-Caveat Lector-
FYI
"Mrs. Jela Jovanovic, Secretary General" wrote:
> -Caveat Lector-
>
> ===========================
> The Committee for National Solidarity
> Tolstojeva 34, 11000 Belgrade, YU
> HUMANITARIAN WAR:
> MAKING THE CRIME FIT THE PUNISHMENT
>
> by Diana Johnstone
>
> www.emperors-clothes.com
>
> The order of events is strange. On March 24, 1999, the
> NATO forces led by the United States began an
> eleven-week-long punishment of Yugoslavia's President,
> Slobodan Milosevic, which amounted to capital punishment
> for an undetermined number of citizens of that
> unfortunate country. Two months later, on May 27, the
> U.S.-backed International Criminal Tribunal for former
> Yugoslavia issued an indictment of Milosevic for "crimes
> against humanity" having occurred after the punishment
> began. Then, in late June, the Clinton administration
> dispatched 56 forensic experts from the Federal Bureau of
> Investigation to Kosovo to gather material evidence of
> the crimes for which Milosevic and five of his colleagues
> had already been indicted and for which his country had
> already been severely and durably punished.
>
> The FBI had no instructions to search for evidence of
> crimes as such, including those that might have been
> committed by, say, armed rebels fighting against the
> established government of Yugoslavia. The only crimes of
> interest were those for which Milosevic had previously
> been accused, and all evidence was assumed in advance to
> point to his guilt.
>
> Thus the world entered the new age of humanitarian
> vigilante power.
>
> At the end of World War II, a world political system was
> put in place to outlaw war. In its triumph as sole
> superpower destined to govern the world, the United
> States is currently striving to replace the system that
> outlaws war by a system that uses war to punish outlaws.
> Who the outlaws are is decided by the United States.
> Alongside economic globalization, this vigilante system
> corresponds to a dominant American world view of a
> capitalist system inherently capable of meeting all human
> needs, marred only by the wrongdoings of evil outcasts.
>
> At home and abroad, the social effort to bring everybody
> into a community of equal rights and obligations is
> abandoned in favour of universal competition in which the
> rich winners exclude the losers from society itself. On
> the domestic scene, as the rich get richer, the
> well-to-do escape from the very sight of the poor by
> moving into gated communities, social programs are cut,
> while prisons and execution chambers fill up. Punishment,
> even vengeance, are popular values.
>
> Twenty years ago, the United Nations and its agencies
> provided a political forum for discussions of such
> matters as a "new economic order" or a "new information
> order" that might seek to narrow the enormous gap between
> the rich Atlantic world and most of the rest of the
> planet. All that is past, and today, the United Nations
> is instrumentalized by the United States to pursue
> dissident States which it has chosen to brand as rogues,
> terrorists or criminals. Capitalist competition is being
> forced onto the entire world as the supreme law by new
> bodies such as the World Trade Organization. NATO-land is
> a gated community whose armed forces are being prepared
> to intervene worldwide, at the bidding of Washington, to
> defend members' interests, in the name of the war against
> crimes against humanity.
>
> The Clinton Doctrine
>
> The NATO war against Yugoslavia marks a great leap
> forward toward the depoliticization and criminalization
> of international relations. In the case of the similar
> war against Iraq, the regime of Saddam Hussein was in
> fact a military dictatorship, which did in fact violate
> international law by invading Kuwait (leaving aside
> eventual extenuating circumstances), and the United
> States did obtain a mandate from the United Nations
> Security Council for at least some (but not all) of its
> military operations. In the case of Yugoslavia, the
> military operations were carried out without U.N. mandate
> against a state with an elected civilian government,
> which had not violated international law.
>
> NATO's war, directed from Washington, was intended as a
> pure demonstration that the United States could make or
> break the law. For it was Yugoslavia, which had not
> violated international law, that was branded a criminal
> State. Already on November 5, 1998, the American
> presiding judge at the International Criminal Tribunal
> for former Yugoslavia, Gabrielle Kirk McDonald, described
> Yugoslavia as "a rogue state, one that holds the
> international rule of law in contempt". During the
> bombing, U.S. and British leaders regularly compared
> Milosevic to Hitler. And afterwards, the U.S. Senate on
> June 30 adopted a bill describing Yugoslavia as "a
> terrorist State", in the total absence of any of the
> usual criteria for such a designation. The United States
> is free both to commit crimes, and to criminalize its
> adversaries. Might is sure of being right.
>
> "A Clinton Doctrine of humanitarian warfare is taking
> place", rejoiced (1) columnist Jim Hoagland, a leading
> voice in the chorus of syndicated columnists who have
> nagged away at the President to get up the gumption to
> lead NATO through the Balkans into a brave new
> millennium. This "doctrine" is not quite as spontaneous
> as it is made to seem by the media chorus which portrays
> Uncle Sam as a reluctant Hamlet generously stumbling into
> greatness.
>
> Since the end of the Cold War, United States leaders have
> been searching for a grand new design to replace the
> containment doctrine developed after World War II. To
> this end, the oligarchy that formulates American foreign
> policy has been hard at work in its various exclusive
> venues such as the Council on Foreign Relations, private
> clubs, larger assemblages such as the Trilateral
> Commission (which specializes in the great American
> ruling class art of selective co-optation and conversion
> of potential critics), and a myriad of institutes,
> foundations and "think tanks", overlapping with a half
> dozen of the most prestigious universities and, of
> course, the boards of directors of major corporations and
> financial institutions. All are united by an unshakable
> conviction that what is good for the United States (and
> the business of the United States is business) is good
> for the world. American policy-makers may be more or less
> generous or cynical, crafty or forthright, but all
> necessarily share the conviction that the system which
> has made America great and powerful should be bestowed on
> the rest of an often undeserving and recalcitrant world.
> There is no conflict between this conviction and ruthless
> pursuit of economic self-interest; they are part of the
> same mindset.
>
> None better epitomizes the combined power and good
> conscience of American capitalism than the Carnegie
> Endowment for International Peace, founded in 1910 by the
> Scottish-American steel king Andrew Carnegie (1835-1919)
> who recycled part of his vast rags-to-riches fortune into
> philanthropic enterprises. It is fitting that in
> formulating the Doctrine of Humanitarian Warfare now
> attributed to Clinton, a major ideological role appears
> to have been played by the Carnegie Endowment under the
> presidency of Morton I. Abramowitz (2).
>
> The Importance of War Crimes
>
> In May 1997, three months after taking office as U.S.
> Secretary of State, Madeleine Korbel Albright created a
> new post, ambassador-at-large for war crimes issues. The
> creation of the post indicated the crucial importance of
> "war crimes" in Albright's foreign policy. Two days
> later, crime was linked to punishment as she delivered
> her first policy speech on Bosnia to senior military
> officers aboard an aircraft carrier in the Hudson River.
> These gestures showed that the first woman Secretary of
> State was out to demonstrate the serious meaning of her
> famous remark, "What's the use of having the world's
> greatest military force if you don't use it?"
