Forum

The Double Triangle: USA/NATO/AMPO versus RUSSIA, CHINA and INDIA Paper presented at the International Conference of NGOs, 11-13 October 1999 in Seoul, Korea 1. A Super Power in the Making: The Russia-China-India triangle Have a look at these press excerpts from late summer 1999: • “NATO MOVE MAY BRING RUSSIA CLOSER TO CHINA, INDIA Washington. – In an attempt to forge military cooperation with non-member states, NATO is spreading its wings eastwards to the Caucasus and Central Asia which may bring Russia closer to India and China,” the weekly Defense News said. “The move builds on a four-year-old project ‘Regional Initiative’ to install modern, harmonised Air Sovereignty and Operations Centres (ASOCs) in countries belonging to Partnership for Peace – funded by the US /which/ provides about five million dollars for each ASOC. Installations have opened in 10 countries across the Baltic region and Central and Eastern Europe, including in NATO’s...

LONDON- President Bill Clinton’s inability to win enough Senate votes to win ratification of the American-sponsored Test Ban Treaty is one more milestone on the way to inevitable nuclear conflict. The fact that the decision to concede defeat was taken with the knowledge, following the coup in Pakistan, that a military regime, answerable to no civilian authority, is now in direct control of one country’s nuclear weapons is but one more indication that U.S. congressional opinion is dangerously out of touch with the pace of world events. It sends a clear signal to the world at large that the U.S. is not committed to nuclear arms control, even when it works in its favour. America, we all know, is capable of reacting after a disaster, but it appears dangerously bereft of an instinctive, prescient wisdom that might preclude it. The use of nuclear weapons remains unlikely between the U.S. and Russia,...

LONDON- Tanzania in East Africa has long been one of the 25 poorest countries in the world. But there was a time when it was described, in terms of its political influence, as one of the top 25. It punched far above its weight. That formidable achievement was the work of one man, now lying close to death in a London hospital. How it came to be so is one of the more interesting political histories of our age. A man born of peasants in a remote village climbed the educational ladder of the local Catholic missionaries, went to Edinburgh university, became a teacher and then blossomed into being the leader of Tanganyika’s (as it was then called before its union with Zanzibar in 1964) budding independence movement. His extraordinary intelligence, verbal and literary orginality (he later translated Shakespeare’s Julius Caesar into Swahili) and apparent commitment to non-violence made him not...

EU’s og Danmarks USA-afhængige Balkanpolitik vil lede til nye katastrofer på Balkan. Det viser Helveg Petersens ulykkelige konflikt med den jugoslaviske opposition, mener fredsforskeren Jan Øberg. På forsiden af Berlingske Tidende kunne man den 10. september læse at udenrigsministrene Helveg Petersen og Robin Cook stod bag en “storstilet politisk EU-plan” for samarbejde med oppositionen i Jugoslavien. Som modydelse for jævnlige konsultationer, eksperthjælp, støtte til demokratisering, økonomisk hjælp, mulig lettelse af sanktionerne og andre EU-bidrag skulle oppositionen dernede garantere, at når den kom til magten ville den lovgive for og respektere menneskerettigheder, en fri presse og demokratiske valg. På det første møde i Luxembourg den 11. oktober kom ingen af de vigtigste oppositionelle. Begge udenrigsministre mener at alt som sædvanligt er Milosevic’ skyld og at han har truet dem til at blive væk. Dette uaget at det Demokratiske Partis leder Zoran Djindjic da han hørte dette i Beograd igår svarede at...

Christian HårlemanF.d. överstelöjtnant, f.d chef utbildningsavd. för fredsbevarande operationer i FN, rådgivare till Institute of World Affairs, Washington D.C e-mail: ch.harleman@crido.pp.se Jan ØbergFil.dr., Direktör för Transnationella Stiftelsen för Freds- och framtidsforskning, TFF, i Lunde-mail: tff@transnational.live Sverige håller på att installera ungefär 850 soldater i Kosovo som ska delta i KFOR, den militära styrka om 45.000 soldater med tung utrustning, som kom på plats i kölvattnet på NATO:s krig mot Jugoslavien under våren. Som väntat och efter långa och noggranna förberedelser är styrkan både välutbildad och välutrustad: toppmodern utrustning och ungefär 140 olika fordon – allt från stridsvagnssläp, arbetsfordon och lastbilar till pansarbandvagnar, pansarskyttefordon och pansrade ledningsfordon. Kostnaden uppges vara 900 miljoner kronor. Detta är den största enskilda satsning vår regering gör för att bidra till en lösning av de svåra problemen i och kring Kosovo. I jämförelse har Sverige avsatt 84 miljoner kronor år 1999 och 2000 för civila insatser...

