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|| * -- SPECIAL -- * April 06, 1999 * -- EDITION -- * ||
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* SPECIAL EDITION *
* * *
_________________________________________________________________
U.S.-NATO ATTACKS ON YUGOSLAVIA
_________________________________________________________________
CONTENTS
------
X. AFIB Editor's Introduction
1. (CP) COUNTERPUNCH: How the US State Dept. Recruited
Human Rights Groups to Cheer On the Bombing
Raids - Those Incubator Babies, Once More?
2. (NYT) THE NEW YORK TIMES: In Yugoslavia, Rising Ethnic
Strife Brings Fears of Worse Civil Conflicts
[1987 background article]
3. (IAC) INTERNATIONAL ACTION CENTER: Radioactive Weapons
Used by U.S. and NATO in Kosovo
4. (GLW) GREEN LEFT WEEKLY: Russia and Yugoslavia -
Letting NATO Off the Hook
* * *
AFIB EDITOR'S INTRODUCTION
US-NATO attacks on Yugoslavia are bitter confirmation of the
"good intentions" of the world's only superpower: knuckle-under
or else. Like a Mafia don, US president Clinton insists if
Belgrade "comes back to the table" and signs the Rambouillet
"agreements" (which would mean the effective dismemberment of
what's left of Yugoslavia and conveniently, a forward base for
NATO troops in the region) the bombing will stop. Newspeak
translation: "I'll make him an offer he can't refuse." And if the
Yugoslavs don't capitulate, there's always the "Iraqi scenario."
Despite what one thinks of Milosevic, the United States is
exploiting - some would argue (this writer among them) creating -
the present humanitarian catastrophe in Kosovo for crude geo-
political leverage over the European competition. But at the end
of the day, there's nothing "crude" about US intentions. For more
than eighty years (since 1917 to be precise), US policy has been
driven by one consideration: make the world "safe" for US
investments. And if the deformed remnant of socialist Yugoslavia
is destroyed in the process, with incalculable losses for all
ethnic groups in the area, tough luck. "Human rights" rhetoric
aside, current attacks are but another in a long line of
"demonstration effects" to any and all who dare question the
"good intentions" of the masters. But for struggling millions
around the globe crushed beneath the wheels of "economic
restructuring," the enemy isn't in Belgrade but in Washington,
Berlin, Paris, Brussels, Rome, etc. Imperialism by any other
name...the "New World Order," perhaps?
* * *
* COUNTERPUNCH *
Edited by Alexander Cockburn and Jeffrey St. Clair
`Tells the Facts and Names the Names'
3220 N Street, NW, Suite 346
Washington, DC 20007
Tel: 1-800-840-3683
E-mail: counterpunch@counterpunch.org
Web: http://www.counterpunch.org/
- 3 April 1999 -
-----
`How the US State Dept. Recruited Human Rights Groups to
Cheer On the Bombing Raids'
_________________________________________________________________
THOSE INCUBATOR BABIES, ONCE MORE?
_________________________________________________________________
* * *
As the US stepped up its bombing raids against Yugoslavia,
Harold Koh, assistant secretary of state for democracy, human
rights and labor, called the leaders of several US human rights
groups to a hastily arranged meeting at his offices in Foggy
Bottom. Koh started the session by telling the groups' leaders,
who included Amnesty International-USA's head Dr. William Schulz,
that he was sorry that the administration could not support the
extradition of Pinochet. He stressed that while Madeleine
Albright cared deeply about human rights matters, the Defense
Department had quashed the idea. But, Koh said, there was good
news. Albright had convinced the Defense Department and Clinton
that human rights concerns should be the driving force behind the
bombing of the Serbs. Koh said he hoped the human rights groups
would enthusiastically support the mission and promised that if
they did, Albright might even meet with them in person in the
near future.
Amnesty International has obediently hopped to State's tune,
saying in a press release "violations of human rights lie at the
heart of the current conflict in Kosovo, and have done so ever
since it developed during the 1980s. It is therefore essential
that the effective protection and promotion of human rights
should be the centerpiece of any agreement to be reached on
Kosovo." On March 29, the group called for increases in military
intelligence operations on the ground in Kosovo. Human Rights
Watch has also pressed the cause of military intervention, using
their Kosovo Human Rights Flash to draw attention to Serbian
abuses. After a week of unrelenting missile attacks in Yugoslavia
and Kosovo, none of the Human Rights Watch reports included any
tallies of civilian casualties from the NATO bombings. Care
Yugoslavia, an Australian humanitarian aide group, said that over
the first week, NATO bombing raids had killed at least 15 ethnic
Kosovars, when its bombs hit a refugee camp.
