The European conquest of Africa and Asia was directed by white officers, fought by black, brown and yellow soldiers so that white capital could exploit colored workers and peasants. Regional, ethnic, religious, clan, tribal, community, village and other differences were politicized and exploited allowing imperial armies to conquer warring peoples.
In recent decades, the US empire builders have become the grand masters of ‘divide and conquer’ strategies throughout the world. By the 1970’s, the CIA made a turn from promoting the dubious virtues of capitalism and democracy, to linking up with, financing and directing, religious, ethnic and regional elites against national regimes, independent or hostile to US world empire building.
Global Research, June 8, 2008 - The key to US military empire building follows two principles:
direct military invasions and fomenting separatist movements, which can
lead to military confrontation.
Twenty-first century empire
building has seen the extended practice of both principles in Iraq,
Afghanistan, Iran, Lebanon, China (Tibet), Bolivia, Ecuador, Venezuela,
Somalia, Sudan, Burma and Palestine – any country in which the US
cannot secure a stable client regime, it resorts to financing and
promoting separatist organizations and leaders using ethnic, religious
and regional pretexts.
Consistent with traditional empire
building principles, Washington only supports separatists in countries
that refuse to submit to imperial domination and opposes separatists
who resist the empire and its allies. In other words, imperial
ideologues are neither ‘hypocrites’ nor resort to ‘double standards’
(as they are accused by liberal critics) – they publicly uphold the
‘Empire first’ principle as their defining criteria for evaluating
separatist movements and granting or denying support. In contrast, many
seemingly progressive critics of empire make universal statements in
favor of the ‘right to self-determination’ and even extend it to the
most rancid, reactionary, imperial-sponsored ‘separatist groups’ with
catastrophic results. Independent nations and their people, who oppose
US-backed separatists, are bombed to oblivion and charged with ‘war
crimes’. People, who oppose the separatists and who reside in the ‘new
state’, are killed or driven into exile. The ‘liberated people’ suffer
from the tyranny and impoverishment induced by the US-backed
separatists and many are forced to immigrate to other countries for
economic survival.
Few if any of the progressive critics of the
USSR and supporters of the separatist republics have ever publicly
expressed second thoughts, let alone engaged in self-critical
reflections, even in the face of decades long socio-economic and
political catastrophes in the secessionist states. Yet it was and is
the case that these self-same progressives today, who continue to
preach high moral principles to those who question and reject some
separatist movements because they originate and grow out of efforts to
extend the US empire.
Washington ’s success in co-opting
so-called progressive liberals in support of separatist movements soon
to be new imperial clients in recent decades is long and the
consequences for human rights are ugly.
Most European and US progressives supported the following:
1.
US-backed Bosnian fundamentalists, Croatian neo-fascists and
Kosova-Albanian terrorists, leading to ethnic cleansing and the
conversion of their once sovereign states into US military bases,
client regimes and economic basket cases – totally destroying the
multinational Yugoslavian welfare state.
2. The US funded and
armed overseas Afghan Islamic fundamentalists who destroyed a secular,
reformist, gender-equal Afghan regime, carrying out vast anti-feudal
campaigns involving both men and women, a comprehensive agrarian reform
and constructing extensive health and educational programs. As a result
of US-Islamic tribal military successes, millions were killed,
displaced and dispossessed and fanatical medieval anti-Communist tribal
warlords destroyed the unity of the country.
3. The US invasion
destroyed Iraq ’s modern, secular, nationalist state and advanced
socio-economic system. During the occupation, US backing of rival
religious, tribal, clan and ethnic separatist movements and regimes led
to the expulsion of over 90% of its modern scientific and professional
class and the killing of over 1 million Iraqis…all in the name of
ousting a repressive regime and above all in destroying a state opposed
to Israeli oppression of Palestinians.
Clearly US military
intervention promotes separatism as a means of establishing a regional
‘base of support’. Separatism facilitates setting up a minority puppet
regime and works to counter neighboring countries opposed to the
depredations of empire. In the case of Iraq , US-backed Kurdish
separatism preceded the imperial campaign to isolate an adversary,
create international coalitions to pressure and weaken the central
government. Washington highlights regime atrocities as human rights
cases to feed global propaganda campaigns. More recently this is
evident in the US-financed ‘Tibetan’ theocratic protests at China .
