BALKANS WAR: BALANCE OF POWER
Nato's nagging doubts at odds with general mood, Michael Binyon writes.
Public support for land war is on the increase
DESPITE growing concern that the air
campaign is not working, public opinion across
Europe is swinging more firmly behind Nato.
After a week of war, support for the military
action against Yugoslavia is growing, and in
some countries there are now public calls for the
use of ground troops.
Opinion polls show backing for the Nato action
running at about 2:1 in Britain, with almost 60
per cent of Germans in favour and the same
solid backing in France.
The key factor that has hardened support is the
brutal expulsion of the Kosovan Albanians. The
television pictures of columns of women and
children being marched to the border have
inevitably awoken Europe's memory of the
Holocaust.
More than anything, perhaps, the use of trains
to transport expelled Albanians to the border has
evoked chilling comparisons with the Second
World War.
Claims by the German Social Democrats that
concentration camps have been set up for the
Kosovo Albanians have inevitably drawn a
sharp emotional reaction in Germany, and are a
main factor in rallying support for the attacks on
Yugoslavia.
The Germans themselves have been surprised
by the lack of protest and anti-American
demonstrations. Most still cannot believe that
Germany is now involved in a full-scale war,
turning its back on half a century of pacifism.
Newspapers ask: can this be Germany? Where
are the protests? Where is the Left's knee-jerk
anti-Americanism?
Even in Italy, where anti-militarism is strong,
support for the war is running at roughly 50:50.
In Spain, the predicted opposition to the
bombing has been largely neutralised by the
(Javier) Solana factor, and trust in the Nato
Secretary-General, who is a respected former
Spanish Foreign Minister. Throughout Nato's
southern flank, public opinion appears to be
strengthening just as the Governments
themselves appear less sure of the operation.
Other countries which, a generation ago, saw
thousands of students demonstrating against
airstrikes in Vietnam now find that the Left
strongly supports action against the Serbs. In
Norway and Denmark there is strong, but
reluctant, backing for Nato. In The Netherlands
a special factor influences both the Government
and public opinion: the continuing anguish over
Dutch troops' failure to protect the Muslim men
after the fall of Srebrenica has kindled a deep
antipathy to the Serbs.
Across Europe, the main opposition comes from
the far Left and the far Right. The remaining
Communist parties are motivated as much by
anti-Americanism and suspicion of Nato as by
ideological sympathy with President Milosevic,
one of the last former Communist rulers in
Eastern Europe.
The Right is either suspicious that the war does
not serve the national interest of each country or
is being conducted cackhandedly. There are also
strong doubts about the legality of interference
in a sovereign country, with fears that the
precedent could rebound on other nations.
Most countries need not worry about this
political opposition. But the French and Italian
Governments still need the support of the
Communists. The opposition from Vaclav
Klaus, the right-of-centre former Prime Minister
of the Czech Republic, has been a complicating
factor in this new Nato member.
The greatest doubts appear to be in America
itself, where ignorance of the issues, confusion
over the rights and wrongs of the quarrel and a
contempt for the Europeans' failure to settle
their own affairs have combined with resurgent
isolationism and visceral unwillingness to risk
American lives in someone else's quarrel.
Nevertheless, the television images are changing
perceptions. The latest opinion poll by CNN and
Gallup show that most Americans still express
substantial worry over the Kosovo operation,
with approval now standing at 53 per cent, rising
only three points over the past week.
This is still far below the 74 per cent backing for
airstrikes against Iraq.
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Discouraging! Land war next.
Henry
Doug Henwood wrote:
> Chris Burford wrote:
>
> >I am very glad NATO has abandoned its appeasement role, (which was also
> >imperialist in character - even more so than its war role) but one of the
> >criticisms to be made of NATO is its condescending saviour approach. It
> >should have had a bottom up approach, and it should have insisted in
> >bargaining on fostering not international monitors but the structures of
> >civil society, of the sort that MADRE has worked with.
>
> Chris, your capacity for self-deception is really a marvel. NATO is a
> military organization dominated by the U.S. whose role has historically
> been to destroy the USSR and to bind Western Europe to the U.S. in a
> subordinate role. It is an imperalist organization, to use some
> unfashionable language. MADRE is a feminist human rights organization, and
> an anti-imperalist one at that. Why should an imperialist organization do
> anti-imperialist work?
>
> Doug