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Al-Ahram Weekly 8 - 14 July 1999 Issue No. 437 
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Published in Cairo by AL-AHRAM established in 1875 |
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Al-Ahram Weekly 8 - 14 July 1999 Issue No. 437
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| Published in Cairo by AL-AHRAM established in 1875 |
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Egypt Region International Economy Opinion Culture Profile Features Focus Books Travel Sports Time Out Chronicles People Cartoons Letters IV. No plan in mind, no mind to reason
When the Soviet Union crumbled in the early '90s, it was not just the empire built up by Lenin and Stalin that disintegrated. Its thunderous collapse sent shock waves throughout nearby eastern Europe, and emitted powerful tremors that shook the distant horizon. The Soviet empire was not just one of the two superpowers following World War II. It was also one of the world's great doctrines, which had as much appeal as it had the brute force of arms.
The breakup of the Soviet Union into 15 nations posed a problem. But that was manageable, at least for the time being, because the nationalities that chose to determine their own fate freely were, for the most part, still located on their own territories. Although the state had encouraged the intermingling of nationalities in order to generate a more harmonious and homogeneous demographic distribution, what was required politically could not necessarily be applied voluntarily, particularly in a country where people have such long and deep attachments to their land.
In many multinational countries of eastern Europe, dissolution was also a problem, but there were solutions. In Czechoslovakia, for example, they conducted something akin to a painstakingly delicate surgical operation, using minute scalpel incisions to split the country into two nations. The conflicting nationalities were thus able to shed the burden imposed upon them by leaders more concerned with the balance of power in eastern Europe than with the rights of national groupings as a basis for the political unity of a state.
While such geographical-political-demographic surgery is difficult, it is possible, except in Yugoslavia's case. More than any other eastern European country, it seemed to defy a solution. The five Yugoslav national identities outlined by Tito (Slovenian, Croatian, Serbian, Macedonian and Montenegran) were not located within clearly defined areas that could form the boundaries of new nations. The exigencies of Yugoslavian history pulled, pushed and parried to jostle populations around and shove them up against one another. To separate them now would require a cleaver, not a scalpel. Certain areas, where history was somewhat more stable, managed to escape this turbulence. Slovenia, for example, which borders on Austria and the Germanic cultural basin, and which for centuries had been under Hapsburg rule, was able to evolve a distinct enough character to become an independent state -- with minimal costs.
The same cannot be said for Sarajevo, the capital of Bosnia, which now has a local joint government representing three sectarian-ethnic groups: the Bosnian Muslims, the Serbian Christian Slavs (Eastern Orthodox) and the Croatian Christian Slavs (Roman Catholic).
Nor could the same be said of Kosovo, made up of Eastern Orthodox Serbian Slavs and Albanian Muslims who had come into the area with the Ottoman armies which had made Kosovo their base for encroachments into the Slavic heartland. Thus, Kosovo was a Yugoslav territory into which a large proportion of the Christian Serbs fled or withdrew before the onslaught of Ottoman forces. The gap they left was filled by an Albanian Muslim population, not of Slavic origin like the rest of Yugoslavia, but of Turkish-Caucasian origin. As it stood in the early '90s, the crux of the problem was that these Albanians had lived in Kosovo for centuries. Should they want to claim their right to self-determination, they would have to detach themselves from the land of the southern Slavs. The land area is small, as is the population (between two and three million): were their claims to take their course, Kosovo would inevitably have to be annexed to Albania. In short, a "Greater Albanian" project would pose itself as the alternative to the "Greater Serbian" project. Anything short of that would be terrifying to contemplate.
