This week on Prospect online, historian Marko Attila Hoare argues that Russia’s intervention in Georgia and its recognition of Abkhazia’s and South Ossetia’s “independence” are not equivalent to western action over Kosovo or Iraq. Instead, Moscow’s behaviour is that of an imperial power brutally attempting to preserve and expand its sphere of control—and it must be opposed.
Also this week, Salil Tripathi explains why India is condemning its farmers to misery and impoverishing its own citizens by refusing to move on from its outdated approach to agriculture.
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S. Tripathi’s article is on a part with those written during the Irish Famine on why it was good for the economy to export grain whilst people were starving. India has several hundred million people living in subsistence conditions who are not magically going to find themselves with adequate wages in the urban/industrial sector. They need assistance in maintaining themselves in their present condition–the alternative is starvation or sleeping in the streets of Mumbai as millions of Biharis end up doing. They should not be made the victim of dogmatic market economics and its crude view of ‘efficiency.’ The current Government’s response is the bare minimum that can be done; some of the State governments has been more helpful, especially in Andra Pradesh. If there is a long-term argument about ‘consolidating’ the agricultural sector, it should be undertaken with financial support, including housing and relocation assistance at public expense, paid for by higher taxes on those who have done so well out of the last decade or so.
“in making it clear to Moscow that we shall respond militarily to any further acts of aggression against Georgia or any other east or southeast European state—we would not be behaving foolhardily, but playing it safe. The dangers of appeasement are far greater.”
Very dangerous opinion of You…. “militarlitly” ?? this is not A Hilter.. And Russia is owing nuclear Arms able to destroy the World 42 times.
Further.. Kosovo was part as aut. Region of Socialist Republic of Serbia the same like Wovodina… South Ossetia was aut. region of the Socialist Republic of Georgia…
Serbia was part of the YSSR and Georgia of Ussr.. so what is the difrience?
Russia intervened in Georgia after 17 years of them fighting for the status, ie 1991 to 2008; Serbia was never in war with Slovenia, Croatia or Bosnia. If they were, there would be no Slovenia, Croatia or Bosnia. Rebel Serbs in those states fought for independence, and Serbia’s army was never involved. Serbia has about a 2.5 million people trained for army, more soldiers than those other states have people.
Kosovo and S. Osetia are the same, if you use NATO’s logic. Serbs commit “genocide”, NATO intervenes, Kosovars get independence. Georgians commit “genocide”, Russia intervenes, S. Osetians get independence. This is only a start. We will see this in many more countries.
Hoare sounds like a Bush/Cheney stooge. How about US “imperial power brutally attempting to preserve and expand its sphere of control”? The US has close to 800 military bases all over the world and continues to sell arms to unsavoury governments with oil, just because they happen to be pro-US and anti-Russian.
There isn’t a western country in the world that wouldn’t have done what Russia did under the same circumstances. Bush’s arrogance has forced Russia’s hand, by constantly provoking Russia and dismissing Russia’s legitimate objections to US military installations on its borders. Most of the bombs used by Georgia against South Ossetia were American made and paid for. Why on earth does the west blindly follow the US example, when time and time again since WWII (which was the last time the US genuinely, albeit reluctantly, acted out of selflessness), the US has demonstrated unacceptable, devastating foreign aggression, based on pure egotism and profit. I do not support this one-sided propaganda!
The reason that the US keeps calling Kosovo “unique” is because it fits their agenda.
They wanted to promote their agenda of appeasing the Arab community by giving them ANOTHER Territory in Europe (from which they can assault us). In doing so, they split away 15% of a sovergn country and charter member of the UN without SC approval. UNSC 1244 repsects the territorial integrity of Serbia, as does the Helsinki Charter.
Ethnicity does not give the right for self-determination, otherwise we will have ethnically cleansed states springing up all over the world.
The US created this mess because of a Major Foreign Policy blunder. Time to rethink the policy….
With the name Attila, one could be forgiven for wondering where Mr Hoare is coming from! In many ways Attila is right: Russia is an unreconstructed ex-Tsarist, ex-Soviet entity without any real feel for democracy. Putin is a nasty bit of work and the killing of Anna Politovskaya a disgrace. But, were it only so clear-cut. NATO was set up to counter the Soviet Union and both the US and Europe missed a big trick in 1991 by not dissolving NATO: instead civil servants drew pretty Venn diagrams showing how all the various organizations intersected and would serve a purpose; a classic of Whitehall fudge (no doubt replicated in other countries in order to obey Washington). NATO now has forces in Afghanistan – how absurd is that? Surely it should be the UN there? What Bush Senior and Clinton fudged, Bush junior spat on and made every enterprise one of the US and its ‘willing’ allies thereby kicking the UN into the long grass: for it ought to be the UN in Afghanistan. Europe needs to decide where Europe’s defensive borders lie and that may well not include Georgia or Ukraine formally. The EU should expand wherever conditions of entry can be met but without the formality of defensive responsibility that membership of NATO involves. The only reason that the US is so keen on Georgia’s ‘plucky’ democracy is to preserve the flow of oil. Underpinning all ‘big game’ strategy is the desire for energy security. We could save billions of dollars on defence if, instead, we accelerated spending on renewables and clean, non-fossil fuel sources. All Western leaders are guilty of weakness in forcing through a shift away from carbon-emitting fuels.
“Salil Tripathi explains why India is condemning its farmers to misery and impoverishing its own citizens.by refusing to move on from its outdated approach to agriculture.”
