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Introduction
The people of Britain by implication, whether they are aware or remain ignorant of Britain's disgraceful role in "global" empire building, are part of that drive to impose the West's will on small nations and nation states. The interventions in Iraq and the Balkans are undertaken "in the name of the peoples of Britain". Use of the terms "international community", "the Alliance" or "the West" are no cover for our involvement in the politics of violence.
Even by our silence we are assumed to sanction the transforming of small states into neo-colonies by military, political and economic pressure, violence or the threat of it. It is hardly relevant whether the British government is either pro-European Union Defence Identity, or pro-United States/NATO. This may sometimes be the tactical case. Whatever the role played by government it generally represents big capital interests. Until now the role of the peoples of Britain at large has been passive and unquestioning.
Indeed this is precisely what the imperialist minded amongst us want. They want our passive acceptance of their view of events. They want to get on with the business of imposing neo-liberal corporate reforms on the nations of the planet, pulverising those who attempt to defend their political, sovereign state or national territorial integrity. They want us to applaud their missile diplomacy, mass destruction, bombings, and "negotiation" at gunpoint.
To prevent a backwards into the Twenty First Century to the imperialism of the Nineteenth Century, we must act now to stop any further erosion of international norms and reinforce the self-determination of nations as expressed in the independent sovereign state. What goes around comes around. Failure to defend national independence is an open invitation to have one's own independence removed. And to have it removed if necessary by the "traditional methods" Chancellor Kohl threatened us with in 1994. The penalty for failure is fascism, the last resort of the corporate scoundrel.
While successive pro-EU governments have undermined all forms of democracy in Britain by stealth; the mass of the people still adhere strongly to the principles self-determination and full governmental control over the affairs of state and the economy. If the peoples of Britain insist on remaining passive in the face of the demolition of their own democracy and independence and allow their elected "representatives" to pursue the destruction of other independent sovereign states, then "internationalism" will cease to exist.
What would remain? Your guess is as good as ours! We do know from historical experience that such an attempt to destroy established freedoms will be met with the most severe resistance. A World War of a different kind. That war has already started in Iraq where 500,000 souls have already perished in imperialist engineered military conflict, and continues in the Balkans. The cost for Africa, Latin America and Asia since the end of the cold war is probably multiplied by ten.
The world is on fire, no continent remains unaffected by the "new order". Six billion people who constitute the poor nations of the planet stand in the shadow of monumental Western power such as has never been known before. One billion Western people benefit in varying degrees from untold wealth at the expense of the other five billion poor.
We are assured however, that conditions of empire, new or old order, are conditions which the conquered find insupportable. Conditions which the metropolitan masses will refuse to sanction or swallow because of the increasing fascism of their own conditions. The planet is sick of imperialism, because imperialism is sick.
To those democrats who are aware of the threat to national independence by "Globalist" corporations, we suggest you join us to oppose this. We cannot, under pain of another holocaust, afford to ignore what is happening in our names across the community of nations, the real international community. What goes around comes around. War on a global and horrendous scale can only come from our government pursuing the politics of juvenile delinquency led by whatever Western power alliance doing the business of the voracious transnational corporations. By doing nothing to stop our government's recourse to international piracy and political violence we are seen to condone such actions, or even lend support by remaining silent. By passively looking on while our government helps to forge the chains of others today, we must know that those chains are there for us tomorrow.
What goes around comes around. In Romania a miners leader was sentenced to 18 years in prison. Closer to home 13 leading Belgian trade unionists stand accused of "terrorism". The recent RMT action in Britain has given rise to moves to have strikes banned on London's Underground.
Strategic wars
"....In dealing with the foreign peoples in the East we must foster as many single national groups as possible; Poles, Jews, Ukrainians, White Russians, Kashchuben and as many other small nationalities as can be found..." Heinrich Himmler, nazi SS Supremo: The Fertile Ground For Developing Euro-war Policy
When we in the Campaign against Euro-federalism speak of Common Foreign and Security Policy, we are not referring to some subjective dream, idea or obscure concept which exists in minds of people of a pro-Euro persuasion, the Europhiles as they are called. We refer to the actual objective military conditions existing right now in which CFSP is taking concrete shape. Those objective conditions are a "new political World order".
The Western powers are engaged in a "Wild West" free for all competition to secure maximum territorial influence over former Central and East European Socialist states and Soviet Union, Africa, China and Southern Asia. These are the target fields of operation. The rivalry between the principal Western powers, the United States and Germany, resembles a rapacious colonial stampede. The wealth of raw materials and cheap skilled labour resources in the target areas are seen as a new "Bonanza", or modern gold rush.
The term used to describe this new corporate phenomenon is "globalisation". It is not our term, it is their term. Exactly what is being "globalised"? It is not the Planet. It is territory which belongs to nations of the World. To "globalise", the experts tell us, we must give up national sovereignty, and let global corporate experts wreck the international economy and along with it national independence. It is internationalism itself that is being "globalised". Sovereign states are to be replaced by a corporate bureaucracy like the EU Commission. "Globalisation" is neo-colonialism, the new imperialist strategy.
"New World order" is Transnational corporate order. Transnational corporate capitalism invests anywhere in the World where labour is cheapest, brings to market where prices are stable and highest here in the West, in order to maximise profits, and dumps the industrial waste on the World's poorest economies of the former European empires where environmental laws are weak or non-existent." As it does this Western corporate powers sweep away the sovereign state so that their neo-colonial penetration of the nations meets with little resistance.
Yugoslavia is but the key to advancing "new order" strategy towards the East. The tactics employed via the Western umbrella organisation of NATO in the military interventions in former Yugoslavia - and presently in Kosovo - are the West's military laboratory experiments aimed at establishing Western precedent for untrammelled interventions throughout the entire World. Why? Because the World is to be re-divided into empires which will vie to control the nations of the planet. The name of the new imperialist game is "globalisation".
The Balkan region is also the geostrategic cross-roads to both the Middle East and Russia. Both must be controlled as a source of raw materials and cheap labour. They must not be allowed to develop the capacity to resist the imperial might of Western, US and EU, strategic and economic interests. As well as being the Western power's priority exploitation target, the West needs to ensure new capitalist Russia does not become another competitor, particularly in the area of its former Soviet bloc sphere of influence. The possibility of this becoming a reality, however, is somewhat remote. The destabilising chaos to which Russia has been subjected by the West since the 1980's, if anything, leaves her more open to further destabilisation and penetration of her economic, and national independence. More to the point, Western tactics now unfolding in Yugoslavia are just those which undermine the national diversity of that huge and populous country. The West's strategy is the continuation of the protracted cold war struggle to penetrate the Eastern socialist bloc. That protracted war strategy is now in phase two. It continues at full steam and reflects the reversal of the balance of world political forces.
The World balance of power vacuum.
Euro-CFSP is part of that Western "globalisation" experimentation, part of that rival struggle for world domination. CFSP grows in strength day by day By participating in that struggle. Britain is part of the moves towards CFSP. Euro-CFSP is part of the disease; the violent sickness of war that has afflicted Europe's relationship with the World since the first heady days of colonial empires. Empires that warred twice in the Twentieth Century with catastrophic human consequences and loss of life. The same rival imperialist states which inflicted those holocausts are the same powers that now seek to redress the balance of World power in a unipolar World. A World eclipsed by a bourgeois corporate class more ruthless than any in contemporary experience; more determined to slice up the World and its resources than ever before.
History has taught us that it is precisely in times of changes in the balance of World power that the World is in the most danger from war. In times of massive change from one system to another, from one "order" to another "order". It is then the ruling organism is most vulnerable. When a dominant power such as the US is in economic and political decline brought about by changed global circumstances, and another is in the ascent, as Germany is precisely because of the change in global conditions, then conflict is inevitable. The US will increasingly have to resort to military force to resolve practical politics or concede supremacy. The undiplomatic German opponent will stretch and draw the prey into unwinnable conflict with the whole of Europe and` perhaps further afield.
It has not been unknown for the West's bitter imperialists rivals to act in a semi-united fashion, apart from anti-Communist unity. The six nation force which the West employed to crush the Chinese Boxer uprising was not dissimilar to the force which pounded Iraq in 1991 and now meddles in the Balkan powder keg. It did not stop the same imperialists from sacrificing the cream of European youth on the alters of empire in the killing fields of France in 1914-18 when it suited the dominant military force attempting to change the balance of World forces in its favour.
Who Changed The Balance Of World Forces?
"Whilst there were several Germanys we could take a stroll there. As a single Germany was born, our laughing stopped. Today, whilst there are two Germanies we can sleep again, at least with one eye open. If the two parts are ever glued together again, then we must become as hares again, sleeping with both eyes open." Francois Mauriac - 1963
Germany has tried to conquer Europe under its united custody three times in the last 150 years - Europaeische Friedensordnung or European order. The three previous attempts have been prefaced by military conquest. The present political diplomatic approach to accomplish European Union is, one suspects, only the precursor to military imposition. France has made no significant challenge for European hegemony since Napoleon.
German capitalism must at all cost increase its grip on the other European Union states. She must do this in order to be effective and `measure up' in her rivalry with the US and Japan in the struggle for international imperial supremacy. "European unification is just as important for Germany as German unification" , Helmut Kohl declared in February 1992.
To be able to confront their rivals, Germany's transnational corporations need the greater market of the EU. This is made easier through the Euro-regions. For Germany, "small neighbours" is beautiful. The real purpose of the Euro-regions, for example, is to ensnare the weaker economies of her neighbour states, opening them up to German capital. The inevitable economic dominance she has created, provides the political base to dominate the capitalists of the Euro-regions.
Through their merger policy with other European corporations, Germany politically subordinates a larger and larger part of the corporate bourgeoisie in other EU countries to her foreign and economic policy. This in turn is reflected in national government policies of the member states.
The fear and utter dread expressed by sections of the British ruling-class towards the end of the last Tory government was a panic reaction to the sell out of their national interests and decision making powers to Germany by the British pro-German lobby in the Conservative party. German control of the entire European market and financial system is a question of demographic and economic might. For the traditional British imperial system a Germany as a superpower is a financial threat to their very existence.
It is the peoples of all classes in European Union exploited by these corporations who pay ultimately for Germany's Eastward expansion. The "economic" symbolism of the adoption of the euro by the whole European Union means Germany, from that point on, is in total political control of European Union. "Only then will we pay our German police officers in euros. When they are allowed to perform their duties regardless of frontiers within the European Union", a German Finance Ministry statement announced in 1995.
Thanks to the EU, Germany now penetrates the historic French and English most sacred jewels in colonial crowns. From this position Germany uses her vice like grip on the EU to consolidate her drive Eastwards while simultaneously rendering the need for an anti-Communist cold war alliance with North America obsolete. The long term strategy thinking behind realising this objective was the German policy known as "Ostpolitik". Ostpolitik has been an official priority for Germany since 1974 (See our 1995 pamphlet on CFSP).
The "Ostpolitik" carve up
"....Anybody who was able to represent the Third Reich as loyally as the Weimar Republic and the German Federal Republic as loyally as the Third Reich should have no difficulty in representing to the World the changing development of our democratic Germany. There has been no break, only the expression of a developing policy..." German Social Democratic leader and founder of Germany's modern "Ostpolitik", Willie Brandt, 12 September 1967
Since the turn of the Twentieth Century, German foreign policy has toiled to keep Eastern and Southern European states small and ethnically divided. Czechoslovakia and Yugoslavia were designed by Germany's imperialist rivals to block the German march Eastwards. Between 1939 and 1945 German foreign policy was yet again to splinter this region of the continent. What we are now witnessing from European Union is the final push by Germany to enslave the continent once more.
According to the Intelligence Digest, 11-25. October 1995, a meeting between the Soviet Foreign Minister, Sheverdnadze and the Former German Foreign Minister, Genscher took place in 1991. Germany and Russia agreed to divide up the former Eastern European Socialist bloc into something resembling the former Austro-Hungarian and Russian Empires.
In return for aid from Germany, Russia agreed Czechoslovakia should be split into two separate states. This was part of a carving up deal which gave Germany hegemony in Central and Eastern Europe. Germany gave pledges that the Ukraine and independent Balkan states, part of the Russian Federal Commonwealth would escape German attention. At this time a further deal was struck between the US and Germany. The US, enamoured with the end of the cold war in Europe, was also anxious to contain and eventually control the People's Republic of China and stamp US supremacist authority on the "Pacific Rim" as a US neo-colonial sphere of influence. The US therefore, ceded hegemony in the whole of Europe to the Germany.
