of its global financial architecture - has committed well over 5
billion USD to this godforsaken piece of land in the middle of nowhere.
This is almost 3 times the official GDP of this country. It is the
equivalent of 20 trillion US dollars invested in the USA in four years
time. All this was in order to cement the cohesiveness of this
artificial concoction of a state and to secure its future as a
political (read: economic) unit. It failed, miserably so. The Republika
Srpska is nowhere nearer to integrating with its Moslem and Croat
neighbour. The common currency did nothing to foster a common identity.
And the place represents an abysmal reversion to old colonial habits
with a governor to regulate the unruly and unyielding natives, by the
application of force if need be.
Indeed, the ethnic wars of the modern era are a direct result of said
colonial period. Borders, drawn at random and with a minimal and
arbitrary knowledge of the terrain and its inhabitants - led to a
hundred years of correctional warfare by the victims of this
patronizing ignorance. The rule of thumb is simple: people cannot live
together. Humans are misanthropes, they love to hate the different, the
other. Therefore, it is best to encourage the formation of ethnically
homogenous political units - where ethnic affiliation counts and of
ideologically homogenous political units where ideology matters and of
racially homogenous political bodies where race equals identity. A
simple rule derived from the 5000 years of trials and errors called
"human history".
The USSR disintegrated peacefully because it disintegrated into
ethnically homogenous entities (or entities with clear ethnic
identities and majorities). In the process Russia gave up oil reserves,
mineral riches, space launching sites, strategic locations and much of
its nuclear and conventional weaponry. Despite all these incredible
sacrifices, it was a peaceful process.
The Czechs separated from the Slovaks in a bloodless break-up of their
common state because the two resulting entities were ethnically
homogenous. Well, almost - hence the persecution of the Roma in both
countries.
Slovenia and Macedonia seceded from the Yugoslav Federation without as
much as a shot (except for the first few days of Slovenia's
independence when confusion ruled supreme) - because there were very
few Serbs in either. Slovenia and Macedonia are ethnically homogeneous
(Macedonia with a sizeable Albanian minority, though). Hence their
status as islands of peace and tranquillity in an impossible region.
The war with Croatia and more so in Bosnia was a direct result of
ethnic heterogeneity.
The not-so-implicit deal in the case of the USSR and the Czech Republic
was simple to grasp and very effective. "You will peacefully break up
into ethnically homogeneous units - and we will support you financially
and initiate you into our economic superstructures." It worked. It
still is working. But it was not the deal offered to the former
Yugoslav republics. To them the West's message was: "You will
peacefully break up into ethnically HETEROGENEOUS units - and we will
support you financially, subject to painful and sustained reforms."
It is time to recognize the folly and the fallacy of this last message.
Yugoslavia in particular and the Balkans in general must be
"re-designed" into ethnically homogeneous political units. If this
necessitates the re-drawing of now dangerously obsolete borders - let
it be so. It would make a lot more sense to dismantle Bosnia and unite
the Republika Srpska with Yugoslavia (Serbia) and the Croat bit with
Croatia. The Muslims can have their political unit, if they wish. Parts
of Kosovo must go to Albania. The borders have to be redrawn. The
result should be a series of ethnically homogeneous states - viable,
cohesive, peaceful and able to concentrate on economic warfare rather
than on the economics of war.
To achieve this goal, colonialism must be revived. Operation Allied
Force is a colonial war without the mercantilist emphasis of days gone
by. It is a coalition of rich countries, led by a superpower, attacking
and subduing a regional bully. As in the good old days, borders are
effectively redrawn (Kosovo's "extensive self government"), new
political entities formed, alliances with one group of natives against
another abound, military hardware coupled with economic prowess are
pitted against local aspirations which do not conform with a moralistic
"global view" of the world. The absurd is that - because colonialism is
not politically correct and is condemned by all with great vehemence -
the colonial powers of today are castrated. These eunuchs of
geopolitics do not dare to carry their military and economic clout to
its logical and beneficial conclusion. In other words: they do not dare
to DICTATE a solution and impose it rather than engage in endless
consultations with local parties and amongst themselves.
