And another War ....

[omegaRED]

What`s with the Germans?

------------------
Seth, are you ok ?
I`m peachy, Kate. The world is my oyster.

[paulcs]

I suspect much of Eastern Europe would beg to differ about your assessment of the post-Stalin Soviet Union. Ask the Hungarians. Ask the Czechs. Ask the Poles. Even the Soviet Union refered to itself as the Dictatorship of the People.

Much of the Balkans -- particularly Yugoslavia -- was shielded from Soviet tyranny. This is partly because of Tito. It's also because the Soviets weren't nuts. Face it. The rest of the world considers the Balkans a potential quagmire.

Tito was no saint, although he did maintain the peace. He seemed to do this by playing off the Serbs against the Croations. He certainly wasn't a democrat. (He wasn't a particularly good communist either.)

One of the reasons NATO is slow to react because many of the citizens of the member states think we are nuts for getting involved. It's not politically popular here, and I'm sure it's an issue of great concern throughout Europe.

You're right. We're disagreeing on several key points, but we are on the same side. Macedonian sovereignty is to be protected. The United States has made noise in the past -- both during the first Bush and then the Clinton administrations -- that Macedonia was of great strategic importance. It was the line in the sand. The point where the United States would act unilaterally.

This has all the markings of a no win situation for the US and its NATO partners. Do nothing and the potential for genocide and conflicts spreading into a member state and maybe Central Europe exists. (Now, there's a recipe for WWIII.) Act too decisively and run the risk of turning things into a real quagmire with enemies on all sides.

So we act slowly, deliberately, and seemingly indecisely.

I'm curious. What's the Croation position on all this? We haven't heard much from them at all.

Paul
paulcs@speakeasy.net

[The PIT]

I think you'll find natos postision is do nothing. Theres nothing to be gained. Unless the media get stirred up and start rocking the boat they'll be no action.
Look at it this way this was the first place I heard that anything was going off in Macedonia was on this site.

[paulcs]

NATO is deploying additional troops in the mountains as we speak. Germans too.

Paul
paulcs@speakeasy.net

[omegaRED]

Yes, i know the Germans are allready here, in Tetovo, i was wondering the same thing. Why point out that Germans too are sending troops here. It`s fairly obvious that they would, seeing how they are a NATO member. I heard nothing of Germans refusing to send troops here. Sharping said "We wont allow to be pulled by the nose from anyone, especially Terrorists"

------------------
Seth, are you ok ?
I`m peachy, Kate. The world is my oyster.

[paulcs]

I brought up Germany because German troops were being deployed during the course of this thread. Also, Germany's more active role in NATO military operations is of interest amongst people who follow this sort of thing in the US and I'm sure elsewhere in the alliance.

Paul
paulcs@speakeasy.net

[paulcs]

As for us acting too decisively in Kosovo, I think reasonable people could argue that the UN's dawdling in Bosnia led to tragedy on an enormous scale.

You seem to toss around the phrase "ethnic cleansing" rather easily while ignoring its moral implications. The phrase here is associated with unspeakable evil. Human nature at it's absolute worse. It is viewed as a stupid and feeble attempt to sanitize genocide and forced relocations. The fact that this could happen in Europe - again - is completely unacceptable.

Getting NATO involved in anything is an extraordinary feat. NATO has directly involved itself in exactly two military operations in its fifty year history. Two. And both of them have been in the Balkans. It has deployed ground troops once. It just seems to me that you have to really screw up to get NATO involved. You have to screw up worse than anyone has screwed up in half a century. It's a remarkable, and awful achievement.

Paul
paulcs@speakeasy.net

[Admiral]

There's just one thing that bothers me. Did the UN die or did NATO lost it's purpose after the Soviet Union was no more and it's now trying to find one ?
Wasn't NATO supposed to be a defensive alliance, defending the countries that are part of it ?
Isn't the UN supposed to deal with such cases as Kosovo and what's happening now in Macedonia ?

I agree that right now UN troops are pretty much worthless, having the right to shoot only if they're fired upon, but that doesn't mean NATO has to undertake this task, just give more power to UN troops. NATO doesn't represent the whole World, it represents the Western powers and their policy. The Balkans were and still are to a degree orientated twords Russia, but Russia's interests are left aside. Further more I think this is a European problem, not a US one.
The ones that should interfere are Russia the EU and countryes in the region affected by this.

