Re: M-TH: Imperialism and Serbia
The Independent (London), May 13, 1999 'An Atlantic alliance that has brought us to this catastrophe should be wound up' Robert Fisk How much longer do we have to endure the folly of Nato's war in the Balkans? In just 50 days, the Atlantic alliance has failed in everything it set out to do. It has failed to protect the Kosovo Albanians from Serbian war crimes. It has failed to cow Slobodan Milosevic. It has failed to force the withdrawal of Serb troops from Kosovo. It has broken international law in attacking a sovereign state without seeking a UN mandate. It has killed hundreds of innocent Serb civilians - in our name, of course - while being too cowardly to risk a single Nato life in defence of the poor and the weak for whom it meretriciously claimed to be fighting. Nato's war cannot even be regarded as a mistake - it is a criminal act. It is, of course, now part of the mantra of all criticism of Nato that we must mention Serb wickedness in Kosovo. So here we go. Yes, dreadful, wicked deeds - atrocities would not be a strong enough word for it - have gone on in Kosovo: mass executions, rape, dispossession, "ethnic cleansing", the murder of intellectuals. Some of Nato's propaganda programme has done more to cover up such villainy than disclose it. And, as we all know, the dozens of Kosovo Albanians massacred on the road to Prizren were slaughtered by Nato - not by the Serbs as Nato originally claimed. But I have seen with my own eyes - travelling under the Nato bombardment - the house-burning in Kosovo and the hundreds of Albanians awaiting dispossession in their villages. But back to the subject - and perhaps my first question should be put a little more boldly. Not: "How much longer do we have to endure this stupid, hopeless, cowardly war?" but: "How much longer do we have to endure Nato? How soon can this vicious American-run organisation be deconstructed and politically 'degraded', its pontificating generals put back in their boxes with their mortuary language of 'in-theatre assets' and 'collateral damage'"? And how soon will our own compassionate, socialist liberal leaders realise that they are not fighting a replay of the Second World War nor striking a blow for a new value-rich millennium? In Middle East wars, I've always known when a side was losing - it came when its leaders started to complain that journalists were not being fair to their titanic struggle for freedom/ democracy/human rights/sovereignty/soul. And on Monday, Tony Blair started the whining. After 50 days of television coverage soaked in Nato propaganda, after weeks of Nato officials being questioned by sheep-like journalists, our Prime Minister announces the press is ignoring the plight of the Kosovo Albanians. The fact that this is a lie is not important. It is the nature of the lie. Anyone, it seems, who doesn't subscribe to Europe's denunciations of Fascism or who raises an eyebrow when - in an act of utter folly - the Prime Minister makes unguaranteed promises that the Kosovo Albanians will all go home, is now off-side, biased - or worthy of one of Downing Street's preposterous "health warnings" because they allegedly spend more time weeping for dead Serbs than the numerically greater number of dead Albanians (the assumption also being, of course, that it is less physically painful to be torn apart by a Nato cluster bomb than by a Serb rocket-propelled grenade). President Clinton - who will in due course pull the rug from under Mr Blair - tells the Kosovo Albanians that they have the "right to return." Not the Palestinian refugees of Lebanon, of course. They do not have such a right. Nor the Kurds dispossessed by our Nato ally, Turkey. Nor the Armenians driven from their land by the Turks in the world's first holocaust (there being only one holocaust which Messers Clinton and Blair are interested in invoking just now). Mr Blair's childish response to this argument is important. Just because wrongs have been done in the past doesn't mean we have to stand idly by now. But the terrible corollary of this dangerous argument is this: that the Palestinians, the Armenians, the Rwandans or anyone else cannot expect our compassion. They are "the past." They are finished. But what is all this nonsense about Nato standing for democracy? It happily allowed Greece to remain a member when its ruthless colonels staged a coup d'etat which imprisoned and murdered intellectuals. Nato had no objection to the oppression of Salazar and Caetano - who were at the same time busy annihilating "liberation" movements almost identical to the Kosovo Liberation Army. Indeed, the only time when Nato proposed to suspend Portugal's membership - I was there at the time and remember this vividly - was when the country staged a revolution and declared itself a democracy. Is it therefore so surprising that Nato now turns out to be so brutal? It attacks television stations and kills Serb journalists - part of Milosevic's propaganda machine, a
Re: M-TH: Imperialism and Serbia
Rob, Here' another dimension of bourgeois motivation. For one thing, the bourgeoisie do not do the dying in their wars. Just the internecine, working class mass murder is an enormous plus for interests of the bourgeoisie as far as any war is concerned. War perpetuates nationalist division of the international working class. Charles Brown "Charles Brown" [EMAIL PROTECTED] 05/17/99 11:23AM Hello Rob, Rob Schaap [EMAIL PROTECTED] 05/15/99 02:32AM G'day Chas, You write: "Doesn't American imperialism and all imperialism need the INSTITUTION of war ? Some war , somewhere, regularly ? Otherwise, how could it avoid disarmament ? And wouldn't disarmament spell the end of capitalism ? World peace would take away capitalism's ultimate form of creative destruction, its method of restoring the rate of profit." Well, war is definitely the ultimate way to resolve excess capacity problems, but you'd need a big war in the