-Caveat Lector- <A HREF="http://www.ctrl.org/"> </A> -Cui Bono?- From http://www.chroniclesmagazine.org/NewsRoundUp030400.htm {{<Begin>}} BRIEFING PAPER 2-iii-00 MARCH 2000 KOSOVO AND AMERICA’S ROLE IN THE WORLD Thomas Fleming Benjamin Franklin, when he was asked what kind of government was being produced at the American Constitutional Convention in Philadelphia, replied: A republic if you can keep it. Franklin knew enough history to know that earlier republics which began with a limited government administered by virtuous and disciplined citizens soon degenerated first into mob rule and then into despotic tyranny. Such was the history of Athens, of Rome, and of the Italian republics of the later Middle Ages and Renaissance. Ancient Athens is perhaps the simplest example. It was a community of farmers, olive merchants, and potters who stood up to the massive power of the Persian Empire that twice invaded Greece. During the second invasion, in 480 BC, Athens made herself the center of an alliance of island cities, and after the war she promptly converted that alliance into an empire of tribute-paying dependent states. When some rebelled they were mercilessly crushed. The Athenian people liked the income, some of which they spent on making their city beautiful and the rest they distributed in boondoggles for the poor who realized that there was money in empire. Their arrogance and conquests drew them into a conflict with Sparta and by the end of that disastrous war, Athens had saddled herself with a set of gangsters who are the predecessors of every fascist movement ever since. >From the battle of Salamis to the thirty Tyrants is a mere two generations. What happened? One cause of their rapid degeneration was a profitable empire that enabled more and more Athenians to live without working and to enjoy the oriental consumer luxuries their ancestors had never even dreamed of. There were other causes: strange new philosophies that undermined Greek religion and morality and seemed to justify vice and immorality and atheism as the marks of a civilized person. When push came to shove, though, the old-fashioned and superstitious Spartans proved that they could push and shove a lot harder than the lazy and skeptical sophomores of Athens. That, in summary form, is the rise and fall of Athens as a world power. With a few minor changes it is also the story of the United States: a republic of farmers and small shopkeepers that rose to power in the 20th century, at the head of three alliances--two against Germany, and most recently as the Soviet Union. Like the rulers of other world powers, our elite class turned against the religion and traditions of our ancestors and in the end lost its soul. That is why the American empire is the most dangerous force in the world today: dangerous not only because it kills anyone who gets in the way but even more dangerous in promoting a global pop culture of consumerism and self-indulgence that will doom all the nations of the West if they do not escape the contagion. Let us start with the fact of the empire. In the 1970s Henry Kissinger used to condemn what he called “Soviet adventurism” in Africa and Latin America as the greatest obstacle to world peace. The test of the so-called Brezhnev Doctrine that justified these adventures came not in Nicaragua or Angola, where successful Soviet-backed revolutions were eventually checked by the CIA, but in Afghanistan, where the Russian military bogged down in a civil war. The winning side, a coalition of Islamic militants, was armed by the shortsighted geniuses in the US State Department who have yet to realize the strategic threat posed by militant Islamic states. Today, the Soviet empire is only a memory, and Islamic nationalists - usually encouraged by the US - are slicing off bits of the Russian Federation - but the world is no more at peace today than it was when the Berlin Wall was standing. Despite the naive pronouncements of so-called experts like Francis Fukuyama, there are conflicts all over the globe. Poor Fukuyama had confidently predicted the end of history, at the close of this millennium, but instead there was a bloody conflict in Indonesia, where militant Muslims have been attempting to exterminate the Christians of East Timor, or in the Sudan, where Muslims backed by the Arab oil states are also attempting to exterminate the Christians and native pagans. In Asia China is rattling its sabers against Taiwan - or rather it is not sabers but the neutron bombs given by Bill Clinton, and in the Balkans Albanian Muslims are just about finishing off the last of the Christian Serbs in Kosovo. In the wake of the Kosovo disaster, some Europeans are complaining under their breath about a new adventurism, US adventurism. The new Clinton-Albright Doctrine provides the pretext for US intervention anywhere on the globe where we can find a pretext for expanding US power and influence. Top military strategists are now speaking openly of using the US military to reconstruct other nations on the American model, and some conservative republican strategists are publicly calling for a new American empire. The test case for these new imperialists was Kosovo, and even though our attack on Yugoslavia violated the UN charter, the NATO charter, and every established principle of international law and morality, the imperialists are satisfied with the results. The prestige of NATO and the US were vindicated, they say, and that is all that counts. So we Americans have an empire now, and we have American boys and girls stationed in over 100 countries across the world. It is nice to be a great world power, but what exactly do the American people get out of it? Long before the Kosovo fiasco began some Balkans experts tried to explain the situation: that Albanian Muslims, who had been persecuting the Kosovo Serbs for 150 years, under Turks, under Nazis, under communists, were now determined to get US help in getting rid of all of them for good. The atrocity stories were nearly all suspicious - either invented, as in the case of the Racak massacre which never took place, or exaggerated in the case of the hundreds of thousands of murders allegedly carried out by Serb militiamen. We were shown satellite photos of mass graves holding potentially tens of thousands of