As Yugoslavs resist, war approaches turning
point
Invasion pressure builds as air war fails
By Fred
Goldstein
The heroic resistance of the Yugoslav people, army and
government, who are holding up despite 20,000 sorties of death
and destruction carried out by the combined might of all
Western imperialism, has driven the high-and-mighty U.S./NATO
alliance to distraction and disunity.
The process of inter-imperialist conflict over how to
continue the war is approaching a turning point. Above all, the
struggle is heating up over bringing in ground troops. But
while the various NATO powers vie for a hand on the reins of
war, the anti-war movement must remain focused on stopping the
war and keeping the U.S. and NATO from occupying Yugoslavia--in
whatever form and under whatever label.
The U.S. and European imperialist air warriors--at 15,000
feet--are escalating their attacks every day. Their aim is
clear: to bomb the civilian as well as the military
infrastructure to smithereens and make life unbearable for the
Yugoslav population.
Each day more bridges, roads, factories, fuel supplies,
power stations, and all the means of modern life are destroyed.
The cities of Belgrade, Nis, Novi Sad, Pristina, Prizren, Pec
and surrounding areas are bombed again and again.
With each new savage attack and escalation of the air war,
the generals, admirals and imperialist politicians wait for a
sign of surrender. And with each new escalation the people dig
in, and the Yugoslav government reiterates its desire to settle
the war on the basis of retaining its sovereignty, restating
its determination not to surrender to an imperialist
occupation.
Demonstrations against the war are taking place from India
and Pakistan to Argentina and Vietnam, from Greece, Germany and
Japan to the U.S. Tony Blair was burned in effigy when he
visited Bulgaria.
NATO's transparent lies--like the one about the Yugoslav
Army using Kosovo Albanians as human shields--can't conceal its
barbarous bombing of civilians. The governments of the vast
majority of the world's people oppose the war and fear the
unilateral imperialist arrogance of the U.S.-NATO powers, who
have simply decided to stamp out the independence of a
sovereign country that would not bow to their will as they seek
to redivide the globe in the post-Soviet era.
As the 55th day of this murderous air campaign approaches,
the U.S. government and its NATO allies are at each other's
throats. The humiliation of U.S. air power advocates is
becoming excruciating.
Washington convinced the Europeans to put the credibility of
NATO on the line in Yugoslavia. Now all the powers are
desperately looking for a solution. But having made such
arrogant claims, and having come so far along the road of war,
their real argument is over how best to lay the basis for
victory over Yugoslavia.
Ground troops:
the voices grow louder
On May 1, Gen. Colin Powell, the former Chair of the Joint
Chiefs of Staff who presided over the Gulf War, went public
with a press conference where he criticized President Bill
Clinton for not keeping the threat of ground troops open from
the beginning. He also declared that he did not think the air
war was sufficient to win.
The May 20 issue of Newsweek magazine revealed that the
Pentagon wrote a letter to the Clinton administration declaring
the war cannot be won without ground troops. At the same time
Tony Blair and the British Labor government are publicly
pressuring for troops.
The British call for ground troops is partly political
posturing. Blair, having had naïve faith in his U.S.
master's air power, went way out on a limb as the devoted
advocate of total victory. He is now having to find a way to
shift the blame to Clinton for the present failure to defeat
Yugoslavia. Nevertheless, he reflects the pressure in British
ruling class circles.
Clinton, under pressure from all sides, on May 18 indicated
at a press conference in the Oval Office during a visit by
Jordan's King Abdullah that he would not rule out troops. He
said that NATO "will achieve our objectives one way or the
other" and "`we have not and will not take any option off the
table."
Italian Prime Minister Massimo D'Alema held a meeting in
southern Italy on May 18 with German Prime Minister Gerhard
Schroeder, during which they both called for a UN resolution
along the lines of the one passed at the G-8 meeting in Bonn on
May 5. This resolution, agreed to by Viktor Chernomyrdin,
Russian President Boris Yeltin's special emissary, called for
some undefined armed force to enter Kosovo and an unspecified
withdrawal of Yugoslav forces from the province.