We need a new Berlin Congress. We need a new Bismarck. He said that the
whole Balkan is not worth the bones of one Pomeranian grenadier - but
this did not prevent the newly born (and recently victorious) Germany
from engaging in the redesign of South Europe. Unfortunately, the
Berlin Congress was a shoddy job, more influenced by the narrow
self-interests of the participants than by any grand vision or
integrity of intentions. To the reshapers of Europe of that time it was
more important to adversely affect the interests of Russia and Turkey
than to create a long lasting peace and the conditions for prosperity.
It was bound to fail and it did and it still does.
This is the second chance (not counting communism). This is the time to
redefine South Europe and the Balkans. This is the time to draw logical
borders, which reflect not whims and eccentricities, paranoias and
ignorance, condescension and malice - but demography and history,
national aspirations and disparate cultures and narratives. Let each
ethnic group live within safe and internationally guaranteed borders.
Let them work in harmony across borders - rather than engage in
conflicts within them. Let the Albanian lands go to Albania, the
Serbian lands to the Serbs - as the Czech lands are to the Czech and
Russian lands are to the Russian. Only then will peace prevail as it
does in Western Europe and in Scandinavia today - the scenes of
centuries of battles and bloodshed.
(Article published May 31, 1999 in "The New Presence")
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Millenarian Thoughts about Kosovo
"English persons, therefore, of humanitarian and reformist disposition
constantly went out to the Balkan Peninsula to see who was in fact
ill-treating whom, and, being by the very nature of their perfectionist
faith unable to accept the horrid hypothesis that everybody was
ill-treating everybody else, all came back with a pet Balkan people
established in their hearts as suffering and innocent, eternally the
massacree and never the massacrer."
("Black Lamb and Grey Falcon - A Journey through Yugoslavia" by Rebecca
West - Penguin Books 1994 edition p.20)
Rebecca West's book was first published in 1940. By that time, it was
common wisdom that the Balkans is the place where the destiny of our
world is determined or, at the very least, outlined. Had she lived
today, she would have had no reason to revise this particular judgement
of hers.
The Kosovo "air campaign" exposed and brought to culmination a series
of historical processes whose importance cannot be exaggerated.
The Russian Revolution
Forced to choose between nationalist delusions of imperial grandeur and
modern capitalism and its attendant, individualism - Russia chose the
latter. The ever-surprising Yeltsin completed the revolution he started
in 1990 by deposing of the last vestiges of stagnation personified by
Primakov. The remnants of the former nomenclature, the establishment
figures, the fossils in the ideological swamp that communism has become
- were given the penultimate slip. Russia was forced to peer into the
abyss of its own corruption, nepotism, criminality, social and
political disintegration and military impotence. It was forced to do so
by the developments in the Kosovo crisis. It was made to elect between
pan-Slavism and pan-capitalism. For a while, it seemed to have been
choosing the former - leading to an inevitable and suicidal
confrontation with the victorious civilization of the West. Then it
recoiled and chose the IMF over the KGB, material goods over
ideological fervour, the new myths of modernity over the old ones of
blood-steeped patriotism.
It is a momentous event, the consequences of which cannot yet be fully
fathomed. Extrapolating Russian history, it would be reasonable to
expect a backlash in the form of a counterrevolution. A communist
counter-revolution being unlikely - we can expect a fascist-criminal
counter-revolution. But it is as safe to assume that the revolution is
irreversible, setbacks aside. It is irreversible because for the first
time it generated vested interests not only for a select elite - but
also for everyone. Prosperity tends to trickle down and, as it does
(forming a middle class in its wake) - it knows no boundaries of class.
The real revolution has just been completed in Russia, 70 years after
Lenin's death. And all classes are about to win.
The Second Cold War
The outlines of the second cold war have emerged. It is to be fought
between a prosperous, almighty, vainglorious, narcissistic,
self-righteous, contemptuous and increasingly disintegrating USA and an
equally disintegrating China on the economic ascendant.