Albanian victims, but after the FBI did a thorough investigation on site, they were able to document but two thousand deaths, on all sides and from all causes. This was the pretext used to justify the murder of thousands of Serbs and Albanians during the NATO attack. Clinton and Albright were told the facts of the case even before Rambouillet, but desperate for a victory to wipe away the taste of Monica Lewinsky, they refused to listen to their own experts. Now, apparently, even though the peace accord we signed with Belgrade guaranteed that Kosovo would remain a part of Yugoslavia, we have changed our minds. Of course, the Clinton administration has not actually changed its mind: the Kosovo Serbs are being given the same choice as the Krajina Serbs: leave or die. Obviously the Serbs don’t matter. All that counts is that NATO has emerged victorious from the war in Yugoslavia, and the real power within NATO, the United States and its Armed Forces, has given the world a salutary demonstration of its ability to enforce peace and security in Europe. This, say Mr. Clinton’s friends, was America’s finest hour since the end of World War II. There is disturbing evidence, however, that the pundits are wrong, as they usually are, on both points. One: U.S./NATO has not brought peace to Kosovo. Two: the principal effect of the NATO bombing campaign against civilian targets in the heart of Europe has been to convince many Europeans that the United States is the latest in a series of imperialist powers who have attempted to dominate the continent: Jacobin and Napoleonic France, Hitler’s Germany, Stalin’s and Brezhnev’s Soviet Union. News of the escalating violence in Kosovo has seeped even into the state- controlled media of the United States, although every few dozen Serbs murdered are usually described as “revenge killings” - as if Serb attacks on Albanians had nothing to do with over a hundred years of Albanian violence and ethnic cleansing. Nearly all of the 350,000 non-Albanians of Kosovo - including Jews, Gypsies, and Muslims - have fled, and “ironically” many of these non-Albanian Muslims have moved into the Serb capital, Belgrade, where they are living unmolested. KFOR Gen. Sir Mike Jackson quickly became exasperated by the behavior of the “victimized” Albanians and has denounced KLA violence in no uncertain terms. Col. David Hackworth points out that, since the NATO victory, “more Serb civilians have been slaughtered than ethnic Albanians were before the NATO air campaign began.” Hackworth has also revealed that NATO’s air war left Yugoslavia’s military capability virtually intact. There was no NATO military victory, because NATO never actually waged war, unless you consider the long-range and impersonal slaughter of civilians as the hallmark of modern warfare - German V2’s raining death on London, the RAF fire- bombing of Dresden, and the list continues: Hiroshima, Nagasaki, Hanoi, Novi Sad. Even Bob Dole - sometimes known as the senator from Tirana because of his unwavering support for Albanians, a support paid for by an impressive list of $1,000-plus contributors - has called upon his terrorist/heroin-trafficking buddies to go easy. “The news is filled,” Dole confessed in USA Today, “with ominous reports of power grabs, town-hall occupations, murderous reprisals, black marketeering, extortion, violent intimidation of Albanians and Serbs alike, and property confiscations by self-appointed Albanian ‘commissars’ reputedly acting with the knowledge or approval of Hakim Thaci and others among your leaders.” Like most politicians, Senator Dole has always counted on the ignorance and apathy of American voters, few of whom will lose sleep over the rights and wrongs of tribal wars in the Balkans, even when American credibility is at stake. For American businessmen, however, Western Europe is another matter. Italians, Greeks, and Hungarians were terrified by this exhibition of naked and immoral force, and when the slaughter stopped, the protests began: five hundred prominent Norwegian intellectuals have signed a statement condemning NATO’s new aggressiveness, and France’s Non a la guerre petition drive has evolved into a full-blown international movement. Most ominously for NATO, however, are the discussions in Europe, led by Germany and France discussions for a European defense force, independent of NATO and the United States. Nonsense was the general response we received from the so-called experts, when we pointed this out during the NATO bombardment, but it is not nonsense. Now even that cynical and unprincipled foreign lobbyist, Henry Kissinger, is catching on. Writing in the Los Angeles Times, Kissinger wonders: “Did Kosovo mark the end of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization or at least as we have known it?” Dr. Kissinger is frankly puzzled: “The first joint operation of the alliance, carried out with extraordinary political cohesion and blessed both with apparent success and low allied casualties, has evoked vehement calls for greater European independence.” In fact, this past June, the 15 leaders of the European Union committed themselves to the principle of a separate military force that will act independently of both NATO and the United States. Many Europeans, apparently, are scared stiff of the United States, which has been transformed from their protective big brother into the biggest bully in the neighborhood. Even the Italians are getting the picture. President Ciampi, celebrating the great NATO victory, recently told a group of 127 Italian ambassadors that Italy has recovered its pride, and the Prime Minister added, that neither NATO nor the United Nations by itself can guarantee the peace of Europe, and a restricted group of major countries all have a part to play. Uncle Sam had better watch his step when even the Italian government is recovering its military pride. It is not only in Italy and Greece, where political leaders are becoming hostile to the United States. Many Russians have been completely radicalized by Kosovo. They remember General Wesley Clark’s order to Sir Michael Jackson to attack the Russians at the Pristina airport. Jackson refused and appealed it all the way to the top - Tony Blair - saying “I’m not going to start World War III”; but the Russians viewed Clark’s