Separatists
are backed as potential terrorist shock troops in attacking strategic
economic sectors and providing real or fabricated ‘intelligence’ as is
the case in Iran among the Kurds and other ethnic minority groups.
Why Separatism?
Empire
builders do not always resort to separatist groups, especially when
they have clients at the national levels in control of the state. It is
only when their power is limited to groups, territorially or ethnically
concentrated, that the intelligence operatives resort to and promote
‘separatist’ movements. US backed separatist movements follow a
step-by-step process, beginning with calls for ‘greater autonomy’ and
‘decentralization’, essentially tactical moves to gain a local
political power base, accumulate economic revenues, repress
anti-separatist groups and local ethnic/religious, political minorities
with ties to the central government (as in the oppression of the
Christian communities in northern Iraq repressed by the Kurdish
separatists for their long ties with the Central Baath Party or the
Roma of Kosova expelled and killed by the Kosova Albanians because of
their support of the Yugoslav federal system). The attempt to forcibly
usurp local resources and the ousting of local allies of the central
government results in confrontations and conflict with the legitimate
power of the central government. It is at this point that external
(imperial) support is crucial in mobilizing the mass media to denounce
repression of ‘peaceful national movements’ merely ‘exercising their
right to self-determination’. Once the imperial mass media propaganda
machine touches the noble rhetoric of ‘self-determination’ and
‘autonomy’, ‘decentralization’ and ‘home rule’, the great majority of
US and European funded NGO’s jump on board, selectively attacking the
government’s effort to maintain a stable unified nation-state. In the
name of ‘diversity’ and a ‘pluri-ethnic state’, the Western-bankrolled
NGO’s provide a moralist ideological cover to the pro-imperialist
separatists. When the separatists succeed and murder and ethnically
cleanse the ethnic and religious minorities linked to the former
central state, the NGO’s are remarkably silent or even complicit in
justifying the massacres as ‘understandable over-reaction to previous
repression’. The propaganda machine of the West, even gloats over the
separatist state expulsion of hundreds of thousands of ethnic
minorities – as in the case of the Serbs and Roma from Kosova and the
Krijina region of Croatia…with headlines blasting – “Serbs on the Run:
Serves Them Right!’ followed by photos of NATO troops overseeing the
‘transfer’ of destitute families from their ancestral villages and
towns to squalid camps in a bombed out Serbia. And the triumphant
Western politicians mouthing pieties at the massacres of Serb civilians
by the KLA, as when former German Foreign Minister "Joschka" Fischer
(Green Party) mourned, “I understand your (the KLA’s) pain, but you
shouldn’t throw grenades at (ethnic Serb) school children.”
The
shift from ‘autonomy’ within a federal state to an ‘independent state’
is based on the aid channeled and administered by the imperial state to
the ‘autonomous region’, thus strengthening its ‘de facto’ existence as
a separate state. This has clearly occurred in the Kurdish run northern
Iraq ‘no fly zone’ and now ‘autonomous region’ from 1991 to the present.
The
same principle of self-determination demanded by the US and its
separatist client is denied to ‘minorities’ within the realm. Instead,
the US propaganda media refer to them as ‘agents’ or ‘trojan horses’ of
the central government.
Strengthened by imperial ‘foreign aid’,
and business links with US and EU MNCs, backed by local para-military
and quasi-military police forces (as well as organized criminal gangs),
the autonomous regime declares its ‘independence’. Shortly thereafter
it is recognized by its imperial patrons. After ‘independence’, the
separatist regime grants territorial concessions and building sites for
US military bases. Investment privileges are granted to the imperial
patron, severely compromising ‘national’ sovereignty.
The army
of local and international NGO’s rarely raise any objections to this
process of incorporating the separatist entity into the empire, even
when the ‘liberated’ people object. In most cases the degree of ‘local
governance’ and freedom of action of the ‘independent’ regime is less
than it was when it was an autonomous or federal region in the previous
unified nationalist state.
Not infrequently ‘separatist’ regimes
are part of irredentist movements linked to counterparts in other
states. When cross national irredentist movements challenge neighboring
states which are also targets of the US empire builders, they serve as
launching pads for US low intensity military assaults and Special
Forces terrorist activities.
