Extradition of Milosevic: Triumph for U.S. imperialism

By Dave Silver, June 2001

Inter-imperialist rivalry particularly among France, Germany and the US which were seeking a client state in the Balkans created and perpetuated the wars within first Bosnia then in Kosovo. Imperialist support for Croatian neo-fascist elements were followed by material and logistic support for mercenary Albanians. These were mineral rich regions where Serbs, Croats and Muslims lived by and large peacefully. What brought on the imperialist orchestrated internal ethnic divisions and devastating NATO bombing and war? A Communist turned nationalist politician, Slobodan Milosevic told the imperialists that they could not station their military on Yogoslav soil and build a pipeline going through the Balkans to the oil rich Caspian Sea.

Washington and its allies decided that he must be neutralized or imprisoned and provided logistic and material support for the Opposition in Belgrade, Bosnia-Herzogovina and Kosovo and began a process of destabilizing the Belgrade government. Weapons and Intelligence were provided to mercenaries labeled freedom fighters as well as elements inside and out of the Serbian Socialist Party who were identified as reformers who wanted to bring democratization to Yugoslavia. The CIA provided these good guys with radio frequencies of Voice of America and Radio Free Europe. To guarantee a successful operation the servants of imperialism-Clinton-Albright, provided faked photos of alleged atrocities by the Serbs in Serbenica much as the PBS broadcast in 1990 (after the the victory of the counter revolution in the USSR) did in their documentary A Time For Judgment, in which Stalin was blamed for the mass graves in Nazi occupied Vinnitsa the Ukraine in 1943 that were victims of Hitlers genocide. In addition the bourgeois media became a spokesman for the State Department and Pentagon.

In defiance of Belgrades Constitutional Court the Prime Minister and his co-conspirators brought Milosevic to the American airbase in Tuzla, Bosnia for transfer to the International Tribunal in the Hague. George W. was so delighted that he immediately increased the initial payment to 180 million dollars (eventually to total over a billion dollars) to Belgrade. Of course much of that money will have to go to rebuild the infrastructure devastated by the NATO bombing.

The main contradiction is still between Imperialism and socialism (even though greatly weakened). Milosevic was an obstacle in that he not only refused to play the imperialist game of privatization and selling the resources of his country to the Transnationals as in Russia. He committed the ultimate sin of safeguarding portions of what remained of the socialist/collective base of the Yugoslav economy. Anti-communism is alive and well and has infected portions of the Left some of who equated as co-evils Milosevic and the Nato bombing.