-Caveat Lector-
From
http://www.lewrockwell.com/orig/mcadams2.html
> Clinton’s six-month occupation of post-Dayton Bosnia by Nato "peacekeepers" has now
> lasted more than five years and cost the US more than $15 billion. What return can we
> see on our investment?
Bank robbery? T'AER
}}>Begin
Nation-Building
and Bank Robbery: All in a Day’s Work for Nato in Bosnia
by
Daniel McAdams
On the campaign trail, candidate Bush had a simple but effective
foreign policy message: no more nation-building. Plain Texas-style
talk. It was a promise – and a style – that resonated with the
American people, who despite the screeching propaganda of the
chatterers
have never supported adventures abroad.
So why is it that everywhere we were engaged in under that grand
wizard of the nation-builders, President Clinton, we remain engaged
today? Particularly in places like the Balkans, which candidate
Bush and his national security advisor, Condoleezza Rice, specifically
singled out for disengagement? Secretary of State Colin Powell,
in his first foray last month into the Balkan minefield, not only
failed to uphold candidate Bush’s promise but actually promised
the opposite: that we would remain "engaged" in the Balkans
for the foreseeable future.
That in itself would be a bitter pill, of course, but what is worse
is the manner in which we remain engaged in the Balkans. For, it
was not only the fact that the US was dumping its national treasure
into an area with little strategic importance, but rather that this
money, used to "build democracy" in the post-communist
world, has actually been engaged in undermining and destroying what
little democracy had managed to seep through cracks in the region’s
bloody post-communist era history.
Hard as it may be for some Americans to accept, the truth is that
Bosnia is further from being a democracy now than it was under Comrade
Tito’s rule, and the culprits are the very people we are paying
enormous amounts of money to "build democracy" in the
Balkans. "Nation-building," in fact, is merely a codeword
for left-wing social engineering with a little bit of old-fashioned
colonialism thrown in for good measure – and profit.
The Joys of Nation-Building in Bosnia
Take Bosnia, for example. Clinton’s six-month occupation of post-Dayton Bosnia by
Nato "peacekeepers" has now lasted more than
five years and cost the US more than $15 billion. What return can
we see on our investment? Have we built any democracy? Ask the
political
parties who have the misfortune of getting elected fairly in the
new Bosnian democracy. The Croatian Democratic Union, the Serb
Democratic
Party, and the Muslim-dominated Party for Democratic Action have
campaigned and won election after election in Bosnia only to see
results arbitrarily overturned by the dictatorial rule of the UN
Office of the High Representative (OHR), which uses Nato’s
Stabilization
Force (SFOR) as its army of enforcement. In one election, the OHR’s
partner organization in Bosnia, the vile Organization for Security
and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE) certified with a straight face
an election in which 104 percent of the population. One can never
have too much democracy, perhaps.
Dayton itself was Clintonian foreign policy at its most grotesque:
the warring parties are squeezed until they sign on the dotted line,
the ensuing treaty then suddenly takes on a supernatural power that
can only – conveniently – be properly interpreted by the Office
of the High Representative. Remember the Wye accords? Rambouillet?
Thus millions of dollars have been spent by the OHR to create and
fund "multi-ethnic" political parties in Bosnia. The election
law jointly authored by the OHC and the OSCE disqualifies any
political
party that does not include at 33 percent women candidates. Millions
more are spent to make sure that only these parties have access
to the media. Those radio stations and newspapers that are not
sufficiently
respectful to the spirit of Dayton are simply shut down by the OHR.
Regardless of their ownership. Non-governmental organizations (NGOs)
have been created and funded by the U.S. government in Bosnia to spew
the U.S. party line.
Yet the terribly backward voter in Bosnia remains ignorant of what
is best for him, and keeps voting for the nationalist parties. Not
to worry, though, the OHR has a remedy for that as well: Austrian
diplomat Wolfgang Petritsch, currently serving as the High
Representative,
simply dismisses victorious candidates from the wrong parties. In
last November’s parliamentary elections, for example, the right-wing
Croatian Democratic Union (HDZ) swept the elections in the ethnic
Croat regions of the joint Muslim-Croat Federation. Petritsch responded
by disqualifying 13 victorious HDZ candidates. Ante Jelavic, the
elected Croat member of the tripartite presidency of Bosnia, vociferously
protested both the permanent minority status of the Croats in Bosnia
and the heavy-handed OHR approach to his party’s victory in the
elections. He began the process of pulling out of the Dayton-created Muslim-Croat
Federation on behalf of his constituents. Petritsch
fired him and barred him from politics.
