1. >At 05:31 PM 3/31/99 -0500, Nathan wrote: >>Sorry, Comrades, The Serbs Aren't Nice Old Communists Wojtek, this wasn't Nathan speaking, it was Ken Livingstone. Nathan was simply forwarding the Livingstone piece in case people were interested. Wojtek writes: >That sounds like an ethnic stereotype to me. There was substantial >anti-Milosevic opposition in Yugoslavia (much of it from the left) that had >a real chance of defeating Milosevic. If the Western powers were so much >concerned with democracy in Yugoslavia, why did not they support the >opposition? My own hunch is that Western ruling classes felt more >comfortable with the fascist Milosevic than with the populist opposition >that were simply too pink to the Eurobourgeoisie tastes. The air strikes >all but wiped any internal opposition to Milosevic. I think that the US/NATO power elites have a very shallow understanding of politics and society in the former Yugoslavia. They didn't understand that Milosevic simply represents one political and social force among several in Serbia and the Serbia-Montenegro federation (the rump Yugoslavia). It's a force that (1) tried to hold things together after the old Yugoslavia fell apart (under German and the Pope's influence, etc.) and (2) used Serbian ethnic chauvinism to do so. It's not simply one leader who can be replaced (in response to the strategic bombing, as the fantasy goes). Both the effort to hold the rump Yugoslavia together and ethnic chauvinism would persist without Milosevic. In fact, to a large extent, Milosevic is a creature of ethnic chauvinism: it gives him power, so he can't survive without it. It shouldn't surprise anyone -- including the dim-bulb US/NATO leaders -- that the bombing unleashed and encouraged that chauvinism to increase. BTW, I'm glad that US/NATO didn't support the anti-Milosevic opposition. Such support would have only corrupted the opposition (as the "West" corrupted Poland's Solidarnosc). It's probably true that the bombing has set the opposition back ten years -- as reported on NPR this a.m. -- but with luck it can recover. It's easier to recover from repression by one's stated foe than from the corruption influences of one's so-called friends, because in the latter case it's often much harder to know that one needs to recover. 2. Question: the FAQ on Serbia by Ron Jacobs (that Louis forwarded to us) said that the US had helped engineer the breakup of the old Yugoslavia. I don't know enough about this. What evidence is there of this? why would the US have wanted to do this? Why would the "International Monetary Fund [and] western banks" want to destabilize Yugoslavia beyond the normal IMF efforts to ensure that creditors get paid and that Monetarist Orthodoxy is imposed? I also thought that the idea that the US/NATO wanted military bases in Yugoslavia was pretty weak. Why does it need them? Military technology has gone a long distance since the Imperialist Western European powers competed to get coaling stations for their fleet during the late 19th and early 20th centuries... However, it's probably true that "NATO [wants] ... to establish dominance in this region, [since] the alliance would greatly enhance its ability to control the economies and peoples of Europe" which involves "destroy[ing] the only remaining power in the region--Serbia" but I think it's very iffy to extend this to see NATO as gaining greater control over Africa from this war. It's hard to imagine that even the US/NATO elite thought they could gain more control over Africa by bombing Serbia. 3. Louis, NPR's coverage is bad, but it's better than on the Public Radio International/BBC/WGBH "the World" show, which sounded like "we" were fighting Hitler once again. But I guess one can always find a worse case... After all, PRI looks better than the Pentagon press releases (though not much). In closing, I would like to hear from pen-l's resident experts on the Balkans if any of the above is wrong-headed. Jim Devine [EMAIL PROTECTED] & http://clawww.lmu.edu/Faculty/JDevine/jdevine.html