For example, almost all of the
Kurdish separatist organizations draw a map of ‘Greater Kurdistan’
which covers a third of Southeastern Turkey, Northern Iraq, a quarter
of Iran, parts of Syria and wherever else they can find a Kurdish
enclave. US commandos operate along side Kurdish separatists
terrorizing Iranian villages (in the name of self-determination; Kurds
with powerful US military backing have seized and govern Northern Iraq
and provide mercenary Peshmerga troops to massacre Iraqi Arab civilian
in cities and towns resisting the US occupation in Central, Western and
Southern regions. They have engaged in the forced displacement of
non-Kurds (including Arabs, Chaldean Christians, Turkman and others)
from so-called Iraqi Kurdistan and the confiscation of their homes,
businesses and farms. US-backed Kurdish separatists have created
conflicts with the neighboring Turkish government, as Washington tries
to retain its Kurdish clients for their utility in Iraq , Iran and
Syria without alienating its strategic NATO client, Turkey .
Nevertheless Turkish-Kurdish separatist activists in the PKK have
lauded the US for, what they term, ‘progressive colonialism’ in
effectively dismembering Iraq and forming the basis for a Kurdish state.
The
US decision to collaborate with the Turkish military, or at least
tolerate its military attacks on certain sectors of the Iraq-based
Kurdish separatists, the PKK, is part of its global policy of
prioritizing strategic imperial alliances and allies over and against
any separatist movement which threatens them. Hence, while the US
supports the Kosova separatists against Serbia , it opposes the
separatists in Abkhazia fighting against its client in the Republic of
Georgia . While the US supported Chechen separatist against the Moscow
government, it opposes Basque and Catalan separatists in their struggle
against Washington ’s NATO ally, Spain . While Washington has been
bankrolling the Bolivian separatists headed by the oligarchs of Santa
Cruz against the central government in La Paz , it supports the Chilean
government’s repression of the Mapuche Indian claims to land and
resources in south-central Chile .
Clearly ‘self-determination’
and ‘independence’ are not the universal defining principle in US
foreign policy, nor has it ever been, as witness the US wars against
Indian nations, secessionist southern slaveholders and yearly invasions
of independent Latin American, Asian and African states. What guides US
policy is the question of whether a separatist movement, its leaders
and program furthers empire building or not? The inverse question
however is infrequently raised by so-called progressives, leftists or
self-described anti-imperialists: Does the separatist or independence
movement weaken the empire and strengthen anti-imperialist forces or
not? If we accept that the over-riding issue is defeating the
multi-million killing machine called US imperialism, then it is
legitimate to evaluate and support, as well as reject, some
independence movements and not others. There is nothing ‘hypocritical’
or ‘inconvenient’ in raising higher principles in making these
political choices. Clearly Hitler justified the invasion of
Czechoslovakia in the name of defending Sudetenland separatists; just
like a series of US Presidents have justified the partition of Iraq in
the name of defending the Kurds, or Sunnis or Shia or whatever tribal
leaders lend themselves to US empire building.
What defines
anti-imperialist politics is not abstract principles about
‘self-determination’ but defining exactly who is the ‘self’ – in other
words, what political forces linked to what international power
configuration are making what political claim for what political
purpose. If, as in Bolivia today, a rightwing racist, agro-business
oligarchy seizes control of the most fertile and energy rich region,
containing 75% of the country’s natural resources, in the name of
‘self-determination’ and autonomy, expelling and brutalizing
impoverished Indians in the process – on what basis can the left or
anti-imperialist movement oppose it, if not because the class, race and
national content of that claim is antithetical to an even more
important principle – popular sovereignty based on the democratic
principles of majority rule and equal access to public wealth?
