12. An increasingly authoritarian West
Look at the ‘Letters to the Editor’ section of various
influential Western dailies, watch debates on television,
listen to new questions being asked by journalists. Surf
Internet, read list servers, websites and discussion groups
and one thing is abundantly clear: ordinary citizens
throughout the West are increasingly skeptical. They see the
ever widening gap between NATO and State Department news and
other news. Many feel that bombing innocent civilians is
just not right; common sense also tells that this is not the
way to create trust between Albanians and Serbs – or for
that matter between any conflicting parties. It all
militates against all we know about human psychology.
The longer it takes, the more likely the momentum of that
public protest. NATO country citizens will begin to ask: if
a mistake like this could be made in this important field,
are other mistakes also lurking in, say, globalization, in
the more or less forced democratization, in the zeal with
which Western human rights are used as a political tool? If
we can’t trust NATO, can we trust the World Bank, the
International Monetary Fund, can we trust our own
governments after this? Can we believe in security a la NATO
and in further NATO expansion if this is what NATO does?
Government decision-makers meet these challenges either
with silence or with counterattacks: we are at war, this is
not the time to question and split our own ranks, fifth
column activity cannot be tolerated. We must achieve our
goals, no matter the cost. Too much is at stake. In short,
democracy, the freedom of expression and the open society,
the public discourse itself could well be curtailed in the
West as this situation becomes more and more desperate.
Quite a few media people already seem to practise
self-censorship.
Also, let’s not forget that those who say that Milosevic
is a new Hitler are leaders of countries which actively seek
a kind of world dominance (economically, militarily,
politically and culturally), which violate international
law, which demonize a nation (Serbs, not Jews), and which
possess mass destructive weapons. They commit aggression
against a country that has not done to them what they do to
it. They kill innocent civilians. They use propaganda and
call it information. Blaming others for doing that is what
psychologists call ‘projecting.’
NATO as an organization is beyond – and actively defies –
any world democratic control. Truth is that no other
organization, no government and no UN or other world body
can force NATO to stop if its members want to continue.
All this could be seen as more threatening to
international peace and world order – as simply more
dangerous for the world – than whatever a (comparatively)
petty authoritarian leader such as Milosevic and the
separatist KLA/UCK do in the province of Kosovo.
13. Ever more weakening of the UN, OSCE and
NGOs
The more NATO attempts to take over (see point 15), the less
space and resources will be available for other actors. It
remains to be seen what will be the longterm consequences
for the mentioned organisations. If NATO fails in this
mission, one way or the other, they might actually be
strengthened. But where NATO has so far gone in, others have
gone out. This is not good for the world, it is particularly
bad from the point of view of the middle-sized and small
nations.
14. Ruining the peace-making that has allegedly been
achieved
The West is proud of the Dayton process. However, if it
keeps on bombing FRY, the Serbs in Bosnia-Herzegovina will
hardly feel any obligation to remain there. If they see also
that Kosovo-Albanians are, for all practical purposes, being
helped to achieve their own state by NATO force, they will
say goodbye to the Dayton process and to Bosnia. In
addition, Republika Srpska has lost its most important
economic ally, FRY, and social unrest already threatens
throughout RS.
The West has been very proud because of the successful
policy of ‘preventive diplomacy’ in FYROM/Macedonia. With
the UN having been squeezed out there, with NATO having
entered arrogantly and forcibly converted Macedonia to a
FRY-hostile actor with 20.000 foreign troops there, the West
has already destabilized the country, its delicate ethnic
balance and its economy and violated its sovereignty as well
as its good neighbourly relations – a case of ‘provocative
diplomacy’ instead.
It should also be crystal clear by now that FRY will not
accept NATO the peacekeeper after having been visited by
NATO the destroyer.
15. Imperial overextension, the beginning of the end
of Western strength
History’s empires have weakened and dissolved due to
over-militarization, over-extension – wanting more than they
could control, or ‘spreading thin’ – and due to a
combination of hubris and human folly. NATO under US
leadership now tries to be 1) a nuclear-based and
conventional alliance geared to fighting wars, b) a
political alliance keeping the West unified and protecting
Western civilization, 3) a ‘world police’ outside its
members borders, 4) a humanitarian and refugee-assisting
organization, 5) a partnership structure for potential
members and for confidence-building, 6) a trustworthy friend
of Russia and China, 7) a negotiator, 8) a peacemaker, 9) a
peace enforcer, 10) a reconstruction agency and 11) a
cooperative partner with other organizations such as the
OSCE, WEU, EU, etc. In addition, it’s members have global
interests and promote economic (capitalist) globalization,
Western human rights, democracy, civil society etc.
It is safe to predict that all this will not be possible
at one and the same time without creating conflicts among
its members and conflicts with the 170 or so non-NATO states
around the world. In addition, there is no way NATO can
issue guarantees to new formal members AND set up various
types of ‘protectorates’ throughout the Balkans
AND continue its policies vis-a-vis e.g. Iraq and North
Korea AND fulfil its commitments to South-East Asia and
Japan AND handle future emergency situations AND police a
variety of low-intensity conflicts wherever they may appear
tomorrow.