Dismemberment of Czechoslovakia would be followed by incorporating regions of Bohemia and Moravia into a Deutchmark zone with political incorporation within 15 years. Hungary, Germany's ally would regain territory lost under the Trianon Treaty, at the end of WWII. This included territory in what is now Slovakia, and Voivodine in Serbia. It was agreed the state of Slovakia would be dominated economically by Hungary with a long term objective of political incorporation of Slovakia into Hungary.
Yugoslavia was to be divided, with Slovenia, Croatia and Bosnia going to Germany.
In 1991 the Warsaw Pact formerly terminated, ending the political logic for the North Atlantic Treaty Organisation. The Franco-German Alliance immediately announced the plan for a Euro-army called the Euro-Corps. These forces were to operate within the framework of the WEU which served as the vehicle to present the world with the "European Defence Identity" (EDI). WEU was also promoted as the Euro-pillar of NATO. The promotion of the "pillar" concept was useful so that the Franco-German alliance could use NATO logistics or US power to advance its objectives in Eastern Europe.
Germany was immeasurably strengthened politically by her success in ending the cold war in Europe and reunification of the fatherland. She was equally victorious in creating chaos in "Ostpolitik" inspired "Perostroika" Russia. The Russian new-bourgeois class is extremely weak and depended on German aid. At the same time, in order to compete with, other imperial powers the Russia's new capitalists have to accumulate sufficient capital to survive in competition with the transnational corporate West. The resulting drive for capital has given birth to an Mafia type parallel economy relying on a form of primitive accumulation of capital. The social and economic effects on the Russian people has been catastrophic.
Russia, weakened and splintered politically by counter revolution, dependant upon foreign aid and dominated by Mafia gangs is unlikely to become a competitive threat to Germany, at least not in this generation. On the contrary, Russia is wide open to Western penetration and exploitation of all her superstructural weaknesses, particularly, her long outstanding national questions.
French imperialist power in the continent, on the other hand, had been castrated by her acceptance of junior partner role to Germany in "Europe". Germany once more rules Europe. British imperial power, like the French has been relegated to the ranks of supporting actor to the US Superstar. However, contradictions arise even here. France and Britain, to a lesser extent, have had a long history in which the Serbs have always proved allies against Germany. This is particularly so for France in WWI and for both France and Britain in WWII.
In November 1998, French solidarity with Serbia came to the fore when a French officer, Major Pierre Bunel, was arrested for supplying NATO planning to Serbia. Everything from air attack plans to possible ground invasion. In general, French officers have always showed support for Serbia, but the French government always cast a blind eye. It was only when the French were given leadership of the Kosovo "extraction force" that Major Bunel fell foul of the new Euro-pillar policy France had inherited around the time coinciding with the Major Bunel's arrest.
British army officers were another headache for the US and Germany's corporate global geostrategists. General Sir Michael Rose, UN commander in Bosnia in 1994-95 revealed in his book,<> Fighting for Peace, that the US resented his attitude and approach toward the Serbs, which they said was pro-Serb. He also said his headquarters in Sarajevo may have been bugged by US intelligence after the US had given full backing to the Bosnian Muslims.
When he asked the US military if they had been electronically intercepting his communications and distorting reports about his running of the UN mission, they did not deny it. The General carried out his role as UN Commander, not to take sides, but to act as mediator.
General Rose was former director of special forces and commanded the SAS. In November 1994 during the British UN Command, elements of the SAS on the ground at night, acting under UNPROFOR, refused to give US NATO F16 fighters co-ordinates to attack Serb artillery positions from the air, outside Bihac.
General Sir Michael Rose, now retired, described in his book the disgraceful treatment he received at the hands of US interventionists. The General also described his feelings for the local bourgeois rabble that has led the former Yugoslav people into such utter chaos. He said of those that led the warring factions in Bosnia, "I had utter contempt for them all". Times 10 November 1998)
Consolidating 25 years of Ostpolitik
Emboldened by their successes , the German government directed the EC to adopt its "Ostpolitik" Foreign Policy Agenda in 1991. The EC recognised the right of Slovenia and Croatia to secede from the multi-nation Federation of Yugoslavia. This was done without regard for minorities in these federated states, particularly the Serbs. It constituted gross interference in an integral sovereign state. The move was designed to explode the federal state of Yugoslavia.
The result was ethnic conflicts in Yugoslavia over territory. Because the new micro states of Slovenia and Croatia were backed up financially and militarily by Germany, they did nothing to protect the rights of the minorities in these new client states of Germany. Quite the opposite, minority rights were expressly denied in the case of Croatia. The situation predictably disintegrated into conflict, bringing about the total destruction of Yugoslavia.
Yugoslavia came into existence in 1917 as an alliance of Southern Slave peoples. Slovenia, Croatia and Bosnia-Herzegovina were detached from the Austria-Hungarian Empire and united with Serbia and Montenegro. This was ratified under a treaty known as the "Pact of Corfu". In 1929 the state became known as `Yugoslavia'. It was intended by the British and French in particular that Yugoslavia would act as a buffer against German expansionism. However, until 1941, Yugoslavia was pro-German. When Germany invaded Belgrade it was to set up a puppet Serbian state.
In 1992 Chancellor Khol's government created the spark which lit the Balkan fire. But the fuel had been stockpiled secretly throughout the 1980's by German interference. Germany had armed and trained the Croat and Slovene armies. Germany quickly learned it could not intervene successfully to dominate the whole of former Yugoslavia, that required military intervention. The traditional and principal opponents of Germany in Yugoslavia, the Serbs, proved more resilient in their defence of Yugoslavia than Germany cared to admit.
Germany, therefore, lost the initiative militarily and thus politically, (at least temporarily) to the stronger US rival Atlantic Alliance power in Europe. Germany's constitutional law in 1991-2 deprived her imperialists of the opportunity to intervene by armed force. The WEU was riddled with division and was not accomplished at reacting in militarily unison to crises without the US cold war master. The initiative passed to the North American "pillar" of NATO. However, Germany was not too concerned to have the US to do her Balkan dirty work for her.
"The European Union revealed its immaturity and its inaptitude in seizing the opportunity to assert itself , in its own continent as a power capable of imposing peace, if need be, by force. Through the 1995 Dayton Agreement the United States re-established too fragile a peace." 'Le Monde Diplomatique'. Front page article, February 1999 edition
Indeed, the peace was designed to be too fragile. It was a peace forced on the Bosnian peoples over a smoking gunpowder keg.
If it had been a real peace reflecting real acceptance of the state of affairs existing between the ethnic groups in Bosnia, there would have been no justification for occupying by Western troops. Military occupation is in place to guarantee Western interests. A real peace would have been not to interfere in Yugoslavia in the first place.
The Dayton "peace" agreement is one that keeps the Bosnian peoples divided. Ethnic unity within territorial state boundaries would spell the end of Western interference. The Dayton agreement is expressly designed to entrench division.
This marked the beginning of a gloves off and hands on "pillar" struggle within the NATO alliance between the Atlantic Allies, which, if taken to its ultimate conclusion, can only be resolved on the field of battle.
USA, Rules OK!
"....Imperialism is still without question a most powerful force in economic, political and military relations by which the less economically developed lands are subjected to the more economically developed. We may still look forward to its ending..." Michael Barret Brown: After Imperialism quoted from Culture and Imperialism by Edward. W. Said, 1993.
In the Winter 1992 edition of `Foreign Affairs', General Colin Powell stated: "America has to rule the world, that we cannot do without the armed forces." Around the same time the US Pentagon published two documents outlining US strategy. It reiterates the US
"is the only Superpower, and that this status should be enforced through a military pervasiveness strong enough to ensure that no nation or group of nations [EU] will challenge American supremacy....In the last resort the international order is guaranteed by the United States, which will have to act independently if collective action is impossible or requires immediate action." `Le Monde Dioplomatique', reported, April 1992 edition
Since then the US has set about a policy of intervention and subjecting Eastern Europe to a form of military control through its "Partnership for Peace" strategy. This policy has imposed the principle that NATO is authorised through the United Nations Security Council,and where this is not possible through the Organisation for Security and Co-operation in Europe - OSCE, to deal with so-called security problems throughout Eastern Europe. The targets are the former people's democracies and Soviet Republics. To date the US has demonstrated that 1992 `policy objective' in every continent on the planet. More worrying, the US has shown its determination to act independently.
"American special operations forces have reached out to the militaries of at least 110 countries. All of Latin America and 13 armies of Central and Eastern Europe", particularly the US sponsored prospective Central European NATO states, Hungary, the Czech Republic and Poland declared Herald Tribune 15 December 1998: "In small groups hundreds of US military personnel have shaped the armies of 13 Central and Eastern European countries...."
But the US desire to militarily dominate these Central and Eastern European countries does not stop there. The real objective is to use the US military supremacy to beat the Europeans led by Germany to the finishing line as in Yugoslavia. The logic of US military strategic bases means if the rival imperialist wants a slice of the "new order" cake it will be on conditions dictated by the supreme power, the alternative will be conflict.
The US plan is to expand the export of: "US military training and doctrine into the Caucasus and the independent states on Russia's Southern border", the report continued. The US imperialist drive, we should note, is not economics. It is not driven by a trading disposition as is the EU. It is driven primarily by the US military industrial complex.
The Herald Tribune article described, "these relationships as the most far reaching military to military contacts anywhere in the world". These are relations which exclude the EU and European NATO allies. "But the enterprising character of US engagement [in eastern Europe] is best captured by the little known initiative called the Joint Contact Team Programme. The programme is run by the US European Command, based in Stuttgart, with no direct involvement by NATO..."
On the 5 December 1998 William Pfaff, a US political columnist, writing in the same journal and quoting a US strategist, said that NATO is seen as the geostrategic, coherent and long term instrument for the whole of Eurasia and targeting Asia. Perhaps the US sees NATO as the strategy to contain its European NATO rivals.
It is against the background of US military expansion in Europe and rivalry of the European powers that the latest operational attempts to occupy Kosovo have to be examined. For the Western powers occupation trials on Kosovo must succeed. It will be another first for NATO. The first time NATO has occupied a territory militarily. Kosovo is to set the pattern for all future NATO operations against nations that refuse to knuckle under to the West. First also for the EU "pillar" of NATO since operational command will be an EU affair with the US conceding NATO military command to is rival "pillar". Is this a concession for the sake of holding NATO "together" under US hegemony?
In May 1998, A group of influential business men made clear their opposition to allowing the US military industrial complex to dominate US foreign policy. They published a full page advertisement in North American newspapers demanding to know if by pushing Western and NATO armies right up to the gates of Russia would it encourage the Russian people "to feel more secure?" And how would the people of the US feel if the Russian military marched into Canada or Mexico? They would sleep much better in their beds, wouldn't they! the advert rejoined.
This is the plan ! No, this is the plan!
When the US first reacted to EU intervention in the Balkans, it did so ineptly. Yet in its clamour the US recognised EU strategy as jackboot German Foreign Policy. What concerns us here is the political interference, military and diplomatic assistance given to the various local bourgeois national leaders by Western powers seeking representative puppets to extend their imperial spheres of influence. A new form of vassal or neo-colonial relationship, moulded to "new order" conditions was being created.
Another unmistakable feature of the Balkan interventions is the slippery chameleon ability of the Western imperialists to change policy and allegiance to further their interests on the mere flip of a coin.
In 1991 the US and Britain were staunchly for the holding together of the former Yugoslavia. The US castigated the EC for recognising Slovenia and Croatia. On the 5 July 1991 Germany said it would not accept maintaining the integrity of Yugoslavia by using the Yugoslav army JNA. The US changed its slippery policy and followed suit. On the 7 March 1992 the US recognised the independence of Bosnia Herzegovina and formed a political and military alliance with the Islamic fundamentalist integrist, Izetbegovic.
US intervention in former Yugoslavia in 1992 sought to make the Serbs their Slav puppets. The US fielded a presidential candidate called Milan Panic. A US Serb sphere of influence in Serbia was soon put to flight in a vote of no confidence in December 1992. The US then threw all its weight behind the Bosnian Muslims. Alija Izetbegovic, became the US hero of the day.
Effectively, the US was forced to re-establish her strategic position in a post cold war map of Europe which Germany has torn up. When the UN Secretary, Perez de Cuellar, and Lord Carrington, warned that this would provoke a devastating civil war the warning was ignored in favour of the search for a US "safe house" in the former Yugoslavia. The civil war in Bosnia punished the Serbs for their rejection of US patrimony and was in effect really a war to arrest and block Germany's advance, and establish the US firmly in former Yugoslavia.
