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To: Kosovo Talk
From: Diana Johnstone
Subject: Answer to second question

It is hard to answer such a question within the framework of reality. It posits a totally fictional version of the United States, which, like a soap-opera heroine, wonders from installment to installment, "Oh dear, what should I do?" Indeed, this fictional character gains its apparent credibility from the cultural context of U.S. mass entertainment, which centers around pure and simple good guys and gals blundering spontaneously to victory over evil bad guys, saving victims along the way.

The intervention of the United States in the Balkans has nothing, absolutely nothing, to do with moral dilemmas. It is power politics on a scale we have not seen since World War II. But this time, the dominant military power, NATO, also possesses a near-monopoly on public perception, as well as a stranglehold on most international organizations. This overwhelming dominance of firepower, political clout, and mass communications is a temptation that is dangerous in itself. As Madeleine Albright put it, what's the use of having the greatest military power in the world if you don't use it? (Or words to that effect.) The United States is using it now, in the Balkans, to reshape the whole world order.

Concern for "human rights" is a cynical pretext. Worse than that, in this new world order, the "humanitarian imperative" is the battering ram for breaking down the fragile structure of international law, the only structure that could theoretically put limits on the global intervention of U.S. military power. Why should the global Superpower prefer the "humanitarian imperative" to law? Because it is more subjective, fuzzily defined, and now overwhelmingly influenced, even shaped, by a mass media that belongs to the same power structure as the U.S. military-industrial complex.

For years, official U.S. government statements and the mass media -- influential columnists and editorialists most of all -- have conditioned public opinion to perceive the Yugoslav situation in terms of "human rights" and "genocide," and thus to clamor for, or at least approve, U.S. intervention. This enables the U.S. to flout international law and national sovereignty in the name of a "higher good." Taking the law into one's own hands is an old American frontier custom, glorified in popular culture.

This is not the first time the U.S. has violated international law, but it is the most flagrant and spectacular. And it has succeeded in involving European NATO allies as partners in crime. This leaves not only the Balkans, but the remnants of the post-World War II structure of international law in shambles.

To leave reality for a moment and get back to the hypothetical question: The only duty of Superpower U.S.A. should be to support genuine, neutral mediators. Months ago, a few of us who saw what was coming tried to suggest to anyone who would listen that what Kosovo required was a team of international mediators, sponsored by neutral governments with no strategic interest in the Balkans. Admittedly, in today's world, there are few governments that are not subject to being intimidated or bought off by the United States -- or by its filthy rich allies in Saudi Arabia and Brunei.

The only name that came quickly and obviously to mind was Nelson Mandela. But others could probably be found, less prestigious, perhaps, but any of them better than William Walker, the former instrument of U.S. banana republic control in Central America who was assigned to scuttle the Kosovo Verification Mission set up (formally) under the auspices of the Organization of Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE). This was the final U.S. stroke designed to discredit and remove from the scene the OSCE, long mentioned as the desirable alternative European security organization to replace NATO. (Grumbling about Walker's role is widespread within the OSCE itself, and has been voiced publicly by its German Christian Democratic Vice President Willy Wimmer.)

It should be obvious that the United States is an economic and military giant and a moral dwarf on the world scene. Its international humanitarian organizations are easily used as cover for CIA operations; its expenditures for genuinely humanitarian purposes are minimal; its population is deliberately kept ignorant and misinformed about other countries; it fails to pay its U.N. dues; it bullies Europe to abandon the peasants of the Caribbean to destitution for the sake of Chiquita bananas; it bombs pharmaceutical plants and strangles the population of Iraq without a qualm.

There are countries in the world much poorer in material terms, but much richer in the wisdom, empathy, patience, interest in others, reconciliation skills, and modesty -- so important when meddling in other people's business -- required to help resolve such a difficult problem as Serbian-Albanian relations in Kosovo. Along with Mandela, one might suggest respected figures from such countries as Burkina Faso, Iceland, Sweden, India, Bangladesh, Finland, Laos ... all more qualified to act as disinterested mediators than the United States. But that is a dream, and we are living the nightmare.