>
> Albright and the man named to the new "war crimes" post,
> David Scheffer, were putting into practice new policy
> concepts they had helped develop before Clinton was
> elected President, and before the war in
> Bosnia-Herzegovina, when they had been part of what a
> privileged observer (3) recently described as "a small
> foreign policy elite convened by the Carnegie Endowment
> for International Peace to change U.S. foreign policy
> after the Cold War."
>
> During the last years of the Bush administration, the
> Carnegie Endowment for Peace was confronting the major
> question raised by the collapse of the Soviet bloc: what
> new mission could save NATO, the necessary instrument for
> U.S. leadership in Europe? And it found an answer:
> humanitarian intervention. Reports by group members
> Albright, Richard Holbrooke and Leon Fuerth "recommended
> a dramatic escalation of the use of military force to
> settle other countries' domestic conflicts." (4)
>
> The Carnegie Endowment's 1992 report entitled "Changing
> Our Ways: America's Role in the New World" called for "a
> new principle of international relations: the destruction
> or displacement of groups of people within states can
> justify international intervention". The U.S. was advised
> to "realign" NATO and the OSCE to deal with these new
> security problems in Europe.
>
> Release of this report, accompanied by policy briefings
> of key Democrats and media big shots, was timed to
> influence the Democratic presidential campaign. Candidate
> Bill Clinton quickly took up the rhetoric, calling for
> Milosevic to be tried for "crimes against humanity" and
> advocating military intervention against the Serbs.
> However, it took several years to put this into practice.
>
> At the Carnegie Endowment, as member of a study group
> including Al Gore's foreign policy advisor Leon Fuerth,
> David Scheffer had co-authored (with Morton Halperin) a
> book-length report on "Self-Determination in the New
> World Order" which proposed military intervention as one
> of the ways of "responding to international hot spots". A
> major question raised was when and to what end the United
> States should become involved in a conflict between an
> established state and a "self-determination" -- i.e. a
> secessionist -- movement. Clearly, the question was not
> to be submitted to the United Nations. "The United States
> should seek to build a consensus within regional and
> international organizations for its position, but should
> not sacrifice its own judgment and principles if such a
> consensus fails to materialize"(5).
>
> In general, the authors concluded, "the world community
> needs to act more quickly and with more determination to
> employ military force when it proves necessary and
> feasible"(6). But when is this?
>
> When a self-determination claim triggers an armed
> conflict that becomes a humanitarian crisis, getting
> food, medicine, and shelter to thousands or millions of
> civilians becomes an inescapable imperative. A new
> intolerance for such human tragedies is becoming evident
> in the post-Cold War world and is redefining the
> principle of non-interference in the internal affairs of
> states (7).
>
> Now, in theory, this sounds almost indisputable. However,
> in practice the question becomes one not of theory but of
> facts. When does a crisis in fact correspond to this
> description, and when, on the contrary, can it simply be
> made to seem to correspond to this description?
>
> In the official NATO version, vigorously endorsed by
> mainstream media, the Kosovo war was precisely an
> instance when "a self-determination claim triggers an
> armed conflict that becomes a humanitarian crisis..."
> However, there is considerable, indeed overwhelming
> evidence that the "self-determination claim" quite
> deliberately provoked both the "armed conflict" and the
> "humanitarian crisis" precisely in order to bring in, not
> humanitarian aid, but military intervention from NATO on
> the pretext of humanitarian aid. For there was never any
> need of NATO intervention in order to provide food,
> medicine and shelter to civilians within Kosovo or before
> the NATO bombing. The "humanitarian crisis" was a mirage
> until NATO triggered it by the bombing.
>
> But in the culture of images, temporal relationships are
> easily obscured. What came before or after what is
> forgotten. And with temporal relationship, cause and
> effect are lost, along with responsibility.
>
> Can Kosovo be detached from Serbia? "The use of military
> force to create a new state would require conduct by the
> parent government so egregious that it has forfeited any
> right to govern the minority claiming
> self-determination"(8). But who decides that conduct is
> sufficiently "egregious"?
>
> Clearly, Madeleine Albright was so eager to put these
> bold new theories into practice that she worked mightily
> to make the crime fit the punishment.
>
> Morton Abramowitz himself, who as Carnegie Endowment
> President nurtured Albright, Holbrooke, Fuerth, Scheffer
> and the others as they jointly developed Clinton's future
> doctrine of "humanitarian warfare", has also played an
> active role. In 1997, he passed through the elite
> revolving door from the Carnegie Endowment to the Council
> on Foreign Relations. He has contributed his wisdom to a
> new, high-level think tank, the International Crisis
> Group, whose sponsors include governments and omnipresent
> financier George Soros. The ICG has been a leading
> designer of policy toward Kosovo.
>
> Putting into practice the hypothesis of "a
> self-determination claim triggering an armed conflict",
> Abramowitz became an early advocate of arming the "Kosovo
> Liberation Army"(U?K). At Rambouillet, Abramowitz
> discreetly coached the ethnic Albanian delegation headed
> by U?K leader Hashim Thaqi (9).
>
> Back in February 1992, before civil war broke out in
> Bosnia-Herzegovina, television producer John B. Roberts
> II was asked to design a publicity campaign to gain
> public support for the soon-to-be-published Carnegie
> Endowment recommendations. When he saw that "Changing Our
> Ways" proposed "the revolutionary idea that a U.S.-led
> military first strike was justified, not to defend the
> United States, but to impose highly subjective political
> settlements on other countries", that it "discarded
> national sovereignty in favour of international
> intervention", Roberts "began to regret [his] efforts to
> build publicity for the report" (10).
>
> One way or another, the "revolutionary idea" has been
> widely propagated during the 1990s. Humanitarian
> intervention was an idea whose time had come because it
> met a certain number of perceived needs. It provided a
> solution to the problem formulated by Senator Richard
> Lugar, that once the Cold War ended, NATO must be "either
> out of area or out of business". A new missionary mission
> not only kept NATO alive, thereby nourishing a vast array
> of vested industrial and financial interests, primarily
> but not solely in the United States, it also could be
> seen as a potential instrument to defend less broadly
> perceived geostrategic interests without submitting them
> to public controversy.
>
> Humanitarian Realpolitik
>
> When Madeleine Albright took over the State Department
> from Warren Christopher in early 1997, her promotion was
> presented to the public more as a personal success for a
> woman than as a corporate success for a policy design. At
> its most informative, The New York Times (11), mentioned
> influential policy-makers as if they were benevolent
> uncles ready to give encouragement to a lady. Three
> months after she took office, it was reported: "Ms.
> Albright has reached out for advice. She has talked with
> Zbigniew Brzezinski; the departing president of the
> Carnegie Endowment, Morton Abramowitz; the philanthropist
> George Soros; and Leslie Gelb, president of the Council
> on Foreign Relations."
