Lecture
organised by the University of Thrace at Xanthi, Greece,
September 1999
The Balkan war: a case of ethnic cleansing or the first war
of the internationalised market economy?
TAKIS FOTOPOULOS
printable version
Abstract
The paper, starting from the NATO explanation of the aims of
the war in terms of stopping the ethnic cleansing of the
Albanian Kosovars at the hands of the Serbian regime,
proposes an alternative interpretation according to which
the war was in fact the first war of the New Economic Order,
i.e. the internationalised market economy. This is indicated
by the three novel aspects of this war:
-
first, that its aim was the integration of a country
(through its dismembering) into the New Order,
-
second, that the war has been fought by a new NATO whose
role has been redefined in the Washington summit as the
main military institution of the New Order and,
-
third, that a new doctrine of “limited sovereignty”
―which is rapidly becoming the ideology of the New
Order― has been used to legitimise that role.
My objective is to show that the real aims of the war
against the Serbs had nothing to do with the NATO mythology
about it and that in fact the war itself may be seen as the
first war of the New Economic Order, i.e. of the
internationalised market economy. This became clear anyway
by the aftermath of the war and the ethic cleansing in
reverse that takes place in Kosovo at the moment. This
showed clearly that the official NATO objective, to avert
ethnic cleansing, was never the real aim of the war. The
Ramboillet
“agreement” made it crystal-clear that the
western élites’ objective has always been the gradual
independence of Kosovo. The provision that the autonomy to
be granted in the first stage was to be enforced by a NATO
peace-keeping force (as it is happening now) clearly implied
that the real aim was the creation of a
“pure” Albanian
entity in Kosovo which, at a later stage, will become
formally independent and at a still later stage (to qualm
the concerns of other Balkan states) will inevitably be
united with Albania itself. This
“scenario” means uprooting
10% of the prewar population, which constituted the Serbian
minority, and who, voluntarily or not, will end up moving
rather than living under Albanian rule. The Serbian élite,
at the time of the Western attempt to impose on it this
agreement in Ramboillet, facing the imminent danger of
further dismembering, decided to resist, in the hope that
the inevitable conflict would create the dynamics for the
partition of Kosovo. It failed. So, NATO, after its
victorious war, imposed its own conditions in full. However,
the aim of both the Western and the Yugoslavian élites has
always been ethnic cleansing, (albeit with a different
content), although of course the Western elites had other
objectives as well.
So, if we get out of the way the mythology about the war
aims let’s try to develop an alternative analytical
framework to understand its real aims.
Wars in the New Order
A useful starting point in interpreting the NATO war against
Yugoslavia is to examine the political and economic
contours of the New Order. I will identify the New World
Economic Order with the
“internationalised market economy,”
i.e. the present phase of marketization, which is defined as
the historical process that has transformed the socially
controlled economies of the past into the present system of
the market economy[1].
The internationalisation of the market economy, as I tried
to show elsewhere,[2]
should be distiguished from globalisation, which refers to
the case in which production itself is internationalised.
Internationalisation refers to the case where markets become
internationalised and, as a result, the economic policies of
national governments, as well as the reproduction of the
growth economy itself, are conditioned by the movement of
commodities and capital across frontiers. The present
neoliberal form of the internationalised market economy may be seen as completing
the cycle which started in the last century when a liberal
version of it was attempted. Thus, after the collapse of the
first attempt to introduce a self-regulating economic
system, a new synthesis is attempted today. The new
synthesis aims to avoid the extremes of pure liberalism, by
combining essentially self-regulating markets with various
types of safety nets and controls, which secure the
privileged position primarily of the “over-class” and
secondarily that of the “two-thirds society”, as well as the
mere survival of the “under-class”
―without affecting the
self-regulation process in its essentials. Therefore, the
nation-state’s role is restricted today in securing, through
its monopoly of violence, the market economy framework and
in maintaining the infra-structure for the smooth
functioning of the neoliberal economy.
So, the internationalisation assumed here does not imply the
elimination of the regulatory role of the state, let alone
its physical disappearance at the political level. What it
does imply is the loss of the state’s economic sovereignty
not just in terms of the disappearance of major state
controls over markets but also in terms of important social
controls, which are ruled out by today’s institutional
framework of free commodity and capital markets.
Furthermore, the internationalisation of the market economy
does not mean that its intra-state regulation is redundant.
