[Chronocles, April 1995, pp. 26-29]
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[Dhimitrios Gheorghiou writes from Washington, D.C.]
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Whenever you hear the New World Order crowd whining about
the obligation of the "international community" to come to
the rescue of a "multiethnic democracy" threatened by
"nationalism," get ready for Uncle Sam to be dragged off on a
fool's errand. This term, "multiethnic democracy," the prime
exemplar of which is supposedly the United States, is
state-of-the-art New World Order lingo for the new type of
state designed to supplant the old nation-state, which is
based on retrograde "nationalism." "Nationalism" is
pejorative, referring to the aspiration, heretofore
considered natural and honorable, of any people to live in
its own home- land, contingent upon that people's ability and
willingness to fight for it and sustain it. In their untiring
vigilance against any holdouts, current or potential, against
the homogenized, deracinated world government in the making,
all lovers of progress oppose ethnically-based nationalism at
home and abroad. Exibit A of this phenomenon is the hatred of
the Bad Old South Africa, particularly Afrikaner nationalism,
and the wild enthusiasm for the Good New South Africa, an as-
piring "multiethnic democracy" labeled a "rainbow nation" by
French President Francois Mitterrand. The new African Na-
tional Congress-dominated regime, with the rest of the
world's approval, is determined to stamp out any remnant of
autonomy for the Afrikaners and Zulus, the genuine nations
in South Africa with the strongest sense of identity and
cohesion. Incidentally, that stamping out may yet involve
slapping blue halmets on the United States Army's 82nd
Airborne.
The endangered "multiethnic democracy" of the moment is, of
course, Bosnia-Hercegovina. According to proponents of
intervention in the Balkans, Bosnia was once a dreamland
where Catholic Croat, Orthodox Serb, Muslim, and Jew lived in
peace and harmony, frequently intermarried (a big selling
point), and respected and tolerated each other until,
inexpliably, the Serbs, incited by the
Hifler-of-the-Month, Serbian President Slobodan Milosevic,
suffered an atavistic fit of nationalism. The only decent
response, in the New World Order, is to stage a Studs
Turkelesque "Good War" to restore Bosnia to its pristine
state.
In pursuit of this goal, the entire apparat of the West has
cranked into action. Atrocity stories, war crimes, even geno-
cide. Grim footage of -- yes! -- DEATH CAMPS, in the heart of
Europe, back after 50 years! Mortar bombs raining down upon
civilians in bread lines and marketplaces (never mind who the
real perpetrators were, or how Muslims cameras just happened
to be ready at the scene). The shelling of hospitals
(omitting little details like guns mounted on hospital
roofs). Evil Serb snipers shooting Muslim children in a bus
(the fact that the murdered children were actually Orthodox
Christians -- i.e. Serbs -- somehow getting lost in the
shuffle). Elie Wiesel wailing on opening day at the United
States Holocoust Memorial Museum. Zubin Metha leading the
Sarajevo Symhony Orchestra in a performance of Mozart's
REQUIEM in the shelled-out ruins of the National Library,
broadcast to 26 countries worldwide. Peter Jennings in an
hour-long nationally televised pout. Patricia Ireland and
the National Organization for Women demonstrating against
the elusive "rape hotels."
Somehow, though, America "just didn't get it." Despite a
sustained, three-year propaganda symphony not equiled since
the Spanish Civil War in its comprehensiveness, striking im-
agery, and nearly undetectable smothering of dissent -- plus
assurances of no American ground troops, just surgical air
strikes, which do not count as real war -- Americans, in a
shocking manifestation of niggardliness and blighted global
consciousness, remain unwilling to send their sons (and
daughters) into this particular abattoir. Maybe they felt
gypped by the outcome of the crusade against the previous
Hitler-of-the-month, Saadam Hussein. Or maybe, in his own
spasm of tribalism A LA SERBE, Joe Sixpack done figured
out that the United States military, if it survives
feminization and sodomization by our Philanderer-in-Chief,
would have its hands full taking care of our borders
(assuming they are ever set to that task) without trotting
them off as janissaries to save every "multiethnic democracy"
that hoists a flag at the United Nations. Or maybe, despite
a Made in America historical memory normally good for about
two weeks of the Latest O.J. Simpson developments, our
typical fellow citizen has evolved an inarticulate but
usually accurate political sense that tells him when he is
being force-fed an uncommonly ripe batch of swill by the
reigning pseudoaristrocracy, representing both entrenched
parties (from Bob Dole and Newt Gingrich to Joe Liberman and
Joe Biden), the news media (the networks CNN, National
Socialist Public Radio, the New York Times, the Washington
Post, and the Washington Times), the opinion magazines (from
the New Republic to National Review, from the American
Spectator to the Nation), organized religion (Protestant,
Roman Catholic, Jewish, and Muslim), the off- the-shelf
scribblers and blabbermouths (from William Safire to Anthony
Lewis and Susan Sontag), and a bevy of neoconservative
pinups (Jeane Kirkpatrik, Zbigniew Brzezinski, Natan
Scharansky, George Soros, Norman Podhoretz, Teddy Kollek,
Albert Shanker, Richard Perle, Albert Wohlsetter, Joseph
Brodsky, and Czeslaw Milosz, plus numerous others, demanding
in the Wall Street Journal that the United States bomb not
only the Bosnian Serbs but Serbia proper).