Separatism in Latin America: Bolivia, Venezuela and Ecuador
In
recent years the US backed candidates have won and lost national
election in Latin America . Clearly the US has retained hegemony over
the governing elites in Mexico , Colombia , Central America , Peru ,
Chile , Uruguay and some of the Caribbean island states. In states
where the electorate has backed opponents of US dominance, such as
Venezuela , Ecuador , Bolivia and Nicaragua , Washington ’s influence
is dependent on regional, provincial and locally elected officials. It
is premature to state, as the Council for Foreign Relations claims,
that ‘ US hegemony in Latin America is a thing of the past.’ One only
has to read the economic and political record of the close and growing
military and economic ties between Washington and the Calderon regime
in Mexico , the Garcia regime in Peru , Bachelet in Chile and Uribe in
Colombia to register the fact that US hegemony still prevails in
important regions of Latin America . If we look beyond the national
governmental level, even in the non-hegemonized states, US influence
still is a potent factor shaping the political behavior of powerful
right-wing business, financial and regional political elites in
Venezuela , Ecuador , Bolivia and Argentina . By the end of May 2008,
US backed regionalist movements were on the offensive, establishing a
de facto secessionist regime in Santa Cruz in Bolivia . In Argentina ,
the agro-business elite has organized a successful nationwide
production and distribution lockout, backed by the big industrial,
financial and commercial confederations, against an export tax promoted
by the ‘center-left’ Kirchner government. In Colombia, the US is
negotiating with the paramilitary President Uribe over the site of a
military base on the frontier with Venezuela’s oil rich state of Zulia,
which happens to be ruled by the only anti-Chavez governor in power, a
strong promoter of ‘autonomy’ or secession. In Ecuador , the Mayor of
Guayaquil, backed by the right wing mass media and the discredited
traditional political parties have proposed ‘autonomy’ from the central
government of President Rafael Correa. The process of imperial driven
nation dismemberment is very uneven because of the different degrees of
political power relations between the central government and the
regional secessionists. The right wing secessionists in Bolivia have
advanced the furthest – actually organizing and winning a referendum
and declaring themselves an independent governing unit with the power
to collect taxes, formulate foreign economic policy and create its own
police force.
The success of the Santa Cruz secessionist is due
to the political incapacity and total incompetence of the Evo
Morales-Garcia Linera regime which promoted ‘autonomy’ for the scores
of impoverished Indian ‘nations’ (or indianismo) and ended up laying
the groundwork for the white racist oligarchs to seize the opportunity
to establish their own ‘separatist’ power base. As the separatist
gained control over the local population, they intimidated the
‘indians’ and trade union supporters of the Morales regime, violently
sabotaged the constitutional assembly, rejected the constitution, while
constantly extracting concession for the flaccid and conciliatory
central government of the Evo Morales. While the separatists trashed
the constitution and used their control over the major means of
production and exports to recruit five other provinces, forming a
geographic arc of six provinces, and influence in two others in their
drive to degrade the national government. The Morales-Garcia Linera
‘indianista’ regime, largely made up of mestizos formerly employed in
NGOs funded from abroad, never used its formal constitutional power and
monopoly of legitimate force to enforce constitutional order and outlaw
and prosecute the secessionists’ violation of national integrity and
rejection of the democratic order.
Morales never mobilized the
country, the majority of popular organizations in civil society, or
even called on the military to put down the secessionists. Instead he
continued to make impotent appeals for ‘dialog’, for compromises in
which his concessions to oligarch self-rule only confirmed their drive
for regional power. As a case study of failed governance, in the face
of a reactionary separatist threat to the nation, the Morales-Garcia
Linera regime represents an abject failure to defend popular
sovereignty and the integrity of the nation.
The lessons of
failed governance in Bolivia stand as a grim reminder to Chavez in
Venezuela and Correa in Ecuador : Unless they act with full force of
the constitution to crush the embryonic separatist movements before
they gain a power base, they will also face the break-up of their
countries. The biggest threat is in Venezuela, where the US and
Colombian militaries have built bases on the frontier bordering the
Venezuelan state of Zulia, infiltrated commandos and paramilitary
forces into the province, and see the takeover of the oil-rich province
as a beach-head to deprive the central government of its vital oil
revenues and destabilize the central government.
Several years
into a Washington-backed and financed separatist movement in Bolivia ,
a few progressive academics and pundits have taken notice and published
critical commentaries. Unfortunately these articles lack any
explanatory context, and offer little understanding of how Latin
American ‘separatism’ fits into long-term, large-scale US empire
building strategy over the past quarter of a century.
Today the
US-promoted separatist movements in Latin American are actively being
pursued in at least three Latin American counties. In Bolivia, the
‘media luna’ or ‘half-moon’ provinces of Santa Cruz, Beni, Pando and
Tarija have successfully convoked provincial ‘referendums’ for
‘autonomy’ – code word for secession. On May 4, 2008 the separatists in
Santa Cruz succeeded, securing a voter turnout of nearly 50% and
winning 80% of the vote. On May 15, the right-wing big business
political elite announced the formation of ministries of foreign trade
and internal security, assuming the effective powers of a secession
state. The US government led by Ambassador Goldberg, provided financial
and political support for the right-wing secessionist ‘civic’
organizations through its $125 million dollar aid programs via AID, its
tens of millions of dollar ‘anti-drug’ program, and through the NED
(National Endowment for Democracy) funded pro-separatist NGOs. At
meetings of the Organization of American States and other regional
meetings the US refused to condemn the separatist movements.
