http://www.globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=va&aid=9246
Separatism and Empire Building in the 21st Century
by Prof. James Petras
Introduction: The Historical Context
Throughout modern imperial history, Divide and Conquer has been the essential
ingredient in allowing relatively small and resource-poor European countries to
conquer nations vastly larger in size and populations and richer in natural
resources. It is said that for every British officer in India , there were
fifty Sikhs, Gurkhas, Muslims and Hindus in the British Colonial Army. The
European conquest of Africa and Asia was directed by white officers, fought by
black, brown and yellow soldiers so that white capital could exploit colored
workers and peasants. Regional, ethnic, religious, clan, tribal, community,
village and other differences were politicized and exploited allowing imperial
armies to conquer warring peoples. In recent decades, the US empire builders
have become the grand masters of divide and conquer strategies throughout the
world. By the 1970s, the CIA made a turn from promoting the dubious virtues of
capitalism and
democracy, to linking up with, financing and directing, religious, ethnic and
regional elites against national regimes, independent or hostile to US world
empire building.
The key to US military empire building follows two principles: direct military
invasions and fomenting separatist movements, which can lead to military
confrontation.
Twenty-first century empire building has seen the extended practice of both
principles in Iraq, Afghanistan, Iran, Lebanon, China (Tibet), Bolivia,
Ecuador, Venezuela, Somalia, Sudan, Burma and Palestine any country in which
the US cannot secure a stable client regime, it resorts to financing and
promoting separatist organizations and leaders using ethnic, religious and
regional pretexts.
Consistent with traditional empire building principles, Washington only
supports separatists in countries that refuse to submit to imperial domination
and opposes separatists who resist the empire and its allies. In other words,
imperial ideologues are neither hypocrites nor resort to double standards
(as they are accused by liberal critics) they publicly uphold the Empire
first principle as their defining criteria for evaluating separatist movements
and granting or denying support. In contrast, many seemingly progressive
critics of empire make universal statements in favor of the right to
self-determination and even extend it to the most rancid, reactionary,
imperial-sponsored separatist groups with catastrophic results. Independent
nations and their people, who oppose US-backed separatists, are bombed to
oblivion and charged with war crimes. People, who oppose the separatists and
who reside in the new
state, are killed or driven into exile. The liberated people suffer from
the tyranny and impoverishment induced by the US-backed separatists and many
are forced to immigrate to other countries for economic survival.
Few if any of the progressive critics of the USSR and supporters of the
separatist republics have ever publicly expressed second thoughts, let alone
engaged in self-critical reflections, even in the face of decades long
socio-economic and political catastrophes in the secessionist states. Yet it
was and is the case that these self-same progressives today, who continue to
preach high moral principles to those who question and reject some separatist
movements because they originate and grow out of efforts to extend the US
empire.
Washington s success in co-opting so-called progressive liberals in support of
separatist movements soon to be new imperial clients in recent decades is long
and the consequences for human rights are ugly.
Most European and US progressives supported the following:
1. US-backed Bosnian fundamentalists, Croatian neo-fascists and Kosova-Albanian
terrorists, leading to ethnic cleansing and the conversion of their once
sovereign states into US military bases, client regimes and economic basket
cases totally destroying the multinational Yugoslavian welfare state.
2. The US funded and armed overseas Afghan Islamic fundamentalists who
destroyed a secular, reformist, gender-equal Afghan regime, carrying out vast
anti-feudal campaigns involving both men and women, a comprehensive agrarian
reform and constructing extensive health and educational programs. As a result
of US-Islamic tribal military successes, millions were killed, displaced and
dispossessed and fanatical medieval anti-Communist tribal warlords destroyed
the unity of the country.
3. The US invasion destroyed Iraq s modern, secular, nationalist state and
advanced socio-economic system. During the occupation, US backing of rival
religious, tribal, clan and ethnic separatist movements and regimes led to the
expulsion of over 90% of its modern scientific and professional class and the
killing of over 1 million Iraqis
all in the name of ousting a repressive regime
and above all in destroying a state opposed to Israeli oppression of
Palestinians.
