YUGOSLAV INTERNATIONAL POLICY PERIODICAL AVAILABLE ON INTERNET
International Action Center paper included—“NATO must be abolished”
11 Jul 2000
On June 10, the editorial office of the Yugoslav periodical "International Policy," marked the prestigious magazine’s 50th anniversary by presenting a new issue that was entirely devoted to the causes and consequences of NATO's aggression (March-June 1999) on Yugoslavia.
A presentation entitled “NATO Must Be Abolished,” made at a March 24-27 Institute of International Politics and Economics symposium in Belgrade by International Action Center representative John Catalinotto, is included among the contributions to the latest issue of “International Policy.” This contribution is reproduced below.
Along with analytical articles of more than ten authors from the world and country the periodical gives an insight into developments that preceded the aggression, the genocide over Serbs conducted by the largest military machinery in the world, and the devastating results of the international security presence in Kosovo and Metohija.
The periodical has over 5,000 subscribers in the world, and the director and editor-in-chief, Prof. Jelica Stefanovic-Stambuk, informed journalists that as of this issue, International Policy editions in Serbian and in English will be available on the Internet ( ( www.inaffairs.org.yu ).
John
Catalinotto |
NATO Must Be Abolished
In the name of the International Action Center and its president, former US Attorney General Ramsey Clark, I would like to thank the Institute for International Politics and Economics for inviting us to participate in this important symposium to discuss the roots and the consequences of the war of aggression the US-led NATO powers waged against the people of Yugoslavia.
Yugoslavia has always had a special place in our hearts. Why? Exactly because the ideal of Yugoslavia is that of a multi-ethnic, multi-national, multi-religious state founded on social justice and equality of nationalities, religions and languages.
The greatest military powers on earth – just a year ago– unleashed a vicious, cold-blooded war against the people of Yugoslavia. These powers expected the Yugoslavs to beg for mercy after two, three days at most. Instead, the people here stood up bravely to 78 days of relentless bombing. We are proud to be here on this anniversary among such people. We only regret we couldn't have done more in our own country to stop the bombing and the war waged against you.
Long Live Yugoslavia!
Since the defeat of the Soviet Union strategists in US ruling circles have promoted the policy of expanding NATO and using that military pact as a world policeman. This policy is directed against smaller and weaker countries in Africa and the Middle East. It is also aimed at plundering the East, up to the Caspian Sea with its oil riches.
While the major NATO powers are military allies, they are rivals for markets, resources and areas to invest in. The US strategy of expanding NATO is also aimed at keeping these powerful rivals in line behind Washington.
The people of Yugoslavia were the direct targets of this policy. But they were only the first part of the world's peoples endangered by a strategy that leads towards bigger, more dangerous wars – unless the people of the world are able to stop it.
With the exception of Japan and Australia, NATO includes all the major industrial and financial powers: the United States, Germany, France, Britain, Italy and Canada. These six plus Japan make up the G-7 countries that set economic rules for the world.
The corporate and financial rulers of these countries control the bulk of the world's wealth, both in these industrialized countries themselves and in what can be described as the oppressed countries or the Third World.
These capitalist countries were the first to industrialize, they are now the most advanced in technology, they control the mass media, and of course they manufacture the most powerful weapons and are the most heavily armed. They sell weapons to the world but keep the most powerful and advanced weapons for themselves.
They include the big colonial powers of the 19th century – Britain and France – that directly ruled vast parts of the earth, and others that held colonies like Germany (Namibia, Tanzania), the Netherlands (Indonesia) and Belgium (Congo). Now there are few direct colonies, but through control of the world market, currency exchange rates and banking, and on the basis of their technological advantages, they now indirectly control and oppress most of the world. In 1878 they met in Berlin and carved up the Balkans. In 1885 they met in Berlin and carved up Africa into spheres of influence. In 1999 they met in Bosnia and carved up Kosovo for the so-called peace-keeping forces.
It should never be forgotten that, while pursuing their rivalry for markets, colonies and raw materials in the first half of this century, these predatory states launched two world wars that together killed 100 to 200 million people.
