The Militant(logo) 
    Vol.61/No.1           January 6, 1997 
 
 
NATO Troops Out Of Yugoslavia!  
NATO's tanks, artillery, and ground troops occupying Bosnia are aimed at workers, farmers, and youth throughout Yugoslavia - tens of thousands of whom have taken to the streets for weeks to protest the antidemocratic policies of the regimes in Belgrade and Zagreb. That's the main point the daily demonstrations against the annulment of municipal elections by the Stalinist regime of Slobodan Milosevic and the attitude of the imperialist powers toward the protesters show.

The NATO intervention, led by Washington, is aimed at bringing Yugoslavia back into the imperialist system of exploitation, and set a powerful example for reestablishing capitalism through naked military force across Eastern Europe and the former USSR. Its goal is to return the domination of capital and do away with the nationalized property relations and the social expectations that grew out of the powerful Yugoslav revolution. One of the 13 points of the imperialist-crafted Dayton accord is "the creation of a free market economy" in Yugoslavia.

The intervention by rival capitalist powers is also fueled by competition among themselves over spots in the feeding chain of the imperialist system of robbery. Washington, the number-one European power in military and economic terms, leads the pack. Germany is number two in Europe and is now attempting to flex its military muscle by deploying combat troops in the Yugoslav workers state.

But working-class resistance to the antidemocratic measures of Milosevic, Franjo Tudjman, and company is making the imperialists' task more difficult. That's why the big-business press scolds student demonstrators for referring to representatives of imperialism as "liars" and "American scum." Despite the reactionary leadership of the main parties in the Zajedno coalition, the street demonstrations in Belgrade, Nis, Zagreb, and other Yugoslav cities show that the working class in Yugoslavia has not been beaten down and demoralized as the bourgeois media attempts to portray.

The most important aid all opponents of capitalist injustice and exploitation can give to our brothers and sisters in Serbia, Croatia, and elsewhere in this workers state is to tell the truth about the 1945 Yugoslav revolution and ask strikers, young people fighting police brutality, or defenders of affirmative action to add to their demands that NATO troops get out of Yugoslavia now!

 
 
 
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