A person who attended the meeting tells CounterPunch he was
shocked that many of the leaders endorsed Koh's rationale. "Human
rights is just another affinity cause to be used by Clinton and
Albright when it suits them, rather than consistently and
broadly," he said. "Indeed, human rights concerns could be used
as an excuse for extra-legal military actions that bypass the
security council and/or Congress."
Readers may recall that one particularly successful
propaganda campaign against Iraq saw US government operatives
using Amnesty International to advance the false and easily
disprovable story that Iraqis had murdered over 300 Kuwaiti
babies in August, 1990, by tossing them out of their incubators
and letting them die on the floor. It's not at issue here whether
or not Iraqi or Serb forces are brutal. It's a matter of how
human rights organizations willingly become instruments of state
policy. Somalia offers a particularly vivid example of this.
NATO, SIG HEIL!
It's bracing to see the Germans taking part in NATO's
bombing. It lends moral tone to an operation to have the
grandsons of the Third Reich willing, able and eager, to drop
high explosive again, in this instance on the Serbs. To add
symmetry to the affair, the last time Serbs in Belgrade had high
explosives dropped on them was in 1941 by the sons of the Third
Reich. To bring even deeper symmetry, the German political party
whose leader, Schroeder, ordered German participation in the
bombing is that of the Social Democrats, whose great grand-
fathers enthusiastically voted credits to wage war in 1914, to
the enormous disgust of Lenin, who never felt quite the same way
about social democrats ever after. Whether in Germany or England
or France all social democratic parties in 1914 tossed aside
previous pledges against war, thus helping produce the first
great bloodletting of our century. Today, with social democrats
leading governments across Europe -- Schroeder, Blair, Jospin,
Prodi -- all fall in behind Clinton. This is, largely, a war most
earnestly supported by liberals and many so-called leftists.
There's been some patronizing talk here about the Serbs'
deep sense of "grievance" at the way history has treated them,
with the implication that the Serbs are irrational in this
regard. But it's scarcely irrational to remember that Nazi
Germany bombed Belgrade in the Second World War, or that
Germany's prime ally in the region, Croatia, ran a concentration
camp at Jasenovac where tens of thousands of Serbs -- along with
Jews and gypsies -- were liquidated. Nor is it irrational to
recall that Germany in more recent years has been an unrelenting
assailant of the former Yugoslav federation, encouraging Slovenia
to secede and lending determined support to Croatia, in gratitude
for which Croatia adopted, on independence in 1991, the German
hymn, "Danke Deutschland."
So much for Serb feelings about Germany. Serbia has some
reason to feel similar resentment towards the United States. The
biggest single ethnic cleansing of the mid-1990s in the former
Yugoslavia was conducted by Croatia under the supervision of the
United States, whose military generals and CIA officers issued
targeting instructions to Croatian artillery for the ethnic
clearing. The targets were Serbs, living in Serbian territory, in
the Krajina. Heading the Croatian cleansers was president Franjo
Tudjman, who has rehabbed Nazi war criminals. Yet somehow it is
Serbia's Milosevic who is demonized here as Hitler.
In 1999 Bill Clinton more or less left the UN's secretary
general, Kofi Annan, to find out from CNN about NATO's decision
to bomb. The US game, abetted chiefly by Blair's UK, is to make
NATO the arbiter of Europe's borders and "security", and to
boycott the UN as a forum.
The twentieth-century illusion of air power is once again
being exposed. Now come demands for ground troops and a route
march into deeper madness, wider killing and misery. The only
chance is rising protest from Americans, from the world
community, from dissident countries in NATO with calls for a
cease-fire and a genuine, UN peace-keeping force in Kosovo with
no troops from the contending parties and their allies. Absent
that, why not a drive for impeachment of Bill Clinton, on serious
grounds at last, for abusing Congress's war-making powers and
also his sworn duty to uphold the international treaties to which
the US has set its name.
