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Gerard Baudson: The New World Order And Yugoslavia

INTRODUCTION
The Constraints of Hegemonism

"The love for order is often confused with the taste of the tyrant"
Alexis de Tocqueville
Democracy in America ("Da la democracie en Amerique")

The New World Order is an expression of President Bush voiced before the American Congress on Tuesday, September 11, 1990, after the invasion of Kuwait by Iraq.

"A new world order (...) can emerge in these troubled times, a new era more free from the menace and from terror stronger in its search for peace, an era in which countries of the world, both of the East and of the West, of the North and of the South, can prosper and live in harmony"

Contrary to the Roman Empire which reigned under the Pax Romana during two centuries on the two coast of the Mediterranean, the New World order has engendered in only six years more armed conflicts and OUN interventions than during the entire forty years of the cold war: 22 OUN operations from 1988 to 1994, in contrast to 13 from 1948 to 1988

There have never been so many displaced persons or refugees in the world than since the New World Order came into life 17 million refugees in 1991 and 27 million in 1996.l

There have never been in the entire world history so many changes of frontiers in such a short time, from the coasts of the Adriatic Sea up to the confines of China The three federal states of Eastern Europe: USSR, Yugoslavia and Czechoslovakia, have given birth to some twenty new countries, of poorly defined and often contested frontiers.

In the year 1989 we have passed from one historical period into an other. The fall of the Soviet Union, German reunification, end of the cold war and of the bipolar world have marked the emergence of only one super-power: the United States of America. This is a fundamental fact without a precedent in History. This is also the first time that on the planetary level there exists only one super-power which is concentrating in itself all the attributes of power: strategic, political, economic, financial, military and even cultural. The very term 'super-power' in itself is not a pejorative one. All the empires are not necessarily being born out of their deliberate and passionate wish for domination. In the case of the United States, however, this happened at one specific moment - in the year 1989 - arising from a historical move: the confrontation between East and West - and the collapse of the Soviet empire through the internal dislocation of the republics which were its component parts.

An Universal Hegemony

It is also in the natural order of things that every hegemony wishes to endure and, as a consequence, undertakes to disperse, eradicate, and remove all resistance to its aspirations, and to that end, prevent all the other competitive hegemonies from disputing it its character of exclusivity. This vocation of universality of power and of its exclusive exercise can be better understood, in the case of the United States, in the light of the fact that it has for 45 years experienced competition with the USSR and endured its hard trials. The United States have lived through a series of failures: the impossibility of destroying North Korea, with 35,000 soldiers killed in action, out of the 6 million Americans involved in the conflict; the defeat in Vietnam -- 58,000 killed; obliteration of their influence in certain countries of the Middle East -- Egypt, Syria, Iraq, Iran; contestation in Africa; rebellions in Latin America -- missile crisis in Cuba.

An ideological power without a rival, an economic omnipotence, and an absolute military power, the United States now intend to preserve their hegemony, both regarding their former adversaries and regarding their present-day allies.

The fundamental orientations of the foreign and military policy of the United States, defined by the State Department, by the Pentagon, Security Council and the White House, are drafted in two reports: the first one is entitled "WOLFOWITZ report" 2, named after the Under Secretary for Defense in charge of the political affairs, and the second one is the "JEREMIAH Report" 3, drafted by a group of experts, engaged by Admiral Jeremiah, conceiving the military policies of the United States in the function of scenario of conflicts considered as probable.

The WOLFOWITZ Report specifies that the main objective of the American foreign policy is to maintain hegemony and "to convince the eventual rivals that they have no need to aspire to the playing of a greater role". In order to achieve this, the status of the unique superpower of the United States "must be perpetuated by... a military force which will be sufficient to dissuade any nation or a group of nations from defying the supremacy of the United States". This warning applies to the former Soviet Union because "there are risks for the stability in Europe from the reign of nationalists in Russia and attempts to rejoin again to Russia the countries which have become independent: Ukraine, Belorussia, and eventually, some other ones", and: "It is necessary to provide for the dislocation of the former Soviet military apparatus, in order to eliminate all possibilities for any state whatsoever (Russia) that will be its state-successor, to engage in any major conventional conflict".