Thus, in the early '90s, guns were the language of dialogue in the bids for self-determination in all of Yugoslavia (with the exception of Slovenia!). Until 1992, George Bush was the master of the White House and his secretary of state was his close friend from Texas, James Baker. They, along with dozens of aides and policy-makers, watched the Soviet Union as it crashed and echoed through Eastern Europe. According to all evidence, the line of thinking at the White House went as follows:
A VERY BALKAN PEACE: US troops search Kosovar refugees at the border post of Blace; K-FOR forces entering Kosovo (Photos Gamma)
TRAGEDY AND FARCE: Top, a refugee from Kosovo arrives in Albania; bottom, the scandal that rocked the White House
With the fall of the Soviet Union, the US finally had the chance to impose its authority and direct world affairs to suit itself. The only nuclear power that had been capable of challenging it had just crumbled. The only rivalry the US would encounter in the near future would come from the rising powers of Europe and Asia, and in both cases the rivalry would be economic. Germany, in the heart of Europe, was spearheading the rise of that continent. In Asia, competition was represented by Japan's rapid and steady growth at the brink of the continent and by China, which had begun to fulfil Napoleon I's prophecy. Both Germany and Japan were able to rise to such dizzying economic heights because they had enjoyed the protection of American might. In other words, for a long time neither had to pay the costs for their national defence, because the US was footing the bill. But now it was the time for the US to call in its debts. The US, however, did not want the two countries to pay back dues in the form of a large military force that would necessarily comprise a dangerous nuclear arsenal. All it expected was for them to undertake certain tasks with respect to neighbouring regions. Specifically, Europe -- with Germany at the centre -- was to assist in the regulation and control of affairs in eastern Europe (including Yugoslavia). Japan, as an island on the edge of Asia, was to make sure that China stayed in its place and did not exceed its bounds to assume a role that would grant it control over southeast Asia (which to a large extent is a basin of Chinese civilisation, open to Chinese influence).
Beneath the surface of all the diplomatic make-up, the US wanted to keep Europe busy -- and perhaps burden it -- with an exorbitantly costly, and virtually impossible to fulfil, mission on the eastern European front. Similarly, it wanted to keep Japan amused, if not embroiled in a potentially dangerous game with China.
Germany, as it transpired, was not prepared to fall in with US designs. Indeed, it had designs of its own, which involved breaking with EU unanimity and recognising the independence of Slovenia over US protests. Japan, too, as it turned out, drew up its own plans, which were to develop a policy of rapprochement with China, its first reason being the enormous potential of investment in the Chinese market. The policy of keeping western Europe preoccupied with eastern Europe and using Japan to strike at China failed to give the US a clear shot at the summit of world power, now, in the near future and, perhaps, forever.
1992 was a presidential election year in the US. As always, foreign policy was a prime focus of the electoral contest. Because the sounds of gun and missile fire and the images of bloodshed and flames in Yugoslavia made themselves palpably felt in Washington in black and white in the press and in vivid colour on television screens, Yugoslavia became an important issue in the campaign.
Clinton, aspiring to his first term at the time, took advantage of the events in Yugoslavia to demonstrate the Bush administration's inability to contain an appalling human and political tragedy. Specifically, Clinton accused Bush of lack of political imagination, insensitivity to the human tragedy and neglect of the role of American leadership at a time when it had attained international supremacy. The Bush administration, he implied, had abandoned eastern Europe, including Yugoslavia, to feeble assistance from Europe and an impotent UN.
Bush countered that Clinton had little experience in foreign policy. He had spent half his youth dodging the draft to avoid going to Vietnam and the other half aspiring to become governor of Arkansas. Those were the limits of his knowledge of the world and its major conflicts.
To be fair, Clinton was campaigning against a rival who held a great advantage. Bush was in the White House at the time of the Gulf crisis, and led the battle to liberate Kuwait in 1991. The results appeared to be a magnificent success: virtually no American blood was spilt, and others paid the material costs. In fact, for the first time in history, war yielded a net profit of billions of dollars, whether because of the surplus from war credits or, more importantly, because of the packages of arms deals concluded with the countries of the region wishing to purchase the new miracle technology that won the Gulf War at the press of a button.
Clinton, however, also based his opposition to Bush's policy in eastern Europe on considerations other than his desire to expose his rival's incompetence. Much to his credit is the fact that he instigated the task of investigating strategic alternatives to America's role in the new world. He entrusted this task to think tanks both within his campaign staff and in specialised strategic studies centres and institutes. What he told them he was looking for was "a new concept for the exercise of a grand American strategy in changing times".
Clinton won the 1992 elections and entered the White House with his new team. When he stepped into the Oval Office and took his place on the highest seat in global politics, it was only natural that the first files he opened were those prepared for him on this grand strategy, which he adopted as his administration's policy.
Contrary to the policy of his predecessor, which the new president deemed defensive, Clinton's idea was to take the offensive. In other words, in the new world it envisaged, the US did not need western Europe mired in the swamps of eastern Europe. Nor did it need Japan wandering about in the great Chinese unknown. The US needed to lead. It wanted to take command at the centre of the world. The instrument -- NATO -- was there, and America's status at its forefront was recognised.