Where exactly is the explanation? His thesis is something like
1) If India liberalised its agricultural trade rules, it would benefit Indian farmers and create jobs
2) If India adopted Chinese -style rural policies this would improve rural employment
Where does one begin? Well firstly thse two points are not compatible, China adopted its rural policies under a strong regime of protection of agricultural markets, so 1) does not fit with 2).
Point one has been going on since 1991. Whilst this has lead to some employment generation (though the poverty statistics are hotly disputed) it has also lead to the worst situation in the countryside ever.
So the government, by pursuing policies that the author recommends (1) that contradicts his other recomendation (2) have arrived at the problems the author describes, and the author recommends more of the same.
To me, his is not really an analysis, but a boiler-plate response derived from something the Economist once said.
Dear Daniel
One begins by looking at the compatibility of the points made. They are not incompatible, if you accept that everyone who is a farmer today need not remain a farmer. People who call themselves farmers are often in disguised unemployment today. That surplus labour can, and should, be redeployed.
India, too, has adopted protectionism – agricultural or otherwise – for a long time; it did not help attain high growth. The reforms since 1991 in India haven’t led to “some” employment generation; it has fundamentally altered the way people look at the role of the state. It has empowered people who want to get entrepreneurial – not only big industries, but even in the informal economy. The failure of those reforms has been that they’ve not penetrated at all levels. Lets have more of that.
And “worst” situation in the countryside ever? Really? Worse than the famine of 1940s? Worse than the drought of 1960s? The drought of 1980s, all during periods/time when India was either colonized or pursuing what it thought was socialism?
My “recommendations” are not contradictory: the government needs to offer greater autonomy to farmers; those who wish to invest more, and can benefit through enterprise, will; others will cease being dependent on landlords, rains, or vagaries of karma, and move to other jobs. If the worry is that the cities can’t handle that load, TVEs are one way of managing that transition.
Thanks for writing;
Salil
‘UNSC 1244 repsects the territorial integrity of Serbia’
No it doesn’t:
http://www.nato.int/Kosovo/docu/u990610a.htm
Attila Hoare’s twisted logic and dubious interpretation of events is consistent with his long standing anti-Serbian campaign. For these purposes he makes facile comparisons with events in Georgia in an attempt to discredit Serbian claims to Kosovo. He also rarely allows facts to interfere with his agenda. Georgia’s claims to South Ossetia are weaker than Serbia’s on Kosovo. Furthermore, it was Georgia with the support and training of the CIA and the US military that launched a brutal attack against South Ossetia. He is profoundly deluded if he believes that the US’s goals in supporting Georgia has anything to do with promoting democracy in the region.
Francine Last and Alex Popovich make a number of perceptive points. The precipitate and ill-advised Georgian ‘intervention’ in South Ossetia definitely led to the swift, surgical and conclusive Russian response, which arguably saved more lives and caused less disruption than the dithering which occured in Kosovo prior to the Clinton intervention. Russia clearly had and has an agenda, but Georgia is the second largest recipient of US aid after Israel, we know that Cheney (and McCain) hold partisan views on Georgia and the Republicans are desperate for a new source of fear and loathing.
If democracy really is the issue, then the majority of Ossetians would almost certainly choose independence from Georgia, as would the Abkhasians. Pragmatism, ethnicity and self-interest would moreover ally them more towards Russia than Georgia. America has once again bungled, and Europe would have a very cold war – no gas and oil – if sanctions are enacted against Russia in defence of the indefensible.
JFYI, according to Guardian, there were no “killing over 100,000 people”.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2000/aug/18/balkans3
The final toll of civilians confirmed massacred by Yugoslav forces in Kosovo is likely to be under 3,000, far short of the numbers claimed by Nato governments during last year’s controversial air strikes on Yugoslavia.
“Marko Attila Hoare
September 4, 2008 at 2:26 pm
‘UNSC 1244 repsects the territorial integrity of Serbia’
No it doesn’t:
http://www.nato.int/Kosovo/docu/u990610a.htm”
Serbia is the successor state to the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia so yes it does.
If you think that a region’s previous status within a federation is so important why did you not state that Abkhazia was a Autonomous Soviet Socialist Republic within Georgia?
one word for this article . . . garbage
Dear Laurence
Sorry, hadn’t seen your response…. You write:
“They (the farmers) need assistance in maintaining themselves in their present condition–the alternative is starvation or sleeping in the streets of Mumbai as millions of Biharis end up doing.”
This is inaccurate (millions of Biharis are not sleeping on the streets of Bombay) and to “maintain” any of those farmers in “their present conditions” is patronizing – to those farmers and to the vitality and energy of Indians.
As for whether more taxes, and public expense are needed, we’ll have to agree to disagree; and I’ve not suggested that India should “export” its grain at the expense of demand at home. Trade is a two-way street; nothing prevents India from importing grain, and other products, if there’s domestic demand. In any society consumers of food outnumber producers of food, and millions of India’s consumers are poor, and forcing them to buy more expensive “domestic” food does not sound particularly egalitarian to me.
Thanks;
Salil
‘JFYI, according to Guardian, there were no “killing over 100,000 peopleâ€.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2000/aug/18/balkans3‘
The figure of over 100,000 refers to the death-toll in Croatia and Bosnia. This Guardian article refers to the death-toll in Kosovo. Try not to confuse the two.
‘The final toll of civilians confirmed massacred by Yugoslav forces in Kosovo is likely to be under 3,000, far short of the numbers claimed by Nato governments during last year’s controversial air strikes on Yugoslavia.’