Companies which are active in the internationalised market
economy need a degree of stability in financial markets, a
secure framework of free trade and the protection of
commercial rights. All this implies the need for
international economic regulation (through the G7 group, the
WTO etc) as well as the need for international political
“regulation”.
Therefore, in the same way that in the first phase of
marketization, when the market economy was basically
national, the nation-state was assigned the role of
enforcing —through its monopoly of violence— the market rules,
in today’s internationalised market economy the corresponding role of
enforcing the internationalised market rules is assigned not
to the state, but to international organisations like NATO
and a capitalist- controlled UN. It is not therefore
surprising that (as it was shown by a team of reporters led
by Nicholas Kristof in a recent series of articles in the New York Times),
it became part of the State
Department’s job and therefore, indirectly, of the
US-controlled NATO, to push deregulation and the dismantling
of all barriers to trade and finance both with individual
governments and in international negotiations on economic
matters (WTO).[3]
It is in the context of internationalisation, in the sense
of a gradual loss of economic sovereignty of nation-states,
that we may develop a useful analytical framework to discuss
the war in the Balkans. In Europe, the internationalisation
of the market economy has proceeded very unevenly due to its
division, up to the beginning of the decade, into a
capitalist Western Europe and the Eastern Europe of
“actually existing socialism”. The main effect of the uneven
integration of Europe into the internationalised market
economy has been that there is still a significant degree of
tension between nationalism and internationalisation, with
immediate ramifications in today’s war.
Thus, in Western Europe, there is a movement towards a
federal supra-national state, which reflects the fact that
the core EU countries have already entered the highest phase
of the marketization process. In fact, Western Europe is in
a transitional period, which is however qualitatively
different from that in the East. The present political
conflicts with respect to the future organisation of
European integration arise out of the fundamental
contradiction indicated by the fact that the economic
structure of each nation-state has already been
internationalised, whereas the political structure, formally
at least, still bears the hallmarks of a nation-state.
On the other hand, in Eastern Europe, where the
marketization process was violently interrupted by the
advent of `actually existing socialism', the state is still
supposed to be able to play the role that it used to play
in Western Europe during the past century, when it was
involved in the process of establishing the system of the
market economy, protecting national capital against foreign
competition etc. Of course, with the exception of Russia,
this is a false supposition, given the degree of interaction
among the components of the internationalised market
economy. It is only in Russia where nationalism is still
relevant due to its huge scale. However, this fact alone
does not prevent the resurgence of nationalism in other
parts of East Europe and particularly the Balkans where the
integration of their economies into the internationalised
market economy has not as yet been completed.
In this problematique, wars between the states of AMEs are
no longer possible since these states are nothing more than
the municipalities of the internationalised market economy
and their job is to provide, at the cheapest possible cost,
the infrastructure and the
“public goods” required for the
effective functioning of business.[4]
Therefore, the
“hundred years peace” (1815-1914) described
by Polanyi,[5]
which accompanied the first (failed) attempt for the
creation of a liberal internationalised market economy may
become a
“millennium peace” in the framework of today’s
neoliberal internationalised market economy. It is not
difficult to see, for instance, that, in the framework of
this internationalised economy, any attempt by an AME to use
military force against another AME in order to achieve its
economic aims is inconceivable, since it will incur the
immediate sanctions of the global financial markets and the
first casualty will be its own currency.
But, if wars among AMEs which control the New Economic Order
are, almost by definition, ruled out this is not the case as
regards wars between them and dependent economies, as well
as wars among dependent economies (in which case the
advanced economies may be fighting wars
“by proxy”).
As regards wars between AMEs and countries in the periphery
and semi-periphery, the explosion in the world inequality,
which is a built-in element of the New Order and an
inevitable by-product of liberalising and deregulating the
markets, implies that attacks against any
“rogue” regimes
challenging in any way the New Order will continue unabated.
The same applies of course with respect to any liberatory
movement that might develop in the future, which will have
to be crushed in the kind of total victory that we have seen
in the case of Iraq and Yugoslavia. It is with the purpose
of fighting wars of this type that the armies of AMEs have
been fast converted into armies of professional killers (a
kind of samurai) who are not susceptible, as conscripts are,
to ideological influences and feelings of solidarity with
the social groups from which they are recruited (usually the
poorest groups). Despite the higher cost of professional
armies,[6] the
elites of the New Order do not have any choice but to
finance the extra expenses, since wars are not any more for
the defence of the country but purely for the defence of the
New Order and the privileges of those mainly benefiting from
it.
