Inke Arns on Sun, 2 Jan 2000 14:12:59 +0100


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Syndicate: (2) Ethnicizing and Natosevic - the war and the left


[continued from mail no.1]


>This dynamic stems from the fact that said powers have some common
>interests indeed, but those interests can be too similar - in the sense
>of a competition for spheres of influence. A strong motive for the USA,
>but also for the Netherlands and England, is maintaining NATO as a
>hegemonic military power. For the USA the main interest is to perpetuate
>the US role as the protector of the European post-war order. For the
>Netherlands and England the presence of the USA is desirable for
>counterbalancing German or rather German-French dominance in EU
>structures. Germany and even more so France do indeed have an interest
>in the continued existence of NATO, but not as a hegemonic power that
>restricts them in their power-strategic options. In their view, NATO
>should be cut back to an alliance among others, alongside EUropean
>structures that allow EUrope under the leadership of Germany and France
>a certain autonomy from US-American interests.
>
>In order to save a NATO that has become quite useless after the Cold
>War, NATO needs a war in which it can prove that it is needed. This,
>however, does not yet explain why this war is waged against Yugoslavia.
>In this the motives of the various powers probably differ. An
>interesting point - only in the German discussion, along with that in
>Austria and in German-language areas of Switzerland, is Germany
>perceived and described as an imperialist power pushing towards the
>south-east. The investment policy of Germany since 1989 has been better
>known for its orientation towards Russian markets and for a relative
>disinterest in the Balkans. Is the emphasis on German imperialist
>efforts by some activists in Germany shaped by an anti-German[7]
>overrated perception of "oneself" (all bad things come from Germany)? Or
>is rather a lack of information about the ins and outs of the German
>foreign policy in other languages responsible for the omissions
>regarding Germany in discussions outside the German-language area? Some
>indications (the tip of an iceberg?) of German interests and power games
>do exist. Most widely known are the diplomatic initiatives of
>Hans-Dietrich Genscher in favor of the international recognition of the
>independence of Slovenia and Croatia that provided (unintentionally?)
>substantial help to Milosevic's strategy of clinging to power, based on
>ethnicizing social questions. Already in the first phase of dislocating
>the Yugoslav state structure by means of war the demonizing of Serbs was
>accompanied by common interests of the German foreign and the Yugoslav
>domestic politics - much like today between NATO and the Yugoslav
>central government. A point which received less attention than
>Genscher's Yugoslavia politics but has nevertheless found its way into
>non-German media is some evidence that the KLA has been supported, in an
>early phase, by the German Bundesnachrichtendienst (BND - Federal
>Information Service) and other German secret services, and was armed by
>German institutions against the will of the US-American CIA.[8]
>
>In any event, the escalation strategy in its final phase seems to have
>taken place under US leadership. It may be difficult to find out whether
>the US government was pushed to take over by the facts created on the
>ground by German efforts towards an escalation, in order to avert an
>excessive EUropean autonomy, or whether the USA took steps towards
>making a diplomatic solution impossible due to its own interests in the
>disintegration of what was left of Yugoslavia. In any case, the US
>government came to the conclusion that a war under NATO/US leadership
>worked more effectively towards maintaining its influence than
>diplomatic attempts at defusing the war preparations pushed ahead by
>German and Yugoslav policies.
>
>In an effort to explore the interests of various powers, it seems
>appropriate to me to start out with the observed consequences of the
>NATO attacks and to try to imagine who might benefit from those
>consequences, who might have accepted them grudgingly and who will
>clearly suffer from them. I do not imagine that every single consequence
>can be assigned to a willful strategy. But I do think that most of the
>consequences were very easy to predict and may therefore, in the view of
>one or the other actor and under the given circumstances, have
>contributed to making the escalation strategy attractive or, on the
>contrary, to raising skepticism about such a strategy.
