“The more
things change, the more they stay the same,” wrote a French columnist back in
1849 – but the witticism applies just as well in 2012. Recall, for
example, that Barack Obama became Emperor in 2008 by promising Hope and Change,
only to embrace continuity instead. His challenger
this year campaigned against Obama’s domestic policies, but on matters foreign
he was strangely
in sync with the incumbent.
Obama’s easy
re-election has, predictably, been termed a mandate to continue the present
policies – including, no doubt, the “humanitarian” interventions and social
engineering (called “nation-building” when done abroad). The trouble with
Empire, however, is that it’s not only bleeding the U.S. dry, but that it
manifestly doesn’t work.
Consider, as Gordon
Bardos did earlier this week, the situation in the Balkans. Twenty-odd years
of Imperial meddling later, and the region has come back to where it was in the
early 1990s – though some roles may have been reshuffled in the process:
“…some of the most well-funded international efforts in nation- and state-building in history have in many ways gotten us right back to where we started from two decades ago. Perhaps even further back.”
Ramush Returns
Take, for example,
the ICTY, an ad hoc “tribunal” allegedly established – under
dubious circumstances – to foster reconciliation by prosecuting those
responsible for wartime atrocities. It has manifestly done nothing of the sort,
instead serving as a tool of the Empire to eliminate inconvenient politicians,
bolster favorites, and rewrite the region’s history, both recent and distant.
Having recently
released two Croatian generals it originally convicted of taking part in a
campaign to murder and expel ethnic Serbs, the “Tribunal” did the same with
Ramush Haradinaj. One of the leaders of the terrorist KLA, Haradinaj became a
favorite client of Empire and “prime minister” of the Albanian provisional
government in the occupied Serbian province of Kosovo. Then, in 2005, he was charged by the “Tribunal” and
much was made of his orderly surrender. Just as the generals’ indictment
cleared the way for Croatia to join the EU, Haradinaj’s indictment helped the
Albanians declare
independence. Having served the purpose, they were set free, leaving the “court” to
return to its business of railroading
Serbs.
This Time, It’s Personal
Haradinaj’s
release came just a day after the centennial celebration of Albania’s
independence, and was rightly seen as a gift to the Albanians from their
patrons in the West. Its implications were obvious: “I’m happy that
international justice has confirmed that our road to freedom was clean and
just,” Haradinaj declared (Reuters), just as Croat leadership
had done two weeks prior.
A day earlier, at
the ceremony in Tirana, Albania’s president Sali Berisha gave an exuberant
speech, among other things laying
claim to parts of Greece, Montenegro and Macedonia, in addition to Kosovo
and more of Serbia. Athens and Skopje both protested. Belgrade, predictably,
did not.
Berisha claimed he
was misinterpreted, and that the promised union of all Albanians would be the
EU. But just days earlier, he had joined “Kosovo PM” Hashim Thaci at the
massive celebration organized
in Skopje. Having ceremonies in Tirana and even occupied Pristina is one thing, but
staging one in the capital of a neighboring country, where Albanians are a minority
(however privileged), suggests an arrogance of people who believe they can do
anything, since the Empire is personally
invested in their cause. Not for the first
time, either.
Appeasement Now
That impression is
certainly shared by the current government in Serbia. Prime Minister Ivica
Dacic simply took the appeasement policy of the previous government – in which
his Socialists were a key, but junior, partner to Boris Tadic’s Democrats – and
cranked it up to eleven. No matter what happens, he keeps repeating that the
“EU has no alternative.” He has now been to at least two meetings with “fellow
Prime Minister” Hashim Thaci in Brussels, organized by the EU.
Deputy PM
Aleksandar Vucic, recently elected leader of the Progressive Party, has even
said that the government would “continue its path to the EU… because it is the
best thing for Serbia’s citizens, whether they agree or not.”
As a result,
Dacic’s government is setting up border
controls on what they euphemistically call the “administrative line” with
Kosovo – and the EU, the Albanians and the actual documents signed properly
term a border. As a reminder, Thaci’s failed attempt to do just
that in July 2011 resulted in a yearlong
standoff between the local Serbs and NATO’s occupation force. The crisis never
really ended, it merely subsided after the Empire decided it would be easier to
break Belgrade than the locals.
Now the Serb
civilians are on the barricades once again, facing not NATO tanks (yet) but
Serbia’s own gendarmerie, who have orders to secure the
construction sites – or else. Whether the gendarmes fire upon their own people,
or refuse the orders and turn against the government, the situation has a lot
of potential to become extremely unpleasant.
Bitter Fruits of EUrope
It is unclear
whether the regime in Belgrade serves the Empire with such desperate eagerness
because they honestly believe in its might, or if they simply fear it more than
the wrath of their own populace. In any case, their devotion to the EU blinds
them to events in immediate vicinity. It’s one thing to ignore Greece’s less
than stellar EU experience, but what about Slovenia?
The first
“republic” to separate from Yugoslavia, claiming the rest of the country was dragging
its prosperous economy down, Slovenia had actually been the privileged recipient of subsidies and raw materials from the rest of
Yugoslavia, while also benefitting from trade with the West. The wealth thus
accumulated enabled it to coast for years – until it joined the EU, and
discovered that Brussels was a far less forgiving master than Belgrade.
Now there
are riots throughout the country, as resentment of corrupt politicians spills
over into the streets. Even if somehow they got better politicians, though,
it’s hard to see what else the Slovenians could do, trapped in the EU’s
unworkable model of death-by-overregulation and welfare statism.
Tripwire
This is the deadly
embrace the replacement
quislings in Serbia obsessively work towards. Their obsession, however, blinds
them to a lesson from their own past.
In October 2000,
the Empire engineered
the fall of the Milosevic government by stoking the feelings of discontent
among the people, while lavishly funding the media and the opposition. What is
forgotten is that the opposition had used a catchy slogan accusing Milosevic of
“betraying Kosovo” by surrendering it to NATO and the Albanians.
Yet it was the
surrender of Kosovo to NATO and the Albanians that the opposition was installed
to accomplish – and they’ve been trying for twelve years, while doing far more
damage to the Serbian society, security, economy and dignity than Milosevic
ever had. Now they are rushing to “finish the job”, convinced the people will
meekly follow their lead.
Perhaps they
believe that without a shadow
apparatus run by the National Endowment for Democracy, popular discontent
cannot be properly channeled and can therefore be safely ignored.
But if the cycle
of Balkans history is anything to go by, they are very much mistaken.
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