>
> If Abramowitz may be considered the ?minence grise behind
> the whole "humanitarian intervention" policy, Brzezinski
> provided a geostrategic rationale. Brzezinski has no
> inhibitions about using high principles in the power
> game. In Paris in January 1998 to promote the French
> edition of his book, The Grand Chessboard, he was asked
> about an apparent "paradox" between the fact that his
> book was steeped in Realpolitik, whereas, in his days as
> National Security Adviser to President Jimmy Carter,
> Brzezinski had been the "defender of human rights".
>
> Brzezinski waved the paradox aside. There is none, he
> replied. "I elaborated that doctrine in agreement with
> President Carter, as it was the best way to destabilize
> the Soviet Union. And it worked"(12).
>
> Of course, it took more than nice words about human
> rights to destabilize the Soviet Union. It took war. And
> Brzezinski was very active on that front. As he told a
> second French weekly (13) during his book promotion tour,
> the CIA had begun bank-rolling counter- revolutionary
> Afghan forces in mid-1979, half a year before the Soviet
> Union moved into Afghanistan on a "stabilizing" mission
> around New Year's Day 1980. "We did not push the Russians
> into intervening, but we knowingly increased the
> possibility that they would. That secret operation was an
> excellent idea. The effect was to draw the Russians into
> the Afghan trap."
>
> Brzezinski rightly felt he could be forthright about such
> matters as humanitarian entrapment in Paris, where the
> policy elite admires nothing so much in American leaders
> as unabashed cynical power politics. This admiration is
> most acute when the French are offered a share in it, as
> was the case with Brzezinski and his book. France, wrote
> Brzezinski, "is an essential partner in the important
> task of permanently locking a democratic Germany into
> Europe", which means preventing Germany from building its
> own separate sphere of influence to the East, possibly
> including Russia -- a connection that Brzezinski's policy
> recommendations are designed to forestall at all costs.
> "This is the historic role of the Franco-German
> relationship, and the expansion of both the EU and NATO
> eastward should enhance the importance of that
> relationship as Europe's inner core. Finally, France is
> not strong enough either to obstruct America on the
> geostrategic fundamentals of America's European policy or
> to become by itself a leader of Europe as such. Hence,
> its peculiarities and even its tantrums can be
> tolerated"(14).
>
> These assurances may contribute to explaining the mystery
> -- as it was widely perceived in other countries -- of
> France's strong support to NATO's Kosovo war, second only
> to Britain and in disharmony with reactions in Germany
> and Italy. That is, the French elite had been given to
> understand this war as part of the Brzezinski design for
> a transatlantic Europe giving France a politico-military
> leadership role offsetting Germany's economic
> predominance.
>
> Brzezinski frankly sets the goal for U.S. policy: "to
> perpetuate America's own dominant position for at least a
> generation and preferably longer still". This involves
> creating a "geopolitical framework" around NATO that will
> initially include Ukraine and exclude Russia. This will
> establish the geostrategic basis for controlling conflict
> in what Brzezinski calls "the Eurasian Balkans", the huge
> area between the Eastern shore of the Black Sea to China,
> which includes the Caspian Sea and its petroleum
> resources, a top priority for U.S. foreign policy. In the
> policy elites of both Britain and France, perpetuation of
> Trans-Atlantic domination could be understood as a way of
> preventing a Russo-German rapprochement able to dominate
> the continent.
>
> Along with Jeane Kirkpatrick, Frank Carlucci, William
> Odom and Stephan Solarz, Brzezinski has joined the
> anti-Serb crusade in yet another new Washington policy
> shop, the "Balkan Action Council", calling for all-out
> war against Yugoslavia over Kosovo.
>
> In the Brzezinski scheme of things, Yugoslavia is a
> testing ground and a metaphor for the Soviet Union. In
> this metaphor, "Serbia" is Russia, and Croatia, Bosnia,
> Kosovo, etc., are Ukraine, the Baltic States, Georgia and
> the former Soviet Republics of "the Eurasian Balkans".
> This being the case, the successful secession of Croatia
> and company from Yugoslavia sets a positive precedent for
> maintaining the independence of Ukraine and its
> progressive inclusion in the European Union and NATO,
> which he sets for the decade 2005-2015 as a "reasonable
> time frame".
>
> The little Balkan "Balkans" appear on a map on page 22 of
> The Grand Chessboard interestingly shaded in three
> gradations representing U.S. geopolitical preponderance
> (dark), U.S. political influence (medium) and the
> apparent absence of either (white). Darkly shaded (like
> the U.S., Canada and Western Europe) are Hungary,
> Rumania, Bulgaria and Turkey. Medium shading covers
> Slovakia, Moldavia and Ukraine as well as Georgia and
> most of the "Eurasian Balkans". Glaringly white, like
> Russia, are Yugoslavia and Greece. For Brzezinski,
> Belgrade was a potential relay for Moscow. Serbs might be
> unaware of this, but in the geostrategic view, they were
> only so many surrogate Russians.
>
> Cultural Divides and Caspian Oil
>
> Samuel Huntington's notion of "conflict of
> civilizations", by identifying Orthodox Christianity as a
> civilization in conflict with the West and its famous
> "values", has offered an ideological cover for the
> "divide and conquer" strategy, which has less appeal, but
> is not incompatible with, the "humanitarian"
> justification. It has been taken up by influential (15)
> writer Robert D. Kaplan, who sees a "real battle" that is
> "drawn along historical-civilizational lines. On the one
> side are the Turks, their fellow Azeri Turks in
> Azerbaijan, the Israelis and the Jordanians [...]. On the
> other side are those who suffered the most historically
> from Turkish rule: the Syrian and Iraqi Arabs, the
> Armenians, the Greeks and the Kurds"(16). It is not hard
> to see whose side the United States must be on in this
> battle, or which must be the winning side.
>
> Kaplan places Kosovo "smack in the middle of a very
> unstable and important region where Europe joins the
> Middle East" while "Europe is redividing along historic
> and cultural lines"(17).
>
> "There is a Western, Catholic, Protestant Europe and an
> Eastern Orthodox Europe, which is poorer, more
> politically unsettled and more ridden with organized
> crime. That Orthodox realm has been shut out of NATO and
> is angrier by the day, and it is fiercely anti-Moslem",
> Kaplan declares.
>
> An oddity of these "cultural divide" projections is that
> they find the abyss between Eastern and Western
> Christianity far deeper and more unbridgeable than the
> difference between Christianity and Islam. The obvious
> short, three-letter explanation is "oil". But there is a
> complementary explanation that is more truly cultural,
> relating to the transnational nature of Islam and to the
> importance of its charitable organizations. Steve Niva
> (18) has noted a split within the US foreign policy
> establishment between conservatives (clearly absent from
> the Clinton administration) who see Islam as a threat,
> and "neo-liberals" for whom the primary enemy is "any
> barrier to free trade and unfettered markets". These
> include European leaders, oil companies and Zbigniew
> Brzezinski. "Incorporating Islamists into existing
> political systems would disperse responsibility for the
> state's difficulties while defusing popular opposition to
> severe economic `reforms' mandated by the IMF. Islamist
> organizations could also help fill the gap caused by the
> rollback of welfare states and social services...", Niva
> observed.
