A Global Balkans

According to one review, "the 31-page document asserts American dominance as the lone superpower – a status no rival power will be allowed to challenge. And it provides a reason the world should accept this state of affairs: the expansion of peace and more freedom." Another review analyzes the "unrestrained arrogance" of American Empire, and the plan to reshape the world any which way it chooses.

All eyes are now turned towards Iraq, as the testing ground for the new Grand Strategy. But the test has already been conducted over the past decade, in the faraway corner of Europe: the Balkans. From the early-on involvement in dismembering Yugoslavia to the current occupation and domination of the resulting vassal principalities, the US has used the Balkans to test and expand the limits of its power, eventually abolishing them altogether.

What the Strategy offers to the world is a global Balkans: ruined, conquered, desperate, hopelessly mired in delusions and lies. A wasteland, called peace.

There are many passages in the "National Security Strategy" dealing with specific objectives, from promoting genetically modified foods (for which US companies would charge royalties) and "free trade" (only as long as America comes out ahead), to subjugating India, China, Russia and several key African countries. But in the effort to make the world safe for America, the "Strategy" also makes broader claims, grounded one way or another in the Empires’ Balkans experiences: a chilling example of how theory is based on successful practice.

In several places, the "Strategy" asserts the importance of democracy in the new world order, and pledges US power to spread it to the entire world.

"[W]e are ultimately fighting for our democratic values and way of life," it says (Section III). How? Consider this direct reference:

"when openings arrive, we can encourage change – as we did in central and eastern Europe between 1989 and 1991, or in Belgrade in 2000." (Section II)

That the US literally paid the Serbian opposition to take over the government was freely admitted on the pages of the Washington Post and the New York Times even as the Serbian elections of 2000 were under way. In Kosovo, elections were used to legitimize the Albanian takeover and the UN/NATO occupation. In Bosnia, Imperial satraps have regularly attempted to influence electoral outcomes, and if the results displeased them, they would simply dismiss or disenfranchise the winners. Most recently, Imperial lackeys did their best to manipulate the vote in Macedonia.

To seize power anywhere in the Balkans – not just the former Yugoslavia, either – one needs America’s blessing. Yet the lives of Croats, Bosnian Muslims, Serbs, Albanians, Macedonians, Bulgarians, and Romanians are a far cry from the "American way"- in fact, most are worse off than under Communism.

The next pillar of the Strategy is derived from George W. Bush’s speech in the aftermath of September 11:

"[O]ur responsibility to history is already clear: to… rid the world of evil." (Section III)

That seems like an ambitious goal. After all, George W. Bush considers himself a Christian. As the foremost Christian prayer asks God to "deliver us from evil," wouldn’t this "responsibility to history" be blasphemous? Certainly, unless "evil" is defined in terms peculiarly unique to the Imperial worldview.

In that strange universe, evil and good are not attributes of actions undertaken by individuals or nations, as would normally be the case. Rather, they are attributes of individuals and nations themselves, determining the righteousness or wickedness of their actions. Bombing civilians, for example, would be considered evil under the old morality. In the Imperial world, however, it is evil only when undertaken by evil people – individuals or nations thus designated by the Empire (like Slobodan Milosevic). Employed by the Empire itself, the embodiment of all that is righteous and good, it is entirely acceptable. And why is the Empire the embodiment of all righteous and good? Why because it says so, of course, in a brilliant display of circular logic that circumvents every philosophical principle from the dawn of humanity onwards.

Until Emperor Bush called them "evil" last year, the US-designated forces of darkness were referred to by an Albrightism, "rogue states." According to the Strategy, rogue states:

"display no regard for international law, threaten their neighbors, and callously violate international treaties to which they are party" (Section V)

One might note that the Empire itself has committed all of these transgressions: it has flouted international law by attacking Yugoslavia in 1999; it threatens not is neighbors, but indeed the entire world, with "preemptive strikes"; and it certainly does not hesitate to violate international treaties it has signed.

