ON THE PUNISHING CULTURE, GLOBALIZATION, SOVEREIGNTY AND GEOPOLITICS
R.K.Kent
The collapse of the Soviet Union at the end of the 1980’s created a
moment in time when a very real friendship could have been forged
between the American. and Slavic peoples of Russia and the Ukraine.
Together with United Europe, this would have been a formidable alliance
for stability for decades to come. During the years of Cold War, there
grew in the United States a huge industry with two major components
actually threatened by the fall of an enemy that not only united them
but which provided the very reason for their continuous growth and
power.The two components are the" Military-Industrial Complex" focused
on the Pentagon and the "Intelligence Community" with the CIA at its
center. Both have outgrown even the Behemoth, commanding mega-billion
dollar budgets. Both are taking huge chunks of tax payers’ moneys,
beyond any reasonable defense needs, for rather dubious undertakings in
the name of "National Security" and "National Interest." Both are
creating ever new "enemies" abroad. Neither is willing to shed the
"Cold -War" mentality. Their "New" NATO is , on the one hand, an
oxymoron really useless in Europe, "reinvented" to perfect hi-tech
warfare in missions that give the appearance of victories while making
the situations worse, even insoluble. It also provides the frameworks
for going to war while by-passing Congress as well as assuring the U.S.
domination of Europe. There is an added bonus to the"
Military-Industrial Complex" through the transfer of U.S.-built weapons
systems to NATO’s "new members" guaranteed by loans from Uncle Sam which
will be ultimately repaid not by European but by American tax payers..
The Pentagon-CIA Galaxy is mocking a Democracy that lasted two
centuries and became the bastion of freedom against all emerging
totalitarian ideologies . Its erosion in America did not come with a
sudden military coup d’etat but with an endemic duping and manipulation
of the American People. Major decisions in foreign policy are now made
by a power elite, in secrecy. without any real care for a population
that votes and foots the bills.So far, for example, the monetary outlays
covering just the first serious U.S. enagement in Southeastern Europe
have run past $20 billion, with no end in sight and with results that
contradict most of the anticipated "benefits." Never in a period of
general peace have the White House and to a somewhat lesser extent
Congress been more willing to yield to the unelected foreign-policy
"experts" than duruing the Clinton Administration. Of the 47 U.S.
military interventions abroad since 1945 , 33 have taken place in the
last eight years. This transformation of Athens into Sparta is
parallelled by the increasing use of an Intelligence Establishment to
penetrate our own audio-visual and scribal media precisely in order to
misinform and disinform the American People in respect to the real
purposes of an action abroad.
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In the Cold War, the CIA was mandated to confine its activities to the
external world. . Specific legislatiion even excluded a similar
domestic role. This has changed in a major way, disregarding
legislation just as a monarchical President violates the Constitution by
waging a foreign war
without the consent and approval of Congress.It does not even seem to
matter any longer. The attempt to impeach President Clinton over the
Lewinsky scandal seems almost comical in comparison with the type of
Constitutional violation that could, some day, lead to World War III
What disturbs too, "We," the people, are actually paying the high
salaries of hundreds of inadequately -educated, bloody -minded and
pretentious foreign-policy "thinkers" and "shapers" who, with rare
exceptions, perceive" US" as imbeciles badly in need of their
enlightened services. . Nothing illustrates more dramatically the
results of this growing Evil than our entry into the deconstruction of
Second Yugoslavia (1945-1991} and the deliberate trasnformation of
an ally in two World Wars, the Serbs, into an "enemy," served as a
great "achievement" with a "victory at Kosovo."
First, the secrecy factor. When the decision to enter into the
ex-Yugoslav space was made, the American People were in no mood to
support this involvement in a faraway area hardly close to a vital
national interest. As late as November 1994, after more than a year of
our actual intelligence and military presence in Croatia and Bosnia, the
Pentagon vigorously denied all the mounting reports to the contrary in
the Europen Press. Here was a major foreign-policy decision, with
implications far beyond even the entire Balkan Peninsula, well hidden
from the American People. When this could no longer continue it became
necessary to endow actions of the U.S. "team" with a moralistic
mythology and promote a well-orchestrated and constantly escalating
satanization of a newly designated "enemy," the Serbs.Only, this
mythology was not directed at the "enemy." Its target has been from the
start the home audience. There was a long -term purpose in deforming
the Serbs beyond recognition. It was to pave the ground for a more
substantial military operation against Serbia somewhere down the road.
In 1993, a would-be "international" Criminal Tribunal was set up at the
Hague to deal with war crimes and crimes against humanity in
ex-Yugoslavia since 1991. To be sure, this Tribunal came out of the
U.N.and included jurists from different countries but it became in fact
a tool of our State Department’s drive to smear and punish the Serbs
collectively. . It was set up originally by Madeleine Albright who
secured the earliest funds and hand-picked the jurists neither of whom
came from any country apt to be pro-Serb In the beginning three years
of the Tribunal’s operation, all the indicted war criminals were Serbs
despite a tripartite civil war which was "re-defined" as a war between
states in order to "legitimize" the international competence of this
Tribunal. Even three more years down the road, as a few Croats and
Bosnian Muslims were indicted too none had anything to do with crimes
against the Serbs but only against one another. The Tribunal
established, in a pseudo-legalistic sense, that the Serbs are eternal
aggressors in the Yugoslav space and never the victims of anyone
else’s aggression .Although the Tribunal was hatched behind closed
doors to mask its anti-Serb purpose and although its prosecutors and
supporters enageged in every kind of casuistry to keep the mask on, its
practice pulled the mask down.A
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Tribunal’s major and specific disregard of crimes against the Serbs
cannot successfully put the mask back on. Between August 1991 and
February 1992, Croatia’s Army and para-military carried out the first
massive "ethnic cleansing" after World War II. This took place in
Western Slavonia, producing some 40,000 Serb refugees, several thousand
deaths and the systematic destruction of all Orthodox Churches. So far,
after seven years of the Tribunal , no one has been indicted .
Similarly, a major and self-admitted war criminal among the Bosnian
Muslims, thriving in the U. S. .dominated town of Tuzla, is not even on
the "secret" Tribunal list. A similar record applies to the military
leader of the KLA at Kosovo, saluted today by NATO troops. It has just
come to light that this ostensibly "dignified judicial body" has been
engaged int abeting the kidnapping by mercenaries of alleged "Serb
criminals" from the still-sovereign Yugoslavia.