Similarly, in Albania, from 1991 to 1995, the US supported President Berisha, whilst Germany supported the Socialist party of Fatos Nano. Seeing better prospects with Fatos Nano, the US dropped Berisha and installed Fatos Nano in power. Who supports Berisha now? Why Germany of course. Through Berisha, Germany now seeks to destabilise the US in Albania and Kosovo. Berisha controls troops in the North while Fatos Nano holds sway in the South. These sorts of policy and alliance reversals by Western powers to meet short term imperialist expediency or advance strategic interest are an unmistakable feature of the Balkans interventions.
The principle of imperial expansionist policy is gaining a strategic foot hold in the face of your imperial opposition. From these strategic vantage points the empire strikes out.
NATO: National Liberation Fighter?
It is from Northern Albania that smuggled German arms and supplies reach the Kosovar guerrillas. It is the North that provides the guerrillas with rear bases. In September 1998 a major national confrontation between the heavily armed Albanian rivals was narrowly averted. Parliament and the main TV station was seized by armed units of Berisha's forces in possession of T35 tanks and chanting "death to communism", according to the Times 16 September 1998. Berisha was accused by the Nano government of an attempted coup d'etat. Clearly, these events could not have taken place without the express approval from somewhere very high up in Germany's government. It is no coincidence the offices of the Kosovar "government" in exile are in Stuttgart and Frankfurt.
Germany had launched the violent destruction of Yugoslavia in the hope of a swift decision for her Balkan allies. It also offered an occasion to exercise the new Euro-corps as the Euro-pillar of NATO. This was quickly dispatched by the US intervention which drew the conflict out to her immediate tactical advantage. Germany had hoped to take Bosnia Herzegovina into her sphere of influence. Instead the US snatched it from under her nose. Bosnia is now effectively an American base The Balkans bled slowly to allow the mighty to assert their new post cold war power. The only role NATO allowed the WEU "pillar" to play was a minor one, to maintain the naval blockade of Serbia and Montenegro reinforcing sanctions against Serbia.
This contradiction did not worry Germany too much since the US was busily and actively employed in doing Good German work in breaking up the Balkans just as Germany herself would have done. France however, was furious. Unrestricted by constitutional law, as Germany was, France found herself with a considerable armed force and no objective Euro-role, antagonised by witnessing the despised US rival wade through a Euro-manufactured "crisis management" scheme with Yankee hob nail boots. France could do nothing.
The loss of Bosnia provoked Germany to destabilise the Balkans once more. This time to undermine her US rival and US bases in the region. Kosovo was the instrument, not only to stretch US forces in the area, drawing her further into conflict in Europe, but also serving to bisect Serbia even more. It should be remembered the US and Britain were never in favour of exploding Yugoslavia.
The US preferred to take the whole federation into the new world order corporate free market arena. It is Germany's policy to create micro-statelets the better to administer them as branches of the tree, easier to bend and break than a solid resistant trunk. This is the reason why the theatre for rival imperialist conflict between Germany and the US has shifted to Kosovo.
"We are predestined to inherit the principal advantages of the return of these (socialist countries) to Europe. We must succeed here, where twice we have failed"...declared Klaus Kinkel, former German Foreign Minister in the `Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung', 19 March 1993
There is every reason to believe that Germany was to a large extent behind the growth of the UCK, "Ushtirse Clirmtare te Kosoves", (KLA as it is known in Britain). Introducing the KLA to the British public, the Sunday Times 1 March 1998, let it be known that KLA members appeared in "immaculate German uniforms", their machine-guns were said to have been "looted from factories during the 1997 uprising in Albania." In the same article the US envoy Robert Gelbard was quoted as saying: "They are terrorists, I used to be responsible for counter-terrorism in the United States government and I know them when I see them." In a twist of political logic only credible in the USA, Mr. Gelbard, US fighter of international terrorism, said that any Serb offensive against the Kosovar terrorists would lead to "tough sanctions against Serbia".
Colonialism is dead. Long live Neo-colonialism!
Splintering states like Yugoslavia into micro-statelets is the classic method of establishing client states with neo-colonial agents representing the contending Western powers. These micro-states are quite small and cannot exist "autonomously" except as the vassals of Western powers. The statelets have no prospect of real "self determination" and are totally reliant upon the power of imperialists. In Bosnia, for example, the Bosnian Constitutional Court is dominated by a majority of non Bosnian members.
"...The `constitution' forbids that the Governor of the Bosnian Bank be a Bosnian. It is the `European Bank for Regional Development' which determines privatisations. In other words Bosnia is a colonial protectorate [in the old fashioned sense of the word]. Real power lies in a parallel government composed of Western representatives", explains Michel Collon, writing in `Solidaire', 24 June 1998
On the 5 March 1999, The Guardian reported that the Bosnian Serb President, of the "Serb entity" "was sacked yesterday by the Western official in charge of imposing the country's 1995 peace accord" The Official, Carlos Westendorp, the well known Europhile and NATO aficionado now runs the colonial protectorate of Bosnia. When the Western military and political institutions, media and ethnic Albanians proclaim "autonomy" or "independence" for Kosovo, this is what the people of the region will get. An "independent" Kosovo would follow the same path as Bosnia. Military intervention and occupation by imperialist powers has never been a measure of independence and freedom. It has always been the yardstick of colonialism. 32,000 NATO led troops occupy Bosnia Herzegovina.
Often , like the good policeman and the bad policeman, Germany has had to reign in its junior partner, France, pointing out that "Europe" welcomes the US role in the Balkans and in Europe generally. Slippery German imperialism seeks to draw the US rival into conflict with its Balkan allies with the aim of breaking up and reducing Serbia to a manageable puppet state.
Eventual Balkan wide conflict would embroil the Americans in deploying ground forces which would then be a target, perhaps provoking the US to retire from Eastern Europe under pressure from home. It is well known that traditionally, the people of the United States have always been more interested in their own large domestic problems than foreign involvements.
The strategic and military objectives of the West are clearly shaped by the rivalry which has generated the most blood curdling civil wars in the Balkans since nazi occupation, in which the people have suffered incalculable losses. The choice for the Western rivals is either division, conflict and war for the Balkan peoples or face social revolt in the zones they control through occupation. The objectives of the West are equally geared to preventing social cohesion and possible revolt.
The reimposition of savage liberal capitalist economics in Eastern Europe has benefited the new rich, the new bourgeois class. The majority of the people and workers in particular are social victims of corporate capitalist economic "reforms". The people were promised "liberty", prosperity and "la vie en rose".
Instead the Western corporations grabbed the viable sections of the socialist economy, subjected it to "down sizing". They dumped the resulting unemployed, used the skilled and qualified labour at costs which normally give rise to social revolt. In Yugoslavia that insecurity was deflected by the local bourgeois nationalists. They channeled the peoples resentment into the devastating divisions which were the foundations of inter-ethnic civil war.
In 1997 the people of Albania revolted against the corruption of the Berisha regime. His regime was the instrument which imposed the liberal capitalist market reforms on his people. In this revolt we were treated to an exhibition of traditional imperialist intervention policy at its most illuminating. An international rapid reaction force was immediately assembled and deployed in Albania to restore order. The force was led by Italy, the chief corporate investor in Albania. In this case the foreign military occupation made no claims of protection of minorities or human rights. The military intervention had nothing to do with "human rights", protection of ethnic minorities or "guaranteeing" national borders. It was an occupation to crush a popular revolt and protect the investments of the Western corporations. Pure and simple!
The US has set Germany back, temporarily, by aggressively moving in on Germany's post cold war successes and diverted its concerted march Eastwards. However, the situation in which the US has operated to break up the former Yugoslavia serves at the same time to accomplish Germany's strategic objectives by carving a pathway to Russian oil in Kazakhstan, Caucasus and the Caspian. The Balkans sits at the hub, the pivotal point of strategic control of the Middle East, Eastern Europe and Russia.
Western powers , essentially the US and Germany, belligerently face each other in imperialist "stand offs" sacrificing the blood of small Balkan nations for strategic position. In the North of the former Yugoslavia, Germany controls Slovenia and Croatia. In the South, the US has strategic military bases in Bosnia, Montenegro, Macedonia and Albania.
There are also economic objectives for the Western powers in Central and Eastern Europe, such as control over raw materials and qualified labour bought cheaply for the labour market. In London there is hardly a major construction site that is not peopled by Yugoslav and Russian workers at two thirds the rates of pay available to British workers.
The plan it seems is to dismember Yugoslavia even further. Kosovo is a vital economic province of Serbia, rich in lead, silver, coal production for electricity and highly fertile in agriculture. Voivodine in Northern Serbia has a large ethnic Hungarian population of 340,000 and will be the next Serbian province to be targeted by Germany. If we remember correctly, in September 1991, while Germany still held the initiative in the Balkans,. Hungary, Germany's ally, shot down two Yugoslav planes, and offered to patrol its border with Vojvodina in Serbia on behalf of the EC.
In addition, the US has aroused the Yugoslav Republic of Montenegro against Belgrade, through US pressure and influence on the Montenegro political classes, in order to sever Belgrade's access to the sea. This is just one other means added to sanctions and NATO threats designed to overthrow the Serbian government.
In April 1998, the pro-American and free market reformer, President Djukanovic of Montenegro presented a project in line with the CIA programme to overthrow the present Serbian leadership, entitled: "Strategic Initiatives for the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia - The Basis for the Programme for a New Beginning". It called for the "internationalisation" of Yugoslavia's economic and social life, "privatisation" and "small businesses", the "rule of law"[?] and "`democratisation' of the political and security sphere".
The geo-strategic position of the Balkans for Euro-federalist imperialism makes it imperative it is controlled to the exclusion of competitors. Not only is the Balkans the gateway to the Russian oil regions it also consolidates a strategic cross-roads accessing The Mediterranean for control of the Gulf and Middle-East. The US rival is determined to snatch away any possibility of this becoming a reality.
The key to holding Europe for empire is the subjection of Russia, the principal geopolitical competitor in the region and a mineral and labour resource paradise. Neither Napoleon nor Hitler could subdue Russia. As the Franco-German Euro-Alliance, perhaps with US help, together they have new designs on Russia , Russian oil and vast mineral resources. US bases in Bosnia, Montenegro, Albania and Macedonia providing a string of bases linking up and directed strategically at the Gulf and Caspian. They are anathema to the Franco-German alliance.
When NATO and the US have served their purpose, eventually Germany will feel its time they should be encouraged to leave. The beginning of this process has already begun. By blocking any further advance by Germany the rival struggle has now shifted to Kosovo where Germany hopes to destabilise the US strategic gains. So an new rule was born in the rival imperial Balkan games. Michel Collon, The Belgian journalist and writer, puts it succinctly: "There where I dominate I shall seek a little stability; there where you dominate I shall seek to destabilise...." Solidaire 10 June 1998.
The US bases in the area operate outside the NATO Alliance. That is without EU scrutiny. AWACS spy planes have flown over Yugoslavia since 1992. They are authorised to overfly several Central and Eastern European countries. This makes it possible to listen and survey up to Moscow. Albania holds an important US naval base which complements the largest maritime base in the Mediterranean at Corfu controlled by the US.
The uprisings of the population in Albania in 1997 was a genuine indication of social insecurity and popular discontent. The extent of German involvement is not known to this writer. However, the event also illuminated the strategic importance of Albania to the US. America was obliged to evacuate over 4,000 US citizens, TNC and NGO personnel and missionaries who were not diplomats. It is widely believed that here was the CIA in all its guises. Is this evacuation symbolic in a small way of the future for the US in Europe?
The Media:- Lie Machine!
Two tactics feature prominently in the media campaign to sway public opinion into accepting military occupation of Kosovo as was the case in Bosnia Herzegovina. First was the media propaganda war of lies, Serb demonisation, and misinformation. Second was the hypocrisy and "humanitarian" crocodile tears shed over the violence which the West is unashamedly promoting in Yugoslavia.
Lies, damn lies and ability of the Western power rivals to change allegiances, policies and sides, practically overnight, became the two most notable features of interventions from the man in the street's perspective. As in the Allied propaganda during the "Operation Desert Storm" intervention in Iraq 1991, i.e. babies being pulled out of incubators etc., the same junk was being pedalled apropos Yugoslavia. Massacres, organised gang rape, concentration camps, war crimes overwhelmingly carried out by Serbs. In 1991 when the media was finally exposed as defiled source of the media lies, it was too late, the damage had been done.
