{"article":{"id":9382,"heading":"Why is NATO in Yugoslavia; or the struggle of capitalism....","author":"Sean Gervasi","created":"2001-08-20 15:55:13","modified":"2005-08-15 00:37:35","last_modified":"Mon, 15 Aug 2005 07:37:35","article":"

Subject: WHY IS NATO IN YUGOSLAVIA?

WHY IS NATO IN YUGOSLAVIA?

A Paper Delivered to the Conference on the

Enlargement of NATO

in Eastern Europe and the

Mediterrenean

Prague, Czech Republic

January 1314, 1996

Sean Gervasi

Institute of International Politics

and Economics

Belgrade

Introduction

The North Atlantic Treaty Organization has recently sent

a large task force into

Yugoslavia,

ostensibly to enforce a settlement of the Bosnian war

arrived at in Dayton, Ohio

at the end of 1995.

This task force is said to consist of some 60,000 men,

equipped with tanks,

armor and artillery. It is

backed by formidable air and naval forces. In fact, if

one takes account of all

the support forces

involved, including forces deployed in nearby countries,

it is clear that at

least two hundred thousand

troops are involved. This figure has been confirmed by

U. S. defense sources. [

1 ] .

By any standards, the sending of a large Western

military force into Central and

lSastern Europe is

a remarkable enterprise, even in the fluid situation

created by the supposed end

of the Cold War.

The Ball:an task force represents not only the first

major NATO military

operation, but a major

operation staged \"out of area\", that is, outside the

boundaries originally

established for NATO

military action.

However, the sending of NATO troops into the Balkans is

the result of enormous

pressure for the

general extension of NATO eastwards.

If the Yugoslav enterprise is the first concrete step in

the expansion of NATO,

others are planned

for the near future. Some Western powers want to bring

the Visegrad countries

into NATO as full

members by the end of the century. There was resistance

to the pressures for

such extension

among certain Western countries for some time. However,

the recalcitrants have

now been

bludgeoned into accepting the alleged necessity of

extending NATO.

The question is: why are the Western powers pressing for

the expansion of NATO?

Why is NATO

being renewed and extended when the \"Soviet threat\" has

disappeared? There is

clearly much more

to it than we have so far been told. The enforcement of

a precarious peace in

Bosnia is only the

immediate reason for sending NATO forces into the

Balkans.

There are deeper reasons for the dispatch of NATO forces

to the Balkans, and

especially for the

extension of NATO to Poland, the Czech Republic and

Hungary in the relatively

near future. These

have to do with an emerging strategy for securing the

resources of the Caspian

Sea region and for

\"stabilizing\" the countries of Eastern Europe --

ultimately for \"stabilizing\"

Russia and the countries of

the Commonwealth of Independent States. This is, to put

it mildly, an extremely

ambitious and

potentially selfcontradictory policy. And it is

important to pose some basic

questions about the

reasons being given for pursuing it.

For the idea of \"stabilizing\" the countries which

formerly constituted the

Socialist bloc in Europe does

not simply mean ensuring political stability there,

ensuring that the regimes

which replaced Socialism

remain in place. It also means ensuring that economic

and social conditions

remain unchanged. And,

since the socalled transition to democracy in the

countries affected has in

fact led to an incipient

deindustrialization and a collapse of living standards

for the majority, the

question arises whether it is

really desirable.

The question is all the more pertinent since

\"stabilization\", in the sense in

which it is used in the

West, means reproducing in the former Socialist bloc

countries economic and

social conditions

which are similar to the economic and social conditions

currently prevailing in

the West. The

economies of the Western industrial nations are, in

fact, in a state of

semicollapse, although the

governments of those countires would never really

acknowledge the fact.

Nonetheless, any

reasonably objective assessment of the economic

situation in the West leads to

this conclusion. And

that conclusion is supported by official statistics and

most analyses coming

from mainstream

economists.

It is also clear, as well, that the attempt to

\"stabilize\" the former Socialist

bloc countries is creating

considerable tension with Russia, and potentially with

other countries. Not a

few commentators have

made the point that Western actions in extending NATO

even raise the risks of

nuclear conflict. [2]

It is enough to raise these questions briefly to see

that the extension of NATO

which has, de facto,

begun in Yugoslavia and is being proposed for other

countries is to a large

extent based on confused

and even irrational reasoning. One is tempted to say

that it results from the

fear and willfulness of

certain ruling groups. To put it most bluntly, why

should the world see any

benefit in the enforced

extension to other countries of the economic and social

chaos which prevails in

the West, and why

should it see any benefit in that when the very process

itself increases the

risks of nuclear war?

