U.S. Attempts "Social Work with B-52s" in the Former Yugoslavia
With massive publicity, six B-52 bombers each able to carry 20
air launched cruise missiles, left Barksdale Air Force Base in
Louisiana for the United Kingdom, in preparation for possible air
strikes against Serbia. Meanwhile, talks between U.S.
representative Richard Holbrooke and Serbian officials ended with
the Serbs hailing a breakthrough over the Kosovo question and
Holbrooke denying that any breakthrough took place. If we are to
believe U.S. government officials, it would appear that the five-
year long U.S. involvement in the former Yugoslavia is about to
escalate, with the United States launching a massive air campaign
against Serbia. This is not "wagging the dog." This dog has
been wagged since long before Monica Lewinsky took a job as First
Mistress.
The current crisis is clear enough. Kosovo is an ethnically
Albanian region of Serbia. It wants to secede and join Albania
or have more autonomy within Serbia, depending on who you talk to
and on what day the discussion is held. The Serbs are solving
the problem by slaughtering Albanians. The United States wants
them to stop doing that, and says that it will bomb Serbia if
they don't. Two questions come to mind. First, why don't the
Serbs just let them go? Second, why does the United States care
one way or another?
Let's forget this latest crisis and begin by trying to understand
why the region behaves the way it does. Actually, in order to
understand the Yugoslavs we really need to understand the eastern
Mediterranean as a whole. Look at a map of the Eastern
Hemisphere. It consists of three continents. Africa, Asia and
Europe all converge on the eastern shore of the Mediterranean.
At the center of this intercontinental pivot is the Levant, the
true eastern coast of the Mediterranean, including Israel,
Lebanon and western Syria. Any continental empire wanting to be
secure from powers in the other two continents must hold the
Levantine coast. But that isn't enough. An Asian power, say
Turkey or Persia, can approach Europe through this northern
route, through Turkey then Greece and possibly north into the
Balkans. Of course, to secure this route, an Asia power needs to
cover its flank by seizing the Levant. On the other side,
European powers like Rome must move through the Balkans and
Greece and take the Levant, if they hope control the
Mediterranean and block Asian offensives into Europe.
Think about what it is like living in this region. England has
been invaded twice in two thousand years. Russia, twice in two
centuries. The United States was invaded once since its
founding. The Mediterranean arc constantly has armies passing
through. In this century alone, Yugoslavia has had Turkish,
British, German, Italian and now American troops on its soil
(leaving out minor passing incursions of no note). Each invader
has come for its own reasons, but all had one thing in common.
None really wanted to be there. They were there because they
were building, holding, or destroying empires. The strategic
character of the region forced them to seize it. Except for the
territory's strategic importance, no one cared in the least what
happened to it.
No one wanted to devote a lot of resources to holding it either.
They stationed the minimum number of troops possible. The
general strategy for holding the region, ever since Roman times,
has been for an invader to ally itself with a local clan, tribe
or nationality, arm them, train them, and use them to hold the
region. Frequently, the local group adopted some of the culture
of their allies. If you look around the Balkans, you will see
Roman Catholic, Eastern Orthodox, and Moslem national entities,
not just scattered ethnic groups. These are the remnants of
empires that no one outside the region remembers, of wars
everyone else has forgotten, of extraordinary atrocities that
can't even be named. But everyone in the region remembers each
conqueror, each war and each atrocity as if it happened
yesterday. For them, history is a single fabric of
interconnected events that still define their relations with each
other. Nations invaded once every two centuries have trouble
thinking this way.
What keeps the bitterness alive is a peculiarity of geopolitics.
The conquerors, in order to maximize their ally's strength and
minimize the resources they needed to devote to holding the
region, increased the sense of communal solidarity, known today
as nationalism, and created political and military instruments
necessary for the politico-military mission. But the fact was
that, economically, each of these small nations was tightly
integrated with the others. In order to benefit from economic
integration but not become subordinated by neighbors, the best
solution was to dominate them. Economic interdependence
increased, rather than decreased, both the sense of vulnerability
and the level of antagonism, and both were exploited by outside
powers. Outsiders cannot grasp the extent to which this
claustrophobic entanglement with mortal enemies makes paranoia a
healthy adjustment to an insane condition. It is not just
Yugoslavia. This process applies throughout the eastern
Mediterranean.
The only peace the region has known has been when it has been
occupied by a foreign power, or when one of the local powers
gained ascendance. The most peaceful period in Yugoslavia
probably came after World War II under the Communist regime of
Josef Tito. Three factors made the peace possible. First, Tito
created a political order that appeared to share power among the
republics, while keeping real power in his own hands. Second,
the Army Tito created and dominated (derived from Serbian
partisans) guaranteed the internal order while being strong
enough to keep the Soviets out. Third, the Cold War created a
sort of neutral zone that froze everything in place in
Yugoslavia. Once the Cold War ended, the force field dissolved
and Yugoslavia went to pieces.
