[NYTr] The Dismantling of Yugoslavia: Monthly Review Special Issue

[All the News That Doesn't Fit]

sent by Gregory Elich - Oct 1, 2007

Monthly Review 59:5 - October, 2007
http://monthlyreview.org/

The Dismantling of Yugoslavia

c o n t e n t s

It is almost unheard of for a whole issue of MR (other than
occasionally one of our special July-August issues) to be devoted to a
single contribution. The typical MR issue consists of a lot of short
articles. We have no intention of changing that. Nevertheless, we are
making a rare exception in the case of Edward S. Herman's and David
Peterson's The Dismantling of Yugoslavia, which we regard as the
definitive critique at this stage both of the U.S./NATO role in the
exploitation and exacerbation of the Yugoslavian tragedy and of the
Western Liberal-Left Intellectual and Moral Collapse that made this
possible. So effective has been the media propaganda system at
presenting the imperialist wars in Yugoslavia in the 1990s as
humanitarian interventions that this not only bolstered support for the
invasions and occupations in Afghanistan and Iraq (in defiance of
international law), but is now being offered as a justification for
further possible humanitarian interventions elsewhere, such as Iran,
the Sudan (Darfur), Nigeria, and even Venezuela.

The widespread failure on the left to understand the dire implications
of such humanitarian wars by the United States and the other leading
imperial powers is firmly rooted in misconceptions about the
Yugoslavian case. In the closing paragraph of her Fools Crusade:
Yugoslavia, NATO, and Western Delusions (Monthly Review Press, 2002),
Diana Johnstone warnedin words that should certainly give us pause
todaythat should the tough unilateralist approach of the second Bush
presidency cause serious disaffection among allies, U.S. leaders have
the option of returning to the soft approach of humanitarian war that
proved so successful in silencing critics and rallying support [in
Yugoslavia]. To keep that option open, the partners in crime must
continue to impose their own mythical version of the 1999 NATO crusade.
The fundamental issue associated with such interventions has been
raised by Jean Bricmont in his newly published Monthly Review Press
book Humanitarian Imperialism: Using Human Rights to Sell War. But a
deeper understanding of the traps laid for those who today support
humanitarian wars to be carried out by the imperial powers is only
possible through a close examination of the Yugoslavian case itself,
presented as the model for such interventions: hence, the overriding
importance of Herman and Peterson's The Dismantling of Yugoslavia.

The Dismantling of Yugoslavia: A Study in Inhumanitarian Intervention
(and a Western Liberal-Left Intellectual and Moral Collapse)

EDWARD S. HERMAN and DAVID PETERSON

The Dismantling of Yugoslavia: A Study in Inhumanitarian Intervention
(and a Western Liberal-Left Intellectual and Moral Collapse)  

Part I
Edward S. Herman and David Peterson

The breakup of Yugoslavia provided the fodder for what may have been the
most misrepresented series of major events over the past twenty years.
The journalistic and historical narratives that were imposed upon these
wars have systematically distorted their nature, and were deeply
prejudicial, downplaying the external factors that drove Yugoslavia's
breakup while selectively exaggerating and misrepresenting the internal
factors. Perhaps no civil warsand Yugoslavia suffered multiple civil
wars across several theaters, at least two of which remain
unresolved have ever been harvested as cynically by foreign powers to
establish legal precedents and new categories of international duties
and norms. Nor have any other civil wars been turned into such a
proving ground for the related notions of humanitarian intervention and
the right [or responsibility] to protect. Yugoslavia's conflicts were
not so much mediated by foreign powers as they were inflamed and
exploited by them to advance policy goals. The result was a tsunami of
lies and misrepresentations in whose wake the world is still reeling.

The Dismantling of Yugoslavia  Part II
Edward S. Herman and David Peterson

A striking feature of U.S. policy since the collapse of the Soviet
deterrent is the frequency with which it relies on the Security Council
and the Secretariat for its executionbefore the fact when it can (Iraq
199091), but after the fact when it must (as in the cases of postwar
Kosovo and post-invasion Afghanistan and Iraq). Even though the
Security Council never authorized these last three major U.S.
aggressions, in each case the United States secured degrees of council
assent and ex post facto legitimation.

The Dismantling of Yugoslavia  Part III
Edward S. Herman and David Peterson

The four-year trial of Slobodan Milosevic was the culmination of ICTY
service to the NATO program in the Balkans. It was designed to show the
world by an elaborate procedure leading ultimately to the conviction of
the top Serb leaderthe first head of state in modern times to be
indicted, seized, and tried in this fashionthat the judgment and
opprobrium of history awaits the people in whose name their crimes were
committed, as Secretary of State Lawrence Eagleburger said in 1992.95
As with the ICTY overall, this trial was supposed to help shape how
current and future generations view the wars and in particular Serbias
role in them, as the advocates for this brand of international justice
at Human Rights Watch clearly understand.96 This required the framing
of indictments around the Serbs unique guilt for wars dating back to
the summer of 1991, when Slovenia and Croatia declared their
independence, with NATOs 1999 violation of the UN Charter vindicated on
moral grounds that allegedly preempt the Charters restrictions on the
use of force.

The Dismantling of Yugoslavia  Part IV
Edward S. Herman and David Peterson

Media coverage of the Yugoslav wars ranks among the classic cases in
which early demonization as well as an underlying strong political
interest led quickly to closure, with a developing narrative of good
and evil participants and a crescendo of propaganda steadily
reinforcing the good-evil perspective. This was the case after the
shooting of Pope John Paul II in Rome in 1981, where dubious evidence
of Bulgarian-KGB involvement was quickly accepted by the New York Times
and its mainstream colleagues, and only plot-supportive evidence was of
interest to the media thereafter. They remained gulled for years.

The Dismantling of Yugoslavia  Part V: Notes
Edward S. Herman and David Peterson

The Dismantling of Yugoslavia  Part VI: Glossary & Chronology
Edward S. Herman and David Peterson