>
>Among the obvious consequences of the NATO attacks that will, in my
>opinion, have to be analyzed in future discussions, are (in no
>particular order)
>
>* the political strengthening of Milosevic and the elimination of any
>inner-Yugoslav opposition. Specifically, the war, like the wars in
>Croatia and Bosnia before it, provides Milosevic with a perfect
>explanation why the promises of a better life for the population will
>not be realized - it is war, after all. If an issue out of the current
>demonizing discourse can be found, it is possible that the reasserted
>power position of Milosevic may pave the way for a regional order in
>which NATO assigns him the role of a co-guarantor of the regional
>stability - at conditions conforming to NATO and IMF plans;
>
>* a massive provocation towards the Russian leadership that can be
>interpreted as an attempted revival of the politics of containment
>followed by NATO/the US towards the "Soviet" Union during the times of
>the Cold War. This may have been part of a scheme to evaluate the
>resistance likely to be opposed by the Russian leadership to the ongoing
>US policies aimed at directly disputing the sphere of influence of the
>Russian government around the Caspian Sea and the Caucasus;
>
>* the liberation of Germany from the military isolation imposed by the
>post-war order, by breaking the taboo of a Bundeswehr (the army of
>Federal Germany) intervention against Yugoslavia. This may have been the
>single greatest motive of German politics to enter into a war against
>Yugoslavia within the NATO framework. After this tactical use, NATO has
>served its main purpose as a hegemonic power and Germany, together with
>France, may further on prefer to cut back NATO to the role of a military
>alliance among several others;
>
>* the confirmation of US supremacy, including over EUropean "defense"
>policies, through the leading role taken by the US government in the
>NATO bombings. This situation could easily swing around to a substantial
>loss of US-American power over the EUropean "defense" system, however.
>Germany has become more independent by breaking out of the military
>isolation and is more susceptible to accept French offers for a military
>collaboration in the context of the Western European Union (WEU).
>Furthermore there is a danger of NATO being discredited to the extent
>that the reasons given for the intervention are in obvious contradiction
>to the consequences of the bombings - to the detriment of the US and to
>the benefit of the German and French governments;
>
>* the displacement of hundreds of thousands of people, mostly Kosov@
>Albanians, from Kosov@, with two far-reaching consequences: a massive
>migration of refugees to neighboring countries and in more or less
>controlled ways[9] to Western European countries as cheap and extremely
>dependent labor; the destabilizing of Albania and Macedonia that in
>essence turns those two countries into NATO protectorates. In addition,
>one can be sure that the massive expulsion of Albanians precipitated by
>the NATO bombings was envisaged by NATO strategic planning to serve as
>the heart of its own war-mongering discourse of legitimation;
>
>* also in connection with the mass expulsions, the destruction of the
>subsistence structures which stood in the way of capital accumulation by
>providing an alternative to being exploited at low wages. This time, the
>destruction of social structures aimed especially at the Kosov@ Albanian
>clans. In the context of the past Yugoslav civil wars such destruction
>has been identified as a substantial interest in war for the Yugoslav
>leadership under the pressure of IMF programs (see Materialien Nr. 6).
>The destruction of subsistence structure is thus in the interest of both
>Milosevic and the Western powers;
>
>* at least a temporary weakening of the EUropean economy as compared to
>the US-American. This has become visible through the low exchange rate
>of the Euro to the US dollar. Presumably, US strategists do not mind
>waging a war in EUrope's backyard and imposing the consequences of a
>possible destabilization on their greatest economic competitor and
>NATO-partner;
>
>* the destruction of substantial parts of the Yugoslav industry and
>infrastructure that have been the target of bombings far more often than
>military installations. A reconstruction based on foreign loans will
>make Yugoslavia economically dependent for a long time to come and force
>it to pay interests. Much like in Kuwait, thanks to its leading role in
>the war the US government is likely to position US companies well in the
>business of reconstruction. Even as the German diplomacy is trying to
>grab the initiative by proposing a "Marshall Plan for the Balkans", it
>will be hard for the EU to be more than a junior partner to the US. In
>case such a Marshall Plan turns the dependence of Yugoslavia on loans in
>a dependence on the "donor countries", this will be just another
>opportunity for the latter to implement a redistribution from the bottom
>to the top. Tax money will serve to finance the profits of (US and
>German) transnationals in Yugoslavia;
>
>* a military-Keynesian solution of parts of the overproduction crisis in
>the US, and to a smaller extent in the EU, through the massive use (the
>"consumption" paid through taxes) of weapons. This has the side effect
>of providing a gigantic live weapons show as a state subsidized
>advertising opportunity for transnational arms companies;
>
>* a solution to the question of where the US soldiers thus far stationed
>in Germany should go, if they haven't already been transferred to Iraq,
>or later to Bosnia. With the de facto NATO protectorates in Macedonia
>and Albania and the planned protectorate in Kosov@ (according to Annex B