>
> In any case, all roads lead to the Caspian, and through
> Kosovo. Kaplan publicly advises the nation's leaders that
> an "amoral reason of self-interest" is needed to persuade
> the country to keep troops in the Balkans for years to
> come. The reason is clear. "With the Middle East
> increasingly fragile, we will need bases and fly-over
> rights in the Balkans to protect Caspian Sea oil. But we
> will not have those bases in the future if the Russians
> reconquer southeast Europe by criminal stealth. Finally,
> if we tell our European allies to go it alone in Kosovo,
> we can kiss the Western Alliance goodbye"(19).
>
> Looking at a map, one may wonder why it is necessary to
> go through Kosovo to obtain Caspian oil. This is a good
> question. However, U.S. strategists don't simply want to
> obtain oil, which is a simple matter if one has money.
> They want to control its flow to the big European market.
> The simple way to get Caspian oil is via pipeline
> southward through Iran. But that would evade U.S.
> control. Or through Russia; just as bad. The preferred
> U.S. route, a pipeline from Azerbaijan to the Turkish
> Mediterranean port of Ceyhan has been rejected as too
> costly. Turkey has vetoed massive oil tanker traffic
> through the Bosporus on ecological grounds. That leaves
> the Balkans. It seems the U.S. would like to build a
> pipeline across the Balkans, no doubt with Bechtel
> getting the building contract -- former Bechtel executive
> and Reagan administration Defense Secretary Caspar
> Weinberger is a leading Kosovo warhawk. Bechtel has
> already obtained major contracts in Tudjman's Croatia. It
> is interesting that the Danube, likely to fall under
> German control, has been blocked for serious transport by
> NATO's bombing of Serbia's bridges.
>
> On the way to the Caspian, the next stop after Yugoslavia
> could be the big prize: Ukraine, which like the other
> former Soviet Republics is already under U.S. influence
> through NATO's "Partnership For Peace". Early this year,
> asked by a German magazine whether NATO should be the
> world policeman, NATO commander Wesley Clark observed
> that the "countries on the Caspian Sea are members of the
> `Partnership for Peace'. They have the right to consult
> NATO in case of threat." Clark "didn't want to speculate
> on what NATO might then do..."(20).
>
> Scenarios Reach the TV Screen
>
> As television producer Roberts recalls, it was a
> Ukrainian friend who, seeing the implications for his own
> country of the Abramowitz humanitarian war plans, set him
> to worrying. "If the U.S. endorsed this new foreign
> policy principle the potential for international chaos
> was immense. Real or trumped up incidents of destruction
> or displacement would be grounds for Russian or American
> military intervention in dozens of countries where
> nothing like a melting pot has ever existed."
>
> "Real or trumped up" -- that is the question. For once so
> much is at stake -- nothing less than the future of the
> greatest power the world has ever seen -- events are all
> too likely to follow the imaginary scenario laid out by
> the policy planners.
>
> This can happen in at least three ways.
>
> 1 - Reality imitates fiction. It is a common human
> psychological phenomenon that people see what they are
> looking for, or have been led to expect to see, often
> when it is not there. This happens in countless ways. It
> may account for desert mirages, or apparitions of the
> Virgin, or simple errors of recognition that occur all
> the time.
>
> When reporters unfamiliar with the country are sent into
> Bosnia or Kosovo to look for evidence of "Serbian war
> crimes", and only evidence of Serbian war crimes, that is
> what they will find. And if Croats, Muslims and Albanians
> who are fighting against the Serbs know that that is what
> they are looking for, it will be even easier.
>
> If they are expecting, say, Serbs to be criminals,
> everything Serbs say or do will be interpreted in that
> light, with greater or less sincerity. Every ambiguous
> detail will find its meaning.
>
> 2 - Evidence will be trumped up. This is an age-old
> practice in war.
>
> 3 - Circumstances can be arranged to incite the very
> crimes that the power wants to be able to punish. In
> police language, this is called entrapment, or a "sting"
> operation, and is illegal in many countries, although not
> in the United States.
>
> The Kosovo scenario has been advanced in all three ways.
>
> Military intervention may be justified "when a
> self-determination claim triggers an armed conflict that
> becomes a humanitarian crisis", wrote Scheffer and
> Halperin.
>
> The much-praised non-violent movement of Ibrahim Rugova
> could not meet this criterion. It failed precisely
> because it was not a movement for political equality but
> a movement for secession. A non-violent movement for
> political equality can find many active ways to
> illustrate its exclusion and press its demands for
> inclusion. But the goals of the Albanian movement were
> not inclusion but complete independence from the existing
> State. To show their rejection of Serbia, Kosovo
> Albanians in the Rugova period refused to use the
> democratic rights they had, boycotted elections, refused
> to pay taxes, and even set up their own parallel schools
> and public health service. The odd thing is that this
> movement of passive resistance was met for the most part
> by passive resistance on the part of the Serbian State,
> which allowed Dr Rugova to go about his business
> (obviously in defiance of Serbian laws) as "President of
> the Republic of Kosova", let people get away with not
> paying taxes and did not force children to attend Serbian
> schools. Certainly, there were numerous instances of
> police brutality, although their extent is hard to judge,
> inasmuch as Kosovar Albanian Human Rights Groups
> notoriously exaggerated such incidents in order to claim
> that their people were being brutally oppressed -- a
> claim which was not accepted by the German government
> (21), incidentally, despite its support to the separatist
> movement. But in reality, internal separatism was too
> easy. The two communities grew ever farther apart, but
> peacefully. There was an impasse.
>
> That impasse was broken by the U?K/KLA, acting with the
> backing of the United States. The strategy was summed up
> by Richard Cohen (22):
>
> The KLA had a simple but effective plan. It would kill
> Serbian policemen. The Serbs would retaliate, Balkan
> style, with widespread reprisals and the occasional
> massacre. The West would get more and more appalled,
> until finally it would, as it did in Bosnia, take action.
> In effect, the United States and much of Europe would go
> to war on the side of the KLA.
>
> It worked.
>
> This version perhaps gives the KLA/U?K a little too much
> credit. The United States has been watching Kosovo
> closely for years, and there are strong indications that
> it both passively and actively assisted the armed rebels
> in their humanitarian sting operation. The KLA did indeed
> kill Serbian policemen, as well as a number of civilians,
> including ethnic Albanians who failed to boycott the
> Serbian state. But in between these killings and the Serb
> retaliation, "Balkan style", there was a very significant
> encouragement from Richard Gelbard, acting as U.S.
> proconsul for former Yugoslavia. Normally, Gelbard's
> visits to Belgrade were marked by utterances berating
> Serbian authorities for not doing Washington's bidding in
> one respect or another. But on February 23, 1998, Gelbard
> visited Pristina and declared publicly that the KLA/U?K
> was indeed "unquestionably a terrorist organization".
