NATO
to the Rescue in the Post-Cold War World - (PART 4)
by Gary
Leupp
Since the
fall of the USSR, and the disappearance of the Warsaw Pact, what has
NATO been up to? First of all, it moved to fill a power vacuum in the
Balkans. Yugoslavia was falling apart. It had been neutral throughout
the Cold War, a member of neither NATO nor the Warsaw Pact. As
governments fell throughout Eastern Europe, secessionist movements in
the multiethnic republic produced widespread conflict. U.S. Secretary
of State Baker worried that the breakup of Yugoslavia’s breakup
would produce regional instability and opposed the independence of
Slovenia.
But the
German foreign minister, Hans-Dietrich Genscher, and Chancellor
Helmut Kohl—flushed with pride at Germany’s reunification and
intent on playing a more powerful role in the world—pressed for
Yugoslavia’s dismantling. (There was a deep German
historical interest in this country. Nazi Germany had occupied
Slovenia from 1941 to 1945, establishing a 21,000-strong Slovene Home
Guard and planting businesses. Germany is now by far Slovenia’s
number one trading partner.) Kohl’s line won out.
Yugoslavia,
which had been a model of interethnic harmony, became torn by ethnic
strife in the 1990s. In Croatia, Croatians fought ethnic Serbs backed
by the Yugoslav People’s Army; in Bosnia-Herzegovina, Bosniaks,
Croats and Serbs quarreled over how to divide the land. In Serbia
itself, the withdrawal of autonomy of the provinces of Kosovo and
Vojvodina produced outrage among ethnic Albanians. In 1995 images of
emaciated Bosniak men and boys in Serb-constructed prison camps were
widely publicized in the world media as Bill Clinton resolved not to
let Rwanda (read: genocide!) happen again. Not on his watch. America
would save the day.
Or rather:
NATO would save the day! Far from being less relevant after the Cold
War, NATO, Clinton claimed, was the only international force capable
of handling this kind of challenge. And thus NATO bombed, and
bombed—for the first time ever, in real war—until the Bosnian
Serbs pleaded for mercy. The present configuration of
Bosnia-Herzegovina, a dysfunctional federation including a Serbian
mini-republic, was dictated by U.S. Secretary of State Warren
Christopher and his deputy Richard Holbrooke at the meeting in
Dayton, Ohio in November 1995.
Russia, the
traditional ally of the Serbs, was obliged to watch passively as the
U.S. and NATO remapped the former Yugoslavia. Russia was itself in
the 1990s, under the drunken buffoon Boris Yeltsin, a total mess. The
economy was nose-diving; despair prevailed; male longevity had
plummeted. The new polity was anything but stable. During the
“Constitutional Crisis” of September-October 1993, the president
had even ordered the army to bombard the parliament building to force
the legislators to heed his decree to disband. In the grip of corrupt
oligarchs and Wild West capitalism, Russians were disillusioned and
demoralized.
Then came
further insults from the west. During Yeltsin’s last year, in March
1999, the U.S. welcomed three more nations into: Czechoslovakia
(later the Czech Republic and Slovakia), Hungary, and Poland. These
had been the most powerful Warsaw Pact countries aside from the USSR
and East Germany. This was the first expansion of NATO since 1982
(when Spain had joined) and understandably upset the Kremlin. What
possible reason is there to expand NATO now? the Russians asked, only
to be assured that NATO was not against anybody.
The Senate
had voted to extend membership to Poland, Hungary and Czechoslovakia
in 1998. At that time, George Kennan—the famous U.S. diplomat who’d
developed the cold war strategy of containment of the Soviet
Union—was asked to comment.
“I
think it is the beginning of a new cold war,” averred the
94-year-old Kennan. “I think the Russians will gradually react
quite adversely and it will affect their policies. I think it is a
tragic mistake. There was no reason for this whatsoever… It shows
so little understanding of Russian history and Soviet history. Of
course there is going to be a bad reaction from Russia, and then [the
NATO expansion advocates] will say that we always told you that is
how the Russians are–but this is just wrong.”
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