Croatian 'Operation Storm' Generals Convicted of War Crimes

Apparantly, some Croatians feel that it was okay to drive people from their homes because they were Orthodox rather then Roman Catholic.

Reportedly some 30, 000 appeared in downtown Zagreb (2008 population 804,020) to protest the guilty verdict.

This too, is the position of Croatia's national government.

"Operation Storm"- the summer 1995 miltary offensive being reported as the culmination of Croatia's independence from Yugoslavia, was against the Serbian Krijina Republic, which had succeeded from Croatia after Croatia succeeded from Yugoslavia, with the Krijina being Croatia's Serbian inhabitated regions. Whereas its stated mission was to destroy the Krijina Republic and reincorporate it into Croatia, it included the driving out of some 300,000 Serbian peoples.

Reportedly they were particularly incensed about the finding that operation storm was a 'criminal enterprise'. Indeed! I can agree with this insofar as yes the U.S. and NATO were co-conspirators- and by extension the U.S. State Department and the Clinton Administration.

Indeed, in reporting on these legal preceedings, The New York Times, in an article dated March 12, 2008, reported:

The New York Times wrote that the trial of Gotovina, Cermak and Markac will reveal the role of America in the Croatian Operation Storm.

The trial of Croatian general Ante Gotovina, who closely cooperated with American advisers as he directed the Operation Storm in 1995, may draw the attention on the covert American role in Croatia’s counter-offensive action against the Serbs, The New York Times reports.

“United States military advisers, among them retired and active personnel, helped plan the operation, and Americans directed drone aircraft over the battle zone to gain real-time intelligence for Croatian forces, Croatian officials have said” the NY Times reports.

Alluding to attorneys familiar with the trial, the daily wrote that the United States were not involved with any criminal charges related to the operation, but some of the American intelligence methods or sources could be disclosed.

“Washington has taken a keen interest in the trial, and American diplomats have visited the United Nations war crimes tribunal in The Hague to discuss the case, a former senior prosecutor said” the NYT added.

This url cites an article by Ivo Pukanic in Nacional, Croatian weekly magazine

http://www.nacional.hr/index3e.php?broj=2005-05-24&kat=english&id=516

May 24, 2005

Thrilled with Operation Flash, President Clinton gave the go ahead for Operation Storm

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The United States was actively involved in the preparation, monitoring and initiation of Operation Storm: the green light from President Clinton was passed on by the US military attache in Zagreb, and the operations were transmitted in real time to the Pentagon

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Considering that the US was much more interested in the situation in BiH than in Croatia, they asked Croatia to permit them to install a military base with ummanned aircraft. The United States not only monitored the complete Operation Storm, but they also actively participated with the Croatian Military in its preparation, and in the end directly initiated the operation. The green light from the White House and then President Clinton for Operation Storm was passed on by Colonel Richard C. Herrick, then US military attaché in Zagreb. Several days prior to the commencement of Operation Storm, Herrick visited Markica Rebiæ in Zagreb. Rebiæ, Miroslav Tudjman, then director of HIS and Miro Medimurac, then head of SIS, held the most intensive communications with the American military and intelligence agencies. As such, in 1996, Rebiæ was awarded the Meritorius Service Medal by Peter Galbraith, then US Ambassador to Croatia.

Herrick passed on the message that the US had no opposition to the beginning of Operation Storm, that the operation had to be ‘clean and fast’ and had to be completed in 5 days time. As Nacional has learned, Rebiæ was surprised that such an important political and military message would be passed on through those channels, and following Herrick’s visit, he immediately informed the state administration of the message in writing, and there is certain record of this today in the archives. As such, it is important to note the Ambassador Peter Galbraith was completely left out of the chain of ‘command’, and that this message came directly from President Clinton, Anthony Lake (then National Security Advisor) and Willian Perry (then Defense Secretary) via Rebiæ to Minister Gojko Šušak and President Tudjman.

This was the climax of the cooperation between the US and Croatia, which began to develop in 1992 at the beginning of the Serbian-Muslim war. In 1995, Clinton was preparing for his re-election, and Bob Dole was the Republican candidate who had requested that Congress remove the arms embargo for the Muslims in BiH. For Clinton, the Balkans became an important issue due to internal matters in the US and his stay in the White House. In their strategy to resolve the crisis, they decided to use Croatia to attack the Serbian forces in BiH, and therefore the Split Declaration was signed by Izetbegoviæ and Tudjman, which permitted the entry of HV forces under the leadership of Ante Gotovina into BiH for the purposes of cooperation with Army BiH. In order to realize that operation, HV had to climb the Dinarid mountains above Knin and liberate the city and Krajina through Operation Storm, and then immediately transfer their troops into BiH in order to pressure the Serbs and force Miloševiæ to sign the Peace Accord in Dayton.

This was a battle against the clock for Clinton, for he needed a quick solution to the crisis in order to halt Dole’s initiative and to prove himself before his voters as a decisive president who could resolve such great crises such as the one in the former Yugoslavia, the horrors of which were shown daily on CNN and other American TV stations. In order to keep the English and French off his back, Clinton bypassed the classical diplomatic channels, in order to be able to claim that he had not participated if the operation were to go sour. However, considering that the operation, led by Richard Holbrook on his behalf, ended successfully, and the men emphasized their success in their respective books.

The first contact at the highest intelligence levels began in 1992, when James Clapper was director of DIA (the Defense Intelligence Agency). His men in Croatia were Colonel Richard Herrick and his assistant Ivan Šaraè. Šaraè was a fourth order [master] sergeant, the highest rank for a non-commissioned officer. Of Croatian descent, he emigrated to the US when he was 17 years old. After a few years, he enlisted in the army and was sent to Zagreb at the beginning of the war there as he was familiar with the circumstances and knew the language. Colonel Herrick was a construction engineer, however, over time he climbed the ladder in the American military and became one of Clapper’s most trusted men.

Quickly a sort of ‘trade’ between the two agencies began. Croatia gave DIA Russian 500 kg underwater mines and the most modern Russian torpedos as well as the encryption codes used by the Yugoslav Army and the Russian army. These weapons were transferred to the US via the Split airport. When the transport was conducted, the entire airport was closed off. Hercules C-130s landed in the night, the arms were loaded and transferred to the US or one of their European bases under the greatest security measures. Also, the Croatian agency revealed the location of a chemical weapons factory in Bijelo polje near Mostar which the Serbs had transferred to Serbia. This was a well-concealed factory which was unknown even to General Bienefeld, who was the greatest expert for chemical weapons in Croatia. With the help of samples found, the American experts were able to uncover all the types of toxins produced there which had possibly been sold to Iraq or other potential enemies of the US. This was only the beginning of cooperation, by which the US immediately delivered wiretapping equipment aimed at monitoring Serbia and Montenegro, a system which could simultaneously record 20,000 telephone conversations. This cooperation was conducted with the US NSA.

Prior to Storm, the operations Summer 94 and Summer 95 had to be carried out. In planning the operations of bringing Croatian troops above Knin, the US assisted in the intelligence part of the operations. In order to precisely plan the penetration into the Bosnian mountains inland of Knin, much information was needed on the movement of Serbian troops, their communication system, codes and establishment of shelling points.