Because
of the total incompetence and lack of national political leadership of
President Evo Morales and his Vice President Garcia Linera, the
Bolivian State is splintering into a series of ‘autonomous’ cantons, as
several other provincial governments seek to usurp political power and
take over economic resources. From the very beginning, the
Morales-Garcia regime signed off on a number of political pacts,
adopted a whole series of policies and approved a number of concessions
to the oligarchic elites in Santa Cruz , which enabled them to
effectively re-build their natural political power base, sabotage an
elected Constitutional Assembly and effectively undermine the authority
of the central government. Right-wing success took less than 2 ½ years,
which is especially amazing considering that in 2005, the country
witnessed a major popular uprising which ousted a right-wing president,
when millions of workers, miners, peasants and Indians dominated the
streets. It is a tribute to the absolute misgovernment of the
Morales-Garcia regime, that the country could move so quickly and
decisively from a state of insurrectionary popular power to a
fragmented and divided country in which a separatist agro-financial
elite seizes control of 80% of the productive resources of the
country…while the elected central government meekly protests.
The
success of the secessionist regional ruling class in Bolivia has
encouraged similar ‘autonomy movements’ in Ecuador and Venezuela , led
by the mayor of Guayaquil ( Ecuador ) and Governor of Zulia ( Venezuela
). In other words, the US-engineered political debacle of the
Morales-Garcia regime in Bolivia has led it to team up with oligarchs
in Ecuador and Venezuela to repeat the Santa Cruz experience…in a
process of “permanent counter-revolutionary separatism.”
Separatism and the Ex-USSR
The
defeat of Communism in the USSR had little to do with the ‘arms race
bankrupting the system’, as former US National Security Adviser
Zbigniew Brzyenski has claimed. Up to the end, living standards were
relatively stable and welfare programs continued to operate at near
optimal levels and scientific and cultural programs retained
substantial state expenditures. The ruling elites who replaced the
communist system did not respond to US propaganda about the virtues of
‘free markets and democracy’, as Presidents Ronald Reagan, George H.W.
Bush and Bill Clinton claimed: The proof is evident in the political
and economic systems, which they imposed upon taking power and which
were neither democratic nor based on competitive markets. These new
ethnic-based regimes resembled despotic, predatory, nepotistic
monarchies handing over (‘privatizing’) the public wealth accumulated
over the previous 70 years of collective labor and public investment to
a handful of oligarchs and foreign monopolies.
The principle
ideological driving force for the current policy of ‘separatism’ is
ethnic identity politics, which is fostered and financed by US
intelligence and propaganda agencies. Ethnic identity politics, which
replaced communism, is based on vertical links between the elite and
the masses. The new elites rule through clan-family-religious-gang
based nepotism, funded and driven through pillage and privatization of
public wealth created under Communism. Once in power, the new political
elites ‘privatized’ public wealth into family riches and converted
themselves and their cronies into an oligarchic ruling class. In most
cases the ethnic ties between elites and subjects dissolved in the face
of the decline of living standards, the deep class inequalities, the
crooked vote counts and state repression.
In all of the ex-USSR
states, the new ruling classes only claim to mass legitimacy was based
on appeals to sharing a common ethnic identity. They trotted out
medieval and royalist symbols from the remote past, dredging up
absolutist monarchs, parasitical religious hierarchies, pre-capitalist
war lords, bloody emperors and ‘national’ flags from the days of feudal
landlords to forge a common history and identity with the ‘newly
liberated’ masses. The repeated appeal to past reactionary symbols was
entirely appropriate: The contemporary policies of despotism, pillage
and personality cults resonated with past ‘historic’ warriors, feudal
lords and practices.
As the new post-USSR despots lost their
ethnic luster as a consequence of public disillusion with local and
foreign predatory pillage of the national wealth, the leaders resorted
to systematic force.