Amid the claims that the U.S. team for Yugoslavia worked "hard" for
peace , its actions reveal just the opposite. The U.S. Ambassdor to
Yugoslavia scuttled an agreed-upon tripartite (Serbs,Croats,Bosnian
Muslims) peace treaty, arrived at Lisbon in February 1992, on behalf of
the European Community. In January 1993, Cyrus Vance and Lord David Owen
presented to all three parties in the conflicts an intelligent and
workable plan for a lasting peace. It listed ten constitutional
principles, it provided for a precise and detailed accord on how to
stop armed hostilities and offered a new map. It did not take long for
the Clinton Administration to kill this too. It claimed that the Plan
"rewarded Serb aggression" in Bosnia. The truth is at hundred-and
-eighty degrees from this brazen misinformation since the legitimate
Serb land-holdings in Bosnia were reduced from 63% to 4l%, hardly a
"reward’" to say nothing of the presence of an all-around and not
exclusively Serb aggression. Even Richard Holbrooke, no "Serb
apologist," recommended that the Vance-Owen Plan be approved. Instead
David Owen was ridiculed as "Lord Owensky" to tar him with a pro-Serb
and hence unacceptable bias. ..
The Clinton Cabinet simply did not want peace. It opted to prolong the
civil war and give the New NATO a violent "pedigree." Some "robust"
bombing of the Bosnian Serb targets would establish NATO’s "credibility"
and "validate" its serious nature. Still, a dramatic event to trigger a
protracted bombing mission was badly needed. As an ABC crew just
happened to be in situ to film, there took place the so-called "third
market place massacre" at Sarajevo. Within hours, NATO planes wre in the
air in a campaign that lasted about three weeks killing and maiming
about a thousand Serb .civilians. A fresh UN report exculpated the Serbs
and placed the blame for this particular carnage on the Bosnian Muslim
side.The U.S. Ambassador to the U.N., Madeleine Albright, demanded that
the report be kept secret. It remains secret to this day but its major
conclusion was leaked out by Mr. Akashi, a respected U.N. official.
The latest example of a neurotic and virtually uncontrollable desire to
violently "punish" "the Serbs in Serbia came at the Rambouillet
Conference in February and early March 1999. To Madeleine Albright
surprise, the Serbs were willing to restore autonomy to Kosovo as the
U.S.
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plan demanded. But, the Albanian KLA leader Hashim Thaci would not sign
for autnomy. He wanted independence instead. At this point Madeleine
came up with the "Appendix B" to the plan. It demanded that the Serbs
agree to an impossible condition, the occupation of all of Yugoslavia,
including Belgrade, by NATO troops. As the Serb delegation walked out,
Thaci signed the Plan and the bombing mission was cosmetically
"legalized." Madeleine would quip long after the 78 days of destruction
from the air in Serbia and Kosovo that "we raised the bar (at
Rambouillet) so that Milosevic could not jump over it; Yugoslavia needed
a little bombing." There was also another "massacre" blamed on the
Serbs, at Racak, a KLA stronghold, one that "galvanized" the
"International Community" as Madeleine put it, into punishing the
Serbs. It was a blatantly doctored, non-event, "certified" by none
other than a local U.S. envoy with long years of service in areas
replete with Latin American massacres that were quite real.
When all the dust settled, the U.S. had allied itself in ex-Yugoslavia
with the successors of WWII anti-American extreme nationalists in
Croatia, Bosnia and Kosovo while blaming its long-time, repeated
allies, the Serbs, and a single man for all the ills except bad
weather. It is absolutely clear that no massive blood-letting would have
taken place in ex-Yugoslavia without the meddling of Clinton’s team.
Similarly, the" humanitarian intervention" at Kosovo was a sham
predicated on exaggerated claims of mass executions and mass graves,
"genocide," ranging in figures from 100,000 to 10,000 dead Albanians and
no Serb victims at all from a guerrilla war carried out by the armed
branch of an international drug cartel in the name of "Liberation" As
events subsequent to the NATO occupation of Kosovo have shown, nothing
that has happened
since June 1999 should allow for continued support extended to a KLA
now in disguise. Yet, Kosovo and its Albanian ethnics have been turned
over to the drug dealers, white slavers and smugglers. Albanian mafiosi
and extortion-minded youths are rampant. Despite this, Hashim Thaci,
the KLA civilian leader, who has so far assassinated at least half a
dozen of his political opponents without pulling the trigger himself,
has attended the Democratic Convention in Los Amgeles. on kissin’ terms
with Madeleine Albright . This is perverse and obscene theater yearning
for a Bertold Brecht and his" Arturo Ui " with Thachi in disguise ,
Kurt Weil and an American version of the" Thre Penny Opera," featuring
a female Mack The Knife as the body of a Serb is oozing blood and The
Fat Lady sings like Lotte Lenya
Globalization and
Sovereignty
Why did the Clinton team really jump into ex-Yugoslavia? Why was
everything done to dismantle it? Why were the civil armed conflicts
promoted in the name of peace? Why was an open support for Human Rights
of one group used to deny Human Rights of another? Why were the Serbs
targeted from the outset as the sole aggressor, an enemy to be defetaed
even before any of the atrocities assigned to them took place? Why did
they become subhuman through an orchestrated
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international satanization, not just after May-June 1992 (start of
Bosnian war) but even three years earlier?
Floating bits and pieces of the U.S. entry into the Balkans suggest
numerous strands and imputs. There is the" German Connection. " Early in
the 1990’s a US-German cooperation for the Balkans developed to involve
the CIA and its German counterpart, the BND. It seemed that Germany’s
Industrial giants wanted to transform Yugoslavia into half a dozen
statelets that could easily be dominated as extensions of the German
economy. There is another dimension to the German "drang nach"
Yugoslavia, namely re-alliance with successors of the Third Reich’s
local allies in Croatia, Bosnia and Kosovo, and revenge against the
Serbs as contributors to the Third Reich’s ultimate defeat in WWII. But,
that was revived mainly within Croatia and through a very large Croat
diaspora in West Germany. A nagging fact has somehow fallen out of the
loop. As Yugoslavia began to disintegrate, first in Slovenia. dozens of
German firms rushed to sign commercial agreements even with Serbia.
Despite a revanchist mentality of some of West German officials, its
Industry did not need a war against Serbia to eventually dominate the
industrial part of its economy. Hundreds of thousands of skilled Serb
workers would have welcomed good paying jobs created by German capital
and management. Nor was the government of Serbia opposed to economic
modernization with Germany’s help. Over 150,000 Serbs were working in
West Germany as well.
There was also an "Ideological Connection." With active support of the
Vatican, Germany and Margaret Thatcher President Reagan wanted to
dismantle all the lingering "neo-Communist" regimes in Europe. When
Yugoslavia began to disintegrate, the Slovenes and Croats were
.certified at once as "Democrats." The Serbs remained "Communists"
despite the fact that both Presidents Kuchan of Slovenia and Tudjman of
Croatia had been active and prominent members
of the Yugoslav League of Communists for decades. In this new political
"universe." Serbia was set-up as one of the earliest candidates for
economic and political destabilization. A joint U.S.-German plan
surfaced in 1998 for cooperation between the CIA and the BND going back
to 1991-1992 to "get to the Serbs." Called by its code name "Operation
Roots," it aimed at stripping Serbia of Kosovo, Montenegro and
Vojvodina, removing Yugoslavia from the map altogether and denying its
full re-entry into the U.N.
