>In message <v0401170bb37082318001@[166.84.250.86]>, Doug Henwood
><dhenwood at panix.com> writes
>>[An otherwise unremarkable statement by the Yugoslav Sociological Assn
>>forwarded to the Marxist Literary Group list quoted a Washington Post op-ed
>>by Robert Kaplan, theorist of humanitarian imperialism, that said we needed
>>the Balkans to gain access to Caspian Oil.
>
>The view that the war over Kosovo is being fought out of some narrow
>pecuniary interest strikes me as small-minded in the extreme. (I never
>believed that the Iraq war was fought over oil, for that matter.)
>
>Why is it that the left feels the need to reduce itself to some kind of
>right-wing caricature of narrow economic determinism when talking about
>war? Politics operates at a level that is at many mediations from
>economics, and war even more so.
James, this wasn't "the left" speaking, it was a prominent liberal imperialist pundit who has the ear of the president of the U.S. Besides, the Caspian angle doesn't preclude all the other explanations of the glorious war.
What's your theory of the Gulf War, anyway?
Doug