08.04.1999

For revolutionary defeatism

Nato out of the Balkans! Independence for Kosova!

After two weeks of war, imperialism’s drive to impose its New World Order in Serbia has run into serious trouble. Nato’s strategy is in disarray and stands exposed as an ill-conceived, poorly planned adventure, founded on a combination of poor intelligence and fateful political misjudgement, an operation fraught with dangerous consequences, not only for the Balkans, but also for the world as a whole.

From the outset the campaign has been marked by confusion and ambivalence, even in relation to its most fundamental objectives. As the first cruise missiles hit their targets, Clinton told the world that the air offensive against Serbia was in effect a warning, intended to show Nato’s opposition to Serb aggression; to deter the Milosevic regime from carrying out further attacks on the ethnic Albanian population of Kosova and to “degrade” Serbia’s military potential. Nato general secretary Solana depicted the operation as a punishment for Serbia’s refusal to sign the Rambouillet accord, which would have granted Kosova a limited autonomy, enforced by Nato troops on the ground.

Evidently the alliance’s thinking was based on the assumption, indeed the certainty, that a short campaign of aerial bombardment would be sufficient to force Milosevic into suing for peace and accepting a negotiated settlement. This triumph of political wishful thinking and arrogance over sound military doctrine and justified scepticism was doomed from the start. As any saloon bar strategist could have foretold, the consequence of Nato’s limited offensive has been to unite the Serbs behind Milosevic and effectively hand him the initiative. While Nato spokesperson boasted about the devastating effect of their attacks on Serbian air defences, Milosevic lost no time in sending his army and special forces into Kosova to carry out an accelerated programme of ethnic cleansing, aimed at terrorising the ethnic Albanian population into fleeing their homeland. In this he has had considerable success. Current estimates suggest that around one million Kosovars have crossed the borders. Within the next two weeks, if events maintain their present momentum, Kosova could be virtually depopulated.

Faced with the abject failure of its initial plan, the alliance has now declared a widening and intensification of the air war, clearly hoping that the ensuing devastation will bring about the collapse of the Serbian government, Milosevic’s removal and his replacement by a regime prepared to negotiate. This approach may work, but the balance of probability, not to mention the experience of ‘Desert Fox’ against the regime of Saddam Hussein, seem to be against it. In the event of another failure, the military case for the deployment of ground forces - Clinton’s and Blair’s nightmare scenario - would then become compelling. To be sure, the military defeat of Nato by the Serbs is inconceivable, but a protracted and debilitating ground war, fought against a background of potentially heavy allied casualties and fragile popular support at home, would threaten Nato with a political disaster and perhaps even lead to the collapse of the alliance.

What has been the reaction of the left to the Serbian war thus far? Frankly, a totally inadequate and superficial kind of knee-jerk anti-imperialism, and a tendency in some quarters to call for the unconditional support of the Serbs. This curious stance, seemingly rooted in the belief that rump Yugoslavia must be defended because it was once a “workers’ state”, is exemplified by comrade James Paris of the Trotskyite Marxist Workers’ Group (USA) in his letter to this paper (Weekly Worker April 1). The same approach has been taken by the Stalinite Economic and Philosophic Science Review and its editor Royston Bull, the SLP’s former vice-president.

Comrade Paris argues that “when the conflict between Belgrade and the Kosovo Albanians began, it appeared to be a case of an oppressed minority fighting for the right of self-determination” (my italics). “Appeared”? It was a struggle for self-determination, a struggle led by the Kosova Liberation Army and supported by many on the left in Britain, including the CPGB. The comrade tells us that the imperialists’ intervention in Serbia has changed everything: “At the moment that the KLA and other Albanian forces formed an unholy alliance with imperialism, the struggle ceased to be a question of self-determination”, and the KLA was “transformed from a guerrilla force of ‘liberation’ into a proxy force for imperialism, with the goal of the continued break-up of the country”. On the basis of this logic, the comrade maintains that continued support for the aim of Kosovar independence and self-determination constitutes “back-handed support to imperialism”.

The key to comrade Paris’s position lies in his reference elsewhere in his letter to the “break-up of the former workers’ state [Yugoslavia] along ethnic and national lines” as a goal of imperialism, an “ongoing effort” by the imperialists that must be resisted. Where has comrade Paris been? Yugoslavia has already been broken up along ethnic and national lines. All that is left of “Yugoslavia” is a rump state, comprising Serbia and an increasingly disaffected Montenegro. And what is the nature of this “former workers’ state”? Does it contain one iota of adherence to or respect for the values of socialism and internationalism? No, it does not. On the contrary, the Milosevic regime stands for the worst kind of chauvinism and nationalism. On what grounds, therefore, can socialists be expected to support the Serbs? Objectively, the comrade’s case relies on a bizarre kind of nostalgia coupled with the dubious adage that “the enemy of my enemy is my friend”.

This is not only an incoherent position, but an unprincipled one. The only moral basis on which we as communists could support the slogan of “Yugoslav” unity would be if the Serbian working class had been actively, consistently and boldly championing the rights of the Kosovar population - up to and including independence - on a mass scale. Then the call for unity - perhaps in a federal republic - could be countenanced. This would be a precondition for a democratic unity of this “former workers’ state” under socialism. If the Serb working class were acting as the foremost defenders of democratic and socialist values against the reactionary petty bourgeois nationalism and chauvinist demagoguery of Milosevic, then of course we would support unity with them. But there is no sign yet of any such development. Given this situation, our support for an independent Kosova, for the right of the Kosovar people to self-determination, must remain unaltered.

