At 09:24 08/04/99 +0100, Jim H wrote:
>Chris gets up on his high horse about LM's position on the Bosnian War.
>But what is he saying? LM's opposition to the war was certainly a
>minority position, and the government and courts have tried to have the
>magazine closed because of it. Every major newspaper supported Western
>military intervention on the side of the Bosnians. It is only in that
>context that opposition to intervention appears to warmongers like Chris
>to be 'support for the Serbs'. He takes issue with the publication of
>evidence of Bosnian atrocities against Serbs. I can see why .. Chris'
>propaganda computer must have been saying 'does not compute ... does not
>compute'. LM was a small voice in a clamour for war. If we showed people
>things that went against the grain of the dehumanisation of the Serbs,
>and showed that they too could be the victims in this war, then I am
>proud of it.
>
>The recently released news that the US military trained and advised the
>Croatian forces that forced tens of thousands of Serbs out of Krajina
>indicates that we were right to take a distance from the hectoring war-
>party of former leftists that Chris has joined. The suspension of
>democracy in the OSCE protectorate of Bosnia since the conflict confirms
>it.
I did not duck the question of the ethnic clearing of Serbs out of the Krajina. 4 years ago, when the western powers were at their most cynically appeasing in Bosnia, when the Croatians mounted a successful counterattack with US support I submitted a number of posts to marxism-space highlighting the ethnic cleansing that they too were imposing.
I do not know the point that Jim H is making abour the suspension of democracy in Bosnia. I do not know the details or the underlying policy.
Perhaps for bad and discreditable reasons Bosnia wished to secede from the Yugoslav federation. My understanding is that the Serb nationalist response was to attack to split is and dominate as much of the land as possible in ethnically pure territories. The Croats then moved to grab other areas. Am I wrong in that?
I do not accept that I am a warmonger. I consider that Serb nationalists are warmongers, and launched a war of aggression against the civil population of Kosovo because they wanted to exercise their right to self-determination. The intervention I seek is proportionate to what is effective as far as Kosovo is concerned as should not harm Serbia as such unnecessarily.
>Date: Fri, 9 Apr 1999 01:37:18 +0100
>From: Jim heartfield <jim at heartfield.demon.co.uk>
>Subject: Max, Angela, Chris, DL
>In message <3.0.2.32.19990409000016.0147c630 at pop.gn.apc.org>, Chris
>Burford <cburford at gn.apc.org> writes at me
>
>>Your hands are not clean to the extent that you promoted appeasement of the
>>Serb attacks in Bosnia.
>
>Which, in placing himself outside of civil discussion, saves me the
>dreary task of demonstrating to him why Dimitrov's definition of fascism
>is 1) wrong and 2) inapplicable to the Yugoslav republic.
>
>(Suffice to say that the essential characteristic of fascism is the
>mobilisation of a petit bourgeois mass movement to destroy the working
>class)
I disagree with that definition too as unnecessarily restrictive.
But if Jim H claims it is outside the bounds of civil discussion to say that a particular position promotes appeasement of racist attacks, how can we discuss or even recognise the possible existence of appeasement?
>(And if anyone thinks that refusing to characterise the Yugoslav regime
>as fascist is support, can I quickly add that I do not believe that Nato
>is fascist either.)
I do think there is a sense in which NATO can be called fascist. It is clearly using terror against smaller nations. I am aware that in saying it is progressive to want to do something to stop the Albanians in Kosovo from being crushed, my position can be presented as pro-NATO pure and simple, for which I have been banned from contributing on this subject on Louis Proyect's list.
To say that it is all a mess of atrocities is not a coherent analysis.
Lenin argued in "Socialism and War" 1915: "The Socialists have always condemned wars between peoples as barbarous and bestial. Our attitude to war, however differs in principle from that of the bourgeois pacifists and anarchists.... We Marxists differ both from pacifists and anarchists in that we recognize the necessity of a historical study of each war individually, from the point of view of Marx's dialectical materialism."
And in 1916: "How, then can the 'real nature' of a war be ascertained; how can it be determined? War is the continuation of politics. We must study the politics that preceded the war, the politics that led to and brought about the war. If the politics were imperialist politics, ie, politics in the interests of finance capital, of the robbery and oppression of colonies and foreing countries, then the war that emergered from these politics is an imperialistic war. If the politics were national-liberation politics, ie the expression of a mass movement against national oppression, then the war that emerged from these politics is a war for national liberation."
Now there are in a sense several wars going on simultaneously and they reflect several political struggles. There is a war by the Kosovans for the defence of their right to self-determination, and a war by the Serbian nationalists against not just the KLA but the civilian population of Kosovo, to crush that struggle and to drive large proportions of that population off the land. There is a war by NATO against the Serbian nation as a whole taking advantage of massive superiority of air power.
I do not myself think the politics behind this are so much to control the Balkans because a more canny policy of placing increasing numbers of troops there peacefully in various countries like Macedonia would have increased imperialist influence for a lower price. Probably above all it is a bid for the moral high ground of defending a small subject nationality, to be able to enforce respect for its military domination in the world.
There is also the political struggle, only partly reflected in military action, between the Serb nationalists who want their economic activity based on a relatively small nation state, and the politics of European market integration which tolerates a Europe of the regions, so long as capital can have complete freedom for its activities in a supranational market.
I do not think this can be reduced to one position of opposing our imperialists' involvement in NATO.
Chris Burford
London