---------------------------------------------------------------------- ---------- Causes of war ---------------------------------------------------------------------- ---------- Sirs: I recently found a useful article explaining the Caspian oil connection to the war against the FRY by Sean Gervasi titled "Why is NATO in Yugoslavia?". The report was delivered at the Conference on the Enlargement of NATO in Prague on January 13-14, 1996 and can be found at http://www.mclink.it/assoc/fondpasti/nato/. I have since updated the institutional theory provided in the article with additional evidence from a variety of sources. My hope was to connect the dots that led to this tragedy; describe it in terms of current system theory; and suggest how such wars could be avoided in the future. I do hope it will at least provides useful information to you and can in some way contribute to an overall understanding of the cause of all this suffering. The writing style may be too heavily descriptive as I am an environmental analytical soil and water chemist and not a professional writer. Sincerely, James Robbins Wagons east - International trade and the FRY-NATO war US President Bill Clinton has admitted that the war against The Federal Republic of Yugoslavia (FRY) by NATO and French Eurocorps forces is about the global economy, stupid! Clinton's exact words were "If we're going to have a strong economic relationship that includes our ability to sell around the world, Europe has got to be a key.... That's what this Kosovo thing is all about."(1) In other words, NATO must pacify Yugoslavia so that transnational oil companies in coordination with the Bretton Woods Institutions, can secure the oil transportation route from the Caspian Sea into Central Europe. Globalism and the New Silk Road oil route Sean Gervasi in his paper "Why is NATO in Yugoslavia" described the main globalistic objective of NATO as control of the Danube Canal in the FRY to ensure a continuous trade route to the East block and increase trade with Eastern Europe, Russia and the Commonwealth of Independent States.(2) This action would create a NATO administered European inland waterway between the Black Sea and the North Sea via the Rhine-Main-Danube canal. More importantly this canal would serve as the means for transnational corporations to transport oil and petroleum products from the Caspian Sea into Central Europe. The US Geological Survey (USGS) has estimated the low sulfur Caspian oil reserves to be up to 200 billion barrels (Gbo), which is about twice the 94 Gbo of oil recaptured from Iraq in the Kuwait war.(3) Proven natural gas reserves stand at about 5 to 8 trillion cubic meters, on par with those of the United States, with estimated recoverable reserves three times larger.(4) According to William Ramsay, deputy assistant secretary of state for energy, sanctions and commodities, "these Caspian reserves are crucial to the world energy balance over the next 25 years". He also said "the Caspian can provide one-third of the expected increase in energy demand by 2010 -- and will play a decisive role in powering world development over the next three decades."(5) Clinton's war goals and Gervasi's institutional theory support Ramsey's vision that, "There already exists a kind of outline of a new Silk Road running through the Caucasus and beyond the Caspian. We think oil and gas pipelines, roads, railways and fiber optics can make this 21st century Silk Road a superhighway linking Europe and Central Asia." (5) Recent analysis of world oil reserves indicate that all oil estimates by the transnational oil companies and the USGS significantly overestimates the global oil reserves, however, this would add even more urgency to extracting Caspian Sea oil. (6) Ramsey was further quoted as saying that U.S. Energy Secretary Pena stressed, on his visit to the Caucasus region in November 1997 "that the next 12 to 18 months are a crucial period in Caspian development."(5) Coincidentally, the first secure pipeline from the Azerbaijan Caspian Sea port of Baku to the Georgian Black Sea port of Sapsa was ceremonial opened in December 1998 and the first oil tanker destined for Spain was loaded in March of 1999. Numerous wars for control of this oil, including the Georgia-Abkhazia, Albania-Azerbaijan (Nagorno-Karbakh), North Ossetian-Ingush, and Chechnya-Russia wars, make other pipeline routes unreliable. Unfortunately, the Strait of Bosporus is already overcrowded with tanker traffic, and Turkey further limits oil tankers in the Bosporus fearing an Exxon Valdez type oil disaster. (7) Solutions to getting the oil to market include alternate oil pipelines planned between Bulgaria-Greece, Bulgaria-Macedonia-Albania, and Azerbaijan-Southern Turkey. However, none of these routes solves the problem of how to economically transport oil to Germany and the surrounding Northern European countries and finished products to markets in the former Soviet Union. The reopening of the Danube canal following the 1991-1995 UN sanctions against Yugoslavia and the recent completion of the Rhine-Main-Danube canal would allow the bulk transport of oil and refined petroleum products to Austria, Germany, Poland, and Belgium. This waterway is being expanded by channeling most of the major rivers of Europe, including a Rhine-Rhone canal into France.