You aver:
>Someone (wish i could remember who) said that academic
>infighting is so nasty because the stakes are so small.
>I wonder if that could explain the nastiness here, too?
>(And no, that's not meant snidely at all -- the comment
>has always seemed zen-like to me)
>
>Pity that Yoshie left, but i'm sure she's happier now.
We are talking about one scenario of death and destruction versus another here, Marg! It's difficult and it's about unimaginable human suffering - so any bunch of concerned individuals are gonna go at it pretty hard.
My feeling is that there is an unfortunate tendency amongst we lefties to set ourselves opposite and apart - rendering ourselves smugly impotent in the process. To this extent I have found Chris's insights very important and quite compelling. As Chris says, lefties can not eschew their meta-critique and their vision, but what they must not do is abrogate their responsibilities as citizens within liberal democratic polities. People are beginning to see this is all very sad and equally dangerous - they belong to a narrowly instrumental political culture, and demand a coherent technical response to a 'dehistoricised' crisis (the West in general, and America in particular, has lost the ability to remember and contextualise, I think, but that's a big issue all on its own).
Anyway, what we have to do is come up with a least-unsatisfactory response to an obscenely unsatisfactory state of affairs. A response that is actually thinkable now, and in full recognition of the relations of power and interest that pertain right now. We're gonna have to compromise, in other words. I'm all for articulating demands we know governments will dismiss (like Angela's idea about opening western borders immediately) - we should always demand - but that's the political part of our project.
We shouls also seek input into saving lives right now, in the real benighted world. To that end, we need a grasp of what's happening and a take on what's possible by next week.
Seems to me we're talking about one of two scenarios from the NATO point of view. Either it was a complete misunderstanding of Milosovic's ability or proclivity to bend before their onslaught (the history of US foreign policy is such that any charge of gross ineptitude and breath-taking arrogance has to be entertained seriously), or it has turned out as it was meant to turn out (after all, how many times have we been told by the very authors of this conflagration that air-power alone can not win and hold ground?).
I favour the latter suspicion. The idea was always to take over Kosovo, and something had to be done to mobilise popular support for a a big invasion. The gamble that Milosovic would need to pursue his re-Serbianisation of Kosovo, and that he would be sure to exploit a state of war to transform the demographics of Kosovo, was not against the odds. The gamble that half a million terrified refugees would make good enough television to tar the whole Serbian people with the Milosovic brush was also at backable odds (although it seems this has not worked, at least as yet - I read on LBO that Clinton's support has plummetted over the last couple of days, for whatever reason). The third gamble, that Russia would feel tied by its perceived need for Western dollars and debt-forgiveness, seems odds on. And the last, that the appearance of total ill-preparedness for a terrestrial assault would convince most of NATO's innocence, seems spot-on. Of course, popular support for the months-long Desert Shield build-up was well maintained last time, and would seem likely to be so again.
But the choice of expeditionary force is crucial. You can't have Islamic involvement (eg the Turks), as this threatens to recast the war rather dangerously (Serbia would unite completely and a 'holy war' dimension - framed as 'all Serbs v. all Muslems' might threaten), and you can't have too large an American contingent, as this excites suspicion in a world which has learned to distrust American adventurism. No, the soldiers would primarily have to come from the European NATO countries, especially the new member states. Now there's a gamble. LaFontaine's resignation and Schroeder/Scharping's recent actions lead us to believe German involvement is assured, the Brits always do what they're told, and any state in need of Western funds can be cajoled. But Jospin's France might be difficult, and Greece and Italy already evince reservations.
Anyway, assuming this can be done, we must assume all of Kosovo is the NATO target - the gratitude and subservience of a financially and strategically insecure bloc (a client-bloc made up of Albania, Kosovo and Macedonia) and the approval of Islamic states in general all adds up to a comfy state of affairs, eh?
So how would we prepare our rhetoric for such a scenario? Well, we could demand a partition of Kosovo (I am innocently envisaging an east-to-west division: mebbe Pec in the southern Albanian half, and Pristina in the northern Serb half) and a cessation to the bombing while the offer is considered. Milosovic might be able to sell that to the monster he helped create; Clinton can still sell it as the foreign policy success he craves; Yugoslavia keeps its Kosovo memorial, the mineral wealth with which independently to rebuild itself, and its strategic presence; and southern Kosovo makes for some great fertile, resource-rich land to add [mebbe] to either/both Macedonia and/or Albania. The partition would be policed not by NATO troops (now most definitely 'the invader'), but Russian troops - Primakov and Yeltsin save their political hides, Russia its face, and Milosovic can point to some Slavic 'brotherhood' thing to take the curse off it.
Then we could demand curtailment of NATO unilateral discretion, and wave pictures of burnt-out schools, bridges, vacuum-cleaner factories, and cluster-bomb victims to anyone who'll listen - at which point NATO's strategic interests come in for a bit of scrutiny (the Danube thoroughfare, the mineral deposits, the strategic isolation of a potentially recalcitrant Russia, the trialling of new weaponry, Clinton's 'changing of the subject', imperial sway from the Meditteranean to the Bulgarian border, a return to Reaganite 'military Keynesianism' in times of [possibly?] incipient instability in the Western economy, blah blah blah).
And after all that we could ask for an explicit promulgation of the concept of 'crimes against humanity'. It'll be fun watching 'em try to come up with something that puts Serbs in gaol but keeps the likes of Tudjman, the KLA elite, and Clinton out. And we have an opportunity to ask for a scientifically reliable definition of 'genocide against own people'. More fun as they try to keep what happened to the Kosovars in whilst keeping what's happening to the Turkish Kurds out.
I'm banging on like this - all urgency and perhaps little understanding - because we do need to start speaking out very soon, and with a comprehensive take on it all, because there's a good chance we'll be swopping bullets in Yugoslavia within a couple of months, and then no-one will have any control over a situation that can take the world all the way to armageddon.
Cheers, Rob.