>of the Rambouillet agreement in all of Yugoslavia) there is now
>sufficient work for those soldiers otherwise threatened with
>unemployment;
>
>* an increased pressure on the state governments of the region to act in
>accordance with their candidacy for NATO accession, and test runs for
>NATO loyalty. The Bulgarian government for instance was - as Bulgarian
>media commented - not asked to provide an air corridor to NATO planes
>for any war strategic use, but in order to test the political
>willingness of bowing to the will of NATO against the will of the
>population;
>
>* the fact that the acceptance for a division or separation of Kosov@,
>and in the medium term maybe of Macedonia, has grown internationally. If
>we examine the main argument given for the inalterability of state
>borders, namely the fear that other minorities in Europe might follow
>the example of the Kosov@ Albanians, we notice that this argument loses
>its stringency if the price of their sovereignty becomes so high that
>anyone who might fancy to walk in their footsteps would be thoroughly
>discouraged. This paves the way for the continuation of the splitting up
>of the Balkans according to "ethnic" criteria, or whatever criteria may
>suit the economic and geostrategic interests of the Western powers;
>
>* a strengthened KLA leadership. In this context we can expect that
>especially the US, after the weakening of Yugoslavia and Macedonia, will
>not risk the creation of a Greater Albania under the leadership of the
>KLA or other forces. It would therefore not be surprising if the KLA was
>used as cannon-fodder and thus wiped out in the war - for instance by
>being armed so as to serve as ground troops of NATO and being sent to
>fight an overwhelmingly stronger Yugoslav army.[10] Albania is useful
>for the US as a submissive and extremely dependent state government. If
>however a self-assured Kosov@ Albanian leadership emerges from the war
>in full strength and kicks off a dynamic of independence, this does not
>lie in the interest of the US government who wants especially to control
>trade routes in the region and to that end needs obedient governments.
>As opposed to Germany, that has, as we mentioned earlier, supported the
>KLA at an early stage and apparently finds such a dynamic more
>promising.
>
>Yugoslavia as a center of East-West trade
>
>The importance of East-West trade routes stems from the already
>mentioned US interests in an enlargement of the US sphere of influence
>coinciding with a containment of the Russian influence around the
>Caspian Sea and the Caucasus. Thinking one step further, it is also
>about the revival of the old silk route all the way to China, with the
>important detail that Russia is to be bypassed, but at the same time
>alternatives are to be created to the Turkish route in order to take the
>edge off Turkey's crucial strategic importance. Since I have not yet
>seen these trade strategic reflections expounded in a publicly available
>source, and since the US hegemony in the Atlantic Alliance continues
>despite all the wounds incurred, I would like to elaborate on this a
>bit.
>
>An essential reason why the lack of submissiveness and reliability (seen
>from a Western-imperialist perspective) of the Yugoslav government was
>so annoying was that trade routes that are important for the future pass
>through Yugoslavia with practically no alternative and thus depend on
>the goodwill of the Yugoslav government. In circles dealing with
>investment strategies Yugoslavia is seen as a country that (both before
>and after 1989) has misused its geographic position in order to control
>trade routes - both the overland route from Bulgaria and Macedonia
>through Belgrade to the West and the Danube shipping route. NATO
>strategists could have a good laugh about such attempts at monopolizing
>if they had ready alternatives. Besides the route going through the
>Bosporus, where in the case of oil, for instance, the limits of capacity
>have already been reached and substantial ecological danger and logistic
>problems are arising, alternatives to the route through Belgrade or the
>Danube have not been developed.
>
>However, the current trade policies of the Western powers, and
>especially of the US, build upon the notion that a multitude of
>alternatives should be opened in order to reduce dependencies. If it had
>been possible to develop these alternatives earlier the Yugoslav
>government would have been missing an essential trump card and would
>have been much more exposed to Western attempts at intimidation and
>threats of embargo. Then, the "Yugoslav nut" might possibly have been
>cracked without a war. Even if for the NATO countries there was a whole
>set of other reasons for escalating towards a war, the probability that
>sufficient support for the war might have been assured would have been
>substantially lower. The development in good time of alternative trade
>routes was hindered both by diverging priorities among Western powers
>and mutually incompatible transport policies of the Balkan countries,
>combined with a lack of funds for infrastructure investment. In order
>for foreign investment to flow, the unwritten trade rules of the Balkan
>countries, which are not understandable to Western businesspeople, had
>to be abolished. The difficulties of understanding stemmed mainly from
>the fact that these rules were much too awkward for effectively imposing
>Western profit interests. Through the policies of "development" banks
>like the World Bank and the European Bank for Reconstruction and
>Development (EBRD) those rules were substituted by a business system of
>Western type that favors Western companies and essentially excludes the
>local firms.