Not a day passes in the British corporate news media without the perpetuation of the most outrageous media distortions. Headlines such as "Kosovo women raped by crazed Serb forces" ; "Serb tanks `butcher' 200 in Kosovo" ; "Serb shells and bulldozers smash pledges", set the appalling tone for how people in Britain are induced to swallow the Western political agenda. One would be forgiven for assuming that "Serbs" were some sort of extra-terrestrials menacing the whole human race and the news articles were a panic reaction to this.
A daily glance at the media in Europe and the US suggested that Britain was manufacturing the worst type of all the lies and bias in the pro-Western mass media. Only the wilfully blind would not challenge the utter bias of the Western media against independent Serbia. By contrast the pro-German UCK (KLA) are presented as the epitome of liberation struggle. The truth is the West cares for neither, except as pawns in the expansionist struggle for global hegemony.
The most recent example at the time of writing was the so-called "massacre" at Racak. This the corporate media whipped up until, no doubt, they believed it themselves. You will remember this was the story that 45 "civilians" were massacred in cold blood by Serb forces. Very little hard evidence was put forward to support the claim. The Yugoslav government said the dead were killed in battle and during the night the forces of UCK (KLA) brought the bodies of the paramilitaries into the village and staged the "massacre".
First reports by French journalists supported what the Yugoslav Government was saying, that the bodies were of those killed in action and then arranged by the Kosovo guerrillas so as to suggest an atrocity. The Serb clarification was given very little coverage in the Western press and in some instances totally ignored. William Walker the head of the OSCE observers monitoring the "cease fire" went to Racak the same day and announced the massacre to be real.
It is a well known fact that irregular, guerrilla warfare or "low intensity conflict" as it is called when used as a political weapon by Western powers, must enlist support of the civilian population otherwise it can not survive. Guerrilla war is really a political war of the people, it is an army of the people. It is from the civilian population that it draws its fighters, whether uniformed of not. Consequently, the staging of a "massacre" is theoretically an easy feat to accomplish.
Who is William Walker? In 1985 he was advisor to the vice-Secretary of State for Latin America, a principle player in Colonel Oliver North and President Reagan's "Contragate" affair channelling arms to the infamous Nicaraguan "contras" financed by CIA drug trafficking. The prosecutor Lawrence Walsh accused Walker of being one of the ring leaders in that terrorist operation. From 1988 to 1992 Walker was US ambassador to El Salvador where army death squads butchered thousands of people. Most of these death squads were set up by the US. Liberation theology priests accused Walker of being behind the 6 May 1996 massacre in the Simon Canas University dormitory. (Solidaire 27 January 1999, www.ptb.be/solidaire.htm)
Little wonder then, that William Walker, "Observer extraordinary", spy and expert in terminological inexactitude, was pronounced persona non grata and banned from Kosovo by the Serbian government. His past career said a lot for the credibility and particularly of the OSCE "monitors" he led.
The CIA was not averse to bugging the headquarters of General Sir Michael Rose, UN Commander in Bosnia in 1994. General Rose describes a meeting with "a strange shadowy figure straight out of a Graham Greene novel". His name was Fred Cuny, an ex- US Marine Corps officer who was in charge of the Sarajevo water project run by "International Rescue Committee". "We assumed he was working for the CIA" the General said. The American was highly critical of the UN mission and demanded "tough military action against the Bosnian Serbs. `Fred' threatened to undermine the General's position if he could not demonstrate his resolve by action on the ground. At this point, the General said, `I threw him out'." (Times 10. 11. 19)
The reality of the matter is, that the Western powers must have a pretext for intervention in order not to be accused by the public of open aggressive missile diplomacy, intervention or imperialist recolonisation. On the one hand the interventionists disguise themselves as the defenders of national minorities. On the other, "Humanitarians". Defence of "human rights" is the slogan employed to justify intervention in the affairs of sovereign states which the Western powers themselves have destabilised. In 1998, US Secretary for State, Madeleine Albright announced the United States no longer recognised The UN charter respecting the integral sovereignty of states. A precarious statement for a "nation" made up of diverse states held together by federal cement.
The corporate owned media churns out its dirty war of misinformation to prepare an unwitting public opinion to support military and political intervention in sovereign states, followed by military occupation. Western powers have pushed the ethnic groups into war in the Balkans.
General Rose described examples of mindless US bias against Serbs in the Times interview on the occasion of the launch of his book on the subject, Fighting For Peace. When former NATO supreme Commander US General John Galvin visited the UN mission , General Rose describes the event.
"We were escorted by a woman from the US Embassy, who in my view was the most hostile American I met during all my time in Bosnia." When flying towards Tuzla by helicopter, she pointed at all the destroyed villages in the Zvijezda mountains and exclaimed excitedly to General Galvin, "Look at what the criminal Serbs have done". General Rose pointed out that they were Croat villages ethnically cleansed by the Muslims.
Later when visiting Mostar in the south where the Croats had virtually destroyed the Muslim Eastern part of the town the US Official "planted her hands on her ample hips and cried; `Well at least this was done by the criminal Serbs'." General Rose said that the woman burst into tears when it was pointed out the Croats were to blame, nor was the episode lost on General Galvin.
We will look briefly at what is happening before our eyes in Kosovo. Our position here in exposing Serb demonisation does not mean we take sides in the matters artificially dividing the former Yugoslav peoples. We wish to expose the Western powers use of Serbia as the scapegoat, the creation of the pariah for the prosecution of their policies of divide and conquer. We wish to single out the EU in particular since that institution is a direct threat to national independence here in these islands.
By Media or Missile, by NATO or Bomb,
any which way, Freedom is gone!
On the 11 February 1999, at the Royal United Services Institute, General Sir Michael Rose Commander of NATO forces in Bosnia 1994-95 attacked the British and US for creating a "culture of violence", that, their reaction to the Kosovo crisis created a "dangerous president for future interventions". He denounced the use of Cruise missiles against Iraq, Afghanistan and Sudan in 1998 in retaliation for bomb attacks on US embassies in Africa. He said firing cruise missiles reflected a "false view that intractable problems could only be solved by military force. Complex human emergencies demand understanding of the conditions rather than solutions from the barrel of a gun". Guardian, 12 February 1999
War by its very nature has its casualties. All war is horror. All war is genocidal and destroys human life en masse. It has always been and so it will remain. It is an extreme course of action used as a last resort. All the more reason then, to put a stop to the West's handiwork that has propelled the people's of the Balkans into inter-ethnic civil war with one another.
In the name of "entertainment" the corporate media blitz our daily lives with Hollywood screen violence. Western aggression is now similarly portrayed on the "telly". "Live" bombing, killing real people, is bought into our homes, seeking our acceptance, our approval, our applause for the West's violent acts of imperialist vandalism.
The Western corporate owned media monopoly skilfully turn the effects of its own intervention handiwork into a crusade defending "human rights" in an orchestrated victim blaming campaign. If the West did not convince the public of serious human rights violations there would be no "moral" justification for interference in other nations affairs. So the imperialists simply violate the truth. They invent atrocities to add to the atrocity of war itself.
In the United States and Europe where freedom of information and news analysis is more available, if not more open, support for NATO military intervention has fallen drastically, in the US in particular, in 1998 it fell from 63% in favour of NATO intervention to 45% in a matter of six months.
The demonising misinformation is aimed at the Serbs is, in part , to weaken international solidarity for the principled stand Serbia has taken on the independence of its sovereign state. In part to misinform for purposes of gaining public support for military intervention. Atrocity stories are quite easy to accomplish in a conflict environment. Easier still, if the media is in private hands and the official Western "left" eats out of the hand of corporate capitalism. In France a "left" youth group has published a demand for NATO to bomb Serbia entitled "NATO air, just do it". In Britain similar "left" organisations and "left" personalities have called for NATO bombing of Serbia.
To the modern Western generation war is an unknown quantity. Viewed on TV from the comfort of the living room the West's masses, unaccustomed to battlefield conditions are targets for disgraceful partial propaganda. Truthful political analysis would be unthinkable. It would expose the shameful Western military intervention and occupation of the Balkans. Without media lies, imperialist intervention and occupation would never get the support of the people. Without the facts the people remain ignorant. They remain an impotent democratic force for progress. So the media, receives its instructions to raise the temperature in the battle to bludgeon the hearts and minds of people.
In the West, media reports introduce names of towns, unpronounceable to most people; offering a hoch poch of "ethnic crimes" committed by as many ethnic and national groups living in those towns in Central Europe. For the most part, unsubstantiated "crimes" are presented instead of "political and news analysis". Indeed the use of the term "ethnic" serves to plant in the unsuspecting Western mind the equation "ethnic =racist war". "Ethnic war" is then extrapolated to promote the idea that the Balkan conflicts are "congenital" and only explained by hatred amongst bitter intractable opponents.
We, as deemed policemen of the World must act on behalf of these warring factions; save them from themselves. We must bomb the hell out of one half of them and intimidate the hell out of the other half. We must send jobs for the boys "Observers" and "Monitors" to the unpronounceable towns not to encourage harmonious conditions in the towns, bur rather to spy and invent " ethnic crimes" where none exist.
The presentation of rape, baby killing and massacre media propaganda as news is vital in another important respect it serves to cover up Western interference, clouding the issues for the ordinary public. In this climate, those close to the centres of power can air their views openly in articles such as the following which appeared in Herald Tribune 28 January 1999, headline: "For or Against: Six Steps Toward a Kosovo Solution" it continues, "The parade of officials to Belgrade to ask Mr. Milosevic to behave and threaten him if he fails is futile...
"... The international community must decide whether it favours continued Serb control of Kosovo, for reasons of regional stability or Kosovo's independence. There is unfortunately no third possibility.[for the US]....The American policy [of bombing] that has failed in Iraq , would be unlikely to change Mr. Milosevic's conduct....support for continued Serbian rule would find little public support in the West"....
The author, Mr William Pfaff, proposed the following measures:
(i) Serbia should be forced to forfeit its rights over its sovereign territory in Kosovo by NATO or some other international agreement.
(ii) An Iraq style attack on Serbian air defences to punish Serbia. It could be made to look like protecting the Kosovars.
(iii) Provide arms and training for ethnic Albanian forces in Kosovo as the US did for Croatian and Bosnian forces 1993-95.
(iv) Recognition of Kosovar forces in control of most of Kosovo. Serb minority to be given Security in leaving Kosovo and compensated for loss of property.[a cleaner ethnic cleansing].
(v) Declaration by NATO, OSCE, the contact group, or perhaps even the UN that Kosovo is an international protectorate with international control over any subsequent Kosovar authorities.
(vi) The status of Kosovo to be finally decided by the "international community" when the present Serb government is "reliably replaced".
The same author, in the same daily, writing on 5 December 1998, informs us Washington sees Kosovo as a precedent for NATO rendering possible NATO military actions against Iraq, Southern Asia and all trouble making states. NATO he says is seen by leading US strategists as the long term coherent geostrategic instrument for the whole of Eurasia.
The Serbs, like the Iraqis, are the most determined of the former Yugoslavia peoples to remain genuinely independent. There are only two types of state as far as genuine democratic and internationalist analysis is concerned, one a sovereign and independent state and the other a state controlled by foreign powers.
The Serbs also have the presence of mind not to join NATO and resist foreign interventionist troops on their soil. This is why they have been the constant target of the interventionist "imperialist community" and its lying media. Unfortunately, if enough mud is slung then, by the law of averages some of it must stick. So, in Britain, the name "Serb" is now popularly associated unjustifiably with "mud".
But the Serbs are portrayed as the worst offenders in a Balkan World of intractable ethnic hatred - a race war. The peoples of the former Yugoslavia are the victims and not the instigators of ethnic division. Imperialism divided them and imperialism continues to claim its victims. The demonisation of the Serbs because their territory is the strategic object of the empires is a conspiracy ranking in terms with that of the nazi anti-Slav campaigns.
If there are any criminals in these Balkan violations, then it must be the "imperialist community" itself. All imperialist inspired war is a war crime for which the Western perpetrators should be brought to book.
The Kosovo Question (?)
Success in creating a "Greater Albania" by annexing a province of Serbia will involve the whole of the Balkans, including Greece and Turkey in possible all out war according to US analysts. Macedonia might lay claim to the Greek province of that name if annexation became an acceptable option for the Balkans. 30% of the Macedonian population is Albanian and may wish to be part of a territorial "Greater Albania". Albanian minorities in Turkey and Greece, Turks in Greece and the Greek - Turkish rivalry as regional players etc. do make for an explosive mixture of territorial claims and counter claims. The promotion of the UCK , or KLA as it is known in Britain, is a deliberate German-EU tactic aimed at destabilising the US military presence in the region.
