Author: Academician
Milorad
Ekmecic
WHAT DOES AMERICA REALLY WANT IN THE
BALKANS?
Today barroom politicians use to say that
it is America that created Yugoslavia in 1918 and broke it up in 1992. To say
that means to disregard a crucial fact that the America of 1918 and that of
1992 are not one and the same. On the eve of 1917 when America entered the war
and when two Americas were marching hand in hand none could predict that the
gap between these two Americas would grow so wide and the opposition so great
as to make it almost impossible to believe that they had ever, as people,
belonged to the same nation. The first America was the nation educated by
Calvinistic teachers who believed in the sovereign right of each nation to
self-determination as a stepping stone to democracy. It is from that angle of
vision that the first America considered Yugoslavia as one linguistic entity
and fought for its democratic unity. Woodrow Wilson was one of the most
prominent personalities professing these Calvinistic ideals. He is famous for
saying that he " did not know of any instance in history in which political
advance had been made by benefits granted from above; they all had to be
gained by the efforts and the bloods of the elements from below."
This is the reason behind Wilson's refusal to
send marines to crush the rebellion in Mexico with the explanation that it is
up to each sovereign nation to build its own democratic state by itself. He
also refused to establish a big standing army and navy, because, in his view,
they would inevitably militerize the foreign and internal policy of the
country and provide for the domination of powerful intelligence services, thus
bringing about the destruction of the very foundation of American democracy
and its tradition. Wilson's support to the creation of unified Yugoslavia
stemmed from the principle that any solution based on the sovereignty of a
nation could not be permanent. The scholars, members of " The Inquiry
Group" in charge of determining the American war aims for the Peace Conference
in 1919 supported, as basic, the idea that "scientists may safely conclude
that any solution which does not treat the Yugoslavs as one nation is based on
unscientific foundations, and hence cannot be considered a permanent
solution". In 1917 this Group asigned to work out the basic democratic
principles of the future Yugoslavia, actually feared that the Catholic church
would try to use Germany as its major powerful tool for the expansion towards
the Christian Orthodox East. This fear was actually the main driving force
behind a successful completion of the project called Yugoslavia. At the same
time this fear was the main reason for not supporting the
restoration of a Catholic Central Europe as an option which would bring
genuine stability to Eastern Europe. Woodrow Wilson also advised the Serbian
king that, whenever faced with the difficulties in the process of establishing
a democratic state in the Balkans he should only opt for a liberal solution.
Moreover, aware of the danger that in Northern Albania traditional anarchy
could be revived among the Albanian tribes Wilson thought that this territory
should either be incorporated in the state of Yugoslavia, or placed under the
trusteeship of the League of Nations.
The Calvinistic concept of "Covenant Democracy"
did not prevail, either in the American domestic or foreign policy. The actual
winners of that historical race are the "Rednecks", a popular name for the
representatives of the big corporations and banks, who are developing their
proper ideology within semi-secret organizations. The main features of that
alternative American future were disigned already in 1915, in the book:
America and the World War by Theodore Roosevelt. Instead of one League
of Nations the author supports the idea to create a League of Winning
Nations, with America as a leader of the industrially most developed European
countries. This list also includes some small countries such as: Belgium,
Holland and Switzerland ( and oddly enough Uruguay too) because of
their " important and honorable role in the development of
civilization!". This League of Nations conceived as some kind of a punitive
force on a global level against those who do not comply with the rules of
the new order. It was to be called "Posse comitatus" but judging by its
description it would rather remind of a group of cowboys from the Wild West in
pursuit of thieves. Within this framework the American foreign policy is based
on the principle "speak softly and carry a big stick". Germany is to be the
next leading nation to America because " the Germans are not merely brothers;
they are largely ourselves'. On the other hand, the Slavs, assessed as not yet
civilized, are not on this list. Evidently, the author of the book displays
ignorance about the Slavs similar to that of average American who confuses
"Yugoslovakia" with "Czechoslovakia". In his view the Americans should not
support the "Czechoslavs" and the "Yugoslavs". According to him the best
solution for the Serbs is to be incorporated in a Catholic Habzburg
state.
It is from the "Redneck Democracy" conceived
before 1914 that the present sumptuous plant of the American foreign and
internal policy has developed. In 1992 Wilson D. Miscamble, historian,
explained that the American government had honored its commitment to support
the Yugoslav state so long as Marshal Tito represented a model of internal
corrosion for the USSR. The very moment the Catholic nations of the
Eastern Europe started offering their more radical assistance in this
regard the American government responded by providing support to the Catholic
parts of Yugoslavia and their separatism.
The first victim of this change in approach was
the principle of sovereignty of people as a basic in democratic state.
Instead, the idea of "Nations without states" was gaining support, as
promoted by Gidon Gottlieb in "Foreign Affairs" of May 1994. It was, actually,
a redrafted philosophical idea of the Austrian authors Ludwig Von Mises and
Friedrich Hayek, from 1919. According to Gottlieb the principle of
sovereignty "must be supplemented by new scheme that is less territorial
in character and more regional in scope". This practically meant American
political support to a slow transformation of integral Yugoslavia as a
state by encouraging the Catholic and Islamic separatism. In addition to that,
due to the crisis of communism in Eastern Europe and the disintegration
of the Soviet Union the integral state of Yugoslavia lost support
from that side too. At first the idea was to support the
establishment of network of cantons with self-administration on the
ruins of Yugoslavia, which would be followed by independance of the states
recognized by NATO. It was practically the approach of Count Julius Andrassy
before the Berlin Congress in 1878. Bosnia and Hertzegovina were to be
occupied because they do not have " a national of their own and tend to
unite with Serbia, thus threatening the stability of the whole Central
European system. In 1996 Henry Kissinger properly described the outcome
of that approach in the following way:" When NATO recognized Bosnia as an
independent state it did not mean the birth of new state but the
beginning of civil war."
Nowdays the aim of the American government
is not to set up a system of stable, democratic states in the Balkans. As
Woodrow Wilson feared already in 1914, America has become a global
militaristic state, by its intelligence services transformed into a police
state, like any other such state. For America all solutions for the Balkans
are only the means, not the ends. The fundamental democratic criteria the
American government recognizes are not free elections and a multi party
system, but readiness to accept NATO military control over the national
territory and national foreign policy.
The war NATO started against Yugoslavia on March
24 last year was a "video game war", as suggested in July 1994 by David
Gompert, Vice_Chairman of Rand Corporation and Senior director for Europe and
Euroasia in the Bush administration, because, according to him , the Serbs
only understand the language of force. "A sustained economic and information
war against Serbia should in time topple the Belgrade regime and permit a
better solution. Industrial demise and wretched living conditions should
create pressure for change.... Isolation and misery should produce a
democratic revolution and leaders eager to earn a place for the Serbs in the
society of nations. We should commit to quarantine Serbia until the virus it
carries has been eradicated."
Today, the Balkans is a battle ground of the
adventurous policy pursued by the industrialized Central Europe, like in
1878, 1914 and 1941. By bombing the Serbs in Bosnia in 1995 and the Serbia in
1999 America is actually writing a new "Declaration of Independence" of a
militaristic and police state for the next century.
This is my answer to the
question posed in the title.
Mrs Jela Jovanovic, art historian