>
> To the Serbs, this simply seemed to be recognition of
> what to them was an obvious fact. Naively believing that
> the United States was, as it continued to declare,
> sincerely opposed to "international terrorism", Serbian
> authorities took this remark as a green light to do what
> any government normally does in such circumstances: send
> in armed police to repress the terrorists. After all,
> they were not hard to find. Unlike guerrillas in most
> conflicts, they made no effort to conceal their
> whereabouts but openly proclaimed that they were hanging
> out in a number of villages in the Drenica hill region.
> Far from heading for the hills when the police
> approached, the U?K let civilians who didn't want to get
> shot head for the hills while they themselves hunkered
> down at home, sometimes with a few remaining family
> members, and shot it out with police. This suicidal
> tactic may have stemmed from the fact that Albanian homes
> often double as fortresses in the traditional blood
> feuds, but could not withstand Serbian government fire
> power. In any case, the results were enough dead
> Albanians in their villages to enable Madeleine Albright
> and her chorus of media commentators to cry "ethnic
> cleansing". It was not "ethnic cleansing", it was a
> classic anti-insurgency operation. But that was enough
> for the trap to start closing.
>
> It is easy to imagine how the same scenario could enfold
> again in some remote area of the "Eurasian Balkans",
> where folk customs are not frightfully different from
> those of the Albanians.
>
> How to Get the Job of U.N. Secretary General
>
> The Abramowitz-Albright policy for Yugoslavia has been
> used as the event, the fait accompli, to complete a major
> institutional shift of power. Institutions based on the
> principle of decision-making equality between nations
> (the United Nations, its agencies, and the OSCE) have
> been drastically weakened. Others, effectively under U.S.
> control (NATO, the International Criminal Tribunal), have
> enlarged their scope, under the heading of a vague new
> entity, the "international community".
>
> The first target of this shift has of course been the
> United Nations. Already weakened by the successful U.S.
> undermining of U.N. agencies such as UNESCO and UNCTAD
> which threatened to promote alternative and more
> egalitarian concepts of "globalization", the United
> Nations has been reduced by the conflict in Yugoslavia to
> a rubber stamp to be used or ignored by the United States
> as it chooses.
>
> Certainly, responsibility for weakening the United
> Nations is widely shared among world powers, but the
> United States' role in this demolition enterprise has
> nevertheless been outstanding. Far from trying to help
> the United Nations seek an even-handed solution to the
> Yugoslav crisis, the Clinton administration used its
> influence to secure decisions of benefit to its own
> chosen clients, the Bosnian Muslims and the Albanian
> secessionists. In Bosnia, United Nations forces were
> given impossible missions: hanging around deceptively
> declared -- deceptively because never demilitarized --
> "safe areas", as fighting continued. Their inevitable,
> not to say programmed, failure could be, and has been,
> trumpeted as "proof" that only NATO can carry out a
> proper peace-keeping mission.
>
> A significant high point in the United States' reduction
> of the United Nations to a pliant tool came on August 30,
> 1995, when the United Nations momentarily relinquished
> its control over Bosnian peace-keeping to NATO, aka the
> Pentagon, in order to let the United States bomb the
> Bosnian Serbs.
>
> For Washington, the primary significance of this bombing
> had less to do with the people of Bosnia than with U.S.
> power. According to Richard Holbrooke, this was correctly
> grasped by columnist William Pfaff who wrote the next
> day: "The United States today is again Europe's leader;
> there is no other."
>
> In his memoir To End a War, Richard Holbrooke recounted
> this proud achievement and lavishly praised the United
> Nations official who made it possible: the Ghanaian
> diplomat Kofi Annan, then in charge of peacekeeping
> operations.
>
> Madeleine Albright, at the time the U.S. ambassador to
> the United Nations, was carrying on a "vigorous campaign"
> in favour of bombing the Serbs. Luck smiled:
> "fortunately, Secretary-General Boutros-Ghali was
> unreachable [...], so she dealt instead with his best
> deputy, Kofi Annan, who was in charge of peacekeeping
> operations. At 11:45 a.m., New York time, came a big
> break: Annan informed Talbott and Albright that he had
> instructed the U.N.'s civilian officials and military
> commanders to relinquish for a limited period of time
> their authority to veto air strikes in Bosnia. For the
> first time in the war, the decision on the air strikes
> was solely in the hands of NATO -- primarily two American
> officers [...]"
>
> "Annan's gutsy performance in those twenty-four hours was
> to play a central role in Washington's strong support for
> him a year later as the successor to Boutros
> Boutros-Ghali as Secretary General of the United Nations.
> Indeed, in a sense Annan won the job on that day"(23).
>
> Bosnia was the main reason for getting rid of
> Boutros-Ghali. "More than any other issue, it was his
> performance on Bosnia that made us feel he did not
> deserve a second term -- just as Kofi Annan's strength on
> the bombing in August had already made him the private
> favorite of many American officials", Holbrooke
> explained. "Although the American campaign against
> Boutros-Ghali, in which all our key allies opposed us,
> was long and difficult [...] the decision was correct,
> and may well have saved America's role in the United
> Nations."
>
> How to Sabotage the OSCE
>
> With the collapse of the Soviet bloc, the Organization
> for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE) was widely
> favoured to succeed both the dismantled Warsaw Pact and
> NATO as an all-inclusive institution to ensure security,
> resolve conflicts and defend human rights in Europe. This
> naturally encountered opposition from all those who
> wanted to preserve and expand NATO, and with it, the
> leading U.S. role in Europe -- that is, from many
> important officials in many NATO countries, especially
> Britain and the Netherlands, as well as the United States
> itself.
>
> On the eve of the Kosovo war, the tandem of Richard
> Holbrooke and Madeleine Albright once again moved to
> cripple a rival to NATO and clear the way for NATO
> bombing.
>
> On October 13, 1998, under threat of NATO bombing, U.S.
> envoy Richard Holbrooke got Yugoslav President Slobodan
> Milosevic to sign a unilateral deal to end security
> operations against armed rebels. The agreement was to be
> monitored by 2,000 foreign "verifiers" provided under the
> auspices of the OSCE. From the start, opinions in Europe
> were divided as to whether this Kosovo Verification
> Mission (KVM) marked an advance for the OSCE or a kiss of
> death, designed to prove the organization's impotence and
> leave NATO as the uncontested arbiter of conflicts in
> Europe.
>
> The mission's fate was sealed in favour of the second
> alternative when the European majority in the OSCE was
> somehow persuaded to accept U.S. diplomat William Walker
> to head the KVM. Walker was a veteran of Central American
> "banana republic" management, who had collaborated with
> Oliver North in illegally arming the "Contras" and had
> covered up murderous state security operations in El
> Salvador as U.S. ambassador there during the Reagan
> administration.
>
> Walker brought in 150 professional mercenaries from the
> Arlington, Virginia-based DynCorp which had already
> worked in Bosnia, drove around in a vehicle flying the
> American flag, and did everything to confirm what his
> French deputy, Ambassador Gabriel Keller, described as
> the "wide-spread conviction in Serbian public opinion
> that the OSCE was working under cover for NATO, [...]
