From: wlarkin@hounix.org (Ward Larkin)
Subject: Comment on Editorial in Against the Current (12/92)
Organization: Houston UNIX Users Group (HOUNIX), Houston, TX
Date: Fri, 11 Dec 1992 22:57:28 GMT

The following is a reply to an editorial on Yugoslavia
which appeared in the December, 1992 issue of AGAINST
THE CURRENT magazine.

The author of this piece is Ernie Haberkern,
Email: EVH-AIS@UCBCMSA.BITNET

- - - - - - - - - - - - -

      I was disappointed but not suprised to see Against
the Current drift with the current and join the Hate Week
campaign against "the Serbs". What I did find shocking in
your editorial of December 1992 was the casual way in which
the anti-imperialist tradition of the left was dropped. The
editorial actually attacked the European powers for failing
to intervene in the civil war in Yugoslavia.
      For some inexplicable reason the article opposed a US
ground invasion - which doesn't seem to be in the works
anyway - while blaming the Europeans for not making a
"decisive response" by bombing Serbian warships. This makes
no sense. If you accept the right of the European powers to
intervene and impose a settlement why not the power best
equipped for the job? What if tomorrow the Clinton
administration decides to intervene with appropriate UN
cover? What principled objection would you have to that?
What if Clinton takes your advice along with that of Anthony
Lewis, Anna Quinlan, Newsday and the other liberal hawks and
just bombs the bejeezus out of Serbia - presumably with
smart bombs left over from the Gulf War? Will you attack him
for doing what you urged on the Europeans? Or will you
applaud?
      Against the Current is simply following along the path
that a number of former New Left anti-war activists started
on when Saddam Hussein invaded Kuwait. The brutality of the
Iraqis was real even if it was exaggerated for propaganda
purposes. Saddam Hussein was a dictator. Presumably, that
made the Gulf War a "good war" like WWII and not a "bad" war
like the one in Vietnam.  Of course, Ho Chih Minh had also
been a dictator and there were concentration camps in North
Vietnam.  But the New Left never faced that problem. Its
partisans simply inverted the Cold War logic of American
imperialism which justified its actions by demonizing the
enemy. The New Left accepted the logic. It defended its
anti-war position by romanticizing Ho Chih Minh and other
Third World nationalist dictators. Because revulsion against
American atrocities and the sacrifices required by the war
made it increasingly unpopular the inadequacy of the
movement's politics didn't matter. That is, it didn't matter
until the war ended and the left faced new conflicts where
it was not so easy to tell the good guys from the bad guys
and where - most importantly - American troops were not
seriously threatened.
      Like Saddam Hussein, Slobodan Milosevic is a nasty
piece of work. Franjo Tudjman and Alija Izetbegovic are no
prizes either. What distingusihes Milosevic and Hussein is
that, for largely accidental reasons, they have stepped over
bounds drawn for them by the masters of the "New World Order"
(Doesn't anybody remember that that phrase was first
popularized by the fascists?) What has made them demons is
that they refused to back down.  Dictators as brutal as
Hussein or Milosevic have been pampered by the US and others
as long they towed the line. We all know that one of these
was Saddam himself in an earlier incarnation. But Milosevic
was also looked on as one of the new realists in the Eastern
bloc who could be worked with.  Just like Ceausescu and Tito.
(For an expose of the whitewashing of Tito by conservative
politicians and public opinion makers see Nora Beloff's
Tito's Flawed Legacy.)  All the good people who are rightly
outraged by the real attrocities committed by the Serbian
irregulars and Milosevic's support for them are being used
by political leaders who are quite callous when it comes to
atrocities by their friends. They want to punish the Serbian
minorities in Bosnia and Croatia for questioning their right
to draw borders and impose order as they see fit. And they
want Milosevic to join the ranks of good dictators by helping
to police those rebellious minorities. If Milosevic had
condemned them his personal dictatorship would have been
ignored and he would have been allowed to do what he wanted
with his minorities in Kossovo and Sanjak.
      Whatever you think of the demand of the Serb minority
for self-determination, to support the use of force, military
or economic, by the US and its allies to dictate the internal
politics of other countries is to abandon the democratic
principles on which any socialist foreign policy has to be
built. Precisely because the US is being urged to intervene,
however, American liberals and leftists have to take a stand
on the issues involved in the civil war.
      To call, as your editorial does, for the defense of
Bosnia, is to support the suppression of the right to self
determination of approximately one-third of the population.
The referendum on independence clearly indicated that the
overwhelming majority of the Serbs did not want to become
part of an independent Bosnia.
      There was no democratic vote to dissolve the Yugoslav
federation by the citizens of that state. Had there been
