SUPPORT FOR WAR DWINDLES IN EUROPE
By John Catalinotto
Public support for NATO’s war on Yugoslavia is diminishing in the NATO countries as the war drags on and its punishment of the civilian population becomes apparent. This has also begun to weaken the position of social-democratic and "green" parties that back the imperialist war.
In mid-May, a former minister in the French government of Fran‡ois Mitterrand, the 1960s left intellectual Regis Debray, wrote a first-hand account of events in Kosovo for the daily newspaper Le Monde that countered the incessant demonization of the Yugoslav government and Serbian people. It exposed some of the lies about the so-called crimes of the Yugoslav army in Kosovo and revealed some of the crimes committed against the Yugoslav people.
That Debray’s mild article was immediately attacked by the French intellectual establishment shows how far that establishment had gone in supporting the imperialist war against Yugoslavia. What makes it especially difficult for the anti-war movement in France is that the government is Socialist Party-led, with participation by the French Communist Party (PCF) and the French Green Party.
Instead of combating the war with all its strength, as any real communist party should, the PCF has instead been attacking the Yugoslav government headed by Slobodan Milosevic. In addition, the other "far left" parties—
Workers’ Struggle and the Revolutionary Communist League— have taken the absurd position of being for the "liberation" of Kosovo, putting them on the same side as NATO and its "Kosovo Liberation Army."
Despite this misleading by the traditional left, polls in France show support for the bombing dropped below 50 percent in the third week of May.
In Germany, leading bodies of the Green Party in some of the major cities have split off because of the pro-war position of the Green leadership. German Foreign Minister Joshka Fischer, a Green leader, has been a major spokesperson for German participation in the war. While refusing to break with the government’s war policy, a recent Green special congress demanded that the regime press for a negotiated settlement of the war.
Green support for the bombing has eroded partly because it has become clear that the massive bombing of Yugoslavia has brought with it enormous destruction of the environment.
This writer—who was an editor of the book "Metal of Dishonor," about weapons made with depleted uranium— participated recently in meetings in The Hague, Netherlands, and in Bonn, Germany. In both of these meetings, environmental destruction, including that by DU, was a major point.
The meeting in The Hague on May 15--hosted by the groups "NATO means war, down with NATO" and the New Communist Party of the Netherlands—mobilized new support for protests against the war in Yugoslavia. The groups had held a protest the week before in Amsterdam that brought out 1,500 people against the war, and are planning a national action for June 5.
The Bonn meeting on May 17 featured Dr. Siegwart-Horst Gunther, who has gathered information about DU’s effects on the Iraqi population, and Lenora Foerstel of Women for Mutual Security. By the end of the meeting the audience was painfully aware that the war against Yugoslavia was also a war on the environment.
The question for the anti-imperialist movement is how to turn this growing concern over the war into a potent force independent of the NATO governments that is capable of ending NATO’s bombing of Yugoslavia.