Victory? The fact that a war happened in this day and age is a stunning defeat to the human race. To quote an anonymous ww2 soldier, upon "liberating" a pile of ruggle..."We sure liberated the hell out of this place..."
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How many billions of taxpayer's money goes to the pentagon etc. - and then the jerks run out of ammo in a few weeks?!? That's right, NATO is running out of cruise missiles and bombs. We're the smeg did all that money go? They's better be out of them, cus if I get my hands on a cruise missile I'd...
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This is unprecedented
This is the first time since Hitler's declaration of war that America has fought against whites. Interestingly, this is also the first time since before Pearl Harbour (a battle against non-whites) that republicans have been opposed to a war. (Well, Buchanittes, anyway).
Also, it's probably the first time in history that America has gone to war without major business interests involved. It's mainly because of the "humanitarian reasons" Clinton named in his speech - which are probably all moot, but that's not the point. The only business reason I can think of is the armaments industry, which needs expensive and newsworthy wars to continue its work.
World war two has for business interests - it just happened to coincide with a humanitarian interest. Pearl Harbour and the Philippines were American colonies. Hitler by himself didn't hurt business interests - Standard Oil, for example, had a great trading relationship with the Nazis, and the republicans were dead set against war in Europe. However, U-boats off your coast don't help the stock market much, so once Hitler declared war America fought him to the end.
To conservatives - in this case republicans and the media, a war for humanitarian reasons (backfireing or otherwise) is a dangerous precedent. Next on the slippery slope we might actually oppose Indonesia for its genocide - we might even support the Kurds - imagine what that would do to the love-hate relationship with Hussien!
Republicans tend to oppose Clinton in peace and goosestep behind him in times of war. I support humanitarian efforts in peace but not "humanitarian war". There where a million alternatives to the present bombing. For this reason I can't support the bombing, even if it works, which it probably isn't. (One of the 20 targets on day one was a FACTORY! How many Albanians did that save? "Oh no, we can't murder people now - we've lost all of our screwdrivers and blueprints!")
The following is a translation of last night's speech by the Prime Minister of Japan, explaining why the Japanese air force bombed military bases [and a factory!]
and command-and-control installations in the American Southwest:
"My fellow citizens: Today our armed forces joined our allies in the Pacific Rim Organization for National Treaty Observance in air strikes against American
forces responsible for the brutality in New Mexico. We have acted with resolve for several reasons. We act to protect thousands of innocent people in New
Mexico from a mounting military offensive by the `border patrol.' We act to defuse a powder keg at the heart of North America that has exploded twice before
in the last century and a half with catastrophic results, when the US invaded Mexico in 1846 and 1916. We act to stand
united with our allies for peace. By acting now, we are upholding our values, protecting our interests, and advancing the cause of peace. Tonight I want to speak
with you about the tragedy in New Mexico and why it matters to Japan that we work with our allies to end it.
First, let me explain what it is we are responding to. New Mexico is a state of the United States, in the middle of southwestern North America, about 1500 miles west of Cuba -- that's less than the distance from Hokkaido to Okinawa -- and only about 1000 miles north of Mexico City. Its people are mostly ethnic Latino and mostly Catholic.
In recent years America's leader, Bill Clinton, the same leader who started the wars in Iraq and Colombia and attacked Sudan and
Afghanistan in the last decade, increased the authority of the federal secret police, the `INS'; Mexicans are denied their right to speak their language, run their
schools, shape their daily lives. For years, Latinos struggled peacefully to get their rights back. When President Clinton sent his troops and police to crush them,
the struggle grew violent.
The American leaders refuse even to discuss key elements of the Japanese peace proposal. America has stationed Marines along the border in preparation for a major offensive. We've seen innocent people taken from their homes, forced to kneel in the dirt and sprayed with bullets; Mexican men dragged from their families, fathers and sons together lined up and shot in cold blood. This is not war in the traditional sense. It is an attack by armored vehicles and high-tech weapons on a largely defenseless people whose leaders speak only of peace.
Ending this tragedy is a moral imperative. It is also important to Japan's national interests. Take a look at the map. New Mexico is a small place, but it sits on a major
fault line between North America, Latin America, and the Pacific, at the meeting place of Catholicism and both the liberal and evangelical branches of
Protestantism. To the South are our allies, Peru (whose president is of Japanese descent) and Venezuela (which produces oil); to the north our increasingly
important trading partner, Canada. And all around New Mexico there are other
states struggling with their own economic and political challenges, states that could be
overwhelmed by a large new wave of refugees from New Mexico -- California, Texas, Arizona. All the ingredients for a major war are there: Ancient grievances,
struggling democracies, and in the center of it all, a president in America of highly questionable personal character who has done
nothing since the Cold War ended but start new wars and pour gasoline on the flames of ethnic and religious division.