With respect to wars among states in the periphery,
conflicts of cultural, religious, nationalist or ethnotic
nature may easily arise between dependent states.
Particularly so, since conflicts of this type serve also to
give outlet to their peoples’ socio-economic frustrations
(see, for instance the present conflicts among the
Indonesian peoples). In this sense, the old dream of
economic liberalism that
“war would become the recourse of
failed and economically backward societies and political
forces, driven by economically irrational goals like ethnic
homogeneity or religion”[7]
may indeed be near materialisation. In some of these cases,
as for instance the ethnic wars in the Balkans, such
conflicts may threaten the stability of the New Order and
have to be crushed through the military arm of the New
Order, i.e. the new NATO or, if possible, the UN. On the
other hand, if these tensions do not threaten as such the
New Order, but they are useful in financing the expansion of
the armaments industries of the AMEs whereas, at the same
time, they legitimise their elites in playing a role of
arbitrator, (as, for instance, in the case of the chronic
tension between Greece and Turkey) then, such tensions are
left to keep simmering.
Integrating Yugoslavia through its dismembering
In this analytical framework, we may see the dismembering of
Yugoslavia as an attempt by the AMEs to fully integrate the
area into the New Economic Order of the internationalised
market economy. Thus, given the resurgence of nationalism in
the Balkans after the collapse of socialism and the fact
that the old Yugoslavia was the strongest Balkan state, with
a long history of independence from both the Western and
Soviet blocks, it is obvious that the Western elites at some
stage drew the conclusion that the normal methods of
economic integration, which were successfully used in the
rest of the Balkans (Albania, Bulgaria, Romania) would not
be sufficient to fully integrate the old Yugoslavia into the
internationalised market economy and its economic and
military institutions (EU/NATO). Therefore, the policy
adopted by the AMES was one of encouraging Yugoslavia’s
dismemberment[8]
through the creation of a series of protectorates. Either on
a
“voluntary” basis, (as in the cases of Croatia, Slovenia,
Macedonia), or by force, (as in the cases of Bosnia and now
Kosovo ). So, the elites of AMEs throughout the present
decade exploited in every way possible the nationalist and
ethnotic divisions which emerged after the collapse of
Yugoslavian
“socialism”. In this task, the elites of AMEs
have found a useful ally in part of the Yugoslavian
nomenclature which used these divisions for a different
reason: to perpetuate itself in power.[9]
In fact, the nationalist part of the nomenclature was in
more than one sense an important ally of the AMEs since it
was also in favour of marketization. Thus, the so-called
“Milosevic Commission” report of May 1988 was advocating
market-oriented reforms in which the
“world market and world
competition represents the strongest generator of economic
operation” whereas Milosevic himself urged Yugoslavs to
overcome ‘their unfounded, irrational and…primitive fear of
exploitation ‘ by foreign capital.[10]
The outcome of the dismembering of Yugoslavia was the return
of the Yugoslav peoples to the pre-World War II condition of
dependence, which had been interrupted by their partial
separation from the world market and the corresponding
political independence they achieved under the Tito regime.
It is therefore obvious that it is not something in the
nature of the Balkan peoples (as the Western propaganda
presents it) that pushes them towards ethnotic or
nationalist and religious conflicts but the system of the
market economy itself. The very fact that a variety of
peoples in the Balkans were able to live in relative harmony
with each other for centuries in the framework of a
pre-capitalist empire like the Ottoman empire and also
during the period of
“actually existing socialism” is a
proof of this. But, it is not just the system of the market
economy in general which creates conditions of uneven
development and huge inequalities that constitute the
perfect background for the emergence of this sort of
conflicts. The marketization process in Yugoslavia was
directly relevant to the resurgence of the ethnotic
conflicts.
The intensification of marketization, which started in
Yugoslavia in the early eighties and accelerated in the
early nineties, had similar catastrophic effects to the ones
I examined elsewhere[11]
with reference to the rest of Eastern Europe (disintegration
of the industrial sector, a gradual dismantling of the
Yugoslav Welfare State etc) but, it also led to the
emergence of a strong movement against the marketization
measures. Furthermore, an IMF-initiated
“financial aid
package” in 1990 crucially contributed to the crippling of
the federal State system, as state revenues which should
have been distributed as transfer payments to the republics
and autonomous provinces were instead channelled towards
servicing Belgrade’s debt.[12]
So, the economic basis of the federal state was effectively
undermined by the IMF program which substantially helped the
secessionist tendencies that were already flourishing in a
climate of economic decay and freezing wages and salaries.
