Why the left says "No!"
plan. He told the German cabinet that it was reckless to follow the Americans in
Kosovo. One German minister informed the New York Times that 'in the end, it was Kosovo that made him go".
A silent, behind-the-scenes war is being fought across Western Europe to determine the leadership of the EU. The US has used its old British Trojan Horse to lead a neoliberal drive in the EU.
Kosovo is a neat operation in Western European terms to promote a new Anglo-American-French alliance to lead world politics and replace Franco-German hegemony. American strategists, desperate to retain NATO as their battering-ram in the new Europe, manoeuvred Europe into a war in order to prove that NATO had a permanent function and was not a paper tiger.
If the US disengages from Kosovo and negotiations recommence with the Serbs accepting a NATO peace-keeping force, it will be hailed as a big victory and will strengthen the Anglo-America alliance in the EU. If NATO splits, the results would be catastrophic. What is important for NATO planners is not how many Kosovars die in the process, but how these deaths are perceived. If NATO is blamed for them, then they will have failed, and moves towards a European Security Council, including the nonNATO states, might be revived.
This is what the German and Russian states really want and they might yet succeed. Just before the bombing began the Kosovar and Serb leaderships had agreed a three-year period of autonomy, after which the issue could be rediscussed. The discussions broke down on the presence of a "peacekeeping force".
Serbs, not unreasonably, regarded the composition of this force as NATO-in-disguise. The Russians could have persuaded them that this was not the case if NATO had agreed to a Russian complement, but before matters could proceed further, the United States said 'enough. The Serbs left the table and the bombs began to fall.
Negotiations will have to begin again. It is unlikely that the Serbs will accept the presence of any NATO soldiers on their soil. The Kosovars, for their part, will refuse to tolerate Milosevic's special police units or soldiers. Both will be right and a solution might lie in a neutral UN peacekeeping force, which does not contain soldiers from armies that have attacked either side.
The break-up of Yugoslavia has already cost the EU and the USA billions of dollars. This war alone has, so far, been costed at $2bn and the figure could rise. If half this amount of money had been spent on economic development, we might have been spared all the conflicts. * Source and © The Independent, March 28, 1999
By Tariq Ali Western leaders assemble in Washington later this year to celebrate the 50th birthday of
NATO. The aim of the summit is a new mission statement for NATO, transforming it from a defensive alliance into a zapping organisation which can hit a target state anywhere in the world to defend the interests of the United States, defined, of course, as 'human rights' and the 'free market'
Tony Blair is committed to the transformation of NATO. New Labour is harnessed to the chariotwheels of US military policy. Germany, Italy and France are skeptical. Oskar Lafontaine walked out of the German cabinet mainly because of Kosovo, arguing that it was reckless to follow the Americans. Italian, Greek and Portuguese governments are divided.
What is taking place in the skies over Serbia is, therefore, of critical importance in determining who wins this argument.
In other words, the main concerns in this war are not the sufferings of the Kosovar Albanians. The USA's motives are much more sordid.
Even the most servile NATO apologists who fervently claimed that the bombing of Serbia was designed to help the Kosovars must, surely, be able to see the scale of the humanitarian disaster that this has unleashed. The bombing has been an abject failure.
The most sustained critique of the war has come from the rightwing commentators: Edward Luttwak, Andreas Whittam-Smith, William Rees-Mogg Alan Clark, Norman Stone, to name the most prominent. Most of Britain's traditional liberal and social-democratic antiwar left is, if anything, pro-NATO.
Since the bombing has failed, the liberal warmongers, who think nothing these days of violating national sovereignty (a crime for which Galtieri was crushed and Saddam is still being punished) will, no doubt, be calling for ground
This option has so far been excluded. NATO soldiers prefer to kill rather than die, with one exception. The only NATO country whose leaders are not too worried about the body-bag problem is Turkey.
Perhaps a swap could be proposed Serbia could join NATO. Serb troops could liberate the Kurds and the Turks could save the Kosovars.
NATO bombing was supposedly designed to halt the flow of refugees. It has increased it a hundredfold. Pre-bombing spin had also implied that Milosevic wanted his country bombed so that he could quickly capitulate and isolate more hard-line nationalists. This turned out to be pure fantasy. Another reason was to weaken political support for Milosevic within Serbia. Instead, it has strengthened him.
If the bombing moves into Phase Three and civilian and economic targets are targeted, the war might well spread to other regions. If ground troops are dispatched, the result would be a long and bitter
There are only two serious alternatives for this region. Either a series of NATO protectorates imposed by war and bloody battles, which would lead to the remilitarisation of Europe and a new cold war with Russia, or a serious attempt to create a new regional framework. The latter require an immediate cessation of hostilities, the return of monitors to Kosovo and the stationing of a UNsponsored peace-keeping force, which excludes both the NATO states that have waged war and the Serbians that have terrorised and driven out the population.
The long-term future of the region should be decided by a new Congress of Berlin, under the auspices of the UN Security Council and chaired by the SecretaryGeneral. This could, if the EU and US are willing, establish a stable basis for the region by setting up a new programme for reconstruction for all those who sign a comprehensive peace treaty, including the Kosovars, who must, within the new framework, be permitted their independence. If even half the billions spent by the West after aiding in the break-up of Yugoslavia had been spent on economic aid, we might have been been spared the traumas of the last urce: The Guardian (London and Manchester) 1 A
99 http://www.guardian.co.uk© Copyright Guar Media Group plc. 1999
International Viewpoint #311 May 1999 15
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But faith in the West has slid steadily ever since. And now, as the bombs rain on Yugoslavia, the last shreds of belief in Western goodwill are being replaced by cynicism.
The mood of hostility to the West is especially marked in the Russian military. "Most Russian military personnel are expressing direct readiness for armed solidarity with the Serbs," the Moscow daily Nezavisimaya Gazeta reported on March 27. "The US and NATO are now associated exclusively with the image of the enemy.")
Russian media pour scorn on the rationalisations offered by Western leaders to explain the bombing
*There is an unquestionable double standard..." the Moscow paper "If one recalls how harshly Turkey, a Novye Izvestiya observed on March 26. NATO member, deals with the Kurds...
Why, Russians ask themselves, has the NATO alliance been preserved, now that the Cold War has ended?
For a decade, liberal ideologues have tried to suppress the instinct of many Russians to view political questions in terms of class, and of exploitation of the poor by the rich. But as the bombs and missiles have pounded Yugoslavia, even Russian liberals have admitted that NATO is essentially a military club of the rich, an armed alliance for enforcing the interests of the "haves" of North America and Europe against the "have-nots"
As citizens of what is now the great