> that we acted with a hidden agenda" (24).
>
> That impression was shared by many members of the KVM. A
> number of Italians, whose comments were published
> anonymously in the geostrategic review LiMes, accused the
> Americans of "sabotaging the OSCE mission". Said one:
> "The mission in my view had two primary aims. One was to
> infiltrate personnel into the theatre with intelligence
> tasks and for special forces activities (preparatory work
> for a predetermined war). The other was to give the world
> the impression that everything had been tried and thus
> create grounds for public consent to the aggression we
> perpetrated"(25).
>
> According to Swiss verifier Pascal Neuffer: "We
> understood from the start that the information gathered
> by OSCE patrols during our mission were destined to
> complete the information that NATO had gathered by
> satellite. We had the very sharp impression of doing
> espionage work for the Atlantic Alliance"(26).
>
> KVM members have criticized Walker and his British chief
> of operations, Karol (John) Drewienkiewicz, for rejecting
> any cooperation with Serb authorities, for blocking
> diplomatic means to ensure human rights, for controlling
> the mission's information flow, and most serious of all,
> for using the mission to make contact with U?K rebels and
> train them to guide NATO to targets in the subsequent
> bombing (27). Since the Serbs were quite aware of this
> activity, as soon as the bombing began on March 24, Serb
> security forces set out to root out all suspected U?K
> indicators. These operations are very probably at the
> heart of what NATO has described as ethnic cleansing.
>
> However, prior to the bombing, KVM members testify to a
> low level of violence, as well as a pattern of U?K
> provocations. According to Keller, "every pullback by the
> Yugoslav army or the Serbian police was followed by a
> movement forward by [U?K] forces [...] OSCE's presence
> compelled Serbian government forces to a certain
> restraint [...] and U?K took advantage of this to
> consolidate its positions everywhere, continuing to
> smuggle arms from Albania, abducting and killing both
> civilians and military personnel, Albanians and Serbs
> alike."
>
> By the end of 1998 and the beginning of 1999, an
> increasingly audible split was taking place within the
> KVM between Walker and most of the Europeans. Every
> incident was an occasion for Walker and the U.S. State
> Department to denounce the Serbs for breaking the truce,
> and to accuse Milosevic of violating his commitment. The
> Europeans saw things differently: the Albanian rebels,
> with U.S. encouragement, were systematically provoking
> Serb attacks in order to justify NATO coming in on their
> side of the conflict.
>
> In mid-January, Walker settled the score with his
> European critics by bringing the world media over to his
> side. This was the political significance of the famous
> "Racak massacre". On January 15, Serb police had carried
> out a pre-announced operation, accompanied by observers
> and television cameras, against U?K killers believed to
> be hiding out in the village of Racak. As the Serbs swept
> into the village, the U?K gunmen took refuge on
> surrounding high ground and began to fire on the police,
> as TV footage showed. But the Serbs had sent forces
> around behind them, and many U?K fighters were trapped
> and shot. After the Serb forces withdrew that afternoon,
> the U?K again took control of the village, and it was
> they who led Walker into the village the next day to see
> what they described as victims of a massacre. It may be,
> as Serb authorities claimed and many Europeans tended to
> believe, that the victims were in fact killed in the
> shootout reported by the police, and then aligned to give
> the appearance of a mass execution, or "massacre".
>
> In any case, the extremely emotional public reaction by
> the high-profile head of the KVM, condemning the Serbs
> for "a crime against humanity", "an unspeakable atrocity"
> committed by Serbs "with no value for human life", ended
> any possible pretense of neutrality of the OSCE mission.
>
> Walker's accusations were quickly taken up by NATO
> politicians and editorialists. A complex conflict was
> reduced to a simple opposition between Serbian
> perpetrators of massacres and innocent Albanian civilian
> victims. The U?K and its provocative murders of policemen
> and civilians were to all intents and purposes invisible.
> Presented as a gratuitous atrocity, "Racak" became the
> immediate justification for NATO war against Yugoslavia.
>
> In Kosovo itself, KVM members have testified, after Racak
> the Serbs were totally convinced that the OSCE was
> working for NATO and began to prepare for war, while the
> U?K became still more aggressive. KVM members have also
> complained of the fact that Walker evacuated the mission
> to Macedonia on March 20, five days before the bombing
> began. This way, no outside observers were there to see
> exactly what did happen when the bombing began, much less
> try to prevent it. Walker's leadership had effectively
> removed all pressure or incentive for either side to show
> restraint.
>
> "In the history of international missions it would be
> hard to find such a chaotic and tragically ambiguous
> enterprise", concluded an Italian participant.
>
> How to Obtain Justice
>
> The importance of crimes in this new world order was
> highlighted by the establishment in May 1993 of the
> International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia
> (ICTY). This tribunal was established by Security Council
> resolution 827 under its Article 29 which allows it to
> set up "subsidiary bodies" necessary to fulfill its
> peacekeeping tasks. It is more than doubtful that the
> framers of the United Nations statutes had a criminal
> tribunal in mind, and many jurists consider resolution
> 827 to be an usurpation of legislative and judicial
> powers by the Security Council. In fact, this act went
> contrary to over forty years of study, within the
> framework of the United Nations, of the possibilities for
> setting up an international penal tribunal, whose
> jurisdiction would be established by international treaty
> allowing States to transfer part of their sovereign
> rights to the tribunal. The Security Council's ICTY went
> over the heads of the States concerned and simply imposed
> its authority on them, without their consent.
>
> Last April 5, as NATO was bombing Yugoslavia, the ICTY's
> presiding judge Gabrielle Kirk McDonald (a former U.S.
> federal judge in Texas) told the Supreme Court that the
> Tribunal "benefited from the strong support of concerned
> governments and dedicated individuals such as Secretary
> Albright. As the permanent representative to the United
> Nations, she had worked with unceasing resolve to
> establish the Tribunal. Indeed, we often refer to her as
> the `mother of the Tribunal'".
>
> Because it is also located in The Hague, very many
> well-informed people confuse the Tribunal with the
> International Court of Justice, or at least believe that,
> like the ICJ, the ICT is a truly independent and
> impartial judicial body. Its many supporters in the media
> say so, and so do its statutes. Article 32 of its
> governing statute says the Tribunal's expenses shall be
> borne by the regular budget of the United Nations, but
> this has been persistently violated. As Toronto lawyer
> Christopher Black points out, "the tribunal has received
> substantial funds from individual States, private
> foundations and corporations". The United States has
> provided personnel (23 officials lent by the Departments
> of State, Defense and Justice as of May 1996), equipment
> and cash contributions. More money has been granted the
> Tribunal by financier George Soros' Open Society
> Foundation, the Rockefeller Foundation and the United
> States Institute for Peace, set up in 1984 under the
> Reagan administration and funded by Congressional
> appropriations, with its board of directors appointed by
> the U.S. President.
