the Central-Eastern European nations have strongly anti-Russian and consequently Atlanticist currents. Poland and the Baltics are the prime examples because they share a border with Russia.

My understanding is that this isn't representative of the reality on the ground. The self proclaimed 'elites' of the political circles are anti-Russian (I wonder what the financial arrangements are) while Eastern European society at large is hardly anti Russian.

Statistics on this are welcome.

Secret Bases Part 1 - WWW.SECRET-BASES.CO.UK - © 2009

RAF Croughton near Brackley in Northamptonshire is an old USAF airbase, but no runways have been apparent for many years. The base appears as a significant cluster of aerial symbols. That's because RAF Croughton is the focal point for the US military's communications within Europe.....

Croughton has a transmitter annexe at RAF Barford St. John near Banbury in Oxfordshire. This "disused airfield" is said to provide secure communications facilities for CIA agents and US Diplomatic personnel. The 1:25000 OS map reveals another good old "Wireless Station" label.

"+" because the Base Structure Report is clearly incomplete, in terms of not listing any bases for countries where we know that US forces are based, and also in terms of only listing a central base in locations with multiple bases ... for example, in the 2003 report, Okinawa has one Marine Corps base listed, where there are as many as 10 Marine Corps bases on the island.

I've been accused of being a Marxist, yet while Harpo's my favourite, it's Groucho I'm always quoting. Odd, that.

... but even more importantly, actively working to eliminate it and actively working to reinforce it is a false dichotomy. There are actions short of actively working to eliminate it that would accelerate the decline resulting from its obsolescence ... for instance, removing participation in actions outside of NATO borders from the NATO structure would be a big step in the right direction.

I've been accused of being a Marxist, yet while Harpo's my favourite, it's Groucho I'm always quoting. Odd, that.

Here's a factoid I've borne in mind a lot these last few years: when the 20th century opened, civilian casualties accounted for about 10% of all casualties in conflict. By the century's close that ratio had reversed - about 90% of all casualties of conflict are civilian casualties.

I doubt this factoid is true if you do not (as they did at the time) constrain the definition of war to the conflicts between european powers. When dealing with people without machineguns (Congo, Tasmania and the list goes on) attempted genocide was common. WW2 saw these practices spread to europe, hence the horror.

Sweden's finest (and perhaps only) collaborative, leftist e-newspaper Synapze.se

Pointing out that Pax Americana means no wars America did not start except in trivial countries which are mostly important as sources of raw materials ... does not contradict the absence of Great Power Armed Conflict, it just underlines the limitations of Great Power Armed Conflict as a framing for violence against people around the world.


I've been accused of being a Marxist, yet while Harpo's my favourite, it's Groucho I'm always quoting. Odd, that.

The Germans are not only coming... in fact, they're already back (albeit in a somewhat different outfit) to many of the places they left back in 1945.

Is anyone advocating that the Germans - Austrians repeatedly communicate regret and apology to these nations... Is that because the 'people' of central Europe have no fear or is it because the local media and governing 'elites' are supportive of renewed German economic and political influence in their countries?

I don't think one could imagine such an experience would be forgotten by the early revolutionaries, certainly not Stalin, and what followed should be seen in this light, also, I think.    

The Hun is always either at your throat or at your feet. Winston Churchill

targetting a regime which had already committed one genocide and gotten away with it, NATO was awfully handy

Here we go again :(

Can you please substantiate your allegation that there was genocide committed by the elected government of rump Yugoslavia against Muslim Bosnians?

That's the official line pushed by Bill Clinton, Tony Blair, Wessley Clark, Madeleine Albright and all the other Western heroes that most on ET would like to send to the Hague.

It's the official line pushed by CNN, the NYT the BBC, ...  the very same MSM that ET-ers love to hate.

Besides, from a factual perspective may I remind you that on 26 February 2007 the ICJ ruled that THERE WAS NO GENOCIDE in Bosnia. It was a civil war in which all ethnic sides suffered casualties.

Kosovo as a low-level counter-insurgency prior to NATO getting involved. Not an ethnic cleansing or genocide at all. In fact, one of the worst massacres (at Racak) was recently uncovered as a fraud when the head of the UN Forensics Team, Helen Ranta, came clean.

You can't start a war with someone for something they did five years prior.

The Serbs were involved in a crackdown on the KLA. In this fighting, the KLA had killed Serb civilians and the Serbs had killed Kosovo Albanians. About 1,000-1,500 had been killed in equal numbers in the years leading up to the first dropping of NATO bombs.

