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﻿<title﻿>﻿New Socialist Magazine, Why the War--And What Next? - Article﻿</title>﻿

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﻿<b﻿>﻿Why the War--And What Next?

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by David Finkel﻿<br﻿>﻿

﻿<i﻿>﻿New Socialist Magazine, July - August 1999﻿</i>﻿<br﻿>﻿<br﻿>﻿<br﻿>﻿

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﻿<b﻿>﻿Introduction﻿</b>﻿

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The following article was written prior to the Serbian parliament's acceptance of NATO conditions for ending the bombing. While the talks on implementing the Serbian military withdrawal and the NATO/G8 occupation force in Kosova stalled over the June 5-6 weekend, the chances are (nothing is certain in this mess) that the bombing phase of the war will end within days and the much longer occupation will be underway.

﻿<br﻿>﻿<br﻿>﻿

As NATO proudly trumpets the victory of its air campaign--a "victory" which was in any case inevitable sooner or later--I believe socialists should try to bring a number of questions into sharper public focus:

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a) Why does the West continue to deny the legitimate desire of Kosovar Albanians for independence? Is it simply because the powers don't want to seem to be redrawing boundaries and alienating the Russians? Or do they actually want Kosova to remain juridically part of Serbia, so that NATO creates a precedent for future actions by formally occupying part of Yugoslavia?

﻿<br﻿>﻿<br﻿>﻿

b) Why did NATO make no apparent attempt to stop the Serbian military's mass deportation of the Kosovars in the crucial first two weeks of the bombing? Was it because nothing could be done? Or did the NATO governments actually need the spectacle of half a million refugees pouring out of Kosova to provide a legitimation for the bombing?

﻿<br﻿>﻿<br﻿>﻿

c) Since the bombing campaign clearly became a war to punish Serbia as opposed to rescue mission on behalf of the Kosovars, might it be the case that NATO now seeks to prolong the rule of Milosevic--knowing that his presence helps to keep NATO unified and the Serbian population condemned to long-term misery, a la Iraq?

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-- D.F. 

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﻿<b﻿>﻿Main Text﻿</b>﻿

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Marxists have a problem. On the one hand, our theory and the experience of history teach us correctly that world capitalism in the age of imperialism is inherently a system that inevitably breeds the collective insanities of war, racism and genocide. At the same time, Marxists are also children of the Enlightenment and like to think of ourselves as champions of logical thought.

﻿<br﻿>﻿<br﻿>﻿

Trying to penetrate the chaotic surface of events to their deeper meaning is the very essence of Marxism, but far from a simple exercise--especially when the events themselves appear to be acts of insanity, as in the case of NATO's war on Serbia and the Milosevic regime's war on the population of Kosova. Presumably this is why the NEW SOCIALIST editors have invited comment on the cause(s) and motivation behind this catastrophe.

﻿<br﻿>﻿<br﻿>﻿

I will suggest that (1) this imperialist war began as a product of political opportunism and miscalculation, rather than grand design; (2) having begun, the war imposes its own logic on the war makers; (3) it may very well end not in "victory" for anyone, but mutual defeat.

﻿<br﻿>﻿<br﻿>﻿

Clinton/Albright and the EuroNATO Social Democrats never intended to fight a real war against Serbia. Throughout this decade, the Clintonites considered Slobodan Milosevic as the sole legitimate heir to the Yugoslav state, the very state he had destroyed in order to create Greater Serbia. While the multicommunal republic of Bosnia was torn to pieces, the Western powers imposed an arms embargo that prevented it from defending itself, sent United Nations "peacekeepers" to stand by as Serb forces slaughtered people who had fled to UN-declared "safe havens," and then--once Bosnia had begun to finally win the war--imposed the Dayton Accords.

﻿<br﻿>﻿<br﻿>﻿

They expected to achieve the same "success" through Rambouillet: divide the Albanian Kosovar resistance movement, then make another deal with Milosevic that would explicitly deny Kosovars the right of self-determination. The strategic geniuses of the State Department even calculated that Milosevic "needed" a few days of bombing to enable him to accept.

﻿<br﻿>﻿<br﻿>﻿

The point of the exercise was to show that NATO could police Europe (and beyond) by showing muscle, without having to use it. Milosevic and his gangster partners called the bluff by undertaking the massive expulsion of the Kosovars, an act the NATO commanders called "predictable" but for which they were utterly unprepared.

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NATO is now engaged in a war it never sought, but it's become a war in which the stakes are not the lives of the Kosovars but NATO's own survival. It is a brutal imperialist war, not because it is about conquering markets but because the political and military structures that assure the "stability" of western capitalism are on the line. The war may have enabled the Serb gangsters to render the destruction of the Kosovars' society an irreversible fact, but never mind--it is, at the very least, possible and necessary to get even" by destroying the economy, infrastructure and environment of Serbia for a generation.