move as the final straw. The Balkans is at the Russians’ back door. Two years ago Russia’s greatest military hero, General Alexander Lebed, aptly said that the Americans were circling around Russia like a pack of wolves closing in for the kill, first knocking off friends in Yugoslavia, then fomenting Islamic uprisings. The key to Russia’s failure to stand up to the US is, of course, Boris Yeltsin. His own people know that he is a monster: a drunken degenerate who fired on his own parliament, but the US props him up as our “SOB” arranging money, trade credits, loans which benefit gang-bankers like Yeltsin’s friend Boris Berezhovsky. Our steady support for this self-embalmed prince of the undead only gives ammunition to the anti-American opposition in Russia. In supporting Islamic terrorism in Bosnia, Kosovo, and the Caucasus, in keeping the zombie in the Kremlin alive, in manipulating the Russian economy for the benefit of Western financiers, the American government has demonstrated its intentions of subjugating Russia by every indirect means possible. What makes it easier is the dream, shared by so many impoverished Russians, of joining the global consumer-economy of blue-jeans, fast food, and pop music--junk food, junk culture. Like the other kind of junk - morphine and heroin - junk culture is apparently addictive. As one junkie-novelist explained it years ago: the more you have the more you need, and as the threshold of consumption continues to rise, the threshold of taste and morality keeps getting lowered. The dream of the first cold warriors has apparently been realized, and America is a number one in a world in which there is no number two. All the ingredients for a resurgent American nationalism are present - except one: a nation. The forces of multi-culturalism have been effectively deployed to eradicate the historic American identities. The leaders of the regime think they can create a new American identity out of slogans and symbols, but where lions as ruthless as Hitler and Stalin have failed, the weasels such as Bob Dole and Bill Bennet are unlikely to succeed. Patriotism, nonetheless, is not quite a spent force in America, and the appeal of Pat Buchanan and his friends to national sentiment resonates powerfully with Middle Americans. It is a dangerous energy source that the regime would like to tap. As Irving Kristol said years ago, if Communism did not exist, it would have to be invented, since anti-communism was the only glue holding the country together. That glue has worn off, and the regions and factions, races and religions are at each other’s throats, in the USA, which may be the last and best reason for American imperial expansion into the Balkans and finally into the East, where we can hope to bully the Russians, some day, into acting like men. Like the Romans oligarchs before Third Punic War, who worked hard to find the pretext for wiping Carthage off the map - a fate which that infanticidal city richly deserved. What are the prospects for restoring - or rather creating - a sense of unity among Europeans, East and West? Unfortunately, appeals to the common ties of religion and civilization will not work in Washington any more than they will work in the Kremlin today. Just as the cold warriors, East and West, came to resemble each other like mirror images, the regimes of all the major states of the world are controlled by revolutionary elite classes that have no more use for Christianity than they do for civilization. The best hope, as I see it, lies with the genuine traditionalist nationalists on both sides: ultramontane Catholics, mystical Orthodox mathematicians and tough soldiers like General Lebed. Of course, any talk of a unified movement is pie in the sky. By definition conservatives are all rooted in their own traditions, some of which involve them in hatreds as bitter as those between Serbs and Croats. But some kind of anti-internationalist internationale ought to be possible, based on the principle of the Golden Rule applied to nations: whatever a Serb demands for himself, in or out of Serbia, he ought to be prepared to grant to the Croat - and vice versa. This is the problem for Canadians and Europeans: to find some means of resisting the global culture and global economy that is the real foundation of US imperial hegemony. The tragedy of Sparta is that in defeating Athens, she learned to imitate the Athenian vices of greed and imperialism, and her generals and leaders became corrupted by money and international culture that made their own traditions seem provincial. Take Canada, where most people live within an hour or two away from the US, where television and popular music and fiction and journalism are almost completely dominated by Americans or by Canadians who could pass for Americans. Some Serbs, who used to dream of the American paradise, have been taught a good lesson in the past few years, and they are turning back to their own traditions. As a satellite of the United States, Canada will go round and round, closer and closer to the American sun, until it is sucked into the conflagration. It is time for Canadians, who have preserved some measure of their traditional kindness and decency, to recover their identity and independence. * Keynote speech given at The Lord Byron Foundation’s conference “Degrading Serbia,” held in Toronto in October 1999. {{<End>}} A<>E<>R ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ Integrity has no need of rules. -Albert Camus (1913-1960) + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + The only real voyage of discovery consists not in seeking new landscapes but in having new eyes. -Marcel Proust + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + "Believe nothing, no matter where you read it, or who said it, no matter if I have said it, unless it agrees with your own reason and your common sense." --Buddha + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + It is preoccupation with possessions, more than anything else, that prevents us from living freely and nobly. -Bertrand Russell + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + "Everyone has the right...to seek, receive and impart information and ideas through any media and regardless of frontiers." 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