Of these seven countries, the United States, with the greatest single national economy and by far the biggest military power, is now the most dangerous to the rest of the world.
This analysis will focus on statements coming from United States military and diplomatic leaders and from their own media. Yet it will clearly show how the war against Yugoslavia was premeditated, planned in advance, with wide-ranging geostrategic goals, and that it contains the seeds of new wars.
On March 8, 1992, the New York Times published excerpts from a 46-page White Paper leaked by Pentagon officials. This paper asserts the need for complete US world domination in both political and military terms and threatens other countries that even aspire to a greater role. The public threats seem to be aimed at the European powers and Japan. Here's some part of what it said:
"Our first objective is to prevent the re-emergence of a new rival... First, the US must show the leadership necessary to establish and protect a new order that holds the promise of convincing potential competitors that they need not aspire to a greater role or pursue a more aggressive posture to protect their legitimate interests. We must account sufficiently for the interests of the advanced industrial nations to discourage them from seeking to overturn the established political and economic order. Finally, we must maintain the mechanism for deterring potential competitors from even aspiring to a larger regional or global role".
Regarding Europe, the document continues:
"It is of fundamental importance to preserve NATO as the primary instrument of Western defense and security... We must seek to prevent the emergence of European-only security arrangements which would undermine NATO".
It wasn't too long before strategists began adapting this policy to the developing crisis in the Balkans.
Retired Air Force Chief of Staff Gen. Michael J. Dugan and George Kenney of the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace wrote an opinion piece for the New York Times published November 29, 1992, entitled "Operation 'Balkan Storm': Here's a Plan".
"A win in the Balkans would establish US leadership in the post-Cold War world in a way that Operation Desert Storm never could". Dugan laid out a scenario of building a coalition with Britain, France and Italy on an ad hoc basis, if possible, because he believed the United Nations Security Council would not approve a NATO assault. He described arming the pro-US Bosnian forces to use "unconventional" operations in Bosnia to force the UN to suspend humanitarian programs.
Then, he said, massive air power should be used against Serbs in Bosnia and Serbia. Dugan suggested using aircraft carriers, F-15s, F-16s, F-18s, and F-111s, Tomahawk missiles, and the JSTARS surveillance system to destroy Serbia's electricity grid, refineries, storage facilities, and communications. "But the US costs in blood and treasure would be modest compared with that of Bosnian trauma".
Gen. Dugan was infamous for his interview in September 1990 where he candidly laid out US plans for the massive assault on and destruction of Iraq. For speaking out so frankly, he was relieved of his command. But the US carried out this vicious plan against Iraq.
His scenario for Bosnia too was carried out a little over six years later, but starting instead from Kosovo. And by then Washington was able to push and pull all of NATO behind it while the UN was left powerless.
From 1993 to 1995 in Bosnia the US, through NATO, increasingly used air power against Bosnian and Croatian Serbs as well as against those Muslim forces that opposed the Izetbegovic regime.
In August and September 1995, NATO launched a massive air war against positions of the Bosnian Serbs. The combination of these air raids with the NATO-enforced economic blockade led to the Dayton Accords of 1995. As part of the agreement, 60,000 NATO troops, 20,000 of them US soldiers, were sent into Bosnia under US command.
Earlier, a German/French-backed European force intervened in Bosnia, where it attempted to broker a truce. But US officials prodded the Bosnian regime to sabotage this agreement, leading to more bloodshed. Finally, US officials brokered the Dayton Accords on more or less the same terms
– except with a major US role as the occupying army.
A large new NATO base was established in Hungary to facilitate troop deployment in Bosnia. The US also established new bases in Macedonia and northern Albania. (San Francisco Chronicle, September 12, 1995)
As early as 1990, the US government had put in place plans for a military occupation of Eastern Europe and possibly parts of the former Soviet Union. That plan included the 100,000 strong Allied Command Europe Rapid Reaction Corps, the NATO unit in charge of the Bosnia operation.
