-Caveat Lector- >From NewsMax.CoM The West Begins to Crack: U.S. Policy May Be Diplomatic Suicide J. R. Nyquist April 19, 1999 With 80,000 Russians volunteering to fight NATO and 30,000 U.S. reservists being called to active duty, Bill Clinton's leadership continues to propel Europe toward war. But Europe may not follow Clinton's lead to the bitter end. European leaders are beginning to realize the depth of Russia's anger and the potential consequences. Consider the following formula: If you want bad relations, insult a government. But if you want war, insult a nation. By assuming that Russia cares more about IMF money than its own national dignity, the Clinton Administration has offered a powerful insult to the Russian people. As Clinton takes blatant advantage of Russia's economic distress to wage war on Russia's ally, dislike for America has gone from 28 percent in Russia to 72 percent. Reflecting this, politicians from the mayor of Moscow on up to the President of the Russian Federation have openly warned of a third world war. Observing Russia's anger, taking note of Russian warnings, many in Western Europe are beginning to wonder. Can they continue to follow a NATO leader who openly advocates the violation of NATO's own charter, who flouts international law, who treats a nuclear superpower with galling contempt, and who casually breaks oft-repeated promises about the "peaceableness" of NATO's eastward expansion? The Russians have good reason to be furious. Clinton's words have not matched his deeds. Two thirds of the Russian people expect NATO will soon attack Russia. Trust and good will between the world's nuclear superpowers has been effectively destroyed. Consequently, Russia is making dangerous moves of its own. More than 30 vessels of Russia's Black Sea Fleet have been mobilized for war exercises which are slated to continue until 28 April, while units of the Ukrainian navy have also put to sea. In fact, Russian naval units are presently engaged in readiness exercises from Vladivostok to Murmansk. On the Western side of the equation, after a disastrous week of bombing, France has begun to distance itself from Washington, suggesting it is too risky to confront Russia with total war. At the same time Germany begins to play the role of middleman between Washington and Moscow. Are Europe's continental powers beginning to mark out a more equivocal position, hoping to avoid the destruction that a widened war might bring? Is the United States rushing headlong into diplomatic suicide and the breakup of NATO? As the situation in the Balkans continues to deteriorate, France and Germany are bound to be the first countries to feel the heat. The French remember that it was Russia that defeated Napoleon, and the Germans know it was Russia that defeated Hitler. If Europe's greatest war leaders could not stand against the ever "backward" Russians, who can safely take them on today? Is Clinton respected as a military genius? Are we to rank him with Roosevelt or Churchill, as he bites his lower lip -- feeling the world's pain? The Russians are a proud people, not nearly as comfortable or compromising as those in the West. Russians have always been more ready to sacrifice themselves in war. This truth was first observed by Frederick the Great over two hundred years ago. Sadly, this truth has been lost on Bill Clinton. As Russia's war preparations continue, the significance of French and German diplomacy cannot be overstated. Should America press forward without French or German support, she will lose her position in Europe altogether. If this should happen, Moscow would win a great diplomatic victory. And the victory would likely prove the first episode in a renewed Cold War -- a Cold War that would begin with a Russian proxy controlling the strategic minerals of South Africa and the Cape sea route to the Middle East oil. (South African President Nelson Mandela has already declared which side his country will choose -- the Russian side.) But the consequences of Clinton's Balkan campaign have yet to be considered by U.S. officials. In Washington they are acting as if Russia no longer matters. But in reality it is Washington that might cease to matter. In fact, if Yeltsin's threat of World War III bears out, Washington might even cease to exist. Whatever one may say about the French, at least they have the sense to be afraid of what Russia's nuclear arsenal can do. But General Wesley Clark of NATO is not afraid. He recently summed up the American position when he said: "We're going to continue with the mission