On the basis of such considerations, Chossudovsky draws the
conclusion that
“the ruin of an economic system, including
the take-over of productive assets, the extension of markets
and
“the scramble for territory” in the Balkans constitute
the real cause of the conflict.
However, once the dismembering of Yugoslavia has effectively
been achieved by the end of this decade and half of its
ex-members (Slovenia, Croatia, Macedonia) have already been
converted into de facto Western protectorates and on the way
to become fully integrated into the internationalised market
economy (with Bosnia still in the process of
“pacification”), the new Yugoslavia of Serbia and Montenegro
presented a problem to the AMEs since it was the only part
of the Balkans not yet fully controlled by them. Then, the
same method that was used with such success for the
dismembering of the old Yugoslavia, was put once more into
operation. The extreme nationalist elements in Kosovo, who
wanted not just the restoration of the province’s autonomy
but full independence from the truncated Yugoslavia, were
encouraged by the AMEs. Thus, KLA, an organisation which up
to a few years ago was characterised as
“terrorist” by them,
suddenly became a liberating force to be supported in every
possible way. The inevitable intensification of the reppression of Albanians which followed gave the pretext for
the direct intervention by the AMEs, in the form of the NATO war.
Today, the AMES, despite the inescapable differences between
them as to the client states and the ‘zones of influence’
they support in the Balkan conflict, they all share a
common aim: to
“pacify” the area in a way which would secure
the full integration of it into the New Order, political and
economic. This is evident, for instance, by the explicit
reference to marketization in the Rambouillet document (“the
economy of Kosovo shall function according to market
principles”[13]).
Also, Clinton and Blair have repeatedly stated that, after
the war ends, all Balkan countries should become members of
the economic and political expressions of the New Order in
the area, i.e. the EU and NATO[14].
Finally, the EU’s Stability and Association Pact for the
Balkans explicitly seeks to bring all the forner Yugoslav
republics and Albania into the EU club and under the
security umbrella of NATO.[15]
So, there are three important novel aspects in this war
which mark it as the first war of the internationalised
market economy. These are:
-
First, the fact that its real aim was the full
integration (through dismembering) of a country into the
New Order
-
Second, the way it has been carried out. This is the
first war which has been fought by the
“new” NATO, i.e.
a NATO whose role has been fundamentally redefined to
transform it into the main military institution of the
New Political Order, which complements the new Economic
Order, i.e. the internationalised market economy.
-
Third, the ideology used to legitimise it. This is the
first war which has been legitimised on the basis of an
ideology that aims at the protection of human rights, as
universal values to be protected throughout an
internationalised market economy, irrespective of
national sovereignty considerations.
Having considered above the first aspect, let us now turn to
the other two novel aspects of this war.
The New World Political Order and the new NATO
The New Political Order, which is the necessary complement
of the New Economic Order, is defined by two basic
institutional changes:
a. the redefinition of the role of NATO, as effected in the
latest Washington summit
b. the limitation of the concept of national sovereignty
which constitutes the ideology of the New Order and was
endorsed by NATO’s new strategic concept
As it is well known, NATO was founded in 1949 as a
collective defence organisation against the communist threat
posed by the Soviet block. The heart of the North Atlantic
Treaty and thus of the NATO alliance was Article 5, in which
the signatory members "agree that an armed attack against
one or more of them in Europe or North America shall be
considered an attack against them all; and consequently they
agree that, if such an armed attack occurs, each of them, in
exercise of the right of individual or collective
self-defence recognised by Article 51 of the Charter of the
United Nations, will assist the Party or Parties so attacked
by taking forthwith, individually and in concert with the
other Parties, such action as it deems necessary, including
the use of armed force, to restore and maintain the security
of the North Atlantic area."
However, the Washington summit of an expanded NATO that
included several formerly Soviet block countries, which
convened in Washington in April 1999, adopted a new
“strategic concept”[16]
which radically changed the nature of this crucial military
organisation in which all main AMEs (apart from Japan) take
part. The new NATO constitution redefined the role of NATO
from a mutual defence organisation (after the collapse of
the Soviet block there was not much to defend against!) into
a regional policeman, i.e. the main military institution of
the internationalised market economy. Thus, as article 6
explicitly states,
“the Alliance therefore not only ensures
the defence of its members but contributes to peace and
stability in this region.”