The UN -- from the US perspective -- may be good as a backdrop to ceremony, but it is not suitable when practical measures must be taken. The UN as such could not serve as world command headquarters. Its members include every Tom, Dick and Harry in the international community. Some members take their responsibilities too earnestly and act, or at least speak, as though they really had a stake and a voice to be counted in every issue. The UN also has legal frameworks, some of which clearly give whomever wants it the opportunity to protest on the basis of some principle or another. Second, the Security Council, which represents the will of the UN, guarantees the right to veto, with the added assurance that among five nations, the positions of at least two will be difficult -- or perhaps easy -- to predict. Finally, the UN is run by a "sluggish and cumbersome" bureaucracy, incapable of responding quickly in the right direction. Yet today's circumstances and exigencies require working within an assembly that offers the opportunity for a broad consensus, the possibility of rapid action and a willingness to leave the responsibility of management up to the US on the principle of "I pay, I say".
Some people imagined that NATO's mission ended with the collapse of the Soviet Union and the end of the Cold War. That vision of NATO, to Clinton, seemed to be too narrow in scope, too limited in ambition. NATO could still thrive, even if its original purpose had come to an end. Confirming this was the fact that NATO had found itself a new mission in a rekindled crisis.
The US thus set about transforming NATO into an advanced command base from which to achieve Clinton's grand strategy. The most salient points of logic behind this policy went as follows:
To begin with, NATO was as necessary after the Cold War as it was during it. In fact, perhaps now it was more necessary because its role would be more positive. Instead of working to obstruct a real or potential major enemy, its goal would now be to ensure the safety of a world in which there was no longer a major enemy for the foreseeable future. This meant that NATO's scope would have to be expanded beyond those who had originally founded it for their self-defence. As a result, NATO opened its doors to all qualified applicants willing to take part in its new mission, and penetrated deep into eastern Europe to bring on board Poland, Hungary and the Czech Republic as a first lot, with more to follow. Perhaps because of the absence of a single major foe, NATO's geographic expansion would have to be accompanied by a commensurate diversification of its tasks. To confine itself to military tasks may have been logical at one time, but in the new era NATO needed to update its definition of "security". Among the definitions that emerged was that which held that security required an attention to regional disputes, particularly those taking place within close proximity of NATO's field of activity. As such, NATO's definition of security dispensed not only with the notion of a prime enemy but also with the very concept of "the enemy", at least in its classical definition. The enemy, if we may use that word, is no longer the side that refuses to relinquish control, advantages and influence on the pretext of vested interests. The enemy now may be the party that clings to its stance and objects to or obstructs the new definitions of security, even by claiming national sovereignty or asserting a different cultural identity.
As part of the process of redefining security, and due to the need to establish legitimacy for its strategy, NATO had to reinterpret the concept of international law in general, and the UN Charter in particular. That way it could fling open the doors to their fullest extent to accommodate both "traditional" and "advanced" security. Moreover, if the reinterpretations of international law and the UN Charter did not fully meet the bill, there was always a new law for the international community which should not be forgotten. The Universal Declaration of Human Rights, after all, mentions "values to defend", and could be invoked as part of the new definition of security.
Two areas required NATO's immediate attention because of their proximity to and, often, extensive contiguity with its borders. Indeed, in some spots, their territories jut deep into NATO's interior. These are the Balkans in eastern Europe and the Mediterranean basin, from Europe's southern shores to the Arab world and Israel. The southern and eastern reaches of the Mediterranean have been and continue to be more or less under control (with some Arab countries as good friends, others troublesome but debilitated, and with a faltering peace process that in most cases "moves" like an old train, inching forward then jerking to a stop, usually without accident). The future, however, is unknown, and every unknown implies peril. As a result, the first area to target for rapid action -- in grand strategy jargon -- was eastern Europe, the active volcano. Afterwards, NATO could turn to the Middle East -- the dormant volcano (for now).
With NATO's sights thus set on the Balkans in general, and Yugoslavia in particular, human nature once more reasserted itself. Any strategy, grand or otherwise, is implemented by policy, and the implementation of any policy is subject to an authority that has decision-making powers. That decision-making authority, in turn, has at its head a human being. Furthermore, when policy decision-making is both human and American, it has certain characteristics that are difficult to refute and should be recognised.
First, behind the formulation of American foreign policy, for reasons that are deeply rooted in the evolution of the US itself, is a mentality that refuses to recognise history. The US is a modern creation intent upon leaving the baggage of worries and ancient legacies behind when setting off to the New World. Hence the first law of American policy: The beginning starts now. Everything before now is a bunch of stories about the past, which are not worth wasting our time on. This logic cannot apply to problems that did not surface in one go, like the American continent when Christopher Columbus happened across it. It is the height of absurdity in a situation in which history is the major protagonist of a crisis and not merely its backdrop.
