THE DOUBLE EXTORTION
War in Kosovo. In Milocevic's regime, the West fights a monster which it created. On the beginning and the end of a new world order.
by Slavoj Zizek
The big winner in the competition for biggest nincompoop of the year 1998 was a Latin American patriotic terrorist, who sent a letter bomb to the US consulate in order to protest against the American interference into the policy of its country. The obligation-conscious citizen wrote it the address on the envelope but forgot however, to glue on stamps so that the post office returned the letter to him. Since he had forgotten about it, he opened the letter and blew himself up - a perfect example for the fact that a letter in the long run always atttains its destined place (or returns to its place of origin)
Isn't something similar happening to Slobodan Milocevic ' s regime with the current NATO bombardment? For many years Milocevic sent letter bombs to his neighbours, to Albania, Croatia and Slovenia. They lit fires all around Serbia. His last letter finally returned to himself. We hope that the NATO intervention will lead to the Milocevic becoming the political nincompoop of the year..
The fact that the west finally intervened in Kosovo constitutes a type of poetic justice , because there, we forget that not, the ascent of the Slobodan Milocevic began. The arrow hit that which shot it, by setting free the spirit of ethnic passions. The decay of Yugoslavia did not begin, when the Slovenian " secession " released a domino effect (only Croatia, then Bosnia, then Makedonien...), but already with Milocevic's constitutional reforms in the year 1987, which robbed the Kosovo and the Vojvodina of autonomy. From that moment on Yugoslavia continued to live only because it did not notice yet that it was already dead.
It is easy to praise the bombardment of Yugoslavia by NATO as the first intervention in a country with full national sovereignty. Isn't it pleasant to see that the NATO troops intervene not because of certain economic interests but simply, because a country cruelly violates the human rights of another ethnical group ? Isn't the only hope in our time that an internationally recognized force guarantees that all countries respect a minimum of ethical standards? But the situation is more complex, and that becomes already clear in the way that NATO justifies its intervention: The mention of the violation of human rights is always accompanied with a vague note to " strategic interests ".
NATO as rescuers of the human rights -- that is only one of two stories which one can tell about the bombardment of Yugoslavia. The second story concerns the other page of much-praised new ethical world politics, which permit it to hurt the national sovereignty in order to protect human rights. One gets a first impression from the other page, if one observes, how the western media stylize a local " warlord " as the Personifizierung of Evil. Whether Saddam Hussein or now Milocevic - always it means: " the community of the civilized countries against... " But on which criteria is this distinction based? Why protect Albanians in Serbia , not however Palestinian in Israel, Kurd in Turkey et cetera? And here, naturally, we have to dowith the shady world of the international capital....
In the just-published bookCensored 1999 Carl Jensen reveals that the best hidden story of the year 1998 was a halfsecret international convention with the title MAI(multilateral Agreement on Investment). The principal purpose by MAI: to protect the foreign interests of multinational enterprises. This convention undermines the sovereignty of the nation, because it lends almost the same power to the large concerns as to countries in which they are settled. Governments will not any longer be able to treat native companies better than foreign enterprises. The companies can sue sovereign states if ecological or other standards appear ureasonable to them.
Renato Ruggerio, the director of the World trade Organization, cheers this project, which was developed almost without media attention, as already the " foundation-stone of a new global economy ". Exactly this is thus the drawback of the much-praised new global morality, which is praised even by some neoliberal philosophers as the beginning of one era, in which the international community intervenes in the territories of states themselves to prevent to commission of crimes against human rights.
Also this other story has thus its ominous military page. The last American interventions rang in a new stage in military history - of battles, in which the aggressor is already almost under the obligation to have no victims in the own ranks. And wasn't the counterpoint in addition the almost already surreale war reporting of CNN? The Gulf War was not only presented on the American side as a TV event, which the Iraqis have themselves done. During the day Bagdad was a normal city of full people , as if war and bombs would be unreal nightmare-likeghosts, which emerged only at night.