exactly as planned regardless of political and diplomatic atmospherics." In Clark's view Russian war preparations are mere "atmospherics." In this instance, the disregard equals disrespect. Sadly, it is America that has forgotten its good manners. It is America that does not realize the military weakness into which it has fallen. It was only last October that the Pentagon itself complained about the deplorable state of the nation's military. Now we are to believe something quite the opposite -- that we are the world's only superpower. If U.S. policy in the Balkans is not military suicide, it may yet prove to be diplomatic suicide. >From Reuters (via CommonDreams.OrG) Monday April 19 6:30 AM ET Moscow Stands By Milosevic Reuters Photo Full Coverage NATO - Serbia War BRUSSELS (Reuters) - Russian President Boris Yeltsin warned the West Monday he would not allow it to defeat President Slobodan Milosevic and establish control over Yugoslavia. Yeltsin, speaking hours before a scheduled telephone conversation with President Clinton, said Moscow could not ditch Milosevic whom the West has accused of war crimes. Clinton had asked for the telephone call to seek a solution to the crisis in Yugoslavia, which NATO has been bombing for nearly four weeks to end what it calls Belgrade's attempt to empty the southern Serbian province of Kosovo of its ethnic Albanian majority. The 19-nation alliance called off most of its air raids overnight because of bad weather in the Balkans. Kosovo Albanian guerrillas pleaded Monday for NATO tactical air strikes to save thousands of cold and hungry refugees trapped in the mountains of central Kosovo from Serbian shelling. A Kosovo Liberation Army (KLA) official said some 40,000 refugees sheltering in the Berisha mountains had come under heavy fire since Sunday. The United Nations refugee agency, the UNHCR, said Monday Yugoslav forces appeared to be turning back ethnic Albanians trying to leave the country. UNHCR spokesman Kris Janowski said the latest flow of refugees from Kosovo into Albania had stopped overnight. He said refugees had also stopped crossing into the neighboring former Yugoslav republic of Macedonia and Montenegro, which with Serbia makes up the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia. British Prime Minister Tony Blair vowed to force Milosevic to pull his troops out of Kosovo and return the province to ''the people to whom it belongs.'' ``You will be made to withdraw from Kosovo,'' Blair said in speech addressed to Milosevic. Yeltsin, whose earlier attempts to mediate in the conflict have failed, met top security officials Monday, including Prime Minister Yevgeny Primakov and newly appointed Kosovo envoy Viktor Chernomyrdin, to work out Russia's strategy. ``Bill Clinton hopes that Yugoslav President Slobodan Milosevic will capitulate, give up the whole of Yugoslavia. We will not allow this. This is a strategic place,'' Itar-Tass news agency quoted Yeltsin as saying. Russian news agencies quoted Yeltsin as saying that during his conversation with Clinton he would reiterate Moscow's call for a halt to NATO air strikes to allow more talks. Interfax news agency quoted Yeltsin as saying Russia would exercise ``restraint'' in handling the Kosovo crisis, but it would maintain close ties with Milosevic. It quoted him as saying: ``We simply cannot ditch Milosevic. We want to embrace him as tight as possible.'' Russia has bitterly denounced NATO air strikes but made clear it will not get drawn into the conflict militarily. Washington said it had the support for the war from the states surrounding Serbia, to which hundreds of thousands of Kosovo Albanians have fled. ``All of the leaders made clear that they stand behind what NATO is doing, that President Milosevic is isolated and that his brutality and repression will not go unanswered,'' a spokesman said of Clinton's telephone calls to Hungary, Bulgaria, Albania and Romania. Yugoslavia severed diplomatic relations with Albania Sunday, accusing it of siding with NATO. Despite criticism that 26 days of NATO air strikes had failed to stop the killings and deportations in Kosovo, Secretary of State Madeleine Albright said Sunday there was no immediate plan for ground troops. But she added: ``That assessment can be quickly updated and that is where we are.'' Blair, addressing what he described as a simple message to Milosevic, said Monday an international military force ``will go in to secure the land for the people to whom it belongs.'' ``The dispossessed refugees of Kosovo will be brought back into possession