HOW RUSSIA CAN PROTECT SERBS

In October 2011 we witnessed NATO forces clashing with ethnic Serbs:

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-15435124

How did this situation come about? NATO should be protecting, not attacking, civilians. Is NATO a rogue organization? Let us objectively analyze the situation so that we can find out what Russia can do to protect their “Slav brothers”.

First a note about the author of this document – I am Australian. As an Australian, I share the same Anglophone culture as the Americans, and the same western culture as NATO, but I am independent of these places/organizations. I'm also not an ethnic Serb/Slav or any other ex-Yugoslav country. I am writing this document because I strongly object to NATO's actions.

If you wish to defeat your enemy, it makes sense to spend the effort to properly understand him. To understand America you first of all need to get rid of the conspiracy theories about America attacking Serbia so that greedy American corporations could get mining rights or similar nonsense. This is not what drives America, and your argument will be ignored because the Americans know it is not true, even if you sincerely believe it to be true. If you wish to make an impact on the Americans, you need to get inside their heads.

America is a liberal democracy. That is their ideology. They think liberal democracy is “good”. Dictatorship is “bad”. They think this regardless of whether you agree with that or not. Americans can innately see that in the long term, dictatorships are dangerous to them, because a dictator is an ideological competitor and may go to war with them. America will not necessarily have such a strong military in the future. If it ever falls from its position, ideological competitors may attack it. As such, the Americans/Anglophones have a novel concept of defence. Defence doesn't begin and end at the nation's borders. The objective is to spread liberal democracy around the world, to completely extinguish the enemy country. With a liberal democracy in place, the country in question will usually even become an ally. The worst case is a neutral. This is a truly fantastic form of defence. And it requires no resources to maintain a liberal democracy in a foreign country. They are self-maintaining.

In 1999, Yugoslavia was a dictatorship, as it had been for decades. So in the American paradigm, this country was an enemy, or potential enemy. For strategic reasons, America will often engage with dictators. It needs the help of one dictator to defeat another dictator. You cannot understand America's actions without this paradigm of constant war to spread liberal democracy. Alternative paradigms require copious uses of conspiracy theories to explain the seemingly strange actions. America doesn't blatantly state this underlying strategy, although they do hint at it when the State Department does an annual report on conditions inside every country in the world.

Americans assume that life under a dictatorship must be bad, and when they see conflict in a dictatorship, they are not surprised, and usually side with the people who are against the dictator. They have no problem with breaking up a dictatorship, where hopefully some of the pieces will be liberal democracies (that's better than the whole place being a dictatorship). So this is the context in which the 1999 NATO campaign was waged. It was seen as supporting freedom fighters whose human rights were being abused. The natural instinct is to annex some territory where there is more chance of a liberal democracy being formed by grateful freedom fighters. It has NOTHING to do with attacking Slavs or attacking Russia.

But the NATO campaign was unusual – there was a negotiated end to the war, which avoided the need for a ground war. This CONDITIONAL surrender undoubtedly saved NATO lives, and was welcomed by NATO. The conditions themselves were no problem for NATO. Even if the territory remained officially part of Yugoslavia, the territory could have autonomy, a liberal democracy, and NATO protection. Formal recognition is largely symbolic, and it is not worth the cost of a ground war. The SPIRIT of this agreement was that NATO would not annex this territory – that NATO could be trusted to do the right thing - which was just to ensure human rights were protected and a liberal democracy set up.

Then an amazing thing happened – Serbia itself turned into a liberal democracy! Meanwhile, the Kosovars turned out to be racists and religious bigots, and have a democracy that is lower quality than Serbia. This SHOULD have changed the equation. Ie NATO should have now been on the side of Serbia and entering discussions on what should be done about the racist, religiously-bigotted Kosovars.

You can see this categorization here:

http://www.freedomhouse.org/template.cfm?page=363&year=2011

where Serbia is listed as “free” but Kosovo is only listed as “partially free”. Freedom House may not be accurate in all their categorizations, but it does provide a starting point for discussions.

Serbia's liberal democracy should have created a rethink in NATO strategy, but unfortunately it didn't. And this is where America is vulnerable. They can be attacked on their own terms, with questions such as:

Why did you forcibly annex territory from a liberal democracy? You didn't allow the southern states of the US to secede, so why are you giving that right to racist religious bigots in Kosovo? Why are you going against the spirit of the agreement that allowed your ground forces to enter Kosovo unopposed? Isn't this breaking your word? How do you expect to be trusted in the future if you break your word on this? You realise those conditions were all outlined for a reason? And you agreed to them for a reason?

I don't see how the Americans will be able to respond to those arguments. You will have them cornered. They really need to rethink their decision to recognize Kosovo. And you can force this rethink by sending Russian troops to the northern Kosovo border. Threaten to cross the border to protect the Serbian liberal democrats from NATO attacks. It would be best if the troops entered northern Kosovo unarmed. NATO definitely does NOT want to get into conflict with Russians (armed or unarmed). Certainly not for the purpose of annexing territory from a liberal democracy (which it shouldn't be doing anyway). Being unarmed means that nuclear war won't accidentally be triggered. Russian soldiers can be there if NATO forces attempt to use tear gas again. You need to embarrass the NATO forces.

Further information:

http://www.mutazilah.org/enlight.htm