Yugo- What *is* to be done.

[Chris Burford <cburford@xxxxxxxxxx>]

Doug:
-----
I tried this once before, and I'll try it again, since I got no answer the
first time. This evocation of the UN sounds like a prayer for divine
intervention. The UN has no army, budget, or power on its own. It needs the
assent of the great powers, who obviously have no interest in acting. How
then is a UN solution possible? And what does this UN intervention mean?
Infantry forces from around the world land in the FY and start shooting? If
so, at whom? What would be the political strategy behind the intervention -
i.e., what sort of map rethink do you & other interventionists have in
mind?


Chris B:
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I welcome Doug's pursuit of an answer. Although I take the force of
some of Carrol's points, a belief that we are too late, might look
a missed opportunity when you consider what the situation might be in
three years time. The fact that we are all fleas does not remove from
us the responsibility to do something however small, if we think it
is important enough, and could be useful.

I did not contribute to stirring this debate up on Yugoslavia because
I thought I had all the answers and would not make mistakes on the way,
but because I thought we had to have a go, if we are to be able to relate
marxism to practice at all.

To answer Doug's point.

I think the problem is that it is both a) a minefield of bourgois and
imperialist interests b) it would technically be a very complex problem
even without them.

However we have now had more than five years experience since the fall of
the Berlin Wall of international "peace keeping" operations, and some
lessons are being summed up. We can analyse these too from a
marxist point of view. The rigid distinction between peace keeping and the
doling out of charity (food etc) on the one hand and peace enforcement on
the other, is simplistic and mechanistic. Both ways of looking at it lack
a basic democratic respect for the people on the ground.

In practical terms massive intervention appears to work only if "they"
are taking on a country the size of Grenada. Even Somalia was too big.

UN intervention, on the other hand, in a very low key, unglorious way,
was helpful in South Africa.

I propose that the strategy should be about conflict management, conflict
reduction, mediation, and helping the better people on the ground
come to compromise and set up solutions themselves.

Hot lines between Serb, Croat and Muslim villages, multi-ethnic monitoring
groups, reconciliation meetings, development projects based on co-operation.
But all the time accepting the reality that the different sides are in
bitter conflict, must retain arms, and will reserve the right to retaliate
with arms. Clarification of the point of view of different sides to
each other without expecting them to agree.

We would of course want this carried out with
marxists able to play a part in the reconcilation groups (whereas the
bourgoisie on all sides would want them excluded) and with the emphasis
on democratic solutions particularly shared by working people.

Such a peace policy, would be greatly in the interests of ordinary
people, and great courage would be shown by volunteers in carrying it out.

In fact of course there will be hundreds of initiatives of this sort
going on spontaneously now, even as people flee, and the most democratic
way forward would be to back them either by voluntary contributions
or with grants from governments that would be a fraction of what the same
governments are spending now on Yugoslavia.



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