James,

I completely share your analysis of the west's motives - you'll notice I
mentioned Chossudovsky in my posting, and am well aware of the activities
of the IMF and other TNC-driven supranational bodies in leading to the
current economic and social divisions that are a major factor in the
current situation. I also share Kees van der Pijl's (and other neo-marxist)
analysis of much of transnational class formation and the neo-imperialism
(or whatever you choose to call it). In addition, my current research is
into US / UK military intellligence sites, and I'm very well informed about
the overt and covert agendas at work here. Part of what I am doing is
trying to understand the links (and tensions) between economic
globalisation and military power and especially surveillance / control
technologies, which [links] I believe are very little understood by: on the
one hand, most writers and researchers on economic globalisation, including
myself until very recently; and on the other, by those looking at
international politics and military affairs.

None of this in any way undermines the critique I have of Serb apologists.
A small bastard being attacked by a bigger bastard doesn't make the small
bastard any less a bastard! It is not 'irrelevant' as you put it,
especially not to those victims of the small bastard. whether or not they
are as numerous as NATO propaganda claims.

My politics are basically green anarcho-socialist with a strong dash of
Gandhian pacifism. What I don't like is the kind of trad left critique
(recently espoused by deal old Tony Benn in the UK) that the Serb
administration are innocent victims.

This apologism, which is the child of the pro-Stalin rhetoric of the 1930's
and 40's, seriously undermines the integrity of opposition to NATO /
western imperialism, and also does little to help understanding of the
complex socioeconomic, cultural and political factors at work here.


David.


PS: I hope you don't mind that I have posted this reply and your message to
me on CGF. This is a debate that should be open to all to contribute to -
there has still not been enough discussion of this situation on CGF.

PPS: Thanks for the additional info - I will work my way through it, and if
it changes my mind, or causes me to adjust my view, I'll tell you!




James Blaut wrote:

>
>David:
>
>Milosoovic is a thug. So is Saddam Hassan. So is Noriega. So is
>whats-his-name, the big terrorist whom we bombed in Afghanistan.  I'm sure
>you've noticed that all of the leaders whose countries we bomb or invade,
>in flat contravention of internastional law, are either Bad Guys (as are
>the above) or putative bad guys (Khaddafi, Adid, Bernard Coard, et al.).
>
>In a word: you're right about Milosevic but it is irrelevant. We bomb and
>invade in order to convince all small and middle-sized countries that they
>can't stand up to the West and, most pointedly, to the globalization that
>consists of penetrastion by Western (and Jaspanese) multinsationals into
>all these countries. In another word: it is neo-imperialism. Better stated:
>it is neogunboatism -- gunboat diplomacy having done prcisely the same
>thing in an earlier epoch: if they interefer with US busdiness interests,
>send in the gunboats.
>
>So I think the statment forwarded by Gunder does ring true. NATO, and of
>coursde the CIA, and German intelligence, and... have been trying to chop
>up Yugoslavia for several years now, because-- regardless of the thugginess
>on the ground there -- this is the one country that that has not fully
>capitulated. Make an example of them (another in the long tedious list of
>examples); maybe also pick up some minerals cheap.
>
>I am, however, waiting to see the evidence that the Srbs are slaughhtering
>Kosovars more systematically than, say, the Croats slaughtered Serbs.
>
>And I am inclinde tha accept the theory -- provisionally -- that most of
>the exodus of Kosovars is the classic flight from warfare. Most of it.
>
>I'm attaching the following which seems to reinforce this view.
>
>Two items. One about Rambouillet, the other a comment by an Indian general
>who commanded UN troops in bosnia.
>
>Best
>
>Jim Blaut
>*****************************************************
>
>FIRST OF TWO ATTACHMENTS
>
>Subject: THE FATAL FLAWS UNDERLYING NATO'S INTERVENTION IN YUGOSLAVIA (fwd
>Date:    13-Apr-99 at 20:43
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>From: James Blaut <[log in to unmask]>
>Subject:      THE FATAL FLAWS UNDERLYING NATO'S INTERVENTION IN YUGOSLAVIA
>(fwd
>Comments: To: Geopol <[log in to unmask]>,
>          Critical Geography Forum <[log in to unmask]>
>To: [log in to unmask]
>
>Forwarded by Jim Blaut
>
>-------- Forwarded Message --------
>
>Subject: THE FATAL FLAWS UNDERLYING NATO'S INTERVENTION IN YUGOSLAVIA (fwd)
>Date:    13-Apr-99 at 17:59
>From:    INTERNET:cscpoolsci.umass.edu, INTERNET:cscpoolsci.umass.edu
>TO: WORLD SYSTEMS NETWORK,INTERNET:wsnsf.colorado.edu
>Subject: THE FATAL FLAWS UNDERLYING NATO'S INTERVENTION IN YUGOSLAVIA
>
>USI, New Delhi, April 6, 1999
>
>THE FATAL FLAWS UNDERLYING NATO'S INTERVENTION IN YUGOSLAVIA By Lt Gen
>Satish Nambiar (Retd.)
>
>(First Force Commander and Head of Mission of the United Nations Forces
>deployed in the former Yugoslavia 03 Mar92 to 02 Mar 93. Former Deputy
>Chief of Staff, Indian Army. Currently, Director of the United Services
>Institution of India.)
>
>My year long experience as the Force Commander and Head of Mission of the
>United Nations Forces deployed in the former Yugoslavia has given me an
>understanding of the fatal flaws of US/NATO policies in the troubled
>region. It was obvious to most people following events in the Balkans since
>the beginning of the decade, and particularly after the fighting that
>resulted in the emergence of Slovenia, Croatia, Bosnia-Herzegovina and the
>former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia, that Kosovo was a 'powder keg'
>waiting to explode. The West appears to have learnt all the wrong lessons
>from the previous wars and applied it to Kosovo.
>
>(1) Portraying the Serbs as evil and everybody else as good was not only
>counterproductive but also dishonest. According to my experience all sides
>were guilty but only the Serbs would admit that they were no angels while
>the others would insist that they were. With 28, 000 forces under me and
>with constant contacts with UNHCR and the International Red Cross
>officials, we did not witness any genocide beyond killings and massacres on
>all sides that are typical of such conflict conditions. I believe none of
>my successors and their forces saw anything on the scale claimed by the
>media.
>
>(2) It was obvious to me that if Slovenians, Croatians and Bosniaks had the
>right to secede from Yugoslavia, then the Serbs of Croatia and Bosnia had
>an equal right to secede. The experience of partitions in Ireland and India
>has not be pleasant but in the Yugoslavia case, the state had already been
>taken apart anyway. It made little sense to me that if multiethnic