16. However, the weapons manufacturers may
thrive
There are at least two very influential groups who may see
their interests satisfied. First, it’s those operating
within the military-industrial-scientific complexes in the
West and their arms dealers. Second, there are the
transnational corporations and others in favour of spreading
capitalism to every corner of the world.
The interests of the former is obvious. New NATO members
now adapt to Western military standards, NATO operability
etc. They want to modernize by buying the most sophisticated
(and expensive) military equipment from leading Western
nations. A war is an opportunity to test weapons and
tactical and strategic concepts as well as to gain
practical, rather than simulated, experience. It’s a ‘live’
chance to train international co-operation also with
newcomers. It’s a drilling and disciplining opportunity. And
with all the weapons and ammunition that is destroyed,
replacement must be manufactured and sold. Furthermore,
newly independent states will acquire their own military
‘national defence’ afterwards.
17. — and so may capitalism cum
globalization
It must be remembered that capitalism’s essential problem,
or contradiction, is overcapacity, overproduction, surplus
capital in relation to the global base of consumption. The
system’s ability to churn out more goods and services than
is in demand – and people worldwide can pay for – is
periodically out of sync. Thus, capital has to be destroyed
to halt the in-built propensity to dump commodities at
unprofitable prices.
Wars and military production are opportunities for such
‘waste’ production. The military market is monopsonistic, it
has basically one buyer, the government. Thus it is outside
the normal market and serve to absorb surplus capacity. War
is a destruction of already produced commodities – and
increases the demand when countries must be re-built. This
demand increases overall prices and rub off on the civilian
markets worldwide – that is, if the war is ‘big enough.’
Just think of tremendous resources, goods and services, that
will be needed to rebuild FRY and perhaps other countries
after months or years of systematic destruction. So, wars
may help to periodically balance and calibrate global
capitalism – which is not to say that it is the root cause
of NATO’s aggression now.
This war comes in the midst of the most serious world
economic crisis since the 1930s. Even with commodities
dumped at ridiculously low prices in, say, Japan, consumers
worldwide are hesitant to buy and world investments lack
behind. Insecurity and fear are the catchwords. Although war
also creates fear, a major war with cycles of destruction
and re-construction of capital could be perceived as coming
in handy from that point of view and peace-building serves
to bring the devastated region into globalization and assign
to it a role in the global economic division of labour.
In addition, when an area has been devastated – by itself
and/or by outside forces – it can be taken over by the IMF
and leading Western countries; marketization and
privatization etc. can be introduced as ‘conditions’ for
obtaining loans, entering finance institutions and,
eventually, the EU. So, to be re-created you have to be
destroyed first.
Do you think this is far-fetched? Well, that is
presumably only because this type of factors are never
touched upon in the media, some of which are controlled by
transnational military and civilian corporations.
Concretely, ask yourself why it is laid down in Bosnia’s
constitution that it shall be a market economy and why the
Rambouillet Dictate stipulated the same for
Kosovo.
Says Dr. Oberg, “Look at the 15 first points above. It
does not HAVE to go that wrong. But it looks to me as if we
are approaching a dangerous ‘chicken game’ between the
United States and NATO on the one hand and Yugoslavia and
its leadership on the other. They are like two car drivers
racing against each other on the middle of a narrow road,
hoping the other will pull the steering wheel last minute to
avoid a a deadly collision. Before they started they both
drank quite a lot of whisky and one of them (NATO) has
already signalled its defiance by throwing the steering
wheel out of the window…
With each bomb that falls on civilian and on military
targets, the above-mentioned consequences become more
likely, more pronounced and more costly. First and foremost,
of course, we must be deeply concerned about the human costs
in the region. But my sense is that this crisis is so
serious that it will increasingly hit back as a boomerang on
the West itself. That has not been highlighted in our media
and debates.
I fail to see why citizens in NATO countries should allow
that to happen. The governments of NATO countries, not the
military, have made a very serious bombing blunder in the
Balkans. To hide that – which is a human thing to try to do
– they will tend to wildly exaggerate the problems and the
‘evilness’ of the Yugoslav leadership. This helps them deny
(also to themselves) that in order to save NATO’s face and
their own individual leadership, fundamental elements of
Western civilization must be put at risk. And, thus, we are
on slippery slope: the war itself becomes more important
than what it was to be fought for in the first
place.
TFF’s director concludes, “I think the best type of
damage limitation we can do now to the Balkans and to
ourselves is to appeal to common sense and genuine humanity
among citizens, to actively demonstrate solidarity with all
who suffer in all of the Balkans – for instance, by going
there – and persuade our leaders to stop the bombing for a
number of days to begin with and thus open a space for
politics and a time for reflection.”
© TFF 1999
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C o r r e c t i o n
PressInfo # 64 contained two mistakes. We meant to ask
why NATO – not Belgrade, of course – did not bomb earlier to
prevent ethnic cleansing. And KLA/UCK controlled 30% of the
Kosovo province, not of Yugoslavia. We apologize!
