Americki bazi

BorisVM

PACIFICATION FOR A PIPELINE: EXPLAINING THE U.S. MILTARY PRESENCE IN THE BALKANS Marjorie Cohn Thomas Jefferson School of Law Despite President George W. Bush’s rhetoric about withdrawing our forces from the Balkans, we can expect a strong continuing U.S. presence there. Why? It’s all about the transportation of massive oil resources from the Caspian Sea through the Balkans, and maintaining U.S. hegemony in the region. Although NATO ostensibly bombed Yugoslavia to stop ethnic cleansing, the bombing was actually part of a strategy of containment, to keep the region safe for the Trans-Balkan oil pipeline that will transport Caspian oil through Macedonia and Albania. The pipeline is slated to carry 750,000 barrels a day, worth about $600 million a month at current prices. Cooperation of the Albanians with the pipeline project was likely contingent on the U.S. helping them wrest control of Kosovo from the Serbs. The U.S. seeks to contain Macedonia as well, supporting both sides in the conflagration there. Military Professional Resources International, a mercenary company on contract to the Pentagon, has trained both the Kosovo Liberation Army and the Macedonian army. MPRI also supplied and trained the Croatian army in 1994 and 1995 before the Croatians cleansed more than 100,000 Serbs from the Krajina region. The bombing was not aimed at ethnic cleansing. It was part of U.S.-run NATO’s eastward expansion as a counterweight to Russia, which wants the Caspian oil pipeline to run through its territory. NATO, created during the Cold War to protect Western Europe from the Soviets, should have disbanded after the breakup of the USSR. But a 1992 draft of the Pentagon’s Defense Planning Guidance advocated continued U.S. leadership in NATO by “discouraging the advanced industrialized nations from challenging our leadership or even aspiring to a larger global or regional role.” Secretary of State Colin Powell recently said, if we decide to expand NATO, “we should not fear that Russia will object; we will do it because it is in our interest.” Bush is walking a delicate tightrope. He calls for Europe to do the grunt work in the Balkans, but also wants to prevent the European Union from becoming more powerful than U.S.-led NATO. A U.S. Army officer stationed in Bosnia, speaking anonymously to the Los Angeles Times, observed wryly, “The only thing the Europeans need us Americans for is the leadership.” The U.S. has invested too much in the region to pull out. After the NATO bombing campaign, the U.S. spent $36.6 million to build Camp Bondsteel in southern Kosovo. The largest American foreign military base constructed since Vietnam, Bondsteel was built by the Brown & Root Division of Halliburton, the world’s biggest oil services corporation, which was run by Richard Cheney before he was tapped for Vice-President. NATO’s bombs, never sanctioned by the United Nations, were not “humanitarian intervention.” The alleged mass graves were never found by the FBI, and the 10,000-11,000 bodies NATO touted turned out to number about 2000-3000, mostly in KLA strongholds. Even the Marine Corps Gazette concluded after the bombing that the “resulting deaths of thousands of Serbian soldiers, civilians, and Kosovar Albanians and the displacement of hundreds of thousands more can hardly be viewed as a victory for humanitarianism.” It is the purview of the United Nations, not the United States, to authorize humanitarian intervention. If the U.S. really wanted to provide humanitarian assistance to the people of Yugoslavia, it would encourage the International Monetary Fund to forgive $14 billion in loans from prior regimes, finance reparations to rebuild the infrastructure destroyed by its bombs, and remove the U.S. troops from the region. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Marjorie Cohn, an associate professor at Thomas Jefferson School of Law in San Diego, participated in the International Law and Ethics Conference on Humanitarian Intervention last year in Belgrade. She sits on the national executive committee of the National Lawyers Guild. April 27, 2001 ——————————————————————— Discussion Marjorie Cohn's commentary is a reflection of the sad reality that as much as things change they take us back in history. This new world order, as declared following the Soviet Union's collapse, is really a world order analogous to Imperial Europe, only today it is Imperial America. It was obvious during the Rambouillet "negotiations" that they were only a pretext to war, for many of the reasons that Cohn refers to, namely: geo-economics, geo-politics, geo-strategic military interests. I have read several commentary addressing these issues separately. However, Cohn has very elegantly brought them together in her excellent commentary. The legal issues surrounding Nato's bombs, regretfully, only begin with the fact that the bombing violated the U.N. Charter, not to mention Nato's own charter. Even a cursory examine of the Geneva Convention, Protocol 1, coupled with an examination of Amnesty International's study: Collateral damage or Unlawful Killings, suggest that there were at least some violations of international humanitarian law under the guise of "humanitarian intervention." This is reminiscent of the Roman Empire which also believed in "humanitarian intervention" in a manner analogous to the meaning applied in the Balkans. As I said: the more things change, the more they take us back in history. Maria Greifeneder Austria While I entirely agree with everything the author has written, and I wholeheartedly thank her for