Clearly US military intervention promotes separatism as a means of establishing
a regional base of support. Separatism facilitates setting up a minority
puppet regime and works to counter neighboring countries opposed to the
depredations of empire. In the case of Iraq , US-backed Kurdish separatism
preceded the imperial campaign to isolate an adversary, create international
coalitions to pressure and weaken the central government. Washington highlights
regime atrocities as human rights cases to feed global propaganda campaigns.
More recently this is evident in the US-financed Tibetan theocratic protests
at China .
Separatists are backed as potential terrorist shock troops in attacking
strategic economic sectors and providing real or fabricated intelligence as
is the case in Iran among the Kurds and other ethnic minority groups.
Why Separatism?
Empire builders do not always resort to separatist groups, especially when they
have clients at the national levels in control of the state. It is only when
their power is limited to groups, territorially or ethnically concentrated,
that the intelligence operatives resort to and promote separatist movements.
US backed separatist movements follow a step-by-step process, beginning with
calls for greater autonomy and decentralization, essentially tactical moves
to gain a local political power base, accumulate economic revenues, repress
anti-separatist groups and local ethnic/religious, political minorities with
ties to the central government (as in the oppression of the Christian
communities in northern Iraq repressed by the Kurdish separatists for their
long ties with the Central Baath Party or the Roma of Kosova expelled and
killed by the Kosova Albanians because of their support of the Yugoslav federal
system). The attempt to forcibly
usurp local resources and the ousting of local allies of the central
government results in confrontations and conflict with the legitimate power of
the central government. It is at this point that external (imperial) support is
crucial in mobilizing the mass media to denounce repression of peaceful
national movements merely exercising their right to self-determination. Once
the imperial mass media propaganda machine touches the noble rhetoric of
self-determination and autonomy, decentralization and home rule, the
great majority of US and European funded NGOs jump on board, selectively
attacking the governments effort to maintain a stable unified nation-state. In
the name of diversity and a pluri-ethnic state, the Western-bankrolled
NGOs provide a moralist ideological cover to the pro-imperialist separatists.
When the separatists succeed and murder and ethnically cleanse the ethnic and
religious
minorities linked to the former central state, the NGOs are remarkably silent
or even complicit in justifying the massacres as understandable over-reaction
to previous repression. The propaganda machine of the West, even gloats over
the separatist state expulsion of hundreds of thousands of ethnic minorities
as in the case of the Serbs and Roma from Kosova and the Krijina region of
Croatia
with headlines blasting Serbs on the Run: Serves Them Right!
followed by photos of NATO troops overseeing the transfer of destitute
families from their ancestral villages and towns to squalid camps in a bombed
out Serbia. And the triumphant Western politicians mouthing pieties at the
massacres of Serb civilians by the KLA, as when former German Foreign Minister
"Joschka" Fischer (Green Party) mourned, I understand your (the KLAs) pain,
but you shouldnt throw grenades at (ethnic Serb) school children.
The shift from autonomy within a federal state to an independent state is
based on the aid channeled and administered by the imperial state to the
autonomous region, thus strengthening its de facto existence as a separate
state. This has clearly occurred in the Kurdish run northern Iraq no fly zone
and now autonomous region from 1991 to the present.
The same principle of self-determination demanded by the US and its separatist
client is denied to minorities within the realm. Instead, the US propaganda
media refer to them as agents or trojan horses of the central government.
Strengthened by imperial foreign aid, and business links with US and EU MNCs,
backed by local para-military and quasi-military police forces (as well as
organized criminal gangs), the autonomous regime declares its independence.
Shortly thereafter it is recognized by its imperial patrons. After
independence, the separatist regime grants territorial concessions and
building sites for US military bases. Investment privileges are granted to the
imperial patron, severely compromising national sovereignty.
The army of local and international NGOs rarely raise any objections to this
process of incorporating the separatist entity into the empire, even when the
liberated people object. In most cases the degree of local governance and
freedom of action of the independent regime is less than it was when it was
an autonomous or federal region in the previous unified nationalist state.
Not infrequently separatist regimes are part of irredentist movements linked
to counterparts in other states. When cross national irredentist movements
challenge neighboring states which are also targets of the US empire builders,
they serve as launching pads for US low intensity military assaults and Special
Forces terrorist activities.