And on this one, our typical fellow citizen has got it right.
Bosnia -- in fact, the entire Balkans -- is not "the heart a
Europe": it is the charred, bone-paved gateway to the
Middle East. It was never a tolerance, but an arena of fierce
and bloody struggle for supremacy and survival between
Christians (in two mutually antagonistic varieties, Roman
Catholic and Orthodox, not counting the now-extinct Bo-
gomils) and Muslims; among communist, royalist, republi-
cans, and irationalists of various hues; and among Serbs,
Croats, Greeks, Bulgarians, Albanians, Germans, Italians,
Magyars, Romanians, and Turks. If at any time a semblence
of order existed in a given locale, it was only because one
group or another was on top, and depending on the specifies,
the other just had to live, or die, with the consequences.
Rule Number One is this: you want your enemies to live as a
minority in YOUR state; you do not want to be a minority in
their state. In the Balkans, the hazards of minority status
can range from the fairly comfortable buy-out of their
ill-gotten gains "suffered" by the Muslims under what
amounted to Serb rule in pre- World War II Yugoslavia, to the
horrendous oppression of Christians under five centuries of
rule by these same Muslims, featuring such niceties as the
Blood Tax (a periodic levy on the infidel's children), not to
mention occasional bouts of pillage, and massacre to remind
them who rules in Dar-ul-Islam.
As has been widely observed, the collapse of communism has
led not to the end of history but to its reappearance.
Perhaps the problem in the Balkans is that the place just has
a lot more undigested history than most other regions. Seem-
ingly one cue, starting in 1991, the natives took up their
long knives and went after roughly the same throats as during
the First and Second Balkan Wars (which occurred just before
World War I), with encore performances during The War to End
All Wars and its Sequel. Particularly striking is the degree
to which the nearby regional powers have gravitated to the
sup- port of their traditional clients, setting up, in this
Bosnia Round of the Third Balkan War, a semi-overt proxy war
among Germany, Russia, and Turkey. Of course, there are
always new -- meaning, in the Balkans, reemerging --
wrinkles. Last year, so-called neofascists, included for the
first time in a post- war Itailan government, raised the
issue of whether certain parts of the Dalmatian coast should
go to -- they would say, be returned to Italy. These areas
encompass the major towns of Dubrovnik, Zadar, and Split,
a.k.a., Rausa, Zara, and Spoleto. The Serbs, who have their
own republic in a nearby part of Dalmatia, think this is a
dandy idea and have conferred honorary citizenship on a
right-wing Italian senator. Meanwhile, NATO air strikes
against the Serbs are launched from Italian bases. Croatia is
a German satellite. Russia is as pro-Serb as it can afford to
be, with Yeltsin government tacking between appeasement of
its Western benefactors and the outrage of domestic critics
across the political spectrum: support for the Serbs is one
of the few areas of policy where "democrats" pretty much
agree with what they otherwise refer to as the "red-brown
conspiracy." Britain and France, officially com- mitted via
NATO and the European Union to "the Western policy," i.e., a
generaly pro-Croat/German and pro- Muslim/Turkish
orientation, favor a solution that leaves the Serbs with most
of their current holdings, a manifestation of their
traditional Germanophobia. The only really unprecedented
element is the emergence of the United States as a zealous
partisan of Muslim regional interests, along with Turkey,
Iran, and pretty much the same lineup as in the anti-Iraq
coalition in the Persian Gulf War.
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[The United States, by virtue not only of its tripwire
in FYRM but its overall regional network of political
and military assets, would be deeply committed to the
Albanian/Turkish side in the Third Balkan War. Besides
the local consequences, we would then have the makings
of a sharp American/Russian confrontation.]