>
> The Tribunal is vigorously supported by the Coalition for
> International Justice (CIJ), based in Washington and The
> Hague, founded and funded by George Soros' Open Society
> Foundation and a semi-official U.S. lawyers' group called
> CEELI, the Central and East European Law Institute, set
> up to promote the replacement of socialist legal systems
> with free market ones, according to Christopher Black.
>
> Last May 12, ICTY president Gabrielle Kirk McDonald, in a
> speech to the Council on Foreign Relations, said that:
> "The U.S. government has very generously agreed to
> provide $500,000 and to help to encourage other States to
> contribute. However, the moral imperative to end the
> violence in the region is shared by all, including the
> corporate sector. I am pleased, therefore, that a major
> corporation has recently donated computer equipment worth
> three million dollars, which will substantially enhance
> our operating capacity."
>
> Moreover, during the bombing, Clinton obtained a special
> $27 million appropriation to help the Tribunal,
> especially in collecting anti-Serb testimony from
> Albanian refugees along the borders of Kosovo. Finally,
> Clinton has offered a bounty of $5 million for the arrest
> of Yugoslav President Slobodan Milosevic.
>
> Ethnic Divisions, Unified Empires
>
> An extremely significant feature of the humanitarian
> intervention policy is its emphasis on collective in
> contrast to individual rights.
>
> "In the aftermath of the breakup of the Soviet empire,"
> runs the summary of Self-Determination in the New World
> Order, "new nations are emerging rapidly, and more and
> more ethnic groups are pushing for independence or
> autonomy." So the question is "how the United States
> should respond". The authors "propose criteria for
> decision makers who are weighing whether to support
> groups seeking self-determination, to offer political
> recognition, or to intervene with force."
>
> This approach has practically nothing to do with
> democracy, and everything to do with empire construction.
> Although the words "democracy" and "democratic" are still
> used, they tend increasingly to be without meaning other
> than to designate favoured client leaders or groups in
> countries of interest to the United States. Certainly,
> Hashim Thaqi, the U?K leader who counts Madeleine
> Albright's spokesman James Rubin (husband of CNN's
> Christiane Amanpour) among his fans (28), is scarcely
> more "democratic" than Milan Milutinovic, elected
> President of Serbia, indicted with Milosevic by
> Albright's "International War Crimes Tribunal". In fact,
> the selection of particular groups, ethnic or social, as
> clients, is the traditional way in which a conquering
> empire can reshape social structures and replace former
> elites with its own.
>
> The imperial project is becoming increasingly open.
> Protectorates are being established in Bosnia and Kosovo,
> President Clinton is vigorously calling for the illegal
> overthrow of the legally elected Yugoslav president.
>
> Totally disregarding the feelings and wishes of the real,
> live people who live there, Robert Kaplan announced (29)
> that "there are two choices in the Balkans -- imperialism
> or anarchy. To stop the violence, we essentially have to
> act in the way the great powers in the region have always
> acted: as pacifying conquerors." Like the Romans and the
> Austrian Habsburgs, "motivated by territorial
> aggrandizement for their own economic enrichment,
> strategic positions and glory."
>
> Merely to suggest that the United States might "intervene
> with force" on behalf of an ethnic group seeking
> self-determination is to cause trouble. There are
> potentially hundreds of such groups not only in the
> former Soviet Republics but throughout Africa and Asia.
> The prospect of U.S. military intervention will, on the
> one hand, encourage potential secessionist leaders to
> push their claims to the point of "humanitarian crisis",
> in order to bring in the Superpower on their side. By the
> same token, it will encourage existing states to suppress
> such movements brutally and decisively in order to
> prevent precisely that intervention. A vicious cycle will
> be created, enabling the single Superpower to fish
> selectively in troubled waters.
>
> The concept of "ethnic group" rests on the notion of
> "identity". If individual identity is problematic, group
> identity is even more so. That is, just as individuals
> may have multiple or changing "identities", groups may
> have changing compositions as people come and go from one
> "identity" group to another. Especially in the modern
> mobile world, ethnic identity is therefore a highly
> questionable basis for claim to political recognition in
> the form of an independent State. The forceful
> affirmation of "ethnic identity" tends to strengthen
> traditional patriarchal structures in places such as
> Kosovo, at the expense of individual liberation. Stress
> on ethnic identity enforces stereotypes, mafioso
> structures and leadership by "godfathers".
>
> Foreign policy based on ethnic identity has notorious
> antecedents: it was precisely the policy employed by
> Adolf Hitler to justify his conquest of the same Eastern
> European territories that Brzezinski now watches so
> attentively. Both the takeover of Czechoslovakia and the
> invasion of Poland were officially justified by the need
> to protect allegedly oppressed German minorities from the
> cruel Czechs and Poles. The British government's
> understanding for Herr Hitler's concern about Germans in
> Czechoslovakia is the real "Munich". Before invading
> Poland, Hitler had the SS manufacture an "incident" in
> which wicked Poles stormed an innocent German-language
> radio station in order to desecrate it with their
> barbarous Slav language. The dead body left on the scene
> to authenticate the incident was in fact a prison convict
> in costume.
>
> In Yugoslavia, Hitler "liberated" not only Germans but
> also and especially Croats and (in conjunction with
> fascist Italy) Albanians, long selected as the proper
> Randv?lker to receive German protection, the better to
> crush the main historic adversary, the Serbs, the people
> who more than any other had fought for independence from
> Empires. (The Serbs themselves as they became "Yugoslavs"
> were less and less unified around Serbian identity, even
> if they have continued to pay for it.)
>
> Making policy by distinguishing between "friend" and
> "enemy" peoples is pure Hitlerism, and this is what the
> Anglo-American NATO leaders are now doing, while
> ironically pretending to reject "Munich".
>
> History As Melodrama
>
> The media that recount Balkan ghost stories to the
> "children" (30) back in NATOland rarely go into detail
> about the peculiarities of these various customs and
> situations. Popular culture has prepared audiences for a
> simpler version. The pattern is the same as in disaster
> movies, outer space movies, etc: there is always the trio
> of classic melodrama: wicked villain, helpless victim
> (maiden in distress) and heroic rescuer. Same plot. Over
> and over. Only in the Abramowitz humanitarian war plan,
> the trio is composed of ethnic entities or nationalities.
> There is the "good" ethnic group, all victims, like the
> Kosovar Albanians. Then there is the "bad" ethnic group,
> all racist hatred, ethnic cleansing and even "genocide".
> And finally, of course, there is Globocop to the rescue:
> NATO with its stealth bombers, cruise missiles and
> cluster blade bombs, its depleted uranium and graphite
> power-plan busters. A bit of fireworks, like the car
> chase at the end of the movie.
>
> The whole concept of ethnic war as pretext for U.S.
