Many progressive people, particularly in the USA, opposed their government's war over Kosovo. It was animperialist war in its character and conduct. We can now see that it was largely an economic war, aimed for example at the Danube bridges rather than at the oppressive Serbian forces actually within Kosovo. As an economic war, the last chapter is being played out with the ransom of Milosevic to go to the Hague.
But the item below gives some evidence that there were two wings within the imperialist bourgeoisie: one wing that wanted to oppose the Serbian Party of Socialism because it was socialist, the other that was prepared to appease and do deals with it for massive profits, even if its record on democratic rights was questionable.
The appeasement wing of the British imperialist bourgeoisie was well represented in the British Foreign Office, which adopted a tone of civilised cynicism throughout the atrocities in Bosnia, repeatedly feigning helplessness. Their lack of helplessness about business deals is now revealing.
Of course none of this is in a sense new. The same the same wing of the bourgeoisis won ascendancy, in relation to Putin's appalling war against the Chechens, but there the regime at least stopped short of expelling most of the population, unlike in Kosovo.
Of course left-wingers, who come from a Trotskyist background, had difficulty in understanding the concept from the mid 1930's of an international united front against fascism, which might on some occasions include, and should include, imperialists who were progressive on this issue. They and many other sincere progressive people argued for the defeat of their own bourgeoisie as the Nato planes bombed from 30 thousand feet (if I remember the altitude correctly).
Some suggested that for all the elements of corruption in Milosevic's version of post-socialist family entrepreneur economy and its brutal suppression of bourgeois democratic rights, it was aprogressive socialist bastion against the eastward march of imperialism. Some truth in that, but the news item below shows that it was more a question of controlling the interprenetration. Besides the former Yugoslavia geopgraphically would have had little chance of resisting in a way that is just arguably not lost for Russia or some of the other states of the former Soviet Union.
Meanwhile the former editor of Living Marxism, renamed LM before its demise, (a journal originally founded by a group coming from the Trotskyist tradition) Mick Hulme now concedes that Milosevic "may" (or may not) be guilty of crimes against humanity. Interesting since LM vigorously campaigned at the time of the atrocities in Bosnia to argue that they were fake. Or if they were not, it was six of one and half a dozen of another. Rather like the elegant cynicism of people like Lord Hurd.
At 02/07/01 18:45 -0400, you wrote:
>Telegraph (London) - 1 July 2001
>
>Milosevic: I'll name British leaders who helped me
>Lawyers for the deposed Serbian president will name three former Foreign
>Secretaries, Lord Hurd, Lord Carrington and Lord Owen, in a strategy
>designed to implicate British and American diplomatic figures in the
>bloody break-up of Yugoslavia.
>
>They will claim that he was given a "green light" for many of his most
>controversial actions, including the use of force, by Western governments.
>Branimir Gugl, one of Milosevic's lawyers, told The Telegraph yesterday:
>"Mr Milosevic feels that Nato are the real criminals and that will be part
>of his defence."
>
>Milosevic will argue that the British peers, along with Foreign Office
>diplomats, were involved in negotiating peace deals that were designed to
>maintain him in power despite his record.
>
>Lord Hurd's later role as a director of National Westminster Bank in
>striking a lucrative deal with Milosevic to refinance the Serbian economy
>is likely to be highlighted during the trial.
>Lord Hurd, who aroused controversy by opposing American plans to lift the
>arms embargo on Bosnia's Muslims, later became the deputy chairman of
>NatWest Markets and brokered a deal to privatise Serbia's telecoms
>service. At a secret business breakfast with Milosevic, he was accompanied
>by Dame Pauline Neville-Jones, formerly Britain's most senior woman
>diplomat, who had also joined the bank.
>
>The French are believed to have maintained communications with the Serbs
>during the Nato bombing campaign which was beset by leaks of targets.
>Serbs claimed that Gen Bernard Janvier, a French former UN commander,
>secretly promised to veto air strikes in 1995 provided that they released
>300 UN hostages. A month later, the Bosnian Serb army attacked Srebrenica,
>killing 7,000 Muslims in Europe's biggest war crime in 50 years.
>
>Milosevic's lawyers plan to call former peace envoys to give evidence.
>These include Lord Carrington, the chief negotiator for the European Union
>in 1991-92, Lord Owen, who co-brokered the 1993 Vance-Owen peace deal, and
>Richard Holbrooke, the American who brokered the Dayton accord on Bosnia.
Chris Burford
London