(8) The canal system is already the most economical trade route for most of Western Europe, supporting both freighter and barge train traffic. The Romanian Black Sea port of Constanta would serve as a transshipment point from and to the Silk Road. This European "TRACECA" (Transport Corridor Europe Caucasus Asia) corridor VII would also support oil pipeline along the Danube.(9) Constanta has large oil refineries which could provide secondary petroleum products to western markets.(10) The opportunity for resumption of Ukrainian iron and coal imports is also a significant factor in the trade equation. The TRACECA program was implemented at Baku September 8, 1998 to provide sustainable access to Trans-European and Trans-Asian transport networks for the land-locked Caucasian and Central Asian countries.(9) The subsequent Silk Road Declaration of April 24, 1999 is designed to "promote the effective use of the international transport corridor Europe - the Caucasus".(11) The European Union has recently created the INOGATE program that is designed to promote the security of energy supplies. An INOGATE Summit Meeting will be organized in Kiev (Ukraine) on July 22, 1999, in order to proceed with the final signature of the "Umbrella Agreement" Careful reading of all these European Union programs show that they are designed to protect the investment of transnational corporations.(12) Yugoslavia as a NATO security threat With this eastward expansion of the European Union and the corresponding NATO security alliance, the independent FRY has become a perceived threat to globalistic economic interests. The fact that the FRY was not a NATO or UN combined with 1998 talks on the proposed formation of a Russia, Belarus, and Yugoslavia federation threatened their plans. The recent Balkan wars underscored to NATO that the region was unstable and that further pacification was needed to ensure a safe economic climate for Western investors! Ironically, the Canadian economist Michael Chossudovsky, has shown that the IMF ordered restructuring of the Yugoslavia economy during the late 1980s, and administered by reformist bankers such as Milosevic, contributed to the Balkan wars during the 1990s. The massive economic crisis from these economic policies, including the loss of approximately two million jobs by the end of 1980, had ignited ethnic hatreds, exacerbated by authoritarian leaders, leading to brutal wars of ethnic cleansing by Serb, Croat, and Muslim forces beginning in 1991.(13) The reverend Jesse Jackson once remarked that "They no longer use bullets and ropes. They use the World Bank and the IMF."(14). Most people in the region never realized that the true "butchers of the Balkans" of the late 20th Century were the IMF and World Bank leaders who inflicted pain and suffering with a pen The recent completion of the Baku-Supsa pipeline has undoubtedly added pressure on the European political system to resolve the FRY problem and get on with the oil rush. Social unrest and drastic economic downturns in Romania, Bulgaria, Hungary, and Poland, caused by the failed policies of economic "Structural Adjustment" engineering by the IMF, is of great concern to the European Union security. Thus the desperate need for the European Union to show that capitalism bears fruit in Eastern Europe has accentuated the NATO perception that the FRY posed a security threat to trade. NATO's slogan has thus became, "NATO: Out of Area or Out of Business".(15) Lessons from Dayton The success of the 1995 Dayton Accords allowed NATO to pacify Bosnia-Hertzogovenia with some 60,000 troops equipped with armor and backed by superior air and naval forces. This NATO deployment was unique in that it was the first major NATO operation and it was staged outside NATO boundaries. Undoubtedly, Clinton mistook the willingness of the Slobodan Milosovic's government to negotiate at the Dayton Accords, following a short NATO bombing campaign against the Republic of Serbia forces, for weakness. The added ease of which Franjo Tudjman's US and German trained Croat army was able to capture Krijana, kill approximately 10,000 Serbs and ethnically cleanse some 750,000 Serbs from Croatia, added to this misconception. Clinton's Bluff Anyone who bothered to read Appendix B of the Rambouillet ultimatum noticed that it required Yugoslavia to submit to occupation by 30,000 NATO troops, not only in Kosovo and Metahuji (Kosmet), but also throughout Serbia and Vojvodina. The FRY Ambassador Vladislav Jovanovic drew the parallel that "what happened at Rambouillet was the same thing that Hitler had done with Czechoslovakia over the Sudetenland: If Prague does not agree, Germany will attack." The expected refusal of the Serbs to relinquish sovereignty provided the justification needed for the immediate coalition bombing campaign! Jesse Jackson later remarked that "a diplomacy with no diplomacy is no diplomacy; that bombing and forcing an enemy to capitulate with no other dialogue is wrong." Apparently the bombing campaign was expected to result in the immediate capitulation of Yugoslavia rather than face the most powerful air force in world history. NATO commander General Wesley Clark went so far as