In neighboring Guatemala President Clinton recently acknowledged that American support for torture and murder cost 200,000 lives. Earlier, World War II engulfed the Pacific. In both wars, the world was slow to recognize the dangers, and Japan held back from entering these conflicts. Just imagine if leaders back then had acted wisely and early enough. How many lives could have been saved? How many Japanese would not have had to die?
We learned some of the same lessons in Nicaragua and El Salvador a decade ago. The world did not act early enough to stop those wars, either. And let's not
forget what happened: Innocent people herded into concentration camps; children gunned down by snipers on their way to school; soccer fields and parks
turned into cemeteries; a quarter of a million people killed not because of anything they had done but because of who they were. Two million Central Americans
became refugees.
This was genocide in the heart of the Americas, not in 1945 but in 1985, not in some grainy newsreel from our parents' and grandparents' time, but in our own time, testing our humanity and our resolve.
At the time, many people believed nothing could be done to end the bloodshed in Central America, They said, `Well, that's just the way those people in the Americas are.' But when we and our allies in the UN joined with courageous Central Americans to stand up to the aggressors, we helped end the wars. We learned that in the Americas inaction in the face of brutality simply invites more brutality, but firmness can stop armies and save lives. We must apply that lesson in New Mexico, before what happened in Central America happens there too.
Today we and our PRONTO allies agreed to do what we must do to restore the peace. Our mission is clear: to demonstrate the seriousnessof PRONTO's purpose so that the American leaders understand the imperative of reversing course; to deter an even bloodier offensive against innocentcivilians in New Mexico; and if necessary, to seriously damage the American military's capacity to harm the people of New Mexico. In short, if President Clinton will not make peace, we will limit his ability to make war.
Now, I want to be clear with you, there are risks in this military action -- risk to our pilots and the people on the ground. America's
air defenses are strong. It could decide to intensify its assault on New Mexico or to seek to harm us or our allieselsewhere. If it does, we will deliver a forceful
response. Hopefully Mr. Clinton will realize his present course is self-destructive and unsustainable.
If he decides to accept our peace proposal and demilitarize New Mexico, PRONTO has agreed to help to implement it with a peacekeeping force. If PRONTO is invited to do so, our troops should take part in that mission to keep the peace. But I do not intend to put our troops in New Mexico to fight a war.
Do our interests in New Mexico justify the dangers to our armed forces? I thought long and hard about that question. I am convinced that the dangers of acting
are far outweighed by the dangers of not acting -- dangers to defenseless people and to our national interests. If we and our allies were to allow
this war to continue with no response, President Clinton would read our hesitation as a license to kill. There would be many more massacres -- tens of
thousands more refugees, more victims crying out for revenge. Right now our firmness is the only hope the people of New Mexico have to be able to live in their
own country without having to fear for their own lives.
Imagine what would happen if we and our allies decided just to look the other way as these people were massacred on PRONTO's doorstep. That would discredit PRONTO, the cornerstone on which our Pacific security rests.
We must also remember that this is a conflict with no natural national boundaries. Let me ask you to look again at a map. The arrows
show the movement of refugees -- north, east, and west. Already this movement is threatening the unstable democracy in Texas, which has its own Mexican
minority and an Indian minority. Already American forces have made forays into Mexico, from which New Mexicans have drawn support. Mexico has a Mayan
minority. Let a fire burn here in this area, and the flames will spread. Eventually key Japanese allies could be drawn into a wider conflict, which we would be
forced to confront later only at far greater risk and greater cost.
I have a responsibility as Prime Minister to deal with problems such as this before they do permanent harm to out national interests. Japan has a responsibility to
stand with our allies when they are trying to save innocent lives and preserve peace, freedom, and stability in North America. That is what we are doing in New
Mexico. If we have learned anything form the century drawing to a close, it is that if Japan is going to be prosperous and secure we need a North America that is
prosperous, secure, united, and free. We need a North America that is coming together, not falling apart, a North America thatshares our values and shares the
burdens of leadership. That is the foundation on which the security or our children will depend. That is why
I have supported NAFTA and the economic unification of North America.
Now, what are the challenges to that vision of a peaceful, secure, united, stable North America? The challenge of strengthening a three-way partnership with
the EU, that despite our disagreements is a constructive partner in the work of building peace. The challenge of resolving the tension between Latin and indigenous
peoples, and building bridges with the Christian world. And finally the challenge of ending instability in the United States so that these
bitter ethnic problems are resolved by the force of argument, not the force of arms, so that future generations of Japanese do not have to cross the Pacific to
fight another terrible war. It is this challenge that we and our allies are facing in New
Mexico. That is why we have acted now, because we care about saving innocent lives, because we have an interest in avoiding an even crueler and costlier war,
and because our children need and deserve a peaceful, stable, free North America.
