TWIN
CONTAGIONS
The
[London] Telegraph's take on the story was headlined:
"Bush
is upstaged by Balkan crisis." "US officials," the
Telegraph informs us, "had wanted to keep it off
the agenda," but by the time Bush stepped off the tarmac
in Spain events had already overtaken them. Macedonia
is unraveling fast: it
may be only a matter of days before the Albanian ultra-nationalist
fighters of the "National Liberation Army" – essentially
our old friends, the Kosovo Liberation Army (KLA) – fight
their way into Skopje, the Macedonian capital. The wolves
unleashed by NATO's war on Yugoslavia – armed, trained,
and legitimized by their Western sponsors – are hunting
fresh game, and all the pious declarations of the NATO
leaders will not take them off the scent of newly-spilled
blood. Eternally ravenous, the NLA insurgents fighting
for a Greater Albania might be likened to a politicized
version of the AIDS virus: once they are allowed to invade,
and get inside the victim, their progress is pitiless
and inexorable. What's more, both the virus and the NLA
utilize the same tactics: the body's very defenses are
turned against it, and the constitutional and legal system
that protects citizens from force and fraud (the immune
system) enables the invaders in their aggression, not
only failing to defend the country but disarming it. .
.
NO
IMMUNITY
In
the case of AIDS, the process of sabotaging the body's
internal defense mechanism is accomplished by a method
that remains unknown to science. But the history of how
the Western powers have sought to undermine and essentially
neutralize Macedonia's internal defense mechanism is being
described on a daily basis in the headlines. "They
need to get on with it," a senior Western diplomat said.
"We need to see more progress." Progress, in this
context, means progress in caving in to the Albanians'
endless demands and basically dismantling Macedonia. The
West has opposed, from the beginning, every attempt by
the Macedonians to defend themselves, even successfully
lobbying against the Macedonian government officially
declaring the country to be in a state of war. NATO Secretary
Lord Robertson, in one of his many trips to Skopje, urged
the government to "hold
its fire and implement a peace plan unveiled by President
Boris Trajkovski last week" – and dictated, word for word,
by the NATO powers and the US.
FULL
EMPLOYMENT
As
Macedonians, fearful for their lives and their liberty,
implore their government to do something – and are refused
when they offer to organize themselves into self-defense
units – a chorus is rising from the ranks of the War Party
in the West: NATO must intervene! This is the favorite
method by which governments everywhere have succeeded
in expanding their sphere of influence: create a problem,
and then "solve" it – creating an even bigger and more
intractable problem in the process. It is a full employment
program for government officials, weapons-makers, and
their amen corner in the media, and a recipe for perpetual
war in the name of "peace."
ALL
TOGETHER NOW
French
Prime Minister Chirac was the most vocal, declaring at
the NATO meeting in Brussels that "We must not preclude
any form of action" in response to the Macedonian crisis,
and Tony Blair dutifully chimed in. Along
with Jeanne Kirkpatrick and Richard Holbrooke, the
NLA took
up the call for NATO troops to roll in and complete
their conquest of the Balkans: "With the presence of NATO
it would be possible to reach the agreement for the transformation
and demilitarization of the NLA," said the Albanian nationalists'
"peace plan," which furthermore demanded "NATO intervention
in the whole territory of Macedonia, as a guarantee for...reaching
a lasting peace."
.
. . THE SECOND AS FARCE
Before
we go any further, let's get one thing clear: the NLA
could not operate in Macedonia without at least the passive
cooperation of NATO, which has tens of thousands of troops
stationed in Kosovo – and that, after all, is where the
"rebels" are coming from. The apparent political and diplomatic
unity of Chirac, Blair, and the NLA is just a reflection
of their ongoing military alliance on the ground in the
Balkans. It was the Western intelligence agencies, after
all, that armed, trained, and unleashed the KLA on the
Yugoslavs: when the same sequence of events occurs next
door, in Macedonia, you don't have to be a "conspiracy
theorist" to take the view that history is repeating itself.
A
MACEDONIAN MEAL
Bush
kept up the pretense of American reluctance to get involved,
but the Europeans pricked up their ears when he burbled
that "NATO must play a more visible and active role" to
counter the Albanian insurgency. This would seem to not
rule out intervention in principle. If the "political
settlement" Bush says he favors refuses to jell – that
is, if the Macedonians refuse to cave – we could see a
NATO occupation of the country, including the presence
of at least the several hundred American soldiers who
are already there. Bush also took the opportunity to reiterate
the obvious, that he would not keep his campaign promise
to get US troops out of the Balkans, although, as the
Telegraph is careful to say, he "made clear that
he wanted to reduce the US deployment rather than increase
it." In other words: go ahead, you guys, and make a meal
out of Macedonia. Just leave us out of it. But it remains
to be seen just how much the Americans will stay out of
it: or, indeed, just how involved they have been in it
up to this point. . . .
FROWICK'S
FOLLY
As
Misha
Glenny has pointed out, the European attempts to broker
a deal on the diplomatic front were fatally undermined
by the actions of an American diplomat, Robert Frowick,
now working for the Organization for Security and Co-operation
in Europe, who made the arrangements that led to the signing
of a joint statement by the NLA and the leaders of Macedonia's
main Albanian parties. This was the "key event," as Glenny
puts it, that "persuaded the NLA that it could snatch
more from the chaos than just a seat at a negotiating
table." The "truce" supposedly in effect swiftly broke
down, and fighting resumed. Given the green light by their
American sponsors, the NLA-KLA army is on the march –
and they won't stop until they reach Athens, or Sofia.