Neither are the allies treated better: "We have to act in view of preventing the emergence of a security system exclusively a European one which could de-stabilize NATO".

The military application of these choices brought the Jeremiah Report to the envisaging of the seven scenarios of warfare: two of them pertained to the Soviet Union, one to Iraq, another one to Korea. It envisages another three possibilities of intervention: in Central America, in the Far East and the seventh one is the confrontation between Iraq and Korea together. This is "the option of two conflicts simultaneously". It is foreseen to maintain an army of 1.4 million soldiers, a navy with 346 battle ships, from this 11 aircraft carriers. The American hegemony necessitates a capacity sufficient for intervention anywhere in the world, and if need be, in several different places at the same time.

To Prevent the Emergence of Potential Rivals

It is not a question of allowing the establishment of a hegemony which would rival the one of the United States.

Japan is experiencing an accentuated demographic aging, it does not have nuclear weapons, it is totally dependent on abroad for its nourishment and the other basic necessities, and is limited by geographic factors which are emphasizing its weakness and are restricting its options for ascension into the ranks of the super-powers.

China is virtually in possession of all the means necessary to turn it into a super-power: the space, numbers, natural resources, nuclear power, geographic location, etc... but its economic and technological backwardness are too pronounced.

Russia is strongly manifesting its incapability of regaining the status of a super-power. It is now in the first phase of an extraordinary decline which has brought about shrinking of its borders down to those of Russia of the 17th century, even before the victory won by Peter the Great over Charles XII of Sweden! It is not the major economic crisis in the former USSR - which is, nevertheless, formidable - that has caused the fall of the Soviet empire. It is most of all and much more profoundly the loss of will and awareness, that moral crisis which is preventing the Russian people from mobilizing itself anymore around some cause sufficiently strong to brake down particularism and local resistance, the one that can pull together the country and turn it towards the economic progress options, of sufficiently rigorous yet coherent policies.

Russian society is on the path of disintegration under the effects of establishment of a regime in all appearances a capitalist one, but preserving many characteristics of the previous regime, which has fomented the emergence of one dominant class, searching, in all evidence, to ascend to the level of life, to the purchasing power and the style of living, to the economic and financial power, which will differentiate it more and more from the rest of society, plunged into such a misery that has not been known even at the times of the Soviet regime.

The entire social categories are living below the threshold of poverty. Life expectancy has been reduced for many years, which is a historical fact without precedent.

These factors of weakening can not be removed in any near future, and the United States are taking care that Russia remains in this state of total weakness, especially through selectioning the economic and financial aid, or by supporting protests of minorities, like the one in Chechnya.

The most serious threat may be coming from Europe, where most of the countries are now re-grouped in the seat of the European Community.

Since the end of the World War Two, Europe is (or was?) a region of great tranquility. Having seen the emergence of the East bloc, countries of Western Europe grouped around and behind the United States, in the bosom of the North Atlantic Alliance and its military organization. This situation has never changed since. It is evidently a system which corresponds in an extremely profound manner to the interests of the United States, because it is guaranteeing to them the leadership in the midst of a coalition in which are to be found - with the exception of Japan which is being held by other links - all the industrial powers of the western world. This group has been placed under the political and military guidance of the United States, and is functioning for their benefit until our days. This is not a theory but a statement of the practice which has been taking place ever since the year 1945.

The European states, in this system of American leadership, have seen their security assured, and obviously, could not question it, even more so since some of them have profited by being able to limit their own military expenditures (Italy).

This military dependence on the United States entailed also their political and economic dependence. This is the reason why General De Gaulle granted nuclear arms to France and in the year 1966 decided to abandon the military organization of the North Atlantic Treaty.