The principle success of the US strategy of
promoting separatism was in destroying the USSR – not in promoting
viable independent capitalist democracies. Washington succeeded in
exacerbating ethnic conflicts between Russians and other nationalities,
by encouraging local communist bosses to split from the Union of Soviet
Socialist Republics and to form ‘independent states’ where the new
rulers could share the booty of the local treasury with new Western
partners. The US de-stabilization efforts in the Communist countries,
especially after the 1970’s did not compete over living standards,
greater industrial growth or over more generous welfare programs.
Rather, Western propaganda focused on ethnic solidarity, the one issue
that undercut class solidarity and loyalty to the communist state and
ideology and strengthened pro-Western elites, especially among ‘public
intellectuals’ and recycled Communist bosses-turned ‘nationalist
saviors.’
The key point of Western strategy was to first and
foremost break-up the USSR via separatist movements no matter if they
were fanatical religious fundamentalists, gangster-politicians,
Western-trained liberal economists or ambitious upwardly mobile
warlords. All that mattered was that they carried the Western
separatist banner of ‘self-determination’. Subsequently, in the ‘post
Soviet period’, the new pro-capitalist ruling elites were recruited to
NATO and client state status.
Washington ’s post-separatism
politics followed a two-step process: In the first phase there was an
undifferentiated support for anyone advocating the break-up of the USSR
. In the second phase, the US sought to push the most pliable pro-NATO,
free market liberals among the lot – the so-called ‘color
revolutionaries’, in Georgia and the Ukraine . Separatism was seen as a
preliminary step toward an ‘advanced’ stage of re-subordination to the
US Empire. The notion of ‘independent states’ is virtually non-existent
for US empire builders. At best it exists as a transitional stage from
one power constellation to a new US-centered empire.
In the
period following the break-up of the USSR , Washington ’s subsequent
attempts to recruit the new ruling elites to pro-capitalist,
client-status was relatively successful. Some countries opened their
economies to unregulated exploitation especially of energy resources.
Others offered sites for military bases. In many cases local rulers
sought to bargain among world powers while enhancing their own private
fortune-through-pillage.
None of the ex-Soviet Republics evolved
into secular independent democratic republics capable of recovering the
living standards, which their people possessed during the Soviet times.
Some rulers became theocratic despots where religious notables and
dictators mutually supported each other. Others evolved into ugly
family-based dictatorships. None of them retained the Soviet era social
safety net or high quality educational systems. All the post-Soviet
regimes magnified the social inequalities and multiplied the number of
criminal-run enterprises. Violent crime grew geometrically increasing
citizen insecurity.
The success of US-induced ‘separatism’ did
create, in most cases, enormous opportunities for Western and Asian
pillage of raw materials, especially petroleum resources. The
experience of ‘newly independent states’ was, at best, a transitory
illusion, as the ruling elite either passed directly into the orbit of
Western sphere of influence or became a ‘fig leaf’ for deep structural
subordination to Western-dominated circuits of commodity exports and
finance.
Out of the break-up of the USSR , Western states allied
with those republics where it suited their interests. In some cases
they signed agreements with rulers to establish military base lining
the pockets of a dictator through loans. In other cases they secured
privileged access to economic resources by forming joint ventures. In
others they simply ignored a poorly endowed regime and let it wallow in
misery and despotism.
Separatism: Eastern Europe , Balkans and the Baltic Countries
The
most striking aspect of the break-up of the Soviet bloc was the
rapidity and thoroughness with which the countries passed from the
Warsaw Pact to NATO, from Soviet political rule to US/EU economic
control over almost all of their major economic sectors. The conversion
from one form of political economic and military subordination to
another highlights the transitory nature of political independence, the
superficiality of its operational meaning and the spectacular hypocrisy
of the new ruling elite who blithely denounced ‘Soviet domination’
while turning over most economic sectors to Western capital, large
tracts of territory for NATO bases and providing mercenary military
battalions to fight in US imperial wars to a far greater degree than
was ever the case during Soviet times.
Separatism in these areas
was an ideology to weaken an adversarial hegemonic coalition, all the
better to reincorporate its members in a more virulent and aggressive
empire building coalition.
Yugoslavia and Kosova: Forced Separatism
The
successful breakup of the USSR and the Warsaw Pact alliance encouraged
the US and EU to destroy Yugoslavia , the last remaining independent
country outside of US-EU control in West Europe . The break-up of
Yugoslavia was initiated by Germany following its annexation and
demolition of East Germany ’s economy. Subsequently it expanded into
the Slovenian and Croatian republics. The US , a relative latecomer in
the carving up of the Balkans, targeted Bosnia , Macedonia and Kosova.