Two scientific studies indicate that approximately 10,356 Kosovo Albanian civilians were killed in the period March-June 1999, or approximately 12,000 Albanians between February 1998 and June 1999:
http://shr.aaas.org/kosovo/icty_report.pdf
http://shr.aaas.org/kosovo/icty_report.pdf
Alex Popovich,
Yeah, I agree, but he’s good for a laugh and hasn’t got the bottle to allow comments on his blog. Hence my trip over here.
Shall we begin with this bit of old tosh? Let’s do:
1. Kosovo had a Serbian majority until the Second World War when so many of them were killed by Germans, Kosovo-Muslims and Croats.
2. It has always been a part of Serbia, but Tito gave it autonomy, not statehood, to weaken Serbia within the federation. It’s autonomy was stripped away because the Mussies were persecuting Serbs.
3. South Ossetia was only dumped in Georgia by Uncle Joe for administrative reasons. It didn’t matter then because it was all one USSR, but since the cataclysm it has wanted to be free of the Georgians.
4. Russia did not attack, she responded when the Georgian head-the-ball decided to take advantage of the Olympic Games to sent his army into S. Ossetia. Do you want to know how they behaved? Click on the first video here, and listen to the “Yee-Haw” sound from some American trained goon as he blasts a S. Ossetian town with his heavy machine gun.
OK, so the Americans and their clients wage an unprovoked war of aggression against the likes of Serbia, and this spaz wants us to believe that the event was actually not an unprovoked war, but was somehow better than Russia’s defence of South Ossetia? Oh, and Russia started the S. Ossetia conflict…
Yeah, there is a sort of argument here that someone from a third rate institution that was allowed by John Major to degrade the name of university might propound, but does that mean that we have to take it seriously?
http://www.the-exile.info/search/label/South-Ossetia-Conflict
http://www.the-exile.info/search/label/South-Ossetia-Conflict-02
Marko Attila Hoare, Serbia is the successor state to the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia. Therefore UNSC resolution 1244 does indeed affirm the commitment of all member States to the sovereignty and territorial integrity of the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia (now Serbia).
PJD, Serbia is the successor state to the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia, but it is not the same state and does not have the same borders – any more than Turkey, the successor to the Ottoman Empire, has the same borders as the Ottoman Empire. The international community is under no compulsion to transfer its international obligations from a deceased state, unchanged, to a successor state.
Even before the recognition of Kosovo’s independence, the international community recognised the splitting of the former Federal Republic of Yugoslavia (the State Union of Serbia and Montenegro), to form two separate states of Serbia and Montenegro, rendering all talk of the ‘territorial integrity of the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia’ meaningless. Since Serbia itself recognised Montenegro’s secession and the dissolution of the territorial integrity of the former Federal Republic of Yugoslavia, it cannot now claim Kosovo on the basis of said territorial integrity and UNSC Resolution 1244.
The Exile’s comments are all rubbish and I really can’t be bothered to reply to them, except to say that he’s wrong about Kosovo’s population: the Albanians were already in the majority in 1912, when Kosovo came under the rule of the modern Serbian state for the first time.
PDJ,
‘If you think that a region’s previous status within a federation is so important why did you not state that Abkhazia was a Autonomous Soviet Socialist Republic within Georgia?’
Actually, I did. I wrote:
‘Abkhazia was also an autonomous republic, but with a population in 1990 that was nearly half ethnic-Georgian and only 17 per cent Abkhaz, its secession from Georgia can hardly be justified on the basis of national self-determination).’
My apologies about missing your comment about Abkhazia being an autonomous republic.
So your argument is that Abkhazia cannot be independent because it didn’t have a Abkhaz majority prior to the war of the early 1990s.
But South Ossetia cannot be independent because despite Ossetians making up approximately two-thirds of the population consistently over the past 100 years it is simply too small.
It all depends on where you set the population bar then?
So are you arguing that UNSC 1244 is no longer valid as the FRY doesn’t exist anymore?
In any case both the FRY’s and Serbia’s territorial intergrity is (supposedly) guaranteed by the Helsinki Accords. 1244 simply states that UN members should continue to respect that.
Mr Hoare,
I find it very difficult to follow your arguments you seem to want to have your cake and to eat it too. Please clarify for us your statement that the collapse of Yugoslavia rendered its territorial integrity as meaningless. Would you then agree that the borders of the former republics became meaningless as well? Would it follow then that the regions in Croatia and Bosnia where Serbs were in a majority also had a right to seccesion. Of course, the Serbs of Croatia have been expelled from their homeland with no prospect of return and I know from your previous articles that you believe that the combined American, Croatian and German operation known as storm, which ethnically cleansed Croatia, was another admirable western attempt to advance the cause of democracy.
I am eager to read you reply so that I can understand what principles guide your arguments or are they selective as I highly suspect!!!
Alex, the collapse of Yugoslavia did not render the borders of its former republics meaningless. Just as, if the EU were to collapse, the borders of its member states would not become meaningless. On the contrary. National self-determination for the peoples of Yugoslavia could only be on the basis of the constituent members of the federation. There is a very good reason for this. The ‘regions in Croatia and Bosnia where Serbs were in a majority’, that you talk about, were also inhabited by Croats, Bosniaks and others, who also possessed rights; there were Croats living in Knin, Croats and Bosniaks in Banja Luka, Serbs in Mostar, etc. They also had rights. You cannot solve the problem of ethnically mixed areas by redrawing the borders in favour of the Serbs as the largest and strongest nation.
