(CHICAGO) 22 March - Sometime after these words are written--within months perhaps, but more likely within hours--the United States will go to war against Yugoslavia. It will begin with a bombing campaign.

It can only end in a land war. "The threshold has been crossed," declared U.S. president Clinton today. "We cannot allow President Milosevic to continue the aggression with impunity." It was left to the Italian Foreign Minister to name the quintain: "Invasion."

But the objective is even bigger than that. And the war began long before tomorrow.

Softening up

For years now the Western public has been assailed with misleading propaganda: centuries-old Balkan hatreds threaten to pull much of Europe into their bloody maelstrom. Only the civilized West can separate the vendetta- crazed Serbs, Croats, Kosovars, Moslems etc. (some force required).

If the West could be criticized at all, it was for spending too long on the sidelines, helplessly wringing its hands while bloody waves of ethnic massacres washed over Yugoslavia.

Beacon

But hatreds in Yugoslavia don't go very far back at all. In fact Yugoslavia--unlike any other Soviet-bloc country--achieved genuine inter- ethnic unity in the course of revolutionary war against Nazi invaders. Backed by much of the population, partisan guerrillas of all backgrounds cooperated to achieve the remarkable feat of tying down seven divisions of Hitler's army.

And by establishing semi-autonomous republics for the various nationalities and rotating central government positions among them, the post- war partisan government demonstrated its commitment to maintaining ethnic equality in the new, socialist Yugoslavia.

In fact in the late forties and early fifties the Yugoslavia became a beacon of hope not only against the dark memories of World War #2, but against Stalin's murderous dictatorship. Progressives and revolutionaries from around the world traveled there, like they do to Cuba or South Africa today, or Nicaragua in the 1980's.

Sadly, like Nicaragua, the leadership was unable to maintain a revolutionary course. War hero Marshall Tito (central figure in the new government) succumbed to enormous pressure from both East and West, and the regime slid into mild Stalinism.

More importantly, growing reliance on free market mechanisms--and on economic integration with the West--made Yugoslavia increasingly vulnerable to destabilization ... should someone be so inclined. Gotcha

Enter Washington, which in a secret 1984 National Security Decision Directive (NSDD #133) spelled out how to implement in Yugoslavia the U.S. policy on Eastern Europe which called for "expanded efforts ... to overthrow Communist parties and governments." ("Dismantling Yugoslavia, Colonizing Bosnia" by Michel Chossudovsky, Covert Action Quarterly, Spring 1996.)

And indeed, according to Chossudovsky, "throughout the 1980s, the IMF and World Bank periodically prescribed further doses of their bitter economic medicine....

"[IMF-ordered]'shock therapy' began in January 1990....and real wages collapsed by 41 percent in the first six months....

"The IMF also effectively controlled the Yugoslav central bank....State revenues that should have gone as transfer payments to the republics and provinces went instead to service Belgrade"s [foreign] debt....

"In one fell swoop, the reformers engineered the final collapse of Yugoslavia"s federal fiscal structure and mortally wounded its federal political institutions. By cutting the financial arteries between Belgrade and the republics, the reforms fueled secessionist tendencies that fed on economic factors as well as ethnic divisions, virtually ensuring the de facto secession of the republics." Mercenaries

Meanwhile both Western governments and financial institutions dangled millions before erstwhile "Communist" bureaucrats to cripple Yugoslav socialism by closing nationalized enterprises and eliminating social services.

And so the country was plunged into flames of violence fueled by economic disaster and Communists turned warlord businessmen -- flames carefully fanned by the West.

The U.S.--world^Òs largest arms dealer and possessor of an extraordinary spy satellite network--kept its hand on the weapons pipeline, turning it on and off to first on side and then the other, keeping the conflict as protracted and bloody as possible.

Its central feature--aside from the 200,000 dead and the two million refugees--became the apparent conflict between U.S. president Clinton and Serbian dictator Milosevic. Clinton issued threats and expressed outrage, while Milosevic committed atrocities and posed as Serbia's defender against the (justly-hated) West.

Saddam

It was a board game in which sacrificed Yugoslav pawns piled up by the hundreds of thousands as the two stern-faced leaders locked in combat ... while holding hands under the table.

This scenario was most recently played out this past fall and winter in Kosovo: fearing spillover from the popular insurrection in Albania, Washington's envoy to Belgrade declared ethnically-Albanian civil rights activists in Kosovo "terrorists," pointedly adding Serb military operations against Kosovars were an "internal" matter, meaning they could not be opposed by other nations.

Milosevic dutifully set to work. Los Angeles Times commentator William Pfaff described the results in his 2 October syndicated column: "International officials, aid workers, and journalists are now providing the same kind of reports as they did six years ago [from Bosnia]. The pattern is identical. Towns and villages are being destroyed and the inhabitants forced to flee....What is going on is the ethnic cleansing of Kosovo by Milosevic^Òs police and army."

It was an arrangement much like that with Saddam Hussein: the U.S. would keep the dictator in power as long as he inflicted maximum damage on his population's rights and living standards.

Just kidding

Of course the two secret love-birds were also simultaneously playing each other for fools: Clinton's real objective was preparing the political groundwork for "civilized" Western occupation of Kosovo (having already taken Bosnia and Macedonia), while Milosevic was banking on everything from Russian support and intra-Western conflicts to Monica Lewinsky and Saddam Hussein to keep U.S./NATO toothless.

Now they're calling each other's bluff. Washington used Milosevic's massacres in Kosovo to bludgeon the Kosovars into accepting a "peace settlement" in which they'd be disarmed in return for the "protection" of NATO invaders. But Milosevic still refuses to sign on to Western occupation and the loss of Kosovo. Mistake

Truth is both Clinton and Milosevic have seriously overplayed their hands, committing the classic error of over-estimating their own strength.

Tens of thousands of NATO troops already occupy Bosnia, Croatia and Macedonia -- but although calamity reigns, capitalist vassal states have yet to be established there.

Now U.S./NATO proposes to occupy the rest of Yugoslavia with a single division ... a task seven Nazi divisions failed at.

Meanwhile Milosevic is mired in illusions about Western impotence -- and about the depth of popular opposition to his ruinous rule.

But if Washington and Belgrade are locked in a folie a deux [mutual folly] the door is open for intervention by the overlooked ranks of ordinary people. The trajectory of the rulers is clear: war planes may well strike tomorrow -- and the first land war involving the U.S. and Europe since World War #2 comes next.

Good time for common people to write a different future.

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