Le Monde

På adressen http://www.monde-diplomatique.fr/en/1999/04/index.html återfinns en Le-Monde-artikel om socialdemokratin och Jugoslavienkriget, skriven av Ignacio Ramonet. Från april 1999.

"For the first time since it was established in 1949, the North Atlantic Treaty Organisation is engaged in a war against a country that has not committed any act of aggression outside its own frontiers. And for the first time since 1945, European forces are bombing a sovereign European state. The decision to go to war, announced on 23 March 1999, was described by NATO Secretary-General Javier Solana, one-time leader of the Spanish Socialist Workers' Party, as a "moral duty".

Mr Solana is supported in this decision principally by the French, German, Italian and UK heads of government, Lionel Jospin, Gerhard Schrsder, Massimo d'Alema and Tony Blair - all four of them eminent proponents of social democracy in Europe.

They all agreed to the military solution proposed by Washington as the "only way" to break the deadlock in the Kosovo peace negotiations, even though it is common knowledge - confirmed by US experience in Iraq since 1991 - that crises of this kind cannot be settled by air strikes and any attempt to send in land forces to occupy Kosovo would be extremely costly in terms of human life and might extend the conflict to the whole Balkan peninsula.

The crisis is largely the result of Yugoslav President Slobodan Milosevic's refusal to grant Kosovo a broad measure of political autonomy. But he has widespread support for this stand among the Serbian population who believe Kosovo should remain within Serbia for cultural reasons and feel a sense of solidarity with the Serb minority there. So this is not, as NATO propaganda would have us believe, a clash between an isolated President Milosevic on one side and the allied forces and the Serbian people, ripe for "liberation", on the other. The situation is more complicated.

Mr Solana justified the decision on the ground that we must prevent an authoritarian regime from continuing to oppress its own people in Europe . Does this mean that we must resort to force to oblige Turkey, also a European country and a member of NATO, to grant autonomy to Kurdistan and end an oppression that has already caused thousands of deaths among Kurdish civilians? Is there by any chance a double standard here?

How could the social democrat leaders, heirs to Jean Jaures and a long tradition of respect for international law, yield to pressure from Washington and embark on a military escapade that has not a shred of international legitimacy? There is no UN Resolution expressly authorising the use of force in the region and the UN Security Council, the supreme arbiter on international conflicts, was not consulted before the first strikes were launched and has not agreed to the use of armed force against Serbia."

"For social democracy, which holds undisputed sway in all the major countries of Europe, politics means economics, economics means finance, and finance means the markets. That is why it is keen to encourage privatisation, the dismantling of the public sector, and concentrations and mergers of giant corporations. It is willing to renounce the social compact and has abandoned all idea of full employment or eradicating poverty, of seeking to alleviate the plight of the EU's 18 million unemployed and 50 million poor.

...The left now has to reinvent its place in the political spectrum, while the mantle of conformism, or conservatism, has fallen on the social democrats. Social democracy is the new right. It has taken on the historic task of taming neo-liberalism in a spirit of vacuous opportunism.

It is at war with Serbia today and may be fighting its own suburbs tomorrow. All in the name of realism, not rocking the boat, above all not disturbing the status quo."