>
>The conditions for the development of trade routes are given by the
>interplay between local/regional interests and the requirements of
>interregional trade. The transport connections between Bulgaria and
>Romania, for instance, which would provide a way to bypass Belgrade on
>the way to the north-west, remain poor - only a single bridge far in the
>East and a few ferries, for a border of no less than five hundred
>kilometers. As long as the Bulgarian government insists on building the
>new bridge in Vidin, 20 kilometers from the Yugoslav border, the
>Romanian government will never agree. The latter has no interest in
>developing trade over the Bulgarian-Romanian border, since the master
>plan of Romanian transport politics is aimed at developing East-West
>trade from the Romanian Black Sea port of Constanta to Hungary and
>onwards. The construction of a new bridge over the Danube would open
>Constanta to the competition of the Bulgarian ports of Varna and Burgas.
>Hence the interest of Western powers - in this case not so much the US
>as Germany and Austria - in alternative routes and flexibility will be
>realized only if the Romanian government can be offered sufficient
>compensation. The war of NATO against Yugoslavia now offers a coercive
>environment in which the Romanian government may be brought to agree to
>a bridge, as long as its location ensures that the traffic through
>Romania - and not only through a small corner in the west between
>Bulgaria and Hungary - is developed. Furthermore a bridge further away
>from the Yugoslav border could satisfy the needs of two trade routes,
>namely - besides the one mentioned - a south-north route from Turkey and
>Greece whose inclusion in such a project would make it interregionally
>more attractive and would make the investments more profitable.
>
>For the United States another overland route is of much higher
>geostrategic importance - corridor VIII. This corridor runs from the
>Black Sea through Bulgaria, Macedonia and Albania to the Mediterranean
>and is part of the transport political priorities of all three of these
>countries. The aim of US politics is to bring it under the control of
>international institutions and its advisors. This foreign interest suits
>the three Balkan countries to the extent that they are hoping it will
>help them break out of a transport political isolation - Albania is
>completely isolated towards the east, Macedonia is connected only
>towards the north and the south, and Bulgaria is too dependent on
>Yugoslavia to the west. In contrast to some of the other EUropean
>corridors, corridor VIII does not play a significant role on an
>intra-EUropean level (its "integrative force" is low for EUrope, say
>analysts who are close to investment circles). The corridor VIII
>receives its full strategic significance only when it is seen as part of
>an outreaching route leading to the Caspian Sea and further on to China.
>For the USA this corridor is therefore of outstanding importance, and
>the weakened governments of Albania and Macedonia (a significant
>consequence of the war moves of NATO) come just in time as forcibly
>obedient servants of US politics. Besides this, Bulgaria is not known
>for its affirmed independence from Western institutions, since it has
>been made dependent through Western loans and through the tactical
>promise that it will catch up to a Western standard of living by joining
>NATO and the EU.[11]
>
>A trade corridor running through easily controlled countries offers the
>US the opportunity to reduce its dependency on current trade routes
>through Turkey and Greece and to get a tighter grip on its two NATO
>partners. On an economic level, the direct winner would be Italy, which
>would profit from the fact that Albania, through which the goods would
>transit and reach the Mediterranean, does not itself have the necessary
>infrastructure to serve as a distribution center for goods and raw
>materials arriving from the East.
>
>The corridor VIII does not run directly through Kosov@, even if the most
>likely route runs as close as 20 kilometers from the Macedonian border
>to Kosov@. The war of NATO against Yugoslavia can certainly not be
>explained exclusively from the fact that the US have an interest in
>controlling trade routes and playing one route against the other. Such
>an aim would never have found the approval of the NATO partner
>countries. Notably in matters of the development of trade routes, the
>interests of Germany and the United States diverge substantially. What
>they do have in common is that Yugoslavia is to be bypassed if possible.
>For the US - to the south towards the Mediterranean. For Germany - to
>the north. Nevertheless, for parts of the US establishment the corridor
>VIII, in addition to the search for a legitimation of NATO as police
>unit, is likely to have been an important part of their strategic
>thinking. And more generally, the powerful position of the Yugoslav
>government stemming from its control over the trade routes developed so
>far was certainly on the agenda of German and other strategizing
>meetings.
