>Here are some points I would think we could agree on, though we probably
>won't:
well, i'm here to disagree on a few points, but not because i'm a pacifist. and i'm not at all sure what revolutionary defeatism means...
>
>1. Obviously the prime actors, partly over-lapping, are NATO and the EU,
>with the U.S. clearly the preeminent actor in NATO. Their joint interest
in
>Europe is stability, which means among other things dampening separatist
>insurgencies. Such insurgencies engender violence, atrocities and
refugees,
>all of which belie the image of the EU as an evolving, civilized single
>market, and of NATO as a guarantor of peace and security.
perhaps paradoxically, the EU's morphing into a single market requires a passage through a period of violence that it simultaneously internally and externally directed. no one was particularly excited about the EU before apart from a few economists, but after this...
>2. NATO does not need to stoke nationalism in the Balkans. Nationalism
is
>a fact.
and the war will provide the EU with its own nationalism, replete with ceremonies, funerals and mourning. the best they can hope for is that they have one big moment of loss, like dunkirk for the brits, gallipoli for the australians... anyone for freud?
>6. Because NATO has not supported an independent Kosova, it has not
>supported the KLA as a legitimate political force. That explains the
racist
>propaganda from mainstream media linking the KLA with drug-running and an
>"international Albanian Mafia." It would also explain a motive for
>exaggerating tales of Muslim atrocities against Serbs. (I do not doubt
such
>atrocities have taken place.) The moral of the story is, all these people
>hate each other so much, they need the UN to step in and run things
>indefinitely, ergo no self-determination for Kosova, nor perhaps for
Serbia.
no, the moral of the story as we fly into the next century is that the failures of neoliberal capitalism to deliver the goods is the failure of those who are uncivilised. no more needing to prove just how well capitalism can deliver prosperity as in the cold war. irving kristol commented just after the berlin wall came down: 'we might have won the cold war, but now the enemy is us' or some such. this all gets solved by attributing to whole slices of the world (beginning with sub-saharan africa and ending with immigrants/refugees at home) the qualities of capitalism's 'bad side', the source of the antagonisms.
Angela --- rcollins at netlink.com.au