Second, US foreign policy, also for reasons deeply rooted in the creation of that nation, is grounded in a mentality that holds that might is law. The six-shooter which the American settler pointed at the "Red Indians" is what legitimised his confiscation of their land. As for the law of the right to self-defence, which was the only law the "Indians" had at their disposal, that constituted "holding up progress".
Third, the US president, who is in charge of setting the course of American policy, has to fight an electoral battle every four years. His fate is a pawn of the electoral climate, and not necessarily to a grand strategic vision for a "new world". The prime concern of every president is to stay president. In democratic societies, presidents only reach power, or hold on to their seats, through the ballot box. Consequently, the US president -- any US president -- is always ready to give and take, move forward or back, be tough or lenient, depending on what best serves his electoral prospects. If policy considerations seem to take a back seat for the moment, the incumbent's immediate answer is that staying in office is vital to sound policy. Of course, that policy is strong if the ballot box, and the opinion polls say the president is strong, and weak if the ballot box and opinion polls say he is weak.
These characteristics of US policy-making were all alive and active when Washington, at the head of NATO, turned its attention to Yugoslavia. The problem of what to do about what remained of Yugoslavia remained elusive because of the very palpable involvement of history. Complicating the problem was the fact that Serbia -- where Milosevic was -- had the mightiest fire-power on the ground, but others had the wherewithal to block a Serbian solution and the imposition of a situation by force of arms. And then US presidential campaign interests intervened!
For example, in his reelection campaign in 1996, Clinton was fighting against the Republicans, whose influence had grown in the 1994 congressional elections when veteran Republican Speaker Newt Gingrich led his party to a strong majority. The Republican victory, which would keep Clinton hemmed in during the following two years of office, shook his self-confidence and that of the Democrats.
Dick Morris, Clinton's campaign manager, has revealed some astounding details about his reports and advice to the president and their meetings during the attempt to devise a strategy that would overcome the shock of the staggering Republican congressional success. Morris, for example, published excerpts of reports he submitted to Clinton (later publishing the full texts in a 100-page book called Behind the Oval Office). According to one report, he told Clinton: "The Republicans succeeded in the congressional elections because they offered the voters a platform that they liked. What you have to do is to steal the Republican platform and make it your own, leaving them stranded. You are in a better position to make that platform work because you're actually in the White House."
With regard to US foreign policy in Yugoslavia specifically, Stephanopoulos, Clinton's press advisor, recalls in his book, All Too Human, how he tried to coordinate White House policy in Yugoslavia with Clinton's campaign manager. Stephanopoulos relates that Morris told him, "I don't care if the Serbs are massacring the Muslims or not. I advised him [Clinton] to hit Milosevic until his guts fall out, so he can appear to the people as a strong president."
In the autumn of 1998 and the winter of 1999, the crisis in the Balkans became more and more complicated. Clinton, however, was up to his ears in the Monica Lewinsky scandal. It was not just Clinton's image that was muddied in the eyes of the world, but the image of the United States. Apparently, Clinton had to find a way to appear strong (in the manner described above) in order to rescue his reputation and make his mark before his term ended. At the same time, it appeared that other pillars of the US administration, above all Madeleine Albright (herself originally an immigrant from Eastern Europe), wanted to find a way to restore some of the US's lost prestige. This is the point where American policy began to threaten that armed force would be used in Yugoslavia.
Weapons only came into it, however, by tripping down the stairs, not by climbing them one by one. According to all accounts, it was clear that at first, the Clinton administration imagined the threat of armed force would cause Milosevic to think twice. When they discovered that this was not the case, they thought that the best way to persuade him would be to amass the forces that had the potential to strike him at the borders, where he could see them. Still, Milosevic refused to think twice. Washington grew certain that he would think again with the first air raid on his positions. Then he would know that what he saw was not an illusion, and that the readiness to strike was not a joke. When the strikes began, however, a number of military observers and analysts said Clinton was not serious. In the first 20 days of strikes, they said, NATO aircraft only dropped a tenth of the bombs it dropped on Iraq in a single day; the missile force used in Yugoslavia was 15 per cent of that used against Iraq. Determined to demonstrate resolve and earnestness, Clinton ordered the intensification of air strikes. Neither side stopped to think that Milosevic had not yet thought twice, or that the Clinton administration had revised its calculations. The brutality of the strikes was bound to increase, because inad (that overriding, obstinate tenacity) was no longer a uniquely Yugoslavian trait; it had infected the White House. The toll accumulated, draining Yugoslavia materially and psychologically, but it also drained other NATO partners such as Germany, Italy and Greece, among others.
