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Gerard Baudson: The New World Order And Yugoslavia
INTRODUCTION
The Constraints of Hegemonism"The love for order is often confused with the taste of the tyrant"
Alexis de Tocqueville
Democracy in America ("Da la democracie en Amerique")The New World Order is an expression of President Bush voiced before the American Congress on Tuesday, September 11, 1990, after the invasion of Kuwait by Iraq.
"A new world order (...) can emerge in these troubled times, a new era more free from the menace and from terror stronger in its search for peace, an era in which countries of the world, both of the East and of the West, of the North and of the South, can prosper and live in harmony"
Contrary to the Roman Empire which reigned under the Pax Romana during two centuries on the two coast of the Mediterranean, the New World order has engendered in only six years more armed conflicts and OUN interventions than during the entire forty years of the cold war: 22 OUN operations from 1988 to 1994, in contrast to 13 from 1948 to 1988
There have never been so many displaced persons or refugees in the world than since the New World Order came into life 17 million refugees in 1991 and 27 million in 1996.l
There have never been in the entire world history so many changes of frontiers in such a short time, from the coasts of the Adriatic Sea up to the confines of China The three federal states of Eastern Europe: USSR, Yugoslavia and Czechoslovakia, have given birth to some twenty new countries, of poorly defined and often contested frontiers.
In the year 1989 we have passed from one historical period into an other. The fall of the Soviet Union, German reunification, end of the cold war and of the bipolar world have marked the emergence of only one super-power: the United States of America. This is a fundamental fact without a precedent in History. This is also the first time that on the planetary level there exists only one super-power which is concentrating in itself all the attributes of power: strategic, political, economic, financial, military and even cultural. The very term 'super-power' in itself is not a pejorative one. All the empires are not necessarily being born out of their deliberate and passionate wish for domination. In the case of the United States, however, this happened at one specific moment - in the year 1989 - arising from a historical move: the confrontation between East and West - and the collapse of the Soviet empire through the internal dislocation of the republics which were its component parts.
An Universal Hegemony
It is also in the natural order of things that every hegemony wishes to endure and, as a consequence, undertakes to disperse, eradicate, and remove all resistance to its aspirations, and to that end, prevent all the other competitive hegemonies from disputing it its character of exclusivity. This vocation of universality of power and of its exclusive exercise can be better understood, in the case of the United States, in the light of the fact that it has for 45 years experienced competition with the USSR and endured its hard trials. The United States have lived through a series of failures: the impossibility of destroying North Korea, with 35,000 soldiers killed in action, out of the 6 million Americans involved in the conflict; the defeat in Vietnam -- 58,000 killed; obliteration of their influence in certain countries of the Middle East -- Egypt, Syria, Iraq, Iran; contestation in Africa; rebellions in Latin America -- missile crisis in Cuba.
An ideological power without a rival, an economic omnipotence, and an absolute military power, the United States now intend to preserve their hegemony, both regarding their former adversaries and regarding their present-day allies.
The fundamental orientations of the foreign and military policy of the United States, defined by the State Department, by the Pentagon, Security Council and the White House, are drafted in two reports: the first one is entitled "WOLFOWITZ report" 2, named after the Under Secretary for Defense in charge of the political affairs, and the second one is the "JEREMIAH Report" 3, drafted by a group of experts, engaged by Admiral Jeremiah, conceiving the military policies of the United States in the function of scenario of conflicts considered as probable.
The WOLFOWITZ Report specifies that the main objective of the American foreign policy is to maintain hegemony and "to convince the eventual rivals that they have no need to aspire to the playing of a greater role". In order to achieve this, the status of the unique superpower of the United States "must be perpetuated by... a military force which will be sufficient to dissuade any nation or a group of nations from defying the supremacy of the United States". This warning applies to the former Soviet Union because "there are risks for the stability in Europe from the reign of nationalists in Russia and attempts to rejoin again to Russia the countries which have become independent: Ukraine, Belorussia, and eventually, some other ones", and: "It is necessary to provide for the dislocation of the former Soviet military apparatus, in order to eliminate all possibilities for any state whatsoever (Russia) that will be its state-successor, to engage in any major conventional conflict".
Neither are the allies treated better: "We have to act in view of preventing the emergence of a security system exclusively a European one which could de-stabilize NATO".
The military application of these choices brought the Jeremiah Report to the envisaging of the seven scenarios of warfare: two of them pertained to the Soviet Union, one to Iraq, another one to Korea. It envisages another three possibilities of intervention: in Central America, in the Far East and the seventh one is the confrontation between Iraq and Korea together. This is "the option of two conflicts simultaneously". It is foreseen to maintain an army of 1.4 million soldiers, a navy with 346 battle ships, from this 11 aircraft carriers. The American hegemony necessitates a capacity sufficient for intervention anywhere in the world, and if need be, in several different places at the same time.
To Prevent the Emergence of Potential Rivals
It is not a question of allowing the establishment of a hegemony which would rival the one of the United States.
Japan is experiencing an accentuated demographic aging, it does not have nuclear weapons, it is totally dependent on abroad for its nourishment and the other basic necessities, and is limited by geographic factors which are emphasizing its weakness and are restricting its options for ascension into the ranks of the super-powers.
China is virtually in possession of all the means necessary to turn it into a super-power: the space, numbers, natural resources, nuclear power, geographic location, etc... but its economic and technological backwardness are too pronounced.
Russia is strongly manifesting its incapability of regaining the status of a super-power. It is now in the first phase of an extraordinary decline which has brought about shrinking of its borders down to those of Russia of the 17th century, even before the victory won by Peter the Great over Charles XII of Sweden! It is not the major economic crisis in the former USSR - which is, nevertheless, formidable - that has caused the fall of the Soviet empire. It is most of all and much more profoundly the loss of will and awareness, that moral crisis which is preventing the Russian people from mobilizing itself anymore around some cause sufficiently strong to brake down particularism and local resistance, the one that can pull together the country and turn it towards the economic progress options, of sufficiently rigorous yet coherent policies.
Russian society is on the path of disintegration under the effects of establishment of a regime in all appearances a capitalist one, but preserving many characteristics of the previous regime, which has fomented the emergence of one dominant class, searching, in all evidence, to ascend to the level of life, to the purchasing power and the style of living, to the economic and financial power, which will differentiate it more and more from the rest of society, plunged into such a misery that has not been known even at the times of the Soviet regime.
The entire social categories are living below the threshold of poverty. Life expectancy has been reduced for many years, which is a historical fact without precedent.
These factors of weakening can not be removed in any near future, and the United States are taking care that Russia remains in this state of total weakness, especi