Thanks to massive deception and self-deception by media and politicians, even the anti-globalisation movement failed to grasp the implications of the aggressive military globalisation pursued by the United States, from Iraq to Afghanistan and beyond.
In this study, Diana Johnstone identifies the common geopolitical interests running through all these past, present and future military interventions. She argues persuasively that outside intervention creates rather than solves problems and cannot be justified.
Johnstone shows that the 'War in Kosovo' was in reality the model for future destruction of countries seen as potential threats to the hegemony of the 'International Community', led by the United States.
Thanks to massive deception and self-deception by media and politicians, even the anti-globalisation movement failed to grasp the implications of the aggressive military globalisation pursued by the United States, from Iraq to Afghanistan and beyond.
In this study, Diana Johnstone identifies the common geopolitical interests running through all these past, present and future military interventions. She argues persuasively that outside intervention creates rather than solves problems and cannot be justified.
Johnstone shows that the 'War in Kosovo' was in reality the model for future destruction of countries seen as potential threats to the hegemony of the 'International Community', led by the United States.
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Overview
Thanks to massive deception and self-deception by media and politicians, even the anti-globalisation movement failed to grasp the implications of the aggressive military globalisation pursued by the United States, from Iraq to Afghanistan and beyond.
In this study, Diana Johnstone identifies the common geopolitical interests running through all these past, present and future military interventions. She argues persuasively that outside intervention creates rather than solves problems and cannot be justified.
Johnstone shows that the 'War in Kosovo' was in reality the model for future destruction of countries seen as potential threats to the hegemony of the 'International Community', led by the United States.
Product Details
| ISBN-13: | 9781783715794 |
|---|---|
| Publisher: | Pluto Press |
| Publication date: | 09/20/2002 |
| Sold by: | Barnes & Noble |
| Format: | eBook |
| Pages: | 328 |
| File size: | 574 KB |
About the Author
Diana Johnstone is a distinguished essayist and columnist, who writes frequently for CounterPunch and ZNet among many high-profile publications in Europe and the US. She is the author of Fools' Crusade: Yugoslavia, NATO and Western Delusions (Pluto, 2002). Her articles on the Balkans have been translated in many European languages. She lives in Paris.
Read an Excerpt
CHAPTER 1
The Yugoslav Guinea Pig
Why Yugoslavia? How did the Serbs go from being the heroic little people who stood up to empires and Nazis in defense of freedom, to being the "new Nazis", pariahs of the Western world? What were the faults and weaknesses inside Yugoslavia that account for the conflicts of the 1990s? What did the Europeans and Americans do to contribute to the mess? A complex interplay of internal and external errors and ambitions contributed to the Yugoslav disaster.
Despite concentrated media attention and the publication of book after book, the West managed for a decade not to see many of the most significant factors in Yugoslavia.
1. INVISIBLE SERBIA
Bill Clinton, 1999 Memorial Day speech:
In Kosovo we see some parallels to World War II, for the government of Serbia, like that of Nazi Germany, rose to power in part by getting people to look down on people of a given race and ethnicity, and to believe they had no place in their country, and even no right to live.
Slobodan Miloševic, 28 June 1989, at the commemoration of the 600th anniversary of the battle of Kosovo Polje:
Never in history did Serbs alone live in Serbia. Today more than ever before, citizens of other nationalities and ethnic groups are living here. That is not a handicap for Serbia. I am sincerely convinced it is an advantage. National structure is changing in this direction in all countries in the contemporary world, especially in developed countries. More and more, and more and more successfully, citizens of different nationalities, different faiths and races are living together. Socialism in particular, being a progressive and just democratic society, should not allow people to be divided by national or religious identity ... Yugoslavia is a multinational community, and it can survive only on condition of full equality of all nations that live in it ... Equal and harmonious relations among Yugoslav peoples are a necessary condition for the existence of Yugoslavia and for it to find its way out of the crisis and, in particular, they are a necessary condition for its economic and social prosperity.
Here we have the contrasting words of two successful politicians, who each in his own country rose to be president with the reputation of being more clever than scrupulously truthful. Which one, in this particular case, is the bigger liar?
In all simplicity, the answer has to be Clinton, because whether or not what Clinton says in this speech is true depends on what Milosevic said in order to rise to power. And this speech of Milosevic is the prime example, referred to in countless books, editorials, and articles, of the Serbian nationalist rhetoric by which Milosevic supposedly rose to power. But what he actually said does not fit the description given by Clinton.
