October 2000

Från en balkong i Makedonien ser fredsforskaren Jan Øberg ut över Ohridsjön och Albaniens berg och reflekterar över situationen i dag på Balkan. Sitter på min balkong med utsikt över Ohridsjön i Makedonien, lika stor som vacker. Silvriga vågor rullar i oändlighet in mot kusten under de svarta granarnas silhuetter. Många kilometer borta, där på andra sidan, finns Albanien, vars berg ligger blåröda och självlysande under molnen. Långt uppe ser jag en vit röksvans från ett jaktplan. Vems kan det vara, över Albanien, på väg vart någonstans? Jag är på konferens om säkerhet och demokrati på Balkan arrangerat av Partnerskap för fred (NATO) och Skopje-universitetets Institut för Försvarsstudier. Några timmars bilfärd härifrån mot norr ligger Kosovo. Man håller lokalval, som ska ge intryck av att provinsen är på väg mot demokrati. Makedonien själv har betalat dyrt för västs sanktioner mot Serbien, och förra året övertog NATO i praktiken landet och...

Sedan mitten av 1980-talet har Sverige rört sig i riktning mot EU och USA. SAP har kommit att också stå för den Stora Anpassningens Politik. Samarbete över gränser om problem som kräver gemensamma lösningar är bra och nödvändigt. “Samarbete” kan betyda att olika parter var och en bidrar med sina individuella förutsättningar och resultatet blir det möjligas konst. Det kan också innebära att mindre deltagare utplånar sin individualitet och underordnar sig den eller de största makthavarna. I första fallet blir samarbetet lika med enighet i mångfald &endash; en rörelse i riktning av internationell demokrati och global-ism. I det senare innebär samarbete enhet i enfald, en autoritär utveckling och global-isering under den starkare. Sverige gick in i EU ungefär samtidigt med utvecklingen av en gemensam EU utrikes- och säkerhetspolitik. Neutraliteten, nedrustnings- och fredsengagemanget avtog. Hänsyn till Europas stormakter ersatte lojalitet med Norden. Vi gick över till NATO:s “partnerskap för fred,” som...

LONDON – Richard Nixon, contending to be president in 1968, wrote a sensational article in the magazine Foreign Affairs in which he anticipiated a more conciliatory U.S. policy towards China. Soon after Nixon’s election, the U.S. moved to recognise communist China, which it had refused to do for twenty two years , and ejected Taiwan from the Chinese seat at the UN. During his election campaign Jimmy Carter promised he wouldn’t “ass-kiss” the Chinese, but like Nixon he ended up turning his back on China’s human rights dissidents, intent on concluding the formal normalization of relations with China. When Bill Clinton campaigned for the presidency against George Bush Senior he charged that Bush was soft on China- Bush had been quick after the Tiananmen Square masacre to send to Beijing his National Security Advisor to reassure the Chinese leadership of Washington’s solid, enduring relationship. Clinton promised if elected that the age...

Based on the analysis in PressInfo 102, here follow some examples of the cul-de-sac created by the Milosevic/West symbiosis: Kosovo options 1. Declare it an integral part of Serbia/Yugoslavia. If so, it can’t be excluded that hardline Albanians would begin to attack KFOR, UN, OSCE, and NGO staff. The risk of losing lives would scare the West, the US in particular. The Albanians are perfectly right in interpreting US and other Western actions the last years as a policy of strong support to their struggle for Kosova as an independent state. The KPC could quickly become KLA again. And if Serbs and other chased-out people came back to Kosovo we would see much more violence. 2. Declare Kosovo an independent state. That is incompatible with UN SC resolution 1244. More important, no democratic government can be elected in Belgrade on “let’s give Kosovo away forever.” If a democratic government actually did so...

The Milosevic-West symbiosis In handling the Balkan crisis the last ten years, the United States and European countries could have chosen a pro-active policy based on conflict analysis and a fair, principled implementation. They could have avoided today’s intellectual, political and moral cul-de-sac and avoided the bombing last year. They would not be de facto protectors of Bosnia and occupiers of Kosovo/a. Most Western actors grossly underestimated the complexities of the Balkans, they were occupied with the end of the Cold War, they chose to perceive it all in simplified black-and-white terms. They never acted to only help the parties solve their problems, but were guided by their own more or less nationalist, competing interests in the Balkans. And then, above all, there was the “Milosevic factor.” The West is cosmologically burdened with a tendency to write simplifying, fail-safe recipes for the solution of extremely complex economic, constitutional, historical and...

