http://www.chroniclesmagazine.org/?p=146 Chronicles - A Magazine of
American Culture
Dilettantes, Poseurs, and Idiots
by Srdja Trifkovic
The quality of expert foreign policy analysis and commentary in the
United States has never been lower. During the Cold War many area
specialists (especially East European-born Kremlinologists) were prone
to tailor their analysis to suit their personal prejudices and
ideological preferences, but at least their hold on the basic facts of
history was firm. Today it’s free for all.
The main culprits are the Washingtonian quasi-academic Agitprop outfits
in which not toeing the Party line will cost you your job
<http://www.tnr.com/doc.mhtml?i=w060807&s=ackerman080706>; but things
are hardly better in the commercial sector. “With an unrivalled blend of
strategic and tactical expertise, Stratfor <http://www.stratfor.com/>
specializes in providing situational awareness, focused insight and
actionable intelligence in the areas of geopolitics, security and public
policy to help our clients prepare for uncertainties and take action for
maximizing results,” claims a leading strategic forecasting outfit. Its
“Geopolitical Diary” for June 11, “Kosovo Divides the International
Community
<http://www.stratfor.com/products/premium/read_article.php?id=290043>,”
combines a poseur’s professional tone with a dilettante’s ignorance.
The report opens with the bland assertion that President Bush’s recent
trip to Albania was “historic.” If this term was used in the sense of
“the first by a U.S. President,” then it’s meaningless rhetoric; by the
same token Mr. Bush’s visits to Bulgaria, Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania,
Slovakia, to name but some, have all been “historic.” If it meant
“memorably unprecedented,” we have only the mystery of the President’s
disappearing watch
<http://www.kansascity.com/news/world/story/148000.html> to justify the
claim. If, on the other hand, Stratfor’s analysts seriously believe that
Mr. Bush’s fleeting visit to Europe’s poorest and most lawless country
will be remembered in the annals of anyone’s history (except, perhaps,
those of Albania itself), they are mad.
In the next paragraph comes the straightforward claim that Kosovo “will
be the first real test of relations between the global powers in
decades.” If “decades” is another piece of meaningless rhetoric, then
instead of Stratfor’s geopolitics you may as well read /Wall Street
Journal/ editorials—they come cheaper and take less time. If it is meant
literally—“more than one decade,” i.e. at least 20 years—then the
assertion, presented as fact (“Kosovo will be”), is absurd. Far more
important “tests of relations” were Reagan-Gorbachev summits in December
1987 (eliminating intermediate-range nuclear forces), May-June 1988 (the
INF treaty), or December 1988 (armed forces reduction), not to mention
the ensuing issues of Germany’s unification, the withdrawal of Russian
forces from Central Europe, or—more recently—the major U.S.-Russian
dispute <http://www.armscontrol.org/act/2007_06/MissileDefense.asp> over
Mr. Bush’s plans to deploy an anti-ballistic missile system in
Central/Eastern Europe.
Stratfor’s bland assertion, in the same paragraph, that “the Serbs and
Kosovars are growing impatient with the delays” over the final status of
the province is factually incorrect. While Kosovo’s Albanians are
increasingly impatient for the United States to deliver on the promise
of independence—a reckless and destabilizing promise reiterated by Bush
in Tirana—the Serbs (including the country’s “pro-Western reformist
President, Boris Tadic) want the exact opposite: no artificial and
arbitrary deadlines
<http://www.mfa.gov.yu/Bilteni/Engleski/b301006_e.html#N14>, but the
opening of fresh negotiations without any preconceived outcome.
In the next paragraph comes the remarkable claim that “Serbia still
maintains a tight hold on the province.” Proponents and opponents of
Kosovo’s independence may differ on many points, but both will agree
that this assertion is simply untrue. The former argue that Kosovo is
already /de facto/ independent, and has been since the 1999 NATO
military intervention, which is one reason why Kosovo’s return to
Serbian rule is unthinkable. The latter bewail the fact that not even
symbolic Serbian presence in Kosovo has been allowed by the United
States, in violation of the U.N. Security Council Resolution 1244 that
ended the war.
Stratfor’s assertion that “[t]he relationship between the Albanians and
Serbs in Kosovo now has reached a breaking point” implies the existence
of two equal, equally intransigent camps within the province. It ignores
the reality that the remaining Serbs—less than one-third of the pre-war
population—live in isolated ghettos, subject to occasional pogroms
<http://hrw.org/reports/2004/kosovo0704/7.htm> and constant violence and
harrassment <http://www.savekosovo.org/default.asp?p=3&leader=0&sp=104>.
Stratfor’s depiction of the internal situation in Kosovo is on par with
saying, after the November 10, 1938 Kristallnacht, that “the
relationship between the Germans and Jews in the Reich now has reached a
breaking point.”
“Negotiations between the Serbs and Albanians have failed” is not true,
because there have never been any
<http://www.kosovo.net/news/archive/2007/February_22/2.html> status
negotiations between them. In 2006 Marti Ahtisaari presided over a
series of highly choreographed meetings in Vienna on a host of
peripheral issues (local administration, protection of cultural
monuments, etc) and then issued his plan for Kosovo’s independence that
was, at its heart, completely unrelated to those previous discussions.