right place to do the job to any significant degree. War and rumours of war also cost capital a lot. And then there's the confusing little matter of distinguishing between the interests of capital in general and capitalists in particular - at any particular moment, I think you'd have to deploy an institutional analysis to discern whether you're watching crisis control by or on behalf of capital in general, or whether you're watching a currently powerful capitalist or sector get its way. Charles: Yes, I agree with your critique that that this necessity of war for capitalism is contradictory. Specific capitalists may be losers as a result or war or rumor of war. The FROP is based on the fundamental contradictions of capitalism too. Whether a (European) World War or a colonialist "police action" as in Viet Nam, war is a contradictory, but necessary gambit for capital. For example. the Russian Revolution was caused in part by WWI. So, by saying war is necessary for capitalism, I don't mean to ignore that this necessity is very contradictory. It is one of the primary aspects of capitalism that should be pushing us to establish socialism, in ultimate negation of capitalism. And maybe we should distinguish also between wars that are authored by capital consciously (I think Vietnam was one), and wars that emanate from capital relations (more along the quasi-structuralist lines of Lenin's imperialism thesis - I think both World Wars may have been such events). Charles: Although, I agree that the etiology of a specific war varies, I would think that the different species of capitalist war all have some cause in basic contradictions of capitalism as a system. ((( You also write: "There would be no way to impose the will of the IMF and the big banks and financial institutions, no way to collect the debts which are the basis of neo-imperialist control of the neo-colonies. Brazil and Mexico could just default and what would Wall Street do ?" Again, war is sufficient for this, but not generally necessary. I think it's part of the story in the Yugoslav instance, but most of the world was brought to heel by transnational finance without much war. A bit of debt manipulation, perhaps. Charles: I'd like to hear more from you on this. It seems to me that in the larger historical context, the bringing to heel by transnational finance without "much" war would not have been possible without the bigger wars and WARS to set an example establishing military dominance. Besides out right war there was military support fascist regimes and counterrevolutionary terrorists, etc., undeclared wars, assassinations, the whole nine yards of neo-colonial state repression. I don't see transnational finance having much influence without the underlying military control backing them up, even if the open violence is somewhat separate in time. (( Targetting research and development at getting around public utilities (eg the way satellites were built to offer end-to-end autonomy from public telcos, or deploying market power to make new technologies expensive for governments - as in the health sector), dressing up the insurance sector as the health sector (to undermine public health structures), pushing the debt buttons (by way of currency manipulation and ratings agencies) to encourage governments to pull money out of their public sectors (eg undermining public schooling), and so on. I suspect this a bigger story than war when it comes to the explaining the development of the finance sector's hegemony. Doug has an interesting bit in *Wall St* about how New York's political autonomy was destroyed by a few bankers. Charles: I completely agree with this ( and I learn something here from you on the technique of imperialism). But these methods of control are dependent upon first establishing miltary/state domination for the imperialists and their comprador bourgeoisies. ( I guess I'm banging on thus because both world
Re: M-TH: Imperialism and Serbia
G'day Thaxists, I reckon George has a point, not just regarding this inexplicably quiet list, but regarding the left in general. I propose we each put in one paragraph what best explains the Yugoslav business to us. No essays requested, just a few quick words concerning the single most salient reason for what's going on. We all recognise there may be many reasons and many interested parties, that differing contexts would allow/disallow such adventures for such reasons etc, but you're all busy people (or so it seems), and all I ask is one par on the Yugoslav business *in particular* (ie no general motherhood and apple pie rhetoric). If we get any takers, we might be able to move on to a composite picture (which service this list did used to offer), or at least evidence that we on the left have indeed been reduced to a bunch of lonely blow-hards and intoners of dead aphorisms (a suspicion excited whenever specific crises have tested this list's critical capacities of late). If that doesn't get you reaching for the keyboards, it might be time for Dr Kervorkian, I reckon ... Rob. --- from list [EMAIL PROTECTED] ---
Re: M-TH: Imperialism and Serbia
In message l03130301b3646c00b413@[137.92.41.119], Rob Schaap [EMAIL PROTECTED] writes G'day Thaxists, I reckon George has a point, not just regarding this inexplicably quiet list, but regarding the left in general. I propose we each put in one paragraph what best explains the Yugoslav business to us. No essays requested, just a few quick words concerning the single most salient reason for what's going on. The war has very little to do with events or forces in play in the Balkans themselves. Rather, all the initiative for military intervention is coming from the Western elites, principally, but not exclusively, Britain, America and Germany. Their motivations are not pecuniary in any obvious sense. There is no oil in Kosova that would reward any imperial plunder. Rather the war is being fought to give these elites a sense of higher purpose that they are lacking since the end of the Cold War. Primarily this is a war to 'remoralise' an effete ruling class that lacks any real motivations. Unfortunately, ordinary people fall short of their higher moral purpose and so must be slaughtered in this western Crusade. This is just the latest in a whole range of 'humanitarian interventions', from Iraq, through Bosnia, Somalia, Haiti and Rwanda, leading now to Kosovo. General Colin Powell said after the Gulf War that the US was running out of enemies, with only Castro and Kim Il Sung left worthy of taking on. He underestimated the ability of the western media to criminalise and demonise whole peoples and their political leaders. -- Jim heartfield --- from list [EMAIL PROTECTED] ---
