> I think that we ought to highlight Michel Chossudovsky's > analysis, which squarely puts Yugoslavia among other nations that have > suffered or disintegrated under the weight of external debt payments and > which treats nationalisms not as the cause of the Balkan wars but as > _effects_ of the fundamentally economic problem: the crisis of capitalism > whose dire effects are felt acutely everywhere except in the West, which > has been trying to expand NATO to contain the consequences of the crisis in > the name of 'peace-keeping' and 'human rights.' > Yoshie I'll recycle some info I previously posted... 1) Yugoslavia's initial Five Year Plan (1947-52) called for rapid industrialization requiring imported fuel, food, & raw materials that it could not finance with exports...ran a large trade deficit, most of which was financed by US credits & loans...by end of this period, country was already experiencing what would eventually become chronic: balance of payments and foreign debt problems... 2) between 1948 and 1955 the US gave Yugoslavia US $600 million in direct military assistance and an equal amount in economic aid...moreover, a formal US Military Assistance Advisory Group operated in Belgrade from 1951 to 1961...Yugoslavia used loans and credits to purchase US $1 billion worth of US arms during this period, some of which it is still using - M-4 Sherman & M-47 Patton tanks, M-2 & M-3 half-tracked personnel carriers, artillery, and f-86 Thunderflash fighter-bombers...also, Yugoslav military officers trained in the US during the 1950s... 3) the IMF began substantional loan support to Yugoslavia in 1965... among 1969 World Bank loans that Yugoslavia received were International Finance Corporation (IFC) funds to stimulate private enterprise... 4) The Carter Administration supported increased lending to Yugoslavia (and Poland) in the late 1970s tying it even more to Western banks loans... 5) in 1987, Yugoslavia failed to pay interest on its foreign debt for the first time...IMF forced it to relax foreign exchange controls, open a foreign exchange market, and cut inflation via use of monetarism in exchange for debt rescheduling and new loans... 6) Michael Harrington: "The world capitalist market is working night and day to impose its disciplines, its needs, its priorities, upon the poor countries and to make it even more difficult for them to listen to their own people. Without the presence of a single soldier Western capitalism this makes itself a senior, and often dominant, advisor to the Yugoslavian government." (_Socialism_, p. 295) Michael Hoover >
