THE CHIEF MOTIVE OF THE BALKANS WAR
by R. Schleyer, Eugene, Oregon, USA".
Posted: 21 March, 2000
Ronald Schleyer has a master's degree in journalism from the University of Montana. He is a former news writer and editor and has worked across the northern half of the United States, as well as in Europe and the Middle East.
Many people suspect a deep strategic reason behind
NATO's seemingly facile attack on the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia. In fact, there is a certain
rationale for the Balkans war, a closely held view entertained by its
instigators. They know this conflict as a necessary thrust in an ongoing,
aggressive, long-term, strategic World War conceived almost a century ago by a
British imperialist and cunning sophist of formidable rank. His name was Halford
John Mackinder (1861-1947).
Mackinder, a rather clever geographer with a
murderous Mission, had an idea so beguiling that, even today it animates the
likes of Madeleine Albright, Wesley Clark, Samuel R. Berger, William Cohen,
Richard Holbrooke, and others who take what they imagine is an "intellectual"
view of statecraft.
Mackinder proudly defended British imperial power and is
accurately characterized as an Imperialist. He was knighted for his
contributions, chiefly intellectual, to its maintenance and advancement.
However, Mackinder consciously directed his writings toward the U.S. audience
right from the start because he deeply believed that his own theory called for
this.
Mackinder's homicidal geopolitics now lies at the core of U.S.
military indoctrination (more on this below). The theory specifically cultivates
the goal of subjugating the world. It postulates and persuasively argues the
supposed necessity for continuous war of "enlightened" Seamen
against
"autocratic" Landsmen for domination of the Landsmen's "Heartland,"
thereby attaining the power to "command" the world! In a typically arrogant
British manner, it claims all wisdom and innate "democratic ideals" for
itself.
The Serbians, of course, perceived NATO's countrywide rain of
bombs on roads, bridges, industrial plants, schools, and hospitals as a grave
and unbelievably insane crime, and often asserted that the war was "demented."
They never suspected the war's rational explanation in longstanding
western
geopolitical strategy. It is true that the intellectual sham and
humbug of the Heartland theory has been convincingly exposed in the English
language only in academic circles. Still, it seems incredible that the
professors at Belgrade University never discerned Yugoslavia's unfortunate place
as the doormat of the Heartland until the bombs began to fall.
It should
be borne in mind that, in prosecuting Mackinder's "all for the Heartland"
theory, Yugoslavia's enemies are philosophically ignorant. They think
atomistically and abstractly and are utterly unaware that their conception of
"democratic" (the title of Mackinder's principal work begins with this word) is
thoroughly non-organic. Thus, they totally misconceive the true idea of the
Nation-State, which is exhibited only in Continental philosophy.
As is
well known, the dominant American philosophy has been a bald-faced Pragmatism
for more than a century. The country's leading lights were thus prepared to be
deceived by Mackinder's mechanistic historical geography and clever sophistical
powers in 1919 on first introduction to the Heartland theory. Hence they have
entertained the mad professor's dangerous ideas over and over again, as proven
by the periodic republication of Mackinder's writings over an eighty-year
period, and now for the first time (see below) by the U.S. National Defense
University.
WORLD WAR AGAINST WORLD PEACE
British intellectuals call Mackinder the "father of modern British
geography." In "Democratic Ideals and Reality" (1919), with rhetorical skill and
deft use of brilliantly constructed maps, Mackinder advanced his theory of
geopolitical aggression, declaring a supposed necessity for continuous World War
of maritime "democratic" against "national" land powers.
Mackinder
especially focused on East Europe for strategic control of what he called "The
Heartland" and on the Heartland (including much of the territory of the Slavic
nations) for domination of the "World Island" (Europe, the Near East, Asia, and
Africa). Here is a characteristically catchy aphorism,
taken from the book:
"Who Rules East Europe Commands the Heartland
Who Rules the Heartland
Commands the World-Island
Who Rules the World-Island Commands the
World"
Left-wing academic analysts who advised the Serbian people (e.g.,
Michel Collon, "Secret Strategies on Kosovo" (SMISAO #6 (1/99)) negligently
failed to point out the ultimate danger of the geopolitical theory behind the
decade-long aggression against Federal Yugoslavia. Though entering the
intellectual life of the world as long ago as 1904, Mackinder's conceptions
enjoyed a resurgence in United States military circles especially after the fall
of the Soviet Union. Steps in the Balkans aggression, with its
strategic goal
clear only to the perpetrators in Washington, London, and Bonn, began shortly
thereafter. Major milestones were reached in 1992, 1995, and 1998.
The
U.S. "National Defense University" in 1996 republished the main body of
Mackinder's work (under the same title as given above) with a foreword by U.S
Air Force Lt. Gen. Ervin Rokke, President of that institution. The book is
currently for sale by the U.S. Government Printing Office (GPO) in Washington,
D.C., and is being used to indoctrinate military officers in Mackinder's
fratricidal exhortation to geopolitical conquest.
"In 1942," Rokke says,
"Allied strategic planners . . . recognized the value of Mackinder's work, which
they used in engineering the defeat of Germany" (!). Rokke states that the
entire anti-Soviet Cold War (1947-1991) was merely an interlude, freely
admitting the greater struggle for supremacy over the World Island by the
maritime powers. "Regional strategic concerns," he says, force the NATO powers
"to once again rely" on Mackinder's "classic" formulation of geopolitical war
for world domination.
Mackinder's book was translated into German shortly
after its first publication in 1919, because in it he acknowledges the desire of
what was then an independent Germany to unite German-speaking peoples of East
Europe. Mackinder was subsequently blamed for the Lebensraum strategy of the
Third Reich, which actually was founded on the work of German master political
geographer Gen. Karl Haushofer, who of course had read
Mackinder.
Haushofer, a university professor, was styled in a post-WWII
biography as "a sheep in wolf's clothing" because he kept aloof from the NSDAP
and was not a career officer. None of Haushofer's many German works has been
translated into English, which may be indirect proof that the current
interpreters of Mackinder's wisdom retain their desire to continue to
subordinate Germany under British and U.S. control for their own
purposes.
The people of the whole world, first of all in Europe, face
grave dangers in the escalating geopolitical war pursued by the Mackinderlings
in Washington. Opinion leaders therefore must confront the long-departed mind of
the great imperialist Mackinder and his continuing influence on those who would
risk
universal destruction for a strictly partial, grossly non-organic,
merely superficial conception of democratic ideals and the nature of the modern
Nation-State. In fact, a clearer illustration can hardly be found that all
gravely misanthropic ideas--in this case conceived for avowedly Imperialist
ends--have a devilish life of their own and must be throttled and buried by
those who have the power to do so.
Tragically, the atrocious U.S./NATO
bombardment of Yugoslavia promoted the same type of vicious war-craft denounced
so eloquently a half-century ago by F.J.P. Veale in his memorable book "Advance
to Barbarism." The continuing NATO aggression behind the mask of KFOR, led by
the United States of America, perpetuates and accentuates the world tragedy by
wrecking confidence in the United Nations.
Meanwhile, even today, the
Serbians barely realize that in defending their country's sovereignty and
territorial integrity, they are most of all preserving the very concept of
freedom from otherwise certain death. Hence one of the anti-war movement's most
striking slogans: "God save Serbia from her unholy enemies! She defends
the World!" The historical proof of this lies just around the corner,
as the nations in a bright new century confront the dark legacy of Halford
Mackinder's fratricidal cogitations.
R Schleyer