Milosevic: a fictional character
Throughout the 1990s, Western political leaders and media collaborated in the creation of a fictional character bearing the name "Slobodan Milosevic".
"He is the man who started the war" and won elections "with promises of a Greater Serbia and with lurid propaganda about international conspiracies against Serbia ...". For Daniel Jonah Goldhagen, Milosevic was an "extreme nationalist" and a "genocidal killer" who spread "dehumanizing beliefs" in pursuit of "an eliminationist project". On 26 March 1999, Vice President Al Gore described Milosevic as "one of these junior-league Hitler types who tries to hold on to power by stirring up hatred among his own people". Former British prime minister Margaret Thatcher went further: "We are not dealing with some minor thug", she insisted. "Milosevic's regime and the genocidal ideology that sustains it represents ... a truly monstrous evil ... which must be totally defeated ..."
Media critic Philip Hammond observed that within 24 hours of the start of NATO bombing, "the Yugoslav president had been described by the UK press as a 'Warlord', a 'Serb butcher', the 'Butcher of Belgrade', the 'Butcher of the Balkans', 'the most evil dictator to emerge in Europe since Adolf Hitler', a 'psychopath', a 'Serb tyrant', a 'psychopathic tyrant', 'evil', 'a man of no mercy', and a 'former communist hardliner'. Casting around for insults, the Star added that he was 'dumpy'."
On 13 October 1998, Bill Press, representing 'the left' versus Pat Buchanan on CNN's "Crossfire", said NATO had to intervene militarily against the "evil" Milosevic because "He only understands the use of force like Saddam Hussein." General Wesley Clark, not surprisingly, also drew the conclusion from "dealing with Milosevic over a long period of time" that "he only listens to one thing; that's the use of force".
The French were not lagging behind. French media during the days of bombing informed the public that Milosevic was "a serial ethnic cleanser", "a butcher dictator", "an international terrorist", "a disciple of Stalin and Hitler", "a dictator of the most horrible sort", "a cold-blooded animal" and other descriptions more difficult to translate. The rather ordinary physical appearance of this contemporary Caligula was cited as evidence of his evil character: "Everything in his physical appearance indicates that the man has no feelings. His heavy build speaks of the brutality of the warlord."
This torrent of abuse tells us very little about Milosevic, but a great deal about the political culture of the West, which allows its opinion-makers to resort to the most primitive level of insult.
Still, since nobody is perfect, and certainly not the leader of a "transition" country, the question arises: What was really wrong with Milosevic?
What was really wrong with Milosevic
What was really wrong with Milosevic is indeed closely related to what was wrong with the Serbian people as Yugoslavia began to come apart at the seams in the 1980s: they were extremely divided. Serbs were geographically divided between the various Republics of the Yugoslav Federation: Serbia and Bosnia and Croatia, not to mention Macedonia (where lines of ethnic identity between Slavs were sometimes nearly impossible to draw) and Montenegro, whose principal inhabitants, the Montenegrins, are basically Serbs. They were subjectively divided between two identities, Yugoslav and Serb. Historically, they were divided in several ways, and most bitterly between World War II partisans and Chetniks (respectively, the communist and royalist guerrilla movements opposing Nazi occupation ... and each other). They were divided in outlook and interests between rural and urban inhabitants. And finally, in the wake of Titoism, they were politically divided between left projects to reform socialism and "centrist" projects to revive the parties and political traditions of the pre-communist past.
When a nation is deeply divided, the leader who can succeed is the one whose ambiguity can create a semblance of unity. The ability to be "all things to all men" is often the key to political success. What was really wrong with Milosevic was also his biggest political asset: his ambiguity. When he rose to prominence in 1987 and emerged victorious in the struggle for leadership of the Serbian League of Communists, transformed it into the Serbian Socialist Party and then won Serbia's first postwar multiparty elections in 1990, he seemed to be able to square all the circles. He was the political magician who could get rid of communist "bureaucracy" but maintain a reassuring continuity, defend both Serbian interests and Yugoslavism, combine reformed socialism with economic privatization.
Multiparty elections were also held for the first time in 1990 in Croatia and Bosnia-Herzegovina. Genuine nationalist parties won those elections. Franjo Tudjman's party was clearly the party of Croatian nationalism. Muslim, Serb and Croat nationalist parties dominated the parliament of Bosnia-Herzegovina. In contrast, the genuine Serbian nationalist party, Vojislav Seselj's Serbian Radical Party, came in far behind Milosevic's Socialist Party. The voters of Serbia rejected nationalism. This fact was pushed out of sight by repeated description of Milosevic as an "extreme nationalist". In the single-minded search for confirmation of this pre-judgment, there has been little effort to make a balanced assessment of Milosevic's intentions and those of his adversaries.