More about America's metarphosis into Uncle Salaam in a
moment, but first back to the Balkan War. As noted above, the
Bosnia Round, despite a lot of effort by the usual suspects,
has not done the trick: the United States has not taken the
bait. But, luckily for the progressives everywhere, there
happens to be another "multiethnic democracy" in the
neighborhood that seems to be just what the spin doctor
ordered, lurking under the improbable moniker of "The Former
Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia" (FYROM).
Modern Macedonia is nuch like Kashmir or Israel/Palestine or
the Falklands/Malvinas Islands, in the sense that hardly any-
one really understands it, and most of those who do general-
ly lie, or at least adhere to such astoundingly discordant
ver- sions of what passes for the truth that they might as
well be lying. Formerly the southern-most federal republic of
Titoist Yu- goslavia, FYROM is the home of over two million
people, most of whom speak a Slavic language with features
similar to Bulgarian and Serbian. These Slavic-speakers are,
by tradition, Orthodox Christians. In addition, there is a
Muslim minority, mostly Albanian, plus some Turks and
Gypsies, located mostly in FYROM's northwest, bordering
Albania and Koso- vo. FYROM is landlocked (surrounded by
Greece, Albania, Serbia, and Bulgaria), poor, and
mountainous. Its capital city is Skopje.
Apart from the meager data in the foregoing paragraph, there
is next to nothing to he said about FYROM and its in-
habitants that would not be subject to dispute. As an alter-
native to a blow-by-blow account of Macedonian events since
Alexander rode Boukephalos off toward the sunrise, suffice it
to say that topical questions include, but are certainly not
lim- ited to, the following: Are FYROM's Slavs really Serbs?
(Even before annexing the region in 1912, Belgrade said yes,
but during World War II, Tito, who was half-Slovene and half-
Croat and all communist, decreed otherwise.) Are they Bul-
arians? (Sofia, in two Balkan wars and as many world wars,
has staked everything on the proposition that they are.) Or
are they a distinct Macedonian nationality? (The relation of
ethnonyms to toponyms can he very troublesome. By way of
comparison, Engishmen, Welshmen, and Scots live in Britain,
and are therefore called "Britons," but the previous Celtic
inhabitants of the same land, also known as "Britons," were
displaced or exterminated by the Germanic ancestors of
today's Englishmen, with contemporary Welshmen and Scots
consti- tuting, in part anyway, survivors.) Are the Muslims a
minor minority (under 20 percent, as FYROM Slavs say they
are) or a major minority (over 40 percent, as FYROM Muslims
them- selves claim)? If the Slavs do constitute a nation, do
the peo- ple of Bulgaria's Pirin region, who speak an
identical form of Bulgarian or Macedonian or whatever it is,
count as "Macedonians," with the obvious irredentist
implications? (This is not an idle question. Relations
between Sofia and Skopje almost broke down last year over the
statement, in reference to a trade pact, that it was executed
in "the Bulgarian and Macedonian languages," the latter of
which Sofia rejects but Skopje insists upon.) What about the
undetermined number of speakers of the same language in
northern Greece, who, despite decades of relentless and
sometimes brutal Hellenizatin, only by quite a stretch of the
imagination meet Athens' sur- real description of them as
"Slavic-speaking Greeks"? Where does "Macedonia" end? (FYROM
constitutes only about one- third of the region traditionally
designated by the toponym "Macedonia," with most of the rest
lying in Greece, including a lot of waterfront property and
Greece's seeond-largest city, Thessaloniki.) An why do the
answers to any of these questions matter, anyway?
Because FYROM is likely to he the place where the region- al
Balkan war, having misfired in Bosnia, finally goes off,
pulling Serbia, Albania, Greece, Turkey, and probably Bulgar-
ia, maybe even Romania and Hungary, into the melee, with each
receiving the patronage of the United States, Britain,
France, Germany, Russia, Saudi Arabia, Iran, Italy, and
doubt- less many others. Moreover, in addition to its lack of
internal ethnic cohesion and identity, FYROM occupies, as
Misha Glenny has pointed out, a unique strategic position:
"Control of Bosnia guarantees strategic superiority in the
northern Balkans. And Macedonia (the Vardar Plain) is the
only terri- tory where the Balkan mountains can be traversed
north to south and east to west. Thus, those who control
Macedonia (i.e. FYROM) control the economy of the southern
Balkans. The question is which traffic route will prevail."
