More than 11 weeks of bombardment by Washington and other imperialist powers have devastated the industry and infrastructure of Yugoslavia. In addition to thousands of people killed and injured in the assault, the destruction of factories has left millions without work. There are shortages of food, clean water, and fuel as a result of the systematic bombing of oil refineries and electric power plants.
Now an occupation force of U.S., British, French, German, and Italian troops is carving up Kosova, with the acquiescence and participation of Moscow. These forces preside over the further fanning of chauvinist divisions among working people unleashed by the Belgrade regime, in face of which many Serbian residents who have stayed in Kosova feel compelled to leave their homes. Washington is moving to reorganize elements of the Kosova Liberation Army as a police force to do its bidding in the region. The imperialist troops, while pretending to be neutral, will only act to abet the various middle-class forces that promote chauvinism at the expense of working people.
Workers internationally should stand with those within Yugoslavia who are fighting to defend the Yugoslav federation that was won through the 1942-45 revolution. We need to answer Washington's lie that the Balkans conflict is the result of unalterable historic ethnic hatred - a conflict the imperialist rulers claim only their military intervention can keep in check. This is a cover for the U.S. billionaires' true aims: to establish their supremacy in Europe, deepen their military confrontation with the workers states in Eastern Europe, including Russia, and create conditions that will eventually allow them to reimpose capitalism.
The events of the last few weeks should put to rest any illusions that the regime headed by Slobodan Milosevic would organize a fight to defend the Yugoslav workers state from the imperialist assault, or that government of Boris Yeltsin in Moscow would act to protect the toilers of the Balkans. These regimes, made up of remnants of the former ruling Stalinist bureaucracies and other wannabe capitalist forces, follow a pragmatic course aimed at protecting their own privileges. While they may sometimes come in conflict with Washington, they will always place their own narrow interests ahead of those of workers and farmers around the world. The sending of 200 Russian troops to occupy the Pristina airport, for example, was not a progressive act in defense of Yugoslavia but a crude stunt by the Moscow bureaucracy to maneuver with the imperialist powers as it agrees to the cutting up of Kosova.
There are no stand-ins or saviors for the working class. As "U.S. Imperialism Has Lost the Cold War," the 1990 convention resolution of the Socialist Workers Party, points out, referring to the Soviet Union, "The working class is the only reliable defender of the workers state, the conquests of [the] October [1917 revolution], and the only source of their regeneration. It will take mighty battles with the working class to reimpose the dominance of stable capitalist property relations, dismantle the state monopoly of foreign trade, and end centralized planning. Such battles will be prepared as workers move to resist growing unemployment, accelerated inflation, cuts in the social wage, and deepening social inequality.... The restoration of capitalism is impossible short of defeating the working class in bloody, counterrevolutionary battles." (This resolution is published in issue no. 11 of New International.)
The historic struggle of the working-class vanguard throughout the Balkans has been for unity based on a voluntary alliance of workers and farmers, against a long history of fragmentation and bloody wars by local exploiting classes, usually with imperialist sponsors stirring the pot.
Despite the murderous wars and chauvinist propaganda of Milosevic in Serbia, Franjo Tudjman in Croatia, and the other ruling layers in the Yugoslav republics today, substantial numbers of working people refuse to give up the fight for the Yugoslavia that was forged in struggle.
Such a federation can be truly voluntary only if it is based on the right of all oppressed nations to self- determination - up to and including independence. This remains the conclusion of a small but important vanguard of working people and youth in Yugoslavia. Communists would not advocate independence for Kosova, however, unless the fight for a federal republic became historically exhausted and another way forward was posed. That is not a settled question today.
The Clinton administration claims the NATO occupation is the only way to allow the return of Kosovar Albanians to their homes. But initiatives, such as those by leaders of the Nezavisnost union in Yugoslavia, to appeal to their brothers and sisters in Kosova for unity on the basis of mutual respect and equality of all nationalities shows how it could be possible for vanguard workers and youth to lead brigades of working people in areas of conflict to guarantee the safe return of all refugees, the security of all residents, and the right of Kosovars to decide their future.
National self-determination is impossible under the boot of imperialism. Workers around the world have the obligation to demand all foreign troops - whether under the NATO or UN flag - get out of the Balkans now. We should also demand the draconian sanctions against Yugoslavia, spearheaded by Washington, be lifted, and the "investigators" sent there under the auspices of the so-called war crimes tribunal in The Hague be withdrawn.