Martial law? No thanks
In Britain in the 1970s, leading figures in the British establishment prepared plans to institute martial law, while the army did take control of the six counties of northern Ireland. This week Conservative leader William Hague demanded that the military be given full operational control of the foot and mouth crisis, only to be snubbed by Brigadier Alex Birtwistle, who said 'I don't want to lead this operation' and added that the army were very happy to be working under the Ministry of Agriculture Farms and Fisheries.
There is a world of difference between the two eras. In the 1970s, as the Financial Times reported, the country was in the grip of a 'crisis of rising expectations', with the powers-that-be struggling to contain the militant demands of trade unionists, women, Irish nationalists and immigrant communities. Imagining themselves besieged, the elite wanted the army to step in. In the intervening period, expectations have been diminished by Tory austerity measures and Labour's new realism.
Today, the challenge is not social combativity, but the lowered expectations and elevated fears of an atomised society. As liberal commentator Polly Toynbee noted recently Britain is prone to an exaggerated sense of crisis, making problems like petrol prices or foot and mouth into national emergencies ('Whimpering nation', Guardian, April 6, 2001). It is this climate of anxiety that creates the demand for a kind of Caesarism - the longing for a strong leader to sweep aside all the doubts and take the problem head on.
The Prime Minister's decision to postpone the planned General Election makes Britain sound like a banana republic, cancelling elections because of a 'national emergency'. Tony Blair bent to the leader of the opposition's demand to have the military deal with the foot and mouth crisis. The difference is that the Generals are astute enough to know that they could not possibly meet the aspiration to a quick fix to foot and mouth, so wisely let the politicians carry the can.
Who needs Slobodan Milosevic?
After arrest on corruption charges, former Yugoslav President Slobodan Milosevic was the subject of an extradition order laid by the Hague war crimes tribunal over atrocities committed in the Balkan wars of the nineties. Western leaders need Milosevic as the hate figure that justifies their bizarre military intervention in the ethnic conflicts that fragmented Yugoslavia. Some conflict between Croats, Serbs and Muslims was inevitable when Tito's creaky republic collapsed. But it was the struggle between Europe and America for world leadership after the Cold War that led to a destructive contest to find champions to support and villains to attack in the Balkans. Arbitrarily, Germany named first Slovenia and then Croatia as the oppressed victims of wicked Belgrade. Then the US one-upped them by sponsoring the Muslim minority in Bosnia as freedom fighters liberating their country. The reality was that all the ethnic leaders were steeped in authoritarianism and militarism. But for the West's purposes Serb leader Milosevic had to be made the exclusive personification of evil.
A decade later and the success of the West's campaign can be easily measured. A disagreement was whipped up into a bloody civil war with thousands killed. Bosnia and Kosovo have not been freed, but placed under military occupation by the UN and Nato, and ethnic divisions have become entrenched and even institutionalised. Those whom the West sponsored have been betrayed, as the Croat military leaders armed by Germany and now charged with war crimes, or the KLF fighters disarmed and shelled in Macedonia. Even if they do not understand why, everyone understands that Western policy in the former Yugoslavia was a disaster. The only way to retain a shred of respectability for the strategy is to further demonise former President Milosevic in the Hague.
The West always exaggerated Milosevic's influence, the better to make him the scapegoat for their own policies. As long as the military tension was high, it was difficult for Serbs to put him out of office. But now that he is, the West still needs to exaggerate his influence, to cover up their own sordid dealings in the Balkans.
-- James Heartfield