Economic sanctions were imposed on Serbia in 1992 and have not been
removed to-date despite all kinds of evidence that they punished mainly
the children, the old, the infirm and the middle class. The sanctions
made it easier to attribute all the deficiencies of an entrenched
bureaucracy to "foreign meddling," solidifying in power the very
"undesirable" leaders whose fall was most intensely desired in
Washington. That exactly the same happened in Iraq hardly prevented the
bombings from going on to this day. That the Serbs , as a people who
never harmed America’s interests and who sided with the U.S. in two
major wars, were being punished way out of proportion to the alleged
egregious crimes of some Serbs, hardly caused insomnia to the "shapers"
of this cruel policy. The mentors, some of whom would express contrived
horror when
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a Bosnian or a Kosovo Muslim suffered from Serb thugs, could be nowhere
near a crisis of conscience as our Tomahawks and bombs killed about
3,000 Serbs, mainimg three times the number, destroyed their
infrastructure and poisoned their environment with lasting mutants and
toxins. To kick one to death while one is down reflects aberrant
individual behavior but does not come out as a recognizable American
cultural and national trait.With a million refugees now in Serbia,
"cleansed" from other parts of ex-Yugoslavia with tacit and active
support of the Clinton foreign-policy team, with eight years of
deliberately cruel sanctions imposed on Serbia, after 78 days of
destruction, this team, spearheaded by an extreme and verifiable
Serbophobe, is still seeking to punish the Serbs and destabilize them
even into a civil war. Something has decidedly changed in Washington to
produce a vindictive and twisted mentality that cannot be called
"American" at all.
Indeed, this leads directly into the factor of "Bloody-Mindedness." Its
most prominent exponent has been Madeleine Albright, the self-styled
champion of Universal Human Rights, a championship that cannot withstand
serious scrutiny. Her retort to Leslie Stahl in "60 Minutes" that the
punishment meted out to Iraq was worth the cost of 500,000 child deaths
, is only the tip of a deeper and wider phenomenon, a Punishing Culture
which emerged with Mr.Clinton in the White House. Where regional and
overseas Empires collapsed by imposing on and seeking to maintain
direct rule over recalcitrant foreign populations, the modern Clintonian
Imperial version is "global" in scope, overtly benign and informal and
hence difficult to pinpoint. It is not rooted in territorial
acquisitions and it avoids expenses associated with direct rule.Instead,
an Imperialism of "Free Trade" and super-imposed "Liberal Democracy" is
to Globalize and unite the whole world, do away with the pernicious
influence of history, put to death all forms of Nationalism(with
endless help from George Soros), bring an end to the" impediment" of
Sovereignty, transpose the limitless new" Electronic Universe" into
unlimited economic domination of mega-corporations, oligopolies and
cartels and assure that social and political engeneering will "explain"
this New World Order as a" benefit" to all.
This formula is not, however, a self-generating inducement to " join
Globalization or be left out of its benefits," as Thomas Freedman would
have it.The electronic- communication -and- information -Globalization
can be universally beneficial. Its economic counterpart can easly hurt
the many for the benefit of few . Right now about a fifth of the total
world population owns some 80 % of the global resources.An uncontolled,
rampant economic Globalization would polarize even further.It would thus
in the long run inexorably come to face certain defeat itself as
resistance movements crop-up everywhere in resurgent
and"globally-induced" Nationalisms.In effect, as one critic puts it,
Globalization "requires submission, faith, worshjp and new rites."
Globaliztion "has become a new kind of Totalitarianism ." This is not
admitted but . "Globalization" in toto must be accepted and anyone or
anything that blocks in any way the total submission to it must be
physically punished to the limits of endurance, must undergo cerebral
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terror, must be psychologically re-programmed, educated anew
("pierevaspitach" Soviet-style) without exception, pity, sorrow or
remorse.
.If one cannot logically grasp why the Serbs have ben denied any rights
at all (self-determination in Krajina and Bosnia, self-defense at
Kosovo} it is because they have been turned not only into
the sole "aggressors" in ex-Yugoslavia. Years of premeditated
satanization have mutated them internationally into present-day
"untermenchen" (subhumans) Subhumans cannot, by definition,
have Human Rights. A state deprived de facto of its Sovereignty
becomes a "zone" that can be violated with arrogance and impunity,
from the air or by exacerbating internal turmoil. If some of the more
powerful states still retain Sovereignty all the others can be declared
not to" deserve" it for a variety of reasons, including externally
decreed forms of "internal oppression" which more than "justify"
"humanitarian" interventions. . In what looks like another of Albright’s
"brilliant" ideas to finish-off the Serbs, the State Department is
establishing an office in Hungary to "run" the
opposition to Milosevic in Serbia. It does not take a doctorate in
Political Science to perceive at once that this plays right into
Milosevic’s hands and represents the kiss of death to bring even a
candidate of united Serb opposition to power in his place. It is also
likely to pave the ground for a
civil war in Serbia, possibly and even probably its real goal so that
Serbia can be occupied by NATO troops to "bring peace to the Serb
people," another " virtuous "gesture, strangling them with affection of
a boa constrictor. .
A recent attempt to hook-up "historically" periods of would-be "
dilution" in America’s Sovereignty with moments of economic
prosperity came from the pen of a high-ranking ex-member of the
Intelligence "Community," General Odom. Writing in the Wall Street
Journal, now as a Yale Professor, the General comes up short on both
Economics and History. .Economic prosperity is hardly incompatible with
Sovereignty. Moreover, without an iron-clad respect of Sovereignty,
International Law , as it has evolved since the time of its Dutch
founder Grotius, is replaced by something atavistic even in its most
modern, virtual-reality sense, namely that Might is Right. When the
"requirements" of the New World Order are added to this throw-back, the
Ends come to justify the Means employed and we have in effect a return
to Fascism with its Mussolinian and Hitlerite strands.
All of this comes with an Orwellian Language, too. . You can murder
civilians from 15,000 feet in the air. and call it "collateral
damage." You can call a one-way bombing campaign without harming the
bombers an "air war" as if it consisted of areal combat between two
equal and opposing air-forces. You can endow the shells tipped in
depleted uranium with a humanitarian purpose. You can take a mass of
refugees you have helped create in a major way and declare that they are
returning home thanks to your help without feeling uneasy about the
mutilation of logic. You can transform a communal into a "mass"grave and
advertise who is in it before any serious investigation can be carried
out. You can proclaim "genocide" where it does not exist by either
"re-defining it" or by cynically invoking the Jewish Holocaust in WWII
to "never let it happen again." You can insert Government "Psy-Ops"
into a major media outlet and put out the fairy
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tale that they are on a "training mission." You can formally claim not
to be at war as you destroy a country from the air.