At the end of November 1995, Reuters reported that: "The Allied Command Europe Rapid Reaction Corps (ARRC), based at Rheindahlen in western Germany, has worked relatively unnoticed since 1992 to put into practice NATO's new emphasis... (It has) NATO's full array of firepower (and) a tailor-made fighting force of up to 100,000 soldiers able to deploy quickly. As ARRC commander, British Lt.-Gen. Michael Walker, is in charge of running the multinational ground force to be stationed in and around Bosnia for NATO's first ground deployment outside its own area. The corps, with headquarters in Sarajevo, is taking three divisions into Bosnia. Two of them, the US First Armored Division and the British Third Mechanized Division, are permanently assigned to it. The third division is French".
The US used the Bosnia operation as a wedge for the expansion of NATO into Eastern Europe.
By August 4, 1998 the Clinton administration confirmed that NATO had developed detailed plans for an attack on Yugoslavia. Sources told the New York Times that the focus is on "a variety of air-power options that could punish or intimidate".
On July 29, 1998, the Albanian government had announced that 76 top NATO officers were in Tirana, the capital, to plan "joint Albania–NATO exercises" from August 17 to August 22, 1998 within 50 miles of the border with Kosovo. The maneuvers will prepare NATO and Albanian troops for a "peacekeeping mission". Similar exercises are planned for Macedonia in September.
These maneuvers were recommended in a March 20, 1998 position paper of the International Crisis Group, a think-tank with White House ties, headed by former Senate Democratic Leader George Mitchell.
That report also recommended "an international force in Albania close to the borders of Kosovo to help prevent the conflict in Kosovo from spreading and... facilitate rapid and effective action should an intervention become necessary". On July 29, 1998, German Foreign Minister Klaus Kinkel recommended similar action by NATO.
An article in the November 28, 1998 New York Times, headlined "A policy struggle stirs within NATO", provided advance notice of US plans to expand NATO's use beyond Europe.
Washington wanted NATO forces ready to intervene not only in the Balkans and against countries like Iraq or Iran in the Middle East, or Libya, Sudan or Congo in Africa – but against any attempt at a popular revolution anywhere, from Russia to Indonesia.
UN Security Council resolutions have often provided a cover for US military intervention – against Korea in 1950 and Iraq in 1991, for example. Yet the council is not certain to ratify all US military aggression.
Washington noted in its "mission statement" for NATO that the alliance may act without the Security Council's approval. US officials argue that otherwise a Russian or Chinese veto could stop a military action. One NATO official brazenly explained this to the Times: "A Security Council mandate is highly desirable but we should not tie our hands in advance".
On March 4, 1999:
– A Marine court martial in North Carolina acquitted the captain whose jet fighter-bomber snapped a gondola cable in the Italian Alps a year before, killing 20 European tourists. Italians protested.
– The state of Arizona executed by lethal injection German-American Walter LaGrand. The German government protested.
– Media worldwide announced that the Clinton administration imposed 100 percent import duties on selected European-produced goods. The European Union protested.
These three seemingly unrelated events expressed open economic competition between US business interests and those of its former Cold War "allies" in Western Europe, a competition carried out through the national states.
Within three weeks this competition was buried under the weight of US air power. When Belgrade refused to sign the Rambouillet surrender terms, Washington used this pretext to launch a war against Yugoslavia.
By the time the North Atlantic Treaty Organization celebrated its 50th anniversary on April 4, 1999, it had just made its first military assault beyond its borders and carried out the largest bombing in Europe since World War II.
Washington used the war against Yugoslavia to impose its changes on NATO – changing it from a no-longer-needed anti-Soviet alliance to an intervention force ready to strike worldwide. NATO powers met in Washington in late April to ratify this proposal.
In addition, the US government had recently succeeded in gaining NATO admission for Poland, Hungary and the Czech Republic over the objection of other NATO members. It then pulled these three countries directly into the war.
The brutal bombing of Yugoslavia gives the first example of how the US wants to use the new, post-Cold War NATO to lead its European allies into battle. Washington says the NATO countries have an "alliance of interests". What this means is the common need of the predatory ruling classes in the US and Europe to suppress any popular revolt that threatens their ability to plunder the raw materials and labor of the rest of the world.
