Monday, February 25, 2008
Parker on Kosovo
Polistra has long suspected that the current war may in fact be WW3 in the strictest sense: that is, a third uprising of the Germanic imperial impulse. Since the latest little kerfuffle in Serbia, she dusted off her copy of Robert Parker's 1944 book Headquarters Budapest again.
Well, what does Parker say about Kosovo? Nothing at all! And believe me, Parker covered everything of military or political significance. Unlike today's "journalists", Parker had a firm grasp of relevance. If Kosovo had any meaning in 1944, Parker would have discussed it at length.
Kosovo's importance was generated later by Stalin's version of Affirmative Action. Comrade Stalin's AA had the same underlying mechanism and purpose as Comrade Nixon's AA: pick a Designated Victim Group and a Designated Oppressor Group; propagandize the Victims to believe that all of their problems are caused by the Oppressors; then ram the two groups together. Stalin did the ramming by force, often shipping thousands of people from one area to another, while our Nixonian method uses the workplace instead, but the INTENDED result is the same mix of resentment and guilt, ultimately leading to civil war.
Parker does give one important piece of advice to Western powers: The local leaders in the Balkans can hardly understand the convoluted tangle of historical grievances; why should you think you'll be able to handily manipulate those countries for the sake of resources?
"It is essential that we take no hand whatever in choosing Eastern Europe's governments. If we should try to impose the old discredited regimes against the will of the people, we will drive them straight into the arms of Soviet Russia. If we fail to ... allow Eastern Europe to make its own choices, then WW3 will inevitably follow, just as surely as WW1 and WW2 began in Eastern Europe."
And later history has proved him right. Germany tried hard before and during WW2, but didn't ever get full control; Stalin did put his arms around the region, but after Stalin died, Khrushchev was unable to keep Yugoslavia, Albania and Romania locked into the sphere of satellites. When the Soviet empire fell, the standard Balkan mess reasserted itself. Clinton succumbed to the eternal temptation to clean things up, but only moved the germs around. ¶ 8:17 AM
Polistra has long suspected that the current war may in fact be WW3 in the strictest sense: that is, a third uprising of the Germanic imperial impulse. Since the latest little kerfuffle in Serbia, she dusted off her copy of Robert Parker's 1944 book Headquarters Budapest again.
Well, what does Parker say about Kosovo? Nothing at all! And believe me, Parker covered everything of military or political significance. Unlike today's "journalists", Parker had a firm grasp of relevance. If Kosovo had any meaning in 1944, Parker would have discussed it at length.
Kosovo's importance was generated later by Stalin's version of Affirmative Action. Comrade Stalin's AA had the same underlying mechanism and purpose as Comrade Nixon's AA: pick a Designated Victim Group and a Designated Oppressor Group; propagandize the Victims to believe that all of their problems are caused by the Oppressors; then ram the two groups together. Stalin did the ramming by force, often shipping thousands of people from one area to another, while our Nixonian method uses the workplace instead, but the INTENDED result is the same mix of resentment and guilt, ultimately leading to civil war.
Parker does give one important piece of advice to Western powers: The local leaders in the Balkans can hardly understand the convoluted tangle of historical grievances; why should you think you'll be able to handily manipulate those countries for the sake of resources?
"It is essential that we take no hand whatever in choosing Eastern Europe's governments. If we should try to impose the old discredited regimes against the will of the people, we will drive them straight into the arms of Soviet Russia. If we fail to ... allow Eastern Europe to make its own choices, then WW3 will inevitably follow, just as surely as WW1 and WW2 began in Eastern Europe."
And later history has proved him right. Germany tried hard before and during WW2, but didn't ever get full control; Stalin did put his arms around the region, but after Stalin died, Khrushchev was unable to keep Yugoslavia, Albania and Romania locked into the sphere of satellites. When the Soviet empire fell, the standard Balkan mess reasserted itself. Clinton succumbed to the eternal temptation to clean things up, but only moved the germs around. ¶ 8:17 AM