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This is the point the liberal supporters of NATO's war cannot grasp, that imperialist military intervention begun in the name of humanitarianism inexorably, inevitably becomes a war for domination. NATO faces a crisis of potentially huge dimensions: A ground invasion of Kosova is likely to destroy domestic support for the war, but popular opposition must and will be disregarded if a ground war proves necessary to defeat Serbia.

﻿<br﻿>﻿<br﻿>﻿

Barring the diplomatic "miracle," NATO must pursue the war to a military conclusion and a protracted occupation. That is why NATO governments are hoping, against the odds, that Russian mediation will produce a "settlement" that allows them to declare victory. Then it will be the job of the spin doctors to explain how NATO "won," even if there is no home left for the Kosovars to return. The wishes of the Kosovars will have nothing to do with it.

﻿<br﻿>﻿<br﻿>﻿

Robert Fisk, reporting for the British newspaper THE INDEPENDENT (May 15, 1999), summed up the experience of attending NATO briefings in Brussels where Jamie Shea repeatedly promises "full and thorough investigation" of each case of NATO bombing of Serb and Kosovar civilians:

﻿<br﻿>﻿<br﻿>﻿

﻿<blockquote﻿>﻿"Kosovo is dead. Its people are dead or dispossessed. For investigation, read autopsy. And after a while it dawned on me, as it has dawned on others attending these preposterous meetings, that we are being prepared for the death of NATO."

﻿</blockquote>﻿

I do not believe that we on the left should accept the conclusion that "Kosovo is dead." Its people have the right to struggle for their freedom--which, I believe, must now be won through an independent state. But as for NATO, we should hope for and welcome its death.

﻿<br﻿>﻿<br﻿>﻿

I want to indulge in a few additional remarks about some other attempts at explaining this war. First, it's critical not to rely on explanations that are too general, or reductionist. Thus, all imperialist policy (in war or peace) is ultimately about conquering or protecting markets and "freedom," i.e. the freedom to exploit. But that doesn't mean that we can explain every particular war by discovering that Nike wants to build a factory in Kosova or that some company thinks there's oil in Somalia.

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Second, anti-imperialist politics should not mean social-patriotism [leftist support for the state in﻿ which one lives -ed.] in reverse. Too many on the left, notably Stalinist apologists for Milosevic who have sunk to the level of holocaust-denial over Kosova and who call this "a legitimate Yugoslav war against secession," have constructed a theory that the decade of disintegration of the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia was programmed by an imperial design to break up the FRY.

﻿<br﻿>﻿<br﻿>﻿

The problem with this theory is both logical and factual: It is absurd to imagine that Yugoslavia, of all the bureaucratic states the one that most welcomed capitalist investment, presented any barrier to the "triumph of the market." And throughout the Balkan catastrophe, especially the dismemberment of Bosnia, the West fell all over itself legitimizing the Milosevic dictatorship.

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Then again, both on the right and left, given the fiasco of the first six weeks of the NATO air war, it is easy to resort to explanations based on government arrogance and stupidity, which are seductive because they have some kernel of truth.

﻿<br﻿>﻿<br﻿>﻿

Yes, in fact, Bill Clinton is a dog-wagging manipulator with no principles, nor morals and no military experience. And yes, Madeline Albright is a political pinhead in love with Cruise missiles and smart-bomb technology, a power-worshipping intellectual and--if one can imagine such a thing--a Jeanne Kirkpatrick wannabee.

﻿<br﻿>﻿<br﻿>﻿

The problem is that these facts don't explain very much. In the United States and every NATO state, corporate capital is in charge. Now granted, the ruling classes do not care who did what to whom in the Bill and Monica affair, nor whether Chretien personally ordered the gassing of anti-Suharto protesters in Vancouver. No big deal-- but they will not allow a government to pursue a disastrous war if they see no class interest in it.

﻿<br﻿>﻿<br﻿>﻿

The capitalist classes of North America and western Europe are unanimous in the commitment to save the North Atlantic Treaty Organization. They agree that NATO must not fail, indeed they insist upon pursuing this war to victory, even if this means that Bill Clinton's final legacy is the betrayal and destruction of Al Gore's presidential ambitions. In that ultimate and decisive sense, this is the capitalists' war. And while all socialists should see the Kosovars' struggle for survival and self-determination as part of our own struggle, NATO's war must not be ours.

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﻿<font﻿ ﻿size="1"﻿>﻿David Finkel is an editor of ﻿<i﻿>﻿Against the Current﻿</i>﻿, the journal sponsored by the US revolutionary socialist group Solidarity.﻿</font>﻿</font>﻿<br﻿>﻿<br﻿>﻿


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