The Militant(logo) 
    Vol.61/No.24           June 23, 1997 
 
 
Clinton Launches U.S. Campaign To Win Backing For NATO War Moves  

BY MAURICE WILLIAMS
"Fifty-five years ago, in the early days of World War II," said President William Clinton to some 900 graduating cadets of the United States Military Academy, "Gen. George Marshall spoke here about the need to organize our nation for the ordeal of war." During his pep talk at the May 31 commencement at West Point, New York, Clinton warned the military students, "You could be asked to put your lives on the line for a new NATO member, just as today you could be called upon to defend the freedom of our allies in Western Europe."

The president's speech was the launching of what the administration projects as a year-long national campaign to win support for the enlargement of NATO and use of Washington's military might abroad. "When our values and interests are at stake, our mission is crystal clear," Clinton told the cadets. As part of its war preparations, the White House established a new office headed by Jeremy Rosner, a special assistant to the president and the secretary of state, to publicly campaign for the expansion of the imperialist military alliance.

Clinton's speech was a tribute to U.S. Gen. George Marshall and the 50th anniversary of the Marshall Plan, named after the general. On June 5, 1947, Marshall, who was U.S. secretary of state at the time, delivered a commencement speech at Harvard University announcing the European Economic Recovery Program, later known as the Marshall plan.

Under this program, Washington provided $13 billion in loans between 1948 and 1951 to rebuild the infrastructure and renew industrial production in the capitalist countries of Europe, which had been devastated by World War II. The Marshall Plan was followed less than two years later by the founding of NATO in 1949. Both of these enterprises were aimed at exerting maximum economic and military pressure on the Soviet Union, codifying Washington's political and military supremacy in Europe, and crushing the struggles of workers and farmers around the world.

Half a century later, Clinton's West Point address capped his recent tour of Europe to promote NATO military expansion into Central and Eastern Europe. By moving NATO troops toward the Russian boarder, the U.S. imperialists are preparing for the day when they will try to use military force to restore capitalism in Russia and elsewhere in the region. At the same time, Washington is using the NATO expansion drive to push its political domination in Europe.

"We have the best tools to do these jobs," Clinton boasted to the West Point cadets. "Those are the most powerful and best-trained military in the world and a fully funded diplomacy."

Albright's Balkan mission
Clinton's trip was followed by an arm-twisting mission by Secretary of State Madeleine Albright to the Balkans, where she scolded chauvinist leaders Franjo Tudjman of Croatia and Slobodan Milosevic of Serbia for not complying with U.S.-crafted Dayton "peace" agreement.

According to the New York Times, "unusually sharp exchanges" occurred between Albright and Tudjman during a joint news conference in Zagreb May 31. The current regime in Croatia, with its "autocratic and violent past" does not meet the standards of the "democratic community we are building in Europe," the top U.S. diplomat sneered.

Earlier that day, Albright had choreographed a visit to a family of refugees who were harassed as they tried to return to homes they fled during the 1992-95 war. Afterwards, she chided Croatian reconstruction minister Jure Ganic, saying, "you should be ashamed of yourself," and called him a liar.

The next day, Albright traveled to Banja Luka, where she met with chauvinist Serb leader Biljana Plavsic, president of the Bosnian mini-state Republika Srpska. Albright aimed to push imperialist demands for the surrender of alleged "war criminals." State Department spokesman Nicholas Burns said the Clinton administration plans to set up a representative office in Banja Luka staffed by officials from the U.S. embassy in Sarajevo.

During Albright's meeting with Plasvic, protesters rallied outside and denounced the U.S. government for "waging war against the Serbs." Residents interviewed in the streets strongly opposed giving any concessions to the Clinton administration, the Washington Post reported.

Albright's trip to the Balkans reflects the frustration of the U.S. rulers in accomplishing very little after 18 months of military occupation in Bosnia. Washington has already begun to back away from the agreement to remove the 30,000 NATO soldiers from Bosnia in June 1998. At a May 29 press conference in London, Clinton ignored a question about the troop withdrawal, stating he wanted to "stop talking about what date we're leaving on" and instead focus on how to implement the Dayton "peace" accords.

Clinton's campaign to expand NATO developed from Washington's emergence as the dominant imperialist power occupying parts of the Yugoslav workers state. After years of watching the slaughter in Bosnia, and quietly fueling the conflict, the U.S. government pushed aside its rivals in Bonn and Paris and led NATO bombing missions over Bosnia.