The right of Serb-majority areas in Bosnia and Croatia to secede is not recognised. Neither is the right of Croat-majority areas of Bosnia, or Bosniak-majority areas of Serbia (the Sanjak), or Albanian-majority areas of Macedonia. So where are the double standards ?
I do not support the right of Ossetians in Georgia to secede and become part of a Greater Russia (and Greater Ossetia); neither do I support the right of Bosnian Croats to secede and join a Greater Croatia, nor Sanjak Bosniaks to secede from Serbia and join a Greater Bosnia, nor Macedonian Albanians to join a Greater Albania. And the Bosnian Croats, Sanjak Bosniaks and Macedonian Albanians are all larger national communities than the Ossetians in Georgia.
Operation Storm was the only alternative to the Serb conquest of the Bihac pocket and the genocide of the Bosniak population of Bihac. As you are aware, Serb forces committed genocide against the Bosniak population of Srebrenica in July 1995, then proceeded to attack the Bihac pocket from Serb-held Croatian territory. There is every reason to believe that, had there been no Operation Storm, the Bihac Bosniaks would have shared the fate of the Srebrenica Bosniaks. And, of course, Operation Storm occurred only after repeated Serb rejections of international peace-plans that would have rendered Storm unnecessary. Almost nobody seriously denies that Croatian forces carried out serious war-crimes against Serb civilians during Operation Storm, and I hope that those Croatian commanders responsible are convicted by the courts and receive heavy sentences.
But given Serb behaviour at Srebrenica, Sarajevo, etc., and the failure of the Western alliance to put a stop to this aggression, what was really the alternative to Storm ?
MAH:
By what democratic mandate was Kosovo given autonomy from Serbia? By what democratic mandate was South Ossetia separated from North Ossetia? It’s odd that you defend decisions taken by Tito and Stalin both of whom held democracy in complete contempt.
You complain about the “lack of intervention” in the Balkans when it was precisely ham-fisted American intervention that torpedoed the 1992 agreement at the Lisbon conference prior to the Bosnian civil war. Ambassador Zimmerman encouraged Izetbegovic to renege on the deal and go for broke. How clever of him.
Finally, there is nothing to stop you from organising an international brigade to go and fight fascism in the Caucasus if you really feel so strongly about the cause. It’s less morally reprehensible than asking others to die for your beliefs.
“…and in making it clear to Moscow that we shall respond militarily to any further acts of aggression against Georgia or any other east or southeast European state—we would not be behaving foolhardily, but playing it safe. The dangers of appeasement are far greater.”
One wonders exactly how, and with what force, you’d have us “respond militarily.” One also wonders who “us” is meant to be. Surely no one in the UK imagines that no 10 constitutes an “us” that Russia is bound to find at all daunting.
As an American deeply interested in seeing my own country renounce some of its more egregious claims to ownership of whatever parts of the world it fancies at a given moment, I have to say that I resent a British academic, of all God’s improbable creatures, prodding an already foolish American government into compounding its foolishness in the Caucasus.
The game Putin is playing is an old one, almost as creaky as the country he’s playing it with. Does anyone really think it necessary to help him recreate 1914? Apparently at least one person does; perhaps it’s fortunate that he’s a historian and not the Minister of Defence.
England got involved in the WW1 because of a 1830’s treaty with Belgium.After that war its empire was starting to faulter.Then again England got involved in WW2 and after that war it was only a shadow of its former self,in other words it gave its empire to the USA and at what cost to itself? In my opinion not a smart move!
Marko,
I agree with your view that borders cannot be re-drawn in favour of the group that has the largest numbers in a given area. That is recipe for international chaos. But that is one of the arguments used to defend the annexation of Kosovo from Serbia. The other argument that it was necessary to grant Albanians independence and give them Kosovo, to which Serbs also have rights, was based on the dubious principle of humanitarianism. This idea might have been operative had Milosevic still been in power and the Albanians faced a real threat to their existence after 2000. However, neither of these conditions were present. Rather, the west prodded by the Americans, violated international law and UNSC 1244. In short, the Albanians were rewarded for their longstanding secessionist efforts, which began in the early 1980’s and which were characterised by a campaign of terror against the local Serbian population, with independence.
Why? Certainly not because the Americans are concerned with the well being of the Albanians. Rather, might it not be that the Americans who, like their policies towards the former Soviet republics are seeking to establish their military presence in the region and project power. What is the purpose of Camp Bondsteel in Kosovo? It would seem to me that the American neo-con agenda is what is causing turmoil and instability in the world and not Russia. Can anyone take Secretary Rice seriously when she demands that territorial integrity and international law must be respected. Russia’s actions in Georgia are simply those of a great power exercising realpolitik in its own backyard.
Your usage of the term appeasement is also troublesome. You cannot seriously think that there are any parallels between Russia in 2008 and Germany in 1938. Putin might be a dictator but he has no grandiose territorial ambitions to expand Russia’s power. Rather it would seem that it is the US, which holds that its security interests span the globe and has violated the spirit of numerous arms limitation agreements as well as thumbing its nose at the international community that poses a threat to global security.