For example, almost all of the Kurdish separatist organizations draw a map of
Greater Kurdistan which covers a third of Southeastern Turkey, Northern Iraq,
a quarter of Iran, parts of Syria and wherever else they can find a Kurdish
enclave. US commandos operate along side Kurdish separatists terrorizing
Iranian villages (in the name of self-determination; Kurds with powerful US
military backing have seized and govern Northern Iraq and provide mercenary
Peshmerga troops to massacre Iraqi Arab civilian in cities and towns resisting
the US occupation in Central, Western and Southern regions. They have engaged
in the forced displacement of non-Kurds (including Arabs, Chaldean Christians,
Turkman and others) from so-called Iraqi Kurdistan and the confiscation of
their homes, businesses and farms. US-backed Kurdish separatists have created
conflicts with the neighboring Turkish government, as Washington tries to
retain its Kurdish clients for their
utility in Iraq , Iran and Syria without alienating its strategic NATO client,
Turkey . Nevertheless Turkish-Kurdish separatist activists in the PKK have
lauded the US for, what they term, progressive colonialism in effectively
dismembering Iraq and forming the basis for a Kurdish state.
The US decision to collaborate with the Turkish military, or at least tolerate
its military attacks on certain sectors of the Iraq-based Kurdish separatists,
the PKK, is part of its global policy of prioritizing strategic imperial
alliances and allies over and against any separatist movement which threatens
them. Hence, while the US supports the Kosova separatists against Serbia , it
opposes the separatists in Abkhazia fighting against its client in the Republic
of Georgia . While the US supported Chechen separatist against the Moscow
government, it opposes Basque and Catalan separatists in their struggle against
Washington s NATO ally, Spain . While Washington has been bankrolling the
Bolivian separatists headed by the oligarchs of Santa Cruz against the central
government in La Paz , it supports the Chilean governments repression of the
Mapuche Indian claims to land and resources in south-central Chile .
Clearly self-determination and independence are not the universal defining
principle in US foreign policy, nor has it ever been, as witness the US wars
against Indian nations, secessionist southern slaveholders and yearly invasions
of independent Latin American, Asian and African states. What guides US policy
is the question of whether a separatist movement, its leaders and program
furthers empire building or not? The inverse question however is infrequently
raised by so-called progressives, leftists or self-described anti-imperialists:
Does the separatist or independence movement weaken the empire and strengthen
anti-imperialist forces or not? If we accept that the over-riding issue is
defeating the multi-million killing machine called US imperialism, then it is
legitimate to evaluate and support, as well as reject, some independence
movements and not others. There is nothing hypocritical or inconvenient in
raising higher
principles in making these political choices. Clearly Hitler justified the
invasion of Czechoslovakia in the name of defending Sudetenland separatists;
just like a series of US Presidents have justified the partition of Iraq in the
name of defending the Kurds, or Sunnis or Shia or whatever tribal leaders lend
themselves to US empire building.
What defines anti-imperialist politics is not abstract principles about
self-determination but defining exactly who is the self in other words,
what political forces linked to what international power configuration are
making what political claim for what political purpose. If, as in Bolivia
today, a rightwing racist, agro-business oligarchy seizes control of the most
fertile and energy rich region, containing 75% of the countrys natural
resources, in the name of self-determination and autonomy, expelling and
brutalizing impoverished Indians in the process on what basis can the left or
anti-imperialist movement oppose it, if not because the class, race and
national content of that claim is antithetical to an even more important
principle popular sovereignty based on the democratic principles of majority
rule and equal access to public wealth?