After the meeting in Italy, Schroeder, whose coalition
government is on the verge of falling over the question of the
war, declared that "a NATO ground invasion is unthinkable."
D'Alema, on the other hand, said there should be a short
bombing halt to give Yugoslav President Slobodan Milosevic time
to give in to NATO's demands. If he does not, said Schroeder,
then there should be a ground invasion--presumably authorized
by the United Nations. In fact, the G-8 resolution of May 5 had
tucked away in it a reference to an Article 7
intervention--that is, intervention without the permission of
the victim country. The same article was used for the Gulf
War.
Talbott in Moscow
Strobe Talbott, Deputy Secretary of State and Clinton's
emissary to Russia, was in Moscow meeting with Russian
officials in the midst of the parliamentary crisis there. This
crisis was resolved with a victory for Yeltsin and the ouster
of Prime Minister Yevgeny Primakov. The outcome was fully in
accord with U.S. imperialism's needs. It continues the
capitalist reforms and secures the International Monetary
Fund's conditions on the one hand, and on the other keeps the
Russian capitalist government lined up as stooges in the
attempt to isolate the Yugoslav government. Talbott was working
out a NATO-imposed solution with Russian Foreign Minister Igor
Ivanov and with Chernomyrdin.
Finnish President Martti Ahtisaari has been nominated the
intermediary in discussions on ending the war. Ahtisaari met
once with Schroeder and twice with Talbott and Chernomyrdin
within the last week.
The talks in Moscow between Talbott and the Russians,
reported the New York Times of May 15, were described by State
Department spokesperson James Rubin. "Among the points under
discussion in Moscow, according to Rubin," wrote the Times,
"were: the composition of the force, what constituted a `rapid
and precise' timetable for withdrawal of Milosevic's forces and
how the withdrawal could be verified. The shape of the civil
administration over Kosovo, which would most likely be run by
the United Nations, was also discussed.
"Rubin said that an important part of Chernomyrdin's mission
when he went to Belgrade would be to explain `what will be
necessary for President Milosevic to agree to and accept, so
that we can suspend bombing.'" In a phrase, the terms of
surrender.
The U.S. government's real position was made clear in the
Washington Post of May 17. It quoted a "senior State Department
official" who said that "Our slogan is that it must be NATO at
the core, but it doesn't have to be NATO on the door... That
means that it doesn't have to say on the guy's desk, `NATO
commander General So-and-so. But General So-and-so will in fact
be a NATO national, he will take his instructions from NATO
authorities, and he will have command of all forces in
Kosovo."
All this is supposed to be taken up at a second G-8 meeting
in Bonn on May 19. But whatever is resolved at this gathering
of the imperialist powers and their messengers from Moscow, the
movement must take a completely irreconcilable position against
any formula that does not fully recognize the sovereignty of
Yugoslavia. Attempts to impose any form of
occupation--regardless of whether or not the Yugoslav
government is ultimately compelled to compromise under onerous
conditions--are a capitulation to imperialism.
No imperialist occupation
in disguise
The political basis of sovereignty is control over the
state. The imperialists are planning to demand that Yugoslavia
surrender control over the state in Kosovo or some part of it.
In its place the Pentagon and its partners intend to erect
their own armed force--their state, not subject to the
government of Yugoslavia.
It does not matter who wears the uniform--NATO, the UN, the
Russians, the Ukranians or anyone else. If the armed force is
not there to assist the government of Yugoslavia, and if it is
not subject to the authority of the Yugoslav government while
on its territory, then it is an occupation force--no matter how
disguised. Its aim will be to carry out the dismemberment of
the country for the benefit of imperialism.
Demands that fall short of the unconditional end of the
bombing, of sanctions and of all other attempts to destroy the
Yugoslav government are an aid to the U.S.-NATO war
criminals.
The robbers in NATO may or may not be able to agree on a
common program. If they are split and one group--say the German
and Italian imperialists--wants to have a broader-based war
and/or occupation, the Yugoslav government may want to find a
way to utilize the differences and deepen the split to gain
some breathing room. That is up to the Yugoslav government. But
the anti-war movement must not push one or another imperialist
solution or agency, such as the UN. Imperialism, in any
disguise, is still imperialism.
