<"A ha, a war by Detroit's barons to crush the
threat from the Yugo! Now it
makes sense... :) "This conflict, of course,
has a political economy but
political economy is not DRIVING this
conflict.>
What could it mean to say that this war has a
political economy but is not driven by it? It
seems to me that the politics of this war
(statist, nationalist, masculinist) are integrally
part of its economics (capitalist, militarist,
industrialist), and that being unable to
scientifically prove political-economic
'causality' should not lessen our ability to
discern that political economy is the primary
animus of this bloody mess. Moreover, it is a
political economy in which both sides are now
heinously implicated but which was made in,
and is driven by the West. We were told that it
wasn't about political economy in Bosnia
either (historical powder-kegs etc) so I found
it interesting to know that -
'Even during the high tension of Spring 1992,
the Serbian and Croatian militaries
collaborated in the production of 200 M84
tanks for Kuwait - as part of a $300 million
contract'
(Popovic 1994 'Origins of Yugoslavia's
Disintegration' in New Europe Law Review,
Special Proceedings: Ethno-violence and
nationalism in Eastern Europe
(a good ref on the driving force of political
economy in the disintegration of Yugoslavia)
Chris Haylett
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