Gowan 2000 The Euro-Atlantic Origins of NATO’s Attack on Yugoslavia 1

Introduction
pp.8-9. The political/diplomatic side of the Clinton administration... wanted a war
against Yugoslavia so that the US could pull its NATO allies under US leadership...
In other words the Yugoslav war theatre was a lever for achieving political goals
mainly within NATOland... The big gain was US hegemonic leadership of Western
Europe... The basic rationale for this war had to do with assuring the international
dominance of US capitalism, through bending Western Europe to accept US goals
for the continuing reorganisation and management of the world economy. 2
p.10. Washington’s campaign to achieve US hegemonic leadership in Western
Europe during the 1990s has been focused on one central task: transforming
NATO, transforming its role in European affairs, and blocking Western European
attempts to build political forms which would deny the US hegemonic leadership.
Part 1. Explaining intra-NATO politics
Four constituent elements in the Western Alliance3:
1. Shared (capitalist) interests.
2. Tensions within from conflicting capitalist interests.4
3. US hegemonic dominance and the use of military power for political feedback
leading to economic pay-offs.5
4. The cardinal political management principle: ‘Not in front of the children’:
closed politics - plus the US’s hegemonic privilege of leading by fait accompli when
necessary.
p.19. Putting modernised Lance missiles into West Germany in the Spring of 1989,
as Mrs Thatcher tried vainly to insist upon, would threaten the GDR and pull its
population away from any dynamic towards German unity, remaining instead tied
in to the Soviet alliance (which the Kohl government would not tolerate and thus
insisted upon rejecting).6
p.19. The collapse of the Soviet bloc had the effect of destroying this entire
Western European political framework. The entire shape of European politics and

1
In Tariq Ali ed. 2000 Masters of the Universe?: NATO’s Balkan Crusade.
2
In other words, the war as a step towards the return of US hegemonic leadership
over Western Europe is vital because it is a key to a strong US economic
relationship to the world economy.
3
These are discussed in detail on pp.13-19.
4
Including: “The long political struggle between Britain and the Franco-German
axis in Western Europe.”
5
A political system which, at its height, gave the US hegemonic sovereignty.
6
Endnote14: The campaign for this, evidently designed to put a brake upon the
very dynamic German-Soviet detente, was at first waged by Bush and Thatcher.
But Bush retreated. The German government wouldn’t budge, so Thatcher was
defeated.

1
economics in the 1990s has been shaped by the battles amongst the main NATO
powers over how to reshape the political framework in Western Europe after it was
shattered by the Soviet bloc collapse.

Part 2. NATOland programmes and power politics after the collapse

p.22. Only four states have been capable of fighting for programmes for the whole
of Europe: the US, Germany, France and Russia... Britain could play the role of a
partial spoiler of some projects, but only at great potential cost to itself. It was not
integral to any of the possible projects.
p.23. The three basic programmes on offer were, very schematically: ‘One Europe’;
West European-Russian balance (here there were two main variants of both path
and form); and US hegemony, with Russian exclusion.
Key issues of the geopolitics of accumulation for the major Western states 7
p.25. The Soviet bloc collapse was accompanied by a new sense among European
elites that they could build a strong European political entity... which implicitly
challenged the whole American capitalist social model... Only the leaders of British
capitalism (supported to a great degree by the Dutch) were on message with the
US line. Yet within the capitalist classes of Western Europe there was, potentially,
a powerful social constituency that could be mobilised for a domestic social
transformation of the EU towards the American social model.
p.26. The US strategy for Europe would combine the drive to rebuild US leadership
over Europe, through the campaign to reorganise NATO, with a parallel campaign
to reorganise the political economy of the EU.
p.29. Bush Sr.’s war against Iraq, one of the main goals of which was to show the
rest of the capitalist world that it had to treat the interests of US capitalism with
respect.
p.29. A long-term, deeply worryingly problem for the US: the possibility of a West
European-Russian link up.
p.29. Two central conclusions were drawn for US strategic goals in Europe. First,
the US had to find a way of regaining its role as gate-keeper between Western
Europe and Russia... Second, the US should not allow the emergence of a unified
West European political will to emerge, autonomous from Washington. 8

7
The US, German and France.
8
Instead, it had to find a way to rebuild US political leadership above whatever
integration went on in Western Europe.

2
The Bush Sr. Administration realised that an entirely new NATO was the key to
tackling both these basic challenges.910
The three competing programmes for Europe11
1. ‘One Europe’
p.31. This option has been consistently advocated by the USSR, since 1986, and by
Russia throughout the 1990s. It was, however, only very briefly entertained by the
two key West European powers, Germany and France, between 1989 and 1991.
The US has been resolutely hostile to it.
pp.32-33. The ‘One Europe’ project failed for a number of reasons. 12

2. EU-Russian balance with Western Europe expanding into East Central Europe
p.34. The second option has been that of turning the EC into a fully-fledged
political entity which expands its influence over East Central Europe while giving
Russia its own sphere of influence in the CIS.1314
p.37. This was not remotely acceptable to either the Bush or Clinton
administrations.
3. The new programme for US hegemony
p.37. The goal of this third option: to bring Europe back under US leadership
through the transformation and new ascendancy of NATO in the whole of Europe.
pp.37-. The new NATO was to be radically different from the Cold War NATO. The
programme for the new NATO contained the following main planks: 1. NATO as
gate-keeper for the US between Russia and Western Europe (especially Germany) 15

9
NATO needed an entirely new role, new members, new military instruments. The
only things that should not be new in NATO was US leadership, and the
subordination of West European policy-making, command structures and military-
political initiatives to the US.
10
But how to attain this? What mix of tactics could achieve this strategic goal? That
was the policy problem.
11
Details on pp.31-43.
12
See text for details.
13
p.34. The central idea is that US hegemony in the West is replaced by a solid
West European political entity, under whose influence East Central Europe falls.
The West European entity would be led by France and Germany.
14
pp.36-37. Political ‘insulationism’ - This concept means political policy towards
the East would be confined to ensuring that Western Europe was insulated from
the consequences of state instability, state failure, civil war or inter-state conflict
in the East. A central problem requiring Western insulation in this context was the
threat of great movements of refugees, as well as economic migrants, from the
East. Anglo-French military involvement in Yugoslavia through UNPROFOR was
essentially about that: ‘humanitarian aid’ in the war zone to ensure that the civilian
population did not leave the war theatre.

3
and 2. NATO must be refashioned to play an entirely new aggressive military role
‘out of area’.
p.41. The US had to find a way of persuading Western Europe once again that it
needed military services that only the US could offer, because it needed to do some
aggressive ‘out of area’ jobs.1617
p.43. Convincing the elite audience was the big problem for advancing the US
strategy for its revived hegemony... Germany and France wanted their autonomous
capacity to act as a West European political bloc, without invigilation by the US.
And at the same time, they wanted the capacity to decouple their West European
political base from Anglo-American adventures all over the world.

15
p.40. This is the fundamental meaning of the NATO enlargement into Poland, the
Czech Republic and Hungary.
16
p.42. Two West European states predisposed to use militarism for political
advantage within the Western alliance: France and the UK. Ditto: Both these states
were long geared to military adventure for political gain. So they would be
predisposed towards a few ‘out of area’ projects.
17
p.42. There was only one problem: how to convince the West Europeans of the
vital necessity to strike aggressively ‘out of area’, in the first instance, in the
eastern hinterland of the EU? This was the great problem with the strategy.