PICK THE WARMONGER
A quiz: Which US rep said: "At this point I support the NATO
sponsored air-strikes that are currently taking place." And which
US rep said: "This is not a proud moment for America...as bad as
the violence is towards the ethnic Albanians in Kosovo, our
ability to police and stop all ethnic fighting around the world
is quite limited, and the efforts are quite simply not permitted
under constitutional law." Yes, the first is from the brass-
lunged armchair bomber of Vermont, Bernard Sanders and the second
from Ron Paul, libertarian from Texas. How long will the long-
suffering progressives of Vermont tolerate their hypocritical rep
without rebuke?
Copyright 1999. All rights reserved.
Courtesy of William Blum, BBlum6@aol.com
*****
* KOSOVO: IMPORTANT BACKGROUND INFORMATION *
Introduction by William Blum, BBlum6@aol.com
* * *
In presenting the background to the Kosovo conflict, U.S.
news outlets usually begin with Serbia's revocation of the
Kosovo Albanians' autonomy in 1989. This was a crucial
decision, one of the major reasons that the Kosovo
Liberation Army was formed. It also destabilized the
Yugoslavian system and contributed to the country's breakup.
Yet media accounts have rarely explained why Serbia lifted
Kosovo's autonomy. The attached article, from the New York
Times in 1987, gives important background to this decision.
Although the article is easily found in the Nexis database,
little to none of this information has found its way into
contemporary coverage of Kosovo, in the Times or anywhere
else.
If one read a similar history of Kosovo written today, one
would likely dismiss it as pro-Serb propaganda. Yet this was
written 12 years ago, when Kosovo was an obscure corner of
the world, and the New York Times would not seem to have any
particular interest in defending Serbs or attacking
Albanians.
It should be kept in mind that some of the charges in this
article may be exaggerated or politically motivated. Of
course, the same is true of atrocity reports that are being
carried in the New York Times and other papers today.
William Blum is the author of _Killing Hope: U.S. Military
and CIA Interventions Since World War II_, 1995, Common
Courage Press, Monroe, Maine.
* * *
_________________________________________________________________
IN YUGOSLAVIA, RISING ETHNIC STRIFE BRINGS FEARS OF WORSE
CIVIL CONFLICT
_________________________________________________________________
THE NEW YORK TIMES
November 1, 1987, Sunday, Late City Final Edition
Section 1; Part 1, Page 14, Column 1
By DAVID BINDER, Special to the New York Times
BELGRADE, Yugoslavia -- Portions of southern Yugoslavia have
reached such a state of ethnic friction that Yugoslavs have begun
to talk of the horrifying possibility of ''civil war'' in a land
that lost one-tenth of its population, or 1.7 million people, in
World War II.
The current hostilities pit separatist-minded ethnic
Albanians against the various Slavic populations of Yugoslavia
and occur at all levels of society, from the highest officials to
the humblest peasants.
A young Army conscript of ethnic Albanian origin shot up his
barracks, killing four sleeping Slavic bunkmates and wounding six
others.
The army says it has uncovered hundreds of subversive ethnic
Albanian cells in its ranks. Some arsenals have been raided.
VICIOUS INSULTS
Ethnic Albanians in the Government have manipulated public
funds and regulations to take over land belonging to Serbs. And
politicians have exchanged vicious insults.
Slavic Orthodox churches have been attacked, and flags have
been torn down. Wells have been poisoned and crops burned. Slavic
boys have been knifed, and some young ethnic Albanians have been
told by their elders to rape Serbian girls.
Ethnic Albanians comprise the fastest growing nationality in
Yugoslavia and are expected soon to become its third largest,
after the Serbs and Croats.
RADICALS' GOALS
The goal of the radical nationalists among them, one said in
an interview, is an ''ethnic Albania that includes western
Macedonia, southern Montenegro, part of southern Serbia, Kosovo
and Albania itself.'' That includes large chunks of the republics
that make up the southern half of Yugoslavia.
Other ethnic Albanian separatists admit to a vision of a
greater Albania governed from Pristina in southern Yugoslavia
rather than Tirana, the capital of neighboring Albania.
