A
SIDE DISH
This
was a "humanitarian" intervention, said the President,
an heroic chapter in the international fight against "racism."
Of course, this was said by the same chief executive who
sold pardons by the dozen at a "going out of business"
sale that reaped untold millions – untold because
the Republicans have quashed the inquiry into "Pardongate"
for reasons of their own. In the case of our ex-President,
the old maxim that exhorts us to "follow the money" seems
particularly apt, and I attempted to do this in
a column that speculated on the connection of George
Soros to the effort to expropriate and "privatize" the
Trepca mines, worth some $5 billion. But as it turns out,
the Trepca connection was only gravy: the main course
is being served as I write. For the
news that an oil pipeline is being constructed through
Bulgaria, Macedonia, and on to Albania, tells us everything
we need to know about the real origins of the Kosovo war
and the motive behind our whole Balkan operation.
THE
BROWN & ROOT CONNECTION
A
fascinating
piece by Richard Norton-Taylor in the [London] Guardian
on the jockeying for influence in the Caucasus points
to the oil and gas companies as the real beneficiaries
of NATO's "humanitarian" efforts. The new Trans-Balkan
pipeline, a project initiated by the Albanian-Macedonian-Bulgarian
Oil corporation [AMBO], will run from the Bulgarian
port of Burgas, on the Black Sea, bisect Macedonia, and
go on through to Vlore, Albania's Adriatic port, in anticipation
of the flow of oil and natural gas expected to come out
of the Caspian region. A feasibility study largely paid
for by your tax dollars has given the green light to Texaco,
Chevron, Exxon, Mobil, BP Amoco, Agip, and TotalElFina
that this is the way to get around the bottlenecked Bosporus
and transport oil and gas to energy-starved Europe. AMBO
CEO E.
L. "Ted" Ferguson, appointed in 1997, is the former
Director of Oil & Gas Development for Europe for Brown
and Root – Dick Cheney's old gig, and the military
contractor reaping millions from US deployment in the
Balkans. In 1998, Ferguson
traveled to Albania to meet with President Rexhep
Meidani, who pledged his support to the project: but it
is only now that the project to Islamicize the Balkans
has gotten well along the road to success that they have
managed to begin thinking about actual construction. Detailing
the overtures of NATO and the European Union to Georgian
and Azerbajian, Norton-Taylor succinctly sums up the oil
connection to the Kosovo conundrum:
"While
the US and Nato – and now the EU – hold out
the prospect of untold wealth for the Caucasian states
of the former Soviet Union, the west will also have an
important economic stake in Albania and Macedonia. The
US already seems to take the view that all Serbs are bad
and all Albanians good. The implications for Kosovo, a
Serbian province with an overwhelming ethnic Albanian
population, and for Macedonia, with armed groups from
Kosovo stirring up trouble among the ethnic Albanian population,
are potentially immense."
TURNING
THE GUNS AROUND
The
"Albanians good, Serbs bad" diktat, seen in isolation
from the forces and personalities that shape US foreign
policy, makes no sense at all. But when we put it in context
– when we look at it against the backdrop of the
AMBO/Brown & Root/Cheney connection – it makes
all too much sense that Serbophobia is quite profitable
for the big oil interests that form the corporate core
this administration. Colonel David Hackworth, in
his most recent column, is horrified that US troops
are under fire in the Balkans from a guerrilla army armed
and trained by – the US! Of course, war in the Balkans
is nothing new, he writes, but:
"What's
new is that the AK-47s, the ammo and the wherewithal to
field the Albanian army of insurgent thugs currently going
up against our and other NATO troops were provided not
by Russia or Red China or North Korea, but by the USA.
Yes, American taxpayers paid for the bullets being used
to shoot American soldiers!"
"GREATER
ALBANIA" AND BIG OIL
How
could this be? It makes no sense, unless you ask the essential
question: "Who benefits?" The uses of a "Greater Albania"
come into crystal-clear focus as the "Great Game" for
Caspian oil riches begins to be played in earnest. Hackworth
reports that our European allies are up in arms over US
commanders looking the other way as the CIA unleashes
its Albanian mad dogs on southern Serbia and Macedonia
– another senseless policy that only underscores
the overall pattern of events. For massive Western intervention
to prevent another round of alleged "ethnic cleansing"
would complete the militarization of the southeastern
Balkans – and pave the way for NATO troops to act
as the gendarmes of Big Oil. This is the historical pattern
of corporate lobbying in the foreign policy sphere: the
big boys can make all the overseas deals they want, and
hold out the promise of untold wealth to their shareholders,
but how will they protect their investment? To say that
Balkan governments are unstable would be a bit of an understatement,
and in any case these governments are often an obstacle,
without the inclination or the resources to guard Western
investments. In order to attract investment in the first
place, the builders of such projects as the Trans-Balkan
pipeline not only needed plenty of US government money
– in the form of investment guarantees from the Ex-Im
Bank, loans from the World Bank, and other backing from
quasi-government institutions – they also needed
US and NATO troops on the scene, to police and protect
their investment. The rest, as they say, is history. .
. .
THE
COMING FIRESTORM
But
isn't this is one of those "conspiracy theories" that
rational people are supposed to disdain? The short answer
is: yes. A somewhat longer answer is: so what? Conspiracy
theories are not irrational, per se: for, as Murray
N. Rothbard pointed out, the belief that erroneous and
harmful government policies are pursued as a result of
intellectual error overlooks the reality that statism
– "a massive system of economic exploitation of the
productive many by the parasitic few" – is "in
the rational self-interest of the exploiters." Somebody
benefits from our foreign policy of perpetual war for
perpetual "peace" – and, in this case, it is
Chevron, Exxon, BP Amoco, AMBO, etc. ad nauseum.
As it turned out, the Trepca mines were only the icing
on the cake: the real main course was and is Caspian oil,
which will flow through the Balkans – but not without
igniting a firestorm.
AN
APPEAL TO GEORGE W.
Hackworth
is a good guy, who doesn't like foreign wars and especially
didn't like the Kosovo war, as he makes clear in his column.
But he's a soldier, not a foreign policy analyst or a
political maven, and he sincerely believes that George
W. Bush doesn't want us in this particular quagmire. "During
the presidential campaign," he writes,
"George
W. Bush questioned our operations in ex-Yugoslavia. Now
that he's getting the inside scoop, hopefully he's realized
that it's a mass of endless running sores. Six years after
we went to Bosnia for only one year, we're still there
– and Kosovo looks like an even more open-ended and
far more dangerous commitment. The president must put
a muzzle on the CIA to stop it from supporting one of
the most cutthroat gangs of terrorists in the world."
SINCERELY
YOURS
Hackworth
is sincere – but, I'm afraid, a bit naïve. There
is no way George W. is going to call off the CIA and get
us out of the Balkans. There is too much money involved,
and too much is at stake for US policymakers to turn back
now. The bipartisan coalition that got us into the Balkans
has its tentacles stretching from the corporate boardrooms
of America to the halls of Congress to the White House
itself. The Kosovo war, it turns out, had nothing to do
with "humanitarianism," and the so-called Clinton Doctrine
was just window-dressing for the bought-and-paid-for "intellectuals"
and other Deep Thinkers who rationalized the rape of the
former Yugoslavia. If we follow the money, we wind up
at the door of Big Oil – the same crew that benefits
from our continuing war on Iraq, and the military occupation
of the Middle East. Those who are appealing to George
W. Bush to fulfill his campaign promise to get us out
of the Balkans have a loooong wait ahead of them,
for the smiling face of our genial President is but a
mask for the face of corporate America.