to tell US Rep. Randy `Duke' Cunningham of the 51st Congressional District that "Duke, NATO only wanted to bomb one day and quit (16)". Unfortunately, Clinton and his advisors did not consider the law of unexpected consequences, as Milosovic failed to capitulate as expected. One would have thought that at least General Clark would have been acutely aware of this principle following his fateful planning of the Waco, Texas assault on the Branch Davidian Compound (17). Serbian strategy After the NATO political leaders had their bluff called in their high stakes poker game with the FRY, the NATO generals were either too stupid, or more likely too afraid, to let the political leaders know that this was not the Kuwait oil war! A good analysis of the FRY strategy was recently published in the STRATFOR Journal (11) and reveals that the FRY would use a strategy similar to what Switzerland used to deter Germany in WWII, that is, the threat to inflict a pyrrhic victory. A brutal, but necessary, component of this defensive strategy is the ethnic cleansing of a majority of Kosovar Albanian citizens and approximately half million illegal Albanian aliens. This action serves to tie up NATO resources, create a defendable border, and eliminate rear guard attacks from KLA terrorists within Kosmet. Humanitarian smokescreens To cover the failed bluff, NATO has lied when it claims that the massive deportations Albanians and the ethnic cleansing of Kosavar Albanians from Kosmet was the justification for bombing. The FRY military and police only started their defensive depopulation of the battlefield once the bombing attack began. While the Serbian deportation and ethnic cleansing strategy cannot be condoned, neither can the ethnic cleansing of Serbs from Croatia in 1995 or of Palestinians from Israel in the 1947-1949 war. (19) In each of these three cases, the history of hundreds of years of injustices by both sides of the conflict led to deportation and ethnic cleansing. The NATO political propaganda has justified the subsequent deaths of about 2,000 civilians and the wounding of another 6,000, including Kosovar Albanians, as collateral damage in a war to protect Kosavar Albanians. To deflect attention from NATO geopolitical goals, they repeat the Balkan war propaganda, that the Serbian people are subhuman neo-fascists who deserve what they get in order. In reality, atrocities attributable in the Balkan wars, by Serb, Croat, and Muslim forces were approximately proportional to their respective populations and had their roots in IMF policy. The Clinton Administration is even more amnesic in failing to acknowledge the genocidal wars against native Americans and the many instances of ethnic cleansing, such as the Trail of Tears, the forced removals of Navajo (Dine) and Apache from Arizona, and the Ojibwe from Wisconsin, to mention only a few. Appeals to prevent and reverse the widespread illegal acquisition of tribal lands within Sovereign Indian Nations by non-Indians are routinely blocked by the US Congress. This latter land grab policy makes America and Israel the only two nations in the world that do not have clearly defined borders. Spoils of war The key tactical objective of the current air war seems to be the deindustrialization of Serbia and Vojvodina, by the destruction of key national refinery, communication and transportation assets in day and night bombardment. John Broder has recently quoted Clinton as saying that "Europeans would...pay most of the cost of rebuilding Yugoslavia" after the war. It is more likely that this help will come in the form of IMF arranged privatization of these economic sectors of Serbia by transnational corporations at fire sale prices. The control of oil fields in Vojvodina, approximately five billion in mineral deposits and the second largest European deposit of lignite coal (17 billion tons) in Kosmet, are just secondary prizes. All evidence points to partitioning the FRY into at least the provinces of Kosova, Serbia and by giving the ethnic Hungarian portion of Vojvodina to Hungary. Such goals would require a long-term military occupation by a large NATO army until compliant leaders can be identified and placed in administrative positions and internal security policing established. Wagons East Once the FRY is secured the NATO military alliance can turn its attention the Caucasus. Ariel Cohen, a scholar in Russian and Eurasian Studies, at the Heritage Foundation, has recently stated of that "It is in Western interests to have that region pacified."