Operation Storm, had little to do with what happened in Bosnia, unless you think that somehow expelling 250,000 Serbs from Croatia was a quid pro quo for the events in Bosnia. Of course, I am aware that many innocent Bosniaks died as a result of Serbian attacks at Bihac and at Srebrenica. Civil Wars are not very pleasant. I too hope that all those responsible for committing war crimes are punished. What I object to is the one sided narrative that places all of the blame on the Serbs. Are you aware that Srebrenica, a designated safe haven, was used by Naser Oric and his forces to launch attacks against Serbian civilians. Surely, this pathetic war criminal deserves condemnation and a long jail sentence for jeopardizing the lives of his own people. Yet he walks a free man.
Calamity in the Name of Hegemony
Is War With Russia on the Agenda?
By PAUL CRAIG ROBERTS
Thinking about the massive failure of the US media to report truthfully is sobering. The United States, bristling with nuclear weapons and pursuing a policy of world hegemony, has a population that is kept in the dark–indeed brainwashed–about the most important and most dangerous events of our time.
The power of the Israel Lobby is an important component of keeping Americans in the dark. Recently I watched a documentary that demonstrates the control that the Israel Lobby exercises over Americans’ view of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. The documentary is available here.
As a result of the US media’s one-sided coverage, few Americans are aware that for decades Israel has been ethnically cleansing Palestinians from their homes and lands under protection of America’s veto in the United Nations. Instead, the dispossessed Palestinians are portrayed as mindless terrorists who attack innocent Israel.
If one reads Israeli newspapers, such as Haaretz, or publications from Israeli organizations, such as the Israeli Committee Against House Demolitions, one gets a radically different view of the situation than the propagandistic version delivered by US media and evangelical pulpits.
Most Americans know of the 2000 attack by Muslim terrorists on the USS Cole in Aden harbor that resulted in 17 dead and 39 wounded American sailors. But few have heard of Israel’s 1967 attack on the USS Liberty that left 34 American sailors dead and 174 wounded. Pressured by the Israel Lobby, President Johnson ordered Admiral McCain, father of the Republican presidential nominee, to cover up the attack. To this day there never has been a congressional investigation.
The failure of the American media is again evident in the coverage of the Georgian-Russian conflict. The US media presented the conflict as a Russian invasion of Georgia, whereas in actual fact the American and Israeli trained and equipped Georgian military launched a sneak attack to kill and to drive the Russian population out of South Ossetia, a separatist province.
Russian peacekeepers, together with Georgian ones, had been stationed in South Ossetia since the early 1990s. On orders from Mikheil Saakashvili, the American puppet “president†of Georgia, the Georgian peacekeepers turned their weapons on the unsuspecting Russian peacekeepers and murdered them.
This action by Saakashvili, elected with money from the neoconservative National Endowment for Democracy, an election-rigging tool of US hegemony, was a war crime. In truth, the Russians should have hung Saakashvili, as he is far more guilty than was Saddam Hussein. But it is Russia, not Saakashvili, that the US media has demonized.
Americans have become perfect subjects for George Orwell’s Big Brother. They sit stupidly in front of the TV news or the New York Times or Washington Post and absorb the lies fed to them. What is wrong with Americans? Why do they put up with it? Are Americans the nation of sheep that Judge Andrew P. Napolitano says they are? Americans flaunt “freedom and democracy†and live under a Ministry of Propaganda.
Two decades ago, President Reagan reached agreement with Soviet president Mikhail Gorbachev to end the dangerous cold war. But every one of Reagan’s successors has sought to pick a new fight with Russia. In violation of the agreement, NATO has been taken to Russia’s borders, and the US is determined to put former constituent parts of Russia herself into NATO. In an effort to neutralize Russia’s nuclear deterrent and compromise her independence, the US is putting anti-ballistic missile bases on Russia’s borders.
The gratuitously aggressive US military policy toward Russia will lead to nuclear war. I am confident that if Americans elect John McCain, or the Republicans steal another presidential election, there will be nuclear war in the second decade of the 21st century. The neocon lies, propaganda, macho flag-waving, and use of US foreign policy in the interests of a few military-security firms, oil companies, and Israel are all leading in that direction.
The November election is perhaps the last chance to avoid nuclear war. But the opportunity might already have been missed. The Republicans have chosen as their candidate one of the most ignorant warmongers alive. The Democrats’ choice was between one of the most divisive women in America and a man of mixed race with a funny name. Considering American’s taste for war, the Democratic candidate could fail to defeat the GOP war candidate.
Many Americans will vote against Obama because he is black. Why does mixed ancestry confer the black label? If America’s population was predominantly black, would Obama be considered white?
Race and propaganda are more likely to determine the outcome of the November election than any awareness or consideration of real issues by voters.
The real issues are suffocated by the media. The American middle class is being destroyed by jobs offshoring and work visas for foreigners, while the incomes of the super rich are soaring. The US dollar’s reserve currency status is eroded. The US is massively in debt at home and abroad. Health insurance is unaffordable for the vast majority of the population. Injured veterans are being nickeled and dimed, while Halliburton’s profits escalate. Americans are losing their homes, while the US government bails out banks. Wars with Iran, Russia, and China are being planned in order to secure US hegemony.
Americans no longer have a government that is for the people and by the people. They have a government for and by special interests and an insane ideology.
But Americans have war, which lets them take out all their frustrations, resentments, and disappointments on “Muslim terrorists†and “Russian aggressors.†Few Americans are disturbed that 1.25 million Iraqis and an unknown number of Afghans have died as a result of American invasions based on Bush regime lies and deceptions. Even Americans, like Senator Biden, Obama’s selection for vice president, who understand that the wars are based on lies, still want the US to win. So, it was all a mistake and a deception, but let’s win anyway and keep on killing.
