The Ominous Shades of 1939

Rob Gowland

At the Rambouillet conference on Kosovo, the Government of Yugoslavia was presented with an ultimatum from the US. It demanded the severing of the Serbian province of Kosovo from Yugoslavia and its occupation by NATO military forces.

Far from giving Kosovo independence, it would in fact have been run as a neo-colony, with power vested in non-elected representatives of Washington and Brussels. The refusal of Yugoslavia to bow to this ultimatum was the excuse for the US to launch air attacks and start the first war in Europe for almost half a century.

The US claims it is acting to save the ethnic Albanians of Kosovo from ethnic cleansing and human rights violations at the hands of the Government of Yugoslavia.

But shortly before the Rambouillet meeting, the US stood alone in the UN General Assembly as the only country prepared to support the human rights violating, ethnic cleansing regime in Israel.

The activities of the Netanyahu Government in waging war on its neighbours, oppressing its Palestinian population, destroying their homes and forcibly removing them to be replaced by Israeli settlers ("ethnic cleansing'' by any definition), and thumbing its nose at US-brokered peace agreements would seem to be precisely the sort of thing that brings massive US sanctions and military intervention.

That is, if the principles that Bill Clinton and Madeleine Albright are so fond of proclaiming to the world are actually genuine and not merely a smokescreen for US policy driven by the interests of US big capital.

The UN General Assembly, by 115 votes to two, resolved to reiterate the UN's condemnation of Israel's failure to halt settlement activity. The only two countries to vote against the resolution were Israel and the US, the champion of freedom, democracy and human rights.

The General Assembly bluntly blamed the "deterioration" in the Middle East peace progress on "the lack of compliance by the Government of Israel with the existing agreements". Despite this, Netanyahu seems to be in no danger of having his country subjected to US cruise missile attacks or occupied by NATO "peace keepers".

Israel's settlement program in occupied Palestine contravenes the fourth Geneva Convention. The UN General Assembly called on the signatories to the Convention to meet for a conference in Geneva on July 15.

There, the US will undoubtedly champion Israel's right to continue violating the rights of Palestinians and thumbing its nose at world opinion.

It is also very likely that the global bully will get another diplomatic black eye at the conference in the form of yet another humiliating rebuff.

But its international isolation and increasingly frequent diplomatic rebuffs on an earlier but almost identical vote in the UN condemned the US for its policy towards Cuba but has not deterred the big banks and transnational corporations that determine US policy from their aim not just of global domination but of global control.

US-based transnational big-business is out to control world trade, world food production, world energy supplies, and world finance. They want open access to all markets, freedom to manipulate all currencies, and through the IMF the power to control all the world's economies.

It's a big order, but capitalists have no limits on their thirst for power and profits. The US banks and the TNCs have a way to go yet to achieve their aim but they're on their way sure enough.

Along the way they are going to have to contend with some imperialist rivals in the form of Japan and an integrated Europe, which, with the euro is already trying to screw up US financial domination.

Germany, anxious to become the leading European power, its capitalists yearning for the global power they used to hold before World Wars One and Two, has been an active rival of the US in the dismemberment of Yugoslavia.

Over half the so-called Kosovo Liberation Army is made up of mercenaries, the bulk of them brought in from Germany, their pockets full of marks.

The dismemberment and economic destruction of Yugoslavia is but a part of the drive by the biggest of big business to enforce a new world order.

At the moment the USA and its faithful lapdog Britain are leading the charge, but Germany at the head of a unified Europe and Japan are not likely to be content for long with the status of retainers.

The resemblance between the Rambouillet conference and Munich has been remarked on elsewhere. Munich too was about dismembering a country for strategic reasons that had nothing to do with the loudly trumpeted "rights" of the Sudeten Germans.

Unable to get its way reliably in the UN Security Council (China, Russia and occasionally France tend to oppose US policy) the US is trying now to sideline the UN altogether. It is endeavouring to replace it with NATO as the world arbiter on questions of aggression and threats to peace.

Meanwhile attacks on working people and democratic rights are assuming forms once only associated with openly terroristic fascist regimes.

The working class and the mass organisations of the people need to find solutions to dealing with the global drive of big business for total domination, for the ominous shades of 1939 are gathering fast.