By Fred Goldstein
For over ten weeks the heroic people of Yugoslavia, a poor country with a population of only 10 million, held off the mightiest imperialist alliance ever assembled by standing up to merciless bombing, killing and wounding of thousands of civilians and soldiers, and hundreds of billions of dollars in destruction to the material infrastructure.
The Yugoslav people stunned the imperialist military planners and politicians with their heroism and determination to resist despite enormous sacrifice. A war planned to end in three days is now in day 75.
In the end it was not bombing alone that caused the government of Slobodan Milosevic and the Yugoslav Parliament to submit to the occupation. It was bombing combined with the isolation brought about by the treachery of the Yeltsin regime in Russia and the complete and total integration of international social democracy into the imperialist war effort. This combination caused the Milosevic government to take the decision to retreat and try to keep the core of the Yugoslav state intact.
These very forces--the social-democratic leaders of Europe and the Yeltsin government, together with Japan, all under the leadership of U.S. imperialism--met in Cologne, Germany, June 7-8 to hammer out a robbers' agreement on how to codify the results of aggression. The so-called G-8 is sending the UN Security Council a resolution for passage that basically aims to give international sanction to NATO's criminal takeover of Kosovo after 75 days of aggression from the air.
On the very day they were working on a so-called "peace plan," NATO flew 658 sorties over Yugoslavia. NATO bombed the two largest cities--Belgrade and Novi Sad--and numerous other targets. Its planes concentrated bombing on the Albanian border to give the KLA counter-revolutionary terrorists air cover in their attempts to reenter Kosovo after they had been driven out by the Yugoslav army.
It took two days to arrive at the agreement because the Russian delegate, Foreign Minister Igor Ivanov, at first balked at having to openly agree to NATO as the main force behind and fully in charge of the occupation forces. After a day of objections by Russia, President Bill Clinton got on the phone to Boris Yeltsin, who quickly agreed to get the resolution passed. It was approved the following day. The language on NATO's role was left out of the resolution proper. But the text of the agreement that Viktor Chernomyrdin, Martti Ahtisari and the Yugoslav government agreed to last week, which referred to "substantial NATO forces," was attached as an appendix carrying the same force as the resolution.
In case anyone had any questions about the interpretation of the language or intent of the agreement, Secretary of State Madeleine Albright, speaking with the arrogant voice of U.S. imperialism, left no cover for the Russians. According to the June 8 Washington Post, "Albright said unequivocally that NATO would be at the core of the Kosovo peacekeeping force, a point of contention between Western officials and their Yugoslav and Russian counterparts. `It is in the appendix to this resolution that it has NATO at the core and NATO will be the military leader,' she said."
In addition to ratifying the imperialist occupation force, the resolution mandates the formation of a civil administration under UN auspices - i.e., it calls for setting up a puppet government in Kosovo that would be brought in on the bayonets of NATO with a UN cover.
Provided the so-called "peace-settlement" does not come apart, the next period of the war will be taken up with the disgusting spectacle of arm twisting, horse trading, extortion, bribery and back stabbing, otherwise known as imperialist diplomacy. This will allow the U.S. government and its imperialist NATO allies/rivals to get agreement on how to organize the occupation of Kosovo.
The present plan is to divide up Kosovo like pieces of a pie with the U.S., British, Germans, French and Italians each taking a slice of the occupation under a unified NATO command. For services rendered, the British may be allowed a prime place in the occupation force, but the U.S. will be the dominant power.
There is a struggle within the imperialist establishment over whether or not to allow the Russians to have a sector of occupation on the northern border of Kosovo and whether or not to force them under NATO command. Clinton has held out the Bosnia option to allow Russia its own command and coordination with NATO. Hard liners within the military establishment really do not want a Russian sector. If there is one they want it under NATO command.
Of course, the Yugoslav government would prefer not to have NATO troops on the northern Kosovo border in a clear position to invade north into Belgrade on short notice. But whatever military formula is eventually arrived at, the imperialists are going to be an ongoing threat to the Yugoslav government.
Whatever the formula, the anti-war movement around the world should not become diverted by the diplomatic maneuvering over the different forms and forces of occupation. It should keep focused on the fundamental fact that the war and the occupation are aimed to destroy the sovereignty and self-determination of the last country in Europe to resist the wave of counter-revolution brought about by the collapse of the Soviet Union.
This war must be seen for what it is: a violent expansionary lunge into Europe by the Pentagon in its determination to exercise world domination. Wall Street and the mainstream of the political establishment gave its fundamental support to this overall effort to expand, despite tactical criticisms coming from various quarters concerning the failure to use or threaten the use of ground forces.
