http://www.dissidentvoice.org/2008/02/condi-vs-putin-on-bullying-belgrade/
DISSIDENT VOICE (USA)
Condi vs. Putin on Bullying Belgrade
"Rice Holds Serbia Responsible"
by Gary Leupp / February 26th, 2008
(February 23.) The Reuters headline reads: "Rice holds Serbia responsible
for US embassy attack."
Reading this I couldn't help thinking about the ultimatum delivered to the
Belgrade government in July 23, 1914 by representatives of the
Austro-Hungarian Empire. Yes, I know it's a stretch and we're not in a
similar crisis (yet), but I can't help noticing even distant historical
parallels.
Recall from high school history class that Austria-Hungary blamed Serbia for
the assassination of Austrian Archduke Franz Ferdinand in Sarajevo, Bosnia
on June 28 by Gavrilo Princep, a member of the Serbian minority in Bosnia.
Bosnia's mixed population of Orthodox Serbs, Catholic Croats, and Muslims
had been under Austro-Hungarian administration since 1878.
In the Herzegovinian Rebellion of 1875 peasants - Serbian and Croatian serfs
of Muslim beys or overlords - in what was then Ottoman Turkish territory
rose up in protest of unbearable tax burdens. Serbia, technically still part
of the Ottoman Empire but independent de facto since 1868, and the tiny
Princedom of Montenegro intervened on the side of the rebels, and were soon
joined by Russia, Romania and Bulgaria. At the Congress of Berlin in 1878
Bosnia-Herzegovina was ceded to Vienna. The Ottoman Empire retained formal
overlordship, but in 1908 Austria-Hungary (over considerable protest by
Serbia and Russia) annexed the state outright.
Gavrilo Princep was a Pan-Slavist, a member of the secret Black Hand society
committed to the ideal of a Yugoslavia or "state of southern Slavs:" Serbs,
Croats, Bosnians, Montenegrans, Slovenians. Perhaps he thought that killing
Franz Ferdinand and his wife Sophia would abet that cause. If so, maybe he
was right: just 18 million deaths and four years later, as one of the many
outcomes of the "Great War," the "Kingdom of Serbs, Croats and Slovenes,"
was proclaimed, renamed in "Kingdom of Yugoslavia" in 1929.
We need to remind ourselves that World War I started as a confrontation
between Serbian nationalists, and imperialists delivering ultimatums while
meddling in the Balkans.
The message from the Austro-Hungarians to Belgrade in July 1914 held the
Serbia government responsible for the attack on their archduke:
"The Royal Serbian Government . . . has [since the annexation of 1908]
tolerated the criminal machinations of various societies and associations
directed against the [Austro-Hungarian] Monarchy, unrestrained language on
the part of the press, glorification of the perpetrators of outrages,
participation of officers and officials in subversive agitation, unwholesome
propaganda in public education, in short tolerated all the manifestations of
a nature to inculcate in the Serbian population hatred of the Monarchy and
contempt for its institutions ."
Accusing the Serbian government of complicity in the assassination, hatched
(it alleged) in Belgrade, the message then presents 10 demands. Most pertain
to curbing "propaganda against the Monarchy" by Serbian journalists and
officials, and demanding cooperation in prosecuting those responsible for
hostile actions against Austria-Hungary. But the fifth (and most important)
requires Serbia "[t]o accept the collaboration in Serbia of organs of [the
Austro-Hungarian government] in the suppression of the subversive movement
directed against the territorial integrity of the Monarchy."
Serbia then, in a generally reconciliatory message, denying any
responsibility for the assassinations ("the crime"), offered to "hand over
for trial any Serbian subject" that Vienna could prove was involved. To the
fifth demand it responded:
"[The Serbian government does] not clearly grasp the meaning or the scope of
the demand . . that Serbia shall undertake to accept the collaboration of
the representatives of [Austria-Hungary], but they declare that they will
admit such collaboration as agrees with the principle of international law,
with criminal procedure, and with good neighborly relations."
In other words, the Serbs rejected occupation. This rejection offered
Austria-Hungary an excuse to invade.
Flash forward to March 1999, when Condoleezza Rice's predecessor, U.S.
Secretary of State Madeleine Albright, offered Serbia another ultimatum. She
ordered the Yugoslav army out of the Yugoslav "breakaway" province of
Kosovo. The "Rambouillet Agreement" signed by U.S., British, and Kosovar
Albanian separatists that month further demanded that NATO forces receive
"free and unrestricted access throughout [Yugoslavia] including . . . the
right of bivouac, maneuver, billet, and utilization of any areas or
facilities as required for support, training and operations."
Agree to that, Belgrade was told, or we will bomb you.
Yugoslavia, born out of World War I, had been falling apart for eight years.
The dream of southern pan-Slavism had given way to long-dormant nationalisms
and the nightmare of ethnic cleansing. The Serbs, with the largest
member-state in the Yugoslav federation, had watched Slovenia, Croatia,
Bosnia-Herzegovina, and Macedonia secede. Now the U.S. and its allies were
demanding that Belgrade give up Kosovo, the Serbian Jerusalem, the Serbian
heartland.
Belgrade was willing to restore the autonomy, the de facto republic status
Kosovo had enjoyed until 1989. It was willing to accept UN peacekeeping
forces in Kosovo. It had the year before accepted unarmed Organization of
Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE) forces. But it was not willing to
give NATO unbridled access to the roads and airspace of all that remained of
Yugoslavia. The "scope of the demand" (to again cite the 1914 Serbian reply
to Vienna) was such that no sovereign state could accept.