Considering that the US was much more interested in the situation in BiH than in Croatia, they asked Croatia to permit them to install a military base with ummanned aircraft. The basic condition was that this be the best-kept secret, so that it would not appear that the US had taken sides in this war. The island of Brac was selected, as it could be well protected. There all the equipment and personnel led by the CIA experts, with the long-range unmanned aircraft which could cover the entire territory of BiH to the Serbian corridor on the Sava River. The entire Krajina region in Croatia was also in its range. At that time, no one had any idea what was going on and what was being hidden on the island of Brac. Nor did the US allies, the Germans, have any idea. They sent their military attaché there on 1 January 1994. He hired a rent-a-car and drove the outer fence of the base and began taking pictures, thinking that the alertness in the base had faltered on New Year’s Day. However, he was quickly spotted by SIS and arrested. Only when he was brought into Gotovina for questioning was it learned that this was the German military attaché in Zagreb, Hans Schwan.

After this incident, the entire base was transferred to Šepurina near Zadar, and a triple line of defense placed around it. Equipment was brought in from the US overnight, and from Šepurina, the unmanned aircraft could cover every corner of Krajina and BiH. The Americans had a silent agreement with HV to hand over all the photos of the terrain and the Serbian troops, while the images were transferred via satellite in real time to the Pentagon. Three US and three Croatian officers monitored the situation at all times.

Prior to Operation Flash, which was supposed to serve as a dress rehearsal for Storm, at exactly midnight, six hours prior to the beginning of the operation, Herrick and Šaraè were called into the police and were informed that the planned action would begin in a few hours time. In the Police Ministry, at exactly midnight, the staff of Operation Flash was formed, which was transferred to the Defense Ministry at 6 a.m. When the staff was moved, the American military attaché moved with it. He constantly requested updates and sent them directly to Clinton in the White House. Each morning, the American President was informed of the preparations and every part of the operation. The Americans were thrilled by the way Flash was carried out, they realized that this model of cooperation with the Croatians was ideal, and could be decisive in the battle against Miloševiæ in BiH and could ultimately result in removing him from power. The Pentagon coordinated the entire action via Richard Herrick, and the CIA activities were coordinated by Marc Kelton, head of the CIA branch in Zagreb, who cooperated closely with Miroslav Tudjman, then head of HIS.

At the time Storm was under preparation, the Americans supplied HV with intelligence on the movements of Serbs in Krajina and the movements of YNA on the eastern borders of Croatia. They feared that Miloševiæ would launch a counter-attack with two tank brigades in eastern Slavonia if the Croats launched an attack on Knin. Through intensive monitoring of communications between Belgrade and Knin, and within Serbia, they came to the conclusion that there would be no counter-attack. It was risky that the Serbs might launch an attack from Knin itself when Gotovina and his units arrived on the Dinarid mountains above the city. Had the unmanned aircraft and monitoring showed offensive maneuvers by the troops, Storm would have begun ten days earlier.

In the wee hours of 4 August 1995, the Croatian units were issued the command to turn off all telecommunications devices between midnight and 4 am. Later it was learned that the Americans had used that time to electronically intercept and destroy the Serbian telecommunications devices.

HV was left with one hour, from 4-5 AM to use their radio ties to coordinate the operation. Just prior to Storm, the American military attaché was again called to the operation staff. Ivan Šaraè was again with him. One or two days prior to Storm, Herrick, who had prepared Storm with the Croatian officers and gave the operation the green light on Clinton’s behalf, was replaced by Colonel John Sadler. At exactly midnight, they arrived at the operative staff and from there followed all the events in the field. This time, the entire Operation was transmitted in real time via satellite to the Pentagon, where these images remain archived today. The signal transmitted to the signal by the Americans was also received by HV, and with the help of those images, the firing upon Serbian positions and the military base near Knin could be monitored to within millimeters. In addition to electronically destroying the Serbian communications, the US military also acted militarily against the Serbian positions, when it fired on the anti-aircraft battery near Knin from American combat planes that flew over the battle area. That news was released only once, on the 6 o’clock news. Afterwards, the US sharply condemned this, and that news was never repeated. No one believed the official American explanation for the rocket attack, and today the general perception is that this was direct US assistance to HV, only that even ten years after Storm this must not be admitted, due to US-British relations, as Britain had a completely different perspective on how to resolve the Balkan issue. And it still does today.

The US was thrilled with the how fast and clean the operation was conducted, and with its outcome, which permitted the lightning fast entry of HV into BiH and penetration all the way to Banja Luka and, finally, Belgrade’s consent to sign the Dayton Accord. The American control and satisfaction of the complete operation was later confirmed in the statements that the operation was carried out properly, and as such, the US-Croatian cooperation in intelligence and military matters intensified. General Colonel Patrick Hughes, Clapper’s successor as director of DIA, visited Croatia, intensified cooperation in the sector of electronic monitoring of Serbia and Montenegro, other intelligence was swapped, MPRI began its intensive training of the Croatian military and Rebiæ was decorated for his efforts.

The first word that Croatian officers might have to stand trial for the events during Storm was heard in 1997. The US immediately responded and requested on a dozen occasions in discussions with the Hague Prosecutor that Storm, as a militarily-clean operation, be left alone, as Nacional has learned from a high-ranking diplomatic source. At that time, there was a problem concerning the extradition of Mladen Naletiliæ Tuta to the Hague, and the US promised Croatia that the Hague would not raise charges for Storm if they handed Naletiliæ over. Naletiliæ was extradited, and Carla Del Ponte outwitted the American administration and began with her demands that the Croatian generals be investigated as suspects in Storm. The US was dismayed but was not allowed to show this, trying to resolve the matter through quiet diplomacy instead, which to this day has not succeeded. Therefore it would be a step in the right direction for the Hague to request that the Pentagon hand over all the images recorded by the ‘Predator’ unmanned aircraft during and after Storm.

Furthermore, for the interests of truth, all of the high ranking American military and intelligence officers involved in the entire operation, which ended the war in the Balkans and removed Miloševiæ from power, should be called to testify in the Hague. Those responsible for the crimes which took place after the operation are known, and they are the ones which should stand before the court, as they should have eight or nine years ago. Had these men been tried then, Carla Del Ponte today would have no aces up her sleeve, and Croatia would not have the problems it has, with the entire operation proclaimed a ‘criminal operation’ and the entire state administration of the time a ‘criminal organization’.

Wlodimir Ledochowski's Afterglow 7 Clinton's Waco Massacre

There seemed, indeed, during those years of Ledochowski, Pius XI, and Pius XII, no real limit to what both Jesuitism and overall Roman Catholicism could achieve. Even – especially, we should say – in the afterglow of Ledochowski’s long reign and into the Generalate of his successor, Belgian Jean-Baptise Janssens, the magic power of the momentum seemed to continue.

William Jefferson Clinton would waste even less time displaying that-- as Commander in Chief -- he was a cold blooded murderer of some 88 people, for the sake of enforcing ancient Vatican dictates against heretics, via his cowardly approach to the Branch Davidian sect in Waco, Texas.

Its leader David Koresh, was ostensibly targeted for arrest on never substantiated methamphetamine manufacturing charges (that would statutorily allow such a use of military in domestic law enforcement), though was writing a paper about the Bible’s Book of Revelations Book of Seven Seals.

I find it incomprehensible that there has been so little attention placed on just what Koresh was writing, particularly amongst anti-Vatican Bible scholars, as it is plausible that some writings could displease established religious authorities, that Rome has a long history of suppressing the written words of ‘heresies’, and the connections throughout the government and the MSM to pull that of.

Such over-the-top ‘law enforcement’ -- to arrest a man who routinely jogged providing numerous opportunities for an easier arrest -- starting a 2+ month long siege culminating with armored tanks crashing their turrets into the Branch Davidian building, and the shooting of flammable gas into this building which the FBI had turned off its electricity and knew was being lit via lanterns, starting a fire killing 88 Branch Davidians, including many children, marks a military action of a religious inquisition.

Waco ended any doubt that such Naziesque behavior by the government could indeed happen here and more disturbingly with the acquiescence if not support of the general public.