The main diplomatic defeat, the most important problem for the Americans since the year 1989 is the answer to the following question: how to maintain the NATO system which is assuring their supremacy over Western Europe, when the very basis - the cold war - has disappeared and when the financial constraints are forcing them to reduce their military effective in Europe from 300,000 to 100,000 men?

One of the greatest successes of the American foreign policy, together with the Gulf War, was the prolonged and increased functioning of the North Atlantic Alliance in spite of the disappearance of the Soviet menace.

They have done this through a series of initiatives which have transformed NATO, a military organism, into a diplomatic body, political and economic, with the primary satisfaction of seeing in this way maintained and reinforced their hegemony thanks to the politics of France, which not only has de facto re-integrated into NATO, but has extended the field of its deployment to Yugoslavia.

Europe is finding itself geographically in the dire straights, between an Eastern Europe ravaged by economic disasters, escalation of extreme nationalism caused by the minority problems and the civil wars raging there, without taking into account conflicts on potential frontiers - and the southern coasts of the Mediterranean Sea where at the same time countries are experiencing a galloping demographic explosion, authoritarian regimes, very difficult economic situation bordering on the social crisis further deteriorated by the revival of the newly found religious Islam.

But the best allies of the American hegemonism are the Europeans themselves, who have enclosed themselves upon their Treaty of Maastricht and its famous criteria of convergence, sources of unemployment, and where the customs frontiers have become nonexistent after the repeated assaults of the international free exchange.

Germany in the North, Turkey in the South, these are the countries which have become the two major poles of American hegemony on the old continent. Their interventions in the passed (Germany) and the ones in the future (Turkey) in the Yugoslav affair, are for the American power the best guarantee of the persistence of their power over the divided Europeans, divided even in their very conception of what Europe should be at the dawn of the year 2000.

Ways of Power

Mastering of the world is not a simple thing to do. The super-power in question must be the driving force of the great economic, financial, military, strategic and, let us not forget, media phenomena. Between the mondialization of the economy and mondialization of the information, there spreads an entire range of ways to power: the war, mastering of international organizations, religion, embargo, etc...

The new world order has started through the Gulf War and is continuing through Yugoslavia. These two conflicts, situated thousands of kilometers apart from one another, in appearance are not presenting any common or similar features. Nevertheless, none of them could have erupted, at least not in the form in which we know them, without the disappearance of the Soviet Union. If the independence of Slovenia and Croatia had become inevitable, the independence of Bosnia in April 1992 was willed and executed by the Americans and continued at their will.

"By destroying Iraq and bringing starvation on its population through maintaining of the embargo, arbitrarily prolonged, the United States did not take into account all the consequences of their brutal intervention. Before the Gulf War, people of Islam could envisage two options and exercise their choice: either support Iraqi-Syrian Baasism, a socialist and a secular one, and as far as Iraq is concerned, turned towards the west, searching for a rapprochement by imitating its demarches, or to respond to the appeals of the Iranian integrism, and condemn the Judeo-Christian civilization considered amoral and opposed to values proclaimed by Islam. If need be, to fight this civilization by terrorism, for the lack of any other means which could confront it successfully. The defeat of Iraq and of its leadership "satanized", have compromised the options of the Baasists to the profit of the integrism. And it is exactly from the years 1991/1992 that it has manifested itself the more and more aggressive. The other consequence of this cruel war - and politically a very clumsy one - is the profound resentment of the population of the Islamic faith. Even if a certain number of their leaders have taken the side of the United States, the people of the ' believer' country was profoundly humiliated by the massive presence of the Westerners on the soil of Saudi Arabia, a show of their technical and military power, the sufferings thereupon inflicted on the Iraqis who, Muslims themselves, should have deserved a greater consideration. Since then, the United States are trying to push into oblivion their behavior by supporting wherever they can the cause of Islam (Middle East, Bosnia)".4

Islam or the Achilles Heel of the American Hegemony

There are more than one billion Muslims today all over the globe. There will be two billion of them over the next 25 years. Faced with this major phenomenon, the Americans have decided to abandon their role of "The Great Satan" who supports Israel, and to take the one of the friends of Arabs and Muslims in general.