Actually, Glenny understates the issue: this is not a
question of which way trucks will carry fish or rutabagas. It
is one of regional dominance, which will run either along an
axis from Con- stantinopole west via Adrianopole, Sofia, and
Skopje, terminat- ing at the Adriatic port of Dures, or along
an exis from Thes- saloniki through Skopje to Belgrade and
points north. Or to put it another way, if, on the one hand,
the North/South orientation prevails, the Balkan Peninsula
and all Central Europe, right down to the traditional
entranceway into Hades (sp?) where Cape Tainaron sinks into
the sea, is firmly glued politically, economically, and
culturally to the rest of the continent, with any serious
Muslim influence continued to Turkey's vestigal hold on East
Thrace (and even that, some still hope, might slip too). In
such a case the main political task in the region is a
rational apportionment of German and Russian spheres of
influence (a decidedly Old World Order term that ought to be
revived), a formidable but by no means impossible task.
On the other hand, if the East/West orientation prevails, the
Turks are back at the gates of Vienna. (Figuratively
speaking, since we are talking about the forceful reentry
into European affairs of not just Turkey but the Islamic
world in a broader sense. Of course, the Bihac "pocket" is
still some 200 miles from Vienna, or 40 miles from Zagreb,
but it amounts to the same thing). FYROM is the keystone that
joins, on the east, the heavily Muslim Greek-majority border
region extending to European Turkey, and, on the west,
Albania, Kosovo (a province in Serbia with a 90 percent
Albanian Muslim popu- lation), and Bosnia-Hercegovina. The
Bosnian Muslim settlement from the Turkish border to north of
Sarajevo. Cutting that "road" has been one of the Bosnian
Serbs' principal, and thus far successful, war aim. During
the April 1994 Gorazde crisis, which saw the first
application of American military force in the war, few
observers took note of the real Muslim objective to break out
of Gorazde accross the nearby Bosnian/Yugoslav border to
Sandzak. If they had been successful, the Muslims would not
only have restored an important lifeline to the east, but the
Yugoslav army would have been forced to react, per- haps
triggering the long-sought-after American intervention, the
Muslims' only hope of victory.
As it turned out, despite massive preparations, the Muslims
suffered another humiliating defeat. The American in-
tervention, consisting of a couple of air strikes, was
politically significant but far short of what many observes
hoped for. Still, for reasons that are not entirely clear,
the United States is unambiguously and consistently aiding
the Muslim effort all along "Allah's Road." The Istanbul
publication Avdinlik re- ported on May 21, 1994, that
hundreds of Muslim youths from Sandzak are being secretly
brought into Turkey via FYROM, for commando training. "The
project of training the Sandzak Muslims," it states, "is part
of a plan to create a Mus- lim state in parts of Serbia nd
Montenegro." This also com- plies with the views of (Bosnia's
Muslim President Alija) Izetbegovic's party, which is active
in Sandzak. It was the United States that put forward the
plan to establish a Muslim state in Europe. Saudi Arabia is
openly supporting it. Besides, Turkey's secret diplomacy in
the Balkans is being financed by Saudi Arabia."
On February 14, 1994, the Sofia publication Duma report- ed
on a visit by two American diplomats to the Bulgarian bor-
der region with Greece. According to Duma, their purpose was
to help "draw together" Muslim communities and political
movements on both sides of the border between the two pre-
dominantly Christian states, as part of the formation of a
"Turkish axis between Bulgaria and Greece," connecting Turkey
to FYROM. On May 31, the Sofia publication Konti- nent
discussed "the strong U.S. military presence in the Bal- kans
during the last two years and the unconcealed and in-
creasing appetites of the United States in the peninsula."
Among the specifics are a buildup of American military assets
in Albania; additions to "the U.S. `blue helmet' contingent"
in FYROM and their "gradual replacement of Scandinavian
troops" (this is a reference to the 300 Americans sent there,
os- tensibly as U.N. peacekeepers, actually as a tripwire, by
our Ra- zorbaek Rommel in 1993; their number has quietly
doubled): suspicious violations of Bulgaria's airspace; and
political ma- nipulations within Bulgaria. "If those of our
statesmen who still nurture pro-American feeling hase not yet
realized our geostrategic situation," warns the Kontinet
observer, "I advise them to spend an hour or two perusing the
map. The Balka- ns are not yet the (Persian) Gulf, although
some people are very keen on their becoming so. One thing, we
have no oil, and another, not all of us are yet inclined to
become Muslims."
The respected and well-informed London publication Defense
and Foreign Affairs Strategic Policy points in its
October/November 1993 issue to many of the same developments:
Despite the lack of any clear agreement on Balkan pol-
icy between the competing U.S. foreign policy power
centers ... the United States appears to be establishing
economic, political and military advisers and bases
throughout the Southern Balkans. The U.S. clearly sees
this region as within its sphere of influence. In Al-
bania, U.S. economic advisers are positioned in most, if
not all, government departments, and there is a large
number of military training officers. U.S. warships en-
forcing U.N. sanctions (against Serbia) are based at
Viore. Following an extensive visit to Albania last
month, a British journalist commented that "Albania has
come to resemble an American training academy. The
poorest country in Europe is fast becoming an American
colony." The same picture holds true for Bulgaria and,
under the pretext iii peacekeepers, hun- dreds of U.S.
troops have moved into (FYROM). They are equipped with
sophisticated weapons systems which exceed those
necessary for a normal peacekeeping role.