Nationalism was the principal taboo in the Serbian League of Communists. Any mention of the interests of Serbs as such was considered unacceptable. The Kosovo problem broke this taboo because, following the death of Tito, a resurgence of militant Albanian nationalism in the early 1980s had made national identity a tangible issue in the autonomous province. Serbs living in Kosovo felt discriminated against, intimidated by the Albanian majority, and under pressure to sell their homes and farms to Albanians and move away. The economic downturn aggravated the problem, as the richer republics (Slovenia, Croatia) balked at continuing to contribute to development funds for the province, where unemployment and population growth were far greater than in the rest of Yugoslavia. Kosovo was a burden for the republic of Serbia, which the others did not want to share. But merely to acknowledge that Kosovo was a problem for Serbs was to break the taboo and entail the accusation of "Serbian nationalism", an accusation which could then be used to justify other nationalisms. Indeed, the very reason why the Serbian communists were so strenuously opposed to any mention of Serb national interest was awareness that accusations of Serbian "nationalism" could be exploited by secessionists in other national groups, endangering the whole Yugoslav Federal State.
Milosevic's sin was that he used the Kosovo question to wrest leadership of the Serbian League of Communists away from the man in line for the job, Belgrade party leader Dragisa Pavlovic. Denying accusations of nationalism, Milosevic said it was wrong to "label us Serbian nationalists because we want to, and really will, resolve the problem of Kosovo in the interests of all the people who live there" and condemned Serbian nationalism as "a serpent deep in the bosom of the Serbian people" that would harm the Serbian people by isolating them.
Supporters of Pavlovic bitterly resented Milosevic's rise to prominence and played a key role in characterizing him as an "extreme nationalist". This accusation was eagerly welcomed and passed on to the West by supporters of Slovenian, Croatian, and Albanian leaders who had their own reasons for wanting to secede, but who used the "Serb threat" as the acceptable public excuse. However, outside the particular context of the Serbian League of Communists, the concept of "extreme nationalism" conveys positions and attitudes quite remote from those of Milosevic. At the very least it suggests hostile chauvinism such as that of the French nationalist Jean-Marie Le Pen, at the most the murderous racism of Adolf Hitler. By such association of ideas, the legend grew of the rise of an aggressive racist dictator in Serbia.
What was really wrong with Milosevic was a mixture of optimism and ambiguity not uncommon among ambitious politicians. He was often described as better at tactics than at strategy. His claim to be able to resolve the problem of Kosovo was based on illusion. He continued to preach unity, but offered no program for achieving it. He was never able to resolve the Kosovo problem as he promised, in the interests of all the people who live there. The problem was no doubt much more difficult than he realized. Whether he or anyone else could have solved it is a matter of speculation. In his ten years in office, first as president of Serbia and then as president of Yugoslavia, Milosevic also failed to solve the grave economic problems he set out to solve in the first place. As a former banker, Milosevic persistently gave priority to the economy. Far from being a useful distraction, the wars of Yugoslav disintegration and the international sanctions that followed were insurmountable obstacles to any coherent economic policy. Economic troubles were a prime cause of the clash of nationalisms, which in turn made problems even more intractable.
2. INVISIBLE ECONOMIC CAUSES
During the 1990s, Yugoslavia was disparaged as a sort of mini-USSR which was taking too long to abandon communism. This was ironic since Yugoslavia had been the first to leave the Soviet Bloc and go its own way. While autocratic in its political system, Tito's Yugoslavia had been able to take advantage of its unique intermediate position between East and West, North and South, to experiment at home and to profit internationally as the only European member of the Non-Aligned Movement. The communists counted on economic development to overcome past national antagonisms. This was not without success, until sharp economic decline was precipitated by failed efforts to adapt to the world capitalist system.
