MIM Notes 86 March, 1994 EX-YUGOSLAVIA: 'HUMPTY DUMPTY' OR PRELUDE TO MORE WAR? by MC5 & MC12 Don't look to President Clinton to get the real story behind imperialist aggression in ex-Yugoslavia. He explained it like this: "Sarajevo is sort of the Humpty Dumpty of Bosnia. If you want everyone to be put back together again--the country--you've got to keep Sarajevo from total collapse."(1) The President was at a loss for words to explain why the Amerikan government supposedly suddenly cared about the carnage in Bosnia. Were you fooled? When the United States and its NATO allies call for bombing, in ex-Yugoslavia or anywhere else, their intention is not humanitarian. This is a central axiom of imperialist war policy, but it is worth repeating. National Security Advisor Anthony Lake made that clear recently. Lake wrote that the U.S. government will ask the following questions before getting involved in international military action: "What is the threat to our interests? Is there a clearly defined mission? A distinct end point? How much will it cost? Are the resources available? What is the likelihood of success?"(2) Absent from this list was: "Will this help innocent people who are dying?" But he did say that "peacekeeping" is "an often useful foreign policy tool." So much for humanitarianism. So why do the imperialists care what happens in ex-Yugoslavia? Most simply, the former Yugoslavia republics house precious resources serviced by important populations in a strategic location--on the Adriatic sea and the Danube river, and on key land routes to the Aegean Sea and the Turkish Straits. And the various imperialist powers are in conflict over who gets what. Germany is making the greatest advances into Eastern Europe after the collapse of the USSR. In the first few years after 1989, Germany dumped half of all Western capital into Eastern Europe, making it the largest foreign investor in the region.(3) Germany already won the former Yugoslavian republics of Slovenia and Croatia, drawing them into its orbit when they split from Yugoslavia in 1991. France, Britain, the United States and others fear not only a stronger German imperialism, but also a potential German-Russian alliance. And this threat has grown stronger, not weaker, with the political rise of Russian nationalism. Just days after government conferencing over admitting Eastern European countries to NATO, France said that the credibility of NATO is at stake in Bosnia. This is evidence of a Franco-German split. Here's why. Yugoslavia was not a member of NATO and nor is Bosnia. NATO's credibility is at stake because if NATO has any use to the imperialists, it is to protect against a future threat of Russian imperialism, in the opinion of some circles of imperialists at least. The strong election results of Russian fascist Vladimir Zhirinovsky, whose party won the popular vote in last year's Russian elections, have sent several countries scurrying to NATO. Zhirinovsky has promised wholesale dismemberment of countries if he comes to power. When Zhirinovsky said "we would be happy to have a border with Serbia," despite the existence of several countries in between them at present(4), he was offering Germany a partitioning of Eastern Europe. The top ex-Nazis and current Nazis of Germany are Zhirinovsky's friends. Hence, there are those concerned with a German-Russian imperialist alliance. One weight against Russian-German alliance is the unified European Economic Community. If Germany sees major gains from a European free trade zone, chances are it might reject Russian overtures or seek to bring Russia and Eastern Europe into the EEC later. Should the EEC fall apart, however, we might see more of a German tilt toward Russia. NATO intervention into Bosnia, driven by France and Amerika, is a threat to Germany and Russia. Russia (and Ukraine) denounced NATO action in Bosnia.(5) The Russian Duma had earlier passed a resolution--444 to 280--declaring that "great concern is caused by the discussion in NATO countries of the possibility of bomb strikes against targets in the former Yugoslavia."(6) Zhirinovsky warned against bombing in Bosnia, saying harm to Bosnian Serbs would amount to a declaration of war on Russia.(7) But Amerikan aggression in the face of Germany and Russia is not confined to bombing in Bosnia. It is no accident that on Feb. 8 the Amerikan-controlled World Bank approved new loans to the former Yugoslavian republic of Macedonia, and that on Feb. 9 the United States, over Greece's objection, officially recognized an independent Macedonia.(5) Greek's prime minister was "very, very disturbed" by the move. Greece threatened to blockade Macedonia. Then on Feb. 10, after NATO voted to act in Bosnia, Greece called the ultimatum "totally wrong and guilty," and said NATO was threatening to spread the war in the Balkans.(1) Greece is not overreacting. Speaking candidly, James Baker and Alex Haig, two former U.S. secretaries of state, said there was no point in trying to stop the war in Bosnia. Instead, Amerika's only hope is to deploy thousands of troops in Macedonia, to "prevent" war from spreading.