There is no evidence that the hard-line Communist Government
in Tirana is giving them material assistance.
The principal battleground is the region called Kosovo, a
high plateau ringed by mountains that is somewhat smaller than
New Jersey. Ethnic Albanians there make up 85 percent of the
population of 1.7 million. The rest are Serbians and
Montenegrins.
WORST STRIFE IN YEARS
As Slavs flee the protracted violence, Kosovo is becoming
what ethnic Albanian nationalists have been demanding for years,
and especially strongly since the bloody rioting by ethnic
Albanians in Pristina in 1981 - an ''ethnically pure'' Albanian
region, a ''Republic of Kosovo'' in all but name.
The violence, a journalist in Kosovo said, is escalating to
''the worst in the last seven years.''
Many Yugoslavs blame the troubles on the ethnic Albanians,
but the matter is more complex in a country with as many
nationalities and religions as Yugoslavia's and involves economic
development, law, politics, families and flags. As recently as 20
years ago, the Slavic majority treated ethnic Albanians as
inferiors to be employed as hewers of wood and carriers of
heating coal. The ethnic Albanians, who now number 2 million,
were officially deemed a minority, not a constituent nationality,
as they are today.
Were the ethnic tensions restricted to Kosovo, Yugoslavia's
problems with its Albanian nationals might be more manageable.
But some Yugoslavs and some ethnic Albanians believe the struggle
has spread far beyond Kosovo. Macedonia, a republic to the south
with a population of 1.8 million, has a restive ethnic Albanian
minority of 350,000.
''We've already lost western Macedonia to the Albanians,''
said a member of the Yugoslav party presidium, explaining that
the ethnic minority had driven the Slavic Macedonians out of the
region.
ATTACKS ON SLAVS
Last summer, the authorities in Kosovo said they documented
40 ethnic Albanian attacks on Slavs in two months. In the last
two years, 320 ethnic Albanians have been sentenced for political
crimes, nearly half of them characterized as severe.
In one incident, Fadil Hoxha, once the leading politician of
ethnic Albanian origin in Yugoslavia, joked at an official dinner
in Prizren last year that Serbian women should be used to satisfy
potential ethnic Albanian rapists. After his quip was reported
this October, Serbian women in Kosovo protested, and Mr. Hoxha
was dismissed from the Communist Party.
As a precaution, the central authorities dispatched 380 riot
police officers to the Kosovo region for the first time in four
years.
Officials in Belgrade view the ethnic Albanian challenge as
imperiling the foundations of the multinational experiment called
federal Yugoslavia, which consists of six republics and two
provinces.
`LEBANONIZING' OF YUGOSLAVIA
High-ranking officials have spoken of the ''Lebanonizing''
of their country and have compared its troubles to the strife in
Northern Ireland.
Borislav Jovic, a member of the Serbian party's presidency,
spoke in an interview of the prospect of ''two Albanias, one
north and one south, like divided Germany or Korea,'' and of
''practically the breakup of Yugoslavia.'' He added: ''Time is
working against us.''
The federal Secretary for National Defense, Fleet Adm.
Branko Mamula, told the army's party organization in September of
efforts by ethnic Albanians to subvert the armed forces.
''Between 1981 and 1987 a total of 216 illegal organizations with
1,435 members of Albanian nationality were discovered in the
Yugoslav People's Army,'' he said. Admiral Mamula said ethnic
Albanian subversives had been preparing for ''killing officers
and soldiers, poisoning food and water, sabotage, breaking into
weapons arsenals and stealing arms and ammunition, desertion and
causing flagrant nationalist incidents in army units.''
CONCERNS OVER MILITARY
Coming three weeks after the ethnic Albanian draftee, Aziz
Kelmendi, had slaughtered his Slavic comrades in the barracks at
Paracin, the speech struck fear in thousands of families whose
sons were about to start their mandatory year of military
service.
Because the Albanians have had a relatively high birth rate,
one-quarter of the army's 200,000 conscripts this year are ethnic
Albanians. Admiral Mamula suggested that 3,792 were potential
human timebombs.
He said the army had ''not been provided with details
relevant for assessing their behavior.'' But a number of Belgrade
politicians said they doubted the Yugoslav armed forces would be
used to intervene in Kosovo as they were to quell violent rioting
in 1981 in Pristina. They reason that the army leadership is
extremely reluctant to become involved in what is, in the first
place, a political issue.