The reporting by such MSM entities as The Washington Post -- infamous for lying about some of the most monumental things within the Beltway -- could serve as textbook examples of spin to deny sympathy to Koresh and by extension his followers, and continually distract from the $64,000 question of just what was Koresh writing about the Book of Seals, and particularly just what within would have been so objectionable?

Vatican Tool: Donald Graham,
Executive Publisher, The Washington Post

http://www.sevenseals.com/

http://www.watchman.org/cults/seven.htm

http://ccat.sas.upenn.edu/gopher/text/religion/koresh/Koresh%20Seals

Wlodimir Ledochowski's Afterglow 6 continuing criminal mercantilism under Clinton

Wojtyla & Kolvenbach’s Bill Clinton- Jesuit Tool for ‘Drug War’ Criminal Mercantilism

There seemed, indeed, during those years of Ledochowski, Pius XI, and Pius XII, no real limit to what both Jesuitism and overall Roman Catholicism could achieve. Even – especially, we should say – in the afterglow of Ledochowski’s long reign and into the Generalate of his successor, Belgian Jean-Baptise Janssens, the magic power of the momentum seemed to continue.

The slavish devotion of this next U.S. President, the first of the Democrat Party in 12 years, since Jimmy Carter, would clearly indicate that like the Republican Party, the Democratic Party to was and is a complete tool of the Vatican.

This was evident with the Jesuit’s grooming relationship via their political powerhouse Georgetown University, with their next major political tool, William Jefferson Clinton, with his cowardly approach to the ‘drug war’.

Clinton wasted little time demonstrating his loyalty to Rome’s pharmacratic inquisition-criminal mercantilism with his administration’s slavish devotion to the status quo to simply bury the facts, such as the Clinton Administration’s suppression of the 1993 US Congress Office of Technology Assessment endorsement for legalizing Coca, and the 1994-95 UN World Health Organization reports regarding Coca and cocaine.

Clinton was slavishly continuing Rome’s pharmaceutical-cigarette protectionist policies dating back to whatever transpired between the Vatican and Angelo Mariani when they were giving him the papal medals as a benefactor of humanity.

He was found of using the example of his brother as why ‘drugs’ particularly cocaine must remain illegal- altogether disregarding that it is probation that ensure that drugs popularization in concentrated abuse promoting modes. IOW- Bill Clinton was a complete lackey for the very drug policies that suppressed Coca while promoting highly concentrated cocaine, who deserved to be forced to publicly snort NoDoz and apologize for his shameful participation in these endeavors of criminal mercantilism.

He did finally get around to admitting that marijuana should be ‘decriminalized’ in an Esquire magazine interview at the end of his 2^nd 4 year term- an 8 year period where arrests for marijuana prohibition violation had escalated sharply.

LINK- Explaining people like FDR

Amber Path West To South 14

If TIME can admit that U.S. President Ronald Wilson Reagan (1981-1989) and Roman Catholic Church Pope John Paul II "conspired to assist Poland's Solidarity movement and hasten the demise of communism", then what about the roles of U.S. President William Jefferson Clinton (1993-2001) and Pope John Paul II in steering the Vatican's Counter Reformation War against the Orthodox Serbian people?

http://continuingcounterreformation.blogspot.com/2009/12/amber-path-us-for-croatia-and-against.html

(excerpt)

In early August 1991, when western European-brokered talks on defusing the Yugoslav crisis were about to begin, Croatian special forces launched a secret and brutal raid on Knin, headquarters of the Krajina Serb government. During the raid, Croatian comandos killed 60 Serbian resistence fighters. The next day, EC's representative, Dutch foreign minister Hans van den Broek, requested a meeting of Yugoslav contending patries. No repriemnad were issued against the Croatian attack. Milosevic was furious and refused to attend EC negotiations. Far from sympathizing with the Serbs, however, the Dutch foreign minister blaimed Milosevic for scuttling the talks. The next day, Germany's foreign minister, Hans-Dietrich Gensher, threatened Serbia with economic sanctions. Again, no reprimand was issued against Croatia for its role in the dispute. Germany's close ally, Austria, put additional pressure on Serbia by announcing it was considernig recognizing Croatia.

The Vatican was also making its view clear on the issue. In an August 17, 1991 Mass in the Hungarian city of Pecs, less then 20 miles from Croatia, Pope John Paul II stated that Croatian actions to break away from Yugoslavia were "legitimate aspirations". The Pope's comments were eagerly welcomed by Cardinal Franjo Kuharac of Zagreb and thousands of Croatians who cheered and waved Craotian national flags throughout the Pope's speech.

http://continuingcounterreformation.blogspot.com/2009/01/croatia-wins-expulsions-ok-for-roman.html

Amber Path West To South 13

An account of the Yugoslav War written by by Jan Marijnissen and Karel Glastra van Loon

Jan Marijnissen is leader of the Socialist Party of the Netherlands (SP)

Karel Glastra van Loon was a novelist and journalist, closely associated with the SP, who has died, at the age of only 43, since this book was published in the original Dutch. His best known work in English was The Passion Fruit

