Can NATO call it a victory with Milosevic still in power?

Mr P.A. Van Heusden pvanheus at hgmp.mrc.ac.uk
Fri Jun 11 02:47:22 PDT 1999


I think one of the more important questions that will decide whether NATO's actions are judged a success or not is the future of Milosevic, and the changes that lie ahead for the Serbian political scene.

After all, this could only be called a victory if it achieved its objective of imposing NATO (US and EU) hegemony on the Balkans. A side effect of the war has been to make Milosevic essentially impossible to deal with. Clinton's statement that the rebuilding of Yugoslavia cannot happen with Milosevic in charge is essentially similar to the US and UK rumblings about Hussein in Iraq - the difference being that Milosevic is in a much weaker position that Hussein.

It thus seems likely that Milosevic will exit the Serbian political scene at some point in the future. What seems less certain is that whoever replaces Milosevic will be a pawn of NATO - after all, one of the big 'winners' of the current situation seems to be Vojislav Seselj.

Apart from the danger to NATO aims of an upserge of Serb nationalism, there is of course the political havoc that the war has created around the region, and finally there is the bruising of the US-EU relations that the conflicts within the alliance caused. All in all, I think that while what happened is a clear defeat for the working class, it is not a clear victory for NATO.

Peter -- Peter van Heusden : pvanheus at hgmp.mrc.ac.uk 'The demand to give up illusions about the existing state of affairs is the demand to give up a state of affairs which needs illusions.' - Karl Marx



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