Yes, I rather think it does. I certainly would not want to leave out of account the prior hostility Serbs felt towards the Albanian Kosovars. However, these ethnic tensions would never have gotten any more violent than those in other parts of the world - but for the internationalisation of these conflicts. The key Western powers in London, Washington, Bonn and Paris introduced new motivations and inducements to greater separation. The message to Yugoslavia's minorities was, 'break away and you will get Western recognition and western aid'. That was an irresponsible intervention that turned ethnic tension into ethnic war.
> You are
>intellectualizing
You are emoting, and by-passing your intellect, the better to connect with your (and every war-monger's) prejudices.
>and thereby leaving out the essential element of intent.
>What is the intent of the Serb army as shown by their actions? Is it, as
>you would have us believe, some vain effort to re-solidify Yugoslavia or is
>it an effort to *redefine* Yugoslavia as Serbian? I think it is clearly the
>latter.
I don't deny that there is Serbian chauvinism in the rump republic of Yugoslavia. My point is that Western intervention makes those ethnic tensions greater, not less.
> Again, there is nothing you can demonstrate to be inherent in NATO
>bombing that forces Serb soldiers to dispossess Albanian civilians.
I suppose it was just a coincidence that every aid and charity organisation declared a humanitarian disaster within a week of the Nato bombing. It really is a failure of imagination on your part not to understand what it would mean if your country was subjected to nightly bombing raids undertaken on behalf of a community within your own borders. It is not just, but it is predictable that the Yugoslav forces would have attacked the enemy to hand, lacking the firepower to attack the enemy in the skies.
I really am amazed sometimes at what pricks Americans are when it comes to wars. I realise that America has never been subjected to a bombing raid, but you really should try to think about what that might feel like - and then ask how rational you would be in that situation.
>
> Going farther on that matter of intent, what you characterize as my
>"racial stereotype" of the Balkan people is, first of all, hardly "racial"
>unless you are using some Aryan eugenic definition of the word "race" and
>is, instead, a political judgment. The Balkans fall victim to ethnic
>politicking very easily and that politicking has led to war after war,
>atrocity after atrocity. That it may be provoked from outside does not
>excuse it. The fact that Albanians hates Serbs for being Serbs and Serbs
>hate Albanians for their ethnicity, and that this hatred has led to
>separatism, repression and violence time after time, is clear evidence that
>these people have a brutal outlook on what is appropriate political
>intercourse.
The only thing that is clear to me is that you have a racial view of what the people of the Balkans are like. The people of the Balkans are various. To your mind they seem especially prone to ethnic hostility - but if you stood back a little from your own prejudices you would recognise that it is you that is especially prone to ethnic hostility. You want to stereotype all people in the Balkans, but the vast majority of people there are not involved in any kind of militia activity, or nationalist politics - they are, like people all over the globe disengaged from the activities of their governments and local authorities.
And to what purpose is this silly racial sterotyping put? Why to justify the nightly air-raids upon Belgrade, Novi Sad and Pristina of course. If one wants to annihilate people, first you must dehumanise them. To slaughter Serbs, you must persuade yourself that they are uniquely wicked, and so you say 'they are racists'. Who are racists, DL? 'The entire Balkan Race!' Well give them what they deserve.
>
> When you say is responsible for "engendering" the political
>fragmentation of Yugoslavia, you really mean that the West was responsible
>for *encouraging* that breakup. "Engendering" implies that the West can
>control the intent of the warring factions and that is not true. Could the
>West "engender" the breakup of the United Kingdom? The obvious truth is that
> there never was a politically stable Yugoslavia.
Yes but you fail to realise that unstable Yugoslavia does not add up to Warring Yugoslavia: you need the promise of support to national minorities to do that. In Croatia, the US military trained the army that dispossessed tens of thousands of Serbs from there homes. Now the US is paying for military training for the KLA and bombing Belgrade. Does that not count as engendering division? -- Jim heartfield