such a vote the results might well have been against the
breakup and it might not have followed ethnic lines. All the
Bosnian parties were against the recognition of Croatia at
the beginning of this mess. They understood that a multi-
ethnic Bosnia was only possible in a multi-ethnic
Yugoslavia. What people were faced with was a fait accompli.
Tudjman and Milosevic had already divided the country along
ethnic lines using the bureaucratic mechanisms left them by
the old Stalinist machine. People were left with no
alternative but saving themselves in a country that was
breaking up.
      Even if you think that the Serbs in Bosnia and Croatia
are frenzied nationalists driven by paranoid fantasies bred
in a long ago war (that was WWII - the good one) the fact is
that they make up a higher proportion of the population of
Bosnia than Muslims and Croats together comprised in the old
Yugoslavia. If the Croats and Muslims had the right to secede
from Yugoslavia how can you deny the Serbs their right to
secede from Bosnia? The right of self-determination, like
any other right, is not a reward for good behavior.
      But, in fact, the Serbs are not paranoid. The fascist
party is the third largest party in Croatia and the largest
party, Mr Tudjman's party, openly claims the heritage of the
WWII fascist state. That heritage is one of a "vlkisch"
state in which only ethnic Croats are first class citizens.
The "ethnic cleansing" of the Serbs had already begun by the
time the European Community came to discuss the issue. It
was because of this that the report of the commission
assigned to investigate the question of Croatian independence
recommended against recognition until such time as an
arrangement satisfactory to the Serbian minority was reached.
You have probably seen articles which made it look like this
was a matter of timing. It was not. It was not that Croatia
was recognized "too soon" but that the Croation government
refused to consider the rights of the Serbian minority. Did
the Croatians have the right to go ahead anyway and exercise
their right to self-determination? Of course. And by the
same token the Serbian minority had the right to resist.
That the Serbs have reacted brutally is true even if you
allow for the usual exaggeration and outright lying. But the
Irish Republican Army and the Palestine Liberation
Organization have committed bone-chilling atrocities in
their time and that has not prevented socialists and liberals
from supporting the rights of the Catholics in Northern
Ireland or of the Palestinians. For that matter, the
Vietnamese treatment of US POWs wasn't all that it should
have been either. Were we wrong to oppose the American
invasion of Vietnam?
      This is clearly a case where the decision to exercise
the right to self-determination was a bad one. And in fact,
the people of Yugoslavia were more or less backed into it.
But this case also demonstrates why the defense of the right
of self-determination is a practical necessity and not just
something required by principle. Clearly, the only solution
in Yugoslavia and the Balkans in general is an multi-ethnic
and democratic society. The main obstacle to that is the
bitter ethnic hatreds that have sprung up out of this war.
Paradoxically, it is only the mutual recognition by the
various minorities of each others' rights that can make
possible that kind of multi-ethnic solution. As long as the
Muslims, Croatians and Bosnians of mixed parentage continue
to try and hold the Serbian minority captive the blood-
letting will go on. Far from being a disastrous concession
to Great-Serbian madmen the "cantonization" of Bosnia offers
the only hope of an end to the nightmare.
      Unfortunately, many decent people in Yugoslavia and
their supporters outside the country have been encouraged by
cynical politicians with their own agenda to hope for outside
intervention. If it comes - whether by air, land or sea - it
will prolong the war and the eventual outcome will be little
different than it would be if the Yugoslav factions
negotiated a truce themselves. The lines separating the
"cantons" may be altered somewhat but that is all. The EC and
the US will have once again demonstrated that without their
backing no political agreement will stand. So what if the
result is a disaster for the people who have to live with it.
      In fact, the US may not do much of anything. As I am
writing this article George Bush is sending Bill Clinton an
early Christmas present. If American troops are bogged down
in Somalia, Clinton - who has been demanding a more
aggressive foreign policy - will hardly be in a position to
do much in Bosnia. In any case, the main function, if not the
main purpose, behind Clinton's hand-wringing over Bosnia is
to soften up the public for his more aggressive foreign
policy. In the next crisis the Clinton administration can
point to Bosnia. America behaved shamefully there, he and his
flacks will claim, we cannot repeat Bush's mistake and let
country X be brutalized by dictator Y. It is clear that this
is the means Clinton intends to use to overcome the
Democratic Party's and his personal "Vietnam Syndrome." The
Bosnians are of no more importance to him than the Kurds were
to Henry Kissinger.


-- 
-- Ward Larkin
   wlarkin@hounix.org