The American team negotiating the terms of peace was horrid. Jamie Rubin, Wesley Clark, Madeliene Albright, all had a peace agreement at Rambouillet. The Serbs agreed to total withdrawal. The KLA, Hasim Thaci, did not go along, and the Americans were forced to create a sham of an agreement (Appendix B) which everyone knew was a no-go for the Serbs. They had peace at Rambouillet, and the Americans chose war instead. It was a cowardly choice which mimicked what had been done in Bosnia in 1991-1992 when Cyrus Vance and David Owen had the three leaders agree to a plan that, in the end, looked very much like Dayton. This was BEFORE 100,000 had died in Bosnia.

The ethnic cleansing campaign by the Serbs post-bombing became a matter of controversy when it was revealed that the publicized campaign, Operation Horseshoe, was concocted by German intelligence as propaganda.

The whole war was a farce from start to finish, playing games with people's lives, and in the end accomplishing absolutely nothing.

When the true history of 1990s ex-Yugo is written, it will only be seen as a colossal debacle of diplomacy, and a cowardly war conducted by ALL sides against innocent civilians.

Then there's the fact that various Western(TM) powers were arming the KLA. And that Milosevic's proposals for a resolution that would have granted some measure of autonomy to Kosova without compromising Yugoslavian territorial integrity (such as it was and what remained of it at the time...).

For that matter, if intervention was necessary, it should have been possible to get Russian approval by granting them concessions elsewhere - they had a laundry list of legitimate grievances with The West(TM) at the time (and still have, although it's gotten markedly shorter since Putin started pruning back some of Yeltsin's most obvious mistakes).

So I don't entirely buy the notion that it was Very Urgently Necessary to intervene over the head of the lawful UN bureaucracy.

And as for the CNN's war... the CNN publishes precisely what it's told to publish. Independent and investigative reporting isn't a part of the CNN concept. Nor, for that matter, is basic fact-checking.

- Jake

Friends come and go. Enemies accumulate.

The KLA was armed to the teeth in 1999 (by Germany and the US) and had NATO air support. Just how many Serb troops would be required to expulse 800 000 people from their homes (while at the same time engaging in a systematic campaign of rape and torture of Albanian girls - young and old...). I say Serb troops because their heavy weapons were out of commission given the NATO air campaign.

Any military experts willing to give estimates?

I suppose I would summarise my views as follows:  The post WW2 US security guarantee to western Europe was invaluable in creating a secure space in which western Europe could recover from the war and also facilitated the development of the fore-runners to the EU.

Increasingly, however, the benefits of that guarantee began to be outweighed by the costs in the form of needlessly exacerbated Cold War and arms race tensions, then Vietnam, and the requirement to be subservient to an increasingly arrogant and imperialist USA throughout the world.

A negotiated end to the Cold War - as opposed to a Soviet implosion - would have included a negotiated end to both NATO and the Warsaw Pact but instead we effectively had a western takeover.  Again, this was mostly to be welcomed, but a western capitalism, untrammelled by any fear of socialism, also resulted in a widespread defeat of social democracy and the dominance of Reagan/Thatcher style robber baron capitalism so ably chronicled here as the Anglo disease.

So in some ways the one sided defeat of Communism has also resulted in the one-sided excesses of Capitalism which we are seeing imploding at the moment.  My hope is that we will see a more united, cohesive, and assertive Europe emerging from the debris determined to have good relations with both the USA and Russia and pursuing a more sustainable and equitable model of economic, social and economic development.

Smaller nations have no option but to club together to compete with their larger neighbours in a globalising economy and to create a shared security space.  However our interests are not always identical and so it is very important that we have a strong and democratic EU where those differences can be thrashed out.

A strong EU needs to promote not just economic and political cooperation, but also military and security policies to ensure they are aligned with their member's interests.  So I do see the EU gradually supplanting NATO as the primary guarantor of security in Europe but I appreciate we live in a dangerous world and provided the USA and Russia can continue to behave well and get on with each other I don't have a problem with also having close Treaty relationships with both the US and Russia.

What we don't want, however, is to be caught in the middle if hard-liners in either the US or Russia, or elements in their defence establishment who benefit from increased tensions between them manage to take over again.  That is why we need our own independent European defence, security and foreign policy capability to enable us to stand on our own two feet in the world - and not as a dependent subservient partner to any outside power.

notes from no w here