of that which is rightfully theirs. Our determination on these points -- the minimum demands civilization makes -- is absolute,'' he said. Hundreds of thousands of refugees have streamed out of Kosovo since to escape Yugoslav forces. But those unable to cross into neighboring countries have taken to the hills of central Kosovo. ``There is no escape for anyone from this area,'' Sokol Bashota, a member of the KLA General Headquarters, told Reuters by telephone. ``They are coming at us from three directions and there are Serb forces in place to the south in the Klecka area. We are trapped here and we need NATO's help,'' he said. Western diplomats said the KLA wanted NATO to divert air power to knock out Serbian artillery and drop food and medical supplies to refugees facing starvation and epidemics. ``The KLA is asking why can't Serbian heavy weapons be taken out when it has been reporting their positions to NATO for weeks,'' said a Western military observer who asked not to be named. ``They think it's all very well to blast bridges and oil refineries in Novi Sad but their struggle to shield ethnic Albanian villagers from Serbian attack would be more effective if NATO focused on hitting the Serbs in Kosovo,'' he told Reuters. Novi Sad is the capital of Serbia's northern province of Vojvodina. >From the Boston Globe (www.globe.com) CRISIS IN KOSOVO Serbia's reluctant partner feels a vice close on media Some fear Milosevic effort to provoke civil war By Susan Milligan, Globe Staff, 04/19/99 ODGORICA, Yugoslavia - Armed soldiers in bulletproof vests swarm the building grounds and stand guard on the roof of Radio-TV Montenegro, the state-run broadcast station here, ready for possible attack. For the moment, the offices of the station controlled by the largely anti-Slobodan Milosevic government in Montenegro are safe from physical attack. But the content of the news programming is slipping toward more pro-Serbian views, critics say, as the Milosevic regime in Belgrade slowly tightens its control on the media and intensifies its intimidation of the government of Montenegrin President Milo Djukanovic. ''Of course, the army is trying to take control of the media because it would like to win a propaganda battle,'' said Milka Tadic, director of Monitor, an independent weekly here. ''The pressure from the Yugoslav Army is very strong against the state media and the independent media.'' Montenegro, which, with the much larger Serbia, makes up Yugoslavia, has been highly critical of the Milosevic regime. While Milosevic, Yugoslavia's president, has yet to shut down media outlets critical of him in Montenegro, as he has in Serbia, the noose is tightening, analysts and local journalists warn. The ultimate goal, many fear, is a ''crawling coup'' against Djukanovic - a slow, calculated effort to remove the democratically elected Montenegrin president from office through either an army takeover or the provocation of a civil war here. ''The Yugoslav war, metaphorically speaking, has come here,'' said Miodrag Vlahovic, a former member of Parliament from the Liberal Party. ''It is a crawling coup ... to impose a martial law, but in a quiet way.'' Both foreign and local media have come under increasing threat here, and local independent media fear Milosevic may ultimately try shut them down. Radio-TV Montenegro is now showing an unedited, half-hour news program from Milosevic-controlled Radio-TV Serbia, or RTS. The move is widely believed to be a response to pressure from the government in Belgrade. Velibor Covic, the Montenegrin station's editor in chief, acknowledged that adding RTS to his station's programming was not his idea, but said it did not greatly damage the integrity of the station. Covic said he also is able to run some programming from Western media as well, and ''more or less, they are all lying.'' ''If I don't'' allow the Serbian program to be broadcast, ''an important minority in Montenegro would say I am trying to hide something,'' Covic said. ''Serbia represents one side. It wouldn't be fair not to show our viewers that side.'' RTS has been denounced by both NATO and some Montenegrin leaders as propaganda. The Montenegrin TV station had been sending the Serbian station a half-hour of its own programming, but the material was ''mangled'' to represent something different from the original broadcast, so Radio-TV Montenegro no longer sends the tape, Covic said. Djukanovic, who has been walking a dangerously thin line between accommodating NATO and Milosevic, also downplayed the addition of Serbian TV, although