The Last War of the 20th Century - Chapter 13

May 14, 2008 8:35 | by Jan Marijnissen and Karel Glastra van Loon A new 'new world order' As long as our world, which has the resources to end poverty everywhere, is divided into those addressing the problems of plenty and those confronted by the problems of scarcity, peace and freedom will remain fragile. Nelson Mandela, 24th July, 1998, at the Mercosur Heads of State Summit, in Ushuaia, Argentina In the foregoing chapters we have seen that in the West in general, and within NATO and the European Union in particular, a great deal is expected of the potential of military intervention in domestic and regional conflicts. NATO's new strategic concept and the EU's efforts to develop its own 'military capacity' flow directly from this. On the basis of the wars in Bosnia and Kosovo we have tried to make it clear that these expectations are unfounded, dangerous and shortsighted. Unfounded because the political goals have not been achieved (see Kosovo); dangerous because the violent imposition of peace unleashed new tensions, which in time will lead to new conflicts (see Kosovo and Bosnia); and shortsighted because only short term and limited solutions are considered, with no estimation of the geopolitical consequences (such as for example in terms of relations with Russia), while insufficient account is taken of the history and other aspects of the background to conflicts (see almost all recent military interventions). In order to achieve a lasting peace - or more modestly, to prevent conflicts - other means than violence are much more appropriate. That is why to close this book we want to put forward a few initiatives towards a fundamental debate around a more structural approach to international tensions, and by those means the prevention of violent escalations in the future. Relations between ethnic and/or religious majority and minority groups within states, but also relations amongst states, are often seen in stereotypical terms. Too often tensions are described on the basis of a limited observation of a few incidents, as well as on the basis of platitudes and myths which do no justice to the complex reality. Precisely because it is not straightforward, given this complexity, to develop a truly effective insight into the background to problems elsewhere in the world, it is imperative to operate in international politics with the greatest possible caution. The byword of responsible members of governments should be heeded: better no foreign policy than a bad foreign policy. It is after all true that the greater the distance, both geographic and cultural, the smaller the empathy. And without empathy it is wellnigh inevitable that each intervention will eventually turn out badly, as has been the case time after time during this decade. When in Rwanda the Hutus and the Tutsis became enemies, many thought that what we were dealing with were tribes who had for years lived in discord with each other, that people were being identified only by their appearance and on that basis considered each other friend or foe. These are dangerous simplifications. The historical and socio-economic background, involving poverty, overpopulation and social inequality, continues to be seriously underestimated in many analyses of Rwanda. This has also been the case in the Yugoslav crisis, in the conflicts in the Caucasus, in Indonesia, in short in almost all conflicts which have demanded the attention of the international community over the last few years, despite the fact that it is precisely this socio-economic background which is so extremely important for the forming of a correct picture of the causes of these conflicts. And without knowledge of the causes there can be no adequate solutions, without a good diagnosis, no good medicine. The Pakistani development economist Mahbul ul Haq says with regard to the violence that has flared up in so many places in the world in the past ten or fifteen years that 'You can call these conflicts ethnic or regional, but the real causes are social and economic.' If that is the case, and the 'international community' is truly concerned by all of the injustice to which people subject each other, then you might expect that everything would be done to ensure a fairer division of the world's wealth, in order to help the poor countries in their development, and to create opportunities for those who currently have none. Nothing, however, could be further from the truth: the contradictions in the world continue to grow. The immense debts owed by poor countries to rich ones mean that each year 200 billion dollars net is transferred from South to North, from poor to rich. The average income in 1960 in the richest countries was thirty times greater than in the poorest; in 1990 the ratio was 1:60, while by 1997 it had further deteriorated, to 1:74. The United Nations' Human Development Report for 1999 included - by way of further illustration - the following bizarre comparison: the wealth of the three richest people in the world is greater than the value of the economies of the thirty-five poorest countries combined. The army of the world's really poor currently numbers 1.3 billion people, and that figure continues to climb. What does the expression 'global village' mean in such a perspective? In what village is one person in three allowed to suffer miserably from hunger, while at the same time a minority can abandon themselves to their hearts' content to the thorough enjoyment of life? The expression 'global village' was invented and propagated in order to describe so-called globalisation, and to depict it as a fait accompli. This globalisation forms in its turn a justification for the carrying out of a free trade which goes ever further and the lifting of all restrictions on the movement of capital, with no regard to the social consequences for the 'village'. Or as Sakiko Fukuda-Parr, one of the compilers of the Human Development Report 1999, puts it: 'Globalisation has great advantages for some but for most of the world's citizens it means only further exclusion and impoverishment.' At the end of the 'nineties a major financial crisis hit Asia. The managers of the enormous quantity of money - 1.5 trillion dollars per day - from wealthy countries which roams the digital highway in search of the highest profit levels, were for a number of reasons afraid of losing their money, and decided over a short period of time to withdraw it from countries such as Thailand, Malaysia, Indonesia and South Korea, once known collectively as the 'Asian Tigers'. Within a few days millions of people in the countries involved had lost their jobs and local currencies tumbled to record lows. The crisis resounded long afterwards - not in the rich West, where there was relief and an almost triumphalist assertion that the world economy could indeed survive some rough-handling, but far more in the affected countries themselves. According to the UNDP report discussed above, the crisis led to ''erosion of the social fabric, to social unrest and to a growth in criminality'. The flaring up of all sorts of 'ethnic-religious' conflicts in Indonesia in recent times cannot be seen as unrelated to the economic crisis in which the country has found itself. When as a result of this crisis the Suharto regime fell, countless western experts (amongst whom was the biggest boss of Dutch bank ING's subsidiary in Jakarta) all knew precisely what had gone wrong in Indonesia: the country was corrupt through and through, its 'democracy' was a farce and there was no respect for human rights. The crisis was, in other words, the fault of Indonesia itself. This analysis stood in stark contrast to everything that had been called for in preceding years in regard to the country of Suharto. Human rights activists had been told not to moan and whinge, and Development Cooperation Minister Jan Pronk got a dressing down for his trouble when he had the nerve to approach the Suharto government about the massacre in East Timor. During a royal visit to Indonesia in the year that the country celebrated fifty years of independence, a heavyweight delegation of Dutch entrepreneurs travelled in the footsteps of Her Majesty in order to do business in what was then still referred to as an exemplary growth economy. Top Philips boss Jan Timmer took this opportunity to announce that if he were still young he would certainly set out for South East Asia in order to seek his fortune. We heard not a word then about corruption, while human rights also went unmentioned. As long as there was money to be earned it would turn out time and again that concern over the fate of one's fellow human beings would melt away like snow on a sunny spring day, only to be wheeled out when the situation deteriorated and foreign investments and earnings were at risk. In order to put an end to the vicious circle of lopsided economic growth, exploitation, poverty, migration, instability, crisis and violence in which so many countries are trapped, it is necessary that the western powers at long last show the courage to take a critical look at their economic interventions in those countries. It will then emerge that structural measures are needed if the constant repetition of humanitarian tragedies is to be prevented. In the first place the developing countries must have - and retain - the freedom to determine their own development strategy. This would stand in complete opposition to