We agree with comrade Paris that “it is the duty of Marxists to bring the truth to the light of day”, and this includes the truth about Serbia’s campaign of repression and terror in Kosova. The comrade warns us that “the imperialists are again bandying about the buzzword of ‘ethnic cleansing’... Milosevic is this month’s ‘Hitler’ ... The bosses and their representatives in the US and western European governments are attempting to resurrect the ‘Serb fascist’” (my italics). According to comrade Paris, “many of the charges of ‘ethnic cleansing’ ... are questionable at best”. He cites the Racak massacre in January as a case in point, alleging that it was in fact a KLA deception.

Comrade Paris is an eloquent apologist for Serbian violence, but, as he remarks, “facts are stubborn things”, and the facts about what has happened in Kosova during the last fortnight are incontestable: Serb forces have been engaged in systematic terror, murder, rape, arson and looting on a grand scale; hundreds of thousands of ethnic Albanians have fled their country in fear of their lives. Are we to believe that this exodus was a KLA stunt or an outbreak of irrational mass hysteria? Obviously not. What we are witnessing is human catastrophe on a monumental scale. To ask whether the imperialists’ bombing of Serbia has created the necessary preconditions for this catastrophe, or merely exacerbated it, is to engage in a sterile argument. What is beyond question is that Milosevic and his security forces have committed war crimes against the Kosovar population, crimes motivated by nationalism and ethnic chauvinism.

Comrade Paris will undoubtedly argue that our critique of his position amounts to support for Nato, and that we are being “soft on imperialism”. Nothing of the kind. As communists, of course we are anti-imperialists. But we criticise the Pavlovian anti-imperialism that amounts to little more than crude anti-American, anti-western sentiment - the kind of anti-imperialism that led many on the left to make a hero of Saddam Hussein and leads them now to make a hero of Slobodan Milosevic. Rational, scientific anti-imperialism is not founded on unconditional - ‘military’ or political - support for states or their leaders merely because they happen to be in conflict with the imperialist powers. First and foremost, it is founded on support for the historic mission of the working class and the revolutionary movement in their struggles, whether those struggles be against the imperialists or against their own domestic despots and dictators, like Hussein and Milosevic.

Theoretical clarity on this question is of cardinal importance, not least because of the possibility that the Serbian war may spread across the entire Balkan peninsular and that Russia, the “former workers’ state” par excellence, may become embroiled in the conflict.

Thus far, Russia’s conduct has been marked by bellicose rhetoric but cautious action. Significantly, however, prime minister (and de facto acting president) Yevgeni Primakov took a high-ranking delegation of intelligence and military officers to Belgrade on his recent ‘peace mission’. The dispatch of the Russian reconnaissance vessel, the Liman, to the Adriatic on an intelligence-gathering mission seems more than a merely symbolic gesture - in response to questions, the Russian ambassador to the UN, Sergei Lavrov, confirmed that “the exchange of information” between Russia and Serbia was within international law and was already taking place.

These indicators may only be straws in the wind, but there can be no doubt that a Nato ground offensive against Serbia, especially if it led to a wider conflagration in the region, would lead to an intensification of Russian-Serb cooperation. Commentators comfort their readers and listeners and themselves by assuring us that, although some deputies in the ‘communist’-dominated duma have called for volunteers to go to Yugoslavia and for Russia to break the arms embargo on Belgrade, the duma has passed no resolution to this effect; that Russia’s military leadership has also made clear it does not want to be sucked into a war in the Balkans.

The media, like our politicians, seem able to concentrate only on one issue at a time. They appear to have forgotten that Russia is undergoing an acute political, economic and financial crisis, for which the term ‘meltdown’ is no hyperbole. Nato’s attack on Serbia, preceded only a few days before by the enlargement of the alliance to include Poland, Hungary and the Czech Republic, by reviving understandable fears of imperialist encirclement, has succeeded in creating a temporarily united front among the disparate, mutually hostile forces that are vying for control of the Russian state. The resentment, humiliation, sense of injustice and paranoia provoked by the imperialists’ policy towards Russia, particularly its disregard for what Russia sees as its national and security interests in the ‘near abroad’, have all found a powerful, potentially explosive focus in the Serb question. Unsurprisingly, every leading contender in next year’s presidential elections (assuming Yeltsin lasts that long) has voiced support for arming the Serbs against Nato.

In the event that Russia, contrary to the soothing assurances of media journalists, does enter the war, will comrade Paris and his like expect us to offer unconditional support to the coterie of counterrevolutionary criminals, thieves and speculators that constitutes the current regime in Moscow, simply because Russia was once a “workers’ state”? To do so would be totally irresponsible and an action unworthy of a true communist and anti-imperialist.

To comrade Paris and those who share his mistaken views we say that the only principled anti-imperialist position is to call for an independent Kosova, for the end of Serb aggression in Kosova and for the immediate cessation of Nato’s war against the rump Yugoslavia. Our position is one of revolutionary defeatism. For us the main enemy is at home - the imperialist UK state. But we also call for the defeat of Milosevic’s ultra-chauvinism. The working class must not take sides with either camp, but pursue its own independent interests.

Michael Malkin