Separatism in Latin America: Bolivia, Venezuela and Ecuador
In recent years the US backed candidates have won and lost national election in
Latin America . Clearly the US has retained hegemony over the governing elites
in Mexico , Colombia , Central America , Peru , Chile , Uruguay and some of the
Caribbean island states. In states where the electorate has backed opponents of
US dominance, such as Venezuela , Ecuador , Bolivia and Nicaragua , Washington
s influence is dependent on regional, provincial and locally elected
officials. It is premature to state, as the Council for Foreign Relations
claims, that US hegemony in Latin America is a thing of the past. One only
has to read the economic and political record of the close and growing military
and economic ties between Washington and the Calderon regime in Mexico , the
Garcia regime in Peru , Bachelet in Chile and Uribe in Colombia to register the
fact that US hegemony still prevails in important regions of Latin America . If
we look beyond the
national governmental level, even in the non-hegemonized states, US influence
still is a potent factor shaping the political behavior of powerful right-wing
business, financial and regional political elites in Venezuela , Ecuador ,
Bolivia and Argentina . By the end of May 2008, US backed regionalist movements
were on the offensive, establishing a de facto secessionist regime in Santa
Cruz in Bolivia . In Argentina , the agro-business elite has organized a
successful nationwide production and distribution lockout, backed by the big
industrial, financial and commercial confederations, against an export tax
promoted by the center-left Kirchner government. In Colombia, the US is
negotiating with the paramilitary President Uribe over the site of a military
base on the frontier with Venezuelas oil rich state of Zulia, which happens to
be ruled by the only anti-Chavez governor in power, a strong promoter of
autonomy or secession. In Ecuador ,
the Mayor of Guayaquil, backed by the right wing mass media and the
discredited traditional political parties have proposed autonomy from the
central government of President Rafael Correa. The process of imperial driven
nation dismemberment is very uneven because of the different degrees of
political power relations between the central government and the regional
secessionists. The right wing secessionists in Bolivia have advanced the
furthest actually organizing and winning a referendum and declaring
themselves an independent governing unit with the power to collect taxes,
formulate foreign economic policy and create its own police force.
The success of the Santa Cruz secessionist is due to the political incapacity
and total incompetence of the Evo Morales-Garcia Linera regime which promoted
autonomy for the scores of impoverished Indian nations (or indianismo) and
ended up laying the groundwork for the white racist oligarchs to seize the
opportunity to establish their own separatist power base. As the separatist
gained control over the local population, they intimidated the indians and
trade union supporters of the Morales regime, violently sabotaged the
constitutional assembly, rejected the constitution, while constantly extracting
concession for the flaccid and conciliatory central government of the Evo
Morales. While the separatists trashed the constitution and used their control
over the major means of production and exports to recruit five other provinces,
forming a geographic arc of six provinces, and influence in two others in their
drive to degrade the
national government. The Morales-Garcia Linera indianista regime, largely
made up of mestizos formerly employed in NGOs funded from abroad, never used
its formal constitutional power and monopoly of legitimate force to enforce
constitutional order and outlaw and prosecute the secessionists violation of
national integrity and rejection of the democratic order.
Morales never mobilized the country, the majority of popular organizations in
civil society, or even called on the military to put down the secessionists.
Instead he continued to make impotent appeals for dialog, for compromises in
which his concessions to oligarch self-rule only confirmed their drive for
regional power. As a case study of failed governance, in the face of a
reactionary separatist threat to the nation, the Morales-Garcia Linera regime
represents an abject failure to defend popular sovereignty and the integrity of
the nation.
The lessons of failed governance in Bolivia stand as a grim reminder to Chavez
in Venezuela and Correa in Ecuador : Unless they act with full force of the
constitution to crush the embryonic separatist movements before they gain a
power base, they will also face the break-up of their countries. The biggest
threat is in Venezuela, where the US and Colombian militaries have built bases
on the frontier bordering the Venezuelan state of Zulia, infiltrated commandos
and paramilitary forces into the province, and see the takeover of the oil-rich
province as a beach-head to deprive the central government of its vital oil
revenues and destabilize the central government.
Several years into a Washington-backed and financed separatist movement in
Bolivia , a few progressive academics and pundits have taken notice and
published critical commentaries. Unfortunately these articles lack any
explanatory context, and offer little understanding of how Latin American
separatism fits into long-term, large-scale US empire building strategy over
the past quarter of a century.
Today the US-promoted separatist movements in Latin American are actively being
pursued in at least three Latin American counties. In Bolivia, the media luna
or half-moon provinces of Santa Cruz, Beni, Pando and Tarija have
successfully convoked provincial referendums for autonomy code word for
secession. On May 4, 2008 the separatists in Santa Cruz succeeded, securing a
voter turnout of nearly 50% and winning 80% of the vote. On May 15, the
right-wing big business political elite announced the formation of ministries
of foreign trade and internal security, assuming the effective powers of a
secession state. The US government led by Ambassador Goldberg, provided
financial and political support for the right-wing secessionist civic
organizations through its $125 million dollar aid programs via AID, its tens of
millions of dollar anti-drug program, and through the NED (National Endowment
for Democracy) funded
pro-separatist NGOs. At meetings of the Organization of American States and
other regional meetings the US refused to condemn the separatist movements.