“The biggest roadblock for Kosovar independence is Russia,” Stratfor
goes on, “more for Moscow’s own reasons than anything else.” Does this
imply that the U.S. motives for supporting Kosovo’s independence are not
related to “Washington’s own reasons,” however misguided? That Tom
Lantos was not on to something real and bipartisan when he asked some
weeks ago <http://washingtontimes.com/op-ed/20070426-082756-8233r.htm>
“the predominantly Muslim-led governments in this world” and “jihadists
of all color and hue” to take note that in Kosovo we have “yet another
example that the United States leads the way for the creation of a
predominantly Muslim country in the very heart of Europe,” and then
repeated that “the United States stands foursquare for the creation of
an overwhelmingly Muslim country in the very heart of Europe”?
In any event, for a foreign policy analyst to “reveal” that a great
power supports an issue “more for her own reasons than anything else” is
the intellectual and logical equivalent of a behavioral scientist
“revealing” that the activities of and interactions among groups and
individuals are motivated “more by their survival than anything else.”
Stratfor’s brief reference to history is in the same league: “Over the
past century,” it says, “Moscow has promoted itself as the protector of
Serbia, a fellow Slavic state.” In fact, “over the past century” Serbia
did not exist as a “state” between 1918 and 2003, while it was part of
Yugoslavia. During that period the relations with Moscow were
non-existent between 1918 and 1940, because the Kingdom of Yugoslavia
refused to recognize the Soviet state. In April 1941 Stalin did not move
a little finger to help Belgrade when Germany attacked Yugoslavia
because he did not want to jeopardize the Ribbentrop-Molotov past.
Between 1948 and 1956 the relations were again broken, because of Tito’s
breach with Stalin, and remained ambivalent thereafter—so much so that
the military doctrine communist Yugoslavia always assumed that an attack
from the Warsaw Pact was far more likely than from NATO. And finally, in
the 1990s Boris Yeltsin repeatedly left the Serbs in the lurch—over
Bosnia, the Krajina, and, spectacularly so, over NATO bombing in 1999.
In short, Stratfor’s “analysis” is unadulterated rubbish—but not more so
than the output of the United States Institute of Peace
<http://www.cfr.org/publication/12884/usip.html>, the Washington-based
Center for Strategic and International Studies
<http://usinfo.state.gov/usinfo/Archive/2007/Apr/24-260083.html>, or
Rand <http://mediatimesreview.com/february05/nationbuilding.php>.
As it happens, on June 13 a leftist British daily, The Guardian, gave
us—in 700 words—an account of what is going on in Kosovo and over Kosovo
that is more accurate and more intelligent than anything produced in
American mainstream think-tanks for years.
What is at stake is not just the illegal seizure from Serbia of the
cradle of its national history, Neil Clark writes, and rewarding the
campaign of violence by ex-KLA members which has driven hundreds of
thousands of non-Albanians. There is also the question of whether the
U.S. has the right to redraw the map of the world in any way it chooses,
and the arbitrariness of supporting Kosovo’s independence but dismissing
the claims of the pro-Russian breakaway provinces in Georgia and
Moldova. This is the final stage in what has been called the west’s
“strategic concept,” Clark goes on, the destruction of the genuinely
independent and militarily strong state of Yugoslavia and its
replacement with a series of weak and divided protectorates.
Reminding us of the verdict of the Minority Rights Group that “nowhere
is there such a level of fear for so many minorities that they will be
harassed simply for who they are . . . nowhere else in Europe is at such
a high risk of ethnic cleansing occurring in the near future—or even a
risk of genocide,” Clark concludes that the creation of another new
state in the Balkans will destabilize the region further:
Albanian separatists both in Montenegro and in Macedonia, where
military hostilities took place as recently as 2001, will be
encouraged. Serbia will face further disintegration: Albanians in
the south of the country are keen to be included in a new Kosovo,
while Hungarian demands for self-determination in Vojvodina are also
likely to intensify. Far from being concerned about this
fragmentation, Washington encourages it. “Liberating” Kosovo from
direct Belgrade control, achieved by the illegal 1999 bombardment of
the rump Yugoslavia, has already brought rich pickings for US
companies in the shape of the privatization of socially owned
assets. Even more important, it has enabled the construction of Camp
Bondsteel, the US’s biggest “from scratch” military base since the
Vietnam war, which jealously guards the route of the trans-Balkan
Ambo pipeline, and guarantees western control of Caspian Sea oil
supplies.
Yes, dear reader, regional impact, ex-Soviet enclaves, control of
Kosovo’s assets, Bondsteel, Ambo, Caspian oil: /That/ is strategic
analysis. But don’t try explaining that to the dilettantes posing as
strategic analysts inside the Beltway; after all, they are only obeying
ze orders . . .
<http://www.chroniclesmagazine.org/?p=146&akst_action=share-this>
Srdja Trifkovic <http://www.chroniclesmagazine.org/?author=4> ::
Jun.13.2007 :: News & Views <http://www.chroniclesmagazine.org/?cat=4>
:: 22 Comments »
