[Editorial from the US magazine Against the Currents, May-June
1999]
The carnage in Kosovo and the United States/NATO air campaign
pose one of the greatest challenges in a generation to the left's
principles, political courage and moral backbone. During most of
our lifetimes, it's been unprecedented to confront such a
situation of apparent total conflict between competing
imperatives: between the need for immediate action to stop
genocide, and the need to oppose and halt imperialist
interventions...
The crime against humanity perpetrated in Kosovo would have been
prevented, years in advance, by the defeat of the Milosevic
regime and allied gangsters during their previous war, in Bosnia.
What was required then, from 1991 on, was not NATO bombings or
invasions, but simply allowing the Republic of Bosnia-Herzegovina
to arm itself against the ethnic cleansing that aimed at
destroying a small multicommunal state.
The West imposed an arms embargo in the name of "avoiding a wider
war," which left the unarmed Bosnian civilian population subject
to destruction by Milosevic's "Yugoslav National Army" and by
Serb and Croat paramilitaries, finally forcing Bosnia into a
military alliance with Croatia for physical survival...
Throughout the 1990s the West facilitated Milosevic's butcheries
and internal repression by treating him as the key to Balkan
"stability."
The Catastrophe in the Making
The flow of refugees from Kosovo, the reports of mass
depopulations and burning of villages, and the all-too-credible
reports of separation of male refugees for summary mass
executions, all accelerated when the bombings began. Yet it is
important not to overweight this argument: The Serbian regime's
campaign for the destruction of the Kosovar Albanian population
was already underway... The planning and implementation of this
operation was enabled and precipitated not by the bombing of
Yugoslavia, but by the West's policies of the previous decade of
constant attempts at cynical deal-making with the Milosevic
regime...
The admirable anti-war struggles of the Yugoslav democratic
opposition, at its height in the early 1990s, organized anti-war
mobilizations of larger size, relative to the population of
Serbia, than the biggest U.S. anti- war demonstrations of the
Vietnam era. And this brave legacy of civic opposition to
Milosevic is the first "collateral damage" of the bombing.
But no one could imagine that this opposition today, in its
defeated and corrupted state (with some of its leadership now in
the Milosevic cabinet), could mount any effective challenge to
slaughter and depopulation in Kosovo.
Again, the main international factor that derailed the once-
promising democratic challenge to Milosevic was not NATO bombing.
It was, rather, the incessant western policy of copying up to
Milosevic, legitimizing his regime, rewarding his adventures in
Kosovo (abrogating its regional autonomy in 1989), the war with
Croatia, then the ethnic-cleansing rape of Bosnia-Herzegovina,
each one more murderous than the previous, culminating in the
1998-99 Kosovo catastrophe.
Throughout this decade, everything the West has done could only
make this regime appear permanent and irremovable, even
irreplaceable. That, in fact, was the real lesson of the Dayton
accords, which consolidated the dismemberment of Bosnia (after
its army had begun to win the war!), and the intent of the
ramshackle agreement at Rambouillet, which specifically excluded
the Kosovar Albanians' right of self-determination.
The facts of the immediate impact of NATO bombing on the fate of
the Yugoslav democratic forces, and on the acceleration of
killing and depopulation in Kosovo, are relevant but not
ultimately decisive. After all, by all accounts the refugees
fleeing Kosovo welcome the bombing and would prefer to see it
intensified. As socialists and as revolutionary opponents of
imperialism, we have to face the question uppermost in most
ordinary people's minds: Shouldn't the world stop the genocide?
The Politics of This War
Our response must begin by noting numerous genocides and crimes
against humanity in which U.S. imperialism itself was the
perpetrator or sponsor: Guatemala, Indonesia and East Timor,
Indochina, the starvation of the people of Iraq today.
Nor should it be forgotten that the United States-organized
sadistic torture of the Iraqi population began with the stated
goal of liberating Kuwait from the murderous occupation by Saddam
Hussein. This case illustrates one fundamental reason for
opposing the current war: Any gateway for imperialist
"humanitarian intervention" opens onto the most horrific
consequences, unanticipated and uncontrollable by well-meaning
folks who may have initially supported the intervention.