The Nato bombardment of Yugoslavia was undoubtedly illegal, since it contravened the fundamental principles of the United Nations Charter, which enjoins all members to refrain “from the threat or use of force against the territorial integrity or political independence of any state”; and which commits all members “to bring about by peaceful means, and in conformity with the principles of justice and international law, adjustment or settlement of international disputes or situations which might lead to a breach of the peace”. These are the points of departure for an article by the Swedish jurist, Ove Bring, published in the Autumn number of the Nato Review, 1999. Professor Bring tells us that there are only two justifications for the use of force which are acceptable under the UN Charter. One of these is covered in Article 51, which permits actions of self-defence only “until the Security Council has taken measures necessary to...

Sept. 29, 1999 LONDON- The western powers owe Slobodan Milosevic of Yugoslavia nothing. They certainly don’t owe him the rewriting of history in his favour. This begs the question why on earth are Nato and Russia policing Kosovo with the avowed purpose not just of “keeping the peace”, but of maintaining the fiction that the majority Albanian-peopled territory is part of Serbia and thus part of Milosevic’s reduced empire of Yugoslavia? These questions were asked in this column back in June at the time of Nato’s bombing of Serbia. At the time Bill Clinton, Tony Blair and the other western leaders insisted on every occasion their prime purpose was simply an end of the threats to the security of the Kosovo Albanians; they were not prepared to consider a deal with Milosevic that would re-draw the Balkan map more sensibly. In fact before the war they had insisted on a future...

LONDON- Quite shortly now, if he hasn’t already, Turkish prime minister Bulent Ecevit will have to make up his mind whether the state should procede with the execution of the Kurdish terrorist leader, Abdullah Ocalan. On this decision Turkey’s future as a serious contender for entry to the European Union is going to hang or fall. Well, that is what a good many commentators were saying three months ago, on the conclusion of his trial. Yet, today, following the devastating earthquake in Turkey of August 17th and the serious, but rather less severe one in Greece three weeks’ later, it looks as if Turkey has been allowed a new look at the starting line for entry into the European Union, without delivering any promises about Ocalan or indeed about any of the other large hurdles it supposedly has to cross- a new deal for the Kurds (the world’s largest ethnic group...

LONDON- In his urgent action message received yesterday by all his friends (and unsolicited recipients like myself) Professor Noam Chomsky wraps up the whole East Timor imbroglio as a dastardly American responsibility, replete with ulterior, dark, purposes that suggest the U.S. pursues even its most tangential interests with a total disregard for scruple. It simply wants to rule the world.* While it is probably true that Washington ventures on a dangerous and sometimes counterproductive ego trip every time it involves itself in foreign affairs there is yet- even after Cuba, Vietnam, Cambodia, Central America, Afghanistan, Iraq, ex-Yugoslavia and now East Timor – no hard evidence that there is some malign grand design. Perhaps if there was it might be easier to deal with. No, the trouble with America is more complicated- it is its sense of self-evident (to itself) moral purpose, delivered into the foreign field- on both the military and...

LONDON- When Archbishop Helder Camara died at the end of last month the president of Brazil, Fernando Henrique Cardosa, declared three days of national mourning. Not bad for a cleric who in his “red bishop” days, as Time magazine once dubbed him, so riled the authorities that they sent a gun squad that rained a hail of bullets into his modest apartment tacked on to the back of a church. “When I feed the poor they called me a saint”, he once said. “When I asked, ‘Why are they poor?’ they called me a communist.” I don’t know personally Bishop Carlos Belo of East Timor, the Nobel prize winner, but I see certain important similarities between the two men: a commitment to justice, an anger with those who ignore the poverty of the majority, a preparedness to seek compromise and reconciliation rather than perpetual conflict. Bishop Belo’s time of testing has...

The Western Alliance Will Not Accept an Independent Nation There, and the KLA Will Not Settle for Less From Los Angeles Times, August 19, 1999 In the aftermath of NATO’s military intervention in Kosovo, some analysts presciently warned that the peacekeeping and reconstruction mission undertaken by the U.S. and its allies was fraught with peril. However, as each day brings ominous reports from Kosovo–sniper attacks on peacekeepers, “organized” ethnic cleansing of Serbs by ethnic Albanians–it is apparent that the postwar honeymoon between the Kosovo Liberation Army, on one side, and NATO troops and U.N. civil authorities, on the other, has ended much more quickly than we expected. The first shots in Kosovo’s next war–pitting the KLA against its erstwhile liberators–already have been fired. The unraveling of the post-conflict settlement in Kosovo was easily foreseeable–except, of course, by the Clinton administration. The Clinton foreign policy team bears a heavy responsibility, because...

LONDON- The results of East Timor’s referendum on its future will not be available until September 7th but, given the high turn out, most observers seem to be concluding that the electorate will reject the offer of autonomy offered by Indonesian president, B.J. Habibie. President Habibie has said that in this case Indonesia will give the territory independence. Inevitably, indeed it has already started, this is going to lead to more violence within East Timor, since the militias, with their close ties to the Indonesian armed forces, oppose breaking the Indonesian link, and they are well armed and ruthless to boot. This is going to tear at the heart of Indonesia just as it is about to embark on an historic transition from a president chosen by a self-selected cabal to one picked by ballot by an elected constitutional assembly. Thus, it is strange, to say the least, to see a...