(8) In late January, before the bombing of the Sarajevo market that caused so much mock moral outrage in NATO capitals, the CIA announced it was deploying operatives and spy aircraft in Albania to monitor events in the Balkans.(8) This was when Clinton was still supposedly against military action in Bosnia. Yugoslavia was a fairly advanced industrialized country, from which the United States, Germany and the USSR all drew healthy profits. Its leader, Tito, betrayed communism in 1948 and began building a model for Khrushchev's state capitalism in Russia. The Yugoslav federation exploded in 1991 under the splitting pressure of Germany and Amerika from the West, and Russia from the East. The resulting war is the turf battle between Croat and Serb capitalists, fighting over the spoils of Bosnia-Hercegovina. Bosnia is and was not a nation; many of its people are Croat or Serb Muslims.(9) Those calling for Amerikan war in Bosnia want Amerika to make a more aggressive push into the new European balance of power. The neo-liberal New Republic magazine, for example, complained that with Bush, Amerika was "first among equals," when it came to international action, but with Clinton it's "one among equals. ƒ Thus we had action against Iraq and we have inaction against Serbia."(10) There is a big difference between Iraq and Bosnia, though: Iraq was U.S. turf, Bosnia is in Europe. The magazine complains that "we are hiding behind the Europeans' skirts. Clinton has abjured America's primacy in NATO just as surely as he has abjured America's primacy at the United Nations."(10) Amerikan power-brokers are divided, though. Some people point out that the situation in Bosnia may "require" more than the original "selective" airstrikes; the U.S. contribution to a future NATO/U.N. force was planned to be about 25,000 troops.(11) While the Russian defense minister said the intervention could lead to World War III, Republicans divided--with Jesse Helms against and Bob Dole for--over military intervention.(12) Bush's former National Security Advisor Brent Scowcroft said the U.S. military should be "prepared to carry the war to Serbia itself," if it wanted to accomplish its mission, and experts from the Harvard Kennedy School and Brookings Institution all doubt selective bombing will stop the war.(1). Political developments within Russia are driving the inter- imperialist rivalry. Analyzing the election results in Russia, New York Times analyst William Safire said that the West's hero Yeltsin made a deal with the fascist Zhirinovsky. Yeltsin did not criticize Zhirinovsky by name in the elections and Zhirinovsky did likewise--and supported the new Constitution to give Yeltsin (and maybe himself, someday) greater powers. This maneuver in itself indicates that Yeltsin finds Zhirinovsky's politics to have some merit, and it scares imperialists in-the-know. Though the Western bourgeoisie generally favored Yeltsin's Constitution that legitimized his shutting down of Parliament, without the fascist Zhirinovsky's support it would have failed. Indeed, the strength of Zhirinovsky's showing forced the bourgeois media to make a distinction between phony-communists and fascists for the first time, as the pro-Western "reformers" called for a united front with the "communists" against the fascists in the government.(13) Underlying this shift in bourgeois media coverage is not a new genuine anti-fascism. For a moment, the imperialist bourgeoisie of Amerika believes it needs to court the "communists" in Russia to ensure that they do not ally with Zhirinovsky to redivide Europe with Germany. This fear approached panic as Yeltsin purged his cabinet of "reformers" in January, and its future depends on what final strategy the imperialists agree on for dealing with the instability in Eastern Europe. Those who uphold Lenin's theory of imperialism have a responsibility to point out that the causes of imperialist contention still exist despite the end of the Soviet bloc. The imperialists are already waging war on the Third World countries. The threat of inter-imperialist war remains, but with new alliances. As long as there is capitalist imperialism, there will be a profit in going to war to force other countries to give trade and investment terms favorable to one's bloc. Such war and imperialist subversion of slightly independence-minded governments is already going on every day in the Third World. MIM believes in creating a genuine free trade system based on real independence of nations, equality and actual peace and harmony. That is only possible by replacing capitalist competition and the pursuit of profit with socialism. The wars over ex-Yugoslavia are further evidence of this hard reality. Notes: 1. Reuter 2/10/94. 2. New York Times 2/6/94, p. 17. 3. Economist 5/23/92. 4. UPI 1/30/94. 5. Reuter 2/11/94. 6. UPI 1/21/94. 7. UPI 1/30/94. 8. UPI 1/28/94. 9. See MIM Theory 4, Winter 1993. 10. New Republic editorial 2/28/94. 11. Reuter 2/13/94. 12. AP 2/12/94. 13. See NYT 12/13-15/93.