[PEN-L:6165] Re: Tito-KLA-Kosovo

["Ricardo Duchesne" <RDUCHESN@xxxxxxxx>]

> Date:          Thu, 29 Apr 1999 13:19:39 -0400 (EDT)
> Reply-to:      wwagar@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx
> From:          wwagar@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx
> To:            WORLD SYSTEMS NETWORK <wsn@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
> X-To:          christopher chase-dunn <chriscd@xxxxxxx>

>
>
> Dear Chris and All,
>
> 	I want to express my appreciation to everyone on the list who has
> contributed to the discussion of the war in the Balkans.  In particular,
> the articles by Chomsky and Zinn have done a lot to firm up my own views
> on this monumental tragedy.  Also the posts from Gunder Frank, with which
> I agree completely.
>
> 	But first, a little unabashedly self-serving news.  The University
> of Chicago Press will bring out a revised Third Edition of my chronicle of
> the next two centuries, A SHORT HISTORY OF THE FUTURE, in August or
> September of this year.  I know that some of you have made use of this
> book in courses.  The 2nd Edition, published in 1992, is still in print
> and still available, but will be supplanted by the 3rd late this summer.
> The ISBN of the 3rd Edition is 0-226-86903-2.
>
> Back to Kosovo.  I traveled through Macedonia, Kosovo, Montenegro,
> and Bosnia in the summer of 1958, mostly camping out along the side of the
> road.  The Titoist regime, for all its egregious faults, had done its best
> to dampen and stifle ethnic rivalry.  Experiments in worker co-management
> had given encouraging substance to the dream of a democratic and socialist
> future for all the people of Yugoslavia.  Kosovo was an autonomous region
> of Serbia, and although poor, was benefitting to some extent from the
> surging economic growth rate of the country as a whole.  Everywhere I went
> I was delighted by the warmth and hospitality of the Yugoslav people, and
> impressed by their material progress, the apparent abatement of ethnic
> bigotry, the high rate of intermarriage, the stunning beauty of the cities
> and landscape, and the decline of religious fervor and fanaticism evident
> in all the republics.  And of course I was entirely supportive of
> Belgrade's policy of non-alignment in the Cold War.  Yugoslavia was a
> beacon of sanity and progress in the Balkans.
>
> 	Since then, of course, all hell has broken loose, all the old
> demons have been set free, and I am sick at heart.  I offer no defense for
> the repressive policies of the Milosevich regime in what was and should
> always have been an autonomous Kosovo.  But as Howard Zinn reminds us, the
> KLA opened fire.  With ruthless, almost insane disregard for the safety of
> the Kosovar people, they declared war on Serbia.  And they had plenty of
> help from outside--just how much and from whom we don't yet fully know.
> NATO's lawless and inhuman assault on Serbia has at the very least
> accelerated the ethnic cleansing of Kosovo, strengthened the Milosevich
> government, and raised the possibility of a new Cold War pitting the
> Orthodox world against the Latin world.  The blood-stained Superpower that
> gave us the massacre of millions in Vietnam, Laos, Cambodia, Panama,
> and Iraq--to name just a few recipients of our humanitarian blessings--is
> now wreaking devastation in Yugoslavia, in hopes of further consolidating
> its death-grip on the world-system of late capitalism.  To the roster of
> humanitarian heroes from Johnson and Nixon to George Bush we have now
> added the name of William Jefferson Clinton.  How anyone on the Left and
> anyone active in world-systems research can find a scintilla of
> justification for the NATO Mad Bombers is beyond my comprehension.
>
> 	For peace in the Balkans,
>
> 	Warren Wagar
>
>
> 	W. Warren Wagar
> 	Department of History
> 	State University of New York at Binghamton
>
>