I know people who still complain that the US did not nuke North Vietnam. When I ask why Vietnam should have been nuked, they reply, “if we had nuked them we would have won.â€
What would America have won? The answer is world loathing and the loss of the cold war.
For many Americans, war is like a sports contest in which they take vicarious pleasure and cheer on their side to victory. Millions of Americans are still bitter that “the liberal media†and war protesters caused America to lose the Vietnam war, and they are determined that this won’t happen again. These Americans have no realization that there was no more reason for the US to be fighting in Vietnam 40 years ago than to be fighting today in Iraq and Afghanistan or tomorrow in Iran.
Obama, if elected, is no guarantee against nuclear war. Obama has shown that he is as much under the Israel Lobby’s thumb as McCain. Obama’s foreign affairs advisor, Zbigniew Brzezinski, is not a neocon, but he was born in Warsaw, Poland, and has the Pole’s animosity toward Russia. The Bush administration has already changed US war doctrine to permit preemptive nuclear attack. With the US government determined to ring Russia with puppet states and military bases, war is inevitable.
Presidential appointees face confirmation in the Senate. Any of Obama’s appointees who might be out of step with plans for US and Israeli hegemony could expect opposition from large corporations and the Israel Lobby. There is no assurance that an Obama administration would not be positioned on “the issues†by the same special interests that have positioned the Bush administration.
Americans are filled with hubris, not with knowledge. They have no awareness of the calamity that their government’s pursuit of hegemony is bringing to themselves and to life on earth.
Paul Craig Roberts was Assistant Secretary of the Treasury in the Reagan administration. He was Associate Editor of the Wall Street Journal editorial page and Contributing Editor of National Review. He is coauthor of The Tyranny of Good Intentions. He can be reached at: PaulCraigRoberts@yahoo.com
Dear Salil
I limit my blogging habit for professional reasons, sorry for the delay in replying, I like that you bothered to respond by the way.
“One begins by looking at the compatibility of the points made. They are not incompatible, if you accept that everyone who is a farmer today need not remain a farmer. People who call themselves farmers are often in disguised unemployment today. That surplus labour can, and should, be redeployed.”
OK, but that is an argument made at the greatest level of generality, and does not in any way describe or analyse the Process by which that might come about.
Ha Joon Chang, on the pages of this very publication, detailed how successful liberalisation tends to occur AFTER a state or industry has achieved a certain degree of economic strength and dominance. The lessons of history are very stark on this, Monbiot rehearsed these arguments today in the Guardian, and they have not been fatally critiqued in the academic sphere:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2008/sep/09/eu.globaleconomy
So if you consider development as a process (which is pretty much what the word itself implies) then you see that the timing, rate and kind of liberalisation is crucial. The Chinese paid attention to this whilst you are not, you are using the atemporal and de-historicised ideas that only survive unchanged in the pages of The Economist, because academics are, well, embarrassed by them now. There is a debate on behavioral economics in this issue of the Prospect, which indicates how much the Economics profession is changing right now.
‘And “worst†situation in the countryside ever? Really? Worse than the famine of 1940s? Worse than the drought of 1960s? The drought of 1980s, all during periods/time when India was either colonized or pursuing what it thought was socialism?’
The quotes from rural journalists in India are currently that it is the worst they have ever seen it, you might want to come visit and see for yourself one day.
Utsa Patnaik has done the numbers, and grain absorption per capita has decline sharply in India since 1991, when liberalisation began.
http://www.networkideas.org/featart/apr2004/Republic_Hunger.pdf
She anticipates the criticisms that people are choosing to eat less grain, and switching to meat and dairy. Her figures include grain fed to cattle. So despite the rich doing just such a switch, and thus their grain consumption going up (you lose a lot of grain by feeding it through cows) the overal figure has gone down sharply, indicating the depth of the current rural crisis.
So your solution is not framed within any sense of historical evidence on how development processes actually work, and so far what you are advocating is leading to mass starvation.
Now if you dropped the free market dogma, and started to work on your ideas purely from a point of view of what combination of protectionism and rural autonomy is actually proven to work, you might arrive at something closer to the Chinese option you cite.
But you need to graduate from Neo-Lib 101 first, these ideas may be powerful, but they are also woefully simplistic and at odds with the historical record.
I read your article this week on India’s Imprisoned Farmers. My friend Apu is from India and he agrees. There is a high suicide rate due tothe prevalent alcoholism. Farmers will brew their own moonshine and drink it like water. It might be adequate for growers on large tracts of land but it is much harder for those on rented land. If crops fail, everything is gone and your family starves. There are no McDonalds type jobs to accept just to make ends meet.
Take it from him, he has been living hear in the United States for over a decade and has a job, girlfriend and a gut. He sits with me every lunch and drinks another Diet Coke and shows me electronics he wants to buy over the internet.
“Confronting the Russians may be a daunting prospect, but it will not become easier after Moscow has successfully swallowed up more neighbouring territories, torn up the Nato alliance and re-established its imperial sphere of control in eastern Europe.”
Come on people, don’t buy into this Neo-con cold war Paranoia.
How much money does Russia spend on its army and how does this compare to NATO, or even to the Nations of Western Europe.
This source:
http://www.globalsecurity.org/military/world/russia/mo-budget.htm
Puts Russian military spending at 31M$ per year.