In June 1998 the Greek and Macedonian Foreign ministers, Pangalos and Handziski said, "... enough blood had been spilt in the Balkans through NATO amateurism. ...We will gain the most out of a peaceful solution and the least out of war. Those in comfortable capitals who like playing war games should be the most modest. Kosovo must be resolved within Yugoslavia. Any change of borders would bring a greater war in the Balkans."
At least this was the picture dominating US policy until last Autumn. Until then the plan was, we are told, to prevent a "Greater Albanian" Islamic state. This was the diplomatic reasoning for keeping President Milosevic in power. Suddenly, yet another policy somersault was wheeled onto the Balkan scene. This dramatic new policy volt face was introduced by the US State Department towards the end of November, in the form of "Milosevic must go"....a secret bid to topple the regime of Slobodan Milosevic.
"As of the past few days, the activation of a policy of the end of Milosevic and his power in Yugoslavia is very much on the table..." the Pentagon's Defence Intelligence Agency announced in the Observer 29 November 1998. The Article headed "Clinton tells the CIA to oust Milosevic, said the: "The focus was on helping Montenegrin efforts to break away from Belgrade and on assisting opposition within Serbia." In order to achieve this, "The CIA has set up newly invigorated `analytical structures' in the former and current Yugoslav republics..." This new policy can only be seen in the light of prompting German moves to oust the US by capturing the Kosovars for US policy. Clinton had asked if an Independent Kosovo would work?
A leaked CIA document issued 16 December 1998 was revealed by the Serbian vice Prime Minister Markovic on the 12 January 1999. The document indicated the United States should increase financing for pro Western political parties, media organisations, NGO's trade unions independent of Yugoslavia from $15million to $35 million per year.
Newspapers such as the three so-called "independents" which churned out constant anti-Serb propaganda and owned by George Soros, the multi-billionaire financier. In 1998 a newspaper called The Koha Ditore, taking the official line of the UCK), appeared in Pristina, also financed by Soros. They were suspended by the Serb authorities. This is the usual operational machinery put in place by the CIA interfering in sovereign states promoting the overthrow of legitimate governments which do not bow to the dollar god.
The CIA document states US and European Union NGO's are to be encouraged to augment their presence in Yugoslavia. The primary objective being to develop a new generation of leaders who respect political pluralism and market reforms.
Since the end of the cold war covert destabilisation is the preferred method of removing independent governments without the need for military dictatorship.
"....The cold war stand off between East and West had been mirrored in Africa, Asia and elsewhere and had a significant impact on our priorities for development. Perhaps more on the other side of the Atlantic than in Europe. There had been a tendency to look at aid as one of the instruments in the cold war, which was why we found ourselves propping up, in one way or another, some cruel and monstrous dictators....though they were cruel and monstrous, at least they were on the right side and ought to be kept there....The Americans indulged more in that politicking, but there was always an element of that in our thinking - to stop you going the way of Cuba or Mozambique." Mr Peter Pooley Director General, DV111 European Commission addressing Third World Ambassadors, 2 November 1994, European Commission London Headquarters, Storey's Gate London.
The Daily Telegraph editorial on December 1998, entitled "Kosovo must be free" echoed the Pentagon view, stating: "...Serbia has long since forfeited all moral claim to Sovereignty over the province". This is in stark contrast to the situation in June 1998 when US envoy Holbrooke warned that Kosovo violence could escalate into "general Balkan War". He said: "international boundaries cannot be changed by force" and considers Kosovo as part of Yugoslavia. The new slippery change of policy and allegiance was an attempt by the US to gain control of the pro-German UCK allies and incorporate them into a new US initiative to block German threats of incitement to all out Balkan conflagration which would destabilise their precarious US bases in such a volatile environment.
From Imperial Gunboat Diplomacy
to Imperial Missile Diplomacy!
"....The language in which all diplomats carry on their business throughout the World is French, just as the predominant language in which trade was conducted internationally, until recently, was English. The nations, that is to say, robbed each other in English and fooled each other in French..." James Connolly, on "Diplomacy". `Worker's Republic', 6 November 1915
The Basis for ethnic division in the former Yugoslavia was, historically, as it is now, a product of imperialism; the rival struggles of historic and contemporary empires. This brief work will restrict itself to a broad outline. Serbia was defeated at the battle of Kosovo by the Ottomans in 1389. Turkey conceded independence to Serbia in 1878. During WWII Serbia was invaded and became a puppet state of Germany.
One of the many distortions the British media is cultivating, is the abstraction that Kosovo is somehow not Serbian because it has been inhabited since the 1950's by a majority of ethnic Albanians. Since medieval times Kosovo has been Serbian longer than Scotland has been `English'. For Centuries the Balkans have been carved up between the Ottoman and Austro-Hungarian empires. The peoples of the region known as Yugoslavia for the better part of this century, were as a consequence a scattered and dispersed people distributed across several national and ethnic territorial boundaries. Tito also dabbled in Balkanisation, especially in Serbian Kosovo.
In 1940 the population of Kosovo was made up of 50% ethnic Albanians and 50% Serb and Montenegrins. At that time the Albanians were allied to the Italiano-German axis. The Albanians pursued a policy of a "Greater Albania" promised them by the Axis. When Germany invaded Serbia in 1941, ethnic Albanians took up arms against the liberation struggle.
After the liberation Tito passed a law forbidding Serbs to return to Kosovo. The reason was, Albania was approached to become the seventh state of Yugoslavia. Kosovo would have been a clear territorial incentive to Albania. The objective was to deflect Albania away from Soviet influence. Enver Hoxha took Stalin's position and refused. In the 1981 census Kosovo was composed of 77% ethnic Albanians many of whom had fled Albania. It has not been explained in the British media where the 90% Albanian population of Kosovo comes from.
Kosovo
The 1974 decentralising constitutional changes in former Yugoslavia gave Kosovo extensive autonomy. According to an influential editorialist writing in Herald Tribune 25 February 1999: "The oil shocks of the 70's brought the IMF to Yugoslavia, demanding austerity in exchange for loans. This meant stronger centralised government rather than the decentralising reforms from which the Kosovo Albanians were net beneficiaries....Austerity, and Western market ideology that called on Yugoslavia to give up commodity exports for added value manufactures, dealt further economic blows to Kosovo..."
The economic system of "workers self management" was not successful under Tito. It was a mixture of bourgeois economics and workers control. "Worker's self-management" was created to undermine Soviet socialism by presenting a third way, neither capitalism nor Soviet socialism. It was aimed at the revolutionary Third World to encourage workers to experiment in bourgeois concepts in production. Only capitalism can produce successfully in a bourgeois fashion. The "self- management" aspect became increasingly bourgeois and the workers never had real control.
Worker's self management was an inefficient method of production. It relied on US and German financing to exist. "In reality the Tito state lived on credit, the US and Germany financed the deficit. When Gorbachev liquidated Soviet socialism, the Yugoslav self-management window dressing was no longer relevant. Now the IMF and the World Bank demanded repayments, more austerity and privatisations. They imposed their classical solution: destroy worker's social gains and sack two workers out of three..." wrote Michel Collon, Solidaire 11 March 1998.
In 1989 Belgrade, abolished Kosovo's autonomy under the same pressure of debt repayment that destroyed Yugoslav workers security and saw them rush to arms of bourgeois nationalist leaders who misled them, promising salvation in singular mini-state isolation. In effect handing them over to the Western corporate juggernaught.
What ever dispute exists between ethnic Albanians and Serbs, should be resolved between the opponents themselves by whatever diplomatic or other means they conceive appropriate. This is a matter only for the parties in question. Interference of a predatory nature from great powers serves to excite and enflame the ethnic fears and insecurities in the powder keg Balkan situation which is then exploited for empire. Outside agencies, if they are to help the situation, ought to be governed by international ordinance and impartial institutions governed by strict rules of international impartiality and not "contact groups" made up of ruthless imperialist international vivisectionists.
The KLA (UCK)
Kosovar terror groups first appeared in 1993 when they killed two Serb policemen. Between 1995 and 1997 they launched dozens of attacks and assassinations against Serb targets and Albanians loyal to Belgrade in Kosovo, always claiming responsibility by fax. They became known in Belgrade as the "fax organisation".
In less than a year, the UCK has gone from practical obscurity to a force described as a mobile guerrilla army in the Western media, in possession of ground to air missiles and anti-tank weapons such as the "Amburst" which can only be purchased through official German channels. In October 1998 Macedonian and Japanese TV crews encountered armed and hooded combat units speaking an impeccable German. There are at least four UCKs, each dominated by Albanian national sentiment without a central command and often subject to internecine feuding. However, it is now hard to believe that Germany is alone in supplying the UCK with arms.
The UCK is essentially a Western creation designed to be a tool in the hands of Germany in particular. Its purpose: to lever open Serbia to further imperialist penetration. The UCK is a diversity of armed ethnic Albanian groups demanding the "independence" of Kosovo and its annexation by Albania.
It is quite clear an entity such as Kosovo could never be "independent" of Serbia. The call for "independence" is really for annexation to Albania. The UCK and the ethnic Albanian "separatists" see NATO as the instrument to cordon off Kosovo as the first step towards their goal. A goal that will set the Balkans ablaze as ethnic Albanians will call into question the borders of other Balkan states.
The UCK's tactics have, until no , been to provoke confrontation with the Serb population of Kosovo. The UCK's confrontational politics from the start of its actions have been designed to ensure NATO occupies the Serbian province.
(i) Either in the role of protecting the Kosovo ethnic Albanians from the Serb security force's anti-terrorist campaign, or
(ii) in the role of "humanitarian peacemakers".
Whichever way the UCK coin falls, heads or tails, it is the NATO guarantee of military intervention and occupation of part of Serbia. A NATO base in Serbia would place the Western rivals in almost total control of the Balkans. Well placed for the next military push to the East.
UCK was expected to be the Western pawn in the farcical negotiations forced on the peoples of Yugoslavia and its Kosovo province in Rambouillet, Paris. The negotiations had for their purpose NATO military intervention by ground forces led by that EU "pillar" and along the lines of the Bosnian occupation. However, the UCK was not the lapdog the US expected it to be.
Besides, the US is not the only imperialist ally one can choose from in the Balkans these days. It is well known Germany favours the dismantling of Serbia, while the US and Britain for the moment does not. The US only wants rid of the Milosovic socialists, while Germany wants rid of The Federal Republic of Yugoslavia. Germany will promote a "Greater Albania" by annexing Serbian territory of Kosovo to Albania, while the US and Britain for the moment will not.
A Chronology of Orchestrated NATO Intervention Against Serbia
On 4 January 1998, the UCK issued a statement in Pristina, principal city of the province of Kosovo. It said the UCK assumed the role of the armed forces of Kosovar Albanians. UCK proclaimed its determination to fight for the unification of Kosovo with Albania. Since then UCK has attacked hundreds of Serb targets in Kosovo, farmers, police, and ethnic Albanians loyal to Belgrade.
The Serb authorities faced with the threat of a campaign to annex part of its sovereign territory reacted by a counter-insurgency campaign. The Serbian measures included closing down Albanian institutions which the Serbs considered were being used to ferment insurrection. The closure of Albanian institutions led to violent demonstrations in the streets of Pristina. On 28 January The Council of Europe passed a resolution condemning Serbian repression of the ethnic Albanian population of Kosovo.
The "contact group" for the redivision of Yugoslavia, the Western powers and Russia, US, Germany, France, UK and Italy meanwhile demanded that Serbian Interior Ministry police be withdrawn from Kosovo which would leave the Serb population open to attack by the UCK. Kosovar armed attacks were also backed up by regular mass political demonstrations supporting a Greater Albania.
On 31 March the UN Security Council, the US, France, Russia, UK and China, adopted resolution 1160 imposing an arms embargo on Yugoslavia, but seemingly did not apply to the UCK. China abstained. It urged the two sides to enter into urgent dialogue without preconditions on political status issues. But what status was there to discuss? That Serbia surrender its sovereignty to Albania? This was hardly the real issue.
Serbia had never given any indication that it would not negotiate. But the Serb government said that it would not negotiate on the question of sovereign territory. Part of Serbia was not going to be annexed or surrendered in any way. Serbia would negotiate only on the basis of autonomy for ethnic Albanians within Serbia.
Albanian Kosovars refused to enter into bilateral talks with the Serbs on any terms other than independence for Kosovo. Kosovo, as far as Serbia was concerned, was to become part of "Greater Albania". On 7 April 1998 Kosovar ethnic Albanians rejected an offer of talks from Serbia's President Milan Milutinov, saying they would only engage in talks if they were backed up by Western mediation demanding "independence".
