the US in Europe and the undermining
of the US's ability to impose its core political economy goals for
Europe and for the world on the West Europeans. This is one of the key
things that has made the United States a paradoxically dissatisfied
power in the 1990s. It has had to combat all kinds of European
schemes for building political structures that deny the US hegemonic
leadership in Europe. And in combating such schemes it has had to
develop a new European programme and strategy for rebuilding US
European leadership. In short, the USA has been an activist and pro-
active power in Europe during the 1990s, not a satisfied and reactive
power. The 1990s have been a period of political manoeuvres amongst
the Atlantic capitalist powers as the key players have sought to advance
their often competitive schemes for reorganising the political structures
of the continent.
And in these manoeuvres, the territory and peoples of the former
Yugoslavia have played a very special role. The states bearing
competing programmes for a new European political order have all
sought to demonstrate the value of their political project for Europe by
showing how it can handle an important European problem: the long
Yugoslav crises. Yugoslavia has been the anvil on which the competing
great powers have sought to forge the instruments for their new
European orders. No power has been more active in these endeavours
than the United States.
And this means that a cognitive framework for understanding the
Balkan wars cannot take the form of local actions, great power
reactions. We need an entirely different framework: great power
European strategies, and the tactical uses of Yugoslavia's crisis for
advancing them.
(b)The New Opportunities.
Yet the United States was not just a power dissatisfied with the
international arrangements it confronted at the end of the Cold War. It
was also aware that it had a gigantic relative lead over all other powers
in the world in terms of the resources for entirely reshaping
arrangements on the planet. It had not only unrivalled military capacity
but command of new military technologies that could enable it to strike
safely and fairly accurately at will anywhere on the planet. It could, for
example, out of a clear blue sky, destroy the great dam on the Yangtse
river and drown 100 million Chinese at the heart of the Chinese
economy without the Chinese government being able to stop it: that
kind of power. It could take on China and Russia together and win. It
could militarily seal of Japan and Western Europe from their sources of
vital inputs for their economies and from the export markets vital for
their economic stability.
The United States also have supreme command over the international
political economy through the dominance of the Dollar-Wall Street
Regime over international monetary and financial affairs and through
US control over the key multilateral organisations in this field,
especially the IMF and the World Bank.
With resources like these, the collapse of the Soviet Bloc opened up the
possibility of a new global Empire of a new type. An empire made up
of the patchwork of the states of the entire planet. The legal sovereignty
of all these states would be preserved but the political significance of
that legal sovereignty would be turned on its head. It would mean that
the state concerned would bear entire juridical and political
responsibility for all the problems on its territory but would lose
effective control over the central actual economic and political
processes flowing in and out of its territories. The empire would be
centred in Washington with Western Europe and Japan as brigaded
client powers and would extend across the rest of the world, beating
against the borders of an enfeebled Russia and a potentially
beleaguered China.
And it would be an Empire in which the capitalist classes of every state
within it would be guaranteed security against any social challenge,
through the protection of the new Behemoth, provided only that they
respected the will and authority of the Behemoth on all questions which
it considered important. It the US played its new strategy for empire
building effectively, it could thus earn the support and even adulation
of all the capitalist classes of the world.
Thus the decade from 1989 to 1999 has been marked above all by one
central process: the drive by the US to get from (a) to (b): from
political structures left over from the Cold War which disadvantaged
and even threatened the US in the new situation, to entirely new global
political and economic structures which would produce an historically
new, global political order: New Democrats, New Labour, New
NATO, new state system, new world economy, new world order. This
is the context in which we can understand the various Yugoslav wars,
including the current one.
Peter Gowan is a correspondent for the New Left Review.