Ethnic Albanians already control almost every phase of life
in the autonomous province of Kosovo, including the police,
judiciary, civil service, schools and factories. Non-Albanian
visitors almost immediately feel the independence - and suspicion
- of the ethnic Albanian authorities.
REGION'S SLAVS LACK STRENGTH
While 200,000 Serbs and Montenegrins still live in the
province, they are scattered and lack cohesion. In the last seven
years, 20,000 of them have fled the province, often leaving
behind farmsteads and houses, for the safety of the Slavic north.
Until September, the majority of the Serbian Communist Party
leadership pursued a policy of seeking compromise with the Kosovo
party hierarchy under its ethnic Albanian leader, Azem Vlasi.
But during a 30-hour session of the Serbian central
committee in late September, the Serbian party secretary,
Slobodan Milosevic, deposed Dragisa Pavlovic, as head of
Belgrade's party organization, the country's largest. Mr.
Milosevic accused Mr. Pavlovic of being an appeaser who was soft
on Albanian radicals. Mr. Milosevic had courted the Serbian
backlash vote with speeches in Kosovo itself calling for ''the
policy of the hard hand.''
''We will go up against anti-Socialist forces, even if they
call us Stalinists,'' Mr. Milosevic declared recently. That a
Yugoslav politician would invite someone to call him a Stalinist
even four decades after Tito's epochal break with Stalin, is a
measure of the state into which Serbian politics have fallen. For
the moment, Mr. Milosevic and his supporters appear to be staking
their careers on a strategy of confrontation with the Kosovo
ethnic Albanians.
Other Yugoslav politicians have expressed alarm. ''There is
no doubt Kosovo is a problem of the whole country, a powder keg
on which we all sit,'' said Milan Kucan, head of the Slovenian
Communist Party.
Remzi Koljgeci, of the Kosovo party leadership, said in an
interview in Pristina that ''relations are cold'' between the
ethnic Albanians and Serbs of the province, that there were too
many ''people without hope.''
But many of those interviewed agreed it was also a rare
opportunity for Yugoslavia to take radical political and economic
steps, as Tito did when he broke with the Soviet bloc in 1948.
Efforts are under way to strengthen central authority
through amendments to the constitution. The League of Communists
is planning an extraordinary party congress before March to
address the country's grave problems.
The hope is that something will be done then to exert the
rule of law in Kosovo while drawing ethnic Albanians back into
Yugoslavia's mainstream.
Copyright 1987 The New York Times Company
*****
* INTERNATIONAL ACTION CENTER *
39 West 14th Street, #206
New York, NY 10011
Tel: 212-633-6646
Fax: 212-633-2889
Web: http://www.iacenter.org
E-mail: iacenter@iacenter.org
- Thursday, 1 April 1999 -
-----
_________________________________________________________________
RADIOACTIVE WEAPONS USED BY U.S. AND NATO IN KOSOVO
_________________________________________________________________
Attention: Assignment Editor
Press Contact: Sara Flounders or John Catalinotto
For Immediate Release, April 1, 1999
* * *
The International Action Center, a group that opposes the
use of depleted-uranium weapons, called the Pentagon's decision
to use the A-10 "Warthog" jets against targets in Kosovo "a
danger to the people and environment of the entire Balkans."
The A-10s were the anti-tank weapon of choice in the 1991
war against Iraq. It carries a GAU-8/A Avenger 30 millimeter
seven-barrel cannon capable of firing 4,200 rounds per minute.
During that war it fired 30 mm rounds reinforced with depleted
uranium, a radioactive weapon.
There is solid scientific evidence that the depleted uranium
residue left in Iraq is responsible for a large increase in
stillbirths, children born with defects, and childhood leukemia
and other cancers in the area of southern Iraq near Basra, where
most of these shells were fired. Many U.S. veterans groups also
say that DU residues contributed to the condition called "Gulf
War Syndrome" that has affected close to 100,000 service people
in the U.S. and Britain with chronic sickness.