Our thoughts and prayers tonight must be with the men and women of our armed forces who are undertaking this mission for the sake of our values and our children's future. May God bless them, and may God bless Japan."
An article that goes clear over my head:
Hi folks...
Much of the analysis we see in the media as to why Yugoslavia has broken up in such a bloody fashion over the last decade is superficial to say the least. What we are served up is an explanation based on a few nationalist individuals stirring a centuries old pot of hatred in the aftermath of Tito's death. Central to this explanation is that somehow Tito had managed to suppress all these hatreds for the decades he was in power while his successors where unable to or indeed deliberately encouraged them. Unfortunately some anarchists seem to have adopted a left version of this explanation.
That picture is not completely false but there are two major problems with it
1 - it lets the western (imperialist) powers off the hook in terms of any responsibility for creating the situation
2 - it credits the population of former Yugoslavia as being no more then a gullible mob who can only be kept in check by a strong hand.
All of this serves to create a situation where the strong hand of 'Tito' is replaced by the strong hand of NATO. There is a useful article from Z magazine called Dismantling former Yugoslavia from which I've obtained many of the figures below.
This puts forward a different cause for the break-up and massacres that followed it rooted not in the 'age old prejudices of the Balkan people' but in the economic actions of the imperialist powers, working primarily through the IMF. As I've pointed out previously the IMF and World Bank are effectively agents for the major imperialist powers as they work on the basis of 'One dollar, one vote'.
In particular they act as agents of the US which has a veto over policy and which has managed to insist that every World Bank president is a US citizen. These institutions thus are not the tools of an abstract 'global capitalism' but rather the mechanisms by which the very specific imperialist capitalism of the US and other countries dictates the terms of trade to everyone else. In turn of course what the US dictates is decided by US companies.
Yugoslavia like many other economies outside the 'first world' was severely hit by the debt crisis of the 1980's. This occurred when an international climate of low interest loans in a period of high inflation switched to one of high interest and relatively low inflation in the 1980's. The switch over was introduced by US Federal Reserve Board chairman Paul Volcker in 1979 implementing interest rates as high as 20% to squeeze out inflation. For the debtor countries it resulted in a situation where repayments went from being negative in some cases (below inflation) to many times inflation, effectively making the loan unpayable.
The effects of the 'debt crisis' are best known in relation to Latin America. As countries were forced to borrow to pay off the interest and then borrow again they repaid the original debts many times over. It's estimated that from 1984 to 1990 'developing' countries under SAP's (below) paid 178 billion to western banks. One former world bank official described this as follows "Not since the conquistadors plundered Latin America has the world experienced such a flow in the direction we see today"
I don't intend to go into a discussion of why this happened here or indeed the pitfalls in expressing what happened in such simple terms. Two points are important, the first as stated above is that the US effectively dictated the change in interest rates in 1979. The second is that it subsequently used its effective control of the IMF to use the crisis to force countries to restructure their economies in the interests of US companies. Typically this meant removing barrier to imports and removing whatever protection of workers 'rights' and pay existed through high inflation, privatisation and anti-union laws (and indeed physical repression).
These policies were essentially forced on the debtor countries though the IMF. In order to get loans to service their debt (without which international trade became impossible) countries had to agree to undergo Structural Adjustment Programs (SAP's). An official of the Intoured by the Reagan administration".
Leaving Latin America behind what did this mean in Yugoslavia. In 1975 its foreign debt was 6 billion dollars, by 1980 it had risen to 20 billion, over one quarter of national income. Paying the interest alone took 20% of all export revenue.
Also relevant is the other major effect the debt crisis and the SAP's had on world trade. It pushed up the cost of manufactured good in relation to raw materials. This was to fuel the problems in Yugoslavia as the seen much economic development while the Eastern and Southern parts were sources of raw material.
Although it may seem the in and outs of the relations of the different capitalist (or state capitalist) countries to each other is not all that relevant to anarchists the effects of these changes on the working class are of considerable relevance. (Squaring this circle is yet another reason why we need an anarchist theory of imperialism).
Under IMF/World Bank dictate Yugoslavia introduced the standard measures to reduce foreign debt. Just about all these measures represented an attack on the living standards of the working class, a few examples
1. Directing goods towards the export rather then domestic market to create foreign currency results in rising prices and unavailability of consumer goods.
