Well, we've been over this before. Certainly it is important that the US is the biggest country in NATO and that it has a more organized, if not necessarily more competent, leadership than does the EU which remains still pretty decentralized. It also has the major military firepower.
I guess I tend to side with Wojtek on this one. There are people in Washington and New York who sit up nights worrying about the euro. But that worry has subsided somewhat given its general decline since the beginning of the year. I just don't see the US as having instigated this war to "show the Europeans who's boss."
Clearly the US is the military instigator and leader and everybody knew that and knows that. Nothing whatsoever has been shown that was not already known. If anything the limits of US power are being shown. Without the concurrence of the leading European nations the US would be doing nothing, and it is the lack of support from some of those powers that is ultimately going to prevent the introduction of ground troops, not some resolution in the US Congress.
If Italy did not support this, no bombing from the Aviano base. If other NATO powerse refused overflight, more problems. If Germany and others did not support this, then no use of other bases and weakened supply routes. Sure the US (along with maybe the UK) could sit on aircraft carriers and fly stuff over friendly Albania, or send in the B-2s from Missouri, but this operation would be a joke without the support of the major NATO nations. The question is why are they supporting this, and I do not think it is because they are craven wimps quivering in fear of the mighty US. Again and again, the French in particular have never hesitated to tell the US where to get off when they have felt like it. That has not changed one bit, despite M. Singer.
This is old hat, but I think that the Euro-periphery- pacification issue is quite serious, especially for Germany, even if the Redmond argument about US debts and the Nowell thesis about a focus on the Danube were either misguided or only relatively minor explanations of what is going on. Barkley Rosser -----Original Message----- From: Doug Henwood <dhenwood at panix.com> To: lbo-talk at lists.panix.com <lbo-talk at lists.panix.com> Date: Thursday, April 29, 1999 1:37 PM Subject: Re: il manifesto on the war and labour
>Wojtek Sokolowski wrote:
>
>>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.
>
>Europe can't even agree on building a damn naval frigate. How could they
>launch a common war?
>
>Doug
>