There have been a number of responses to my initial e-mail arguing for
bilateral defeat of NATO and Milosevic. I agree with alll of those who
argue that NATO and the US represent by far the largest and most dangerous
threat in the long term. That's why I want NATO defeated.
But the responses that have simply reiterated "Stop the
Bombing", while not all supporting Milosevic, have chosen to see Milosevic
as a victim. Seiko Kitajima argues that the Serb onslaught in Kosovo is
purely reactuive and defensive. This is simply unsustainable. In Croatia
and Slovenia in 1991, in Bosnia Herzegovina in 1994-1995, and in Kosovo in
1999 there was one common denominator. It was not NATO or even the US;
not Croatia nor Bosnia. The common denominator is Serbia and Serbian
nationalism now fascism since 1991 has been utterly offensive not
defensive. A Greater Serbia is the clear goal. To focus on the very real
and vicious assaults by Croats in 1991 and Kosovans (KLA) more recently
while excusing Milosevic as "reactive" is perverse.
Even the most committed "Stop the Bombing" folks admit that the
Serb military had massacred a minimum of 2,000 in Kosovo before the NATO
attacks. If there was any convincing argument that a halt to the bombing
would lead to a halt to the ethnic cleansing I would immediately sign up
for the most strategically simplistic version of "Stop the Bombing."
Instead it seems to me obvious that Montenegro, the last remaining state
of old Yugoslavia is already in Milosevic's sights. That's why a fascist
like Milosevic has to be stopped.
Linda Peake's post, including Cynthia Cockburn's report from the
London march and e-mails from sisters in Kosovo and Belgrade, captured the
difficulty of the "Stop the bombing" argument, for me. There's also an
article by Slavoj Zizek in this week's "The Nation" entitled "Against the
Double Blackmail" which makes the same point. He makes the obvious but
crucial point that the main isssue is how to build transnational movements
of the sort that can challenge both local manifestations of the New World
Order (Milosevic) and its more global face (NATO). personally, 've always
believed in Lenin's "revolutionary defeatism": fight tpo defeat your own
ruling class first. In this situation, however, although of course the US
reasons for intervention were political economic and cycnical, a
one-sided defeat of NATO in the short term would cost a lot of Kosovar and
probably Montenagran lives.
Neil Smith
Department of Geography
and Center for the Critical Analysis of Contemporary Culture
Rutgers University
Piscataway NJ 08854
phone: 732 445 4103 (Geography)
732 932 8679/8426 (CCACC)
fax: 732 445 0006 (Geography)
732 932 8683 (CCACC)
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