Then, in a section entitled
“The evolving strategic
environment” the document delineates the NATO/UN
relationship by stating that
“the United Nations Security
Council has the primary responsibility for the maintenance
of international peace and security” (article 15). It is
indicative that at the time of the summit meeting, President
Chirac interpreted this clause as implying that NATO could
not act without UN authorisation, but this interpretation
was immediately contradicted by Solana who stated that a
Security Council resolution would not be necessary before
making an intervention outside NATO territory.[17]
The issue has been resolved in practice, through the Balkans
war: if the AMEs cannot secure the votes of all permanent
members of the UN Security Council they will have no
hesitation to start military action without prior UN
mandate.
Further on, in a section entitled
“Security challenges and
risks,” the new strategic concept is clearly defined in
article 20:
Notwithstanding positive developments in the strategic
environment and the fact that large-scale conventional
aggression against the Alliance is highly unlikely, the
possibility of such a threat emerging over the longer
term exists. The security of the Alliance remains
subject to a wide variety of military and non-military
risks which are multi-directional and often difficult to
predict. These risks include uncertainty and instability
in and around the Euro-Atlantic area and the possibility
of regional crises at the periphery of the Alliance,
which could evolve rapidly. Some countries in and around
the Euro-Atlantic area face serious economic, social and
political difficulties. Ethnic and religious rivalries,
territorial disputes, inadequate or failed efforts at
reform, the abuse of human rights, and the dissolution
of states can lead to local and even regional
instability. The resulting tensions could lead to crises
affecting Euro-Atlantic stability, to human suffering,
and to armed conflicts. Such conflicts could affect the
security of the Alliance by spilling over into
neighbouring countries, including NATO countries, or in
other ways, and could also affect the security of other
states (article 20)
Article 20, therefore, makes clear that the AME-controlled
NATO is transformed from a defensive alliance which protects
specific areas from the communist threat to an aggressive
alliance which protects it from a series of vaguely defined
“risks” emerging in a vaguely defined very broad area (“in
and around the Euro-Atlantic area and the periphery of the
Alliance”). In effect, any kind of conflict situation
(including
“the disruption of the flow of vital resources”)
within a region or even a single nation-state in this
broadly defined geographical area, which would directly or
indirectly threaten the stability of the internationalised
market economy, may be considered as threatening the
Alliance, as article 24 makes clear:
Any armed attack on the territory of the Allies, from
whatever direction, would be covered by Articles 5 and 6
of the Washington Treaty. However, Alliance security
must also take account of the global context. Alliance
security interests can be affected by other risks of a
wider nature, including acts of terrorism, sabotage and
organised crime, and by the disruption of the flow of
vital resources. The uncontrolled movement of large
numbers of people, particularly as a consequence of
armed conflicts, can also pose problems for security and
stability affecting the Alliance.
In all these situations, article 31 declares, “in pursuit
of its policy of preserving peace, preventing war, and
enhancing security and stability and as set out in the
fundamental security tasks, NATO will seek in co-operation
with other organisations, to prevent conflict, or, should a
crisis arise, to contribute to its effective management,
consistent with international law, including through the
possibility of conducting non-Article 5 crisis response
operations” (article 31).
Although the above formulations imply that all members of
NATO would take part in defining a
“risk situation” and in
proposing the appropriate measures to be taken, it is
obvious that, given the military hegemony of the US,
generally recognised by the AMEs, it is basically the US
elite which takes the responsibility of defending the New
Economic Order. No wonder that the US Pentagon explicitly
declared that ”a prosperous, largely democratic,
market-oriented zone of peace and prosperity that
encompasses more than two-thirds of the world’s economy”
requires the “stability” that only American “leadership can
provide.[18]
The same goal of
“stability” (i.e. pacification securing the
integration of all countries into the internationalised
market economy) was stressed with reference to the Balkans
war, as Christopher Layne & Benjamin Schwarz in a Los
Angeles article point out:
The belief that the U.S. must use military power to
create a tranquil international environment in which
trade can flourish is not an abstract concept (...) On
March 23, the day before the bombing of Serbia began,
President Clinton himself justified the impending air
strikes by noting that “if we’re going to have a strong
economic relationship that includes our ability to sell
around the world, Europe has got to be a key (...) That’s
what this Kosovo thing is all about.” (...) Similarly, as
Cohen has said, the administration’s strategy seeks to
“discourage violence and instability, which destroys
lives and markets.”
