I'm forwarding this item I received on another list as it may be of
interest to some/many.
----
au revoir
niall johnson
Email: [log in to unmask]
Department of Geography and Sidney Sussex College
University of Cambridge Cambridge
England CB2 3EN England CB2 3HU
Current (temporary) location: Macquarie University, Sydney, Australia
Phone: +61 2 9850 8404
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LE MONDE DIPLOMATIQUE - April 1999
Social democracy betrayed
by IGNACIO RAMONET
For the first time since it was established in 1949, the North
Atlantic Treaty Organisation is engaged in a war against a country
that has not committed any act of aggression outside its own
frontiers. And for the first time since 1945, European forces are
bombing a sovereign European state. The decision to go to war,
announced on 23 March 1999, was described by NATO Secretary-General
Javier Solana, one-time leader of the Spanish Socialist Workers'
Party, as a "moral duty".
Mr Solana is supported in this decision principally by the French,
German, Italian and UK heads of government, Lionel Jospin, Gerhard
Schröder, Massimo d'Alema and Tony Blair - all four of them eminent
proponents of social democracy in Europe.
They all agreed to the military solution proposed by Washington as
the "only way" to break the deadlock in the Kosovo peace
negotiations, even though it is common knowledge - confirmed by US
experience in Iraq since 1991 - that crises of this kind cannot be
settled by air strikes and any attempt to send in land forces to
occupy Kosovo would be extremely costly in terms of human life and
might extend the conflict to the whole Balkan peninsula.
The crisis is largely the result of Yugoslav President Slobodan
Milosevic's refusal to grant Kosovo a broad measure of political
autonomy. But he has widespread support for this stand among the
Serbian population who believe Kosovo should remain within Serbia
for cultural reasons and feel a sense of solidarity with the Serb
minority there. So this is not, as NATO propaganda would have us
believe, a clash between an isolated President Milosevic on one
side and the allied forces and the Serbian people, ripe for
"liberation", on the other. The situation is more complicated.
Mr Solana justified the decision on the ground that we must prevent
an authoritarian regime from continuing to oppress its own people
in Europe (1). Does this mean that we must resort to force to
oblige Turkey, also a European country and a member of NATO, to
grant autonomy to Kurdistan and end an oppression that has already
caused thousands of deaths among Kurdish civilians? Is there by any
chance a double standard here?
How could the social democrat leaders, heirs to Jean Jaurès and a
long tradition of respect for international law, yield to pressure
from Washington and embark on a military escapade that has not a
shred of international legitimacy? There is no UN Resolution
expressly authorising the use of force in the region and the UN
Security Council, the supreme arbiter on international conflicts,
was not consulted before the first strikes were launched and has
not agreed to the use of armed force against Serbia.
And finally, it did not occur to any of these leaders to explain
themselves to their national parliaments before going to war, let
alone ask their permission to commit their armed forces to the
conflict.
Thus socialism, one of the great unifying myths of mankind, has
once again been betrayed by the social democrat leaders of Europe.
The resignation of German Finance Minister Oskar Lafontaine on 12
March 1999 had already afforded spectacular proof of the bankruptcy
of social democracy and its inability to provide an alternative to
the ruling neo-liberal orthodoxy that now finds even the Keynesian
approach that enabled President Roosevelt to bring the US through
the economic crisis of the 1930s too left-wing.
Oskar Lafontaine stood accused by his fellow-socialists of five
cardinal sins: wanting to re-launch Europe, advocating a fairer tax
system, criticising the European Central Bank, calling for reform
of the international monetary system and, earlier, asking the
Bundesbank to lower interest rates in order to reduce the cost of
borrowing, stimulate consumption and combat unemployment.
It is impossible not to see his departure as yet another sign of
the ideological collapse of social democracy. The movement has
completely lost its bearings. It is steering a course as best it
can, obsessed with the next crisis looming up and devoid of any
sound theoretical basis - unless you count those catalogues of
renunciation and reneging, The Third Way by Blair's adviser,
Anthony Giddens, and The Right Choice by Schröder's mentor, Bodo
Hombach.
For social democracy, which holds undisputed sway in all the major
countries of Europe, politics means economics, economics means
finance, and finance means the markets. That is why it is keen to
encourage privatisation, the dismantling of the public sector, and
concentrations and mergers of giant corporations. It is willing to
renounce the social compact and has abandoned all idea of full
employment or eradicating poverty, of seeking to alleviate the
plight of the EU's 18 million unemployed and 50 million poor.
Social democracy won the intellectual battle after the fall of the
Berlin Wall in 1989. The conservatives lost and are preparing to
quit the field of history, as the aristocracy was forced to do
after 1789. The left now has to reinvent its place in the political
spectrum, while the mantle of conformism, or conservatism, has
fallen on the social democrats. Social democracy is the new right.
It has taken on the historic task of taming neo-liberalism in a
spirit of vacuous opportunism. It is at war with Serbia today and
may be fighting its own suburbs tomorrow. All in the name of
realism, not rocking the boat, above all not disturbing the status
quo.
Translated by Barbara Wilson
(1) Le Monde, 25 March 1999.
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