(20). To stabilize Georgia, it was made an Associate of the European Union in April 1999 and an Associate member of NATO on May 31, 1999, and for starters it is being provided with 10 American helicopter gunships and German police advisors. This aid combined with recent joint military exercises between the US 82nd Airborne and Azerbaijan, are meant to protect the crucial pipelines from rebel groups. Major NATO efforts will also be required in Turkey to control a part of Kurdistan's 65 Gbo of oil reserves and the oil pipeline from the northern Iraqi city of Kirkuk to Turkey's Mediterranean port of Ceyhan. The planned major oil and gas pipelines between Azerbaijan to the port of Ceyhan will require additional security. There are also plans to extend this gas pipeline to Israel, which may explain recent joint Turkey and Israel military exercises. The need to protect this new pipeline will eventually be used to justify an aggressive new NATO pacification action against the Kurdish people. The new 30 billion-five year agreement to modernization of Turkey's military by US arms merchants seems to bear out this possibility. Turkey has already killed thousands of Kurds, destroyed some 3,000 villages, and created about two million refugees in the last 14 years! What will happen when Turkey really gets serious about pipeline security! This eastward NATO expansion vision into the Caucasus can be sold to the American and European Union citizens through the powerful subliminal combination of the "American conquest of the frontier" and the "European crusade" myths. However, these myths avoid the question: what happens when the "Indians or Infidels" in these regions resist being pacified and moved to reservations? Fear of the big stick It is obvious that this "Big Stick" war against the FRY is an ecological, social and economic disaster to the Balkans and ultimately may threaten European Union access to the Caspian Sea oil that it thinks it so desperately needs. Alexander Solzhenytsin stated on June 3, 1999, that "NATO wants to enforce the New World Order and it needs Yugoslavia to set an example." "We will punish Yugoslavia, and the rest of the planet will tremble", and that "it can bring the dictatorship of NATO, and the tyranny of NATO over the rest of the planet". Solzhenytsin added that, "he does not see any difference at all between NATO and Hitler". This typical response from Russia and many members of the Commonwealth of Independent States has convinced most of these countries that they need to keep, or acquire, nuclear weapons to protect their people against NATO attacks. The recent Russian military buildup in Daghestan and Armenia due to their fears of being cut out of the oil rush should be carefully considered by NATO. Canary in the mine shaft The NATO war against the FRY has shown that the IMF can destroy European countries just as it can those in the third world. US Rep. Bernie Sanders has argued that such IMF administered policies result in: "a few world-class billionaires, economic collapse, soaring debt, mass unemployment, grinding poverty, and unpaid wages and pensions." Unfortunately, the media only shows acute suffering and not the chronic death by a thousand cuts that the IMF dispenses. There is now alarming evidence that the IMF and NATO destruction of Yugoslavia will be replayed in the Caspian Sea region. IMF policies in the Caspian Sea region are already causing widespread suffering and may result in conflicts to numerous to count.(21, 22) Western powers are also failing to deal with the socioeconomic disruption that comes with sudden oil wealth (23). Who within the EU media will dare announce that many have died for the IMF and many more will follow? FRY-NATO war solution. The FRY parliament approved G8 agreement for meaningful self-rule and sovereignty and territorial integrity of the FRY suggests a Kosova-Kosmet model similar to the Belgium federal monarchy. In Belgium, there are distinct Flemish, Walloon and German communities and decisions affecting each community culture are made within the respective culture as much as possible. Ultimately, it is doubtful that anything less than a Czechoslovak-style divorce would work, no matter how many peacekeepers are present. In the Kosova-Kosmet there would also be the impossible task of separating the Kosavar Albanians factions to keep them from killing each other. There is also the question of whether anyone would want to return to a destroyed land that is littered with mines, bomb fragments, cluster bombs, toxic spills and dusted with depleted uranium. Given the extensive damage in all of the FRY one would expect many refugees of all ethnic groups to try to make a new start elsewhere in the EU, if possible. According to the United Nations High Commission on Refugees, of 1 million Bosnians who fled during the 1990s fighting, only 321,000 have returned home in the four years since the peace agreements were signed. The peace plan will allow both the Clinton (NATO) and Milosovic governments to be able to give the appearance of not losing the war. The reality is that, almost everyone involved lost and will continue to lose for many decades to come. System engineering causes for the war The fundamental lesson from the war was that no one recognized that it arose for the following shifting the burden model: (1) completion of the Caucusus pipeline led to; (2) a need to intimidate the FRY into submitting to loss of sovereignty which; (3) led to the tactic of intimidation of the FRY for a failing balancing loop between Albanians and Serbs that; (4) resulted in quick fix NATO war against the FRY which; (5) caused the unintended consequences of refugees, deaths, suffering, and mass destruction and; (6) addiction loops where the EU community and UN troops will have to keep solving the problems of their intervention for decades which; (7) cause additional problems that lead to more quick fix solutions and; (8) ultimately create numerous other system theory archetype problems. (28) In retrospect, the money wasted on this war could have been used in the late 1980s to create a prosperous and just society in the multiethnic Balkan region that would not have posed a perceived threat. New directions As this bloody century closes it is critical that the peoples of the European Union reflect on their historical failures. It is time that Europe addresses the root economic causes to social discord come up with alternatives to the classical large Nation State or the reductionist New World Order. Fortunately, many economists have clearly described the bribe, divide, and conquer strategies of the New World Order and have suggested alternative ways to conduct a more civil and environmentally sound society.