Re: M-TH: Imperialism and Serbia
G'day Chas, You write: "Doesn't American imperialism and all imperialism need the INSTITUTION of war ? Some war , somewhere, regularly ? Otherwise, how could it avoid disarmament ? And wouldn't disarmament spell the end of capitalism ? World peace would take away capitalism's ultimate form of creative destruction, its method of restoring the rate of profit." Well, war is definitely the ultimate way to resolve excess capacity problems, but you'd need a big war in the right place to do the job to any significant degree. War and rumours of war also cost capital a lot. And then there's the confusing little matter of distinguishing between the interests of capital in general and capitalists in particular - at any particular moment, I think you'd have to deploy an institutional analysis to discern whether you're watching crisis control by or on behalf of capital in general, or whether you're watching a currently powerful capitalist or sector get its way. And maybe we should distinguish also between wars that are authored by capital consciously (I think Vietnam was one), and wars that emanate from capital relations (more along the quasi-structuralist lines of Lenin's imperialism thesis - I think both World Wars may have been such events). You also write: "There would be no way to impose the will of the IMF and the big banks and financial institutions, no way to collect the debts which are the basis of neo-imperialist control of the neo-colonies. Brazil and Mexico could just default and what would Wall Street do ?" Again, war is sufficient for this, but not generally necessary. I think it's part of the story in the Yugoslav instance, but most of the world was brought to heel by transnational finance without much war. A bit of debt manipulation, perhaps. Targetting research and development at getting around public utilities (eg the way satellites were built to offer end-to-end autonomy from public telcos, or deploying market power to make new technologies expensive for governments - as in the health sector), dressing up the insurance sector as the health sector (to undermine public health structures), pushing the debt buttons (by way of currency manipulation and ratings agencies) to encourage governments to pull money out of their public sectors (eg undermining public schooling), and so on. I suspect this a bigger story than war when it comes to the explaining the development of the finance sector's hegemony. Doug has an interesting bit in *Wall St* about how New York's political autonomy was destroyed by a few bankers. I guess I'm banging on thus because both world wars ended up presenting capitalism with enormous threats to its hegemony. We wouldn't have got the Soviet Union without WW1, and widespread national independence agitations (many inspired by socialists - eg. the PKK in Indonesia, Ho's mob in Indochina, and Mao's mob in China), a suddenly enormously powerful SU, and fleetingly resolute social democrat parties throughout the west all issued from WW2. If a war gets big enough to destroy, say, 20% of world capital, it might also be big enough to destroy capitalism in particular and humanity in general. You'd have to be awfully desperate to muck around with stakes like that. Of course, plain stupidity always has a role ... Cheers, Rob. --- from list [EMAIL PROTECTED] ---
Re: M-TH: Imperialism and Serbia
Hi, Some people on this list talk about American imperialism advancing its interests by attacking Serbia. However nobody on the list it would seem to me as clearly explained how those interests are being served by this attack. Neither has it been clearly explained why and how British, German and French imperialists are also being advance by conducting this air war. Perhaps somebody will explain this to me and others. Hi George, Lets put it another way, if it weren't for this war, would the US have such a strong physical presence in Europe? And whilst the conflict may be the beginning of the end for Nato, conjured demons are essential to keep it together:- no matter that the threat to the West is inconsequential, re-create the enemy as a new Hitler and the same old ideological game of freedom versus totalitarianism can be played out willy nilly. As for Britain, well it's now a two-bit power on the world stage, but Saint Tony can massage his own and the establishment's narcissism, by pretending to the world that it still has a _role_ to play in civilising the barbarians. (St. Tony also gets blood on his hands, it excites him: watch his eyes next time you see him on TV.) Ditto the French really, but add some anti-American independent gallic spice to the conconction. And the the Germans? - it's their backyard - they have to be involved at some level, but I reckon that the most strident anti Nato rhetoric will arise from here. The real fun, the frisson in inter-imperialist rivalries will be when there's a conflict between who backs who. I can see the day when a German backed Europe will tell the States to fuck off out of its terrain, or perhaps more likely, when the two Great Powers start to back different horses. 1914 here we come... Russ --- from list [EMAIL PROTECTED] ---