What flows from the United States and NATO giving themselves
license to be the saviors and the guarantors of stability? Our
view is that even worse horrors are the likeliest result.
The current war is a confrontation between two malignant relics,
former Cold War partners now become enemies: NATO, the
U.S.-organized alliance organized 50 years ago to ensure
Washington's hegemony in the anti-Communist Cold War crusade; and
the rump Yugoslav regime of Slobodan Milosevic, a Stalinist who
turned to nationalism, and allied himself to the most vicious
elements within Serbia, to advance his own opportunist ambitions.
NATO is not at war with Yugoslovia for humanitarian reasons to
save Kosovars. Nor is this a war over some direct economic
interest. NATO is at war to save itself and its political
leaders--because their threats and bluffs failed, and they must
now follow through, regardless of whether this means "we have to
destroy Kosovo in order to save it."
An Inevitable Wider War
We oppose NATO's war in the former Yugoslavia first, because we
are opponents of NATO itself--because by its very nature it is
not and cannot be anything other than a machine for imperialist
dominion.
NATO was created in 1949, at a time when the economic hegemony of
the United States was absolutely unchallenged, when it was the
political decision-maker for Europe, when its military muscle and
nuclear umbrella made Washington the guarantor for the
reconstruction of capitalism in Europe and the supervisor of the
transformation of the old European colonial empires.
Much has changed in half a century. The former foe, the Soviet
Union, has vanished, and United States capitalism faces serious
economic rivals. Still, through its unique ability to organize a
large-scale military intervention, the United States seeks in
this war with rump-Yugoslavia to reaffirm its power to call the
shots.
The same desire to maintain U.S. hegemony lies behind
Washington's aggressive sponsorship of NATO's newest members,
Poland, Hungary and the Czech Republic, at a time when a
nearly-shattered post-Soviet Russia cannot be considered any
military threat to them.
Ostensibly, U.S. "leadership" is an indispensable ingredient for
preserving "stability." Instead, the expansion of NATO humiliates
Russia and strengthens right-wing nationalism there, while the
bitter example of the Balkans shows U.S. "leadership" morally and
politically bankrupt, unable even to foresee let alone prevent
systematically-organized ethnic cleansings, dithering and
dathering and blithering and blathering while civilian
populations were left defenseless and consumed.
Secondly, this war, once having begun, almost inevitably must
become nothing less than an all-out occupation and re-drawing of
the map of the Balkans. In this process, the rights of self-
determination of all the peoples involved, Kosovars included,
will be brutally subordinated to the goals of conquest.
We recognize that the Kosovars themselves overwhelmingly support
NATO intervention and undoubtedly want it to be expanded. Our
fundamental quarrel is not with the victims who are
understandably seeking help from any possible source, but rather
with those supporters of this war who fail to face up to the
consequences of where it is most likely to lead.
Unlike some apologists for the Belgrade regime, we don't
subscribe to the notion that this war was all plotted in advance
by U.S. imperialism as part of a plot to "break up" Yugoslavia.
If anything, the United States was less eager than (for example)
Germany to encourage Croatian and Slovenian secession from
Yugoslavia--and certainly, Washington showed little objection to
Milosevic's ambitions for a Greater Serbia so long as it seemed
attainable without too much "wider instability."
Far from expecting this war, it appears that NATO and the United
were surprised by the failures of their diplomatic schemes and
military bluff, and have gone to war without the necessary
military or political preparation.
Evidently, the State Department's Balkan experts failed to
recognize what was most obvious: If the Serb regime was
determined to hold onto Kosovo, against the wishes of its 90%
Albanian population, it would have to kill or expel half or more
of the two million Kosovars.
Only the kind of "experts" whose professional assignment was to
work out a deal with Milosevic could fail to see the pre-planned
escalation from repression to depopulation in Kosovo. But having
failed to secure Milosevic's agreement at Rambouillet or to deter
him with the threat of air strikes, NATO suddenly found itself
with a choice between two options, both potentially catastrophic.
