Interesting bourgeois analysis useful for appraisal of the balance of power after Kosovo. Weak of course on any politics of opposition to fascism. So it mirrors the defeatism and cynicism of the imperialist left.
BTW I note Michael Hoover's posting of German documents stating that it was not possible to prove genocide prior to the start of the NATO attack. I would ask what about the evidence of Operation Horseshoe? More important, what of the evidence of the politics of the Serb fascism, as demonstrated already in Bosnia?
But in terms of analysis of the balance of forces the Stratfor article is useful and intelligent.
In one sense all the bourgeois forces have failed. Russia has failed to be able to do anything, dependent as it is on western capital and an global economic system that it cannot defy, apart from being invited in as a broker. It is being flattered because it suits NATO to flatter it. (This is perhaps the weakest part of the article's analysis).
The Serbian Socialist Party and its more explicit Serb nationalist allies have failed. It has got a radically depopulated province, but Serb deportees from Krajina are even less likely to want to migrate to that environment, dodging the mines and walking round the shattered buildings than Albanians are slightly more likely to want to return. A weekend trip to the countryside will inevitably have to go through one shattered village after another, unless they can all be bulldozed quickly. And children will have to be told they must not pick flowers on the roadside in case they tread on a mine.
The emergent national capital around the Serbian Socialist Party will find its economic outlets severely restricted. No doubt Milosevic could win the Serb presidency, as he is not eligible for re-election to the Yugoslav presidency anyway. No doubt there will be a consolidation around him for a few years. But economic will assert themselves and the long term trend towards a modern civil society in Yugloslavia will resume.
Investigators will comb over Kosovo, as they have in Bosnia, gathering information for war crimes trials. The story of the massacres, which leftists consider their ethical duty to ignore while their own ruling class is at war, will be fleshed out, and will provide material for a new holocaust industry, whose ideological impact is to sing the praises of world human rights under the aegis of monopoly capitalism.
It takes time, as it did with Pinochet, but if national sovereignty can be ignored on principle when war crimes are at stake, does anyone seriously imagine that a dossier will not be prepared against Milosevic? Where will he go for his medical treatment in old age?
I think the Stratfor analysis is at its most perceptive in highlighting the latent disillusionment between the US and Europe. I have already copied here analysis of the long term plan for the European Union to get closer to NATO, and thereby prepare the ground for its own military wing. These observations are in any case commonplace now in intelligent commentaries.
What the Stratfor article does not analyse is the economics which is the basis of the politics of which the war is a continuation. This war will demand the closer economic integration of Europe. It will propel it. It will provide the mythology for it.
There *will* be a Marshall plan for the Balkans. (Ha! Ha!)
Serbia will be locked into reconstruction aid on condition that that is a plan for the reconstruction of Kosovo too, with respect for the human rights of all Kosovans, whether they had their documents removed at the frontier or not. That is the minimum that the pacifist imperialist politics of Lafontaine and Fischer will insist upon.
However pathetic Blair looks to Americans, he is managing public opinion well enough in Britain. He can extract enough news stories out of this war to multiply the "One and a Half cheers". He will be able to call a general election a year early before the Conservatives have been able to consolidate a new leader after dumping Hague. Soon after re-election he will call a referendum on joining the Euro. That referendum will be heavily backed by the large monopoly capitalist companies by comparison to the small capital opposing entry. It will have the story line of building a Europe fit for the 21st century. And it will be successful.
The Stratfor analysis is broadly right. The world will have revolved a few more thousand times. The USA will remain pre-eminent, but its power will be constrained by a number of other regional groupings, who all have an interest in controlling international finance capital more closely than the USA does.
BTW Birthday Greetings.
Chris Burford
London