Lead article
April, 1999

NATO bombing of Serbia allows Milosevic to intensify genocide in Kosova

by Peter Hudis

That the massive bombing campaign against Serbia launched on March 24 by the U.S. and NATO will not aid the victims of Serbian oppression is graphically shown by the way Serb leader Slobodan Milosevic has accelerated his effort to "ethnically cleanse" Kosova of its Albanian populace. Serb forces in Kosova responded to the bombing of Serbia by torching dozens of villages, killing thousands of people, and taking over 20,000 Albanians hostage. Though the bombing of Serbia is the largest use of armed force in Europe since World War II, it has not stopped Milosevic from intensifying his genocidal war against the people of Kosova.

A NEW STAGE OF CRISIS

The bombing of Serbia is the largest offensive operation ever undertaken by NATO and the most massive use of armed force by the U.S. since the Gulf War of 1991. The air war against Serbia may continue for weeks, or even months. Together with the almost daily bombing raids against Iraq, we are witnessing the further consolidation of the U.S.'s determination to wage PERMANENT WAR to secure its interests.

At the same time, Serb troops are intensifying the war against the people of Kosova by burning villages, raping and pillaging the populace, and executing any intellectual or community leader they come across, presenting Europe with its biggest humanitarian disaster since World War II.

"Serbian paramilitaries are killing everybody who refuses to leave their homes," said Adem Basha from Pec, Kosova's second largest city, after crossing into Albania. Hundreds of thousands have been evicted from their homes and are fleeing to the borders. Most of those arriving there are women and children-indicating that the Serbs are systematically massacring the men, as they did in Srebrenica, Bosnia in 1995. The rape of Bosnia is being repeated, on a vaster and more chilling scale.

Clinton says the bombing against Milosevic will bring him to heel, without the use of ground troops. History reveals a different truth. As the massacres in Rwanda in 1994 showed, genocide does not require the use of heavy weapons. Light arms and machetes will suffice against a largely unarmed people, and the Serbs have that in droves. Whether or not the U.S. or NATO eventually get pulled into a commitment of ground troops, the fact that the peril to Kosova has only vastly increased since March 24 refutes the notion that these state powers are the agent of its liberation.

It needs to be reiterated that the Clinton administration long opposed independence for Kosova and, like the Bush administration before it, has often colluded with Milosevic to allow him to maintain his hold on Kosova and parts of Bosnia. The U.S. is demanding that Milosevic agree to the plan arranged in Rambouillet, France last month, which promises Kosova limited autonomy-but denies it independence. The plan also calls for dismantling the Kosovar Liberation Army (KLA).

The real reason for the U.S. intervention is rather concern for the viability of NATO. Next month NATO will celebrate its 50th anniversary at a major conference that will outline a new strategic perspective now that it has expanded to include three former members of the Warsaw Pact-Poland, Hungary, and the Czech Republic. Yet just when a newly refurbished and expanded NATO was being touted as the guarantee of "peace and stability," the war in Kosova threatened to make it look like a helpless giant. It was only then that the Clinton administration decided that the time had come to do something to restrain Milosevic.

The main voice of opposition to U.S. policy on Kosova so far has come from the Republican Right. Though they too are worried about NATO, they are more open about not wanting U.S. soldiers to die "just" to defend victims of ethnic cleansing. The Right's criticisms may become muted as the bombing intensifies, since the last thing these scoundrels want to be accused of is lack of patriotism. This is not as true of those on the Left. The Left, however, suffers from its own disorientation, in that many are distancing themselves from solidarizing with the Kosovars on the grounds of opposing the U.S. bombing.

The missiles and bombs being dropped on Serbia are not only doing great material damage. They are also having a damaging impact on the very MIND of humanity. For it gives the completely false impression that the U.S. is a supporter of the Kosovars and an enemy of Milosevic-when the U.S. has often treated Milosevic as an ally and has given only lukewarm support to the Kosovars.

The U.S. bombing is a distorting lens turning everything on its head. U.S. collusion with Serbia, which helped lead to the present crisis, is being subsumed by the appearance of the military destruction of Serb targets, while the pressure on the Kosovars to disavow independence is being subsumed by the appearance of posing as their "ally."

WHY KOSOVA? WHY NOW?