>Yugoslavia was not tenable that multiethnic Bosnia could be made tenable.
>The former internal boundaries of Yugoslavia which had no validity under
>international law should have been redrawn when it was taken apart by the
>West, just as it was in the case of Ireland in 1921 and Punjab and Bengal
>in India in 1947. Failure to acknowledge this has led to the problem of
>Kosovo as an integral part of Serbia.
>
>(3) It is ironic that the Dayton Agreement on Bosnia was not fundamentally
>different from the Lisbon Plan drawn up by Portuguese Foreign Minister
>Cuteliero and British representative Lord Carrington to which all three
>sides had agreed before any killings had taken place, or even the
>Vance-Owen Plan which Karadzic was willing to sign. One of the main
>problems was that there was an unwillingness on the part of the American
>administration to concede that Serbs had legitimate grievances and rights.
>I recall State Department official George Kenny turning up like all other
>American officials, spewing condemnations of the Serbs for aggression and
>genocide. I offered to give him an escort and to go see for himself that
>none of what he proclaimed was true. He accepted my offer and thereafter he
>made a radical turnaround.. Other Americans continued to see and hear what
>they wanted to see and hear from one side, while ignoring the other side.
>Such behaviour does not produce peace but more conflict.
>
>(4) I felt that Yugoslavia was a media-generated tragedy. The Western media
>sees international crises in black and white, sensationalizing incidents
>for public consumption. From what I can see now, all Serbs have been driven
>out of Croatia and the Muslim-Croat Federation, I believe almost 850,000 of
>them. And yet the focus is on 500,000 Albanians (at last count) who have
>been driven out of Kosovo. Western policies have led to an ethnically pure
>Greater Croatia, and an ethnically pure Muslim statelet in Bosnia.
>Therefore, why not an ethnically pure Serbia? Failure to address these
>double standards has led to the current one.
>
>As I watched the ugly tragedy unfold in the case of Kosovo while visiting
>the US in early to mid March 1999, I could see the same pattern emerging.
>In my experience with similar situations in India in such places as
>Kashmir, Punjab, Assam, Nagaland, and elsewhere, it is the essential
>strategy of those ethnic groups who wish to secede to provoke the state
>authorities. Killings of policemen is usually a standard operating
>procedure by terrorists since that usually invites overwhelming state
>retaliation, just as I am sure it does in the United States.
>
>I do not believe the Belgrade government had prior intention of driving out
>all Albanians from Kosovo. It may have decided to implement Washington's
>own "Krajina Plan" only if NATO bombed, or these expulsions could be
>spontaneous acts of revenge and retaliation by Serb forces in the field
>because of the bombing. The OSCE Monitors were not doing too badly, and the
>Yugoslav Government had, after all, indicated its willingness to abide by
>nearly all the provisions of the Rambouillet "Agreement" on aspects like
>cease-fire, greater autonomy to the Albanians, and so on. But they insisted
>that the status of Kosovo as part of Serbia was not negotiable, and they
>would not agree to station NATO forces on the soil of Yugoslavia. This is
>precisely what India would have done under the same circumstances. It was
>the West that proceeded to escalate the situation into the current
>senseless bombing campaign that smacks more of hurt egos, and revenge and
>retaliation. NATO's massive bombing intended to terrorize Serbia into
>submission appears no different from the morality of actions of Serb forces
>in Kosovo.
>
>Ultimatums were issued to Yugoslavia that unless the terms of an agreement
>drawn up at Rambouillet were signed, NATO would undertake bombing.
>Ultimatums do not constitute diplomacy. They are acts of war. The Albanians
>of Kosovo who want independence, were coaxed and cajoled into putting their
>signatures to a document motivated with the hope of NATO bombing of Serbs
>and independence later. With this signature, NATO assumed all the legal and
>moral authority to undertake military operations against a country that
>had, at worst, been harsh on its own people. On 24th March 1999, NATO
>launched attacks with cruise missiles and bombs, on Yugoslavia, a sovereign
>state, a founding member of the United Nations and the Non Aligned
>Movement; and against a people who were at the forefront of the fight
>against Nazi Germany and other fascist forces during World War Two. I