Put this in the following global ranking:
http://www.nationmaster.com/graph/mil_exp_dol_fig-military-expenditures-dollar-figure
And you see Russia spending about as much as no. 6 in the chart, the UK. Germany and France both spend more, the US is in a different league. You can see this graphically here:
http://www.globalissues.org/article/75/world-military-spending#WorldMilitarySpending
So no, the Russian bear is not likely to take over Easter Europe again or tear up NATO, and most people on the left think that containing Russia and extending NATO membership to worried parties in Eastern Europe is the way forward.
The US vision of the EU and Russia divided whilst it rules is not to be played into. Europe needs to contain Russia to an extent, but mainly it needs to establish strong trade relations, since we share the same continent, and a lot of common history and values.
This is a neocon arse-wipe.
MAH wrote:
“… and in making it clear to Moscow that we shall respond militarily to any further acts of aggression against Georgia or any other east or southeast European state—we would not be behaving foolhardily, but playing it safe. The dangers of appeasement are far greater.”
Everything else you wrote is defensible and even sensible but the threat of military response is a dire bluff and I hope it better be construed like this than be taken seriously.
I don’t like the politics of Putin et co. but there’s not much the West can do militarily against Russia at this point. Saakashvili the fool crossed a border manned by peacekeeping forces, bombed a town and killed also some peacekeepers. By doing this he forfeited any sympathy one could have for the cause he was fighting for.
Should the west go to war against Russia for this skirmish?
What would be the objectives of such a war? Pushing back the Russian troops into Russia? Would they accept an initial defeat without escalating? Who is going to do the war for the west? Nato? Nato cannot finish off the barefoot Afghans and is supposed to defeat a Russian army which, although weak, is sophisticated enough to have defence (and also attacking) means – at least in some areas – on a par with the finest NATO units.
Are you talking about taking on a country with 10.000 nuclear warheads with an organisation whose majority of members are even against sanctions?
Let’s be honest: there’s nothing to achieve with this belligerent tone. Just write off Abkhazia and S. Ossetia and concentrate on the Ukraine, or at least salvaging the non-Russophone, Western part.
Like the US, Hoare decides which side he’s on, then constructs specious arguments to support that side. (His Croat mother, Branka Magas, is I’m sure proud of his ongoing commitment to her orientation and methods. )
In Hoare’s wordbook, Serbians are aggressors for trying to stay in the country of their birth and choice. Tudjman’s fascistic Croats are “defenders” – when they try to forcibly remove all the territory given to them within Yugoslavia, out of Yugoslavia, without consent, and by UDI.
This leads him to his appalling defence of Operation Storm. Just as he presents the US as a decent old cove, trying to protect Albanians from cleansing, so he tries the same trick with his own Croats. Operation Storm, he suggests, was about preventing genocide in Bihac.
But military operations in Bihac had ended a long while earlier (some eight months from memory) in the usual stalemate, with no significant loss on either side.
(The fighting had been between the Bosnian Serb-backed moderate Muslim, Fikret Abdic, together with Serb forces, and the Islamist forces of Izetbegovic, led by Rasim Delic, subsequently accused by the ICTY of war crimes. Incidentally, Izetbegovic’s attempt to paint a Hoar-y picture about Bihac had been memorably punctured by the BBC’s John Simpson in his interview with Izetbegovic’s man, Silajdzic).
So taking Bihac as an idea had long since been abandoned. The Serbs of Bosnia were sitting tight hoping for a decent offer from the Contact Group.
And the idea that Tudjman attacked Serbs to save Muslims!? Come on, Mr Hoare! Croatia’s Tudjman was hardly noted for his commitment to saving Muslim lives (supporting the Bosnian Croats’ vicious war fought against them in 1993).
Yet Hoare suggests such incredible explanations for Storm. This really is wilful, disgusting disinformation, as he himself must surely be aware.
Operation Storm (as even the then US Ambassador to Croatia Galbraith has since kinda admitted) was about ethnic cleansing. Tudjman hated the Serbs as much as he hated the Jews (lumping them together in his racist jokes and writings). So 235,000 Serbs were forced out of the supposedly UN Protected Area of the Krajina. In an operation assisted by that decent old cove, the US.
An operation which also evicted another 120,000 Serbs evicted from the adjacent part of Western Bosnia (an area never previously inhabited by any Croats or Muslims at all), so that Croatia could be geographically less like a banana (-shaped) republic.
335,000 people made refugees, including several thousand murdered. The biggest single ethnic cleansing of the war. Perpetrated by Tudjman’s Croats. Aided and abetted by the US’s NATO. Which only four years later was to re-market itself as a defender of refugees – to excuse its attack on Serbia and its building on Serbia’s territory of Camp Bondsteel.
That’s the side this Hoare is on.
Readers may contrast the polite and civilised way in which I have responded to arguments in this discussion, with the racist and defamatory attack on me by Marko G – who refers to my ethnic origin, my mother and my supposed motives. The ugliness of his manner of ‘debate’ is, at least, an accurate reflection of the ugliness of the Serb-expansionist cause that he champions.
He writes:
‘But military operations in Bihac had ended a long while earlier (some eight months from memory) in the usual stalemate, with no significant loss on either side.’
This is an outright falsehood. The New York Times reported on 27 July 1995:
‘Serbian forces and a rebel Muslim faction pressed their attack on the isolated Bihac region in northwestern Bosnia today, sending an estimated 8,000 refugees fleeing toward Bihac town, a United Nations-designated “safe area.”
The fighting has intensified over the last week in the Bihac pocket, a strategically important area with some 180,000 mainly Muslim residents and refugees that is surrounded by rebel Bosnian and Croatian Serbs.