>
>Invitation
>
>The reflections on a possible radical leftist approach to the war of
>NATO against Yugoslavia and that of the Yugoslav leadership against the
>Kosov@ Albanians and on possible ways to revive arguments based on
>economic and social power interests that were presented in this article
>are sketchy, incomplete and not sufficiently well thought-out to give us
>the tools to act. In fact, they are meant rather as food for thought and
>action, as a possible starting point for further discussions and the
>search for appropriate forms of action and communication. I would be
>happy if readers who are interested in participating in such a process
>contacted me.[12]
>
>
>NOTES
>
>1 The spelling Kosov@ is chosen in the tradition of the gender-neutral
>Spanish spelling which combines the alternatives "a" and "o" into the @
>sign. This provides a way of avoiding having to choose between the
>partisan spellings Kosovo (the Serb neuter stemming from the historical,
>nationalistically tainted name of the place "Kosovo Polje", which
>translates to "Field of the Blackbirds") and Kosova (its variant used in
>Albanian language).
>
>2 Both e-mail lists can be subscribed to by sending e-mail to
><majordomo@zamir.net> with the command "subscribe ex-yu-a-lista" or
>"subscribe attack", respectively, in the body of the e-mail. Most of the
>contributions are in "the language we speak", as Yugoslavs sometimes
>call the South-Slavic language that has by now received separate names
>according to nationalist interests, and sometimes also in English.
>
>3 Ethnisierung des Sozialen - Die Transformation der jugoslawischen
>Gesellschaft im Medium des Krieges. Materialien für einen neuen
>Antiimperialismus Nr. 6, Berlin/Göttingen 1993. (Ethnicizing the social
>fabric - The transformation of the Yugoslav society in the medium of
>war. Materials for a new Anti-Imperialism)
>
>4 Marcel Noir: "Unser Mann in der OSZE". (Our man in OSCE) In: Jungle
>World, 14 April 1999.
>
>5 Interim Agreement for Peace and Self-Government in Kosovo,
>Rambouillet, France - 23 February 1999. And especially its Appendix B:
>Status of Multi-National Military Implementation Force. Available on the
>Web at <http://www.law.pitt.edu/kosovo.htm>.
>
>6 Boris Buden: "The official Bastard (ARKZIN)-statement on the war in
>Yugoslavia - Saving Private Havel", 20 April 1999.
>
>7 The anti-Germans are a faction of the German left that has had the
>merit to reintroduce important historical questions (especially the
>relation to historical Nazism) into the political discussion but
>sometimes tends to take Germany and its importance too seriously in an
>almost narcissistic sense.
>
>8 Roger Faligot: "How Germany backed KLA". In: The European, 21
>September 1998.
>
>9 Note added at translation: As shown by Helmut Dietrich, another effect
>of the war is that through the presence of NATO troops in Albania and
>Macedonia where most of the refugees transited made it possible to
>successfully isolate the refugees and prevent them from making contact
>with people who could help them pass the borders into Italy and on to
>Switzerland and Germany. An even tighter control was made possible by
>the fact that the refugee camps are under NATO supervision. Cf. Helmut
>Dietrich, "Europäische Flüchtlingspolitik und der NATO-Krieg - Die
>Zerschlagung der Fluchtwege aus dem Balkan nach Westeuropa" (European
>Refugee Politics and the NATO war - The dismantling of flight routes
>from the Balkans to Western Europe), Widerspruch No. 37 (July 1999),
>Zurich, Switzerland.
>
>10 Note added at translation: Although as predicted here, soon after the
>publication of this article an outright anti-KLA propaganda started in
>the world media, it seems that the position of the KFOR (Kosovo Force)
>command towards the KLA structures is more ambiguous than I had
>supposed, and the KLA leadership is given the opportunity to ascertain
>its power and - as Bulgarian media surmise and KLA officers openly admit
>- position themselves for the next round of the struggle for a Greater
>Albania. We had better keep an eye on developments in Macedonia.
>
>11 In the context of NATO interests in corridor VIII it may be
>interesting to note that Salomon Passi, the chairman of the Atlantic
>Clubs in Sofia, an association which de facto represents the interests
>of NATO, has served as an intermediate in the negotiations for an
>infrastructure deal between a US-American company and the port
>authorities of Burgas.
>
>12 My e-mail address: <kessi@bitex.com>; Tel/Fax: +359-2-980 96 52.

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