Re: Yugoslavia: background considerations. Last Part (The Coalition)

["Bryan A. Alexander" <bnalexan@xxxxxxxxx>]

Lorenzo's posts continue to disturb me.  Their tone is cautious,
thoughtful; a prose laden with history - and yet a strange Serb
nationalist point of view emerges, one that we should condemn.
        First, the sense of history is curious.  Often Lorenzo's history
is weirdly determinist - not in the Marxian or even Hegelian sense (see
below), but in a war of memory sense.  Serbs commit crimes in revenge for
WWII... France opposes Serbia because it upheld the Turks briefly in the
17th century...  What this ignores is of course the economic
overdetermination which is at work here, but also the fact of persons
making certain choices for policy effects now, on the ground.  In this
sense, Lorenzo's history is an evasion, an excuse... and for Serbs!
        Second, the question of comparative atrocities is often raised in
West Balkan discourse.  Serbs often accuse the Bosnians and Croats of
committing their own, and presumably equivalent, crimes.  The consensus
among scholars of varying stances?  First, the Croats have attempted
ethnic cleansing of their own, but not on the Serb scale.  Conscious of
the West's media eye, they have been cautious with this.  Second, some
units of the BiH army have done crimes.  The Bosnian government *never*
instigated such attacks.  Instead it has condemned every atrocity on
record, and prosecuted the responsible parties.  The serbs?  Notice that
Lorenzo chooses not to mention ethnic cleansing - the use of force on
protestors in Belgrade, 1991 - the violent crushing of Kosovar strikers
and subsequent occupation - the merciless bombardment of cities - etc.
The fact that i can write "etc." and we know what I mean speaks volumes.
In short, the rhetoric of matching atrocities without qualification is a
pro-Serb tactic to mask and shift blame away from those who commit
atrocities.
        Third: anti-Serb coalition?  This alliance has done until two
months ago almost nothing to hurt the Serbs.  NATO and its friends tried
to alleviate the siege of Sarajevo, a brief hampering of the Serb war
effort.  But what we have *not* seen are truly massive bombing campaigns
(the current one is minor - see my earlier distinctions between target
categories), naval bombardment, or a land campaign.  The Serbs have much
more to fear from the weak BiH army.  Heck, more to fear from the Muslim
irregulars operating on the BiH-Serb Republican border in '92.
"Anti-Serb coalition" is a phrase trying to wheedle sympathy, arousing
fears of encirclement -when in reality, the butcher's feet are surrounded
by his corpses.
        Fourth: there's a larger context at work, here.  We've known
about Milosevic's drive for power ever since '87.  We knew about his
breaking of local Communist parties to his personal control; his war
against Kosovar workers; his anti-worker rule in the three-four
territories under his sway.  This career deserves an anti-Serb coalition,
if we accept the identification of Milosevic with his people - which I
don't; I'm more interested in allying with anti-M forces within Serbia.
        And another larger context, one appropriate for this list: class
conflict.  Milosevic is clearly opposed to workers, as in Kosovo, Serbia,
and sympathy strikers in Slovenia.  His allies are twofold: the party
bureaucracy (in its new form); the armed forces.  Furthermore, he has
consistently argued for free-market capitalism - within a state socialist
framework.  In short, Milosevic is a bourgeoisie warrior, waging class
war against *our* allies, both within and without his borders.
Admittedly, the Croats are hardly Leninists.  I abhor them, and view
their tendency to partition BiH with Milosevic as a natural extension of
their class nature (middle class).  But the BiH state is very mixed, and
not clearly at war against the working class.  We need not support NATO;
we must oppose Milosevic, and the critically-weak, ethically-deplorable
arguments that would legimate Serbian atrocities.
        



Bryan Alexander
Department of English
University of Michigan
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