the Multilateral Agreement on Investments (MAI), which the OECD - the organisation representing the richest industrialised countries - and the World Trade Organization currently have in mind. The countries of the Third World must no longer be pressured to accept the International Monetary Fund's neoliberal prescription before they are given any support by the wealthy countries. Even Henry Kissinger, ex-US Secretary of State, criticises the shortsighted approach of the IMF as being 'just like a doctor specializing in measles [who] tries to cure every illness with one remedy", as he wrote not so long ago, complaining that the Fund always prescribes 'moderation', large increases in interest rates to counter capital flight, and strong devaluation in order to discourage imports and stimulate exports. This, he argued, always leads to a dramatic fall in living standards, explosive growth in unemployment and a growing malaise in the general population, undermining the very political institutions that must carry out the IMF programme. Kissinger sides with a long line of former political leaders who, no longer being in office, suddenly begin to say things which are both intelligent and critical. Organisations such as the WTO and the IMF currently represent exclusively the institutionalised 'market think' and interests of the countries which stand to gain most from their approach. They talk constantly of total freedom of trade as opposed to a total lack of freedom, but equal rules for unequal countries simply perpetuate inequality. Moreover globalised free trade means little more than the ability to set worker against worker throughout the world in a new race to the bottom when it comes to wages, social security, social provisions and working conditions. Not only people but nature and the environment will inevitably pay a high price for this. Poor countries must have the right to protect their own domestic markets from cheap western products, in order that they can have enough time to build up their own industries and security of food supply. On the other hand low income countries must have the right and means to sell their products on the markets of wealthy countries without being confronted with barriers in whatever form. In 1976, 7.2 percent of the European Economic Community's total imports originated in developing countries, while in 1995 this percentage had fallen for the European Union to 4.5 percent. It is completely morally objectionable that we continue to think that we should protect our European markets from cheap products from these countries, while we at the same time force them into an unlimited opening of their own markets to our products and corporations. The foreign exchange which they could earn through their exports is indispensable, for example for acquiring new technology. A concrete possibility to do something about inequality in the world could be provided by the introduction of a solidarity levy. Whenever countries gain a competitive advantage through their indifference to social rights or to the interests of the environment, their products should be excluded from the international market by means of a levy imposed at the borders of the importing country. In keeping with the unequal economic position of different countries the size of this levy should be proportionate with the size of the Gross National Product of the exporting country. All of this should be conditional on the poorest countries - as we have already argued - being at all times given free access to 'rich' markets. If we are then also prepared to pay a fair price for their products, so that they too have the chance to work on building a just society, we will have provided ourselves with an effective means of bringing about a redistribution of global wealth and thereby a safer world. Another possible measure is the taming of what former German Chancellor Helmut Schmidt described as 'predator capitalism'. This could be achieved by means of a reintroduction of restrictions on international capital movements, so that economies can no longer - as a result of the herd behaviour and blind hunger for profit of owners of capital - be brought to ruin in a single day. Even the former senior adviser to the GATT (now the WTO), American economics professor Jagdish Bhagwati, seems to have grasped this, as he shows at the end of a lengthy article in the Dutch business daily Financieele Dagblad of 26th September 1998: 'And despite evidence of the risks attached to the free flow of capital, the Wall Street financial complex continues to make the self-serving assumption that the ideal world is indeed one of free capital flows, with the IMF presiding over all. But the weight and the force of logic points in the opposite direction, towards limits on capital flows. It is time to shift the burden of proof from the opponents to the supporters of free capital.' In order to limit these capital flows we must be able to move towards the introduction of the so-called Tobin Tax. James Tobin, American economist and Nobel Laureate, proposed at the beginning of the 'seventies the imposition of a 0.1 percent tax on international monetary flows. By these means situations such as that in Asia in 1997 and 1998 would occur less frequently, while, still more importantly, the United Nations, which would have to collect this, would for example for the year 2000 have available over 188 billion dollars, twice as much money as experts argue would be necessary to combat the world's most severe poverty. In conclusion, a development plan for the Third World's countries must be established under the aegis of the UN - it goes without saying that this should be done with the involvement of the countries in question - and financed by the wealthy countries. Under the slogan 'debt clearance is the best conflict prevention', a start could be made on debt forgiveness for low income countries, the central demand of the Jubilee 2000 initiative. Annual interest and repayments hang like a millstone around the neck of these countries and prevent them clambering up out of the depths of poverty. A country such as Ethiopia is currently forced to pay four times as much money in interest and debt repayment as it does on health care, to give just one harrowing example. And while we are on the subject of a development plan under UN supervision, we should not refrain from calling on this same UN to screen for once instances of multilateral development aid for efficiency and effectiveness. As things stand development cooperation - bilateral and multilateral - is in general a hotchpotch of good intentions, as emerged in practice in, amongst other places, former Yugoslavia. In Bosnia, for example, there are no less than 450 different aid NGOs and consultancies active in spending the 10 billion Deutschmarks which has in total been made available by the various donor countries. The fact that the results fail to meet expectations is logical, as is the fact that there are exceptionally high levels of waste. While corruption thrives in luxury, the reconstruction for which the money was intended stagnates. As we have already said, an 'international community' which was really concerned about the humanitarian tragedies unfolding in countless parts of the world, would put a comparable measure high on the political agenda. That this is not happening says as much about the sincerity of the politicians involved as it does about the relations of power in the world since the fall of the Berlin Wall. A nice illustration of how these relations currently lie was provided by the WTO negotiations which took place in Seattle in December 1999. Corporations such as Microsoft, Hewlett Packard, General Motors and Northwest Airlines belonged to the exclusive community of sponsors that by means of a payment of less than 100,000 dollars assured themselves of the necessary privileges. They each took a place on the front row as well as gaining - to the advantage of their lobbyists - direct access to the informal circuit for direct contact with the heads of state, government leaders and other delegates present. Meanwhile an enormous force of police held the thousands of demonstrators back, while the demonstrators outside the conference building gave voice to the huge dissatisfaction which is growing in ever broader circles over the monomaniac way in which the WTO operates. If we really want to move towards a truly new world order, then this gap between participants to the WTO negotiations and those demonstrators must be closed. Only then will the one-sided fixation on free trade, if needs be at the cost of state sovereignty, and with no regard for the political, social, ecological or safety consequences, have to give way to an awareness of the interests of all of those now ground down by the unrestrained forces of the free market. If it is the most important causes of many conflicts with which we are concerned - poverty, neglect, lack of development and absence of hope - then there is still a world to win. But if this 'new world' is really our goal, we cannot avoid first of all answering the question, 'Who do we want to rule this world?' Is it the rich countries within which this service is provided by those who possess the economic power? Is it organisations such as the WTO, the IMF, the OECD and the G7 in which the wealthy countries set the tone and impose their will on the rest? Or is it the political forces, legitimised by democracy, which