The Militant(logo) 
    Vol.59/No.34           September 18, 1995 
 
 
Stop NATO Bombing In Bosnia  

Much newspaper print and television time is being used to push the view that the NATO bombing campaign under way advances the cause of the Bosnian people. The Militant has taken a stance - and urges its readers to do so as well - that the imperialist military intervention in the former Yugoslavia holds no benefits for working people in the region or anywhere else.

Far from ending the conflict, the use of military force and threats of wider war set back the fight by the Bosnian people for self-determination and national sovereignty.

The White House and U.S. Congress justify the bombing by citing humanitarian concerns for the besieged people of Sarajevo and other Bosnian cities.

Many working people and youth are swayed by such claims because of their natural human sympathy for the plight of the people of Bosnia. But the government of the United States, as well as those of Britain, France, Italy, Germany, and Japan, have a long history of professing humanitarianism to carry out brutal assaults, and using their massive armed forces to advance their imperialist interests and trample on the rights of working people the world over.

The U.S. invasions of Haiti (1994), Panama (1989-90), and Grenada (1983); London's war against Argentina to maintain its colonization of the Malvinas islands (1982); and the U.S.-led war against the people of Iraq in 1990-91 are some of the most recent examples. They were carried out under the pretext of defending human rights and democracy.

Imperialist intervention is often disguised with the fig leaf of the United Nations. That was the case in Somalia (1992-94); during the overthrow of the government of Patrice Lumumba in the Congo (now Zaire) by UN forces in 1961; and in the 1950-53 Korean War, when Washington used the blue flag of the United Nations to carry out its massive invasion and partition the peninsula against the will of the vast majority of the Korean people.

The rival imperialist powers of North America and Europe are seeking ways to intervene in the Yugoslav war, place their stamp on the outcome of events, and thus increase their influence in the Balkans. They are driven to do this by increased conflicts among themselves in the context of a world capitalist economy marked by declining profit rates and stiffening competition for markets. They seek to reinforce the fracturing of the former Yugoslavia and eventually overturn the nationalized property relations and re-establish capitalism.

In Bosnia, the U.S. government is using its military might to set in stone what has been already carved out by the massive spilling of blood of the Bosnian people - the partition of that former Yugoslav republic. Washington is doing so to increase the edge it has already gained over its imperialist rivals in the Balkans. It has outdistanced Bonn in its support for the regime in Croatia. And NATO, the U.S. military arm in Europe, is currently calling the shots over decisions for military intervention in Bosnia.

Now the Clinton administration is peddling the idea of using up to 25,000 U.S. ground troops as part of a 50,000- strong occupation force to enforce its "peace plan." This is simply naked imperialist military intervention in the former republics of the Yugoslav workers state. The "humanitarianism" of Washington and other imperialist powers is exposed as crocodile tears by their backing of Zagreb's "ethnic cleansing," and the shutting of their borders and mistreatment of hundreds of thousands of refugees from the war.

The chief culprit for the murderous conflict in the former Yugoslavia is the regime of Slobodan Milosevic in Serbia. This gangsterous regime of would-be capitalists and its allies in Bosnia pioneered the "ethnic cleansing" in their drive to grab land and resources. The regime of Franjo Tudjman in Croatia followed suit.

The petty-bourgeois and aspiring bourgeois layers in Belgrade, Zagreb, and elsewhere are interested only in safeguarding their own privileges, diverting workers from acting in their own class interests, and continuing the fruitless attempt to be welcomed as equal partners into the world capitalist system.

But because of the historic conquests of the Yugoslav revolution in the 1940s, many working people in all the republics - Serb, Croat, Bosnian, and others - oppose being forcibly divided along national lines. From the beginning of the bloody war in 1991, many workers, farmers, and youth in Yugoslavia have shown by their own actions the potential they possess to resist the slaughter.

Tens of thousands of people in Bosnia have taken up arms to defend their right to self-determination, halt the horrors of "ethnic cleansing," and put an end to the onslaught. They are not helpless victims who must rely on Washington for salvation. Working people the world over should support this fight, including the right of the Bosnian army to obtain weapons wherever it can. But the NATO bombings, and the support for Washington's military assault by the government of Alija Izetbegovic in Sarajevo, set back this fight.

 
 
 
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