Bitter resentment at Serbian domination of Yugoslavia swelled up
and the natural course of events took place. Everyone sought to
get away from the other and no one could. A brutal civil war
took place in which two hundred years of atrocities were
remembered and accounts rendered. Each nation sought an outside
patron. The question on everyone's mind: who would the new
imperial power, the United States, anoint as its surrogate in
Yugoslavia?
The United States had a very different vision of the world in
mind. In its view, politics and war had been suspended.
Everyone agreed with everyone else. Even the Russians were now
the friends of the United States. The questions of empire, such
as who would control the Levant or who would control the Balkans,
were meaningless. Since the United States was the only imperial
power, and since the United States chose not to engage in
imperialism, it simply followed that the question of geopolitical
control simply had no meaning. The Balkans would belong to the
people in the region.
This was a fine sentiment, but it had absolutely nothing to do
with the world-view in the region. A terrible war broke out.
>From the desperate logic of the region, this was the only
possible course. Moreover, each nation sought to position itself
to be anointed by the United States. The United States simply
wanted everyone to stop being nasty. There was, the Clinton
administration believed, nothing to fight over. When the
administration finally grasped not only that the Balkans would
fight, but that the fight would be horrific, it responded by
trying to create a multinational force to stop the fighting.
>From the standpoint of the United States, this was the world
community responding to a minor regional crisis. From the
standpoint of the Balkans, this was simply the normal course of a
great imperial power using subordinate troops (British, German,
Russian) to impose its will. The only question: who would be the
anointed in the Balkans.
Now, the United States didn't plan on anointing anyone. It just
wanted to stop the fighting and get on with increasing
international trade. It intervened on the side of Bosnia because
Bosnia had been the victim of horrible, brutal acts. From the
Serb point of view, all they had done is to finally get even for
the horrible brutal things that Bosnians or Croats had done to
them. Moreover, they were merely clearing them out from areas
they had moved into through force of arms decades or centuries
before. The Serbs saw this as mere retribution and
rectification. But the Serbs did understand one thing: for
whatever reason, not altogether clear to them, the Bosnians were
the anointed of the United States.
Regional protocol would have required that, the selection having
been made, the heavy arming of the Bosnians begin, to be followed
by the launching of an attack on Serbia proper in order to impose
an American-sponsored Bosnian or Bosnian-Croatian dictatorship on
the Serbs. The United States had nothing like that in mind, so
it could not simply get the problem over with. Of course, when
the Kosovo province of Serbia became restless, the United States
did demand that the Serbs not take any meaningful action against
them. Since this would have meant secession of part of Serbia,
the Serbs saw this as the next logical step in America's anti-
Serbian strategy. They therefore cracked down brutally, hoping
to liquidate the insurrection before American action. U.S.
threats of air attacks simply convinced the Serbs that time was
running out. They increased the tempo of their operations. In
other words, the United States achieved the exact opposite of
what it wanted. Rather than dissuade Serbia from brutalizing
Kosovo, they made it a matter of urgency.
The United States is now threatening air attacks. This is
exactly what Serbia has been expecting. It knows that the United
States has designs on the Balkans. It knows that the United
States cannot tolerate a free Serbia. It knows that Bosnia is
America's tool to destroy Serbia and that Kosovo is the next step
in its destruction. The Serbs will seem to agree, buy time, lie.
They will not back down. They fought the Germans to a standstill
and bitterly resisted the Turks. The Americans don't frighten
them nearly as much as a region dominated by Bosnia and Croatia
frightens them.
We get the feeling that the Clinton administration simply does
not grasp the geopolitics of the region. More to the point, they
seem to believe that geopolitics was abolished with the Soviet
Union. This makes this crisis doubly troubling. The problem is
that the United States simply cannot define what it wants. More
precisely, what it wants, a cessation of hostility in the region,
is precisely what is not possible. The administration has
labeled Serbia the villain. It certainly is that. But everyone
in this region will be a villain, given half a chance. In the
Eastern Mediterranean, one is either a victimizer or a victim.
There are no other options.
The only reason for the United States to be in the region is if
it intends to use the Balkans as a base to resist resurgent
Russian power. Even then it is probably a bad idea, but at the
very least it is a sane explanation for being in the region. At
the very least, it is an explanation that the region can
understand. The current explanation, that the United States has
inserted massive forces into the area for purely humanitarian
reasons, is neither sane nor understandable in the region. The
Serbs fought the Waffen SS to a draw. They can be beaten, but it
will take a lot more than a few hundred cruise missiles to make
them fold their cards. They think that their very existence is
at stake.
The United States is acting as an imperial power without having
an imperial appetite. This is the worst of all possible worlds.
On the one side, it throws its weight around globally. On the
other side, since it has no appetite for empire, it is neither
predictable nor persistent. It shows up in various places for no
apparent reason, gets tired and goes home. Without appetite for
empire, the United States is treating imperialism as a hobby.
This is dangerous. Appetites focus the mind and make people
thoughtful and cautious, which at this point in its history, the
United States simply isn't. If the United States wants to build
an empire, then call it that and do it. If it doesn't want to
build an empire, then it should stay home and let others go about
their business. But social work with B-52s is not going to solve
the problem or do much more than confuse everyone as to what the
United States really wants.
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