Neighboring Croatia, citing an agreement with Bosnia, has joined the fray with artillery and infantry attacks, seeking to cut Serbian supply lines south of the enclave.
At a weekend on Saturday in Split, Croatia, President Franjo Tudjman publicly agreed to a request from his Bosnian counterpart, Alija Izetbegovic, for help in the defense of Bihac. Bosnian officials now seem to be pressing for that pledge to be redeemed more substantially.’
http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?res=990CE6DF1E3CF934A15754C0A963958260
So contrary to Marko G’s denial, Serb forces were attacking the Bihac pocket from Croatian territory in the summer of 1995. Croatia was legally and morally obliged to take military action against Serb forces that were operating from Croatian territory to attack Bosnian territory. Had Croatia not taken action to halt Croatian Serb attacks on Bihac, Croatia might have found itself in violation of the UN Genocide Convention. Whether Tudjman personally liked or disliked Muslims was irrelevant in this context.
Marko G would like to pretend that Operation Storm was simply launched against an innocent body of Serb civilians. He would like us to forget that it was launched against Serb rebel military forces that were illegally occupying a part of Croatian sovereign territory, and using that territory to shell Croatian civilians and attack the neighbouring state of Bosnia.
Yet the UN General Assembly on 9 December 1994 recognised that the ‘the ongoing situation in the Serbian-controlled parts of Croatia is de facto allowing and promoting a state of occupation of parts of the sovereign Croatian territory, and thus seriously
jeopardizing the sovereignty and territorial integrity of the Republic of Croatia’
http://www.un.org/documents/ga/res/49/a49r043.htm
Such minor details of international law as the sovereignty and territorial integrity of UN member states and the validity of UN rsolutions do not bother Marko G and other supporters of the idea of a Greater Serbia.
Marko G writes:
‘The Serbs of Bosnia were sitting tight hoping for a decent offer from the Contact Group.’
It is difficult to imagine a more outrageous falsehood. Marko G appears to have forgotten the Serb conquest of the UN Safe Areas of Srebrenica and Zepa in July 1995, including the massacre of 8,000 Muslims at Srebrenica – recognised as an act of genocide by two different international courts. Apparently, this is what he considers as ’sitting tight’. And he conveniently forgets the Contact Group’s peace plan of July 1994, that offered the Serb rebels 49% of Bosnia, even though Serbs comprised less than a third of Bosnia’s population. Not ‘decent’ enough, apparently, for the supporters of a Greater Serbia.
Marko G writes:
‘So 235,000 Serbs were forced out of the supposedly UN Protected Area of the Krajina.’
He conveniently forgets to mention that the ‘forcing out’ of the Serb population of the Krajina in 1995 was undertaken by the Krajina Serb rebel leadership itself, which responded to Operation Storm by ordering the evacuation of the entire Serb civilian and military population from the ‘Krajina’ region. This is described in the published memoirs of former Krajina Serb General Staff member Milisav Sekulic (‘Knin je pao u Beogradu’, Nidda Verlag, Bad Vilbel, 2001, pp. 178-179 ).
Sekulic’s account of the Serb rebel decision to evacuate the Serb population from the Krajina is quoted at length here:
http://greatersurbiton.wordpress.com/2008/03/14/how-croatia-and-the-us-prevented-genocide-with-operation-storm/
[NB this is not to deny, of course, the serious war-crimes carried out by Croatian forces during Operation Storm, including the killing of civilians and the burning of property, that form the basis for the ICTY's indictments of Ante Gotovina and other Croatian commanders]
Astute readers will have noticed that Marko G’s figures do not add up: 235,000 + 120,000 do not equal 335,000. This is fairly typical of Serb-nationalist mathematical skill, on the basis of which it is possible to argue almost anything. The number of Serbs fleeing the Krajina in Croatia following Operation Storm was, by the way, closer to 150,000 civilians and 40,000 soldiers.
Marko G claims that this exodus of Serb civilians was ‘The biggest single ethnic cleansing of the war.’ Again, his memory is selective: he has conveniently forgotten the Serb assault on Bosnia in the spring of 1992, which involved the ethnic cleansing of hundreds of thousands of Croats and Muslims.
Finally, in another shocking falsehood, Marko G describes Western Bosnia as ‘an area never previously inhabited by any Croats or Muslims at all’.
There were Croats and Muslims living all over Western Bosnia before 1992, something that I, as a historian of Bosnia and author of the English language’s most extensive history of modern Bosnia can testify. Supporters of a Greater Serbia wished this wasn’t so; the mass murder and ethnic cleansing they carried out in Western Bosnia in the spring of 1992 was an attempt to change this inconvenient fact.
MAH says He would like us to forget that it was launched against Serb rebel military forces that were illegally occupying a part of Croatian sovereign territory, and using that territory to shell Croatian civilians and attack the neighbouring state of Bosnia.
In your opinion, Mr. Hoare, how long do people have to live in an area not to be considered “illegal occupants”?
These “illegal occupants” have lived in the area since 1578! See http://www.srpska-mreza.com/History/pre-wwOne/Krajina-Serbs.html
I certainly would not cite a newspaper source as something accurate or honest.
Those of us who have bothered to research events in the break up of the sovereign state of Yugoslavia have found that the press and media have played, by and large, a very dirty propaganda part in the proceedings. Their one sided reporting and lies has contributed to many more lives lost in this tragic affair!