It could in essence abandon its stated commitment to the
Kosovars- a choice that Clinton and his European social
democratic partners Blair, Jospin and Schroeder refused to
contemplate, since it would constitute an incredible defeat that
would discredit their respective governments and leave in doubt
NATO's unity and possibly its very survival.
Or, NATO could begin the air war--but once the first strikes
failed to produce a Serb surrender, as again could be predicted
by anyone other than a military expert self-hypnotized by Cruise
missile technology, there is no option but to escalate toward an
inexorable larger war--or admit defeat.
Day by day, as the scope of the horrors imposed on the Kosovars
and the unmanageable extent of the refugee emergency unfolded,
the war imposed its own logic on the planners, more than the
other way around. To save NATO--an even greater imperative than
saving the Kosovars, obviously--it is necessary now to fight the
war and win it.
In the words of the 1980s Reaganaut Lawrence Eagleburger, "We
can't let this pipsqueak nation, Serbia, inflict a defeat on
NATO."
If the refugees are to be returned, a la NATO's promise, the
Yugoslav military must be absolutely defeated in Kosovo and
prevented from returning. That objective requires the destruction
of Serb military power and Serbia's capacity for rebuilding that
power. Hence not only must Serbia's existing military
infrastructure be wiped out, but its industrial capacity must be
bombed back to pre-World War II levels.
Further: A large-scale ground force must be sent into Kosovo,
since air power alone cannot drive out the Serb forces, and to
create a NATO protectorate in most of Kosovo (a part may be left
for the Serb population in Kosovo to flee to). It's true that
Clinton promises every day not to send ground troops, with the
same credibility with which he vowed never having had sexual
relations with that woman--but by the time the lie is revealed it
will be "too late."
At war's end, new boundaries must be forcibly imposed on Serbia.
Whether or not to join "Republika Serpska" in Bosnia to Serbia;
whether or not Montenegro secedes from rump-Yugoslavia; whether
to coercively "adjust" the borders of Macedonia to satisfy
Albanian ambitions on the one hand or Greek claims on the
other--all these are decisions that will be taken by the
occupying powers.
It hardly seems likely (though in the world of diplomacy, perhaps
a role can be arranged for Russia to play intermediary) that
these arrangements can be made with the Milosevic regime and his
gangster partners. Hence, although a military occupation of the
Serbian heartland is out of the question, the government of
rump-Yugoslavia must probably be somehow removed, or else its
people subjected to the protracted horrors now imposed on the
people of Iraq for their unforgivable crime of being ruled by
Saddam Hussein.
Such objectives entail war, and a postwar level of intervention,
with casualties and expenses on a scale for which the population
of the United States and other NATO powers have been completely
unprepared. No wonder that neither Clinton nor any of his
European partners have the political courage to do what
democratic principle demands--to state openly where their course
leads and to ask their Congress or Parliament to debate a
declaration of war.
Anyone on the left who favors NATO's actions, regardless of the
most honorable and sincerest of desires to stop genocide, must
face up to these consequences. The result can only be a more
virulent post-Cold War NATO, intervening at will (mainly, U.S.
will) wherever its power can reach, i.e. practically anywhere.
Kosovo Yes--NATO No!
Given these realities, it is impossible for socialists to want
NATO's operation to succeed. Supporting this war, now, can only
mean supporting imperialism. In the real world, we cannot pick-
and-choose between ostensibly benevolent military interventions,
carried out in the name of humanitarian rescue, and those
conducted for naked military-political aggrandizement or
profit--because inevitably, inexorably, the former becomes the
pretext for the latter.
That is the case even in Kosovo, a war the United States and NATO
didn't "provoke" but actually tried to avoid through a criminal
policy of appeasement. Once having begun, this is inevitably a
war for NATO to occupy and re-configure the map of the
Balkans--even though the war itself, should it end in yet another
"political settlement" with Milosevic or should it produce
military debacles and serious casualties for the invaders, may
prove to be NATO's own road to ruin.