Indeed, when facing a "rogue" like Slobodan Milosevic, whose cardinal sin was daring to disobey American diktat, anything goes. Dare someone argue that Kosovo was an internal Serbian matter, as international law clearly supports? Nonsense:

"the distinction between domestic and foreign affairs is diminishing." (Section IX)

In fact, given the proper media coverage, the democratic public in the West will believe just about anything: from massacre yarns to unsubstantiated claims of genocide. Not only can it believe the nonexistent, it can be made to ignore the existing – such as the mass expulsion of non-Albanians from the occupied province, or the systematic destruction of Serbian churches and cultural heritage in general. The Strategy pays appropriate homage to the power of the media:

"we also need a different and more comprehensive approach to public information efforts that can help people around the world learn about and understand America." (Section IX)

In the aftermath of US interventions, Bosnia (1995+) and Kosovo (1999+) have been occupied by NATO troops. In Bosnia, the occupation was supposed to be temporary. By the time Kosovo came along, even that pretense was abandoned. "Peacekeeping" was replaced by "nation-building." Though a cruel experiment in playing God, with predictably disastrous results, it is endorsed by the Strategy:

"As humanitarian relief requirements are better understood, we must also be able to help build police forces, court systems, and legal codes, local and provincial government institutions, and electoral systems." (Section IX)

Finally, there was the manner in which the Kosovo War was fought: massive destruction from the air, combined with proxy forces on the ground to avoid American casualties. Empire’s causes are worth thousands of deaths, as long as they are not American. The Strategy says:

But what "defenses" does it speak of? September 11 has shown that the Empire lacks true defenses; all its military might is offensive: from aircraft carriers that project bombers (i.e. power) all over the world, to cruise missiles, smart bombs, fast tanks and special forces. Almost since its inception, the United States has defined war as something that takes place elsewhere.

It is the absolute power to attack (but not defend) anyone, anywhere, anytime, that has most likely enabled the assumption of Imperial rulers that they alone can define good and evil. To them, law is but a way of exercising power – a means to an end, no more. Their Manifest Destiny allows for some magnificent sophistry:

[T]he United States must defend liberty and justice because these principles are right and true for all people everywhere. No nation owns these aspirations, and no nation is exempt from them.( Section II)

All are equal before the law: a noble sentiment by any standard, and entirely true. But at the same time, some are more equal than others:

"We will take the actions necessary to ensure that our efforts to meet our global security commitments and protect Americans are not impaired by the potential for investigations, inquiry, or prosecution by the International Criminal Court (ICC), whose jurisdiction does not extend to Americans and which we do not accept." (Section IX)

Again, a noble value – refusing to give up a nation’s sovereignty to a politically motivated and unprecedented supranational institution – is in service of rank hypocrisy. For even as the US rejects the ICC, it flogs Yugoslavia almost daily into submitting to the ICTY, a "court" even less legitimate than its world-encompassing offspring, and even more clearly political in character.

Of course, the Strategy is ultimately about the Empire’s ongoing "war on terrorism". But the war is not against all terrorism – merely the kind aimed against Americans. Employed against others, especially America’s enemies, it is not called "terrorism," and is definitely not labeled as evil.

Terrorism happens to be a remarkably effective way of achieving political and other aims, which is why it is so widespread. The Strategy clearly defines terrorism as "premeditated, politically motivated violence perpetrated against innocents." (Section III)

Consider, then, a statement by Lt. Gen. Michael Short, US Air Force, quoted in the International Herald Tribune and the Washington Post in May 1999:

"If you wake up in the morning and you have no power to your house and no gas to your stove and the bridge you take to work is down and will be lying in the Danube for the next 20 years, I think you begin to ask, 'Hey, Slobo, what's this all about? How much more of this do we have to withstand?' And at some point, you make the transition from applauding Serb machismo against the world to thinking what your country is going to look like if this continues."

Is this not "premeditated, politically motivated violence perpetrated against innocents"? Even as Imperial sophistry says no (for the Empire can do no evil), all logic and reason say yes.

In the period leading up to the US attack, the Albanian "Kosovo Liberation Army" engaged in politically motivated violence against innocents. It was even branded "a clearly terrorist organization" by a US diplomat, who was subsequently exiled to Indonesia for this transgression. The KLA, you see, couldn’t possibly be terrorists. They were fighting for "American values," as Sen. Joseph Lieberman infamously noted. Never mind their actions, or their celebration of their Nazi ancestors. Imperial support for the KLA and its offshoots in Macedonia and southwestern Serbia is unwavering.