There are, in fact, no constraints to disinformation and no limits to
what can be used to deceive the American People, all in the name of
"extendeing Democracy" and"promoting Human Rights." A Democracy
leap-froging abroad while being gradually lost at home. Two of the
recent blatant examples of this manipulating process came on PBS-TV, one
before the "air war" and the other after it. The one in July 1998 was an
obvious attampt to launder the Kosovo" Liberation "Army’s criminality.
In this way, the American public would not be likely to oppose a NATO
intervention slated to help the"Kosovar" "freedom fighters." Sentaor
Lieberman, now the Democratic Vice-Presidential nominee, went as far as
to claim that the KLA fought for "American Values." This was not too
long after even the State Department had branded the KLA as "terrorists
."A recent checking of PAC contributions in Congress reveals that
Senator Lieberman received $10,000 from the Albanian diaspora in the
U.S.
The other example, in two parts, sought to transform the destruction
of Serbia into a "Virtuous War" through subtle but outrageous
propaganda using the techniques which turn Dr. Goebbels into a rank
amateur. While all three endeavors were exposed and ripped to shreds
there was "no response" from the PBS-TV funded by tax payers’ money.
Yet, behind the emerging Punishing Culture and the New World Order there
is something older, something that the Nazis have discredited but
something that has come to dominate many in the foreign policy
power-elite whose members are perpetualluy fighting their own
intellectual boredom and personal inconsquence with some sort of a
"coherent world view" that makes them feel "superior," "special"and
out of reach to the incompetent "ordinary" citizens.That "something" is
"Geopolitics," term first proposed by a Swede (Rudolf Kjellen ) in 1900
but going back as an emerging "discipline" into the mid-Nineteenth
Century.
Geopolitics
Although "Geopolitics" never transcended the pseudo-scientific self
there is a an aura to it as a "discipline." No reputable American
university offers it as such but , to demystify "Geopolitcs" and come
to understand to what uses this would-be "science" can be put, a
background outline becomes essential. Its real developers are two
Germans (Karl Ritter and Friedrich Ratzel) and three Frenchmen ( Pierre
Vidal de La Bache, Jean Brunhes and Albert Demangeon). By way of an
over-simplified explanation, these developers tried to show the
inevitable relationships of geography, space and demography, resources
and political history. Nonetheless, they failed to converge as a single
school in the aftermath of the Franco-Prussian War of 1870-1871. The
French side maintained that, in the multitude of components that enter
into geopolitical thought,
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the human factor is both dominant and determining . It could be said
that the French geographers (and de La Bache was one of the greatest in
Europe) rejected the notion that the scientific, hence the ,
"rational," rules the world , through Universal Laws. They came up with
endless examples of the "humanistic," hence non-rational"modifiers"
acting as a sort of continuous trip-wire. This direction led to the
disappearence of Geopolitical intellectual endeavors in France. . The
discipline was "rescued" on the German side by a Prussian General (Karl
Haushofer) and at Oxford by a Scottish scholar (Halford Mackinder}. In
1904, he came out with the idea of "The Heartland" or the land mass of
continental Eurasia which could be threatened only by the surrounding
maritime powers in control of communications.A U.S. Admiral (Mahan}
combined Geopolitics with Strategic Thinking "perfecting" Mackinder.
>From there on, through one or more champions of naval power , the
world-subdivisions and power relationships become rather arcane,
"sliced" in a number of "equally valid" ways. . Yet, two things are
beyond dispute. Strategic concerns skewed Geopolitics in search of
world-dominance, " politicizing" its applications. They also figured in
pan-Germanism before World War I and in the Nazi ideology bwteen 1933
ans 1945. The geographico-scientific limitations of Geopolitics became
clear at the end of World War II. While intellactualy stimulating,
Geopolitical "determinism" fails to explain anything scientifically.
On the other side, yielding to whatever the politico-strategic views are
in demand at any given time, Geopolitics loses any real scientific
promise as it comes to justify national ambitions.
During the Cold War, there was a sort of Geopolitical Renaissance among
the U.S." strategic thinkers" coming up behind Admiral Mahan and his
even more influential naval-power follower , N.J.Spykman. Its
centerpiece was the idea that the U.S. naval strength could contain the
Eurasian giant, U.S.S.R. Coupled with the famous article of Mr.
"X"(George Kennan) it proved that Geopolitocal and Strategic thinking
could "win" in the long run. This sent Geopolitics into the
"strategic-thinking" overdrive. In 1978, Zbigniew Brzezunsky, the latest
American Geopolitical "guru" declared in Sweden that all of Europe was
now basically under the U.S. benevolent hegemony (he called it
"patronage"}. He added that "nothing endangering the American vital
interests" will be permitted to solidify in that region. Then he
proceeded to lay out "the law" in respect to the Balkans years before it
would be applied. The U.S. objectives in the Balkans as "Zbig" defined
them included a "New Order" (term which appears in one of the earliest
Geopolitical texts} fitting into the West; U.S. dominance in the Balkans
but in close cooperation with Germany in the "political reorganization"
of the Balkans (echoed by President Clinton recently as "deBalkanizing
the Balkans" after he did everything to re-Balkanize Yugoslavia);
special and detailed cooperation with Islamic states, especially
Turkey and Albania." Madeleine Albright was "Zbig’s" foremosr disciple
and what neither of them will admit, they both detest Orthodox Slavs,
primarily Russians (hiding it behid" opposition to Communism"} ut also
Russia’s closest "kin" in the Balkans, the Serbs.
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One might be permited to conclude that a President without any
experience in foreign policy, a "Bubba " from Arkansas, despite his
stint as a Rhodes scholar, turned over his entire foreign policy in the
Balkans to a domineering , power-driven "expert." Madeleine Albright
who subdued even the Republican Secretary of Defense, Cohen, in her
neurotic drive to" punish the Serbs," a drive that might go back to her
childhood in Belgrade but one that has been as hidden as her own
awareness of Jewish antecedents in the Korbel family.The tragedy is that
both the Polish and Czech-born high ranking officials of the U.S.
Government made the distrust and even hate of Orthodox Slavs an integral
part of the U.S. world strategy and thus prevented forever the
possibility stated at the beginning of this essay.
If, after reading this text, there is anyone left who still believes in
all the sick propaganda about "the Serbs" as "neo-Nazi butchers" of the
Fin du Siecle, who still believes in "virtuous wars," who still supports
a new American Imperialism as a "humanitarian" enterprise, there is only
one conclusion left. An American People does not exist and our Political
Leaders have grasped this. We are getting exactly the government we
deserve.
.
Raymond K. Kent, Emeritus
History Department,
University of California,
Berkeley, CA. 94720
510/642-1971
.