However, for Layne & Schwarz what is even more frightening
is the open-endedness of the new US commitments. Thus, the
protection of the internationalised market economy and free
trade, depend on
America’s overseas military commitments and power. But, as
the authors emphasise,
“according to U.S. policymakers, the logic
of global economic interdependence leads to the
proliferation of
American security commitments, since instability and
aggression are regarded
(even in places like Kosovo) as a threat to the
global stability upon
which U.S. prosperity depends”. This thinking they conclude,
is similar to the domino
theory that got US in so much trouble in Southeast Asia.
The Ideology of the New World Order: the doctrine of
“limited” sovereignty
The European self-styled
“left” apologists who have led the
ideological campaign which legitimised the criminal NATO
attack (Anthony Giddens, Alain Tourain et. al. with the
support of Edgar Morin, Habermas and others) talk about a
“new era” in international relations which is marked by the
Pinochet affair and the Balkans war. The fundamental element
of this new era is what we may call the doctrine of
“limited” sovereignty. According to this doctrine, the
protection of human rights is a universal value which should
take priority over other values, like that of national
sovereignty. Globalisation, for the apologists of the New
Order, has also the meaning that whenever universal values
(as defined by the
“international community,” i.e. the AMEs)
are violated, the international organisations expressing the
will of this
“community” (i.e. the UN, or, if this is
impossible, NATO) should enforce them by any means
necessary, irrespective of national sovereignty
considerations which should never override the primary
significance of universal values.
This new doctrine was first formally expressed by the UK
prime minister in a Chicago speech, just before the
Washington NATO summit. The upshot of this was that
democratic states should be allowed to intervene in the
internal affairs of other states, if human rights were at
stake.[19] It
was then fully endorsed by the
“new” NATO. As article 20 of
the new strategic concept mentioned above makes it
explicitly clear only a limited conception of sovereignty is
recognised by the new NATO. This is the obvious conclusion
from the references that article 20 makes to ethnic and
religious rivalries, inadequate or failed efforts at reform
and the abuse of human rights which, according to the new
“strategic concept,” can lead to crises affecting
Euro-Atlantic stability, to human suffering, and to armed
conflicts affecting the security of the Alliance by spilling
over into neighbouring countries (the Yugoslavian case).
However, the new doctrine is false, asymmetrical and
potentially oppressive:
-
It is false, because to adopt in general the principle
that
“human rights” take precedence over national
sovereignty presupposes that we live in a society and a
world in which we can define in a unique and
indisputable way the cases of human rights violations .
It is obvious that we do not. We live in a society and a
world characterised by huge inequalities in the
distribution of political and economic power. This means
that the
“social paradigm” which is shared by the
elites who control political and economic power
―and
therefore the international institutions (UN,
NATO)— potentially, may be radically different from the
social paradigm of the rest of the world population (who
in fact are the vast majority) who do not exercise such
power.[20]
But, it is the
“social paradigm” that defines which are
the universal values, what is their content and when and
where are violated. For instance, the expropriation of
the subsidiary of a multinational corporation by a
liberation movement would be considered as a violation
of human rights by the elites in the AMEs, although for
the multinational’s victims this would be an act of
liberation.
-
It is asymmetrical because as Stephen R. Shalom points
out,
“the right of humanitarian intervention is an
asymmetrical right —it is the right of the powerful to
intervene in the affairs of the weak, and not vice
versa. Humanitarian intervention, Richard Falk has
reminded us, is like the Mississippi River: it only
flows from North to South. Uruguay cannot use B-52s to
punish Britain for its policy in Northern Ireland. Yemen
cannot launch cruise missiles on Washington out of
solidarity with the oppressed in US cities”.[21]
One may add to this that even if a decision on when to
intervene is left to an international organisation like
the UN this cannot provide any real safeguard to the
weak, given the control over the UN and similar
organisations which the powerful elites of the AMEs can
exercise. This could explain why the massive ethnic
cleansing of Palestinians at the hands of the Israelis
or the real genocide in Rwanda have not warranted any
action by the powerful elites of the AMEs.