> military intervention implies this division of humanity
> between "good" and "bad" nationalities, between
> "oppressor" and "victim" peoples. Since this is rarely
> the case, the story is told by analogy with the famous
> exceptional cases where the categories fit: Hitler and
> the Jews being the obvious favourite. Every new villain
> is a "Hitler", every new ethnic secessionist group to be
> used as pretext for new NATO bases is the victim of a
> potential "Holocaust". At this rate, the two terms will
> cease to be proper nouns and become general terms for the
> new global Guignol.
>
> Starting with the pretense of militant anti-racism,
> "humanitarian intervention" finishes with a new racism.
> To merit all those bombs, the "bad" people must be
> tarnished with collective guilt. At the G8 summit in
> Cologne in June, Tony Blair clearly adopted the doctrine
> of collective guilt when he declared that there could be
> no humanitarian aid for the Serbs because of the dreadful
> way they had treated the Kosovar Albanians. With their
> incomparable self-righteousness, the Anglo-American
> commanders are leading this new humanitarian crusade to
> extremes of inhumanity.
>
> Footnotes
>
> (1) Jim Hoagland, "Developing a Doctrine of Humanitarian
> Warfare", International Herald Tribune, June 28, 1999.
>
> (2) A former U.S. Ambassador to Thailand, Abramowitz
> served as Assistant Secretary of State for Intelligence
> and Research in the Reagan administration. In January
> 1986, he took part in an interesting mission to Beijing
> alongside top CIA officials with the purpose of
> persuading China to support supplying Stinger missiles to
> Islamic Afghan rebels in order to keep up pressure on the
> Soviet Union, even as Gorbachev was trying to end the
> Cold War. In the mid-1990s, he was part of a blue ribbon
> panel sponsored by the Council on Foreign Relations which
> advised the Clinton Administration to loosen restrictions
> on CIA covert operations such as dealing with criminals,
> disguising agents as journalists, and targeting
> unfriendly heads of State.
>
> (3) John B. Roberts, "Roots of Allied Farce", The
> American Spectator, June 1999.
>
> (4) Ibid.
>
> (5) Morton H. Halperin & David J. Scheffer with Patricia
> L. Small, Self-Determination In the New World Order,
> Carnegie Endowment, Washington,D.C., 1992; page 80.
>
> (6) Ibid, p.105.
>
> (7) Ibid, p.107.
>
> (8) Ibid, p.110.
>
> (9) Charles Trueheart, "Serbs and Kosovars Get Nudge From
> Their Hosts To Speed Up Peace Talks", International
> Herald Tribune/Washington Post, February 9, 1999: "On
> Monday, the Kosovo Albanians won a small tactical victory
> when their American advisers, initially barred by
> conference hosts, were allowed to visit them at the
> chateau. They included two former U.S. diplomats, Morton
> Abramowitz and Paul Williams."
>
> (10) John B.Roberts, op.cit.
>
> (11) Steven Erlanger, "Winning Friends for Foreign
> Policy: Albright's First 100 Days", The New York Times,
> 14 May 1997.
>
> (12) "Il n'y a pas de paradoxe. J'ai mis au point cette
> doctrine en accord avec le pr?sident Carter, car c'?tait
> la meilleure fa?on de d?stabiliser l'Urss. ?a a march?."
> L'Ev?nement du jeudi, 14 January 1998.
>
> (13) Le Nouvel observateur, 14 January 1998, reported by
> AFP.
>
> (14) Zbigniew Brzezinski, The Grand Chessboard,
> BasicBooks, New York, 1997, p.78.
>
> (15) Kaplan's 1993 book Balkan Ghosts was notoriously
> read by President Clinton, who, however, had to be chided
> later by the author for having drawn the wrong
> conclusion. That is, Clinton's initial conclusion was to
> stay out of the Balkans, whereas Kaplan has, he
> explained, always been an interventionist.
>
> (16) New York Times/International Herald Tribune, 23
> February 1999.
>
> (17) Robert D.Kaplan, "Why the Balkans Demand Amorality",
> The Washington Post, 28 February 1999.
>
> (18) Steve Niva, "Between Clash and Co-Optation: US
> Foreign Policy and the Specter of Islam", Middle East
> Report, Fall 1998.
>
> (19) The Washington Post, 28 February 1999.
>
> (20) Stern, 4 March 1999.
>
> (21) In mid-April, 1999, the International Association of
> Lawyers Against Nuclear Arms (IALANA) obtained and
> distributed to news media official documents from the
> German foreign office showing that in the months leading
> up to the NATO bombing of Yugoslavia, the foreign office
> had repeatedly informed administrative courts of the
> various German L?nder that there was no persecution of
> ethnic Albanians in Kosovo or the rest of Serbia.
> Example: Intelligence report from the Foreign Office,
> January 12, 1999, to the administrative Court of Trier,
> "Even in Kosovo an explicit political persecution linked
> to Albanian ethnicity is not verifiable. The East of
> Kosovo is still not involved in armed conflict. Public
> life in cities like Pristina, Urosevac, Gnjilan, etc.
> has, in the entire conflict period, continued on a
> relatively normal basis." The "actions of the security
> forces [were] not directed against the Kosovo-Albanians
> as an ethnically defined group, but against the military
> opponent and its actual or alleged supporters." These
> reports were published in the German daily junge welt on
> 24 April 1999.
>
> (22) Richard Cohen, "The Winner in the Balkans Is the
> KLA", Washington Post/International Herald Tribune, 18
> June 1999.
>
> (23) Richard Holbrooke, To End a War, Random House, New
> York, 1998, p.103.
>
> (24) "The OSCE KVM: autopsy of a mission", statement
> delivered by Ambassador Gabriel Keller, principal deputy
> head of mission, to the watch group on May 25, 1999.
>
> (25) Italian military participant "Romanus", in LiMes
> 2/99, cited by il manifesto, 19 June 1999.
>
> (26) La Libert?, Gen?ve, 22 April 1999, and Balkan-Infos
> No.33, Paris, May 1999.
>
> (27) Ulisse, "Come gli Americani hanno sabotato la
> missione dell'Osce", LiMes, supplemento al n.1/99, p.113,
> L'Espresso, Rome, 1999.
>
> (28) "Throughout the Kosovo crisis, Mr.Rubin personally
> wooed Hashim Thaci, the ambitious leader of the Kosovo
> Liberation Army", the Wall Street Journal reported on
> June 29, 1999, even going so far as to "jokingly promise
> that he would speak to Hollywood friends about getting
> Mr.Thaci a movie role."
>
> (29) Robert D.Kaplan, "Why the Balkans Demand Amorality",
> The Washington Post, 28 February 1999.
>
> (30) Peter Gowan, in "The Twisted Road to Kosovo", Labour
> Focus on Eastern Europe, Number 62, Spring 1999, explains
> (p.76) that the foreign policy elite discuss the sordid
> realities of power politics in a closed arena, and "not
> in front of the children", that is, the citizenry of the
> NATOland countries, who are regaled with versions that
> appeal to their values and ideals.
>
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>
> Secretary General
> Mrs. Jela Jovanovic
> Art historian
> ===========================
>
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