The Abramowitz-Albright policy for Yugoslavia-7
The Abramowitz-Albright policy for Yugoslavia has been used as the event, the fait
accompli, to complete a major institutional shift of power. Institutions
based on the principle of decision-making equality between nations (the United Nations,
its agencies, and the OSCE) have been drastically weakened. Others,
effectively under U.S. control (NATO, the International Criminal Tribunal), have enlarged
their scope, under the heading of a vague new entity, the "international
community".
The first target of this shift has of course been the United
Nations. Already weakened by the successful U.S. undermining of U.N. agencies such as
UNESCO and UNCTAD which threatened to promote alternative and more egalitarian concepts of
"globalization", the United Nations has been reduced by the conflict in
Yugoslavia to a rubber stamp to be used or ignored by the United States as it chooses.
Certainly, responsibility for weakening the United Nations is widely shared among
world powers, but the United States' role in this demolition enterprise has nevertheless
been outstanding. Far from trying to help the United Nations seek an even-handed solution
to the Yugoslav crisis, the Clinton administration used its influence to secure decisions
of benefit to its own chosen clients, the Bosnian Muslims and the Albanian secessionists. In Bosnia, United Nations forces were given impossible missions: hanging
around deceptively declared -- deceptively because never
demilitarized like Srebrenica -- "safe areas", as
fighting continued. Their inevitable, not to say programmed, failure could be, and
has been, trumpeted as "proof" that only NATO can carry out a proper
peace-keeping mission.
A significant high point in the United States' reduction of
the United Nations to a pliant tool came on August 30, 1995, when the United Nations
momentarily relinquished its control over Bosnian peace-keeping to NATO, aka the Pentagon,
in order to let the United States bomb the Bosnian Serbs.
For Washington, the primary significance of this bombing had less to do with the
people of Bosnia than with U.S. power. According to Richard Holbrooke, this was correctly
grasped by columnist William Pfaff who wrote the next day: "The United States today
is again Europe's leader; there is no other."
In his memoir To End a War, Richard Holbrooke recounted this proud achievement and
lavishly praised the United Nations official who made it possible: the Ghanaian diplomat
Kofi Annan, then in charge of peacekeeping operations.
Madeleine Albright, at the time the U.S. ambassador
to the United Nations, was carrying on a "vigorous campaign" in favour of
bombing the Serbs. Luck smiled: "fortunately, Secretary-General
Boutros-Ghali was unreachable [...], so she dealt instead
with his best deputy, Kofi Annan, who was in charge of
peacekeeping operations. At 11:45 a.m., New York time, came a big break: Annan informed
Talbott and Albright that he had instructed the U.N.'s civilian officials and military
commanders to relinquish for a limited period of time their authority to veto air strikes
in Bosnia. For the first time in the war, the decision on the air strikes was
solely in the hands of NATO -- primarily two American officers [...]"
"Annan's gutsy performance in those twenty-four hours
was to play a central role in Washington's strong support for him a year later as the
successor to Boutros Boutros-Ghali as Secretary General of the United Nations. Indeed, in
a sense Annan won the job on that day".
Bosnia was the main reason for getting rid of Boutros-Ghali. "More than any
other issue, it was his performance on Bosnia that made us feel he did not deserve a
second term -- just as Kofi Annan's strength on the bombing in August had already made him
the private favorite of many American officials", Holbrooke explained. "Although
the American campaign against Boutros-Ghali, in which all our key allies opposed us, was
long and difficult [...] the decision was correct, and may well have saved America's role
in the United Nations."
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