(24, 25, 26) Such changes will require a radical change from the current Newtonian world view of crisis, chaos, pollution and decay to a entropy world view which emphasizes the reduction of disorder in all aspects of society.(27) Care must also be taken to avoid tactical quick fix solutions to socioeconomic problems. This will require thoughtful consideration of strategic system theory principles before engineering cultural changes.(28) Europeans must carefully consider such alternative voices in the wilderness or the next century will even more tragic! Bibliography : (1) U.S. President Bill Clinton In a speech delivered the day before his televised address to the American people about the crisis in Kosovo, Quoted in "The Case Against Intervention in Kosovo", by Benjamin Schwarz and Christopher Layne, The Nation Magazine, April 19, 1999 issue. (2) Sean Gervasi, "Why is NATO in Yugoslavia" presented at the 1996 Prague Conference on the Enlargement of NATO. (3) Caspian Sea: U.S. Experts Say Oil Reserves Are Huge By Charles Fenyvesi Washington, 5 May 1998 (RFE/RL) (4) US and EU scrambling to tap the natural resources of the Caspian region by Ivan Vlahov http://www.onlinebg.com/sofiaecho/se36-98/business/gas.htm (5) Pipeline Superhighway Replaces The Silk Road By Stuart Parrott London, 19 November 1997 (RFE/RL) (6) Campbell, C.J. and Laherrere, J. H. 1998. The End of Cheap Oil. Scientific American March, 1998. pp78-84. (7) Bosphorus Straits Regulation and Central Asian Oil. At http://gurukul.ucc.american.edu/ted / BOSPORUS.htm. (8) Arnould, M. and Epple, R. France Moves to Channelize the Rhone, World Rivers Review, February 1997 (9) The Basic Multilateral Agreement on International Transport for Development of the Europe - the Caucasus - Asia Corridor" Baku 8th September 1998 http://www.azembassy.com/traceca/browse.htm (10) Gross, A. Inches close to the deal of the century: Will the Oil Road cross Romania. IR Magazine 7. (http://www.investromania.ro/magazine/archive/ir7/7caspian.html) (11) Silk Road Declaration. Declaration between Armenia, Azerbaijan, Georgia, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyz Republic, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan and Uzbekistan. April 24, 1999 http://www.azembassy.com/traceca/browse.htm (12) U.S.-EU statement on caspian energy. May 18, 1998 http://www.usis-israel.org.il/publish/econews/1998/may/eco0519b.html (13) Chossudovsky, M. "The Globalization of Poverty, Impacts of IMF and World Bank Reforms" (1997, Zed Books). (14) Jackson, J. Presentation to eleven African heads of state, Liberville, Gabon, May 27, 1993. (15) Senator Richard Lugar. "NATO: Out of Area or Out of Business", Remarks Delivered to the Open Forum of the US State Department, August 2, 1993, Washington, D.C. (16) US Representative Randy `Duke' Cunningham, 51st Congressional District. KOSOVO (House of Representatives - May 05, 1999) [[Page: H2785] [TIME: 2045]] (17) Cockburn, A and St Clair, J. 1999. Clark at Waco? [EMAIL PROTECTED] (18) STRATFOR. Analysis of NATO's ground invasion options. April 14, 1999. (19) Mattlage, A. A chronology of the Zionist-Arab conflict. Dept. of Philosophy. St. Cloud State Univ. St. Cloud, MN 56301 (online). (20) Cohen, A. in Analyst says west has stake in NIS oil development by Rose, W. USIS Staff Writer Daily Washington File. 11/02/95 (21) Starr, S. F. Gloomy thoughts: scenario for a meltdown in central Asia and the Caucasus. Central Asia-Caucasus Institute, SAIS. notes. The Paul H. Nitze School of Advanced International Studies of the John Hopkins University May 1999 (22) Cohen, A. Ethnic conflicts threaten u.s. interests in the Caucasus The Heritage Foundation Backgrounder No.1222. September 25, 1998 (23) Starr, S. F. Being rich will not be enough oil and policy in central Asia and the Caucasus. briefing paper Central Asia-Caucasus Institute, SAIS. The Paul H. Nitze School of Advanced International Studies of the John Hopkins University (24) Korten, D. 1995. "When Corporations Rule the World" Kumarian Press, Inc. and Berrett-Kohler Publishers, Inc. (25) The End of Work. 1995. The Decline of the Global Labor Force and the Dawn of the Post-Market Era. G.P. Putnam's Sons (26) Chomsky, N. 1999. Profit over people:Neoliberalism and Global Order. Seven Stories. (27) Rifkin, J. 1980. Entropy A New World View. Foundation on Economic Trends. Viking Press (28) Senge, P. 1990. The Fifth Discipline. The Art and Practice of the Learning Organization. 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