> countries as Greece and France. That may change. But it
> raises the possibility that either the EU really is calling the
> shots on this one with the US as flunky/waterboy, as Dennis
> Redmond claims (because of US debts to the EU), which I
> find unconvincing, or it is some desire of the EU to somehow
> control and end the various ethnic conflicts on the European
> continent once and for all before the century is out.
I'd argue that EU hegemonialism and ethnic peacemaking are two sides of a single coin. The multinationalism of the Eurocore is creating dire new pressures on the Europeriphery, which spawned all sorts of no less dire neonationalisms; these in turn are creating political crises for the core. Two weeks ago, the euro looked wobbly against the dollar, Lafontaine was chewing out the ECB, and internal scandals were rocking the EU bureaucracy. But a couple of airstrikes later, the euro is stable, the EU governments locked shoulders and agreed on an EU budget from 2000-2006 which will continue to pour billions of euros in Spain, Italy and Ireland, and the EU could brush off the mass resignation of the commissioners as a minor midcourse correction. It's too simple to sweep this all under the rug by waving the flag of US imperialism.
The EU would argue, of course, that the bombing was necessary, and only accelerated a catastrophe which would've happened anyway, a la Bosnia. Which may be partly true; Serbia was not about to let ground-based peacekeepers into Kosovo, and you could see the bloodshed spiraling out of control months ago (the choice of three months of agony, which would at least save lots of Kossovar lives, versus three years of brutish civil war and unimaginable casualties). The only clear thing in the whole bloody mess is that (1) the USA has *no business* participating in an EU pacification operation and should get the hell out of the Balkans and stay out, forever, and (2) long-term solutions have to be negotiated at the table, not settled on the battlefield.
-- Dennis