We are proud to launch TNN, the TFF News Navigator. The Internet permits us to develop a global rather than national focus, to reduce the Western biases of a handful of media conglomerates and to say “no thanks” to standardized and simplified “truths” about matters complicated. TFF’s News Navigator is your tool – a uniquely comprehensive collection of more than 350 links to world news and comments: newspapers, info services, (mega)sites and bureaus as well as magazines of culture, security, alternative economics, media research – and news departments of major international organizations. It gives you access to Buddhist, Muslim, Christian, Hindu and many other sources and perspectives on what happens. TNN is remarkably broad but not so big that you get lost – with all links on one page. There are other meta sites with news. But TNN is unique because of its: – choice and combination of alternative &...

The need for a just peace Anger and frustration should be no surprise Discussions and analysis of recent events in Israel/Palestine by peace workers, journalists, human rights activists, and others have been cause for both encouragement, and a great deal of concern. The situation in Israel-Palestine and throughout the entire Middle East today is very alarming, but it is in no way surprising. Anger and frustration at one of the most oppressive and exploitative structures of violence in the world is exploding. A system which Nelson Mandela once referred to as “worse than apartheid” is itself being met with counter-violence in the form of stone-throwing and protest. The cycle of violence, recriminations, fear and anger on all sides is growing, and, given the complete absence of any real attempts at peace on the parts of the leadership on both sides, can be expected to continue. Any ‘peace’ which would be...

1. The “Normalization” of Northern Ireland Politics There is (without doubt) a peace process going on in Northern Ireland. One of the most recent surveys has shown how these events are off-set by “persistent insecurities” about the return to violence./1/ However, a basic aspect of this on-going “peace process” is that the key issue underlying the conflict, the advocacy of “republic” or “union”, will become less and less salient as time passes on. But of the ten parties currently represented at the Belfast Assembly (based in the old Parliament buildings of Stormont) at least seven are clearly linked to that issue, at least in the name, and the name will always be indicative of some of the discourse. One might hope that, in time, party leaders might respond with imagination to new political discourses, perhaps even so as to develop a new variety of politics in Northern Ireland where the...

LONDON – It would be perhaps expecting too much for the world to learn one thing from the Yugoslavian imbroglio – that its ethnic wars were a figment of the political imagination. The Balkans is not, as Robert Kaplan famously put it, ” a region of pure memory” where “each individual sensation and memory affects the grand movement of clashing peoples” and where the processes of history were “kept on hold” by communism for forty-five years, “thereby creating a multiplier effect for violence.” If ethnic war is when “ancient hatreds” lead one ethnic group to become the ardent, murderous and dedicated opponent of everyone in another group this was not it. It was,as professor John Mueller of Ohio State University has written in the current issue of “International Security”, a situation in which “a mass of essentially mild, ordinary people unwillingly and in considerable bewilderment came under the vicious and arbitary...

Western politicians insist that Slobodan Milosevic must be brought to the Hague Tribunal and stand trial as a war criminal. Media and commentators raise the issue time and again. But there are reasons to believe that this is make-believe. The indictment of Milosevic leaves much to be explained – for instance, why he is indicted only for crimes committed in 1999 but not before – and certain Western countries would hardly want him to be on record in the Hague with a few things that he may know about them. The West would therefore do wise to drop this issue now and let Yugoslavia deal with Milosevic. It seems that few have bothered to read the text of the indictment of Milosevic and four other high-level government officials of Thursday May 27, 1999. Among other things it states: “As pointed out by Justice Arbour in her application to Judge Hunt,...

Milosevic certainly did not even think the thought. The opposition had hoped for it but hardly foreseen it would happened just like that. Western leaders and commentators had predicted about everything else but this: that nonviolence by the many would sweep away the authoritarian power presided over and solidified by Slobodan Milosevic over 13 years. It was a miracle unfolding, minute by minute, in front of our eyes. Unarmed citizens were stronger, finally, than Milosevic’ force. They also achieved in about 24 hours what NATO violence could not achieve in 78 days. It’s yet another remarkable victory for non-violence. But do we see it like that? The power of nonviolence The Shah of Iran lost power mainly due to nonviolent struggle. The Marcos regime in the Philippines did too. Solidarnosc in Poland would not had won had it used violence. The Velvet Revolution in Czechoslovakia is yet another. The East-West...

LONDON – Poets as diverse as William Blake and Yehuda Amichai have sung the praises of the heavenly Jerusalem, a land without strife or rancour, war or bitterness, envy, acquisitiveness or hatred. Mankind now has the historic opportunity to take a giant step towards making the present day Jerusalem acquire, at least in some of its aspects, the earthly prototype of the heavenly Jerusalem. For once we can see whether the work of imams, rabbis and priests has born fruit. The secular politicians may be the ones doing the negotiations and ordering the compromises but it is the teachers of the three great deistic religions who have been exerting their mandate to teach compassion, goodness, tolerance and brotherhood. These traits of virtue, as common to them all as is their God, now will be tested in the hottest of fires. Have their peoples imbibed the true message of their faiths? Or...