Sorry, Carrol, i must disagree. Actions are distinct from actors and from motives. The rescue of a cat from a group of psychopathic children does not become a
bad act because performed by the neighborhood bully for
all the wrong reasons. It just doesn't.
GN:
On Margaret:
The point is well taken. A knee-jerk "everything the US does everywhere is wrong" doesn't get us very far, I think. Some people criticize the US for not initiating bombing of the concentration camps, for example (in WWII).
On imperialism generally:
The question at hand is, unfortunately, not whether there should be US imperialism vs. no imperialism, but U.S. imperialism versus other kinds of imperialisms. There are no good governments in the Middle East, for example, at least measured by traditional western criteria of progressiveness which includes things like free speech, rights, etc. And Milosovitch has very little to recommend him.
Nonetheless the position, advocated by Yoshie & others, that all imperialism is wrong and ipso facto that US imperialism must be opposed, has the merit of consistency. I don't however think the world would be a better place if it had been followed in WWII.
I also think that the historical question is of interest. Weber's analysis of the Roman Empire is instructive. The empire's planations, he wrote, "consumed slaves the way a modern blast furnace consumes coal." His description of slave conditions outside the towns strongly resembles the conditions in a concentration camp. But it's not as if, in the absence of a Roman Empire, we would have had something *better.* We would have had Carthage or somebody else. Possibly it's only the Romans who were positioned to turn the coastal trading civilizations into a Mediterranean scale empire. In any case, strident denunciation of Rome doesn't buy us much in understanding the Mediterranean economy or the evolution of western civilization, in general, at that time.
In the period of capitalist imperialisms, it is not worthless to make distinctions. The US slaughtered many, possibly 100,000 in the Philippines, and the Native Americans were slaughtered as capitalist property relations were established in North America. It wrong that these things are not taught (say, in high school). But there is a significant difference of degree in intensity and character between the empire of Nazi Europe, or Japan, and the empires of the capitalist bourgeois democracies. If Nazi Europe had prevailed the history of Europe from WWII would have been very similar to the conditions prevailing in the USSR. It may eventually have "disintegrated" the same way the USSR did but the world would be a darker place without the western bourgeois democracies. It is worth speculating why the catch-up empires were so much more brutal than their rivals.
The utility argument.
We then come to the question of what makes for "useful" or "non-useful" imperialist action. Vietname was clearly non-useful and came to be recognized as such by the US business class. The ostensible objective was to make the Vietnam penninsula safe for the kind of capitalism we see in Taiwan or S. Korea. Whether the latter two societies are "better" or "worse" off than they would have been under Japan (I think they came out ahead) or than they would have been had they been left under semi-feudal peripheral conditions (the only other real alternative: to assert otherwise is to get into the question of whether feudal societies can be industrialized through socialism, and the record here is not good).
In any case: The reality of Viet Nam was that it was run by drug lords and that the countryside was faced with a peasant uprising. These are not propitious conditions for trying to spread capitalism and the game was lost at considerable brutality and certainly near-genocidal losses in Viet Nam; casualties were, I believe, in the millions.
What is the stake in Serbia?
These are the stakes:
1. To demonstrate that ethnic secession/conflict/massacres will be taken seriously. This is the most important demonstration effect, not that of new weapons, as previously alleged on this list. At issue are Hungarians in Romania, Slovaks in Hungary, Germans in Poland, and so on: dozens of different nationalities distributed in different ways. The objective of liberal capitalism is essentially to spread the EC model, hopefully lowering wages in the process, but also promoting consumerism and relatively peaceful social relations conducive to production and profit. One of the reason the Czec Repub and Hungary are *both* in NATO is to make *both* not fight over their respective nationals in each other's territory. And it should be observed that they can fight over these issues with or without the help of outside capital.
