>The bombing only makes sense as a prelude to intervention on the
>ground. A peace-keeping force is better off if its adversaries'
>military installations have gotten pulverized before-hand. They
>are more pissed off, but they have fewer tools for evil deeds.
>I'm no military genius, but I can understand that much.
perhaps. I'm not a military strategist either, but I actually am this minute more inclined to the idea that the bombings are no prelude to ground troops but rather a way of giving the kla air cover. bombing military installations will not stop the terrorising of civilians in Kosovo or Serbia. which is why I still think that the bombings should be halted. they should never have begun.
****along with this, I would think the only other demand of any integrity that can be put is for all our governments to immediately grant automatic entry to the refugees. there is no immediate solution in sight. the rush to contain the 'problem of the refugees' amounts to the same as the enforced evacuation of Albanian kosovars from their homes - they do not belong because they are not like us. I would hope that, at least here, everyone on the list can agree, despite their differences over intervention and the bombings.****
>I'd like to note that it refutes charges that NATO is
>"terror bombing." Terror bombing is when bombs are falling on
>your head, and you're terrified unto death. That is not
>happening, by and large. I also noted the letters from the
>Albanians, which reflected a keen sense of terror at the Serbs in
>Kosovo.
yes. there is real terror in Kosovo. but what was loud and clear was that the bombings have provided a means for an intensification and expansion of Serbian nationalism. that is no way to create the conditions for a peace, lasting or otherwise. and it is important to remember that the confluence of history and identity for Serbian nationalism hinges on the experience of WW2. which is certainly not a way of justifying it, but it is a way of saying that everyone knows this, so it would not at all be paranoid to suggest that the 'intransigence of milosevic' would have been factored in to any military-political reckonings.
>The point that bears a little more development is the choice
>elaborated by Nowell, that between an expanding,
>bourgeois-democratic-capitalist EU and an under-developed
>periphery sprinkled with petty, butchering tyrants...
yes. the characterizations of the last twenty years as the moments of counter-revolution were somewhat bizarre. but there is no reason to think that these regions will not continue to be underdeveloped as part of NATO/Europe.
as for the 'more European stuff, I'll look for the Zizek article on this.
----------------------------------- ----------------------------------- on to nationalism ---
Louis wrote:
>We should remind ourselves that Lenin supported self-determination
because in the case of oppressed nationalities, it helped mobilize
people against imperialism.<
Greg wrote:
>And so he did. And so did Stalin, too, in his pre-WWI writing on the
National Question. But when those oppressed nationalities turned
themselves into the servants of French and British imperialism, to
help Witte et al against Russia, he had a change of mind.<
Brett wrote:
> I don't know as much as I'd like about all the competing political
parties of the region, but the real culprit seems to be nationalist
fervor, and all the Balkan strains appear infused with the desire to
purge the "homeland" of "impure" ethnicities. The Serbs are guilty of
it, the folks who want to see a greater Albania are guilty
of it, the Bosnian Muslims have been guilty of it, and the Croats
certainly
share in the guilt. Unless these sentiments can either be dulled or
an alternative political movement can be found, I don't have much hope
for the region.<
for Lenin, the support of national self-determination was driven not by support for the principle but for the momentary advantages of certain nationalist aspirations for something other; as is support for national self-determination by the US, Germany, etc.
which suggests that support for nationalism is more a chancy opportunism than a principle. we could oppose this cynicism by insisting that national aspirations should indeed be supported as a matter of principle. but this misses the fundamental point here: that the nation-state is unrealizable without the support of an international power; that no nationalist aspirations can ever be realised without the drawing up of boundaries in which racism, however muted or frenzied, is a key moment.
nationalism is not so pliable that it can be divested of the racism it implies. which is also why leftist support for it depending on its momentary advantages for 'proletarian unity' are imbued with an ugly paradox that will, no matter good intentions, turn around and bite us.
but perhaps more importantly, here is our one chance of proving to ourselves that our insistence that those crazy Balkans stop frothing about nationalism is matched by our insistence that our own governments open the borders, especially to the refugees. to not do so would give the lie to any claim we have to be able to denounce the nationalism of others.
angela