The purposes of this paper are to describe what lies

behind the current efforts

to extend NATO and

to raise some basic questions about whether this makes

any sense, in both the

narrow and deeper

meanings of the term.

NATO in Yugoslavia

The North Atlantic Treaty Organization was founded in

1949 with the stated

purpose of protecting

Western Europe from possible military aggression by the

Soviet Union and its

allies.

W'th the dissolution of the Communist regimes in the

former Socialist bloc in

1990 and 1991, there

was no longer any possibility of such aggression, if

there ever really had been.

The changes in the

former Communist countries made NATO redundant. Its

raison d'etre had vanished.

Yet certain

groups within the NATO countries began almost

immediately to press for a

\"renovation\" of NATO

and even for its extension into Central and Eastern

Europe. They began to

elaborate new rationales

which would permit the continuation of business as

usual.

The most important of these was the idea that, with the

changes brought about by

the end of the

Cold War, the Western countries nonetheless faced new

\"security challenges\"

outside the traditional

NATO area which justified the perpetuation of the

organization. The spokesmen

for this point of

view argued that NATO had to find new missions to

justify its existence.

The implicit premise was that NATO had to be preserved

in order to ensure the

leadership of the

United States in European and world affairs. This was

certainly one of the

reasons behind the

largescale Western intervention in which the

participation of US NATO

partners was

relatively meagre in Kuwait and Iraq in 1990 and

1991. The coalition which

fought against Iraq

was cobbled together with great difficulty. But it was

seen by the United States

government as

necessary for the credibility of the US within the

Western alliance as well as

in world affairs.

The slogan put forward by the early supporters of NATO

enlargement was \"NATO:

out of area or

out of business\", which made the point, although not the

argument, as plainly as

it could be made. [3]

Yugoslavia has also been a test case, and obviously a

much more important one.

The Yugoslav

crisis exploded on the edge of Europe, and the Western

European nations had to

do something about

it. Germany and the United States, on the other hand,

while seeming to support

the idea of ending

the civil wars in Yugoslavia, in fact did everything

they could to prolong them,

especially the war. in

Bosnia. t41 Their actions perpetuated and steadily

deepened the Yugoslav crisis.

It is important to recognize that, almost from the

beginning of the Yugoslav

crisis, NATO sought to

involve itself. That involvement was obvious in 1993

when NATO begari to support

UNPROFOR

operations in Yugoslavia, especially in the matter of

the blockade against the

Federal Republic of

Yugoslavia and the enforcement of a nofly zone in

Bosnian airspace.

That involvement, however, had much smaller beginnings,

and it must be

remembered that NATO

as an organization was involved in the war in

Bosnia-Herzegovina at a very early

stage. In 1992,

NATO sent a group of about 100 personnel to

BosniaHerzegovina, where they

established a

military headquarters at Kiseliak, a short distance from

Sarajevo. Ostensibly,

they were sent to help

United Nations forces in Bosnia.

It was obvious, however, that there was another purpose.

A NATO diplomat

described the

operation to INTELLIGENCE DIGEST in the following terms

at the time:

\"This is a very cautious first step, and we are

definitely not making much noise

about it. But it

could be the start of something bigger...You could argue

that NATO now has a

foot in the

door. Whether we manage to open the door is not sure,

but we have made a start.\"

[4].

It seems clear that NATO commanders were already

anticipating the possibility

that resistance to

US and German pressures would be overcome and that

NATO's role in Yugoslavia

would be

gradually expanded.

Thus NATO was working to create a major \"out of area\"

mission almost from the

time that the war

in BosniaHerzegovina began. The recent dispatch of tens

of thousands of troops

to Bosnia,

Austria, Hungary, Croatia and Serbia is thus simply the

culmination of a process

which began almost

four years ago. It was not a question of proposals and

conferences. It was a

question of inventing

operations which, with the backing of key countries,

could eventually lead to

NATO's active

engagement \"out of area\", and thus to its own

renovation.

The Eastward Expansion of NATO

NATO had never carried out a formal study on the

enlargement of the alliance

until quite recently,

when the Working Group on NATO Enlargement issued its

report. No doubt there

were internal

classified studies, but nothing is known of their

content to outsiders.

Despite the lack of clear analysis, however, the engines

for moving things

forward were working

hard from late 1991. At the end of that year, NATO

created the North Atlantic

Cooperation

Council. NATO member nations then invited 9 Central and

East European countries

to join the

NACC in order to begin fostering cooperation between the

NATO powers and former

members of

the Warsaw Pact.











































































































































































































































































































































































































































































































































































































































































































































































































































































































































































































































































































































































































































































































































































































































































































































































































































































































































































































































































































































































































































































































































































































































































































































































































































































































































































































































































































































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