2. Increased rates of inflation and lower wage rises results in wage cuts in real terms. Wages in the social sector fell 25% between 1979 and 1985.
The standard of living fell by 40% frfore 1987, then to zero and then to negative figures in 1990 represented thousands of closures and lay offs adding to unemployment.
All of this made little impact on the debt which remained at around 20 billion. This repeated the pattern found elsewhere, especially in Latin America.Despite this these countries had to implement the IMF program even where they knew they would never be able to pay off the debt.
1989 was of course the year in which western capitalism sought to move in and take oo remove subsidiesprotecting inefficient industry and so introduce a 'free market' in which loss making companies would go bankrupt. In practise the chaos this generated saw state enterprises desperate to raise revenue being sold for knock down prices, often to consortiums of western capital headed up by the old CP bureaucracy and factory managers. Again I intendto just look at Yugoslavia here but the pattern throughout Eastern Europe was that the working class paid while section of the old rulition of the old banking system that effectively kept less efficient workplaces open. These and other policies also saw hyper inflation. The effects of these on the working class were brutal, in the first 6 months of 1990 alone real wages fell by 41%. By 1993 inflation was to rise to 1134%. High inflation alwayshit workers the hardest as wealthier sections of society have access to foreign exchange in which they can protect their savings.
In the period from 1989 to late 1990 over 1000 companies were closed down leading to over 600,000 layoffs, this disproportantly effected the poorer regions including Serbia and Kosovo. At this stage the World Bank estimated that a further 2,435 closures were needed which were to add another 1.3 million to the unemployment total.
In addition many state companies sought to avoid triggering bankruptcy by the simple mechanism of not paying wages. In the first part of 1990 its estimated that 500,000 workers were not paid.
It's not hard to imagine thict as the 'transfer payments' by which the state helped poorer regions out of central funds had been channelled instead to foreign debt payment.
There was resistance from the working class, particularly in Serbia where some 650,000 workers staged a walk out in 1990. The 1980's had seen many similar protests uniting workers across the various republics. But because the collapse of 'communism' appeared to rule out any left alternative is was unsurprising that workers in the wealthier regions encouraged, in particular by Germany leading to independence in 1991.
Meanwhile in Serbia the need to provide a nationalist scapegoat to divide opposition and fragment the working class on the one hand and the real economic loss that the western republics leaving the federation represented enabled Milosevic to rise to power on a tide of nationalism, initially directed against Kosovo but as the other republics left it was to spread to Croatia and Bosnia.
None of the above is intended to indicate Germanys role to the actions of the Nazis and the creation of their puppet regimes in the last war. While some of the parallels are interesting and a few even disturbing such comparisons tend if anything to trivialise the suffering of the Balkan peoples in that period. The fact that the Serbian tended to fight againstthe fascists in 1944 tells us little about the nature of the regime today.
In so far as I have an opinion it is that an anarchist federation of the Balkans isthe alternative t. At any point where the majority of a region opt for independence then I'd tend to defend their right to make that decision against the Serbian attempts to force them to remain in the federation. But really neither side have much to offer to the working class.
To return to the role of the imperialists, Germanys role in particular in encouraging the break up are well documented. The Western republics with their industry and relatively skilled but low paid workers represent a European equivawith the IMF right down to the careful agreement of a division of the old debt between the new republics.
The republics continue to follow the IMF dictated program favouring western investment and take-overs on the one hand and further driving down wages and living conditions on the other. Another price of recognition has been to hand over large segments of national banking directly to the imperialist powers (again through the IMF).
Nowhere is this and the neo-colonial nature of the western powers do not to impose direct rule. Imperialism has often included indirect economic rule but in the case of Bosnia there are significant aspects of a colonial administration arising out of the 1995 Dayton agreement.
The former Swedish Prime Minister Carl Bildt is effectively a colonial governor with the power to over rule the governments of both the Bosnian Federation and the rump Bosnian Serb Republika Srpska. He is to act in close liaison with IFOR military command...
Of course as with the African colonisation we are to believe that all this is really in the interests of the people of the region and that once they become 'civilised enough' power will be handed back to them...
But centrally it is a further demonstration of how imperialism today does not always show its face. The US is the prime imperialist power of the world, when it boasts it can chew gum and walk in reality it is boasting of its ability to dominate any point of the globe. When this domination is military it is easy to see. Calling it NATO or the UN does not after all hide the US markings on the planes currently bombing the Balkans.
In order to fight something it is first necessary to know it and to call it by its name. And the name under which the Balkans are being bombed is imperialism. Of the most traditional kind.
Andrew Flood