are striving for development and progress within and for all countries, for a fair distribution of wealth and for protection of nature and of the environment? Earlier in this book various people stressed the role of the United Nations and of regional organisations such as the OSCE. The Netherlands Advisory Council on International Affairs had this to say about this question: 'Both the UN and the OSCE have a coordinating responsibility in relation to the preservation of international peace and security. The UN is the sole global forum in which security and stability, human rights, sustainable socio-economic development and environmental problems are on the agenda in their internal cohesiveness.' Everyone - with any knowledge of these matters - will only be able to agree with this assessment. But this assessment should also have consequences for policy. Anyone who takes these words seriously cannot at the same time defend a situation in which countries off their own bat and whenever it suits them break the UN's monopoly on the use of violence and with no legitimacy enter into conflicts in foreign countries. By such actions international law is desecrated, the position of the Security Council undermined and geopolitical stability placed in the balance. The Pax Americana, by which the monopolar world which has existed since the fall of the Wall is characterised, has led in the west to the arrogant belief that we can do everything on our own. The manner in which the west has behaved since the departure of Gorbachev, is therefore illustrative: the enlargement of NATO towards the east; the disregard of the Russian (and Chinese) standpoint in relation to the conflict in Kosovo; using, certainly, Russia's diplomatic offices in solving the conflict but granting the Russians no significant role in the framework of KFOR; the continuation of the development of a defence shield in space by the United States, despite the fact that this is in conflict with the Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty; the development of a new frontline to the south of Russia as a result of strategic interests connected to the oil which is to be found in that region. Where these policies have led within Russia was made clear in Chapter 8 of Part 1 of this book by Georgi Arbatov en Vladimir Lukin; to what foreign policy consequences it will lead only the future can tell us. Although many criticisms can be made of the functioning of the UN - we have written about this above - it is as things stand (and probably this will remain the case) the only place in which the major powers and other countries can together discuss geopolitical questions. Intelligent foreign policy must include the goal of strengthening the United Nations and its institutions, as well as the Organisation for Security and Cooperation in Europe, the OSCE. Max van der Stoel, OSCE High Commissioner for national minorities, takes every possible opportunity to complain about the lack of interest from the international community in investing in inter-ethnic cooperation directed at the early prevention of conflicts. In his lonely struggle he finds it absolutely impossible to assemble financial resources for such projects. 'The states which must contend with economic stagnation or even decline, with as a consequence the threatened loss of of the hope for a better future, deserve particular attention,' said Van der Stoel in his inaugural professorial address at the University of Leiden. 'In such situations political extremism thrives. Giving new impulses through outside aid can help to turn around such dangers and belongs in a modern security policy.' The fire brigade have a popular saying: 'Any fire can be extinguished with a bucket of water if only you get there quickly enough.' For those who really want to contribute to a safer world there are therefore two questions to be answered: do we have the will to get there early? And do we have a bucket of water? In order to 'get there early' we must create a worldwide early warning system, which will enable the UN and regional organisations such as the OSCE to offer timely help in the prevention of conflicts and - where conflicts already exist - the avoidance of further escalation. It will then be necessary for the UN and the OSCE to have access to sufficient financial resources to enable them to offer effective help. After the war in Kosovo the Western countries established a Stability Pact for the Balkans, excluding the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia. The question is this: why is there now a willingness to put billions into this region, while this was not the case earlier? Would Lord Carrington's plan not have had more chance of success when we were prepared to extend also a helping financial hand? It is a question which can no longer be answered with certainty, but what is certain is that the billions which are now being used to bring about damage and destruction is many times more than the sum that at the start of the 1990s would have been needed to reshape a declining economy into a growing economy. Had such a sum been provided at the time, and had the European countries put their efforts into the establishment of a confederation instead of the independence of all of the republics, the human tragedy now unfolding in the Balkans could very likely have been prevented. To make a comparison with the development of armaments, preventative diplomacy, peaceful intervention, and structural aid and advice are perhaps at the level of the invention of the Colt around 1850. That brings us to our last point: the reopening of the arms race. Just as the ubiquity of firearms is cited as one of the most important causes of the exceptionally high degree of violence in American society, so the ample stocks of weaponry provide us with one of the explanations for the violent escalations of regional and/or ethnic conflicts. Despite the fact that the Cold War, which held the world in its grip for decades, and the arms race which was linked to it, are now almost ten years in the past, the worldwide trade in arms continues to grow. The Netherlands plays a leading role in this, despite assertions from the ministers responsible that the Dutch defence industry is limited in size in comparison with other European countries. In 1998 our country was sixth in the league table of the world's biggest arms exporters. With no scruples our country supplied and continues to supply weapons to Turkey, and to Indonesia under Suharto, as well as to countries which spend a disproportionately large share of their GNP on buying weapons, such as Israel, Oman and Qatar. In addition regulated supplies go to areas of tension, such as South Korea and the Middle East. In 1998 licences were issued for the export of military goods with a total value of something over 350 billion dollars. And the Netherlands is no exception - neither in the West, nor in the world as a whole. Almost all countries, or, to put it better, the arms producers in these countries, are still profiting daily from armaments and the arms trade. The member states of the European Union together spend almost 100 billion dollars a year on 'defence', of which a large proportion goes on armaments. It is high time that worldwide arms spending, and above all disarmament, came under international political attention. The extent and quantity of arms exported must be reduced, and in time the entire international arms trade perhaps indeed forbidden. The development of ever more new attack weapons must be stopped, beginning with those countries which have made the greatest progress in the development of sophisticated, 'smart' weapons. The further spread of existing, and the introduction of new, weapons of mass destruction can only be resisted if the nuclear powers are prepared to sign a no first use declaration and at last begin to run down their arsenals. Who are we to send inspection teams to Iraq to track down illegal weapons of mass destruction if we ourselves maintain major arsenals of nuclear weapons? In NATO's new strategic concept nuclear weapons are seen as essential to the preservation of peace. This is in conflict with the Non-Proliferation Treaty, which asserts that states which have signed the treaty have an obligation to conduct negotiations leading to complete nuclear disarmament under strict and effective international monitoring. Through the explicitly stated unwillingness of NATO to proceed to complete nuclear disarmament the fundamental precepts of this treaty have been jettisoned. And at the very moment that the United States Senate has rejected the Non-Proliferation Treaty, India and Pakistan are embroiled in a nuclear arms race, while the Russian nuclear policy, as we have seen, is being accentuated. The course which Western military experts are now following in the area of non-nuclear armament, which is described in this book by, amongst others, the Editor-in-Chief of Jane's Defence Weekly, Clifford Beal, will lead without doubt to still more violence. Perhaps Clifford Beal will in the end have to recognise that whenever the West increases its 'lead' over other parts of the world, this inevitably provokes a reaction. This does not always necessarily take the form of a similar pursuit of smart weapons by those who resist the West, such as China, Iraq, Russia or India. It can just as easily be what has been called an asymmetrical response - such as the carrying out of terrorist attacks.