To avoid getting sucked into the false forms of appearance of this topsy-turvy world, we need to view today's events in a historic-philosophic context.

Nothing is more erroneous than the view of Jean-Christophe Rufin, formerly of Doctors Without Borders, that "With NATO everything has changed. NATO's trigger today is humanitarian." The West showed no concern for the victims of ethnic cleansing in Rwanda, just as they show no concern for the 5,000 dying each month due to the sanctions against Iraq. So why would they be motivated by humanitarian considerations when it comes to Kosova?

U.S. policy vis-a-vis Bosnia reveals the real basis of its actions. When the Serbs attacked Bosnia in 1992, the major powers did not stop them. They instead maintained an arms embargo on Bosnia, making it harder for the country to defend itself. When Bosnia finally managed, by 1995, to take the offensive and, along with Croatia, was about to inflict a major military defeat on the Serbs, the U.S. stepped in and forced it to accept the Dayton accords. This brought "peace" to Bosnia at a very stiff price, for it was forced to accept the legitimacy of the Serb "Republic" occupying a third of its territory, which was established through the ethnic cleansing of tens of thousands of Bosnian Muslims.

In exchange for his help in getting the Bosnian Serbs to agree to the Dayton accord, the U.S. treated Milosevic as a virtual ally for the next three years. The U.S. even made sure not to have NATO troops arrest war criminals like Radovan Karadzic, as he could have detailed Milosevic's role in genocide.

Milosevic's rehabilitation through the Dayton accords gave him a free hand to do what he has wanted ever since he consolidated power in 1989-impose complete control over the province of Kosova, 90% of whose populace is ethnic Albanian.

U.S. policy did not shift against Milosevic even when Serb paramilitaries began entering Kosova early last year. When the Kosovars turned to the KLA to defend themselves, the administration called them "terrorists." It was only this fall, when Serbian massacres on the eve of NATO's expansion became an acute embarrassment, that the U.S. took a more active interest in Kosova.

This spring it convened the Rambouillet conference. As earlier with Bosnia, the U.S. pushed for the disarmament of the liberation forces, by calling for the introduction of 28,000 NATO "peacekeepers" in Kosova and the dismantling of the KLA. The KLA leaders at first balked at this, but later signed on under intense pressure. Whether this is a tactical move on their part to buy time, or an expression of genuine belief in the U.S. as their protector, is hard to say. It once again shows, nonetheless, that the U.S. proclaims "support" for the victims of aggression only after disarming them from taking action on their own behalf.

There is no way of knowing now what will result from the U.S. attack on Serbia. The bombing can last weeks, only to lead to a rotten compromise with Milosevic. It could ultimately involve ground troops should the air campaign fail to convince Milosevic to cut a deal. Milosevic is concentrating much of his ethnic cleansing on the northern and western region of Kosova, which contains the critical Trepca mining region. He may be trying to arrange for a future deal with the West, which would allow him to hold onto a part of Kosova in exchange for "peace." This is precisely the approach followed by the West in partitioning Bosnia, and it may well take on new life in Kosova.

There is always the chance that Milosevic will falter or be removed by forces within Serbia, though at least in the short term the bombing strengthens him by allowing him to parade as the "victim" of U.S. militarism. The fighting could also spill over into neighboring Albania, Macedonia, and Bosnia.

What is not in doubt is that the bombing is doing serious damage to relations with Russia. Russia has decided to end any collaboration with NATO because of the bombing. On March 26 Foreign Minister Igor Ivanov said that U.S. leaders should be tried as war criminals. Russia has been quietly sending arms to Serbia, in violation of the international embargo, and it may now begin to do so openly.

Russia's government may be in no position to directly challenge the U.S., given its collapsing economy. But nationalist elements, who are waiting in the wings to the right of Yeltsin, would very much like to do so. Have U.S. rulers become so dizzy with success over their victory in the Cold War that they feel they can totally disregard Russia? Or is their thirst for military adventurism so excessive that they're willing to deliberately antagonize it so as to justify further military expansion of NATO?

BREAKING THROUGH THE BARRIERS

The disorientation generated by the U.S. attacks on Serbia impacts the effort to project a liberatory alternative to capitalism itself.