Albright's itinerary in Europe also included a May 29 conference of NATO foreign ministers in Sintra, Portugal, where some government officials indicated they wanted to invite Romania and Slovenia into membership. Prime Minister Janez Drnovsek of Slovenia released a statement published in the May 28 Christian Science Monitor expressing a "wish to participate in this historic process and to be included in the first round of NATO enlargement."

Eleven countries are candidates to join the imperialist military alliance, but Albright insisted Washington wanted to admit only the regimes of Poland, Hungary and the Czech Republic.

"NATO is not a scholarship program," she declared. "The alliance should admit only those new democracies that have both cleared the highest hurdles of reform and demonstrated they can meet the full obligations of membership."

Economic turmoil in Czech Republic
At least one of the regimes slated for NATO membership, the Czech Republic, is plagued by a deepening economic and political crisis. The national currency plunged almost 9 percent after Josef Tosovsky, governor of the Czech National Bank announced May 26 a devaluation of the Czech koruna.

Highly touted for years as Eastern Europe's "economic success story" and a "model" for capitalist "reforms," the country experienced a net loss of 550,000 jobs between 1990 and 1993 - and unemployment is still rising. A restructuring plan for the state-owned Czech Railways sparked a national strike in February of this year.

Prime Minister Va'clav Klaus, who is increasingly described in the press as "unpopular," announced the second austerity package in two months on May 28. Klaus called for a wage freeze and cuts in spending for social programs. Trade union officials stated unwillingness to accept more wage curbs on top of those introduced in April.

"The relative lack of industrial unrest up to now has been a blessing for the government," warned a May 14 article in the Financial Times. "When the cuts start to bite, it is inevitable that resistance will increase."

Fending off calls for his resignation, Klaus dismissed two chief architects of the nation's "transition to capitalism" - Industry and Trade Minister Vladimir Dlouhy and Finance Minister Ivan Kocarnik. Dlouhy was blamed for not controlling the growing trade deficit and Kocarnik failed to check some 10 banking officials who have been charged with embezzlement.

Capitalist investors have been pulling out of the Prague stock market. "Foreign capital is losing faith in us and we have to convince it quickly," Klaus stated.

"This is the greatest turmoil since 1989," asserted Jiri Pehe, a political analyst at Radio Free Europe in Prague, referring to the collapse of the Stalinist regime that had ruled the country since 1948.

Elsewhere in Eastern Europe, Russian president Boris Yeltsin signed an agreement May 31 with Ukranian president Leonid Kuchma that ended a territorial dispute over the Black Sea Fleet in Crimea. The pact allows Moscow to lease part of the Sevastopol naval base for 20 years and the Russian government agreed to write off Kiev's huge debt, mostly money owed for oil.

With NATO preparing to expand, the Kremlin stepped up its efforts to strengthen its relations with former Soviet republics like Ukraine. "We honor and respect the territorial integrity of Ukraine," said Yeltsin, while asserting that maintaining ties with Kiev "is a priority of priorities for us."

A little more than two weeks earlier, on May 12, Yeltsin signed a peace treaty with the government of Chechnya. Moscow had launched a bloody 21-month war in December 1994 to halt the Chechens' fight for independence. An estimated 40,000 people were killed.

Facing pressure from Washington's military provocations, the Kremlin is also balking at endorsing the Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty and reducing its nuclear arsenal. Yeltsin "has barely lifted a finger" to complete the agreement, complained the Washington Post.

Meanwhile, as the Clinton administration presses Moscow to reduce its nuclear stockpile, the Pentagon has put a new nuclear weapon, dubbed the "bunker buster," into the field. The new bomb replaces the B-53, a massive weapon that would create a fireball two miles apart and blast a crater 500 feet deep. The B-61 is touted as light enough to deploy in a Stealth bomber and is supposed to bury into the ground before detonating. The New York Times described it as doing "little damage on the surface" - defined as producing third- degree burns a mile away and spewing lethal radiation for 15 miles - and suggests it could be used against what Washington defines as "rogue states," such as Libya, north Korea, or Iran.

Expressing nervousness by a layer of the U.S. capitalist class over implications of the NATO expansion plan, New York Times writer Thomas Friedman declared in his June 2 column, "The Clinton team is expanding NATO without being certain how it will affect America's most strategic objective - getting rid of Russia's nukes. That is so reckless it takes your breath away."  
 
 
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