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R.K.Kent
The collapse of the Soviet Union at the end of the 1980’s created a
moment in time when a very real friendship could have been forged
between the American. and Slavic peoples of Russia and the Ukraine.
Together with United Europe, this would have been a formidable alliance
for stability for decades to come. During the years of Cold War, there
grew in the United States a huge industry with two major components
actually threatened by the fall of an enemy that not only united them
but which provided the very reason for their continuous growth and
power.The two components are the" Military-Industrial Complex" focused
on the Pentagon and the "Intelligence Community" with the CIA at its
center. Both have outgrown even the Behemoth, commanding mega-billion
dollar budgets. Both are taking huge chunks of tax payers’ moneys,
beyond any reasonable defense needs, for rather dubious undertakings in
the name of "National Security" and "National Interest." Both are
creating ever new "enemies" abroad. Neither is willing to shed the
"Cold -War" mentality. Their "New" NATO is , on the one hand, an
oxymoron really useless in Europe, "reinvented" to perfect hi-tech
warfare in missions that give the appearance of victories while making
the situations worse, even insoluble. It also provides the frameworks
for going to war while by-passing Congress as well as assuring the U.S.
domination of Europe. There is an added bonus to the"
Military-Industrial Complex" through the transfer of U.S.-built weapons
systems to NATO’s "new members" guaranteed by loans from Uncle Sam which
will be ultimately repaid not by European but by American tax payers..
The Pentagon-CIA Galaxy is mocking a Democracy that lasted two
centuries and became the bastion of freedom against all emerging
totalitarian ideologies . Its erosion in America did not come with a
sudden military coup d’etat but with an endemic duping and manipulation
of the American People. Major decisions in foreign policy are now made
by a power elite, in secrecy. without any real care for a population
that votes and foots the bills.So far, for example, the monetary outlays
covering just the first serious U.S. enagement in Southeastern Europe
have run past $20 billion, with no end in sight and with results that
contradict most of the anticipated "benefits." Never in a period of
general peace have the White House and to a somewhat lesser extent
Congress been more willing to yield to the unelected foreign-policy
"experts" than duruing the Clinton Administration. Of the 47 U.S.
military interventions abroad since 1945 , 33 have taken place in the
last eight years. This transformation of Athens into Sparta is
parallelled by the increasing use of an Intelligence Establishment to
penetrate our own audio-visual and scribal media precisely in order to
misinform and disinform the American People in respect to the real
purposes of an action abroad.
(2)
In the Cold War, the CIA was mandated to confine its activities to the
external world. . Specific legislatiion even excluded a similar
domestic role. This has changed in a major way, disregarding
legislation just as a monarchical President violates the Constitution by
waging a foreign war
without the consent and approval of Congress.It does not even seem to
matter any longer. The attempt to impeach President Clinton over the
Lewinsky scandal seems almost comical in comparison with the type of
Constitutional violation that could, some day, lead to World War III
What disturbs too, "We," the people, are actually paying the high
salaries of hundreds of inadequately -educated, bloody -minded and
pretentious foreign-policy "thinkers" and "shapers" who, with rare
exceptions, perceive" US" as imbeciles badly in need of their
enlightened services. . Nothing illustrates more dramatically the
results of this growing Evil than our entry into the deconstruction of
Second Yugoslavia (1945-1991} and the deliberate trasnformation of
an ally in two World Wars, the Serbs, into an "enemy," served as a
great "achievement" with a "victory at Kosovo."
First, the secrecy factor. When the decision to enter into the
ex-Yugoslav space was made, the American People were in no mood to
support this involvement in a faraway area hardly close to a vital
national interest. As late as November 1994, after more than a year of
our actual intelligence and military presence in Croatia and Bosnia, the
Pentagon vigorously denied all the mounting reports to the contrary in
the Europen Press. Here was a major foreign-policy decision, with
implications far beyond even the entire Balkan Peninsula, well hidden
from the American People. When this could no longer continue it became
necessary to endow actions of the U.S. "team" with a moralistic
mythology and promote a well-orchestrated and constantly escalating
satanization of a newly designated "enemy," the Serbs.Only, this
mythology was not directed at the "enemy." Its target has been from the
start the home audience. There was a long -term purpose in deforming
the Serbs beyond recognition. It was to pave the ground for a more
substantial military operation against Serbia somewhere down the road.
In 1993, a would-be "international" Criminal Tribunal was set up at the
Hague to deal with war crimes and crimes against humanity in
ex-Yugoslavia since 1991. To be sure, this Tribunal came out of the
U.N.and included jurists from different countries but it became in fact
a tool of our State Department’s drive to smear and punish the Serbs
collectively. . It was set up originally by Madeleine Albright who
secured the earliest funds and hand-picked the jurists neither of whom
came from any country apt to be pro-Serb In the beginning three years
of the Tribunal’s operation, all the indicted war criminals were Serbs
despite a tripartite civil war which was "re-defined" as a war between
states in order to "legitimize" the international competence of this
Tribunal. Even three more years down the road, as a few Croats and
Bosnian Muslims were indicted too none had anything to do with crimes
against the Serbs but only against one another. The Tribunal
established, in a pseudo-legalistic sense, that the Serbs are eternal
aggressors in the Yugoslav space and never the victims of anyone
else’s aggression .Although the Tribunal was hatched behind closed
doors to mask its anti-Serb purpose and although its prosecutors and
supporters enageged in every kind of casuistry to keep the mask on, its
practice pulled the mask down.A
(3)
Tribunal’s major and specific disregard of crimes against the Serbs
cannot successfully put the mask back on. Between August 1991 and
February 1992, Croatia’s Army and para-military carried out the first
massive "ethnic cleansing" after World War II. This took place in
Western Slavonia, producing some 40,000 Serb refugees, several thousand
deaths and the systematic destruction of all Orthodox Churches. So far,
after seven years of the Tribunal , no one has been indicted .
Similarly, a major and self-admitted war criminal among the Bosnian
Muslims, thriving in the U. S. .dominated town of Tuzla, is not even on
the "secret" Tribunal list. A similar record applies to the military
leader of the KLA at Kosovo, saluted today by NATO troops. It has just
come to light that this ostensibly "dignified judicial body" has been
engaged int abeting the kidnapping by mercenaries of alleged "Serb
criminals" from the still-sovereign Yugoslavia.