getting the truth out, I have to point out a factual error. The author states that "the Croatians cleansed more than 100,000 Serbs from the Krajina region." Serbs accounted for 12.2% of the population of Croatia in 1991 and were by far its largest national minority. Serbs were also one of the 3 constituent nations of ex-Yugoslavia (Serbs, Croats & Slovenes) and Croatia. Today, they make up less than 3% of the total population. There were 581,663 Serbs in Croatia (pop. 4,784,265; 1991, Croatian Ministry of Foreign Affairs, http://www.mvp.hr). It is estimated that there are no more than 145,000 Serbs in Croatia today. The official number shall be soon known since the Census 2001 results are due this year. Thus, the number of ethnically cleansed Serbs is not 100,000 but rather close to 436,000. Some of them have left willingly and have emigrated to third countries but the vast majority of these people has been forcefully expelled and/or killed. Less than 8,000 have returned due to intimidation, widespread fascism and general foot-dragging of the "democratic" Croatian government. Mile N Tankosic City of Petrovgrad (Zrenjanin), SERBIA Dear Marjorie, Gee, did you JUST work this out? Where were your astute observations while NATO bombed the Serbs to Hell? I simply can't believe that it's taken an associate professor this long to publish an article that needed to see the light of day two years ago. Still, you did publish the truth and that is far, far more than the rest of the idiot media. Kind regards, Boris Mihailovic Australia The analysis by Margorie Cohn of the goals of US "humanitarian intervention" is accurate and perceptive, although perfunctory. The concept of "humanitarian warfare" is an oxymoron and Orwellian in nature. The US government/media turn the law, morality, and ethics on their heads. We have to remember that "humanitarian intervention" was developed by Adolf Hitler to rationalize and justify the German invasion and occupation of, first, Czechoslovakia, then, Poland. Hitler's policy was to always rationalize the German invasions and occupations of nations as "liberating" oppressed/repressed peoples, such as the Baltic states, Croatia, Kosovo Albanians, Transylvania Hungarians. The Waffen SS perceived itself as a "liberation" force to free oppressed/repressed nationalities. Human rights and humanitarianism and liberation were key Hitlerian justifications for the occupations. Indeed, Munich, 1938 was about allowing the German "humanitarian intervention" against Czechoslovakia to protect the oppressed/repressed Germ With regard to the KLA/NLA, under the US Code, there is a definition of terrorism. Arming, training, or supplying terrorists is made illegal under the Code. The KLA/NLA falls within this definition. Why then did the US government/media support, arm, and train, a known terrorist organization? Finally, it disgusted and appalled me that the Holocaust was being used as the propaganda paradigm for the NATO bombing and occupation. We had Holocaust images and Holocaust terminology: Genocide, war crimes, massacres, ethnic cleansing, refugees. We even had an Albanian Anne Frank, "Adona", the Anne Frank of Kosovo, or the Laptop Anne Frank because she used a computer with a photo scanner. Does anyone remember Adona, the CNN/NPR-manufactured Albanian Anne Frank? Was this an ethical and moral use of the memory of Anne Frank, who died at Bergen-Belsen concentration camp? Adona,went to California to party and enjoy herself after her propaganda success. This type of propaganda misuse of the Holocaust degrades the Holocaust and trivializes it and creates an anti-Jewish backlash.Why don't more people protest against this blatant misuse and manipulation of the Holocaust? Wars come and go, but the propaganda techniques never change. But we never learn anything from history, or until it is too late and academic. But I applaud and commend Margorie Cohn for setting the record straight for the record, for history. The Government/media/intellectual elites cannot fool all the people all the time. Some people can still think independently. Carl K. Savich Michigan/USA So let's take NATO charade step further to the Hague Tribunal which has indicted Slobodan Milosevic. If there was any real justice Milosevic would be rightfully considered not just a national but, a world hero, while Carla Dela Ponte, the ring master of the Hague "show" trials is the real crimminal. Perhaps a future article in JURIST will pursue this point, given the above article to its logical conculsion Robert Oklejas Monroe, MI USA There were several loose-lipped politicians who publicly made the connection between the US/NATO war in the Balkans and Caspian oil pipelines, but the American media in particular never made the overt realization that the two phenomena were tied together, like two particles in Bell's Theorum. http://www.caucasuswatch.com was engendered by the intertwining of the Balkans and Caspian, and more particularly by the media's apparent ignorance of this relationship, or its complicity with the government & big oil to keep the US public from looking beyond feel-good politics. Dean La Velle FL, USA That is why today US is not elected in the Commission of Human Rights at the United Nations. I am Bulgarian and i have firm interests in international law and international affairs - i am an individual memeber of the International Commission of Jurists in Geneva - my individual participation was forced by the process of globalization and by my desire to keep the peace. Marietta Karadimova Bulgaria

http://jurist.law.pitt.edu/forum/forumnew22.HTM