Outside the Soviet Bloc since shortly after it was formed, Yugoslavia had developed its own style of liberal socialism, characterized by "workers' self-management", a "social property" sector in between the state and private sectors, market mechanisms, and much greater personal freedom for citizens, notably the freedom to travel abroad and work in Western countries. Living standards were higher than in most other Eastern European countries and compared favorably with Portugal. Yugoslavia was not a demoralized satellite of Moscow, but a proud leader of the Non-Aligned Movement. Its citizens were welcomed everywhere in the world, East and West. Its engineers worked on development projects in Third World countries, its academics taught in German and American universities, its "guest workers" blended readily into Western society wherever they went. Yugoslavs were not eager to become "Western" because they thought they already were. This was not a prodigal son to be welcomed back into the fold with celebrations; it was not repentant enough for that.
Precisely because Yugoslavia was not part of the Soviet Bloc, it had easily received substantial credits from the West to finance industrial modernization in order to export to Western markets. However, Western markets remained largely inaccessible. After 1979, interest rates skyrocketed on the massive dollar lending of the previous decade. Yugoslavia fell into the same "debt trap" that had strangled Latin American countries. Because the country was dependent on imports even for its own domestic industry, the need to keep up payments on foreign debt took priority among policymakers. Belgrade was obliged to accept the dictates of the International Monetary Fund. Therefore, during the 1980s, the relatively high living standards of the Yugoslav people underwent the shocks of IMF austerity policies. The cost of basic necessities rose while social services were cut back and jobs eliminated. Strikes and work stoppages increased sharply. But protests were not directed against the growing Western influence. Instead, economic hardship tended to be blamed on domestic politicians – either on the ruling communists or, increasingly, on the "other" nationalities. Susan Woodward has provided a masterly description of this process, which by the end of the 1980s had resulted in "a breakdown in all elements of the domestic order, political disintegration and rising nationalism".
Scapegoating economic reforms
Rather than fostering democratic free enterprise, the IMF reforms encouraged clannishness, nepotism and unfair mutual recriminations between social groups – which in multinational Yugoslavia meant national groups. As Woodward observed, the liberal economic reforms
increased the use of personalistic criteria in access to jobs and goods, as well as the barriers to collective political action for change. Pressures to employ relatives, finding scapegoats on the basis of social prejudice, antifeminist backlash, and rightwing nationalist incidents became more common. Resentment against those with political sinecures – or what were assumed to be party-based privileges – was informed by old stereotypes (for example, the belief that Serbs dominated political offices).
One of the reactions of Yugoslavs to the economic stress of the 1980s was to blame other national groups – and in particular, to blame the Serbs, by reviving the old belief that Serbs ran the government. This stereotype, left over from the "first Yugoslavia" (1919?41), had not been true for well over a generation. Tito's Yugoslavia was built on a policy of deliberately reducing Serbian influence. The "key" system of national quotas ensured even distribution of public office between the various nationalities. Serbian dominance of Yugoslavia after World War II was a myth.
In the 1990s, this myth took on an added dimension in the version of Yugoslavia's troubles spread abroad by secessionist Slovenians, Croats, and Albanians in order to win Western sympathy. Serbs were equated with communists, to create the impression that the desire to escape from Yugoslavia was identical with the desire to escape from communism. This wildly misleading equation was well designed to appeal to the anti-communist prejudice of ignorant Western media and politicians.
(Continues…)
Excerpted from "Fools' Crusade"
by .
Copyright © 2002 Diana Johnstone.
Excerpted by permission of Pluto Press.
All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
Excerpts are provided by Dial-A-Book Inc. solely for the personal use of visitors to this web site.
Table of Contents
IntroductionChapter One: The Yugoslav Guinea Pig
1. Invisible Serbia
2. Invisible Economic Causes
3. Invisible Croatia
4. Greater Serbia or Smaller Yugoslavia?
5. Integrating Europe, Disintegrating Yugoslavia
6. Multicultural Bosnia Versus Multicultural Yugoslavia
Chapter Two: Moral Dualism In A Multicultural World
1. Manichean Media
2. Creating Public Opinion
3. The Uses of Rape
4. Criminalizing the Rogues
5. Presumed Guilty Until Proven Innocent
6. The Long Arm of Globalization
Chapter Three: Comparative Nationalisms
1. From State-Building to State-Breaking
2. Slovenia: the End of Solidarity
3. Croatian Nationalism: the End of Yugoslavism
Chapter Four: The Making Of Empires
1. Germany Is Born Again
2. Reclaiming the Habsburg Heritage
Chapter Five: The New Imperial Model
1. Albanians: A People In Search of an Empire
2. Victims and Vengeance
3. The Triumph of Hatred
4. Democracy in the New World Order
Postscript: Perpetual War
1. The Idealisation of War
2. The Real Existing New World Order
Notes
Index