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of the Belgrade Coup
Editor & Webmaster
Leon Chame - 2008
Yugoslav Associates:
- Zoran Radojicic
- Dejan Vukelic
- George Orwell
Contributing Websites:
- Original Sorces
- Transnational (TFF)
- Fair sources
- WSWS
avgust 20, 2008
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Winning and Losing Depends Upon How One Measures It.
There was no doubt that if NATO chose to it would prevail militarily, and it did, but
it surrendered its primary objective - preventing a humanitarian catastrophe. The NATO war
machine, with funding of about $270 billion annually in the U.S., and about $180 billion
annually in the other NATO countries, prevailed militarily over Yugoslavia's armed forces
which receive less than $1 billion annually.
Before the war began it was estimated that after 7 1/2 years of international economic
sanctions, it would take Yugoslavia 29 years to reach the level of economic prosperity it
had in 1989. Now the estimate is 45 years - without international aid estimated at between
$50 billion and $150 billion.
Fought for a "good cause", the prevention of "a humanitarian
catastrophe", NATO's air-only campaign hastened the process of refugees - even though
U.S. generals forewarned President Clinton that this would be the result. The UNHCR
reported 4000 registered refugees outside of Kosovo on March 27. Now only about 10 per
cent of Kosovo's 1.8 million Muslims remain in their homes in Kosovo.
NATO forces, with the exception of the vaunted Apache helicopters, performed brilliantly.
They killed 5000 Serbian soldiers, wounded 10,000, while the NATO count of deaths due to
combat, not accident, was zero.
NATO's primary cause was just, but it was not a just war. NATO waged a war that had no
reasonable chance of success in preventing a "humanitarian catastrophe - its
professed goal". NATO waged a war for reasons
of self-interest - to perpetuate NATO which has no place in a post
Cold War world.
NATO did not wage war as a last resort having exhausted all nonviolent means (Rambouillet
Ultimatum of occupying the whole of Yugoslavia) of settling the dispute with Yugoslavia. Under the G-8 plan for peace accepted by Yugoslavia, NATO
accepted terms it refused to accept before the NATO ultimatum that triggered the war. NATO's peace plan is unacceptable to the KLA which served as NATO's allies on
the ground. The Kosovars have no homes or businesses to return to, few crops and livestock
to feed them, and are mentally scarred by what they have witnessed in the last several
weeks.
How long will an imposed "peace" last? Will NATO countries, specifically their
taxpayers, provide the funding to rebuild Yugoslavia? For how long will the Kosovars
accept limited autonomy under NATO occupation?
And what of the formal complaint laid before the tribunal, by a group of lawyers from
several countries, charging individual leaders of NATO countries and officials of NATO
itself? Will they be brought to trial? And what of President Milosevic and others indicted
by the International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia? Will it be properly processed?
What of the precedent set by NATO in intervening in the internal affairs of a sovereign
Yugoslavia? Will this lead to more self-serving interference in the affairs of other
states?
This all will only accelerate the arms race of which the U.S. is the primary
beneficiary, the aim why this war was staged in the first place.
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