The second cold war (already in progress) is fought not between foes -
but between partners. The extent of economic interests common to the
two current combatants far exceeds anything achieved in the high
moments of detente between the USA and its previous rival, Russia. This
cold war is about markets and cultural dominance - not sheer,
projected, military prowess. It is a throwback to earlier days of
colonialism and mercantilism and it is laden with historical memories
and sensitivities.
The aims are different, as well. China wishes to force the USA to throw
open the gates of the global marketplace, currently zealously guarded
by the only superpower. The IMF, the World Bank, the WTO are all
believed to be extensions of the American economic clout, put to the
use of its geopolitical interests. Russia forced its way into the G8
but China has much loftier ambitions. It is not in pursuit of
membership in gentlemen's clubs - it aspires to real, raw power. It
wants to carve the world between itself and the West. In short, it
wants to dominate and to export and it wants the West to help it do so.
In return, it promises regional and internal stability and access to
its markets. To convince the West of the quality of its wares, China
demonstrates its capacity to destabilize in various corners of the
world. It transfers weapons technology, support international terrorism
and rogue states and, in general, places formidable obstacles in the
path to Pax Americana, the New World Order.
The Americans regard this as a reasonable deal but they wish to reverse
the cause and the effect. First, they want to gain unhindered access to
the potentially infinite Chinese market and to have the Chinese deliver
the regional and international stability they claim to be able to
deliver. Only then are they willing to contemplate the coveted prize of
graduating to the co-ownership of the world financial and economic
architecture.
China is fighting for legitimacy, recognition, access to markets,
capital and technology and the ability to reshape the world in its
favour. The USA is fighting to check progress of the Chinese on all
these fronts. Such fundamental differences are bound to lead to
conflict - as, indeed, they have.
In this sense, the bombing of the Chinese embassy has been an
auspicious event because it allowed both parties to break through, to
unlock and a deadlock and to make progress towards a fuller integration
of China into the WTO, for instance. It also legitimised the airing of
grievances against the style and conduct of the USA in world affairs.
In short, it was cathartic and useful.
The Demise of the Client States
The concept of the client states is so well entrenched in our
historical consciousness that its demise has been denied and repressed.
There are no longer alliances between powerful political units (such as
the USA) and smaller, dependent, satellites. The kaleidoscopically
shifting interests of the few remaining global powers dictate
geopolitical transigence and ideological transparency. These adaptive
processes lead to a myriad of alliances, forever changing to fit the
needs and interests of the moment or to cater to future contingencies.
Thus, Russia ignores Yugoslavia's pleas for help, China allows the USA,
Japan and South Korea to conduct direct negotiations with North Korea,
America bullies Israel into a settlement with the Palestinians (who
support Iraq), the UK and the USA impose a peace plan on the IRA,
Russia respects an embargo imposed on both Iraq and Yugoslavia and so
on. These are the roots of a truly global order. It is also the death
knell for rogue and "insane" states. Devoid of their patronage, these
countries are gradually tamed by the awesome twin forces of the global
market and international capital and information flows. Iran moderates,
Libya surrenders, Yugoslavia succumbs, the only exception being Iraq.
This is NOT to say that warfare is a thing of the past. On the very
contrary. In the absence of the overwhelmingly restraining impulses and
impositions of the superpowers - ethnic strife, border skirmishes, the
proliferation of weapons of mass destruction - all are likely to
increase. But these are already affairs of limited importance, confined
to parts of the world of limited importance, and fought amongst people
of ever more limited importance. War marginalizes the warriors because
it takes them out of the circulation of capital, information and goods.
Decoupled from these essential flows, warring parties wither and
shrivel.
The Convergence of Economic and Military Alliances
The Kosovo crisis started as an exercise in self re-definition. NATO
used it to successfully put its cohesiveness to test. It acted sanely
and its hypercomplex set of checks and balances and more checks scored
an impressive success. As a result, the limited aims and means of the
campaign were maintained and NATO was not dragged into either British
belligerence or Italian and Greek defeatism. It was the second time in
recent history (the first being another multilateral military campaign
in the Gulf in 1991) - that a military move did not degenerate into
full-scale insanity of carnage and bloodshed.