Bank Robbers for Democracy
Furious over the continued popularity of the HDZ and its gall in
challenging the immeasurable wisdom of the Dayton Accords, Petritsch
determined to break the party once and for all. On 18 April, on
his orders, some 400 Nato troops, backed up by 80 tanks and armored
fighting vehicles, 20 helicopters, and two jet aircraft blew up
and robbed a private bank in the town of Mostar. The contents of
the Hercegovacka Banka, one of the largest in Bosnia, were then loaded
into six trucks by Nato’s Stabilization Force (SFOR) troops
and carted away. They left the bank in ruins, its 150,000 account-holders
out of luck. The purpose of the bank robbery was to seek proof that
the HDZ was a corrupt party.
That’s right: the bank was not raided because there was indeed
evidence of wrongdoing by the HDZ; rather, it was looted in the
hopes of finding evidence of wrongdoing. In fact, little if any
evidence was offered to support any claims against the bank – and
certainly none against accountholders unaffiliated with the HDZ.
In the US, where that little inconvenience called due process still
carries some weight, a search warrant request would likely have
been denied on the scant evidence provided. Never mind, Petritsch
was sure something was going on there even if he had to blow up
the bank to find it. The thousands of pensioners who relied on the
bank for their monthly checks were told that until the audit is
completed – which could take a year – their money could not be released.
You have to crack a few eggs to cook a democracy omelet.
And President Bush Really Supports This?
The Bush Administration has given every indication that it supports
Petritsch’s raiders. As the people took to the streets to protest
SFOR’s theft of their assets, U.S. Ambassador to Bosnia and Herzegovina
Thomas Miller barked that the HDZ "uses political power to
cover its criminal activities, which are extensive." In Miller’s
world of absolute power, there little need for such superfluities
as evidence, trials, judges. Bush’s Ambassador further pronounced,
with elegant Marxian flourish, "All you have to do is drive
around Herzegovina, see the companies that these people own, the
houses they live in, the cars they are driving, and ask yourself
a simple question: where did all this come from?" How dare
these people own businesses and nice houses – something untoward
must be going on.
Difficult as it may be for the Bush Administration to understand,
the solution to Balkan woes is not heavy-handed "nation-building,"
or social-engineering, or open-ended occupation by foreign troops.
Democracy cannot be taught using undemocratic means. Autocratic
"Decisions" from on high do not teach citizens respect
for the rule of law. Seizure of their assets without probable cause
does not teach respect for private property. Creating artificial
and foreign-funded political parties does not teach civic responsibility
and the democratic process. Massive foreign assistance does not
teach self-reliance and market economy.
The Bush Administration is going to have to demand some new thinking
from the State Department. The president can jump-start the entrenched
apparatchiks there by announcing a pull-out of our troops the Balkans.
It really is that simple. Ignoring the reasons for Clinton’s foreign
policy debacles is a recipe for repeating them again and again.
Americans clearly voted for something different.
May
2, 2001
McAdams
has monitored elections throughout Central and Eastern Europe with the
British Helsinki Human Rights Group. He is Senior Research Associate
at the Center for Security Policy.
Copyright
2001 LewRockwell.com
Back
to LewRockwell.com Home Page
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The only real voyage of discovery consists not in seeking
new landscapes but in having new eyes. -Marcel Proust
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
The libertarian therefore considers one of his prime educational
tasks is to spread the demystification and desanctification of the
State among its hapless subjects. His task is to demonstrate
repeatedly and in depth that not only the emperor but even the
"democratic" State has no clothes; that all governments subsist
by exploitive rule over the public; and that such rule is the reverse
of objective necessity. He strives to show that the existence of
taxation and the State necessarily sets up a class division between
the exploiting rulers and the exploited ruled. He seeks to show that
the task of the court intellectuals who have always supported the State
has ever been to weave mystification in order to induce the public to
accept State rule and that these intellectuals obtain, in return, a
share in the power and pelf extracted by the rulers from their deluded
subjects.
[[For a New Liberty: The Libertarian Manifesto, Murray N. Rothbard,
Fox & Wilkes, 1973, 1978, p. 25]]
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