Then on 17 April Albania called for NATO troops to be deployed along its border with Kosovo. Not to stave off invasion by Serbia, but to position NATO for eventual invasion of Kosovo. The Kosovo Albanian border is also used to smuggle arms to the UCK and where UCK have rear bases.
The Demonisation of Serbia
The UN human rights commission "approved" a resolution condemning Serb repression of ethnic Albanian "political views" only with 12 abstaining countries the most important being Russia on 22 April. How does one repress "political views"? Until now only people were the object of repression, now it seems "political views" can be repressed. The "political views" of the ethnic Albanians are probably the best advertised in the world, thanks to Western intervention.
Serbia held a referendum on whether the people of Serbia approved of foreign interference in talks on the future of Kosovo on the 23 April. The official results announced on 24 April indicated that 93.4% of votes in a 73% turn out opposed foreign intervention.
Kosovo Albanians boycotted the referendum. UCK launched attacks from Albania to coincide with the referendum and 23 UCK fighters were killed. The next day the pro-Western `Belgrade Centre for Free Elections and Democracy' questioned the referendum result claiming that all ethnic groups except the Serbs boycotted the vote and that the Serbs only constituted 63 % of the Yugoslav population. No further evidence of malpractice, other than this criticism was proffered.
On April 27 EU Foreign Ministers announced their arms embargo against Serbia and banned the export of police equipment and armoured cars. They also denied visas for EU countries to Serb officials. On 29 April the pro-Western "contact group" agreed to freeze Yugoslav financial assets, Russia abstained. All investment in Yugoslavia would be cut off if Serbia failed to enter "meaningful negotiations" with ethnic Albanians by 9 May.
On 15 May the US intervened and a meeting was organised by US envoys Holbrooke and Gelbard bringing President Milosovic and Ibrahim Rugovo the self-proclaimed president of the "Republic of Kosovo" together in Belgrade. The meeting as usual remained stagnant since the Albanians insisted on "independence" from Serbia. The UCK announced it had 12,000 combatants. On May 28 NATO deployed troops on the Albanian Border and began a series of large exercises designed to impress the Serbian people.
The exercises were not solely to intimidate Serbia. Exercises are usually carried out to contingency plans. Obviously in this case to invade Kosovo. The German newspaper Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung carried an article applauding the "Kosovo-isation" of Macedonia where 40% of the population is Albanian. The article went on to claim the: "fight for the political rights of ethnic Albanians in Macedonia is no longer possible within the institutions of Macedonia.
British Foreign Secretary, Robin Cook, chairing the EU General affairs council in Luxembourg, gave President Milosovic of Yugoslavia his "last warning" and hoped he was listening. On 13 June the "contact group" calls for a cease-fire; the withdrawal of Yugoslav and Serbian counter insurgency security forces from Kosovo; for the admission of international monitors to the province and fresh talks between Yugoslav and ethnic Albanian leaders in Kosovo.
Fingers on the NATO Triggers
On 15 June NATO launched a major air exercise employing planes from 13 member countries. They overflew Albania and Macedonia as an intimidatory show of rapid reaction force. The exercise was also promoted as an example of NATO's new "out of area role" - outside its defined territorial jurisdiction as defined by article 5 of the Washington Treaty of NATO 1949.
According to the Times 16 June 1998, eighty aircraft participated in the exercise lasting six hours, flying along the Yugoslav border through 120 miles of airspace. The 15 EU Prime Ministers at the Cardiff summit endorsed the four point demands to be put to Mr Milosovic by the Russian President Yeltsin on the occasion of his visit to Moscow on 16 June. Two of those points the Serbian leader refused to accept. (i) UCK be included in any negotiations and (ii) Anti-terrorist security forces withdraw from Kosovo.
President Milosovic agreed yet again to resume peace talks with Ibrahim Rogova the self-declared "President" of Kosovo and rejected proposals to include UCK which Serbia regarded as terrorists. US Secretary of State Albright said such talks were not what the Contact group demanded. That meant complete withdrawal of Yugoslav security forces from its own sovereign territory. To withdraw Serb security forces meant the UCK could regroup and reinforce its position and leave Serb villages open to attack.
On 23 June US envoy Richard Holbrooke met Mr Milosovic. On June 24 Mr Holbrooke met the UCK. On June 24 the UCK seized the Belacevac coal mine, a vital source of power to the Yugoslav national grid and abducted nine Serb workers. British Prime Minister, Tony Blair, warned Serbia use of NATO air strikes remained an option if Serbian Security forces were not withdrawn. On June 27 Mr Holbrooke declared, " I have no magic solution to offer, no silver bullets for peace". Yugoslav security forces retook the Belacevac coal mine 29 June.
The UCK Finger on the NATO Triggers
On 1 July the nine workers abducted by UCK were killed. On 6 July Germany, the US, Britain,France and Italy sent ambassadors and envoys to patrol Kosovo and monitor the movements and activities of the Yugoslav security forces. Four Albanian arms smugglers were shot dead by Yugoslav security forces on the Albanian border.
On 8 July "a contact group" meeting in Bonn declared the UCK would have to be included in the peace negotiations because of its improved military capacity. On 12 July UCK killed two Serb policemen. On 14 July, the OSCE which suspended Yugoslavia in 1992, held talks with Albanian Kosovars and asked the Yugoslav government if it would allow OSCE monitors into Kosovo.
On July 19 Yugoslav security forces launch offensive against UCK and took several towns out of UCK control, including the UCK headquarters. On 23 July the Yugoslav government extended the border with Albania to a 5km no-man's land in order to repel Albanian gunmen.
On 28 July the US Ambassador to Macedonia announced he had succeeded in creating a unified political structure within the Kosovar factions in order to promote them in negotiations. On the 30 July an EU delegation of envoys met President Milosovic for talks in Belgrade. The Serbs said they were prepared to halt all military action and said once again they were perfectly prepared to discuss autonomy for Kosovo, but not independence.
On 1 August, Yugoslav security forces continued their offensive against UCK. On 5 August, NATO said it had a full range of contingency military plans to restore order but could not move until there was a political mandate. On 6 August the Yugoslav authorities refused permission to "contact group" observers access to sites of alleged mass graves of atrocities blaming the Western media for writing misleading reports of fictitious mass graves. On 8 August, EU observers found no evidence of atrocities or mass graves.
On 9 August, the six nation "contact group" tabled new peace proposals. The Yugoslav government were prepared to negotiate on the basis of the proposals which conceded autonomy to Kosovo as a special part of Serbia with constitutional legislative powers and police, tax and foreign affairs powers. The Ethnic Albanians led by Ibrahim Rogova rebuffed the proposals saying they did not back independence for Kosovo. On 10 August UCK had been routed by Yugoslav security forces and forced to resort to hit and run guerrilla tactics.
On 13 August an Albanian negotiating team was formed by Rogova, which did not include the UCK or other Kosovar figures opposed to the negotiations. Adem Demaci became the UCK political representative. On 17 August, NATO launched another exercise in Albania as a show of rapid reaction force, as it called it, to intimidate Serbia and "bolster the morale of the Kosovar ethnic Albanians in Kosovo" the Times declared, 18 August 1998. The exercises resembled preparations for invading Kosovo and on the same day, Rogova refused to sit down with Serb counterparts.
The US organised a meeting on 1-2 September between President Milosovic and Ibrahim Rogova to support an interim agreement that any deal done could be renegotiated in three to five years. This proposal was shot down by the EU foreign Ministers meeting in Austria. On 4 September US envoy Christopher Hill stated that EU governments were obsessed with EU and were indifferent to the crisis in Kosovo. Two days later EU Foreign Ministers meeting in Austria expressed "wariness" towards new US initiative to break the deadlock in Kosovo showing that the strains between the Alliance rivals were deepening. On 8 September the flight ban into EU countries by the Yugoslav State Airline, JAT, was brought into force.
NATO Moves to Save the UCK
On 23 September the UN security council adopted resolution 1199 demanding an immediate end to all acts of violence by any party, but with China abstaining. The resolution did not threaten the use of force against any party in the conflict. On 24 September NATO approved an "activation warning" authorising General Wesley Clark to ask member states for the forces necessary to carry out military intervention without a UN mandate. Air strikes against Serbia were to be carried out within two weeks. This caused a split in the contact group with Russia which opposed the use of NATO violence against Serbia.
On 28 September the Yugoslav government declared the operation against the UCK had ended and announced all anti-terrorist activities had ended. UCK declared they were not defeated, proclaimed a holy war and demanded NATO action against Serbia.
On 30 September, British Foreign Minister, Robin Crook, called for an emergency meeting of the UN Security Council to condemn three alleged massacres. Mr Cook then warned Yugoslavia "again" that NATO military action would be used if the Serbs failed to comply with resolution 1199 while no stipulation for the use of violence was contained in the resolution. No convincing evidence was ever offered to support massacres.
On 1 October, NATO was placed on a high state of readiness to launch missiles after a UN Security Council session said the Yugoslav security forces did not comply with resolution 1199 and withdrawn. This provoked the pro-Western "contact group" meeting in London on 2 October which again called for Yugoslavia to comply with resolution 1199 (to which no mandate for force was attached). Discussion of NATO use of force was not on the agenda to avoid confrontation with Russia. 359 Russian deputies in the State Duma voted against NATO military action on Yugoslavia.
NATO Acts "Out of Area" and "Into any area"
On 5 October, US envoy Holbrooke met with President Milosovic in Belgrade where he presented Yugoslavia with the threat of air and missile attack on Serbia. Mr Milosovic said a NATO attack on Serbia would be a criminal act. This was followed on 6 October by a Russian warning that it would veto any new UN resolutions authorising NATO military action against Yugoslavia.
On 8 October US President Clinton called for an "activation order" to enable Clark the NATO Commander to go ahead for attacks on Serbia. British Foreign Minister, Robin Cook, acting for the US Atlantic Alliance gave "another final warning" to Yugoslavia at a meeting of the "contact group". France, acting on behalf of the "Euro-pillar" expressed reservations on military force against Serbia owing to divisions in the UN Security Council and the "contact group".
On 12 October US envoy Holbrooke struck a deal with President Milosovic. Yugoslavia would comply with UN resolution 1199, allow 2,000 OSCE observers into Kosovo, and allow NATO reconnaissance flights over Kosovo. Western governments hailed the agreement as a victory for diplomacy at gun point. NATO threatened to bomb Serbia if it did not withdraw its troops from Kosovo. NATO approved air and Missile strikes against Serbia. The air strikes were suspended until 27 October. but NATO secretary General, Solana, said the threat would be retained because Mr "Milosovic cannot be trusted to end the `crack down in Kosovo'."
The actual agreement between President Milosovic and Mr Holbrooke was a US deal which excluded, once again, the rival EU "Allies". Bonn requested the text of the agreement and was totally ignored by the Americans. After three days the Germans were obliged to go in search of the document and presented themselves at the US Embassy in Bonn. One German official was quoted as saying: "Can the US no longer play as part of a team." Trivial it may seem but diplomatically dynamite, in a trifling way the incident exposes the comic but savage irony of the predators in ripping asunder the Central and Eastern Europe.
The West had no mandate from any international institution to bomb anyone. So NATO needed some other pretext for intervention. They gave as a pretext the claim that Serb forces massacred 18 "civilians". But where was the evidence? Finnish legal experts and Kofi Annan, UN Secretary General, were invited by the Serb authorities to investigate the "massacres". No substantial evidence was ever presented.
During the Bosnian conflict 1992-95, US retired officers up to the rank of general, acting as observers intervened on the side of Izetbegovic's troops reorganising them into a real army assisted by spy satellite intelligence tracking the movements of the Bosnian Serbs. In this way the US were able to launch the Muslim army against the Serbs enabling them to conquer large tracts of Bosnia. Each cease-fire was used as a rest period to save the pro-US forces in difficulties before retaking the offensive against the Bosnian Serbs. Germany assisted the Croats in a similar fashion.
Throughout the course of 1998 the UCK (KLA) constantly supplied with sophisticated hand held weapons and hardware grew in number from hundreds to thousands. The size and extent of their extraordinary growth and effectiveness in attacking Serb targets in Kosovo was witnessed by the proof of extensive counter guerrilla operations mounted by Belgrade. By the end of September the UCK had been practically defeated. In October 1998, as in Bosnia, the West moved to protect their UCK investment which was in severe difficulty. This was one of the motives behind the `media massacre' strategy by the West. The other was to use the "media massacre" hysteria as a cover to manoeuvre a new NATO military intervention plan into position.