NATO emerged as a self-restrained, well-choreographed, well
co-ordinated body of professionals who go through motions and off the
shelf plans with lifeless automatism. While somewhat aesthetically
repulsive, this image is a great deterrent. We fear cold-blooded,
impartial machines of war more than we do any hot-blooded,
sword-wielding fanatic. NATO acted with the famous German industrial
efficiency that gave warfare a bad name. It was "surgically precise"
and civilian casualties were alchemically converted into "collateral
damage". The well-practised Jamie Shea is an exceptionally chilling
sight.
Thus, a policeman was born to police the emerging world of
international commerce, true multinationals, boundary-less flows of
data and chaotic reactions to changes in local variables. This
policeman is NATO and it wields an awesome club. As it chooses which
criminals to discipline, it transforms the nature of previously unruly
neighbourhoods. For this, at least, we should be grateful.
(Article published June 6, 1999 in "The New Presence")
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NATO's Next War
The real, protracted, war is about to start. NATO and the international
peacekeeping force against an unholy - and, until recently, improbable
- alliance. Milosevic (or post-Milosevic Serbia) and the KLA against
the occupying forces. It is going to be ferocious. It is going to be
bloody. And it is going to be a Somali nightmare.
Why should the KLA and Serbia collaborate against NATO (I use NATO here
as shorthand for "The International Peacekeeping Force - KFOR")?
Serbia - because it wants to regain its lost sovereignty over at least
the northern part of Kosovo. Because it virulently hates,
wholeheartedly detests, voluptuously despises NATO, the "Nazi
aggressor" of yester month. Serbia has no natural allies left, not even
Russia, which prostituted its geopolitical favours for substantial IMF
funding. Its only remaining natural ally is the KLA.
The KLA stands to lose everything as a result of the latest bout of
peacemaking. It is supposed to be "decommissioned" IRA-style, disarmed
("demilitarised" in the diplomatic argot) and effectively disbanded.
The KLA's political clout rested on its ever-growing arsenal and body
of volunteers. Yet volunteers have a strange habit of going back whence
they came once a conflict is over. And the weapons are to be
surrendered. Devoid of these two pillars of political might - Thaci may
find himself unemployed, a former self-declared Prime Minister of a
shadow government in Albanian exile. Rugova has the coffers, filled to
the brim with tens of millions of US dollars and DM raised from the
Albanian Diaspora worldwide. Money talks, KLA walks. Bad for the KLA.
Having tasted power, having met cher Albright on a regular basis,
having conversed with Tony Blair and Robertson and even Clinton via
expensive high tech gadgets - Thaci is not likely to compromise on a
second rate appointment in a Rugova led administration.
And the bad news is that he doesn't have to. Bolstered by a
short-sighted and panicky NATO, the KLA post-bellum is not what it used
to be ante-bellum. It is well equipped. It is well financed. Its ranks
have swelled. It has been transformed from an agglomeration of
desperadoes - to a military guerrilla force to be reckoned with. Even
the Serbs found that out at a dear price.
With the Serb pullout from Kosovo, Serbia is no longer the KLA'a enemy
of choice. The KLA has seen the enemy and it is NATO. The pro-Rugova
demonstrations in the camps (despite Rugova's Quisling show with
Milosevic and his refusal to explain his motives and to adopt a stern
position against the Serbs) - sounded loud and clear. Thaci picked up
the signal.
No Kosovar autonomy can do without Serbia. Kosovo is connected to
Serbia by way of infrastructure. All its trade is with Yugoslavia. It
is absolutely dependent on Serbia for its energy needs. Rugova knows
this. Thaci knows this. And Milosevic knows this. Only NATO pretends
that Kosova can survive as an independent, economically viable entity.
It cannot. It is a part of Serbia, willy-nilly and it will continue to
be so. Rugova and Thaci will be positioning themselves accordingly and
will seek the favours of the only regional force that really matters:
Serbia. Rumour has it that discussion have already commenced in Prague
between Yugoslav low-level officials and Rugova and Thaci
representatives of their competing administrations.