>consider these current actions unbecoming of great powers.
>
>It is appropriate to touch on the humanitarian dimension for it is the
>innocent who are being subjected to displacement, pain and misery.
>Unfortunately, this is the tragic and inevitable outcome of all such
>situations of civil war, insurgencies, rebel movements, and terrorist
>activity. History is replete with examples of such suffering; whether it be
>the American Civil War, Northern Ireland, the Basque movement in Spain,
>Chechnya, Angola, Cambodia, and so many other cases; the indiscriminate
>bombing of civilian centres during World War Two; Hiroshima and Nagasaki;
>Vietnam. The list is endless. I feel that this tragedy could have been
>prevented if NATO's ego and credibility had not been given the highest
>priority instead of the genuine grievances of Serbs in addition to
>Albanians.
>
>Notwithstanding all that one hears and sees on CNN and BBC, and other
>Western agencies, and in the daily briefings of the NATO authorities, the
>blame for the humanitarian crisis that has arisen cannot be placed at the
>door of the Yugoslav authorities alone. The responsibility rests mainly at
>NATO's doors. In fact, if I am to go by my own experience as the First
>Force Commander and Head of Mission of the United Nations forces in the
>former Yugoslavia, from March 1992 to March 1993, handling operations in
>Croatia, Bosnia-Herzegovina, and Macedonia, I would say that reports put
>out in the electronic media are largely responsible for provoking this
>tragedy.
>
>Where does all this leave the international community which for the record
>does not comprise of the US, the West and its newfound Muslim allies? The
>portents for the future, at least in the short term, are bleak indeed. The
>United Nations has been made totally redundant, ineffective, and impotent.
>The Western world, led by the USA, will lay down the moral values that the
>rest of the world must adhere to; it does not matter that they themselves
>do not adhere to the same values when it does not suit them. National
>sovereignty and territorial integrity have no sanctity. And finally,
>secessionist movements, which often start with terrorist activity, will get
>greater encouragement. One can only hope that good sense will prevail,
>hopefully sooner rather than later.
>
>Lt. General Satish Nambiar Director, USI, New Delhi 6 April 1999
>************************************************************
>SECOND ATTACHMENT
>
>Subject: [PEN-L:5675] Copy of Rambouillet "Accord"--important {fwd} (fwd)
>Date:    21-Apr-99 at 18:54
>From: "Michael Hoover" <[log in to unmask]>
>
>> >April 20, 1999
>> >
>> >Folks--
>> >
>> >One of the key "justifications" for the war against the Yugoslavians was
>> >that they refused to sign to Rambouillet Accord.  But until now, that
>> >accord has been kept secret.
>> >
>> >This accord has recently been published by the French newspaper LE MONDE
>> >diplomatique, with a date of April 17.  I found it on the ZNet site
>> ><www.zmag.org>, but that was linked from the original site:
>> ><www.monde-diplomatique.fr/dossiers/kosovo/rambouillet.html>.  This
>version
>> >that I saw is in English, but I believe it was also posted in French on
>the
>> >monde-diplomatique site.  It is quite long--68 pages, but it IS now
>> >available.
>> >
>> >One acronym in the English version is never forthrightly identified and
>> >that is KFOR.  COMKFOR is identified at one point as being the Commander
>of
>> >the Kosovo Force, so I think it is logical to believe that KFOR refers
>to
>> >Kosovo Force which is, in reality, US/NATO's force to be operational in
>> >Kosovo after the accord was signed.  (It never was signed by the
>> >Yugoslavians, and the Kosovo Liberation Army initially refused to
>> >sign--they wanted an agreement from NATO re independence after three
>years
>> >before signing--and then all the sudden signed.)
>> >
>> >Also on the ZNet site is a "review" of the Accord by a man named Peter
>> >Schwarz, who is not identified.  What is posted is two pages long, but
>> >appears to have accidentally not been posted in its entirety.  Its title
>is
>> >"Rambouillet Accord foresaw the occupation of all Yugoslavia"
>> >
>> >I have only quickly scanned the entire 68 page document.  It's a
>lawyer's
>> >delight.  Again, I have only scanned the whole document.  But I did find
>> >Article XV:  Final Authority to Interpet of Chapter 7 ("Implementation
>II")
>> >stunning.  (This is on page 60 of a 68 page document).  Chapter 7,
>Article
>> >XV reads in part:  "1.  Subject to paragraph 2, the KFOR Commander is
>the
>> >final authority in theater regarding interpretation of this Chapter and
>his
>> >determinations are binding on all Parties and persons."  I say we should
