Yugo Politics

["John Gelles" <jjgelles@xxxxxxxx>]

	In World War II there was a common idea that
	running a nation involved cooperation between
	business, labor and government.

	Government itself was well structured allowing
	one balance between national, state and local
	power and another between executive, legislative
	and judicial bodies.

	Profound problems of ethnic and racial harmony
	were suppressed, mainly out of habit, but also by
	local and state police, without intense national
	attention.

	The model today is different. Labor is weaker.
	National attention has made more likely the
	eventual disappearance of ethnic and racial
	discord.

	In Yugoslavia, things are profoundly different.

	Under Tito a dictatorship functioned, perhaps
	more successfully than in other communist nations.
	However, when the dictator died, unresolved
	ethnic rivalries were exploited by would-be
	other leaders. None of the balanced power
	structures were built in time to prevent medieval
	conditions from spreading across Tito's land.

	Worker managed enterprise, as a means to a
	less centralized economy, was too slight an
	element within the whole of society to substitute
	for all the missing power structures that might
	have allowed democratic growth.

	Meanwhile, the United States has not been able
	or willing to bring Russia into NATO ahead of
	a real possibility of wider war. The same can
	be said about the United States and China.
	Perhaps the continental powers are too big to
	form a a pacific union.  One thinks if they did,
	major war could be made to disappear.

	Now we look at some of the economic
	structures that formed within and around the
	power structures. We wonder which forces,
	economic or political, are more fundamental.

	And, at the most crucial hour, all rests with
	military courage, skill and performance to
	wrestle into place power necessary to
	sustain the next period of uneasy peace.

	No one will be surprised if Belgrade again
	comes under a military ruler.

	John Gelles