But the spin in the U.S. corporate press was well expressed by CNN's
Christiane Amanpour: "Milosevic continues to thump his nose at the
international community." The U.S.-dictated "agreement," rejected by Russia
and Yugoslavia, was depicted as a reasonable international consensus.
Belgrade, which had maintained neutrality between NATO and the Warsaw Pact
for decades, naturally resisted an unlimited alliance presence in its
territory. But the logic of this stance was obscured by the anti-Serbian
propaganda relentlessly unleashed by the U.S. press and the statements of
U.S. officials charging the Serbian state with responsibility for mass
murder in Kosovo. It later became clear that the charges were wildly
overblown, while attacks upon Serbs, their property and holy places were
generally ignored by those demanding U.S. military action.
That action killed about 500 civilians, according to Human Rights Watch.
Since the bombing ended and NATO occupied Kosovo, thousands more have died
in anti-Serbian pogroms. Between June 1999 and March 2004, by one estimate,
over 3,000 perished in ethnic-based violence in Kosovo. Over 200,000 Serb
have fled their Kosovo homeland since 1999.
It's taken all that infliction of suffering to finalize the humiliation of
Yugoslavia, born in 1918. It's taken all that to cut out its heart, the site
of the Battle of Kosovo Polje against the Ottoman Turks in 1389. (Kosovo
Polje by the way was also the site of a pogrom against Serbs that killed 28
people in March 2004. "Kristallnacht is under way in Kosovo," declared a UN
official at the time.) It's hardly surprising that angry Serbian youth would
attack the U.S. embassy in Belgrade, enraged at the speedy U.S. recognition
of Kosovo independence.
In the wake of that expression of outrage the U.S. secretary of state issued
a veiled threat to Belgrade. "They had an obligation to protect diplomatic
missions," fumes Rice (who has no problem raiding an Iranian consulate in
Iraq), "and, from what we can tell, the police presence was either
inadequate or unresponsive at the time. We do hold the Serb government
responsible. We've made that very clear. We don't expect that to happen
again."
But it probably will happen again. And anyway, if Rice can hold the Serbian
government responsible for the attack on the U.S. embassy, the Serbs can
surely hold the U.S. represented by that embassy responsible for multiple
attacks on their country. Serbian security forces will demand to remain in
the north of their Kosovo province. Albania, which hopes to join NATO this
year, threatens to take action if Serbia attempts to partition Kosovo. There
will probably be more violence, more blowback from the 1999 war, more
fingers pointing blame, more imperialist ultimatums.
While Condi talks tough to Serbia, what does Serbia's powerful ally,
President Vladimir Putin of Russia, say (as it were) in reply?
"The precedent of Kosovo is a terrible precedent, which will de facto blow
apart the whole system of international relations, developed not over
decades, but over centuries. [The Americans] have not thought through the
results of what they are doing. At the end of the day it is a two-ended
stick and the second end will come back and hit them in the face."
This from a man who understands something of the history of the Slavs, the
Balkans, the horrific wars twentieth-century wars in Europe, and the
infinitely cruel potentialities of U.S. imperialism. I'm no Putin fan, but I
think he's assigned blame appropriately. He's holding Washington responsible
for what happens next. He might state (like Rice) that he doesn't "expect
it" - another provocation of NATO at his doorsteps - " to happen again."
But how can there not be follow-up since the Kosovar Serbs are going to
refuse inclusion into what they see as a bastard state; the new government
in Pristina is likely to challenge Serbian "secessionists" with force; and
Albania threatens to de-recognize existing borders between itself, Serbia
and Macedonia with its large Albanian minority? There will be hell to pay
for this "dangerous precedent."
* * * *
(February 24.) Reuters now reports that Serbia's minister for Kosovo,
Slobodan Samardzic, in what is perhaps a response to Rice, assigns
responsibility for the embassy attack rather differently than the U.S.
secretary of state. Paraphrased by Reuters, he suggests the "United States
was to blame for this week's attacks on foreign embassies in Belgrade . . ."
Samardzic declares: "The U.S. is the major culprit for all troubles since
Feb 17. The root of violence is the violation of international law. The
Serbian government will continue to call on the U.S. to take responsibility
for violating international law and taking away a piece of territory from
Serbia." Serbian Prime Minister Vojislav Kostunica adds, according to AP:
"If the United States sticks to its position that the fake state of Kosovo
exists.all responsibility in the future will be on the United States."
Take responsibility, Rice demands of Serbia. Take responsibility, Serbia
backed by Russia demands of the U.S. There's a fundamental disconnect here
between historical perceptions. The official American one is deeply
distorted by the Clinton-era disinformation campaign used to justify the
Kosovo War, and by the cultivated depiction of the U.S. as the virtuous
victim of embassy attacks (most nobaly the Iranian "embassy hostage crisis"
episode in 1979-81) and terrorist actions undertaken by people who
supposedly "hate our freedoms." No U.S. presidential candidate is going to
challenge this misrepresentation of the origins of the current crisis. U.S.
policy will be to stabilize Kosovo, draw it into the NATO fold alongside
Albania, and maintain the massive Bondsteel military base it has established
in Kosovo. But Serbian and Russian policy will try to thwart these
objectives. History does not really repeat itself, and this is not 1914. But
it's a good time to revisit that history, consider the near-term
possibilities, and organize opposition to further U.S. aggression in the
Balkans.
Gary Leupp is a Professor of History, and Adjunct Professor of Comparative
Religion at Tufts University, and author of numerous works on Japanese
history. He can be reached at: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
<mailto:gleupp%40granite.tufts.edu> .