2. To head off a spread of the conflict to other NATO partners or countries in which NATO members have a strong interest (e.g. Rumania, which has a significant Serb minority), especially Greece. It will be objected: the war may in fact cause the conflict to spread. That is so, but it would spread anyhow. The fact that it was starting in Kosovo is already indicative of that. The group that feels oppressed draws resources from extra-territorial nationals, especially those in neighboring countries but also the US and elsewhere, wherever there is a disaspora. So: perhaps this will cause the conflict to spread. But it will spread on terms which military minds judge more favorable than the previous terms. Whether that's a good thing or a bad thing, I won't say: in particular, "more favorable" is highly speculative and the rapid escalation of this conflict may prove impossible to avoid.
3. The main political economic element is the Danube. Due to a network of canals in Holland and Germany it is now possible to ship commercially from the North Sea to the Mediterranean passing via Austria, Hungary, Rumania, Bulgaria, and Serbia. It is a key commercial conduit which may fit into the broader plans for the development and shipment of Caspian oil but which even without the oil will fufill a major integrative function in the trade of Eastern Europe. This was in fact one of the old Nazi objectives, but it was equally envisoned as the primary tool for liberal democratic integration by Keynes in his Economic Consequences of the Peace, which was and is excellent reading for understanding Germany's role in Europe. The Danube is not only a cheap shipping lane (no other form of transit is as cheap as water, period)
The Danube is currently blocked by the situation in Serbia, which puts a brake on the entire economic activity of the eastern portion of the continent. That is to say the Serbian tyrant and his little game of massacres is in the way of a major economic developing strategy. Everyone plays massacre games when they see fit. The U.S. did nothing about East Timor and nothing about Cambodia. So why does it care about this little man and his game? To put it analagously, you have to picture what the situation in the United States would be if, for example, the state of Mississippi was fully armed with an airforce, tanks, and missiles, were under a dictatorship and the ruler was actively carrying out an extermination of black people, or catholics, or whatever minority you might choose to designate therein. This kind of activity would inevitably draw involve neighboring states as they 1) received refugees and 2) various groups including governments sought to intervene by sending arms and supplies to the opporessed minority.
Now imagine what it would mean if this situation had blocked commercial traffic on the Mississippi river (which, for those that do not know, is a principal artery of the American economy). Now maybe you can use railroads and trucks and trains and go around Mississippi. But not only is the dictator a mean sonofabitch, but he definitely is in the way of bigger and better things. He's nasty and he's costing money, and he would be bombed. And I would venture to say that if that didn't work he would be invaded, and I would not exclude that possibility here, even given the unwillingness of bourgeois democracies to suffer casualties.
In the case of the Danube, the commercial importance is not at the level of the Mississippi but that does not alter the fact that a lot of people's hopes are riding on it. The case is this: You know you've got the potential for the Mississippi and someone has other ideas.
If you want to argue that it is inherently bad that liberal capitalism should expand into E. Europe then it would be well to contemplate what kind of E. Europe you do envision and what role Milosovitch on the Danube would play in it. But the current situation is that the bourgeoisies of E. Europe want to be more fully participatory in the EC or and have what they perceive as the benefits of an advanced economy. Right now they are screwed because they have neither the benefits of socialism nor those of capitalism, but only the worst of each. As for the "masses," I would suggest that they would settle for whatever got them a job and food on the table. For the time being, that means they are going along with the national bourgeosies. And that might not be stupid, given that socialism without an antecedent phase of developed capitalism has been tried and was not spectacularly successful.
The only thing the period of Soviet imperial rule was successful at, in fact, was the imposition of ethnic peace through brute force and garrisons: the fortress of the KGB in Grosny and the military occupation of the Caucasus was, throughout the period of Soviet Rule, very analogous to the occupation of Eastern Europe.
So perhaps we would like to have some endorsements on this list of Stalin's type of rule, since that has been the most effective "bringer of peace" to the USSR and E Europe of the past century. Nothing has been as good before or since at enforcing toleration. And what the hell, income distribution was better, too. But the situation in Yugoslavia cannot be simplistically pinned on the United States international bourgeois oligarchs. They merely take what evils there are and try to use them to their own ends. That project is currently focused on a bourgeois Europe, which not incidentally has resulted in the most favorable living conditions for its members enjoyed by any civilization in history.