Amber Path West To South 12

An account of the Yugoslav War written by by Jan Marijnissen and Karel Glastra van Loon

Jan Marijnissen is leader of the Socialist Party of the Netherlands (SP)

Karel Glastra van Loon was a novelist and journalist, closely associated with the SP, who has died, at the age of only 43, since this book was published in the original Dutch. His best known work in English was The Passion Fruit

The Last War of the 20th Century - Chapter 12

May 7, 2008 15:37 | by Jan Marijnissen and Karel Glastra van Loon Europe saves the world (not) There are people whom one convinces with towering gestures, but whom with arguments one makes suspicious. Friedrich Nietzsche On 29th November 1999 Minister of Defence Frank de Grave and his colleague from Foreign Affairs Jozias van Aartsen issued the 'Defensienota 2000', the defence memorandum for the coming year. A mistake was evident in the voluminous section dealing with the future of the national army. In a separate letter to parliament's lower house dated 8th December, this error was corrected: the latter part of the sentence, 'The government is strongly attached to having a good basis in international law for military actions, but in the end puts humanity before sovereignty' would have to be scrapped. No information was divulged as to the background to this amendment, but the most probable reason for it was that fortunately the cabinet was not willing to adopt this brief summary of the the thoughts of De Grave and Van Aartsen as representing its own collective opinion. The new world order which the two ministers had in mind, and which to a great extent was based on NATO's actions in Kosovo, is for many reasons undesirable. In the foregoing chapters various people from a range of different disciplines have given their strongly critical views of the actions of the western countries in the Yugoslavia crisis. We have, moreover, on the basis of a reconstruction of the wars in Kosovo and in Bosnia, shown how limited in efficacy NATO's military actions have been. We will now try to make visible the coherence which unites these various critical points, and from this to draw a number of conclusions regarding the new world order, or whatever remains of it. We will, furthermore, dwell on the important question of whether, if we do not favour opening the way to military humanitarian interventions, what can we do instead to help to reduce the number of humanitarian tragedies in the world? Because nothing provides such fertile ground for violence and terror as does indifference. In the Amnesty International magazine Wordt vervolgd! of December 1999, Van Aartsen attempted to set out his vision of the new world order. His 'essay' on 'humanitarian intervention' was in fact a brief summary of his speech before the United Nations General Assembly (see Part 1, Chapter 9). And just as was the case for the speech, this article was full of rhetoric about what was happening in the world today, with far-reaching suggestions regarding how it should be otherwise - without a moment's reflection on what the consequences might be if these suggestions were indeed taken up. A few examples. The minister writes: 'Must we stand idly by as ethnic cleansing, and even genocide, take place because to intercede would perhaps be in conflict with international law? Of course not' The minister here suggests that international law under all circumstances advocates passivity, even if there is the likelihood of genocide. This is incorrect. The UN Charter in fact makes it obligatory for countries to act whenever such a possibility exists. But, and this is still worse, the minister further suggests that international law need not be taken all that seriously, that it is something which you can adhere to or not, as you wish. Such an attitude begs questions. What or who is the 'international community' without 'international law'. Who decides on this? Who then decides whether there is a possibility of 'ethnic cleansing, and even genocide', so that military intervention can be justified? And who decides to engage militarily? With whom lies the responsibility for this decision? Who ensures that there is no likelihood of a double agenda, and that rather than combating alleged systematic abuse of human rights, other strategic goals are not being pursued by means of military intervention in another country? To answer each of these questions is precisely why international law was created. Yet the rhetoric goes still further. 'Because it surely cannot be,' the minister writes, 'that the crimes committed in the killing fields of Cambodia, Rwanda and Yugoslavia can be prosecuted after the event, but that the world community cannot take action against them earlier than that. International law without justice is no law.' Let's just stop and take a closer look at the example of Rwanda. An estimated 800,000 people were slaughtered there in an appalling civil war. Everyone remembers the horrifying pictures. But where was the international community, where was the Netherlands, then? By January 1994 a flood of warnings was arriving at the United Nations. But it was only in April that the organised mass slaughter began. On 29th April, by which time the full extent of the atrocities had long been clear, the United States and Britain refused to support a proposal from the incumbent chair of the Security Council, the New Zealander Colin Keating, to recognise that 'genocide' was occurring, though such a recognition would have made it possible for the UN to act. The British representative at the United Nations went so far as to assert that such a declaration would open the Security Council to ridicule. In a report published in December 1999, written at the behest of Kofi Annan, who at the time was responsible for all UN peacekeeping missions, former Swedish premier Ingvar Carlsson concluded that the United Nations, and above all the Security Council, held joint responsibility for the bloody genocide in Rwanda. It was thus in this case not international law which stood in the way of a timely intervention, but the unwillingness of two major powers - by coincidence precisely the same two major powers which had cried loudest in the case of Kosovo that military intervention was absolutely necessary. It is of course possible that conclusions were drawn from the events in Rwanda, conclusions which pointed to the assertion 'never again'. But is not more likely that this example demonstrates how opportunistic in reality the 'international community' is in its weighing up such events? And Van Aartsen now asserts that we should have intervened militarily, in Rwanda, but also in Cambodia? Should the Netherlands then have supplied troops? Would we then have established a UN protectorate, just as in Bosnia and Kosovo? To none of these questions did the minister give an answer. And that is, indeed, understandable (it would have put him in an awkward predicament, given how big the Dutch armed forces would have to become if we really did want to play the policeman in the entire world), but equally unforgivable for someone who bears so great a responsibility and who is unfolding such ambitious ideas for the future. The idea that 'international law without justice is no law' is an expression with which no-one can find fault. But what does it mean in combination with what is written before this? Does it mean that the 'world community' (once again, as to who or what that is, if not the United Nations which according to international law is so designated, the minister has nothing to say) must act sooner, because otherwise there is no question of justice? And just when is that then - 'sooner'? One last quotation: 'The evolution of the concept of sovereignty,' the minister states, ' does not end with this. In a globalising world we have not only to deal with the abuse of human rights. Consider also dilapidated nuclear power stations, mass deforestation, shortage of water, large-scale production of narcotics, or the so-called "failed state". Must politicians sit and watch until the calamity is truly a fact? Or do they have the duty to take preventative action? The question is apposite. But who will give it a definitive answer?' Here the minister is once more repeating his speech before the UN. Even if he has not yet written it, Van Aartsen's answer to his own rhetorical question is clear: politicians must not sit around until a calamity has occurred. They have the duty to take preventative action. And you do not have to take this line of reasoning to its most absurd conclusions, as Noam Chomsky did in Chapter 9, to see that it's crazy. Because what would it involve? That we would send soldiers to Indonesia to protect the poor farmers of Borneo from the burning of their forests to create arable farmland? That we invade Russia because nuclear power stations there do not comply with the latest demands? One concrete example of where this sort of policy would in practice lead we have already seen, when the Netherlands gave the Americans the right to conduct war against the cocaine farmers of Colombia from the Dutch Antilles, in order to do something about 'the large-scale production of narcotics.' According to expert analysts, Colombia has since threatened to become a second Vietnam. Where are these wise thoughts of the minister leading to in concrete terms? In his article he writes that he wants three things: the Netherlands Advisory Committee on International Public Law and the Netherlands Advisory Council on International Affairs to write a common advisory note on military intervention in the absence of Security Council authorisation, and for it to organise in addition an international seminar, and finally - and this is politically the only one of his wishes which is relevant - to open for discussion the right of veto of the five permanent Security Council members, because this right is an 'anachronism'. As the result of the 'doctrine of humanitarian intervention' launched by the minister, this one concrete proposal is of course rather slender, but it is moreover open to question whether this proposal itself is all that intelligent. Naturally, at first sight it appears sympathetic and also democratic: why should the United States, Russia, France, the United Kingdom and China, after all, have the right to impose their will on the United Nations in matters of peace and security? For this reason only: that the most significant result of the abolition of the right of veto in the current period would be that the Security Council would marginalise itself. Because it is of course not for nothing that these five major countries, each of which has nuclear weapons at its disposal, have been allotted the right of veto. This has everything to do with their exceptionally great political, sometimes economic and in each case military power. None of these countries would accept a declaration from the Security Council which went against the national interest of the state in question. Should these countries lose, therefore, their right of veto, what would be instigated would either be the life-threatening situation in which a decision by a majority of the Security Council meant that the major powers affected would find themselves in direct opposition to the minority, and that they would then find themselves in conflict with each other, or the decisions of the Security Council would be regarded as unimportant and pushed to one side, so that the body would no longer mean anything. As a result the only podium on which the major powers currently speak to each other, the only place also where geopolitical developments can be seriously discussed, would disappear. It is therefore certainly not in the interest of world peace to treat the possibilities offered by this Council light-heartedly, or to speak about it in denigrating terms. Yet within the Dutch government it is evident that things are seen differently. That is not so astonishing, because the NATO bombing of Yugoslavia took place, as we have seen, without the approval of the Security Council. Russia and China had from the beginning major objections to the way in which the West, (for which read the NATO countries) was operating in the Kosovo crisis. They were unwilling therefore to give their approval to NATO military action. For NATO, and therefore also for the Netherlands, this turned out, however, not to be any reason to decide not to conduct such actions. On the contrary. The attack was now in a sense directed at the Security Council itself, while at the same time attempts were made to justify in international law the right to intervene on one's own count and to do so wherever this might be judged necessary, including therefore beyond the NATO states' own territory. This change in the attitude of the Netherlands in relation to the Security Council was rapid. On10th August 1998 Van Aartsen could still write the following in answer to a question from two Labour MPs, Bert Koenders and Gerrit Valk: 'The Netherlands' standpoint is that a Security Council resolution must be in place as the basis for military intervention.' Not six months later this standpoint has been exchanged for its opposite. In the Kosovo crisis a go-it-alone Western approach was preferred to cooperation within the Security Council. The Secretary General of the United Nations, Kofi Annan, has on a number of occasions expressed an extremely negative