We remember the last American attack on Iraq during the Gulf War: no photos, no reports, only rumors that tanks, protected by bulldozers, which rolled over Iraqi trenches and buried thousands of Irqai soldiers in earth and sand. What followed was a blackout so cruel in its almost mechanical efficiency -- pictures would have influenced the public opinion too negatively and a total censorship was imposed. Here the two aspects are connected: the new perception of the war as a technological event, which takes place behind radar and computer monitors, and in which extreme physical cruelty, which is not to be borne under the view of the media. When Jean Baudrillard announced that the Gulf War had not taken place, one could understand this predicate on the contrary asas meaning that the traumatic pictures which stood for the reality of the war had been fully censored.
How can we think ofthese two stories simultaneously, without sacrificing their respective truths? What we find here is a political illustration of that famous drawing, on which one detects either the head of a hare or a goose, depending on which view one takes. If we regard the current situation in a certain way, we see the international community of states, that forces
minimal human rights standards upon a nationalistic, neocommunist leader who practices ethnical cleansing ,. If we change the perspective we see NATO, which attacks a sovereign country, as the armed force of a new of capitalistic world order which implements interests of the capital, in the form of a disgusting travesty, in which they pose as disinterested protectorsr of human rights.
What would however be, if one extracted oneself from this double extortion (if one is against the NATO bombing, is one for Milocevic ' protofascistic regime, and if one is against Milocevic, does one supports the new capitalistic world order)? What would be, if opposing of enlightened international intervention is false against ethnical fundamentalists on one side and heroic resistance against the new world order on the other side? What, if a phenomenon such as Milocevic 's regime were not the contrast to the new world order, but the symptom, the scene, at which the hidden truth steps to the daylight? One of the American negotiators said recently, Milocevic was not part of the problem, but the problem. Yes, but that was not
clear from the outset? Why would the western powers otherwise have so for a long time hesitated to intervene, for many years carried out support for Milocevic, styling it the factor of stability in a crisis reason and closing their eyes to clear cases of Serbian aggression?
If the West fights Milocevic, it does not fight its enemy, one the last opponents against the liberal-democratic new world order: it fights rather its own creature, a monster, which arose for the western policy from the compromises and inconsistencies. In the last ten years the West has been aa Hamlet-like waverer put toward the Balkans to the day, and the current bombardment looses the reins for Hamlet's final murderous outbreak, which entails a quantity of unnecessary dead (not only the king, its actual target, but also his mother, Laertes and Hamlet himself..), because Hamlet concerned himself too late. And also the West pays the price in the current intervention for all the years of hesitating.
One sure thing: The bombardment of Yugoslavia by NATO will change the geopolitical coordinates of the world. The unwritten pact of a peaceful coexistence is over. The first intervention of the new world police, which reserves to itself the right to punish a sovereigns state for its errors signals the end of the new order however at the same time already, because it became evident immediately that the universality of human rights is false as authentication, i.e. that behind the selection of certain targets certain political interests hide themselves. Bombardment means at the same time the end of the serious role of the UN and security council. It is NATO which holds all the threads in its hand. Beyond that , more quietly, the pact with Russia , valud until today, was broken: Russia was formerly publicly treated as a superpower, but it is now openly humiliated . Finally the logical consequence of the new situation will be naturally renewed arising of anti-western tendencies, with the sad consequence that criminal figures are celebrated such as Milocevic as fighters against the new world order.
The lesson reads thus that the alternative is not between a new world order and a neoracist nationalism - it concerns both sides of themedal. The new world order bears within itself the monstrosity which fights it. Therefore the protests of the communist parties everywhere in Europe, and so also the PDS, are full of error. The way to fight the capitalistic world order does not lead to the support of local fascists.
One must address oneself instead to the only relevant question today: How can one establish transnational political institutions, which are strong enough to carry out resistance to the absolute rule of capital and which make politically visible that the fundamentalist resistance against the new world order, fron Milocevic up to Le Pen up to the extreme right in all Europe, is part of this rule ?