There's another thing that bothers me. From where do the albanian guerillas get support. From Albania ? they're too poor to finance such thing. From Russia ? don't think so.
I'll let you people guess what I'm implying.

[paulcs]

It's always seemed to me that UN troops are best equipt to deal with situations where both sides are sick of fighting and sincerely want peace. This often hasn't been the case in the Balkans.

I recall a situation in Bosnia where Dutch troops, flying the UN banner, were forced to hand over almost an entire town of civilians to a local militia. One can only imagine the fate of this people. And what a terrible burden it has been for the soldiers themselves. I've seen a number of them interviewed, and they were haunted by the experience. I think its wrong to put soldiers in this sort of position.

I suspect the situation would have been very different if these same soldiers were under the NATO banner. I doubt the situation would have ever come up. I would expect that if it did, there would have been a swift, unpleasant retaliation.

Andre, the whole philosophy of NATO is "all for one, and one for all." Any threat to a single NATO state is considered a threat to all of them. US participation is a given, but I think European troops do the lion's share of the soldering.

The United States has a long history of isolationism, but the two World Wars and the Cold War changed that. Stability in Europe is a primary objective of US foreign and military policy. The United States has extremely strong cultural and historical links with several European nations, and the US economy is closely tied to Europe's.

Many people in the US are opposed to our participation in foreign military adventures. They don't see it as in our national interest.

Paul
paulcs@speakeasy.net

[Admiral]

"Any threat to a single NATO state is considered a threat to all of them."

I don't see a NATO state in the Balkans (maybe because there are none, yet) that got attacked so that NATO would interfere.

"It's always seemed to me that UN troops are best equipt to deal with situations where both sides are sick of fighting and sincerely want peace. This often hasn't been the case in the Balkans."

That makes you think of UN troops as a police force although even a police force has more power of decission.


"I recall a situation in Bosnia where Dutch troops, flying the UN banner, were forced to hand over almost an entire town of civilians to a local militia."

Yes, and after the commander personally promissed the civillians to protect them.
We could call Northen Cyprus' invasion such a humiliating moment or Lebanon.

Now to be a bit selfish and think at what my country got out of these conflicts. We were imposed to respect an embargo that did quite some damage to our economy and was twords a country with which we've been friends for centuries. The Danube is still blocked by the remains of the bombed bridges making navigation impossible and getting most of the companies that were involved in shipping goods via it bankrupt and we still didn't got any compensation for this nor are we any closer to getting into NATO.

[Schorsch]

<font face="Verdana, Arial" size="2">Originally posted by omegaRED:
What`s with the Germans?
</font>

Don't know why paulcs mentioned the Germans in addition to the NATO (Germany is a member of the NATO). Germany is sending paratroopers to Tetovo/Macedonia in order to protect the KFOR troops there. According to the news here in Germany, Spain and Sweden will send soldiers to Macedonia, too.

[paulcs]

There are NATO nations close enough to the Balkans to be effected if the region were to completely destabilize, as it has been prone to do. Bad stuff in the Balkans also has been known to spill over into Central Europe and the entire continent.

To people critical of NATO's role in the Balkans, I always ask, "where are the men and boys of Srebrenica?" Not once have I gotten a decent answer. One wonders, could the West have done something to stop the killing? Are we in part responsible for not doing something sooner? I guess the Western Alliance must be responsible, because a lot of terrible things took place, and no one in the East seems to be.

Paul
paulcs@speakeasy.net

[bongo]

Abusive post deleted.

[This message has been edited by bongo (edited 26 March 2001).]

[This message has been edited by Joel (edited 26 March 2001).]

[bongo]

Joel deleted my post. There was nothing profane or threatening or violent about it. All I did was criticize the US in my own unimitable way.

Add censorship to the list of what the US has become, along with bullies and cowards.

Joel; deleting the message does not delete the facts.

[The PIT]

Just heard that British soldiers will be involved in patrolling the boarders in an attempt to stop the supply of arms to the rebels.
Now what did Bongo say that caused the deletion?