Amid the claims that the U.S. team for Yugoslavia worked "hard" for
peace , its actions reveal just the opposite. The U.S. Ambassdor to
Yugoslavia scuttled an agreed-upon tripartite (Serbs,Croats,Bosnian
Muslims) peace treaty, arrived at Lisbon in February 1992, on behalf of
the European Community. In January 1993, Cyrus Vance and Lord David Owen
presented to all three parties in the conflicts an intelligent and
workable plan for a lasting peace. It listed ten constitutional
principles, it provided for a precise and detailed accord on how to
stop armed hostilities and offered a new map. It did not take long for
the Clinton Administration to kill this too. It claimed that the Plan
"rewarded Serb aggression" in Bosnia. The truth is at hundred-and
-eighty degrees from this brazen misinformation since the legitimate
Serb land-holdings in Bosnia were reduced from 63% to 4l%, hardly a
"reward’" to say nothing of the presence of an all-around and not
exclusively Serb aggression. Even Richard Holbrooke, no "Serb
apologist," recommended that the Vance-Owen Plan be approved. Instead
David Owen was ridiculed as "Lord Owensky" to tar him with a pro-Serb
and hence unacceptable bias. ..
The Clinton Cabinet simply did not want peace. It opted to prolong the
civil war and give the New NATO a violent "pedigree." Some "robust"
bombing of the Bosnian Serb targets would establish NATO’s "credibility"
and "validate" its serious nature. Still, a dramatic event to trigger a
protracted bombing mission was badly needed. As an ABC crew just
happened to be in situ to film, there took place the so-called "third
market place massacre" at Sarajevo. Within hours, NATO planes wre in the
air in a campaign that lasted about three weeks killing and maiming
about a thousand Serb .civilians. A fresh UN report exculpated the Serbs
and placed the blame for this particular carnage on the Bosnian Muslim
side.The U.S. Ambassador to the U.N., Madeleine Albright, demanded that
the report be kept secret. It remains secret to this day but its major
conclusion was leaked out by Mr. Akashi, a respected U.N. official.
The latest example of a neurotic and virtually uncontrollable desire to
violently "punish" "the Serbs in Serbia came at the Rambouillet
Conference in February and early March 1999. To Madeleine Albright
surprise, the Serbs were willing to restore autonomy to Kosovo as the
U.S.
(4)
plan demanded. But, the Albanian KLA leader Hashim Thaci would not sign
for autnomy. He wanted independence instead. At this point Madeleine
came up with the "Appendix B" to the plan. It demanded that the Serbs
agree to an impossible condition, the occupation of all of Yugoslavia,
including Belgrade, by NATO troops. As the Serb delegation walked out,
Thaci signed the Plan and the bombing mission was cosmetically
"legalized." Madeleine would quip long after the 78 days of destruction
from the air in Serbia and Kosovo that "we raised the bar (at
Rambouillet) so that Milosevic could not jump over it; Yugoslavia needed
a little bombing." There was also another "massacre" blamed on the
Serbs, at Racak, a KLA stronghold, one that "galvanized" the
"International Community" as Madeleine put it, into punishing the
Serbs. It was a blatantly doctored, non-event, "certified" by none
other than a local U.S. envoy with long years of service in areas
replete with Latin American massacres that were quite real.
When all the dust settled, the U.S. had allied itself in ex-Yugoslavia
with the successors of WWII anti-American extreme nationalists in
Croatia, Bosnia and Kosovo while blaming its long-time, repeated
allies, the Serbs, and a single man for all the ills except bad
weather. It is absolutely clear that no massive blood-letting would have
taken place in ex-Yugoslavia without the meddling of Clinton’s team.
Similarly, the" humanitarian intervention" at Kosovo was a sham
predicated on exaggerated claims of mass executions and mass graves,
"genocide," ranging in figures from 100,000 to 10,000 dead Albanians and
no Serb victims at all from a guerrilla war carried out by the armed
branch of an international drug cartel in the name of "Liberation" As
events subsequent to the NATO occupation of Kosovo have shown, nothing
that has happened
since June 1999 should allow for continued support extended to a KLA
now in disguise. Yet, Kosovo and its Albanian ethnics have been turned
over to the drug dealers, white slavers and smugglers. Albanian mafiosi
and extortion-minded youths are rampant. Despite this, Hashim Thaci,
the KLA civilian leader, who has so far assassinated at least half a
dozen of his political opponents without pulling the trigger himself,
has attended the Democratic Convention in Los Amgeles. on kissin’ terms
with Madeleine Albright . This is perverse and obscene theater yearning
for a Bertold Brecht and his" Arturo Ui " with Thachi in disguise ,
Kurt Weil and an American version of the" Thre Penny Opera," featuring
a female Mack The Knife as the body of a Serb is oozing blood and The
Fat Lady sings like Lotte Lenya
Globalization and
Sovereignty
Why did the Clinton team really jump into ex-Yugoslavia? Why was
everything done to dismantle it? Why were the civil armed conflicts
promoted in the name of peace? Why was an open support for Human Rights
of one group used to deny Human Rights of another? Why were the Serbs
targeted from the outset as the sole aggressor, an enemy to be defetaed
even before any of the atrocities assigned to them took place? Why did
they become subhuman through an orchestrated
(5)
international satanization, not just after May-June 1992 (start of
Bosnian war) but even three years earlier?
Floating bits and pieces of the U.S. entry into the Balkans suggest
numerous strands and imputs. There is the" German Connection. " Early in
the 1990’s a US-German cooperation for the Balkans developed to involve
the CIA and its German counterpart, the BND. It seemed that Germany’s
Industrial giants wanted to transform Yugoslavia into half a dozen
statelets that could easily be dominated as extensions of the German
economy. There is another dimension to the German "drang nach"
Yugoslavia, namely re-alliance with successors of the Third Reich’s
local allies in Croatia, Bosnia and Kosovo, and revenge against the
Serbs as contributors to the Third Reich’s ultimate defeat in WWII. But,
that was revived mainly within Croatia and through a very large Croat
diaspora in West Germany. A nagging fact has somehow fallen out of the
loop. As Yugoslavia began to disintegrate, first in Slovenia. dozens of
German firms rushed to sign commercial agreements even with Serbia.
Despite a revanchist mentality of some of West German officials, its
Industry did not need a war against Serbia to eventually dominate the
industrial part of its economy. Hundreds of thousands of skilled Serb
workers would have welcomed good paying jobs created by German capital
and management. Nor was the government of Serbia opposed to economic
modernization with Germany’s help. Over 150,000 Serbs were working in
West Germany as well.
There was also an "Ideological Connection." With active support of the
Vatican, Germany and Margaret Thatcher President Reagan wanted to
dismantle all the lingering "neo-Communist" regimes in Europe. When
Yugoslavia began to disintegrate, the Slovenes and Croats were
.certified at once as "Democrats." The Serbs remained "Communists"
despite the fact that both Presidents Kuchan of Slovenia and Tudjman of
Croatia had been active and prominent members
of the Yugoslav League of Communists for decades. In this new political
"universe." Serbia was set-up as one of the earliest candidates for
economic and political destabilization. A joint U.S.-German plan
surfaced in 1998 for cooperation between the CIA and the BND going back
to 1991-1992 to "get to the Serbs." Called by its code name "Operation
Roots," it aimed at stripping Serbia of Kosovo, Montenegro and
Vojvodina, removing Yugoslavia from the map altogether and denying its
full re-entry into the U.N.