For us, the ruin of NATO is the only possible good that can come
from this horrific human holocaust. Our small contribution to
NATO's defeat must be to do all we can to politically expose and
discredit it inside our own country. We have no "constructive
alternative" to propose for NATO except its dissolution.
Whatever happens next, the Kosovar and Serb peoples have lost.
The Kosovars, if NATO accepts defeat and deals yet again with
Milosevic, will be left a landless and homeless people--the
Palestinians and the Kurds of the Balkans. If NATO ultimately
overwhelms Serbia and establishes a military protectorate in
Kosovo, the refugees may return, but their survival would then
depend upon an indefinite occupation with all the consequences
that entails for future generations.
For the Serbs, ten years of Milosevic's Greater Serbia campaign
have produced a national catastrophe of unimaginable proportions.
Hundreds of thousands of Serbs who lived for centuries inside
Croatia, whose welfare was Milosevic's pretext for invading
Croatia in 1991, were brutally expelled from their homes in the
Krajina region when Croatia regained the territory. Serbs in
"Republika Serpska" are ghettoized, Serbs in Kosovo will have no
future in a NATO-occupied zone and Serbs in the heartland of
Serbia have suffered economic ruin and the destruction of the
hope for democracy.
What Can We Do?
We support the Kosovar Albanians' right of self-determination.
Noone with democratic values can deny the legitimacy of their
struggle, which is a fight for physical and cultural survival as
well as political rights. Even further, under circumstances of
threatened annihilation or mass dispersal of the population, an
independent Kosovo is the only real-life solution.
But the Kosovars' absolutely legitimate struggle is only one
element in what has become a much larger and reactionary
imperialist war. The United States always regarded the Kosovars
as bargaining pawns, never supported Kosovo independence--and
even
welcomed the defeat of the Kosovo Liberation Army (KLA) in 1998,
when the Yugoslav military launched its first assaults. Yet even
aside from that, we do not support "liberating" Kosovo through
NATO destruction of Serbia's cities and people.
In this tragic situation, we believe there are several "wars
within the war" where socialists with consistent democratic
loyalties can take sides and, in some cases, small practical
steps.
* Obviously, we cannot influence in any way the struggle between
the Kosovo Albanians and the Yugoslav Army. But as a matter of
principle we uphold the right of the Kosovars to struggle for
their survival by any means available to them, whether through
the pre- war movement of civic resistance or the struggle of the
KLA.
The KLA itself is no left-wing force: It appears to be
politically incoherent at best, and (probably for that reason)
vastly overestimated its prospects for military success against
Milosevic's army. But it is fighting a justified war for
independence and against a threatened genocide.
* We demand that all the Kosovar refugees receive immediate
asylum wherever they wish to come. For those who choose refuge in
the United States, that means the right to come here--with
unconditional rights to permanent residency or citizenship or
return to their homeland whenever they may choose--not the
unspeakable plan to put them in detention in Guam or Guantanamo.
* Equally important, we must do everything in our power to reach
out to the doubly besieged democratic opposition activists in
Serbia, who are being bombed from the air by NATO and hunted down
by the regime on the ground, in some cases threatened with being
drafted into the Serb army or the ethnic-cleansing paramilitaries
for duty in Kosovo.
Both the imperialists and the Milosevic regime will seek to
exploit, by blaming each other for, the suffering of the ordinary
people of Serbia and the destruction of democratic forces. Thanks
to the internet and to the distribution the international
progressive media can provide, dissidents in Serbia have some
chance to continue to speak for themselves. Their uncensored
voices must be heard, and all possible material and political
solidarity must be extended as they seek to rebuild a democratic
opposition that will be neither a tail to Milosevic or a pawn for
imperialist occupiers.
* Finally, in the military conflict that now dominates the ruins
of former Yugoslavia, let's be clear: There is no side to
support, neither Milosevic's genocidal post-stalinism nor NATO
imperialism. Neither side is a lesser evil. Freedom for Kosovo!
Abolish NATO!
Editorial in Against the Currents (USA), May/June 1999
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