That is not one last straw, though. Dripping in hypocrisy, the Strategy repeatedly states that liberty and trade create peace and prosperity – a manifest truth, actually. But the very concept of Empire is emphatically opposed to liberty, trade, peace, and prosperity: it is entirely about enslavement, power, conquest and despair – in short, about force.

But according to His Elevated Majesty, if someone dares dispute this, or argue that peace, liberty and prosperity cannot possibly come at gunpoint (only power does, as Chairman Mao famously observed), such evil rogues and misfits will be preventively bombed out of existence. For their own good, of course.

Any paleo-Rightist or radical-Leftist who says that we are an empire should be ignored. They are full of sh*t.

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Jonah Goldberg
Not Getting America: Misunderstanding the U.S.
http://www.nationalreview.com/goldberg/goldberg092402.asp

NOT AN EMPIRE

...the talk we hear from the paleo-Right and the anti-American Left and most places in-between about the American "empire" is so disingenuous. In fact, if you look really, really closely, you'll discover that when American lefty intellectuals prattle about American imperialism it is mostly a metaphorical argument. They confuse our cultural dominance with the Roman Empire's dominance, skipping right over the fact that the Roman Empire installed Roman governors, collected imperial taxes, imposed Roman law, conscripted colonial subjects into the Roman army (eventually), and generally considered Rome the supreme and final authority on any important question.

Sure, the U.S. has military bases all over the world — which are often compared to Roman garrisons — but unlike Roman garrisons their host countries can get rid of them by asking them to leave. The same holds true for our overly hyped "imperial" holdings, like Puerto Rico. They are one referendum away from independence.

Anyway, my point is simply this: Saying we rule the world doesn't make it so. We don't rule the world. We lead the world — this is a huge distinction to people who live outside the intellectual menagerie of an Ivy League English department. If the coolest guy in school wears a leather jacket and all the other kids follow suit, that's hardly the same thing as the coolest guy forcing them at gunpoint to buy a leather jacket from him.

Now, the fact that we are not an empire, but could be one if we wanted to, confuses the dickens of all sorts of people. Indeed, some people find the idea so confusing they willfully refuse to believe it and just go on insisting we are an empire the way the guy in the Monty Python skit just kept insisting the parrot wasn't dead. Other folks don't use the word "empire" but they are just as confused about America's behavior. Marxists, for example, have a hard time fathoming that America doesn't behave according to their straight-line predictions about how a capitalistic "hegemon" should behave. So they mine the data. They ignore the inconvenient and misinterpret the unignorable.

Europeans who did have colonies and who did invade both their neighbors and distant lands for material gain — and, to be fair, for more ideologically complex motives — have a hard time computing that America isn't behaving the way they did.

The metaphor of a global Balkans is perfect. Nebojsa Malic is one of the best columnists at Antiwar.com. This article may be a bit more shrill in tone than his usual mournful style but I get a wee bit shrill myself as I see justice for the Serbs getting further and further away on the horizon.

The governments of the West and their corporate media toadies cling tenaciously to the myths of their Balkans campaigns. Even in the midst of otherwise rational articles there will be a ritual denunciation of the Serbs. I suppose this is meant to shield the Global Class from charges of racism or christianism.

In any case, years from now the underground resistance will proudly call themselves "serbs" in memory of the first battle.

The "imperialist" cant can get a little tiresome when it's mouthed by some fat and happy professor on a US campus or some other plump leftie lecturing from the living-room of her beach-front vacation bungalow.

But, I think a citizen of the "former" Yugoslavia might have the right to use that word to describe what happened and is still happening in his form home---don't you? I mean, have you never heard of Camp Bondsteel?

Antiwar.com was almost the only American media outlet who took out after NATO, European "third way" socialists and the rest of the globalist gang when they devoured the serbs. They deserve a lot of respect for that. There aren't that many outlets for those who have read history and understand that war ALWAYS increases the scope and power of the State. and NEVER enhances individual liberty or wealth--NEVER.