A Serb withdrawal from Kosovo would have allowed a breathing space for the UCK to regroup reorganise and rearm in order to have a capacity to launch an offensive in the spring of 1999. Without that capacity the West could not use the urgency of the UCK 's existence as a pretext to pressurise and attack the Serbs.
The US Acts "Out of Order"
Richard Holbrooke, the US envoy to the Balkans declared: "We are forging history." NATO had shown its willingness to act militarily in areas outside its jurisdiction. He outlined its willingness to act without a mandate from the UN in the Washington Post 8 November 1998. This was an interventionist precedent which the US and Britain hoped to extend to the whole international scene. Scenarios were rampant thereafter in the pages of the International Herald Tribune. The conflict that closed the Century in Europe was to provide the military direction for "globalising" military adventure.
Not surprisingly, France, Germany, Italy and Russia insisted Western violence must be covered by UN authorisation. Not because they disagreed with the concept of military intervention but because the US and Britain held the military initiative in the face of their international rivals. The more liberal New York Times noted European Allies were angered at the nomination of an American head of the OSCE observers [who most believe to be spies anyway] in Kosovo while the EU provides two thirds of the finance and personnel.
On 13 October, the Kosovar ethnic Albanians called for NATO troops to occupy Kosovo to protect ethnic Albanians. UCK continued its campaign killing three Serb policemen on 17 October and launched attacks against several Serb targets in Kosovo.
In November, President Clinton gave the go ahead to the CIA to overthrow President Milosovic of Yugoslavia and put a $5 million bounty on the heads of Radovan Karadzic and General Ratko Miladic the Bosnian Serb leaders which the West claim are "war criminals". According to The Observer the US "...focus is now on helping Montenegrin efforts to break away from Belgrade and aiding the opposition within Belgrade."
On December 10 the " Euro-extraction force", led by France installed themselves in Kumanovo in Macedonia. Their task was said to "extract" monitors from Kosovo if "peace" broke down. The so-called peace had been "brokered" by US envoy Holbrooke. It was regarded as a "flimsy" peace by the Western powers. Since the writer estimates the West really desires a "low intensity conflict" to continue past the winter in Kosovo, the monitors were there to enflame one side against the other by "discovering" atrocities and apportioning blame, as a rule on Serbia. Real peace would have been not to supply the UCK with the materials for "low intensity warfare" in the first place.
The "extraction force" is the first Euro-commanded and completely Euro effort excluding US units. This the Euro-federalists have taken as the model for future expeditions by the Euro-corps under the NATO "pillar". The force is led by a French paratroop commander directing an English, Dutch and French battalion from Skopje and a French and German battalion from Kumanovo.
The West's Offensive against national Sovereignty
In January 1999 the Western powers and their Balkan allies took the offensive. The 17 January Sunday newspapers in Britain informed their readers that Serb security forces had "massacred" 45 villagers in Racak in Kosovo. William Walker, the US agent in charge of the OSCE monitors rushed to confirm the scene as one of "massacre" and said, "I do not hesitate to accuse the government and security forces".
The Yugoslav government was incensed. They designated William Walker `persona non grata', banned him from Yugoslavia and exposed him as a CIA agent. But the Western media went into overdrive and used the confusion and commotion to push through their plans, made in the USA, for the isolation of Serbia and NATO occupation of the Serbian province of Kosovo.
British Foreign Minister, Robin Cook, joined the US agent and declared, "I condemn this savagery in the strongest possible terms". NATO Commander Wesley Clark and General Klaus Naumann of Germany and NATO military committee were sent to tell President Milosovic of the determination of NATO to bomb Serbian targets if the Yugoslav government did not pull its security forces out of Kosovo. But the real message they conveyed was "You are leaving the West with only few options, all of them involving force". Herald Tribune, 21 January 1999.
On 18 January the Albanian government demanded that NATO , "Strike today. Only armed intervention by NATO will end the bloodshed and create conditions for the start of dialogue".(Herald Tribune, 19 January 1999). In the same journal on the 20 January a NATO ambassador in Brussels is quoted as saying after the massacres: "Its a turning point for the West on Kosovo. Allied governments were grappling with the need for new policies." President Chirac of France said the Holbrooke October agreement had not convinced President Milosovic to grant autonomy to Kosovo. In actual fact the Yugoslav government has never refused to grant autonomy to Kosovo. It had refused to concede independence to Kosovo.
British news articles of 1,200 words described the anguish and horror of the "event", emotive headlines such as "Horror on the hillside" designed to blind the reader to the one paragraph which explained that Serb security police had fought a battle with UCK fighters in and around the village the night before in which a large number of guerrillas had been killed. Examining the bodies, the head of the Yugoslav forensic team made clear:t "not a single body bears the signs of execution. The bodies were not massacred."
Meanwhile, 220 Kosovar Serbs had been kidnapped by the UCK. 35 were released, 29 found dead, the rest unaccounted for. The bodies of 39 Serbs were retrieved from a canal near Glodjaxie. There are also numerous accounts of Albanians suffering the same fate at the hands of the UCK. Generally there crimes are closeness to Serbs either as boyfriends or girlfriends, or loyalty to the Serb authorities. Where did the Western media report these horrors?
The so-called "massacre" gave the NATO Ambassadors meeting in Brussels on 24 January an opportunity to "devise" a new strategy. NATO Generals Wesley Clark and Naumann announced on 20 January that Mr Milosovic showed little willingness to cooperate with the West. Serbia fearing a stitch up from the so-called "international community" refused to allow an "international investigation into Racak or pull back security forces from Kosovo".
US Defence Secretary Cohen said that the Alliance should be ready to use NATO bombing campaign that seriously curtailed Serbia's ability to use force in Kosovo. He said Western governments were demanding self-government for the ethnic Albanian majority. The problem for the Americans is that no one internationally supports the claim for Kosovo's "independence". If NATO bombs the hell out of Serbia simply in support of a claim that is internationally not acceptable, then NATO will be seen as the airforce of the UCK.
Serbia is threatening no other state in the Balkans. Yet Mr Cohen stated that the US backed "a phased campaign designed to reduce the ability of Milosovic's forces to threaten those in the region itself". EU powers were not prepared to back the US proposals, whereas Holland and Britain sent additional fighter-bombers to bases in Italy. In order to get the German and the Euro-federalists on board, NATO proposed reinforcing the French-led "extraction force".
More importantly, the US and Britain were prepared now to occupy the Serb province of Kosovo. "Deep in the Foreign Office, the people paid to think about these things are coming to a very depressing conclusion. Sooner or later a NATO led force will have to occupy Kosovo....'Its so obvious', a Foreign Office source said, `its just a question of time'...", wrote the The Observer reporter on 24 January 1998.
Negotiations at the point of a Cruise Missile
On 25 January, US ambassador to Macedonia, Christopher Hill, announced he would press to unify the ethnic Albanians behind a set of proposals endorsed in London on the previous Friday, by the "contact group". They included self-government for the Albanian Kosovars, their own political, legal, judicial and police powers in parallel structures to the existing Serbian ones. The idea was to provide a form of autonomy within Yugoslavia, but without independence. The final status of Kosovo to be decided at least three years later in a referendum. The "contact group" would consolidate the agreement on such a position. This position was never one which the Serbian government refused to accept.
France joined the skirmish on 25 January. French top military brass announced that 100,000 US and EU troops would be needed to impose NATO's will on the situation in Kosovo. The French Defence Minister, Alain Richard, insisted: "We will share our part of the responsibility at the heart of Europe and the Alliance", according to the Herald Tribune. But on 26 January the French Journal Le Monde stated:
"international consensus was not yet on the cards." The US at the NATO meeting in Brussels on the 24 January proposed: "to begin to seek a new agreement with a settlement acceptable to the Albanian Kosovars, then impose it on the Serbs under threat of a four day ultimatum after which NATO would Bomb Serbia".
The EU NATO allies said it was too early to bomb Serbia and estimated it was necessary first of all that the "contact group" try once more to "join the two parties in negotiations on the theme of autonomy for the province". The Foreign ministers of the EU met in Brussels and reiterated their position. They expressed a desire that the contact group launch a pressing invitation to the Yugoslav government and the Albanian separatists to negotiate a political solution in the form of an international "conference".
The form of the " international conference" was adopted to deny the US the opportunity to take the Balkan belligerents to the USA and force them to negotiate behind closed US doors, away from the European gaze, as the US did during the "Dayton agreement". In this case the Euro-federalists wanted to be "internationally represented" to ensure a deal was not done without their interests being addressed as was the case in Dayton. An EU diplomat described the new project as an "invitation" accompanied by pressure on both sides in the form of a NATO "warning" to Belgrade (but not an ultimatum at this stage) and a threat to cut the lifeline to the UCK (KLA) by drying up its sources of foreign supplies and logistics, it was stated in Le Monde, 27 January 1998.
In the areas controlled by the UCK only carefully chosen Western journalists are admitted. Any other journalists found are either kidnapped and or killed. "The KLA (UCK) has used the[West's] forced withdrawal of some Serbian police and army units to walk back into villages unopposed, to the chagrin of Belgrade" the Guardian reported on 3 February. The analysis continued, " The KLA did not have to agree to peace talks, the more massacres there are like...Racak...the greater the pressure on NATO to deploy ground troops". Their presence at the talks was only important in that it gave UCK political gravity. Their real objective is to pave the way for Euro-pillar NATO occupation.
The slippery Euro-federalists, who had supplied the UCK guerrillas were aware they had stepped up better and more sophisticated arms deliveries to Kosovo through organised crime channels. Now they had to rein in their creation to meet the demands of the US and Russia for a solution to the crisis.
The US had no influence over the Northern part of Albania where the Berisha Supporters are pro-German. They therefore had no means to block the supply of weapons to the UCK. If the UCK were to stick to their demands for "independence", the US negotiating position and their respect amongst local allies in the Balkans conflict would be in ruins. On 3 February Guardian reported that Yugoslav security forces seized £350,000 worth of weapons ammunition and uniforms destined for the UCK.
The Yugoslav parliament voted 227 to 3 on 4 February to attend the Rambouillet talks in Paris with three abstentions. A twelve page motion stated: the Yugoslav government "was determined to resolve the problem of Kosovo through dialogue. We do not accept foreign troops in our territory under any pretext of implementing an agreement that is reached." The Yugoslav deputy Prime Minister said: "We will use all means to prevent the arrival of NATO troops in Kosovo. There is no way that the troops of NATO can be deployed peacefully."
Cynically, the US played the only card they had. They argued the biggest stick they had was the "credible" use of air strikes. Blitzing could only be used effectively against Serb fixed military installations. At the same time the slippery US administration warmed to President Milosovic as the sole power broker in Yugoslavia who could do the deal for the US. Like the deal he had done on Bosnia in Dayton in 1995.
The "credible" part of the use of NATO violence was to accommodate the "new out of area" and into "any area" military projection dominating US geostrategic analysts. NATO had got to be seen to be "just doing it", credibly before the renewal of the NATO mandate in April 1999. The new mandate, if there is to be one, must retain US supremacy in Europe. The US wanted Kosovo, "not solved", but "managed", out of the way before then, a Herald Tribune report outlined on 2 February.
When Thieves Fall Out
The French insisted that if the US is intent on committing NATO ground troops to occupy Kosovo, then the US must be prepared to be part of it. This was the basis of the thinking behind what became the Rambouillet "peace negotiations".
The "contact group" met in Paris on the 29 January to "issue a virtual summons to negotiate on a plan for interim self-rule in Kosovo" only after it had sent another warning to President Milosovic. A US "NATO diplomat" said that: "The Idea is a Dayton-style lock up under incredible international pressure, the longer the talks go on, the more imposition will replace negotiations", according to the Herald Tribune, 27 January 1998.
General Klaus Naumann ,the German Supreme Commander and head of the NATO military committee, announced on German TV that if NATO were to initiate air strikes, they would be aimed "solely at military targets to cripple the military machine that is waging the campaign in Kosovo". He said NATO welcomed the will on the part of Bonn that German soldiers would take part in any NATO military intervention in Kosovo.
Germany and EU, especially France, wants "Europe" to feature prominently in any intervention in order to prevent the US rival from taking control of the Euro-manufactured crisis. The Euro-federalists insisted on inclusion of the "contact group" in setting the agenda for the Ramboutillet negotiations. This was to allow Germany and France to act as one force outside the NATO military structure. France is still not part of the NATO military structure. In addition Russia is part of the "contact group" and could be used as a counter against the US and Britain.
