> http://www.guardian.co.uk/Archive/Article/0,4273,4136440,00.html
>A discreet deal in the pipeline
>Nato mocked those who claimed there was a plan for Caspian oil
>
>Special report: the petrol war
>
>George Monbiot
>Guardian
>
>Thursday February 15, 2001
>The line will run from the Black sea port of Burgas to the Adriatic at
>Vlore, passing through Bulgaria, Macedonia and Albania. It is likely to
>become the main route to the west for the oil and gas now being extracted in
>central Asia. It will carry 750,000 barrels a day: a throughput, at current
>prices, of some $600m a month.
George Monbiot is an excellent, creative, well-informed, progressive political activist. This article revisits a subject that was indeed discussed during the Kosovo war, including by those whom others wished to censor as cruise missile liberals.
But Monbiot is surely not quite right in his geography when he says
>The pipeline does not pass through the former Yugoslavia
I studied the map at the time, and I recall it went through Macedonia, and that part of Macedonia was carefully called The Former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia.
That is the point. Perhaps nothing is ever caused by just one thing. NATO had geopolitical reasons for the Kosovo war. One of them was upholding the ideology of civil rights over the the right of states to manage their internal affairs.
Another would of course have been strategic economic perspectives. This would not have been the sole reason.
But Monbiot's update suggests quite plausibly, that the economic reason for going to war in Kosovo was to prevent the domino effect of ethnic cleansing spilling over into the FYROM. It was a damn close thing.
Modern finance capitalism does not want too much ethnic conflict. Only enough to divide the unity of the people of the world to control their economic and natural environment.
In *this* respect it is hard to argue that Monbiot's article shows that international finance capital was less progressive than the wing of capitalism represented by Arkan and the relatives of Milosevic.
Finance capital did not trust Serb national capital. It took a democratic cause, the right of nations to self-determination, and won the war - with difficulty.
That does not mean it was progressive to fight its war with depeleted uranium, and cluster bombs, and like condescending saviours from on high (over 10,000 feet).
Chris Burford
London