Because of the total incompetence and lack of national political leadership of
President Evo Morales and his Vice President Garcia Linera, the Bolivian State
is splintering into a series of autonomous cantons, as several other
provincial governments seek to usurp political power and take over economic
resources. From the very beginning, the Morales-Garcia regime signed off on a
number of political pacts, adopted a whole series of policies and approved a
number of concessions to the oligarchic elites in Santa Cruz , which enabled
them to effectively re-build their natural political power base, sabotage an
elected Constitutional Assembly and effectively undermine the authority of the
central government. Right-wing success took less than 2 ½ years, which is
especially amazing considering that in 2005, the country witnessed a major
popular uprising which ousted a right-wing president, when millions of workers,
miners, peasants and Indians dominated
the streets. It is a tribute to the absolute misgovernment of the
Morales-Garcia regime, that the country could move so quickly and decisively
from a state of insurrectionary popular power to a fragmented and divided
country in which a separatist agro-financial elite seizes control of 80% of the
productive resources of the country
while the elected central government meekly
protests.
The success of the secessionist regional ruling class in Bolivia has encouraged
similar autonomy movements in Ecuador and Venezuela , led by the mayor of
Guayaquil ( Ecuador ) and Governor of Zulia ( Venezuela ). In other words, the
US-engineered political debacle of the Morales-Garcia regime in Bolivia has led
it to team up with oligarchs in Ecuador and Venezuela to repeat the Santa Cruz
experience
in a process of permanent counter-revolutionary separatism.
Separatism and the Ex-USSR
The defeat of Communism in the USSR had little to do with the arms race
bankrupting the system, as former US National Security Adviser Zbigniew
Brzyenski has claimed. Up to the end, living standards were relatively stable
and welfare programs continued to operate at near optimal levels and scientific
and cultural programs retained substantial state expenditures. The ruling
elites who replaced the communist system did not respond to US propaganda about
the virtues of free markets and democracy, as Presidents Ronald Reagan,
George H.W. Bush and Bill Clinton claimed: The proof is evident in the
political and economic systems, which they imposed upon taking power and which
were neither democratic nor based on competitive markets. These new
ethnic-based regimes resembled despotic, predatory, nepotistic monarhies
handing over (privatizing) the public wealth accumulated over the previous 70
years of collective labor and public investment to a
handful of oligarchs and foreign monopolies.
The principle ideological driving force for the current policy of separatism
is ethnic identity politics, which is fostered and financed by US intelligence
and propaganda agencies. Ethnic identity politics, which replaced communism, is
based on vertical links between the elite and the masses. The new elites rule
through clan-family-religious-gang based nepotism, funded and driven through
pillage and privatization of public wealth created under Communism. Once in
power, the new political elites privatized public wealth into family riches
and converted themselves and their cronies into an oligarchic ruling class. In
most cases the ethnic ties between elites and subjects dissolved in the face of
the decline of living standards, the deep class inequalities, the crooked vote
counts and state repression.
In all of the ex-USSR states, the new ruling classes only claim to mass
legitimacy was based on appeals to sharing a common ethnic identity. They
trotted out medieval and royalist symbols from the remote past, dredging up
absolutist monarchs, parasitical religious hierarchies, pre-capitalist war
lords, bloody emperors and national flags from the days of feudal landlords
to forge a common history and identity with the newly liberated masses. The
repeated appeal to past reactionary symbols was entirely appropriate: The
contemporary policies of despotism, pillage and personality cults resonated
with past historic warriors, feudal lords and practices.
As the new post-USSR despots lost their ethnic luster as a consequence of
public disillusion with local and foreign predatory pillage of the national
wealth, the leaders resorted to systematic force.