-
Finally, this doctrine is potentially oppressive,
because it may easily be used by the elites of AMEs to
oppress any liberation movement, which might attempt to
establish a different type of society that secures the
equal distribution of political and economic power. It
is obvious that the establishment of a real inclusive
democracy, in place of the present political and
economic oligarchy, would violate the ruling elites’
conception of democracy and human rights and would
legitimise the use of brute force by their military
machine to crush it.
There are two obvious conclusions that one may draw about
this new doctrine which is fast becoming the ideology of the
New Order.
The first conclusion is that this doctrine reverses the UN
Charter which explicitly states that nothing in it "shall
authorise the United Nations to intervene in matters which
are essentially within the domestic jurisdiction of any
state... except upon a Security Council finding of a "threat
to the peace, breach of the peace, or act of aggression."
This reversal becomes all too clear when one takes into
account that a proposal to ensure the protection as well as
the promotion of human rights was explicitly rejected at the
San Francisco Conference establishing the United Nations.
Still, given the control that AMEs exercise at the moment
over the UN, one should not be surprised if at some later
stage they make an attempt to revise the UN Charter in order
to include a version of the limited sovereignty doctrine
already adopted by NATO.
The second conclusion to be drawn, in view of what it was
said above about wars in the New Order, is that it is not
the sovereignty of the powerful states in the AMEs which is
going to suffer because of this new doctrine but only that
of the weak nations.
Finally, as a kind of epilogue, the NATO ‘deal‘, which was
imposed at the end of this criminal war, secures all its
major aims, in a way that signals a total victory for the
New Order in the Balkans. Thus:
1. The dismembering of the old Yugoslavia and the full
integration of the entire area into the New Order is now
completed through the creation of a formal NATO protectorate
in Kosovo, as well as the establishment of conditions of
full economic dependence of Serbia on the West. Thus, the
price tag for repairing the country from the bombings is
estimated to be anywhere between $50 bn and $150 bn and the
damage to the infra-structure is such that, as the G-17
economic research organisation[22]
have estimated, without significant foreign aid, it would
take 45 years for Yugoslavia to reach the level of economic
prosperity it had in 1989, before the beginning of the
Western economic sanctions. Needless to add that the NATO
elites made it clear, immediately after the end of the war,
that Serbia would get no reconstruction aid, unless its
present political elite were ousted. The combined effect of
the creation of a new formal protectorate and of a dependent
Serbia, in all probability, will lead to the formation of
one more (informal) protectorate in Montenegro . As a
Western analyst and supporter of the war put it, the long
term perspective is one of
“NATO and European Union
countries maintaining a formidable military and economic
presence in south-eastern Europe for a long time to come”.[23]
2. The NATO elites have shown an unquestionable capability
of destroying a country with no casualties at all on their
side. Thus, the murderous technique of high tech killing at
massive scale, first used against the people of Iraq, has
been refined to such an extent that even the minimal losses
suffered at the time by the armies of the AMEs have now been
avoided. Thus, against 1,500 Serb civilians and 5,000
troops killed, as well as 10,000 wounded, there was not a
single NATO casualty in battle! As a Western analyst put it,
“Mr Clinton will not have completely rewritten the rules of
war
―there could still be skirmishes and casualties in
Kosovo― but he will have gone a long way towards defining a
new type of conflict; It may be a ''coward's war," but it is
perhaps the only sort of war that a squeamish public will
support. What is more, it has worked.”[24]
In effect, the elites of the AMEs, with the manipulation of
the public which they exercise through their control of the
MMEs, in combination with the techniques of total victory,
which their military technology provides them, are in a
position to crush any radical movement, irrespective of the
degree of popular support it may have.
3. Finally, not only the conduct of the war but its
end as well has taught the Russian (let alone the Chinese)
elite a sound lesson to the effect that it is only the AMEs
which effectively control world economic and military power.
The Russian elite, which, at the beginning of the war,
warned Nato that it was in danger of drawing Russia into a
Third World War, by the end of the war, was playing the role
of the NATO messenger, capitulating completely to NATO
demands—a basic element in the Yugoslavian elite’s
capitulation.
To conclude, in my opinion, the war may either function as a
catalyst for the emergence of new forces that will fight
against the New Order and the building of a new society, or,
alternatively, it will mark the beginning of a new, high
tech form of the Middle Ages.
[15]
Martin Walker, The Guardian (1/6/1999).
[21]
Stephen R. Shalom,
“Reflections on NATO and Kosovo,”
New Politics (Summer 1999).