1) The Death of the Danube Theory:
Greg Nowell recently suggested that the explanation for the NATO actions in Yugoslavia were explained by anger over Serbian machinations to slow trade along the Danube with references specifically to German and Dutch interests. This does not wash. Why not?
Austria.
Austria is the only EU or NATO member actively opposing the NATO actions. But it has a much greater interest in the Danube traffic than does any other such country with the possible exception of brand-new NATO member, Hungary. Certainly its economic interest far exceeds that of either Germany or the Netherlands. For that matter, I don't think the canal link between the North and Black Seas links the Danube and Rhine (flowing by Rotterdam) but the Danube and the Elbe (flowing by Hamburg) with the canal near Regensburg, if I am not mistaken. So much for the Dutch interest.
I would grant that Germany in particular is interested in a "pacified" Central and Eastern Europe. Thus, the arguments about German machinations and interests in all of this do have some ring of credibility. It is striking that even the Greens in Germany seem to be supporting the NATO actions.
2) Yoshie has charged that the Helsinki Commission is just a front for a bunch of Austrian/Norwegian/Finnish anti-Serbs. Wow! If they are all so anti-Serb, why is Austria opposing the NATO actions?
3) Where in Kosovo and Metohija is the Metohija part and who lives there (or lived there)? I know that Herzegovina (Hercegovina) is in the southwestern part of Bosnia and Herzegovina and is mostly full of Croats these days with a few Bosniaks as well (Mostar is there).
4) The Washington Post reports that there were disagreements among the NATO leaders about escalating the bombing to Belgrade. Unfortunately, about on a par with its opaque reporting on the vote in the US Senate, it failed to say who was questioning the escalation, although a careful reading between the lines suggests that the US and UK were for it. Hmm.
5) Talk of NATO ground troops in Kosovo is simply farcical. The WP reports that they could not make a credible entry without at least a month's buildup. For better or (mostly) worse, this business is going to be well over long before then. The Serbs will have on the ground what the want (with the Albanians gone one way or another) and will not be budged.
6) Arguments about oil reserves and NATO bases in Kosovo as motives are even less credible than Greg's Danube theory. The metals theory has more to it, although it seems to be mostly Milosevic who is worked up about that one.
7) Cutting to the unpleasant chase, the real question is can a manageable partition of Kosovo be managed? Talk is all over that that is where we are headed, perhaps in conjunction with a general negotiation that fully partitions all of former Yugoslavia: Srpska Republika to the Serbs, Herzegovina to the Croatians, the rump Bosnia to itself, and Kosovo split between Serbia and itself, the latter perhaps eventually going to Albania. Maybe.
But a careful examination of a map does not indicate any obvious or clear boundary. Some claim that Serbia would take a northern strip (including the mines) and a western chunck (including Pec, the center of Serbian Orthodoxy). But news reports suggest that Albanians are being systematically expelled from "blobs" of territory (future enclaves?) including around Pec (now reportedly totally ruined) in the west, the mines in the north, and the ancient Serb capital of Prizren in the south. Serb Orthodox monasteries are more in the south than in the north and religious and historical sites seem to be scattered all over. There does not seem to be some nice neat obvious line to draw as there was, more or less, in Bosnia and Herzegovina (except for Brcko and Mostar). Ugh.
In the meantime things just seem to be getting worse. I guess whoever (Max S.?) forecast that this will lead to the US electing "the people who know how to do imperialism right" may prove to be correct. What a disaster all the way around, sigh.... Barkley Rosser