While Germany expanded via economic conquest, the US , true to its
militarist mission, resorted to war in alliance with recognized
terrorist Kosova Albanian gangsters organized in the paramilitary KLA.
Under the leadership of French Zionist Bernard Kouchner, the NATO
forces facilitated the ethnic purging, assassination and disappearances
of tens of thousands of Serbs, Roma and dissident non-separatist Kosova
Albanians.
The destruction of Yugoslavia is complete: the
remaining fractured and battered Serb Republic was now at the mercy of
US and its European allies. By 2008 a EU-US backed pro-NATO coalition
was elected and the last remnants of ‘ Yugoslavia ’ and its historical
legacy of self-managed socialism was obliterated.
Consequences of ‘Separatism’ in USSR . East Europe and the Balkans
In
every region where US sponsored and financed separatism succeeded,
living standards plunged, massive pillage of public resources in the
name of privatization took place, political corruption reached
unprecedented levels. Anywhere between a quarter to a third of the
population fled to Western Europe and North America because of hunger,
personal insecurity (crime), unemployment and a dubious future.
Politically,
gangsterism and extraordinary murder rates drove legitimate businesses
to pay exorbitant extorsion payments, as a ‘new class’ of
gangsters-turned-businessmen took over the economy and signed dubious
investment agreements and joint ventures with EU , US and Asian MNCs.
Energy-rich
ex-Soviet countries in south central Asia were ruled by opulent
dictators who accumulated billion dollar fortunes in the course of
demolishing egalitarian norms, extensive health, and scientific and
cultural institutions. Religious institutions gained power over and
against scientific and professional associations, reversing educational
progress of the previous seventy years. The logic of separatism spread
from the republics to the sub-national level as rival local war lords
and ethnic chiefs attempted to carve out their ‘autonomous’ entity,
leading to bloody wars, new rounds of ethnic purges and new refugees
fleeing the contested areas.
The US promises of benefits via
‘separatism’ made to the diverse populations were not in the least
fulfilled. At best a small ruling elite and their cronies reaped
enormous wealth, power and privilege at the expense of the great
majority. Whatever the initial symbolic gratifications, which the
underlying population may have experienced from their short-lived
independence, new flag and restored religious power was eroded by the
grinding poverty and violent internal power struggles that disrupted
their lives. The truth of the matter is that millions of people fled
from ‘their’ newly ‘independent’ states, preferring to become refugees
and second-class citizens in foreign states.
Conclusion:
The
major fallacy of seemingly progressive liberals and NGOs in their
advocacy of ‘autonomy’, ‘decentralization’ and ‘self-determination’ is
that these abstract concepts beg the fundamental concrete historical
and substantive political question – to what classes, race, political
blocs is power being transferred? For over a century in the US the
banner of the racist right-wing Southern plantation owners ruling by
force and terror over the majority of poor blacks was ‘States Rights’ –
the supremacy of local law and order over the authority of the federal
government and the national constitution. The fight between federal
versus states rights was between a reactionary Southern oligarchy and a
broader based progressive Northern urban coalition of workers and the
middle class.
There is a fundamental need to demystify the
notion of ‘autonomy’ by examining the classes which demand it, the
consequences of devolving power in terms of the distribution of power,
wealth and popular power and the external benefactors of a shift from
the national state to regional local power elites.
Likewise, the
mindless embrace by some libertarians of each and every claim for
‘self-determination’ has led to some of the most heinous crimes of the
20-21st centuries – in many cases separatist movements have encouraged
or been products of bloody imperialist wars, as was the case in the
lead up to and following Nazi annexations, the US invasion of Iraq and
Afghanistan and the savage Israeli invasion of Lebanon and breakup of
Palestine.
To make sense of ‘autonomy’, ‘decentralization’ and
‘self-determination’ and to ensure that these devolutions of power move
in progressive historic direction, it is essential to pose the prior
questions: Do these political changes advance the power and control of
the majority of workers and peasants over the means of production? Does
it lead to greater popular power in the state and electoral process or
does it strengthen demagogic clients advancing the interests of the
empire, in which the breakup of an established state leads to the
incorporation of the ethnic fragments into a vicious and destructive
empire?
Writings 
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