The massive pressure of American policy on the states of the
south Balkans is unmistakable; the only thing ruining is a
co- herent explanation for it. Bulgaria and FYROM, two states
with every reason to oppose increased Muslins influence, have
seen little choice but to cooperate. Bulgaria, burned badly
by past attempts to annex FYROM, has today sought refuge in
its image as a Good International Citizen, which in practice
means doing everything the "international community" de-
mands of it. The Greeks entirely missing the point (as usu-
al), have chosen to represent their legitimate concerns about
FYROM's eventual revanchist designs on Greek territory as an
ethnic copyright dispute concerning the name "Macedonia" and
FYROM a Hellenistic flag. Consequently, Greece has been
almost entirely unable to contain the growing Muslim power
that seeks to cut it off from Serbia, Bulgaria, and the rest
of Europe, and has alienated potential allies among FYROM's
Slavs. This confused orientation reflects modern Greece's
perennial perplexity about its identity: whether it is, at
its core, Byzantine, Orthodox Christian, and Romaikos or
European, neopagan, and Ellinikos; the Greece of Constantine
Porphy- rogenitos or of Pericles, of icons or of statuary. At
the same time, Athens' stock in Washington steadily slides,
as ominious warnings are increasingly heard about the undue
influence on America's foreign policy exerted by the "Greek
Lobby" -- from quarters with a selective sense of outrage on
behalf of the United State's wounded sovereignty. Finally,
the health of the aging socialist Prime Minister Andreas
Papandreou, Greece's answer to Ted Kennedy, is not expected
to hold out much longer, with governmental collapse and a
possible "Evita Peron" problem involving his trophy wife,
former Olympic Airways hostess "Mimi," certain to follow his
departure.
For its part, the only line Bulgaria absolutely will not
cross would be a demand to let Turkish troops enter its
territory or airspace. FYROM is in an even weaker position,
sailing be- tween the Seylla of "multiethnic democracy" and
Charyb- dis of Macedonian nationalism. The government of Kiro
Glig- orov, past communist apparatchik and current FYROM
president, has chosen Seylla, which has meant not only utter
subservience to the American/Turkish, East/West axis but con-
stant and unsuccessful attempts to appease the Muslim mi-
nority domestically. This appeasement has reached the point
that he Gligorov government all but ignored a plot uncovered
last year by Muslim organizations to import arms from Alba-
nia in preparation for a secessionist revolt. "If a
binational Macedonia isn't created, we Albanians have two
choises: Either we can accept assimilation or go to war,"
says the leader of the group. Islamic community leaders
long demanded a census in FYROM, but most Muslims boycotted
the one conducted in mid-1994, possibly not trusting the
Slavs to count them fairly, or perhaps out of a desire not to
tip their demographic hand too soon. Outbreaks of violence
between Slav and Muslim youths have become increasingly
common, and there are fears that in the event of large-scale
disturbances Skopje could not cope.
Here, in an ethnic implosion that ends FYROM's efforts to
manage a model state in the New World Order, is how the
United States could get into Balkans for real. Mob violence
between the FYROM communities would trigger an Albani- an
insurgency, and Albania and Turkey would support it. FY-
ROM's Slav would have no choice but to ask for Serbian
backing, leading to an Albanian-Serbian war that would cen-
ter on Kosovo. From there, Greece's participation would be
all but ineviatble, in support of longtime ally Serbia and
pre- dictable ethnic Greek revolt in sothern Albania/northern
Epirus. Turkey would take action against Greece, possibly in-
cluding direct moves in the Aegean and Cyprus. Bul- garia
would try, but probably fail, to stay out of it, ultimately
deciding to help FYROM's Slav and maybe chase out some of its
own Turks. Russia would provide political and military
support to Athens and Belgrade. The United States, by virtue
not only of its tripwire in FYROM but its overall re- gional
network of political and military assets, would be deeply
committed to the Albanian/Turkish side in the Third Balkan
War. Besides the local consequences, we would then have the
makings of a sharp American/Russian confrontation. It is no
accident that the groups in the United States most keen on
American military involvement in the Balkans are, if
possible. even more Russophobic than Serbophobic.
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