Yes the US surely does have a global prescense and it can, I suppose, be called the new'virtual' model of the imperial paradigm.

One big thing does set it aside from its predecessor states. The men who built those empires (Roman, Spanish, French, and most to the point the British)seem to have had a genuine imperial elan. Phrases such as "Civis sum Romanum" "In Spain we are always on crusade', or "mission civilatrice', or "The sun never sets on the Union Jack." emxemplified the sheer determination to win and rule along with a forthright pride in the inherent superiority of the nation or national unit the imperialist belonged to. Along with this went a real enjoyment of the hardship and danger as a challenge to be met that led to driving the imperial frontier further on.

The British considered the NW frontier of the Indian Empire to be a large live fire training area for their anglo-indian troops. officers eagerly competed to exchange for billets with units rotating to the frontier. When other campaigns were launched to crush the Mahdists in the Sudan or bring the Mad Mullah of somaliland to heel there were more officers volunteering than could possibly be accomodated. When Kitchner started his final drive in 1897 that would bring his army to the climatic battle with the dervishes outside Omdurman he categorically refused to have any officer volunteers be accepted. His rage when he found out that Lt. Winston Churchill had been permitted, via the Prince of Wales direct intervention, to join as a addition ADC the one British cavalry regiment that was being dispatched to the Sudan field force knew no bounds.

This unit, the 21st Lancers, fell icharged into a deep ravine jammed with dervishes during the battle of Omdurman and into the annals of the most notable feats of British arms. If a similar event were to befall a US unit the hysteria and politicallty motivated screeching from pundits, pulpits, Congress, and the media would be deafening.

What do we get as a backdrop to our wars of empire? Endless whining about the possibility of casualties. Huge cantoonments such as Camp Bondsteel where a superabundance of uniformed people do anything but something military. When we launch a well executed little border war against the barbarians as we are doing in Afghanistan there is relentless hand wringing over the brutal fact that someone will draw a black card and return home in a box. Why the endless gloom and the maniac insistence on no one ever making a mistake or even having an untoward event. We are not talking about the huge battles and hideous casualty lists of high density peer on peer warfare as exemplified by the world wars or Korea or even VietNam. In Afghanistan and in the future in Iraq and Yeman and whereever else we will be fighting it will be against well armed barbarians who our superior technology, cohesion and discipline should leave crushed in the dust with pretty minimal casualties. Instead of any zest in the lives of our soldiers these events bring perpetual worry someone will step on a mine, roll a truck over, or horror of horrors get in an ambush. All of these things mean the careers of a number of people go up in smoke. So instead we rely almost exclusively on precision air strikes and using SOF assets to ferret out the enemy. Apparently it is considerednok fro SOF and Rangers to go in harms way. If we are going to have an empire lets enjoy it.

Goldberg doesn't seem to understand the concept of metaphore.

Oh, it's a metaphor now? That's not the impression I get from Pat Buchanan and Al Gore. No one is claiming that the US is building an empire in the traditional sense of the word.

Really? You're the first person I've heard say this.

What we are trying to do is remake different parts of the world, such as the Balkins and the middle East, is forcibly impose a system of government and set of civic values, an act which resembles imperialism in some ways.

I agree that we had no business in Bosnia or Serbia (except that NATO would disagree.)

However, I disagree that our actions in the Middle East is imperialistic, metaphorically or otherwise. We have tolerated and done business with dictatorships in the Arab world for many decades. It is only now that their fanatics have attacked our nation inside our own borders, that we must take action. We must deprive those nations of the ability to do us harm. You may think that is imperialistic. I call it defending our nation, which is the PRIMARY role of our government.

We have tolerated and done business with dictatorships in the Arab world for many decades. It is only now that their fanatics have attacked our nation inside our own borders, that we must take action. We must deprive those nations of the ability to do us harm. You may think that is imperialistic. I call it defending our nation, which is the PRIMARY role of our government.

I agree that we need to deprive those nations of the ability to harm us, and that given the latest revelations about Iraq, it may be necessary to depose Saddam in order to do so, but the Bush document goes far beyond that. Its goal is to establish Western-Style corporatist democracies accross the Middle East by force. That is what smacks of imperialism, and I want nothing to do with it.

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