John Catalinotto, a spokesperson from the Depleted Uranium
Education Project of the International Action Center and an
editor of the 1997 book Metal of Dishonor: Depleted Uranium, said
the use of DU weapons in Yugoslavia "adds a new dimension to the
crime NATO is perpetrating against the Yugoslav people --
including those in Kosovo."
Catalinotto explained that the Pentagon uses DU, a waste
product of the uranium enrichment process used for making atomic
bombs and nuclear fuel, because it is extremely dense -- 1.7
times as dense as lead. "DU is used in alloy form in shells to
make them penetrate targets better. As the shell hits its target,
it burns and releases uranium oxide into the air. The poisonous
and radioactive uranium is most dangerous when inhaled into the
body, where it will release radiation during the life of the
person who inhaled it," said Catalinotto.
Sara Flounders, a contributing author of Metal of Dishonor:
Depleted Uranium and the Co-Director of the International Action
Center, said, "Warthogs fired roughly 940,000 rounds of DU shells
during the Gulf War. More than 600,000 pounds of radioactive
waste was left in the Gulf Region after the war. And DU weapons
in smaller number were already used by NATO troops during the
bombing of Serbian areas of Bosnia in 1995.
"The use of Warthogs with DU shells threatens to make a
nuclear wasteland of Kosovo," Flounders said." The Pentagon is
laying waste to the very people -- along with their children --
they claim to be saving; this is another reason for fighting to
end NATO's attack on Yugoslavia.
"Worldwide protests against these bombings are growing. The
U.S. use of radioactive weapons must be linked to all the
protests and opposition that is taking place internationally to
the bombing. These protests must be joined by environmental
activists, veterans groups, anti-nuclear groups, and all those
who know the long-term destruction to the environment and to
whole civilian populations that this type of warfare will cause."
Flounders said that Metal of Dishonor: Depleted Uranium,
which has been translated and published in Arabic and Japanese,
will be coming out soon with a second edition.
Courtesy of Pan African News Wire, ac6123@wayne.edu
*****
* GREEN LEFT WEEKLY *
E-mail: greenleft@peg.apc.org
Web: http://www.peg.apc.org/~greenleft
- Number 355, 7 April 1999 -
-----
_________________________________________________________________
RUSSIA AND YUGOSLAVIA: LETTING NATO OFF THE HOOK
_________________________________________________________________
By Renfrey Clarke
* * *
MOSCOW - With a shower of paint bombs, rocks, eggs and
bottles, thousands of demonstrators outside the US embassy here
on March 25 expressed outrage at the NATO bombing of Yugoslavia.
Next morning, an estimated 5000 people demonstrated outside
the British embassy. The protesters included large numbers of
students, as well as factory workers organised by the Moscow
Federation of Trade Unions.
As the day wore on, the US embassy again became the target
of protest. As many as 7000 people gathered, chanting and
flinging projectiles. Press reports noted the unusual range of
people taking part - from skin and teenage football fans to
office workers and pensioners.
From around Russia came news of further demonstrations.
``Yesterday Iraq, Today Serbia, Tomorrow Russia'', read a
placard in St Petersburg. Nationalist organisations signed up
military veterans to defend Yugoslavia.
According to survey findings, no fewer than 93% of Russians
oppose NATO's bombing of Yugoslavia, where the majority Serb
population have traditional ties with Russia. Sensing the popular
mood, Russia's state leaders have tuned in to it - at least
rhetorically.
As the first reports of the bombing came in, President Boris
Yeltsin hinted that Russia might respond with measures ``of a
military character.'' In an interview on March 27, foreign
minister Igor Ivanov accused NATO of committing ``genocide''
against the Yugoslav people, and suggested that the alliance
answer for its actions before the UN war crimes tribunal.
For anyone who remembers the mood of Russian leaders - and
of a good part of the population - in the early 1990s, the scenes
of the past days and weeks have been brimful of irony. Seven or
eight years ago, so far as Yeltsin and many of his followers were
concerned, the Western powers could do no wrong.
But faith in the West has slid steadily since. As the bombs
rain on Yugoslavia, the last shreds of belief in Western good
will are being replaced by cynicism.
In the Russian press, the rationalisations offered by
Western leaders to explain the bombing campaign are treated with
open scorn. So the NATO powers claim to have gone to war from a
commitment to defend the rights of the Kosovar population in
Yugoslavia? ``There is an unquestionable double standard,'' the
Moscow paper Novye Izvestia observed on March 26, ``if one
recalls how harshly Turkey, a NATO member, deals with the
Kurds.''