Congressional resolutions withholding support were utterly disregarded without the slightest protest from the establishment. The courts threw out a wholly justified lawsuit Congress members brought opposing the violation of the War Powers Act and of the U.S. Constitution, which gives only Congress the right to declare war. It was treated as a minor news story. Congress was reduced to a talk shop, a side show, as the ruling class, with the exception of the right wing, got fully behind this military adventure.
To be sure, there was plenty of anxiety about disrupting the relationship with Russia and about antagonizing China. But the anxiety was hardly enough to deter Washington from its course of aggression, even to the extent of bombing the Chinese Embassy and humiliating the Yeltsinites by turning them into flunkies of NATO on a world stage, day after day. The desire for military expansion to the East and to the Caspian Sea, with all its oil, and the prospect of subordinating European imperialism to U.S. military domination easily overcame any concerns about creating world instability.
But this is precisely what will come back to haunt U.S. imperialism in the long run. The European imperialists are in shock. When they were dragged into agreeing to the U.S.- crafted Rambouillet accord, with its commitment to begin bombing, little did they know the Pentagon had locked them into a 75-day barbaric bombing campaign and a near ground war that had the potential to provoke the masses and destabilize them all.
It is only the momentary stranglehold that these social- democratic traitors have on the working-class movement and the Goebbels-like anti-Milosevic propaganda campaign that temporarily derailed much of the anti-war movement and kept German Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder, Italian Premier Massimo D'Alema, and French Premier Lionel Jospin from being toppled. In addition to the potential threat from the masses, they cannot afford to have the U.S. dictate their fate.
The European bourgeoisie learned that they must strive to break their military dependence on Washington. There will now be an escalating round of militarization in Europe as the bosses and bankers in Bonn, Rome, London and Paris try to catch up with the high-tech arsenal of the Pentagon. They will try to make the working class pay for the military expansion and this will increase class tensions in Europe and international tensions all around. In fighting this militarization, opportunities for struggle will grow.
The Yeltsinites, the gravediggers of the Soviet Union, have now dramatically put their clique interests in the alliance with western imperialism ahead of the strategic interests of Russia, which is a potential target of U.S. imperialism. When the diplomatic smoke clears, the U.S. military is going to be on the ground in Kosovo and another link in the chain encircling Russia will be in place. This will breed renewed anti-imperialist resistance in Russia--a resistance that will eventually find a genuinely revolutionary expression.
As far as the People's Republic of China is concerned, the U.S. military adventure in Kosovo was a clear reminder of the dangerous nature of U.S. imperialism. If not before the embassy bombing, it certainly is now.
The bombing capped off the growing anti-China maneuvers of the Pentagon. These maneuvers include the anti-China security arrangement with Japan; the nuclear spy hysteria; the theater missile defense system in the Pacific; and the brazen anti-China hawks in the Pentagon have even allowed Taiwan to contribute $200 million to the Kosovo aid campaign. Whatever China does diplomatically for the moment, no matter how it votes on the UN resolution, in the long run, the war in Kosovo must put the People's Republic on guard against the U.S.
It was heartening to see a high delegation from the Democratic People's Republic of Korea sign an aid pact with the PRC at the very moment when the DPRK is coming under increasing pressure from Washington.
In any case, the Pentagon has challenged the world and the world is bound to respond to the challenge. In the U.S., thousands of young people took to the streets to protest the war in Washington and San Francisco on June 5 despite the wild demonization of the Yugoslav government and almost total censorship of news coverage of any anti-war actions. They came out despite the talk of a settlement. This shows that the anti-war struggle is not going to be demobilized just because the war goes into an occupation phase.
Most importantly, despite the capitalist boom in the U.S., there is growing poverty and racism and oppression of all kinds. More and more people here can be persuaded that their struggle is not in some country that is a target of U.S. imperialist conquest. It is instead right here at home against the exploiters and the rich who are destroying health care, raising rents, lowering wages, creating unsafe and unhealthy working conditions, breaking unions, promoting police brutality and making prisons the largest growth industry in the country.
Furthermore, the hundreds of billions of dollars replenishing the U.S. military arsenal and preparing for new wars is being taken out of the pocket books of the masses, further aggravating the crisis of life for millions. And finally, the entire capitalist boom in the United States, built upon piles of credit, stock market paper and other forms of fictitious wealth, could come tumbling down at any moment.
The anti-war movement will grow as it combines the struggle against the wars abroad with prosecuting the war against capitalism and all its evils at home.