Rebels for NATO Former anti-war activists are supporting a liberal imperialist adventure, says Tariq Ali Many despairing liberals and kindhearted social democrats, understandably upset by the images of fleeing Kosovar refugees on television, have become keen warmongers. And so have many former anti-war activists. In a simplistic political culture dominated by life-politics, the shedding of tears for one set of victims is coupled with dropping bombs on their oppressors, and if the process means creating new victims, that's fine as long as we don't have to watch on our screens.
The Balkan conflict has divided left and right. Tony Benn is op-
That Milosevic is a brutal leader has never been in doubt. But is he alone? Israel's Benjamin Netanyahu is an equally brutish politician, who defies UN resolutions and regularly bombs targets in Lebanon.
And what of Milosevic's counterpart in Croatia, Franjo Tudjman? He has authorised the ethnic cleansing of Serbs and, on occasion, Bosnians. He presides over a regime which has rehabilitated wartime fascists who collaborated with the Nazi occupiers during the Second World War. But Netanyahu and Tudjman are on "our side" ", and that's all that counts.
"Our side" has practised atrocities on a large scale in the second half of the century. In the name of freedom and democracy the Anglo-Saxon powers have backed dictators much worse than Milosevic (who, we should remember, is an elected politician) and helped them to power on every continent.
The Indonesian dictator, Suharto, was being armed by Britain and America right till the day he was toppled by a popular uprising which received no support from either Washington or London. Indonesia, admittedly, is a far-away country, but what about Turkey? It can certainly be seen by any New Labour MP sunbathing on a Greek holiday island.
What successive governments in Ankara have inflicted on their Kurdish citizens is as bad as, if not worse than, the treatment meted out to the Kosovars. The argument used by the Turkish authorities is exactly the same as that bai employed by the Serb leadership. In ma torturing, maiming, killing and denying to autonomy to the Kurds they are simply fun defending the unity of the Turkish state
How many TV viewers are aware of anc the fact that this is still taking place or Ser that Turkey is an important member of for NATO? The blatant double standard and compels any critical observer to look for alli the deeper reasons to this conflict. res
Are Milosevic and his policies the imI main reason rather than a pretext for
Bma NATO's war? During his recent visit to hoi Britain, Mikhail Gorbachev repeatedly is l pointed out that agreement could have fai been reached if the West had been a bit Ser more patient, as they had been in N. NA Ireland. He implied that the United States wanted a war. Is this pure fantasy?
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The NATO assault on Serbia marks a
SuC watershed in European politics. It reflects the a decision by the United States to agr sabotage all notions of a norm-based
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This is something that the Russians the have been demanding since Gorbachev came to power and it is a demand echoed
Greg by a number of EU states, including NA Helmut Kohl's Germany, ever since the hav end of the Cold War in 1989. The single, cas central reason why the NATO operation COI took place is Russian weakness. pro
With the exception of the British, all "er European governments have hitherto the refused to sanction any act of unilateral aggression, whatever the provocation, aga unless it had prior UN sanction.
aci This me Germany's This was Germany's sol policy throughout the posed to the bombing, Ken Livingstone and Vanessa Redgrave support the NATO offensive.
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International Viewpoint #311 May 1999
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plan. He told the German cabinet that it was reckless to follow the Americans in Kosovo. One German minister informed the New York Times that "in the end, it was Kosovo that made him go".
A silent, behind-the-scenes war is being fought across Western Europe to determine the leadership of the EU. The US has used its old British Trojan Horse to lead a neoliberal drive in the EU.
Kosovo is a neat operation in Western European terms to promote a new Anglo-American-French alliance to lead world politics and replace Franco-German hegemony. American strategists, desperate to retain NATO as their battering-ram in the new Europe, manoeuvred Europe into a war in order to prove that NATO had a permanent function and was not a paper tiger.
If the US disengages from Kosovo and negotiations recommence with the Serbs accepting a NATO peace-keeping force, it will be hailed as a big victory and will strengthen the Anglo-America alliance in the EU. If NATO splits, the results would be catastrophic. What is important for NATO planners is not how many Kosovars die in the process, but how these deaths are perceived. If NATO is blamed for them, then they will have failed, and moves towards a European Security Council, including the nonNATO states, might be revived.
This is what the German and Russian states really want and they might yet succeed. Just before the bombing began the Kosovar and Serb leaderships had agreed a three-year period of autonomy, after which the issue could be rediscussed. The discussions broke down on the presence of a "peacekeeping force"
The Serbs, not unreasonably, regarded the composition of this force as NATO-in-disguise. The Russians could have persuaded them that this was not the case if NATO had agreed to a Russian complement, but before matters could proceed further, the United States said "enough" '. The Serbs left the table and the bombs began to fall.
Negotiations will have to begin again. It is unlikely that the Serbs will accept the presence of any NATO soldiers on their soil. The Kosovars, for sheir specill potice to to or soldiers. their part, will refuse to tolerate MiloBoth will be right and a solution might lie in a neutral UN peacekeeping force, which does not contain soldiers from armies that have attacked either side.
The break-up of Yugoslavia has already cost the EU and the USA billions of dollars. This war alone has, so far, been costed at $2bn and the figure could rise. If half this amount of money had been spent on economic development, we might have been spared all the conflicts. * Source and © The Independent, March 28, 1999 вонавто 'sizza lo noirosiler a