The principle success of the US strategy of promoting separatism was in
destroying the USSR not in promoting viable independent capitalist
democracies. Washington succeeded in exacerbating ethnic conflicts between
Russians and other nationalities, by encouraging local communist bosses to
split from the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics and to form independent
states where the new rulers could share the booty of the local treasury with
new Western partners. The US de-stabilization efforts in the Communist
countries, especially after the 1970s did not compete over living standards,
greater industrial growth or over more generous welfare programs. Rather,
Western propaganda focused on ethnic solidarity, the one issue that undercut
class solidarity and loyalty to the communist state and ideology and
strengthened pro-Western elites, especially among public intellectuals and
recycled Communist bosses-turned nationalist saviors.
The key point of Western strategy was to first and foremost break-up the USSR
via separatist movements no matter if they were fanatical religious
fundamentalists, gangster-politicians, Western-trained liberal economists or
ambitious upwardly mobile warlords. All that mattered was that they carried the
Western separatist banner of self-determination. Subsequently, in the post
Soviet period, the new pro-capitalist ruling elites were recruited to NATO and
client state status.
Washington s post-separatism politics followed a two-step process: In the
first phase there was an undifferentiated support for anyone advocating the
break-up of the USSR . In the second phase, the US sought to push the most
pliable pro-NATO, free market liberals among the lot the so-called color
revolutionaries, in Georgia and the Ukraine . Separatism was seen as a
preliminary step toward an advanced stage of re-subordination to the US
Empire. The notion of independent states is virtually non-existent for US
empire builders. At best it exists as a transitional stage from one power
constellation to a new US-centered empire.
In the period following the break-up of the USSR , Washington s subsequent
attempts to recruit the new ruling elites to pro-capitalist, client-status was
relatively successful. Some countries opened their economies to unregulated
exploitation especially of energy resources. Others offered sites for military
bases. In many cases local rulers sought to bargain among world powers while
enhancing their own private fortune-through-pillage.
None of the ex-Soviet Republics evolved into secular independent democratic
republics capable of recovering the living standards, which their people
possessed during the Soviet times. Some rulers became theocratic despots where
religious notables and dictators mutually supported each other. Others evolved
into ugly family-based dictatorships. None of them retained the Soviet era
social safety net or high quality educational systems. All the post-Soviet
regimes magnified the social inequalities and multiplied the number of
criminal-run enterprises. Violent crime grew geometrically increasing citizen
insecurity.
The success of US-induced separatism did create, in most cases, enormous
opportunities for Western and Asian pillage of raw materials, especially
petroleum resources. The experience of newly independent states was, at best,
a transitory illusion, as the ruling elite either passed directly into the
orbit of Western sphere of influence or became a fig leaf for deep structural
subordination to Western-dominated circuits of commodity exports and finance.
Out of the break-up of the USSR , Western states allied with those republics
where it suited their interests. In some cases they signed agreements with
rulers to establish military base lining the pockets of a dictator through
loans. In other cases they secured privileged access to economic resources by
forming joint ventures. In others they simply ignored a poorly endowed regime
and let it wallow in misery and despotism.
Separatism: Eastern Europe , Balkans and the Baltic Countries
The most striking aspect of the break-up of the Soviet bloc was the rapidity
and thoroughness with which the countries passed from the Warsaw Pact to NATO,
from Soviet political rule to US/EU economic control over almost all of their
major economic sectors. The conversion from one form of political economic and
military subordination to another highlights the transitory nature of political
independence, the superficiality of its operational meaning and the spectacular
hypocrisy of the new ruling elite who blithely denounced Soviet domination
while turning over most economic sectors to Western capital, large tracts of
territory for NATO bases and providing mercenary military battalions to fight
in US imperial wars to a far greater degree than was ever the case during
Soviet times.
Separatism in these areas was an ideology to weaken an adversarial hegemonic
coalition, all the better to reincorporate its members in a more virulent and
aggressive empire building coalition.
Yugoslavia and Kosova: Forced Separatism
The successful breakup of the USSR and the Warsaw Pact alliance encouraged the
US and EU to destroy Yugoslavia , the last remaining independent country
outside of US-EU control in West Europe . The break-up of Yugoslavia was
initiated by Germany following its annexation and demolition of East Germany s
economy. Subsequently it expanded into the Slovenian and Croatian republics.