It also means a common interest in preventing any newer capitalist country from being able to challenge the G-7's domination of the world economy. Neither would-be capitalists in Russia and Eastern Europe nor up-and-coming entrepreneurs in south Korea or Indonesia will be allowed to challenge the supremacy of US, West European and Japanese capital. They will have to consider themselves fortunate to get crumbs off the tables of their masters.
Along with this "alliance of interests", however, there is also a bitter rivalry between the same powers over economic and strategic interests. This has already burst out with the "banana war" and the battle between the US and the European Union over hormone-fattened meat.
Washington's first de facto expansion of NATO's role is against Yugoslavia. To contain the competing interests of the NATO countries and submit them all to US strategic control, Washington had NATO be the instrument for its conquest of Yugoslavia.
Throughout the 11-week assault on Yugoslavia by most of the world's biggest military powers, US and European mainstream politicians of all political shades tried to give the impression that the NATO forces were united, whatever trade rivalries and military maneuvering were going on behind the scenes.
But no sooner had Yugoslavia agreed to terms the European Union's leaders made a remarkable statement: the European Union, up to now a primarily economic alliance centered around German banks and industry, announced plans to emerge as a military power.
Leaders from 15 European countries announced the move on June 3, 1999 – the same day that the Yugoslav leadership announced its acceptance, on paper, of NATO's onerous terms.
"The union must have the capacity for autonomous action", the EU statement read, "backed up by credible military forces, the means to decide to use them, and a readiness to do so, in order to respond to international crises without prejudice to actions by NATO".
Make no mistake. The emergence of a new European military power does not bode well for ordinary working people anywhere. European workers in particular can look forward to having more of their labor robbed to fund the new military apparatus while social services are cut – an experience US workers have been forced to endure for decades.
Just since World War II, Washington has fought the Korean War; overthrown the elected governments of Guatemala, Iran, Chile, Indonesia; fought wars against the people of Central America; invaded Lebanon; carried out a genocidal war in Indochina, in which millions of Vietnamese, Cambodians, Laotians and more than 50,000 US troops died; and enforced an economic blockade against Iraq that has taken the lives of more than a million and a half people, half of them children under the age of five. The real objective of the war on Yugoslavia is to re-balkanize the Balkans – to break up Yugoslavia into small, easily controllable and digestible pieces, in order to insure US/NATO, and especially US, domination of this key strategic region.
While 10 years ago it had no bases in Eastern Europe, today the United States has military bases in Albania, Macedonia, Hungary, Bosnia and Croatia. Washington and its NATO partners have cut up Kosovo into little pieces, occupation zones. And they have assisted in forcing out all ethnic and national groups who were not Albanian, and even some Albanians.
Thomas Friedman, who writes for the New York Times – is a thoroughly despicable individual who is now held up as the highest example of US journalism. Friedman wrote approvingly on March 28, 1999: "For globalization to work, America can't be afraid to act like the almighty superpower that it is. The hidden hand of the market will never work without a hidden fist. McDonald's cannot flourish without McDonnell-Douglas, the designer of the F-15, and the hidden fist that keeps the world safe for Silicon Valley's technology is called the United States Army, Air Force, Navy and Marine Corps".
US military superiority is the key to US global economic domination. The United States does not have superiority over its rivals just by virtue of its economic system and technology. But what it does have is this vast military apparatus to implement its will.
A new military buildup is already under way, even though the United States today already spends more on its military that the rest of the UN Security Council combined. Having spent US$ 19 trillion since 1940 on the military, the US government proposes to spend an additional US$ 1,2 trillion in the next four years.
But Washington doesn't want to be the only one spending on the military. US Defense Secretary William Cohen used an evaluation of the war against Yugoslavia to bully the NATO allies into accepting US policies at an "informal meeting" of 19 NATO defense ministers in Toronto September 21–22, 1999.
Cohen said NATO won the war with US "precision-guided weapons" and other high-tech systems. Speaking of European NATO members, he said that "in some cases countries would have to spend more money" to buy such weapons – by implication from US arms makers.
Speaking earlier at the Institute of Strategic Studies in San Diego on September 9, 1999, Defense Secretary William Cohen boasted of the US role in this bombing. He outlined what he would demand from France, Britain, Germany and the other European powers regarding the US's new NATO proposal called the Defense Capabilities Initiative.