>do
>> >away with all this military bullshit, and make this man "god."
>> >
>> >Schwarz does draw attention to the meat of the agreement, which I have
>> >checked to make sure is accurate with the document posted by Le
>> >Monde-diplomatique.  I will quote several paragraphs from Schwarz:
>> >"The refusal of the Milosevic government to sign the Rambouillet Accord
>> >provided NATO with the official justification for its war against
>> >Yugoslavia.  For a long time, however, the precise contents of this
>accord
>> >were unknown.  The Contact Group, responsible for the talks at
>Rambouillet
>> >and Paris, had agreed to remain silent.  The complete text was only
>> >recently published on the Internet site of theAlbanian Kosova Crisis
>Center.
>> >
>> >"As can now be seen, the accord contains provisions that would have
>> >subjected the whole of Yugoslavia to NATO occupation.  The official
>> >presentation repeatedly stated that it was a matter of autonomy for
>Kosovo,
>> >which would be secured by the stationing of a 'peace force' in Kosovo.
>> >However, Appendix B, "Status of Multi-National Military Implementation
>> >Force', grants NATO freedom of movement 'throughout all Yugoslavia',
>i.e.,
>> >Serbia and Montenegro as well as Kosovo.
>> >
>> >
>> >"The text of Article 8 of this Appendix reads:  'NATO personnel shall
>> >enjoy, together with their vehicles, vessels, aircraft, and equipment,
>free
>> >and unrestricted passage and unimpeded access throughout the FRY
>[Federal
>> >Republic of Yugoslavia] including associated airspace and territorial
>> >waters.  This shall include, but not be limited to, the right of
>bivouac,
>> >maneuver, billet, and utilization of any areas or facilitites as
>required
>> >for support, training, and operations.'
>> >
>> >"Article 6 guarantees the occupying forces absolute immunity.  'NATO
>> >personnel, under all circumstances and all times, shall be imune from
>the
>> >Parties' jurisdiction in respect of any civil, administrative, criminal
>or
>> >disciplinary offenese which may be committed by them in the FRY.'
>> >
>> >[Kim note:  actually, that is Article 6 b.  Article 6 a refers to NATO
>> >itself and reads "NATO shall be immune for all legal process, whether
>> >civil, administrative, or criminal."]
>> >
>> >"Article 10 secures NATO the cost-free use of all Yugoslavian streets,
>> >airports and ports.
>> >
>> >[Kim note:  actually, that is Article 11, part of which specifically
>reads:
>> > "NATO is granted the use of airports, roads, rails, and ports without
>> >payment of fees, duties, dues, tolls, or charges occasioned by mere
>use."
>> >Article 10 actually provides priority access to NATO movements
>throughout
>> >Yugoslavia.  Article 10 reads in part:  "The authorities in FRY shall
>> >facilitate, on a priority basis and with all appropriate means, all
>> >movement of personnel, vehicles, vessels, aircraft, equipment, or
>supplies,
>> >through or in the airspace, ports, airports, or roads used."]
>> >
>> >"If the Yugoslav government had signed the accord, they would have been
>> >relignishing all claims to sovereignty over their own territory.  The
>> >Berliner Zeitung noted, 'This passage sounds like a surrender treaty
>> >following a war that was lost....  The fact that Yugoslavian President
>> >Milosevic did not want to sign such a paper is understandable.
>> >
>> >"The way in which the government was called upon to sign this
>> >diktat--delivered as an ultimatum--and the secretiveness regarding its
>> >content, suggest that the Rambouillet and Paris conferences were aimed
>at
>> >providing a pretext to war, not a political solution to the Kosovo
>conflict."
>> >
>> >Again, everything in quotes--with the exception of the material listed
>as
>> >[Kim note:], which is from me--is from the above referenced paper by
>Peter
>> >Schwarz.  The paper continues on for a few more paragraphs and is worthy
>of
>> >reading the rest.
>> >
>> >I hope people will obtain and read the initial document for themselves,
>and
>> >pass this message on as widely as possible.  In addition to
>informational
>> >and mobilizing efforts, I would write a personal note above this and
>send
>> >it to your political officials and newsmedia.
>> >
>> >In solidarity--
>> >
>> >Kim Scipes
>> >US Marine Corps, 1969-1973
>> >
>> >
>> >
>> >
>> >
>> >
>>
>> regards,
>>
>> Tom Walker
>> http://www.vcn.bc.ca/timework/covenant.htm


David Wood
PhD Student ('The Rural Peace Dividend')
Department of Agricultural Economics and Food Marketing
University of Newcastle upon Tyne
NE1 7RU

Tel: 0191 222 5305

[log in to unmask]




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