The thinking in Washington was that NATO occupation in Kosovo was the new objective. Air strikes would have to be followed by ground forces to "fill the vacuum". According to the new thinking, occupation it is to be. But who will be the boss, Germany, EU, the "contact group" NATO, the US?
A 30,000 strong NATO invasion force was constructed even before a single word had been exchanged in negotiations. It was to be led by the British Commander General Sir Michael Jackson. He would lead the Euro-corps rapid reaction force. US General Wesley Clark, the NATO Supreme commander in Europe would remain in overall control of the intervention. Britain contributed 8,000 troops initially, France 6,000 and Germany 3,000. Other East and West European states contributing 1,000 troops each. The US wanted to keep their contribution to under 2,000 ground forces.
The British Foreign Minister, Robin Cook, demanded on behalf of the US that the Kosovo contestants present themselves in France by 6 February 1998. The venue was the Chateau Rambouillet south west of the capital Paris. Mr Cook was supposed to act as co-chairman on behalf of the "contact group" in conjunction with Hubert Verdrine the French Foreign Minister. The "contact group" told the Serbian President that Kosovo had to be granted self-government. Its future status to be decided after three years. The Yugoslav government would be represented, but resented the West's sacrifice of Serbian sovereignty. Kosovo is the cradle of Serbian national identity and culture dating back to medieval times.
Meanwhile, France undertook to strengthen international institutions against the US rival and its potential for unilateral action, which she said was one of the worlds great worries. The French move is seen in Washington as an attempt to limit and contain American power. France is seeking a new set of principles for the General Assembly of the United Nations for building international order "excluding unilateral temptations and leading to shared management of global tasks". A French dossier of criticisms casts the United States as a primary international problem, a hegemonic power blocking power-sharing in the new Century. It proposes restructuring and reinforcing international institutions such as the UN Security Council and IMF as a means of containing and counteracting US power.
"Forced Agreement" By Confinement
The West's plans for the so-called "negotiations", (or was it a conference?) was to lock the Serbs, Kosovo Albanians and the "negotiating" representatives of the "contact group" into the Rambouillet castle and force an agreement acceptable to the Western powers. A 20 page framework document, drawn up by the West was presented to the Serb and ethnic Albanian delegations.
A settlement would entail pouring 30,000 NATO troops into Kosovo to establish a military base in Serbia. On the success of an "agreement", NATO would occupy Kosovo to "enforce" it. If there was a real agreement what need would there be for "enforcement"? Either the agreement would not be real and therefore not enforceable, or it would be real and therefore would have no need of "enforcement". "Enforcement" could only mean enforcement of the expansionist will of the Western powers.
Here was the plan. If the Albanian Kosovars accepted the deal and Yugoslavia did not, NATO would attack Serbian military targets with missiles and bombs. If the Serb side accepted the deal and the Albanian Kosovars did not then NATO could not attack Serbia or occupy Kossovo. This second scenario, daft though it seems, was designed to enlist and encourage the ethnic Albanian's agreement. That is, to be on the side of bombing the Serbs .
If the matter of agreement rested as much with Albanian acceptance of the accords, as it did with Serbian acceptance, why single out Serbia for mass destruction. Throughout the Rambouillet confidence trick the Western powers singled Serbia out for bombing even before the outcome of the exercise.
For that matter, what international right has NATO to destroy any nation, state or its armed forces? From the outset these were not "negotiations". Rambouillet was an imperialist political pantomime which was supposed to pave the way for a campaign to weaken the Serb military infrastructure by air raids before occupying Kosovo, and perhaps even Serbia itself. The ploy backfired and the pantomime turned into a French farce.
However, the Western powers as usual were divided on who used the force, as they are on most things. The Europeans, led by France were for a more diplomatic pressure backed up with threats only, while the US wanted to do Wounded Knee on the Serbs.
When Britain and France, the hosts to the Rambouillet talks, drew up the draft plan, they omitted to include the section on the "occupation force". The truth was that the EU, in particular, France had tried to block intervention in Kosovo. France wanted authority for air strikes vested in the "contact group". The US insisted that the NATO General Secretary, Javier Solana, have the right to launch the attack. One US official said the Europeans "get carried away by their need to succeed and settle for a bad agreement. Annex A.1, about a stabilisation force on the ground, had been forgotten, so it's being put back in now" he said. Bad for who? Germany? What about Serbia?
The "agreement" which no-one agreed upon, went so far as to specify the size of firearms the remaining Yugoslav forces and a new Kosovo security force would be allowed to use. Reuters quoted a Serb member of the delegation describing the text as "horrifying, because it pushed Serbia right out of Kosovo".
Throughout the disgraceful Rambouillet episode, the Serbs were portrayed as intransigent, as slackers, holding up the talks. Robin Cook accused the Serbs of just that, while praising the Albanians for their co-operation. US Secretary for State Madeline Albright referred to the Serb delegation as "deal breakers". The British press stated British foreign Secretary, Robin Cook, as saying on 12 February: the Serbs were responsible for the impasse. The opposite was the case according to the Herald Tribune 16-17 February which stated the ethnic Albanians were to blame when they rejected the proposals which included recognition of Yugoslav borders for three years.
Six Feet of Earth Makes Aggressors and Victims all the same size
Washington reiterated the now threadbare daily warnings that Serbia would be bombed if it was responsible for letting the talks fail. At the same time Russia reiterated such threats were unacceptable. The Yugoslav deputy Prime Minister said: "We do not underestimate NATO' force, but it would be better for the Alliance not to hit our country.... because it will need more coffins than guns."
One week into the "negotiations" The Yugoslav President said that Yugoslavia would turn to a Vietnam-style guerrilla war if NATO carried out its threat to attack Serbia. He declared: "Serbia would not succumb to foreign intimidation. We have never given in our history. No matter whatever has happened, we have always fought. It would mean blood up to the knees." In a clear message to the US that the Serbs would not back down if attacked, he said: "We might suffer in the first air strikes, but what will happen if the struggle went on for years. We are taking the matter of air strikes seriously."
The Yugoslav President Mr Milan Milutinovic said: "Why should we have a war with the international community? We are in conflict with the terrorists. This is an absurd situation." We have principles on our side, while the "international community has NATO force on their side. Unfortunately, we are a small country and we can only defend ourselves with principles. But in the event of aggression we can also defend ourselves". The Rambouillet meeting was extended for another week.
The Times on 15 February was promoting the invasion even before there was an agreement. It was to be called KFOR British troops, 8,000 of them were to get Hi-tech equipment to deal with the low winter temperatures in Continental central Europe. The initial invasion of Kosovo was to be called Operation Agricola. Final preparations for loading all the heavy equipment were being made in Germany at the port of Emden.
EU diplomats in Paris accused the US, especially Madeline Albright, of having a poor understanding of the Kosovo problem when she said that the ethnic Albanians should adopt Gerry Adams, the Sinn Fein leader as a role model. "Its clear she hasn't grasped the full deal under discussion. Quite honestly she's been unimpressive on details...having said that she's the one that can say to the Serbs, `sign this or we'll bomb the hell out of you',", an EU source was quoted as saying in the Times 16 February.
What the West really wanted, was for the Serbs to accept foreign NATO troops on their soil and the ethnic Albanians to shelve their demand for a referendum on independence for Kosovo after a three year interim period of NATO occupation. "All the rest is conversation", one diplomat was quoted as saying in the Herald Tribune,17 February. The US ambassador to Macedonia, Christopher Hill, said "prior acceptance" of a deal with the Kosovar Albanians was important to the final confrontation with Mr Milosovic, placing blame for an impasse squarely on his side. "It ensures that those who have doubts about the use of air power against Yugoslavia will not have any argument".
Albright and Cook beating the NATO Drums of War
Mr Hill flew to Belgrade to consult President Milosovic which broke the conference rules; a US unilateral action which infuriated EU diplomats. The EU envoy, Wolfgang Petritsch, chased Hill's car to the airport in a vain attempt to stop him. Hill, by EU reckoning, had given the game away. "By recognising that Belgrade held the key to the whole thing, the very idea of the conference is diminished", a source close to the Albanian delegation is said to have commented in the Times, 18 February. EU diplomats also roasted Robin Cook and Albright for beating the NATO drums of war.
On the 18 February, the day before the deadline for the end of the talks, the Western powers called on their citizens to leave Yugoslavia immediately and began evacuating embassies. The warning was an attempt by the Big powers to spread unease, amongst the Serbian population. The Russian President Yeltsin telephoned Clinton and told him: "We will not let you touch Kosovo" it was reported in The Guardian. The White House denied the contact. Instead it sent 41 fighter bombers to staging bases throughout Europe. The Western powers, the greatest military power the world has ever seen, to a man, proclaimed themselves ready to attack the Balkan state. To bomb the hell out of a small nation in the name of "peace".
In response President Milosovic refused to meet Christopher Hill on Friday 18 February. On Yugoslave television he said: "Threats of bombarding our country if it does not allow foreign occupation troops on our territory should be a warning to the whole world. This should be a warning to everyone who cares about peace and freedom. We will not give up Kosovo even if we are bombed."
Rambouillet was suspended on 23 February for three weeks. The Talks had stalled, not because of Serb intransigence in refusing to surrender its sovereign territory to the NATO jackboots, but because the ethnic Albanians refused to accept the deal on offer. The US and the West said the ethnic Albanians would sign in two weeks after consulting at home in Kosovo. No-one was playing by the imperialists rules. The US policy lay in ruins and the EU had no solution to offer. James Rubin, the US state department spokesman said: "If the Kosovars sign we'll have the NATO air trigger back again". The signatures were needed to allow NATO to bomb Serbia into accepting military occupation of its territory.
Ironically, the US was denied its biggest stick, the bomb, by the ethnic Albanians and the UCK. The US, shocked by the diplomatic defeat dealt them by the other Western powers, the Serbs and above all the UCK, began immediately to cast around for another means to bomb Serbia. The new stance was that the provisions that were put in place in October still stood. If Serbia became the victim of another staged "massacre", NATO could bomb Serbia and fulfil its destiny of "out of area" and "into any area" in the Twentyfirst Century.
At the time of writing the Rambouillet Mark II meeting has not taken place. But, NATO the Western powers, the "contact group", the UN security council, the "international community" call it what you will, are one and the same, one and all, imperialists! We include in this all the repulsive offspring and agents of the abusers of power. They have spoken for themselves, as this short work shows.
No matter how the slippery US and German rivals do their diplomatic sums to arrive at their respective intervention formulae, it is inconceivable that the imperialists of NATO are in favour of national liberation, bearing in mind their bloody history of ruthlessly crushing of nations and national liberation in every part of the World. When the historic destroyers of nations raises the cry of self-determination now, it is as justification for the most monstrous military intervention and occupation in Europe since the Hitler occupations 1939-45.
The recent betrayal of Abdullah Ochlan the Kurdish leader is an example of the freedom loving "international community of imperialists" and their paid international servants and puppets. No outcry from NATO as the murderous Turkish armies swept into Kurdistan to "mop up" resistance after the seizure of a real fighter for national liberation. Where was NATO the "national liberation" fighter then? Why is Turkey not bombed for its hideous record of human rights violations? But that is another story.
For labour and democratic movements, as well as those interested in World Peace, there are many dangerous precedents involved in the way the new imperialism has broken up the former Yugoslavia. The issue of world peace is no doubt top of the agenda for most people of any political understanding. However, it is not at first easy to recognise the method of neo-colonising.
It is not the nation itself, which the globalist attacks - which is after all only the extended family living working and producing on a given piece of turf. The globalist empire builder attacks the State which represents and protects the unity and well-being of the nation. He rolls back the state.
Such a state was Yugoslavia. A multi-nation state. Britain is a multi-nation state composed of three basic nations and several ethnic groups. The same may be said of Belgium or Switzerland. Small nations are often grouped together by history, irrespective of what that history is. Generally it would be difficult for these small nations to exist independently if they did not adhere to each other in solidarity under one protective state.
The globalizing neo-imperialist does not attack the nation directly. In fact he claims to be an internationalist. He attacks the state. The state is the only defence mechanism the nation or nations have to defend their social economic and territorial interests. Destroy the solidarity between ethnic groups and small nations which is the cement of unity and the state can no longer exist.
Oh Yes! one more thing. Small nations and protectorate statelets can still exist. And many do. But just as often not as proud independent people's exercising their own democratic will. They exist under imperialism, as they do in Bosnia where the Western bosses can sack the whole government if they wish, or like Northern Ireland where Westminster sacked the whole Stormont government of that statelet in 1972.
8 March 1999
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