Economic sanctions were imposed on Serbia in 1992 and have not been
removed to-date despite all kinds of evidence that they punished mainly
the children, the old, the infirm and the middle class. The sanctions
made it easier to attribute all the deficiencies of an entrenched
bureaucracy to "foreign meddling," solidifying in power the very
"undesirable" leaders whose fall was most intensely desired in
Washington. That exactly the same happened in Iraq hardly prevented the
bombings from going on to this day. That the Serbs , as a people who
never harmed America’s interests and who sided with the U.S. in two
major wars, were being punished way out of proportion to the alleged
egregious crimes of some Serbs, hardly caused insomnia to the "shapers"
of this cruel policy. The mentors, some of whom would express contrived
horror when
(6)
a Bosnian or a Kosovo Muslim suffered from Serb thugs, could be nowhere
near a crisis of conscience as our Tomahawks and bombs killed about
3,000 Serbs, mainimg three times the number, destroyed their
infrastructure and poisoned their environment with lasting mutants and
toxins. To kick one to death while one is down reflects aberrant
individual behavior but does not come out as a recognizable American
cultural and national trait.With a million refugees now in Serbia,
"cleansed" from other parts of ex-Yugoslavia with tacit and active
support of the Clinton foreign-policy team, with eight years of
deliberately cruel sanctions imposed on Serbia, after 78 days of
destruction, this team, spearheaded by an extreme and verifiable
Serbophobe, is still seeking to punish the Serbs and destabilize them
even into a civil war. Something has decidedly changed in Washington to
produce a vindictive and twisted mentality that cannot be called
"American" at all.
Indeed, this leads directly into the factor of "Bloody-Mindedness." Its
most prominent exponent has been Madeleine Albright, the self-styled
champion of Universal Human Rights, a championship that cannot withstand
serious scrutiny. Her retort to Leslie Stahl in "60 Minutes" that the
punishment meted out to Iraq was worth the cost of 500,000 child deaths
, is only the tip of a deeper and wider phenomenon, a Punishing Culture
which emerged with Mr.Clinton in the White House. Where regional and
overseas Empires collapsed by imposing on and seeking to maintain
direct rule over recalcitrant foreign populations, the modern Clintonian
Imperial version is "global" in scope, overtly benign and informal and
hence difficult to pinpoint. It is not rooted in territorial
acquisitions and it avoids expenses associated with direct rule.Instead,
an Imperialism of "Free Trade" and super-imposed "Liberal Democracy" is
to Globalize and unite the whole world, do away with the pernicious
influence of history, put to death all forms of Nationalism(with
endless help from George Soros), bring an end to the" impediment" of
Sovereignty, transpose the limitless new" Electronic Universe" into
unlimited economic domination of mega-corporations, oligopolies and
cartels and assure that social and political engeneering will "explain"
this New World Order as a" benefit" to all.
This formula is not, however, a self-generating inducement to " join
Globalization or be left out of its benefits," as Thomas Freedman would
have it.The electronic- communication -and- information -Globalization
can be universally beneficial. Its economic counterpart can easly hurt
the many for the benefit of few . Right now about a fifth of the total
world population owns some 80 % of the global resources.An uncontolled,
rampant economic Globalization would polarize even further.It would thus
in the long run inexorably come to face certain defeat itself as
resistance movements crop-up everywhere in resurgent
and"globally-induced" Nationalisms.In effect, as one critic puts it,
Globalization "requires submission, faith, worshjp and new rites."
Globaliztion "has become a new kind of Totalitarianism ." This is not
admitted but . "Globalization" in toto must be accepted and anyone or
anything that blocks in any way the total submission to it must be
physically punished to the limits of endurance, must undergo cerebral
(7)
terror, must be psychologically re-programmed, educated anew
("pierevaspitach" Soviet-style) without exception, pity, sorrow or
remorse.
.If one cannot logically grasp why the Serbs have ben denied any rights
at all (self-determination in Krajina and Bosnia, self-defense at
Kosovo} it is because they have been turned not only into
the sole "aggressors" in ex-Yugoslavia. Years of premeditated
satanization have mutated them internationally into present-day
"untermenchen" (subhumans) Subhumans cannot, by definition,
have Human Rights. A state deprived de facto of its Sovereignty
becomes a "zone" that can be violated with arrogance and impunity,
from the air or by exacerbating internal turmoil. If some of the more
powerful states still retain Sovereignty all the others can be declared
not to" deserve" it for a variety of reasons, including externally
decreed forms of "internal oppression" which more than "justify"
"humanitarian" interventions. . In what looks like another of Albright’s
"brilliant" ideas to finish-off the Serbs, the State Department is
establishing an office in Hungary to "run" the
opposition to Milosevic in Serbia. It does not take a doctorate in
Political Science to perceive at once that this plays right into
Milosevic’s hands and represents the kiss of death to bring even a
candidate of united Serb opposition to power in his place. It is also
likely to pave the ground for a
civil war in Serbia, possibly and even probably its real goal so that
Serbia can be occupied by NATO troops to "bring peace to the Serb
people," another " virtuous "gesture, strangling them with affection of
a boa constrictor. .
A recent attempt to hook-up "historically" periods of would-be "
dilution" in America’s Sovereignty with moments of economic
prosperity came from the pen of a high-ranking ex-member of the
Intelligence "Community," General Odom. Writing in the Wall Street
Journal, now as a Yale Professor, the General comes up short on both
Economics and History. .Economic prosperity is hardly incompatible with
Sovereignty. Moreover, without an iron-clad respect of Sovereignty,
International Law , as it has evolved since the time of its Dutch
founder Grotius, is replaced by something atavistic even in its most
modern, virtual-reality sense, namely that Might is Right. When the
"requirements" of the New World Order are added to this throw-back, the
Ends come to justify the Means employed and we have in effect a return
to Fascism with its Mussolinian and Hitlerite strands.
All of this comes with an Orwellian Language, too. . You can murder
civilians from 15,000 feet in the air. and call it "collateral
damage." You can call a one-way bombing campaign without harming the
bombers an "air war" as if it consisted of areal combat between two
equal and opposing air-forces. You can endow the shells tipped in
depleted uranium with a humanitarian purpose. You can take a mass of
refugees you have helped create in a major way and declare that they are
returning home thanks to your help without feeling uneasy about the
mutilation of logic. You can transform a communal into a "mass"grave and
advertise who is in it before any serious investigation can be carried
out. You can proclaim "genocide" where it does not exist by either
"re-defining it" or by cynically invoking the Jewish Holocaust in WWII
to "never let it happen again." You can insert Government "Psy-Ops"
into a major media outlet and put out the fairy
(8)
tale that they are on a "training mission." You can formally claim not
to be at war as you destroy a country from the air.