The mood of hostility to the West is especially marked in
the military. ``Most Russian military personnel are expressing
direct readiness for armed solidarity with the Serbs'', the
Moscow daily Nezavisimaya Gazeta reported on March 27. ``The US
and NATO are now associated exclusively with the image of the
enemy.''
It is not only among military officers that suspicions of
NATO have grown stronger in the past few years.
Why, Russians often ask themselves, has the NATO alliance
even been preserved, now that the Cold War has ended?
For a decade, liberal ideologues have tried to suppress the
instinct of many Russians to view political questions in terms of
class. But as the bombs and missiles have pounded Yugoslavia,
even Russian liberals have been admitting that NATO is a military
club of the rich, an armed alliance for enforcing the interests
of the ``haves'' of North America and Europe against the ``have-
nots.''
As citizens of what is now the great ``have-not'' of Europe,
Russians have been quick to note that the bombing of Yugoslavia
also carries a powerful message for them. If the Russian state
should dare to pursue its interests in ways not to the West's
liking, the message says, the consequences for Russia could be
devastating.
These are valid reasons for the Russian masses to fling beer
bottles, including full ones, at the windows of the US embassy.
The Russian elite have been flinging epithets, but after years of
implementing Western economic prescriptions, the Russian
government can now come up with little in the way of concrete
action to keep NATO in check.
When news of the bombing broke, Russian representatives in
the United Nations Security Council moved a resolution demanding
an immediate halt to the air strikes. The resolution,
predictably, was heavily defeated.
Russian military collaboration with NATO has now been
frozen, and ratification by Russia of the START-2 nuclear arms
reduction treaty has been postponed. The effect of these moves on
the NATO governments, however, has been undetectable.
Meanwhile, calls for Russia to provide military aid to
Yugoslavia have been quietly pushed aside by the authorities as
impractical and dangerous.
The failure of Russian leaders to make any impact on NATO is
not, however, simply a reflection of Russia's drastically reduced
influence in the world. The will is not there either.
The leaders' expressions of outrage at the bombing of
Yugoslavia have been accompanied by assurances that no big
changes in Moscow's orientation to the West are desired or
contemplated.
In a dramatic gesture on March 23, Russian Prime Minister
Yevgeny Primakov called off a trip to the US after being denied
guarantees that air strikes would not begin while he was there.
Other members of his delegation, however, made their way to
Washington, and while bombs fell on Belgrade, most of the
meetings planned for Primakov's trip took place.
A meeting between Primakov and International Monetary Fund
chief Michel Camdessus, which had been due to take place in the
US, was quickly relocated to Moscow. The Russian government was
seeking IMF credits of as much as US$4.8 billion, needed to
forestall a default on foreign debt payments. Nothing the NATO
powers might do in the Balkans, it became clear, would be allowed
to prejudice these negotiations.
It might be argued that in stating emphatic opposition to
NATO's attacks on Yugoslavia, Primakov and the Russian elite have
passed an important test. But given the popular mood, they could
not have done otherwise. If their statements are analysed, it
becomes clear that the Russian rulers have dealt with the
imperialist bombers much more kindly than they might have done.
A striking feature of the rhetoric issuing from Moscow -
both from official spokespeople and major newspapers - is the
whitewash of the Yugoslav government and its refusal to address
the real history and dynamics of the situation in Kosova.
According to Novye Izvestia on March 26, Yugoslavia has been
under attack for ``solving strictly internal problems.''
To foreign minister Igor Ivanov, quoted in the Moscow press,
the Kosova Liberation Army consists simply of ``Albanian
terrorists'' and ``Muslim extremists.'' Meanwhile, all but a few
dismissive references to Serbian atrocities against the Kosovars
have been expunged from the Russian media.
The Russian elite is quite happy to underline its various
differences with the West by permitting and even encouraging
chauvinist fervour. But promoting a serious understanding of
national rights and self-determination - something which would
really give NATO problems - is not its line.
All rights reserved, Green Left Weekly. Redistribution
permitted with this notice attached. Redistribution for
profit prohibited.
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