[PEN-L:6236] Why Nato needs to destroy Serbia

[Louis Proyect <lnp3@xxxxxxxxx>]

>I don't quite get the connection here between economic stagnation in
>Western Europe and bombing Belgrade. What do you think it is?
>
>Doug

Final paragraphs of Sean Gervasi's "Why Nato is in Yugoslavia", at:
http://www.mclink.it/assoc/fondpasti/nato/gerv-e.htm

When closely considered, the proposal to extend NATO eastward is not just
dangerous. It also seems something of a desperate act. It is obviously
irrational, for it can become a self-fulfilling prophecy. It can lead to a
second Cold War between the NATO powers and Russia, and possibly to nuclear
war. It must be assumed that no one really wants that.

Why, then, would the NATO countries propose such a course of action? Why
would they be unable to weigh the dangers of their decision objectively?

Part of the answer is that those who have made this decision have looked at
it in very narrow terms, without seeing the larger context in which NATO
expansion would take place. When one does look at the larger context, the
proposal to expand NATO is obviously irrational.

Consider the larger context. NATO proposes to admit certain countries in
Central Europe as full members of the alliance in the near future. Other
East European countries are being considered for later admission. This
extension has two possible purposes. The first is to prevent "the failure
of Russian democracy", that is, to ensure the continuation of the present
regime, or something like it, in Russia. The second is to place NATO in a
favorable position if a war should ever break out between Russia and the
West.

In an age of nuclear weapons, pursuing the second purpose is perhaps even
more dangerous than it was during the years of the Cold War, since there
are now several countries with nuclear weapons which would potentially be
ranged against NATO. The argument that NATO should be expanded eastward in
order to ensure the West an advantage in the event of a nuclear war is not
a very convincing one. And it would certainly not be convincing to Central
European countries if it were openly spoke of. Those would be the countries
most likely to suffer in the first stages of such a war. Their situation
would be similar to that of Germany during the Cold War, as the German
antiwar movement began to understand in the 1980s.

The main purpose of expanding NATO, as almost everyone has acknowledged, is
to make sure that there is no reversal of the changes which have taken
place in Russia during the last five years. That would end the dream of a
three-part Europe united under the capitalist banner and close a very large
new space for the operation of Western capital. A NATO presence in Central
and Eastern Europe is simply a means of maintaining new pressure on those
who would wish to attempt to change the present situation in Russia.

However, as has been seen, this also means locking Russia, and other
countries of the CIS, into a state of underdevelopment and continuous
economic and social crisis in which millions of people will suffer
terribly, and in which there is no possibility of society seeking a path of
economic and social development in which human needs determine economic
priorities.

What is horribly ironic about this situation is the Western countries are
offering their model of economic organization as the solution to Russia's
problems. The realist analysts, of course, know perfectly well that it is
no such thing. They are interested only in extending Western domination
further eastward. And they offer their experience as a model for others
only to beguile. But the idea that "the transition to democracy", as the
installation of market rules is often called, is important in the world
battle for public opinion. It has helped to justify and sustain the
policies which the West has been pursuing toward the countries of the CIS.

The Western countries themselves, however, are locked in an intractable
economic crisis. Beginning in the early 1970s, profits fell, production
faltered, long-term unemployment began to rise and standards of living
began to fall. There were, of course, the ups and downs of the business
cycle. But what was important was the trend. The trend of GDP growth in the
major Western countries has been downward since the major recession of
1973-1975. In the United States, for instance, the rate of growth fell from
about 4 per cent per year in the 1950s and the 1960s, to 2.9 per cent in
the 1970s and then to about 2.4 per cent in the 1980s. Current projections
for growth are even lower.

The situation was not very different in other Western countries. Growth was
somewhat faster, but unemployment was significantly higher. The current
rates of unemployment in Western Europe average about 11 per cent, and
there is more unemployment hidden in the statistics as a result of various
government pseudoemployment plans.

Both Western Europe and North America have experienced a prolonged economic
stagnation. And capitalist economies cannot sustain employment and living
standards without relatively rapid growth. In the 25 years after the second
world war, most Western countries experienced rapid growth, on the order of
4 and 5 per cent per year. It was that growth which made it possible to
maintain high levels of employment, the rise in wages and the advance of
living standards. And there is no doubt that, in the postwar period, the
Western countries made great advances. Large numbers of working class
people were able to achieve decent living standards. The middle and upper
classes prospered, indeed, many of them reached a standard of living which
can only be called luxurious.

The postwar honeymoon, however, is clearly over. The great "capitalist
revolution" touted by the Rockefellers is no more. "Humanized capitalism"
is no more. Declining growth has now returned us to the age of "le
capitalisme sauvage". It has triggered economic and socil crisis in every
Western country. It is undermining the principal achievements of the
postwar period. In Europe, the Welfare state has been under attack for
fifteen years by those who would shift the burden of crisis onto the
shoulders of the less fortunate. In the United States, a relatively meagre
"social net" to protect the poor is now being shredded by the aggressive
and ignorant defenders of corporate interests, whò also want to be sure
that those who can least afford it bear the brunt of the system's crisis of
stagnation.

The West, then, is itself locked in crisis. This is not a transient crisis
or a "long cycle", as academic apologists would have it. It is a systemic
crisis. The market system can no longer produce anything like prosperity.
The markets which drove the capitalist economy in the postwar period,
automobiles, consumer durables, construction, etc. are all saturated, as
sheaves of government statistics in every country demonstrate. The system
has not found new markets which could create an equivalent wave of
prosperity. Moreover, the acceleration of technical progress in recent
years has begun to eliminate jobs everywhere at a staggering rate. There is
no possible way of compensating for its effect, for creating new employment
in sufficient quantity and at high wage levels.

Government and industry leaders in the West are fully aware of the
situation in one sense. They know what the statistics are. They know what
the problems are. But they are not able to see that the source of the
problem is the fact that, having achieved very high levels of production,
income and wealth, the present capitalist system has nowhere to go.
Half-way solutions could be found, but Western leaders are unwilling to
make the political concessions which they would require. In particular, the
large concentrations of capital in Western countries are led by people who
are constitutionally incapable of seeing that something fundamental is
wrong. That would require them to agree to the curtailing of their power.

Therefore, the leaders of government and industry drive blindly on, not
wishing to see, not prepared to accept policies that might set the present
system on a path of transition to some more rational and more human way of
organizing economic life. It is this blindness, grounded in confusion and
fear, which has clouded the ability of Western leaders to think clearly
about the risks of extending NATO into Eastern Europe. The Western system
is experiencing a profound economic, social and political crisis. And
Western leaders apparently see the exploitation of the East as the only
large-scale project available which might stimulate growth, especially in
Western Europe.

They are therefore prepared to risk a great deal for it. The question is:
will the world accept the risks of East-West conflict and nuclear war in
order to lock into one region economic arrangements which are already
collapsing elsewhere?


Louis Proyect

(http://www.panix.com/~lnp3/marxism.html)