"We have all agreed to develop forces that are more mobile, beginning with the reassessment of NATO's strategic lift requirements for planning purposes. We need forces, we've agreed, that can sustain themselves longer; that means having a logistics system that will ensure they have the supplies when and where they need them".
Cohen said the NATO powers need "forces that can engage more effectively; that means having the new advanced technologies such as greater stocks of precision-guided munitions and forces that can survive better against chemical, biological or nuclear weapons, and also information warfare".
Cohen and his European allies had different views on what the so-called European Security and Defense Identity (ESDI) should mean. Washington would oppose any force that challenges its domination even in Europe itself. Washington sees the ESDI as a way of harnessing European militarism back into NATO – where the Pentagon holds the reins. That's what Cohen told reporters in Toronto on September 22.
"There was unanimity of expression (supporting ESDI)", he said. "This is important for the Europeans to undertake. It is important also to make sure that it is not seen as a separate institution and capability, but rather that it is maintained under the umbrella so to speak of NATO".
On September 22, French Press Agency report noted that ESDI was supposed to allow European NATO members to carry out "a peacekeeping operation, for example, using NATO materiel and resources but not involving the US or Canada. It was unclear, however, how the Europeans would be able to act independently while relying on assets under the control of an alliance still dominated by the Pentagon".
Cohen wants a situation in which the European NATO countries take the risks of wartime casualties and pay the costs, but where US control of strategic weapons and logistics gives Washington all the trump cards.
It's clear that Cohen expects NATO to fight future wars of a Kosovo size and bigger – and more distant from the United States or Western Europe. Now, without a USSR, Washington wants NATO to be a world cop. And Cohen expects the European governments to pick up a big share of the costs of expansion. But he was definitely talking about "the next war", without clarifying if that war was against Iraq, Libya, in the Balkans, in Central Asia, in Africa, against the Colombian revolutionaries, against the Democratic Peoples Republic of Korea. Perhaps it will be some new target with a leader the US media demonizes.
Because NATO is such a threat to peace, Ramsey Clark has declared publicly that he sees no other alternative but to abolish NATO. And we in the International Action Center have made this demand central to our anti-war work.
WHAT IS OUR ROLE?
This conference is doing an excellent job analyzing the war against Yugoslavia and its consequences. But our responsibility is not simply to analyze the world, but to change it. NATO's armies are strong, but they too have weaknesses. The US military fears that any significant casualties among US troops will arouse a mass anti-war movement as happened during the war against Vietnam. Some of the other European powers have populations that are also reluctant to back a war that demands sacrifices. They are in conflict with each other. All this raises possibilities to fight back.
I especially address this to those of us here from the very NATO countries that waged aggression against Yugoslavia. Our responsibility is to use the facts and analysis from here to mobilize our home populations to fight the government's policies, to lift the sanctions against Yugoslavia, to send aid – really reparations for the crimes committed.
On June 10, the International Action Center is holding a day-long International Tribunal on US/NATO War Crimes Against Yugoslavia in New York. Our initial hearing last July 31 inspired or encouraged a dozen US cities. Those working in parallel with us held similar hearings in Oslo, Novi Sad, Berlin, Rome, Vienna, Moscow, Kiev, Sydney, and even Tokyo. The most dramatic was a mass people tribunal in Athens last fall where thousands found Clinton guilty of war crimes. More hearings are planned for Belgrade, Hamburg, Prague, Boston and elsewhere.
We do not expect to make the people in power see reason and change their minds. These tribunals are a way to mobilize mass public opinion and build a movement that can fight the governments that wage these wars. In the International Action Center we also support the struggles of oppressed groups in the United States – or example, the fight to free political prisoner Mumia Abu-Jamal. Only by building bridges to others can we succeed in turning back the US war machine.
On June 10, former Attorney General Ramsey Clark will prosecute US and NATO leaders for 19 charges of war crimes, crimes against peace and crimes against humanity. International expert witnesses will present testimony. And a distinguished international panel of judges will hear the case. Come and be part of this historic event.
Down with NATO! Long live Yugoslavia!