AMERICA
IS NO. 1
Seen
in the context of the emerging superpower contention between
the US and the EU, the Macedonian crisis becomes a little
less murky. By initially opposing NATO intervention, while
hardly ruling it out, Bush emphasizes not only the primacy
of NATO but also the primacy of the US within the Western
alliance. With radically reduced military budgets, and
a general unwillingness to suffer the political consequences
and risks of sending troops in on the ground, the Euro-crats
are being reminded that, despite their pretensions of
moral and esthetic superiority, they are really just a
lot of hot air when it comes to taking action: Their talk
of a European "rapid reaction force" remains a pipe-dream,
while the Americans hold the real power – that is, military
power – in their hands.
ANTIWAR.COM
AT WAR?
In
his
latest really excellent column on developments in
Macedonia, Nebojsa Malic pondered the question of whether
it would be proper for Antiwar.com to advocate a defensive
war on the part of the Macedonians against the Albanian
invaders:
"Though
Antiwar.com should not advocate war, Libertarian political
thought strongly favors legitimate self-defense. Not in
its twisted, Imperial interpretation of sending stormtroopers
halfway around the world and slaughtering thousands of
civilians to achieve 'strategic interests,' but taking
up arms against an invader, or a terrorist movement, threatening
a state that represents a guarantor of its people's liberty
and property."
DEFENDING
MACEDONIA
It
seems to me that the very least Antiwar.com can
do is to defend the victims of an invasion against the
aggressors, especially when their own government seems
to have abandoned that obligation. Not even the biggest
cheerleaders for the KLA, such as Jeanne Kirkpatrick (who
joined their Western front group in supporting Clinton's
war in Kosovo) and Richard Holbrooke, deny who started
the violence. (The Kirkpatrick-Holbrooke Washington
Post op-ed piece manages to go on for some 500 words
without once mentioning the NLA. "Macedonia," they intone,
"is in real danger of destruction" – but at whose hands?
They don't let us in on the secret.) In this fateful hour,
however, the support of Antiwar.com, and of libertarians
and anti-interventionists in general, doesn't mean a whole
lot to the besieged people of Macedonia. After all, how
many legions does the editorial director of Antiwar.com
command? Less than the Pope, I assure you. Only one man
in the world has the power to stop the dissolution of
Macedonia and its annexation into a Greater Albania, and
his name is Vladimir Putin.
AN
ANALOGY RUN AMOK
In
alliance with the EU, the US undertook the systematic
destruction of the former Yugoslavia in a series of wars
whose end is not in sight. Now perhaps Macedonia, known
as FYROM (the Former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia),
will be known as the former FYROM, as the Albanian
Mafia bites off a big chunk and annexes it to their Kosovo
stronghold. One by one, as the nations of Eastern Europe
and former Soviet republics are targeted, and suddenly
plagued by various insurgencies. The AIDS analogy – dormant
since the start of this column – seems to reassert itself
all on its own accord. The contagion spreads, as NATO
pushes eastward, inserting itself into the Caucasus where
joint
Georgian-NATO military exercises are in progress even
as Putin sits down with Bush. Before the summit ever begins,
Putin is getting the message loud and clear: Capitulate,
or you too will be targeted with the deadly – and fatal
– virus of ethnic insurgencies, opportunistic infections
of the body politic that will radically shrink the traditional
Russian sphere of influence and, in the end, destroy all
resistance.
PUTIN'S
CHOICE
Saturday's
Slovenian summit will mark either the reentry of Russia
onto the world stage as a major power, or else its relegation
to the status of a Third World country in terms of prestige
as well as economic resources. Russia cannot allow any
further penetration of the Balkans by the Western powers
and their Albanian proxies – and still remain a power
to be respected if not feared. Either he stands up for
Macedonia, or else he'll go down in history as Butt-boy
Putin rather than Vladimir the Great. As to what course
he will choose, I would not venture to guess, but I can
say this: if Putin does not rise to the occasion, then
the day is coming when someone will. Russia is and will
remain a nuclear power, the only nation that really has
the capacity or even the possibility of the will to stand
up to the aspiring global hegemon. If Putin is not up
to the task, then the nationalist forces that are gathering
strength in the former Soviet republics will emerge as
a viable alternative to his regime. The only question
is: will the Russian people wake up before NATO troops
are on the outskirts of Moscow?
HEY,
DUDE . . .
In
a preview of the weekend summit, President Bush solemnly
declared that he will assure the Russian President that
"Russia is not the enemy of the United States. The Cold
War is over and the mentality that used to grip our nations
during the Cold War must end." Now we will see what Putin
is made of. He is supposed to be a hardnosed type of guy,
and much is made of his KGB background by the Russophobes
in the US for whom the cold war never ended (and never
will end). He should therefore have no trouble asking
his newfound friend, who is so willing to let bygones
be bygones, the following: "Hey, dude, if we're such bosom
buddies, then what about those NATO military exercises
in Georgia? What's up with that?"
WE
REMEMBER IT WELL
Let
us hope that Putin at least has the spirit of Vladimir
Mikamba, defense minister of Abkhazia
– the breakaway republic that seceded from Georgia and
is still fighting the tyranny of "ex"-Communist Eduard
Shevardnadze – who boldly stated why his country was responding
to the NATO incursion into the Caucasus with its own display
of military prowess:
"We
remember it well how NATO started the massive bombing
of Yugoslavia in March 1999 under the pretext of 'preventing
a humanitarian catastrophe' in Kosovo. Who can guarantee
that such fate does not await our tiny republic?"
Who
indeed. . . . ?