The US , a relative latecomer in the carving up of the Balkans, targeted Bosnia
, Macedonia and Kosova. While Germany expanded via economic conquest, the US ,
true to its militarist mission, resorted to war in alliance with recognized
terrorist Kosova Albanian gangsters organized in the paramilitary KLA. Under
the leadership of French Zionist Bernard Kouchner, the NATO forces facilitated
the ethnic purging, assassination and disappearances of tens of thousands of
Serbs, Roma and dissident non-separatist Kosova Albanians.
The destruction of Yugoslavia is complete: the remaining fractured and battered
Serb Republic was now at the mercy of US and its European allies. By 2008 a
EU-US backed pro-NATO coalition was elected and the last remnants of
Yugoslavia and its historical legacy of self-managed socialism was
obliterated.
Consequences of Separatism in USSR . East Europe and the Balkans
In every region where US sponsored and financed separatism succeeded, living
standards plunged, massive pillage of public resources in the name of
privatization took place, political corruption reached unprecedented levels.
Anywhere between a quarter to a third of the population fled to Western Europe
and North America because of hunger, personal insecurity (crime), unemployment
and a dubious future.
Politically, gangsterism and extraordinary murder rates drove legitimate
businesses to pay exorbitant extorsion payments, as a new class of
gangsters-turned-businessmen took over the economy and signed dubious
investment agreements and joint ventures with EU , US and Asian MNCs.
Energy-rich ex-Soviet countries in south central Asia were ruled by opulent
dictators who accumulated billion dollar fortunes in the course of demolishing
egalitarian norms, extensive health, and scientific and cultural institutions.
Religious institutions gained power over and against scientific and
professional associations, reversing educational progress of the previous
seventy years. The logic of separatism spread from the republics to the
sub-national level as rival local war lords and ethnic chiefs attempted to
carve out their autonomous entity, leading to bloody wars, new rounds of
ethnic purges and new refugees fleeing the contested areas.
The US promises of benefits via separatism made to the diverse populations
were not in the least fulfilled. At best a small ruling elite and their cronies
reaped enormous wealth, power and privilege at the expense of the great
majority. Whatever the initial symbolic gratifications, which the underlying
population may have experienced from their short-lived independence, new flag
and restored religious power was eroded by the grinding poverty and violent
internal power struggles that disrupted their lives. The truth of the matter is
that millions of people fled from their newly independent states,
preferring to become refugees and second-class citizens in foreign states.
Conclusion:
The major fallacy of seemingly progressive liberals and NGOs in their advocacy
of autonomy, decentralization and self-determination is that these
abstract concepts beg the fundamental concrete historical and substantive
political question to what classes, race, political blocs is power being
transferred? For over a century in the US the banner of the racist right-wing
Southern plantation owners ruling by force and terror over the majority of poor
blacks was States Rights the supremacy of local law and order over the
authority of the federal government and the national constitution. The fight
between federal versus states rights was between a reactionary Southern
oligarchy and a broader based progressive Northern urban coalition of workers
and the middle class.
There is a fundamental need to demystify the notion of autonomy by examining
the classes which demand it, the consequences of devolving power in terms of
the distribution of power, wealth and popular power and the external
benefactors of a shift from the national state to regional local power elites.
Likewise, the mindless embrace by some libertarians of each and every claim for
self-determination has led to some of the most heinous crimes of the 20-21st
centuries in many cases separatist movements have encouraged or been products
of bloody imperialist wars, as was the case in the lead up to and following
Nazi annexations, the US invasion of Iraq and Afghanistan and the savage
Israeli invasion of Lebanon and breakup of Palestine.
To make sense of autonomy, decentralization and self-determination and to
ensure that these devolutions of power move in progressive historic direction,
it is essential to pose the prior questions: Do these political changes advance
the power and control of the majority of workers and peasants over the means of
production? Does it lead to greater popular power in the state and electoral
process or does it strengthen demagogic clients advancing the interests of the
empire, in which the breakup of an established state leads to the incorporation
of the ethnic fragments into a vicious and destructive empire?
James Petras is a frequent contributor to Global Research. Global Research
Articles by James Petras
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