In conducting these discussions, Milosevic's aim is two-fold. Divide et
impera - he intends to do his best to inflame the nascent internecine
civil war about to erupt in Kosovo. By offering goodies to both camps,
Serbia pits them against one another. By being inconsistent and
unpredictable (remember Serbia's refugees policy?) - the Serbs enhance
a Kosovar personality disorder. Dazed by the arbitrariness and
capriciousness of a vicious neighbour - the Kosovars will lash at each
other in an effort to offload their frustration and aggression.
Lucky Serbia. Its infrastructure all but eradicated - it will enjoy the
best and latest replacements courtesy a multitude of international
financial institutions and NGOs. Materially revamped, nationally
revived, militarily vindicated, an invigorated power that withstood the
mightiest alliance in history - Serbia is in an excellent position to
emerge as an important, nay, indispensable, regional, pivotal player.
It can have its choice. In Rugova it will find a genteel, compliant,
respectable and submissive partner. In Thaci - a fellow bully. Serbia
can conduct business with both. As it tramples over internal dissent,
suppresses Montenegro and tightens its grip on its minorities - Serbia
will strive to split Kosovo. It will be content with the mineral-rich,
historical north. Thaci will be content with any kind of foothold, a
stepping-stone on the way to a Greater Albania. There are grounds for
doing business and business will be done, indeed.
Poor Kosova. Lucky Serbia. With such opponents, one need not have
friends. And, in the background, NATO stumbles on into its worst
nightmare, into an apocalyptic tapestry of exploding mines, KLA sniper
fire and mortar attacks, Serb revanchism, material devastation, mass
starvation and geopolitical destabilization. It is this war: gradual,
nerve wrecking, multi-annual, expensive, replete with body bags and
horror scenes - that will do NATO in. It is the end of NATO, only it
does not know it. It has contracted the humanitarian cancer and its
days are numbered.
Milosevic is smiling. He won the war. Completely. And the world has yet
to learn it.
Post Scriptum
It is ever so easy and rational to disregard the above scenario. It is
abrupt, illogical, paradoxical. The Serbs and Milosevic are surely the
KLA's worst enemies. No peace - even one mediated by a confluence of
interests - can blossom among the ruins of coexistence and trust
shredded. A KLA supported by the Serbs against NATO is as outlandish as
an Iraq supported by the USA against Israel.
But the Balkan is a region characterized by its fluid alliances and
structures. Rebecca West, in her masterpiece, "Black Lamb and Grey
Falcon" tells of an alliance no less unholy and no more improbable than
a KLA-Milosevic one (pages 840-1 in the 1994 Penguin edition):
"It happened that the Slavs who had become Janissaries, especially the
Bosnian Serbs, who had been taken from their Christian mothers and
trained to forswear Christ and live in the obedience and enforcement of
the oppressive yet sluttish Ottoman law, had learned their lesson too
well. When the Turks themselves became alarmed by the working of that
law and attempted to reform it, the Janissaries rose against the
reformation. But because they remembered they were Slavs in spite of
all the efforts that had been made to force them to forget it, they
felt that in resisting the Turks, even in defence of Turkish law, they
were resisting those who had imposed that Turkish law on them in place
of their Christian system. So when the rebellious Janissaries defeated
the loyal Army of the Sultan in the fourth battle of Kosovo in 1831,
and left countless Turkish dead on the field, they held that they had
avenged the shame laid on the Christian Slavs in the first battle of
Kosovo, although they themselves were Moslems. But their Christian
fellow-Slavs gave them no support, for they regarded them simply as
co-religionists of the Turkish oppressors and therefore as enemies. So
the revolt of the Janissaries failed; and to add the last touch of
confusion, they were finally defeated by a Turkish marshal who was
neither Turk nor Moslem-born Slav, but a renegade Roman Catholic from
Dalmatia. Here was illustrated what is often obscured by historians,
that a people can be compelled by misfortune into an existence so
confused that it is not life but sheer nonsense, the malignant nonsense
of cancerous growth."
This is reminiscent of the Gorani Moslems in 1999 Kosovo who
collaborated with the Serbs against their co-religionists, the
Albanians. They persecuted the Albanian population - looted, burned
houses and worse - more tenaciously and more ferociously than any Serb.