In this fashion, the prestige of nations and their presidents becomes bound up with the capacity to wreak death and destruction. There can be doubt about who is the first to cry uncle. In other words, there is no longer any direct relationship between the use of force and moral, legal, humanitarian and political demands for the use of force.
The Milosevic regime did, in fact, deserve to be beaten "until his guts fall out", as Clinton's closest advisor put it. But the problem was that, when Clinton decided to intervene militarily, he made his decision in the American way. It had to be a war without costs. And, although, for the Americans and their NATO allies, it was a war without (human) costs, because it was not an urgent priority it also lacked both a clear ending and a lucid objective.
The declared objective was to stop the systematic expulsion of Muslim Albanians from Kosovo. It was a goal that could be readily understood. But when he found that the operations were limited to air strikes, Milosevic took greater advantage of the situation, transforming systematic expulsion into a total genocide that emptied Kosovo of almost all its Muslim Albanian inhabitants.
The figures speak clearly. In the five years preceding the US/NATO strike against the Serbs, approximately 40,000 Albanian Muslims were expelled from Kosovo. After the attack began -- or in the course of 78 days and until now -- more than a million Muslim Albanians have vanished, through expulsion or genocide. Milosevic may have received a stinging blow in Belgrade and the vicinity, but he achieved one of his biggest aims in Kosovo.
The question that remains, in the end is: what advantages has the US gained to serve its grand strategy, whether for itself as the nation at the pinnacle of world power or along with others at the pinnacle of NATO? Its military action has evolved from intensive air strikes to an enormous bulldozer, tearing down buildings and covering ancient graves with the debris as it digs new graves. It has added to the Serbian complex -- that arrogant tenacity that makes them fight until death -- yet another fixation to heap upon the mounds that have made history a permanent enemy of their present. This problem affects the Serbian people more than it does a Serbian demagogue of the sort that, it would seem, the Balkans have ample experience in cloning. Then there is the appalling human suffering we have seen, the horrifying images of death, destruction and flight, compounded by the military intervention many times over.
In addition, the armed intervention and its consequences will most likely add to the old Yugoslav feuds new causes for vengeance that will play themselves out in an endless chain reaction as long as their minds remain charged with such a heavy and volatile load, ready to burst into flames at the slightest provocation.
It is doubtful that the million Albanian refugees from Kosovo will return unless they can be given guarantees for their safety that go beyond words and promises. Moreover, it takes a long time for guarantees of this sort to prove their credibility, especially without an international or foreign military presence that carries its own costs, as well as its own risks.
Above and beyond all this, NATO's action in the remnants of Yugoslavia has brought the Alliance uncomfortably close to its demarcation lines with the Russian Federation, an entire field of landmines buried under the ice. The map to this minefield has been lost and no one knows where to find it, but what juts out above the frozen surface is sufficient to inspire alarm. A great power is staggering in a daze. A nuclear arsenal is being left to gather dust. An enormous army has had its pride stung, and that kind of wound is the most dangerous of all, for mankind and for armies.
There are crises that cannot be easily remedied by the use of arms, and certainly not when arms are used as the result of a precipitous slide instead of a series of carefully calculated steps. However, it appears that our world is doomed to expect more experiences of this sort. There are ideas whose primary ingredients still have to be fused, purified and molded. There are rough sketches on the drawing boards whose lines and angles have yet to be given proper definition. There are multicoloured acids bubbling away in laboratory vials and test tubes, still biding their time. The tragedy is that, in the meantime, some regions are designated as testing grounds.
The tragedy in the Balkans demands our attention, especially when those concerned recall that the new grand strategy in its NATO framework has singled out two areas: the Balkans to the east and the Mediterranean basin to the south. The Balkans, because of events in Yugoslavia, imposed themselves first on the agenda of the new strategy. However, the Mediterranean and the Arab world can reach far, across their immediate borders to a broad swathe of neighbouring countries, and across the seas, from the Mediterranean to the Red Sea, the Black Sea and even the Indian Ocean. In fact, the Black Sea is the juncture between two vast open expanses targeted by the NATO mission: the Balkans and our part of the world.
Published by special arrangement with Al-Kutub: Weghat Nazar, issued by Dar Al-Shorouk Publishing House.
Translated by Peter Daniel
Edited by Pascale Ghazaleh
