Workers World June 10, 1999:

EDITORIAL STATEMENT

Kosovo 'peace' is an imperialist occupation imposed through overwhelming force and brutality

After more than ten weeks of relentless bombing, the gang of imperialist powers in NATO, led by the U.S. government and the Pentagon, has succeeded in imposing a military occupation on Yugoslavia.

The progressive movement must stand up and expose the propaganda filling the media. This is a robbers' "peace" forced on a small country by a ruthless air war aimed at the whole population.

NOT A PEACE SETTLEMENT BUT AN ULTIMATUM

On June 3 the Serb parliament in a 136-to-74 vote and the Yugoslav government of Slobodan Milosevic accepted an ultimatum. It required Yugoslavia to withdraw its forces from the Serbian province of Kosovo and allow in an occupying army with "an essential NATO participation."

An accompanying United Nations resolution will provide a cover for U.S./NATO command and control of the operation.

This ultimatum had been worked out in meetings between U.S. representative Strobe Talbott, European Union president Martti Ahtisaari, and Russian envoy Viktor Chernomyrdin.

This is not a peace settlement. It contains no assurances that the threats to Yugoslavia's sovereignty are over.

On the contrary, the occupation will only whet the appetites of the imperialists to further undermine the independence of what remains of Yugoslavia--especially the U.S. and British ruling classes, the most blatant and arrogant in their quest for world domination.

The Yugoslav government took the decision to accept the ultimatum--which differs little from the plan it rejected at Rambouillet--only after 72 days of heroic people's resistance to merciless bombardment. The Yugoslav people, of many nationalities, had stood up defiantly to the combined air forces of the U.S., Britain, France, Germany and Italy, which threw at them the most powerful means of destruction available in this high-tech age--short of nuclear bombs.

Presumably, the Yugoslav leaders accepted the ultimatum handed them by Ahtisaari and Chernomyrdin in order to preserve the sovereignty of the core of the Yugoslav state and bring an end to the bombing of the civilian population.

The role of Chernomyrdin, part of the counter-revolutionary clique now ruling Russia, was particularly treacherous. He entered the scene supposedly as a friend of Yugoslavia, but acted totally as a messenger for Bill Clinton and German Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder.

BOMBING HAS CONTINUED

The reaction of the Pentagon and the White House to the news from Belgrade was swift and merciless: there would be no halt in the bombing until Yugoslavia had withdrawn its troops from its own province of Kosovo. They gave no guarantees that the withdrawing troops would not be bombed. That is exactly what happened to Iraqi troops as they withdrew from Kuwait: 45,000 of them were massacred from the air on the "Highway of Death."

The air war has continued. The struggle will inevitably continue in other ways as the U.S./NATO imperialists escalate their demands on Yugoslavia.

The imperialists launched their attack not just to grab Kosovo--and certainly not to aid the ethnic Albanian population there, whose lives were turned upside down by the war. The onslaught of the last ten weeks is part of a long struggle to completely dismember Yugoslavia, the last country in Europe not to be toppled in the imperialist avalanche set loose by the collapse of the Soviet Union.

The effort of the imperialists to overthrow a state that still has progressive features inherited from the national liberation struggle and socialist revolution led by the Yugoslav communists in the 1940s will only intensify.

REDIVISION OF EUROPE

The NATO countries present a united image, but just as in the past, the ruling classes of the U.S., Germany, Britain, France, Italy and other imperialist states are in a deadly struggle among themselves for markets and cheap labor. Once millionaires, they have become billionaires off the exploitation of the workers at home and the super-oppressed abroad.

At stake for them is the wealth of an entire region once liberated from capitalist profiteering but now once again up for grabs.

They are already jockeying for Kosovo's rich mines--while they look to sell costly weapons to countries fearing the next war and scheme to pit the nationalities against each other further east in the oil-rich area of the Caspian Sea.

They are threatening People's China again, after deliberately bombing its embassy in Belgrade--one among many NATO war crimes in this one-sided slaughter called a war.

It's the old imperialist tactic of divide and conquer, and can only be defeated by international solidarity of the workers and oppressed against the racist exploiters.

The increasing viciousness and aggression of imperialism is driven by a stubborn capitalist recession that has enveloped most of the world for two years. This is behind the deepening competition--just as it drove the major imperialist countries into two world wars earlier in this century.

Because of this recession, 200 million people have fallen into poverty, a recent study shows. The assault on the people of Yugoslavia, especially the workers, is one part of this worldwide attack on the living standards of the masses as stock and bond holders amass obscene fortunes.

The anti-war movement in the U.S. must acknowledge the class character of its enemy. It must reach out to the workers and oppressed here, who need the truth in order to defend their own interests in the struggle against imperialism, racism and grinding exploitation.

EDITORIAL STATEMENT

Kosovo 'peace' is an imperialist occupation imposed through overwhelming force and brutality

Copyright © 1999 workers.org