il manifesto on the war and labour

Wojtek Sokolowski sokol at jhu.edu
Thu Apr 29 09:24:35 PDT 1999


At 03:16 PM 4/29/99 +1000, you wrote:
>Ferruccio Gambino
>IL MANIFESTO
>[trans of excerpts, original in full below]
>
>"The Kosovo crisis has offered the United States such advantages for
>making their presence felt as to prove irresistible. With the further
>dismemberment of Yugoslavia, Washington can, with one blow: strengthen
>Germany's privileged partner, anti-fundamentalist Islamic Turkey; humiliate
>the Russians; seal the loyalty of the new NATO members Poland, Hungary and
>the Czech Republic through a baptism of fire; and finally, teach a lesson
>to the Eurocrats. Tomorrow may bring other tangible benefits.
>
>"In the face of the cycles of US-led aggression over the last 15 years,

I am somewhat skeptical about claims that this is a US-led aggression. It looks to me more like a genuine European social-dummiecratic concoction - in which the Clinton administration was a co-conspirator but not necessarily the leader.

Methinks that Euro social dummiecrats realised that they were unable to deliver the promise of reversing neo-liberalism on which they were elected, due to the opposition from the business class. To avoid the history of Mitterand socialists repeating itself as farce, and not having Lafontaine's guts to resign, they apparently decided to 'change the subject' and score some popularity points by winning on the 'human rights' issue. Arresting Pinochet was an appetizer, waging a war against His Excellency (thank you, Barkley) - the main course.

They apparently thought that an air campaign would be an easy win that would score them a few points with their left-of-center constituents, while diverting the attention from the fact that they are essentially unable to reverse the neo-liberal policies set in motion by their conservative opponents.

Methinks, Clinton's administration fell into the same trap. However, when it became quite clear that the air campaign failed, which gives a tremendous opportunity for the Repugs to recover from the damage inflicted by the Starr/Lewinsky affair, Clinton started to back-pedal looking for a quick political solution to prevent further damage. Hence his courting of the Russians - who I understand are quite reluctant to cooperate because they would love to see that thing unravel and weaken NATO even if that means the fall of His Excellence (not exactly a good friend of Russia) - and not getting along with the European oil embargo (which means confrontation with Russia).

It looks like Clinton may, after all, have an 'exit strategy' from that mess in his usual way, by further turning to the right (privatising social security if the need be, for example) - but that option does not seem to be available for Euro social dummiecrats, who now can expact their constituents' wrath not only for their failure to reverse neo-liberal policies but also for exacerbating the plight of civilians in Kosovo and Serbia without accomplish anything in return. That may explain the desperate hawkishness of Blair and Co. - they have really no other way to go.

Wojtek



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