No doubt there is room for improvement in Europe and no doubt there are numerous evils of capitalism: I've taught a number of them myself. But I think to simply spray nonsense that Milosovitch is a good guy or that the crackup of Yugoslavia is the fault of the U.S. or whatever is really to trivialize the whole process of historical development. The U.S., right up till about 1989 or 1991, considered the eastern states as unitary blocs and dismissed at its highest intelligence levels (as has been roundly criticized) any notion that they would disintegrate into mutually slaughtering entities, and that the vaunted Russian military would prove incapable of conquering Chechnya (nominally in its own sovereign jurisdiction) let alone Germany and France.
No one on this list has an answer to the "national question." It has been vigorously argued in Marxist circles and also in non-Marxist ones, and the only one who implemented a solution worth discussing was Stalin, who substituted state-sponsored slaughter and intimidation for the local outbreaks.
So here's what I see:
--No discussion of the National Question and hence no particular insight into what might be better than the status quo ante, which by itself was awful (in Yugoslavia);
--Reflex condemnation of the goals of the imperialist class without serious consideration as to whether those goals are substantively worse or better than whatever it is we are advocating instead
--The blind assumption that if one imperialist power does not act that the outcome will necessarily be preferable to letting other more local imperialisms have sway.
I note that the Bolsheviks who, as "implementing radicals" rather than internet discussants, faced the problem squarely in the Caucasus. They observed 1) that the local groups were slaughtering one another (e.g., the Armenians); 2) That the local groups were in many cases collaborating with hostile outside powers (esp. France, UK); 3) That the resources in the area were vital to the future economic development of the post-revolutionary state; 4) That imposed Bolshevik rule was for all of the above reasons preferable to "independence" and "autonomy" of those states who had every bit as good as a claim--and about the same track record--as ex-Yugoslavia. And they were 5) ready to see that the Caucasus was retrograde and hardly in a position to do anything except entrench the power of people they didn't like. So they conquered the place, and made no apologies about cultural wars against the Beys and Ayatollahs, and didn't worry about the potential for bourgeois democracy in the emergent republics, and went ahead and imposed their deal. And that decision was made while Lenin was alive and Trotsky and others had power.
So let's face it: Yugoslavia under Milosovitch is a shithole, and Milosovitch is a shithead. It's not going to be a great democracy and whatever it is that it's preaching is far worse than the bourgeois Europe (Keynes style) which is the identifiable goal of the NATO and the EC. The only real comment of significance is not that the allies are bombing (and Milosovitch was given plenty of opportunity to try some alternative; even if he'd signed the 3-year accord he might have sought to undermine it later), but that they're too chickenshit to do what the Bolsheviks did, which is go in, take him out, and set up their New Bourgeois Capitalist Order and let us all get on with the business of opposing said order on its distributional inequities.
And if you don't think that bourgeois democracies are not on everybody's mind then remember that *after* the left had been crushed and Franco died they were quite glad to have Spain re-enter the "normal world" as a bourgeois democracy--even if it did mean Socialist rule for a while. Ditto with Portugal. In fact, they *required* capitalist democratic governance as a condition for entry
Which brings us back to Milosovitch. Bourgeois E. Europe could be constructed if he would behave and act like a Franco. That, clearly, would be tolerated; and after he died many would hope for a more civilized successor state. But even capitalist democracies have their limits, and they seem to have reached those limits with Milosovitch; and although I can *imagine* better societies in which to live, I haven't *identified* ones for which I would pack my bags and go, not even in the history books, except the more civilized bourgeois capitalist democracies like Sweden or Canada or other places where I wouldn't be able to get a job.
And I'll bet you none of you could identify an *existing* better social system, or would move, either. Y'all are having too much fun on those computers the capitalists sold you.
All that said, whether bombing Yugoslavia is *useful,* I doubt, because if bourgeois democracy in E. Europe is your goal, Milosovitch has to be taken out or else forced to behave like a Franco or a Salazar. -- Gregory P. Nowell Associate Professor Department of Political Science, Milne 100 State University of New York 135 Western Ave. Albany, New York 12222
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