reaction to this development. He is seriously concerned about the constantly growing number of military actions by the United States, whether or not in cooperation with other powers: the rocket attack on Sudan, the persistent bombing of Iraq, the bombing of Afghanistan - with each American bomb becoming a foundation stone taken from beneath the fragile home of international dialogue within the UN. The Pax Americana is increasingly taking shape. The United States is no longer merely playing the role of international police officer, but sees itself in addition as the prosecutor of anyone who departs from the American norm, as the judge who sets the punishment, and as the one to impose this punishment - as judge, jury and executioner rolled into one. And all of this without the least concern for what the long term consequences might be. Michael Gorbachev, the last president of the Soviet Union, said the following about this at the time of NATO's action against Yugoslavia: 'This war demonstrates that the United States, which plays an authoritative role in NATO, is prepared not only to ignore the norms of international law, but also to impose its own norms on the world with regard to international relations. In fact the United States, in determining these norms, allows itself to be led by its own national interests and only takes account of the United Nations when the decisions and actions of the UN serve the interests of the United States.' It must also be noted that the United States is the only country in the world capable of exercising financial blackmail over the United Nations, using its contribution as collateral. Of the 188 countries currently members of the UN and signatories to its Charter, the United States is by far and away the country with the biggest backlog of unpaid levies. The UN's claim against the US amounts at the moment to around a billion dollars, enough to pay the annual costs of the UN secretariat plus the costs connected with its peacekeeping operations. The US is prepared to pay this debt if first a number of things within the UN are changed in a manner which the Americans find desirable. Now of course there is much to criticise about the United Nations: the slowness, the lack of efficiency, the financial waste, the limited power of the General Assembly, the dominant role of the Security Council, and the sometimes roundly cynical attitudes which prevail. But for the time being the United Nations is all we have. The world community has no other platform on which to discuss questions of war and peace than the UN. We must therefore make the best use we can of this institution and oppose all those persons and all those countries which undermine and ridicule the authority of the UN. The UN Charter includes a number of extremely useful moral anchors for international relations, amongst which is the ban on aggression, and even for the relationship between state and citizen. Responsible states might be expected to know the value of international law, but this can alas not be said of the United States and the other NATO countries. If we look at their actions in the Kosovo crisis, we can only conclude that these damaged both the interests of the UN, and international law itself. M. Bos, Professor emeritus in international law at the University of Utrecht and Vice-President van de International Law Association, has the following to say about this: A characteristic of the law is that it sets limits. The UN Charter does that in a way which is abundantly clear. Transgressing these limits means placing yourself outside of the law of the UN. Appealing to human rights along the way as grounds for justification for conducting a military intervention does not in itself exempt you from this. Such an appeal - assuming that this is de jure possible - can only succeed if the human right in question is enforced and the means of doing so are permissible under general international law. As for the first of these conditions, human rights can indeed be universal, but they do not have an 'absolute' effect... One always has to ask oneself what are the role of and prospects for the human right cited and what in the given circumstances is or could be just. From an historical perspective justice has never been anything other than "what works". This must be the guiding principle of all implementation of human rights... The second point, the permissibility of the means, requires us to look into their proportionality. I have seen no analysis of this principle applied to the question of Kosovo. As our Russian interviewees in Chapter 8 of Part 1 of this book admitted, the fact that the NATO countries had placed themselves outside UN law also had direct consequences for discussions with other countries on the question of what should or should not be allowed in the world. Many people have reacted with indignation to how the Russians have conducted their war against the Chechen rebels, but no proper discussion of this could be held, neither in the Security Council, nor in the OESC conference in Istanbul. One single reference to Kosovo was, for the Russians, sufficient for them to justify their assertion that they did not want to pass any responsibility on to the world community, simply declaring that this was an internal matter to do with nothing more than bandits and terrorists. Precisely how extensive will be the consequences of the illegal actions of NATO in relation to the Kosovo question cannot yet be assessed. But that they will be exceptionally serious is already certain. Now NATO has been transformed from a security organisation to a sort of international intervention force of the rich west, the question is no longer whether new 'Kosovos' will arrive but simply when. After all, just as in the Netherlands has been demonstrated with the Light-Mobile Brigade and the mission to Srebrenica, the simple fact of the existence of an intervention force can mean that politicians - whether or not under pressure from public opinion - may decide more quickly to send troops to a centre of conflict. The European Union, which is developing increasingly in the direction of a political union, is currently hard at work on its Common Foreign and Security Policy. In order to render decision-making within this framework more effective, there are moves to give the European Commission more powers. For this reason NATO ex-Secretary-General Javier Solana, whom we already know well from the Kosovo crisis, has been appointed as the first High Representative for the Common Foreign Policy of the European Union. Further, there are those who would abolish the right of veto enjoyed by the separate member states and move to a regime governed by qualified majority voting. As indicated above in discussing the Security Council, the abolition of the right of veto could have serious consequences and in the end turn out even to be counterproductive. Within Europa equally, the major countries will never allow the law to be prescribed by any supranational body whatsoever. And certainly not in relation to so important and, when it comes to the national interest, so sensitive a point as foreign policy. There are nevertheless moves to proceed further along this path. What's even worse is that, anticipating the possibility of a true, allegedly effective common foreign policy, there is a desire to work on a European Security and Defence Identity (ESDI), a sort of Euro-army. No longer are Europe's leaders willing to be dependent in every respect on the US. They are demanding their own role in the geopolitical game. Europe must speak with one voice, and become more credible. The quote from Joris Voorhoeve, cited in the preceding chapter, shows how this credibility will be fleshed out: by providing major military adventures. And so a military arm must be added to the body of the common foreign policy. Now we would be the last ones to say that we were happy with NATO, or certainly with the role of the United States in the alliance. But what is bizarre is that this Euro-army will not replace NATO, but supplement it. The intention is decidedly to continue with NATO, but in addition, as European countries, to make use of NATO resources - and if necessary quite apart from NATO to have a military capacity entirely their own on top of these resources. And, as we said earlier, more military potential - certainly in combination with ambitious politicians (by which we here mean politicians who want Europe to be make an impact in the world) - will provide more dangerous examples of exaggerated self-esteem. In addition to enhancing the credibility of Europe's foreign policy, the ESDI will also have to provide 'the solution to conflicts on Europe's periphery' - a matter also currently spoken about quite openly. Where this periphery ends did not long remain a secret. The Caucasus is generally seen as a region in which a European military presence is most certainly a possibility. To begin with Europe may establish a permanent presence in Kosovo, where the Eurocorps - in which Germany, France, Spain, Belgium and Luxembourg are already cooperating militarily - will for six months, beginning in April 2000, assume the leadership of KFOR. The Eurocorps can, just as did the Western European Union and the Anglo-French cooperation agreed at the French resort of St. Malo, be seen as one of the forerunners of the Euro-army. All of these initiatives will feed into this. European business has now understood well enough the new possibilities offered by all of this. Manfred Bischoff, Chairman of the Board of Directors of DASA, said on 3rd February 1998, 'Give us a vision. Politicians must answer some obvious questions: Where does Europe want to go? What does Europe expect from high technology, from its defence industry? What products should be made?' In other words, Bischoff sensed that there was, after years of malaise resulting from the end of the Cold War, once again big money to be made by the war industry. The Clingendael Institute, also known as the Netherlands Institute for International Relations, published an essay on the Euro-army in December 1999 in which it said that 'From a military point of view numerous additional exertions are needed, which will demand billions of Euros.' The defence budget of the various European countries offers little space for this, so that carrying out all of these fine plans in reality would mean a huge increase in these budgets in the immediate future. The Clingendael Institute's researchers warn above all of European shortcomings when it comes to high technology, writing that: Precisely because politicians make such exacting demands for the minimalisation of the number of civilian victims and the maximalisation of the pilots' security, high-value technology fulfils a crucial role.... Without American planes, equipped for electronic warfare... no combat mission could be carried out. No European country has available an in-flight ground-target surveillance system. Bad weather imposes serious limits on the carrying-out of air-raids by most European countries. At the European Summit in Keulen on 3rd and 4th June 1999, it was then also decided that a 'substantial industrial and technological basis, a competitive and dynamic European defence industry' must be created. At the Helsinki Summer in December of the same year this decision was once more confirmed and further concretised: in 2003 the EU member states must have ready a total of 200,000 soldiers, so that at any time within sixty days 60,000 soldiers could be sent abroad for a lengthy period of time. More cooperation would be necessary, and gaps in organisation, armaments and instruments to enable the gathering of data must be addressed. And this would cost money. Defence Minister Frank De Grave: 'The cost comes before the benefit: you first have to invest. After years of economies the financial space for this is lacking. It is time to make up the European bill.' Manfred Bischoff can thus sleep easily. But who else can do so? There remains one more aspect of the desire of the EU countries to demand 'armed and therefore credible' space on the geopolitical playing field. If you want new space, you can only have it at the cost of another. And that simple fact leads to tensions, dangerous tensions. Were not both world wars after all violent expressions of the will to bring about a new division of spheres of influence? The Clingendael researchers have this to say about this: 'Tensions between the US and the European allies over the extent and direction of European defence cooperation are unavoidable.' But there is more. Within the US Congress a more isolationist course is increasingly supported, one independent of Europe. The United States determination to develop a space-based defence shield is undiminished, despite the fact that this is in conflict with the Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty. But on the economic front as well, friction between the US and Europe is growing. Accusations time and again over a more than alleged protection of each bloc's economic interest grow exponentially. And to these will be added the growth of European economic and monetary force now that the Euro will be competing with the dollar. Add to these the political ambitions of an EU becoming ever bigger and more powerful on the world stage, and you can only conclude that all of the ingredients for a future clash are in place.