he did not deny Montenegro was pressured to run the news program. ''I do not think that Montenegrin democracy is so weak it can be endangered by a half hour of TV programming, no matter what character it may have,'' Djukanovic told reporters. The federal army's rhetoric on the foreign media here is causing another rift with the Montenegrin authorities, who welcome international reporters. Since the NATO bombing began, the army has detained at least four foreign television crews. A Japanese TV crew had its car, equipment, satellite phone, and cash - all valued at about $30,000, according to the crew - seized by the army last week. The army also has declared that some of the 350 foreign journalists who have entered Montenegro have done so ''illegally;'' the Montengrin government is insisting that it, and not the army, has the primary authority to credential journalists. The pro-Milosevic daily Dan yesterday called 14 unnamed foreign journalists ''spies,'' an accusation the Montenegrin government called ''primitive'' and ''without any proof.'' Locally, the army has ordered independent media to stop broadcasting foreign programming, such as Voice of America and Radio Free Europe. Atena M, an independent radio station, has so far defied that order. ''One of the goals of Yugoslavia is to unify central media for their cause,'' said Covic. ''For the Milosevic regime, it would be unusual not to think that way. If that would happen in Montenegro, that would mean a coup.'' Analysts here warn that Milosevic, instead of simply taking control of Montenegro, may try to orchestrate an internal conflict, starting with taking increasing control of information sources. Such a conflict would come from a standoff between the Yugoslav Army, which now has an estimated 20,000 troops in Montenegro, and the local police, who number an estimated 8,000-10,000. Locals are also divided between Djukanovic sympathizers and those who look toward Milosevic. The second group has become more active and vocal since the bombing began. A civil war would create the instability necessary for Milosevic's forces to step in, Vlahovic said. ''I think Milosevic has too much now on his shoulders'' to attempt an outside takeover of Montenegro, said Hilda Zakrajsek, a Montenegrin citizen who is the former acting director of the now-closed American Cultural Center here. But if Milosevic continues to provoke - especially by directing his army to slowly wrest control from the Montenegrin government and police - ''it could really come to a civil war here,'' Zakrajsek said. ''People here live in clans, and even in families, you have brothers with different political views'' who might end up fighting against each other, she said. Montenegrins, with the Serbs and the Kosovar Albanians, share a defiant willingness to defend themselves against attack until the bitter end - even if the attack is coming from a more powerful force. The ethnic Albanians' Kosovo Liberation Army took on the Yugoslav Army, and the Yugoslavs have taken on NATO - despite their enemies outgunning them. Montenegrins are equally ready to fight the Yugoslav Army and its local sympathizers, though they agree the battle would be a brutal one. ''I am not afraid of the Yugoslav Army; I am afraid of an internal conflict,'' said Alem Mlatisuma, 24-year-old news editor of Antena M Radio. ''Nobody wants to start anything.'' But if civil war does break out, ''it would be the bloodiest war in our 1,000-year history,'' he said, with ''fathers on one side, and sons on the other.'' This story ran on page A12 of the Boston Globe on 04/19/99. � Copyright 1999 Globe Newspaper Company. ~~~~~~~~~~~~ A<>E<>R The only real voyage of discovery consists not in seeking new landscapes but in having new eyes. -Marcel Proust + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + Every great advance in natural knowledge has involved the absolute rejection of authority. -Thomas Huxley + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + Forwarded as information only; no endorsement to be presumed + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + In accordance with Title 17 U.S.C. section 107, this material is distributed without charge or profit to those who have expressed a prior interest in receiving this type of information for non-profit research and educational purposes only. DECLARATION & DISCLAIMER ========== CTRL is a discussion and informational exchange list. Proselyzting propagandic screeds are not allowed. Substance�not soapboxing! 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