This can be seen by looking at what is involved IDEOLOGICALLY with NATO's expansion. NATO's expansion was formalized on March 12 at a ceremony in Independence Missouri, which brought NATO officials together with the foreign ministers of Hungary, Poland, and the Czech Republic.

The meeting promoted a spectacular rewriting of history. Polish Foreign Minister Bronislaw Geremek said NATO's expansion "validated the deeds of those who revolted against Soviet domination in the Budapest uprising of 1956, the Prague Spring of 1968, and the Solidarity movement that was born in Gdansk, Poland" in 1980. Janos Martonyi, Hungary's Foreign Minister, and others, made the same point.

This stands everything on its head. The Hungarian Revolution of 1956, which pried Marx's humanism from the archives, the Prague Spring of 1968, with its slogan "Socialism with a human face," and the Polish Solidarity movement of 1980-81, which at first projected a concept of workers' control of production, were reduced to a straight line of march to Western capitalism! The Reason of the East European masses who aspired for a new humanism is being erased from history.

Much of this rewriting of history flows from the contradictions contained in the collapse of Communism in 1989. While the collapse of the state-capitalist regimes that called themselves Communist was a major step forward, by 1989 there was a move away from working out any connection to Marx's Marxism. The notion of a "self-limiting revolution," promoted by the leaders of Solidarity in 1981, developed by the late 1980s into the notion of "the end of revolution" and the "death of Marxism." This standpoint defines a generation of post-1989 activists and intellectuals. Taking their own mentality as the yardstick of history, these intellectuals see in past history nothing but a reflection of the vacuousness of their own thought.

What is involved here is an effort to subsume the subjectivity of freedom struggles which emerged in the post-World War II era and THEREBY convince the masses that they have no choice but to place their destiny in the hands of state powers like the U.S.

This is extremely dangerous. For it is impossible to avoid getting sucked into the tentacles of capitalism if we skip over the Idea of freedom that has been integral to history, as expressed in actual freedom struggles and in actual PHILOSOPHIES of freedom.

The nature of today's attack on Serbia provi des the sharpest proof of this. It is acting as a distorting lens turning everything on its head, in making it appear as if the U.S. is an enemy of Serbia and a friend of Kosova. As a result, those opposed to Milosevic are accommodating themselves to the bombing of Serbia, while those opposed to the bombing of Serbia are accommodating themselves to the denial of rights to the Kosovars. Both approaches lead to a dead end. Just as no movement for self-determination can avoid having its aims narrowed if it supports U.S. militarism, so no anti-militarist movement can avoid having its aims narrowed if it does not support the struggles for self-determination in Kosova and Bosnia.

Yet it is by no means easy to strike out on such an independent path. It requires that political perspectives be rooted in a philosophy of liberation that expresses a concept of new human relations free from all forms of exploitation.

What makes it hard to work this out today is that, unlike prior historic moments, issues within Marxism do not define the terrain of political struggle and discussion. It makes it hard to work out a comprehensive response to crises and easy to accept their phenomenal expression as the true reality.

It was to help overcome this problem that our book, BOSNIA-HERZEGOVINA: ACHILLES HEEL OF WESTERN 'CIVILIZATION' does not rest content with reproducing our political analyses, important as they are. We also included in it an essay by Raya Dunayevskaya, the founder of Marxist-Humanism in the U.S., entitled "A post-World War II View of Marx's Humanism, 1843-83; Marxist Humanism in the 1950s and 1980s." This essay restated her original discoveries of what is alive in the totality of Marx's Marxism in light of the growing crises in capitalism and the historic-philosophic development of Marxist-Humanism.

As we wrote in that book, "Because Marxist-Humanism's entire body of development centers on responding to the question, 'what happens after the revolution,' its dialectical development provides powerful direction for filling the void in the projection of a liberating alternative to existing society....The fact that today's crises have become so total that even former socialist humanists in Yugoslavia such as Mihailo Markovic became major architects of ethnic cleansing, says volumes about how deep and uncompromising must be our effort to become rooted in a philosophy of total freedom. In this sense, Dunayevskaya's essay, written before the outbreak of the carnage in Bosnia, presents the ground from which to transcend the crisis in thought which helped lead to it" (p. 5).

-March 29, 1999

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