How can they not try to seduce such an enormous mass of future consumers, incapable of producing in sufficient quantities and qualities the goods and services that the petrol money is allowing them to enjoy?

The Americans are now supporting an Islam which is fundamentalist but a conservationist and conform to their interests: Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, kingdoms of the Gulf. This Islam is first of all a Sunni one and is seeing itself as menaced by the Shiah Islam. Or, the zone of the Persian Gulf where three quarters of the petroleum reserves of the world are located, is inhabited by approximately sixty two percent of the Shiite, subjugated to the feudal mastering of the Sunnites: "In the Arab world for a long time dominated by the Sunnism, the Shiite have always been persecuted, excluded and very often were those who are poor. This awakening of the excluded has grave consequences on the Arab world, on the stability of the regimes in power, for the reasons of militancy of this Shiah world which is awakening". 5

Have the Americans - and the Europeans in the bunch - been mistaken about Islam? Whatever the truth, the Gulf War has permitted the Americans to install themselves for a long time to come, as masters in the region. Crisis in the Balkans justifies the permanence and geographic extension (Yugoslavia was not within the NATO zone) of an armed presence of the United States in Europe for the sole purpose of creating an Islamic and fundamentalist state in Bosnia.

For purpose of attempting to retrace, both in its diversity and similarity, the INTERACTION OF THE FIELDS OF FORCE of the American policy, this very complex account of the number of the decision-makers and internationalization of their actions, this book is divided into three parts:

Part one wishes to present the multiplicity of means applied, which allowed the ascent of the American hegemony. In this part the economic and financial liberalism will be studied, the GATT and the Maastricht Treaty, regionalism in Europe, application of the New World Order in the warrior mode - Iran/Iraq/Gulf War - and its immediate consequences - the pro-Islamic politics of the U.S.A., Sunni and Shiah Islam, peace process in the Middle East - embargo or the weapon of the rich against the poor, mastering of the international organizations - OUN/NATO, the European allies of the American power - Germany/Turkey, the role of the media.

Part two is devoted to the history of the Yugoslav space, from the origins of the Slav settlement in the region up to the year 1989. It is impossible to understand the "Yugoslav tragedy" without a minimum of historical knowledge, which neither the diplomats in charge of the conflict, nor the governments and journalist have given any proof of.

Part three or the application of the first part on the second, will be devoted to the civil wars in Yugoslavia, from the question of Kosovo up to the Dayton Peace Accords, to the independence of Slovenes, Croats, Macedonians and Bosnians, to the utilization of the right to apply force - Badinter's Commission /The Hague Conference/ embargo on Yugoslavia - the role of the European Economic Community, OUN and NATO, the game of the great powers, different peace plans, "ethnic cleansing" of Krajina, international criminal tribunal, the disaster of the French politics, the role of religious, identifiers of the war.

In conclusion, we are going to ask ourselves what are the chances for peace or what are the dangers of the war in the Balkans, of the presence of Islam in the heart of Europe, or the American chances in the region and, finally, of the destiny of the Serbian people, the main and unfortunate actor of the tragedy that involves it.

NOTES:
  1. Report of the High Commissariat for Refugees
  2. The New York Times, March 8, 1992
  3. International Herald Tribune, February 18, 1991
  4. Pierre Marie Gallois, Le solei d' Allah aveugle 1' Occident (The Sun of Allah Blinds the West), Edition 1' Age d' homme
  5. Francois Thual, Geopolitique du chiisme (Shiah Geopolitics), Editions Arle a.

PART ONE: The New World Order >>

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