There are, in fact, no constraints to disinformation and no limits to
what can be used to deceive the American People, all in the name of
"extendeing Democracy" and"promoting Human Rights." A Democracy
leap-froging abroad while being gradually lost at home. Two of the
recent blatant examples of this manipulating process came on PBS-TV, one
before the "air war" and the other after it. The one in July 1998 was an
obvious attampt to launder the Kosovo" Liberation "Army’s criminality.
In this way, the American public would not be likely to oppose a NATO
intervention slated to help the"Kosovar" "freedom fighters." Sentaor
Lieberman, now the Democratic Vice-Presidential nominee, went as far as
to claim that the KLA fought for "American Values." This was not too
long after even the State Department had branded the KLA as "terrorists
."A recent checking of PAC contributions in Congress reveals that
Senator Lieberman received $10,000 from the Albanian diaspora in the
U.S.
The other example, in two parts, sought to transform the destruction
of Serbia into a "Virtuous War" through subtle but outrageous
propaganda using the techniques which turn Dr. Goebbels into a rank
amateur. While all three endeavors were exposed and ripped to shreds
there was "no response" from the PBS-TV funded by tax payers’ money.
Yet, behind the emerging Punishing Culture and the New World Order there
is something older, something that the Nazis have discredited but
something that has come to dominate many in the foreign policy
power-elite whose members are perpetualluy fighting their own
intellectual boredom and personal inconsquence with some sort of a
"coherent world view" that makes them feel "superior," "special"and
out of reach to the incompetent "ordinary" citizens.That "something" is
"Geopolitics," term first proposed by a Swede (Rudolf Kjellen ) in 1900
but going back as an emerging "discipline" into the mid-Nineteenth
Century.
Geopolitics
Although "Geopolitics" never transcended the pseudo-scientific self
there is a an aura to it as a "discipline." No reputable American
university offers it as such but , to demystify "Geopolitcs" and come
to understand to what uses this would-be "science" can be put, a
background outline becomes essential. Its real developers are two
Germans (Karl Ritter and Friedrich Ratzel) and three Frenchmen ( Pierre
Vidal de La Bache, Jean Brunhes and Albert Demangeon). By way of an
over-simplified explanation, these developers tried to show the
inevitable relationships of geography, space and demography, resources
and political history. Nonetheless, they failed to converge as a single
school in the aftermath of the Franco-Prussian War of 1870-1871. The
French side maintained that, in the multitude of components that enter
into geopolitical thought,
(9)
the human factor is both dominant and determining . It could be said
that the French geographers (and de La Bache was one of the greatest in
Europe) rejected the notion that the scientific, hence the ,
"rational," rules the world , through Universal Laws. They came up with
endless examples of the "humanistic," hence non-rational"modifiers"
acting as a sort of continuous trip-wire. This direction led to the
disappearence of Geopolitical intellectual endeavors in France. . The
discipline was "rescued" on the German side by a Prussian General (Karl
Haushofer) and at Oxford by a Scottish scholar (Halford Mackinder}. In
1904, he came out with the idea of "The Heartland" or the land mass of
continental Eurasia which could be threatened only by the surrounding
maritime powers in control of communications.A U.S. Admiral (Mahan}
combined Geopolitics with Strategic Thinking "perfecting" Mackinder.
>From there on, through one or more champions of naval power , the
world-subdivisions and power relationships become rather arcane,
"sliced" in a number of "equally valid" ways. . Yet, two things are
beyond dispute. Strategic concerns skewed Geopolitics in search of
world-dominance, " politicizing" its applications. They also figured in
pan-Germanism before World War I and in the Nazi ideology bwteen 1933
ans 1945. The geographico-scientific limitations of Geopolitics became
clear at the end of World War II. While intellactualy stimulating,
Geopolitical "determinism" fails to explain anything scientifically.
On the other side, yielding to whatever the politico-strategic views are
in demand at any given time, Geopolitics loses any real scientific
promise as it comes to justify national ambitions.
During the Cold War, there was a sort of Geopolitical Renaissance among
the U.S." strategic thinkers" coming up behind Admiral Mahan and his
even more influential naval-power follower , N.J.Spykman. Its
centerpiece was the idea that the U.S. naval strength could contain the
Eurasian giant, U.S.S.R. Coupled with the famous article of Mr.
"X"(George Kennan) it proved that Geopolitocal and Strategic thinking
could "win" in the long run. This sent Geopolitics into the
"strategic-thinking" overdrive. In 1978, Zbigniew Brzezunsky, the latest
American Geopolitical "guru" declared in Sweden that all of Europe was
now basically under the U.S. benevolent hegemony (he called it
"patronage"}. He added that "nothing endangering the American vital
interests" will be permitted to solidify in that region. Then he
proceeded to lay out "the law" in respect to the Balkans years before it
would be applied. The U.S. objectives in the Balkans as "Zbig" defined
them included a "New Order" (term which appears in one of the earliest
Geopolitical texts} fitting into the West; U.S. dominance in the Balkans
but in close cooperation with Germany in the "political reorganization"
of the Balkans (echoed by President Clinton recently as "deBalkanizing
the Balkans" after he did everything to re-Balkanize Yugoslavia);
special and detailed cooperation with Islamic states, especially
Turkey and Albania." Madeleine Albright was "Zbig’s" foremosr disciple
and what neither of them will admit, they both detest Orthodox Slavs,
primarily Russians (hiding it behid" opposition to Communism"} ut also
Russia’s closest "kin" in the Balkans, the Serbs.
(10)
One might be permited to conclude that a President without any
experience in foreign policy, a "Bubba " from Arkansas, despite his
stint as a Rhodes scholar, turned over his entire foreign policy in the
Balkans to a domineering , power-driven "expert." Madeleine Albright
who subdued even the Republican Secretary of Defense, Cohen, in her
neurotic drive to" punish the Serbs," a drive that might go back to her
childhood in Belgrade but one that has been as hidden as her own
awareness of Jewish antecedents in the Korbel family.The tragedy is that
both the Polish and Czech-born high ranking officials of the U.S.
Government made the distrust and even hate of Orthodox Slavs an integral
part of the U.S. world strategy and thus prevented forever the
possibility stated at the beginning of this essay.
If, after reading this text, there is anyone left who still believes in
all the sick propaganda about "the Serbs" as "neo-Nazi butchers" of the
Fin du Siecle, who still believes in "virtuous wars," who still supports
a new American Imperialism as a "humanitarian" enterprise, there is only
one conclusion left. An American People does not exist and our Political
Leaders have grasped this. We are getting exactly the government we
deserve.
.
Raymond K. Kent, Emeritus
History Department,
University of California,
Berkeley, CA. 94720
510/642-1971
.
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