1) The Death of the Danube Theory:
Greg Nowell recently suggested that the explanation
for the NATO actions in Yugoslavia were explained by
anger over Serbian machinations to slow trade along
the Danube with references specifically to German and
Dutch interests. This does not wash. Why not?
Austria.
Austria is the only EU or NATO member actively opposing
the NATO actions. But it has a much greater interest in the
Danube traffic than does any other such country with the
possible exception of brand-new NATO member, Hungary.
Certainly its economic interest far exceeds that of either
Germany or the Netherlands. For that matter, I don't think
the canal link between the North and Black Seas links the
Danube and Rhine (flowing by Rotterdam) but the Danube
and the Elbe (flowing by Hamburg) with the canal near
Regensburg, if I am not mistaken. So much for the Dutch
interest.
I would grant that Germany in particular is interested
in a "pacified" Central and Eastern Europe. Thus, the
arguments about German machinations and interests
in all of this do have some ring of credibility. It is striking
that even the Greens in Germany seem to be supporting
the NATO actions.
2) Yoshie has charged that the Helsinki Commission
is just a front for a bunch of Austrian/Norwegian/Finnish
anti-Serbs. Wow! If they are all so anti-Serb, why is
Austria opposing the NATO actions?
3) Where in Kosovo and Metohija is the Metohija part
and who lives there (or lived there)? I know that Herzegovina
(Hercegovina) is in the southwestern part of Bosnia and
Herzegovina and is mostly full of Croats these days with a
few Bosniaks as well (Mostar is there).
4) The Washington Post reports that there were
disagreements among the NATO leaders about escalating
the bombing to Belgrade. Unfortunately, about on a par with
its opaque reporting on the vote in the US Senate, it failed to
say who was questioning the escalation, although a careful
reading between the lines suggests that the US and UK were
for it. Hmm.
5) Talk of NATO ground troops in Kosovo is simply
farcical. The WP reports that they could not make a credible
entry without at least a month's buildup. For better or (mostly)
worse, this business is going to be well over long before then.
The Serbs will have on the ground what the want (with the
Albanians gone one way or another) and will not be budged.
6) Arguments about oil reserves and NATO bases in
Kosovo as motives are even less credible than Greg's Danube
theory. The metals theory has more to it, although it seems to be mostly
Milosevic who is worked up about that one.
7) Cutting to the unpleasant chase, the real question is can
a manageable partition of Kosovo be managed? Talk is all over
that that is where we are headed, perhaps in conjunction with a
general negotiation that fully partitions all of former Yugoslavia:
Srpska Republika to the Serbs, Herzegovina to the Croatians,
the rump Bosnia to itself, and Kosovo split between Serbia and
itself, the latter perhaps eventually going to Albania. Maybe.
But a careful examination of a map does not indicate any obvious or
clear boundary. Some claim that Serbia would take a northern
strip (including the mines) and a western chunck (including Pec,
the center of Serbian Orthodoxy). But news reports suggest that
Albanians are being systematically expelled from "blobs" of
territory (future enclaves?) including around Pec (now reportedly
totally ruined) in the west, the mines in the north, and the ancient
Serb capital of Prizren in the south. Serb Orthodox monasteries
are more in the south than in the north and religious and historical
sites seem to be scattered all over. There does not seem to be
some nice neat obvious line to draw as there was, more or less,
in Bosnia and Herzegovina (except for Brcko and Mostar). Ugh.
In the meantime things just seem to be getting worse. I guess
whoever (Max S.?) forecast that this will lead to the US electing
"the people who know how to do imperialism right" may prove
to be correct. What a disaster all the way around, sigh....
Barkley Rosser