The Iraqi people have suffered genocide under a U.S.-led UN
regime. The Democratic People's Republic of Korea was bombed
and invaded for three years and millions of people were killed
and wounded under a U.S.-led UN regime.
At the moment the hopes of the G-8 group may be foiled
because they are relying on Russia and the People's Republic of
China to abstain in any Security Council vote.
In the case of Russia, there is no telling how low the
Yeltsinites will sink. The government of the
counter-revolutionary new Russian bourgeoisie is still
dependent on handouts from its masters at the IMF and Wall
Street. But even it may not be able to survive a vote for an
occupation.
On the other hand, the Chinese government has kept up a
steady stream of denunciation of the aggression against
Yugoslavia. And, in the wake of the criminal bombing of the
Chinese Embassy, an Associated Press dispatch of May 18
reported that China was "maintaining its barrage of criticism
against NATO's war in Yugoslavia." It "accused the Western
alliance of creating the world's worst humanitarian disaster in
50 years.... Foreign Ministry spokesman Zhu Bangzao said NATO
air strikes have killed 1,200 civilians and left 600,000
homeless. Zhu repeated China's demand that the bombing stop
immediately in order to make peace talks possible."
Another tendency in the U.S. military and its supporters in
the ruling class was given clear expression in an opinion piece
in the Washington Post of May 14. It was co-authored by
Alexander Haig--former head of the U.S. command in Europe,
Nixon's security adviser and Reagan's secretary of state--along
with Harvey Sicherman, president of the Foreign Policy Research
Institute.
In this piece entitled "Defeat in Kosovo," Haig and
Sicherman write, "The diplomacy now underway to settle the
Kosovo crisis ratifies the logic that flowed from NATO's
Council of War in Washington last month. Driven by populism, a
desire for NATO unity and an ample measure of strategic myopia,
the Clinton Administration continued to exclude ground forces.
Lacking a decisive military dimension, alliance strategy was
yoked to Russian mediation as the best and quickest way out.
The result may yield a conclusion to the war, but surely not a
NATO victory."
With strictly an air war, write the authors, "there will be
no carefully planned ground action to impose NATO's will." This
is the voice of the war-until-surrender camp. "All this
enlarges the chronic blunder that has characterized Western
diplomacy throughout the Balkan wars--excessive rhetoric
supported by underwhelming force."
Their view is that bringing Russia and the UN into the
process is to introduce a restraining force on U.S.
imperialism. These are precisely the forces that were behind
the bombing of the Chinese Embassy. They want to break up any
diplomatic movement that endangers the free hand of the
Pentagon.
The Clinton strategy, write Haig and Sicherman, emphasizes
"Russian mediation" and "restoring domestic prestige" to the
Yeltsin regime, which leads to "handing NATO a defeat.... The
G-8 statement takes a major step in this direction, joining an
inept military diplomacy to an incomplete military strategy.
NATO is not even mentioned, has been subordinated to the UN
Security Council, thereby reintroducing Moscow's permanent
veto. To make matters worse, another member of the Council,
China, has now been empowered by the accidental attack on its
embassy to seek NATO's discomfiture for its own reasons."
This is the voice of unbridled, adventuristic militarism
that is vying behind the scenes for control over the war. The
masses are in the dark as to how strong this grouping is within
the Pentagon--but the bombing of the embassy certainly showed
they are a force to be reckoned with.
Whether or not this issue gets to the Security Council, the
Pentagon and Wall Street have already shown some of the
adventurist measures they will resort to in their quest for
world domination--which is what this war is all about. What
they are arguing about now is when and how to send in a ground
invasion when the air war fails to bring about victory. They
are arguing about when and how to mingle the blood of the
working class of the U.S. and Europe with the blood of the
Yugoslav people.
This is the line they must someday cross in their quest for
empire. Voices in high U.S. military circles and in sections of
the ruling class who fear humiliation in Yugoslavia are growing
louder and more insistent that the time to cross that line is
now. All the more must the anti-war movement reach out to the
working class and the oppressed communities to sound the alarm
and to mobilize a militant, broad-based movement of
resistance.
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