I think FIRST -- you need to explain why American intervention in Bosnia, Serbia, and Kosovo are American Imperialism? What did we take? Do we have demands on those countries? Are we taxing them? Installing governors there in the style of the 18th Century Britain?
Might have been misguided to bomb a European capital for 40 days and 40 nights. But it AIN'T "imperialism"..
why do you avoid defending your initial assertions? Can't waste time arguing about American Imperialism as YOU defined it... I think maybe "too much Noam Chomsky" is part of the problem here..
I defended my initial assertions right here:
On the new imperialism:
The reason the old type of colonialism or imperialism disappeared is because International Finance wanted to control and regulate and harvest the other nations like large plantations, through unequal currency exchange rates, and creating a structure of debt enslavement to each nation's government, along with the use of sanctions rather than physical coercion to accomplish the same thing: colonialism or imperialism. It is more efficient than physical colonialism and along the same principle of the Hazard Circular of 1862:
"Slavery is likely to be abolished by the war power, and all chattel slavery abolished. This I and my European friends are in favor of, for slavery is but the owning of labor and carries with it the care of the laborers, while the European plan, led on by England, is that capital shall control labor by controlling wages. The great debt that capitalists will see to it is made out of the war must be used as a means to control the volume of money; to accomplish this the bonds must be used as a banking basis. We are now waiting for the Secretary of the Treasury to make this recommendation to Congress. It will not do to allow the greenback, as it is called, to circulate as money any length of time, as we cannot control that. But we can control the bonds, and through them the bank issue" (Hazard Circular of 1862).
However, the 700 or more military bases in other nations, are still physical Imperialism.
For those who are interested in understanding, Read:
'The Creature From Jekyll Island' by Griffin
'Why Is Your Country At War and What Happens to You After the War' by Charles Lindbergh
'The Secrets of the Federal Reserve' by Eustace Mullins
'Confessions of an Economic Hitman' by John Perkins
'A Republic, Not An Empire' by Pat Buchanan
'None Dare Call It Conspiracy' by Gary Allen
'Overthrow: America's Century of Regime Change from Hawaii to Iraq' by Stephen Kinzer
Well that's a sketchy definition. Apply that to Bosnia/Kosovo/Serbia interventions.
In this context you must first understand what precipitated the humanitarian situation in the former Yugoslavia. You should try to understand the implications of US policy toward the Socialist Federal Republic of Yugoslavia.
Origins of the breakup—a U.S. law/ Control of the purse strings
A year before the breakup of the Socialist Federal Republic of Yugoslavia, on Nov. 5, 1990, the U.S. Congress passed the 1991 Foreign Operations Appropriations Law 101-513. This bill was a signed death warrant. One provision in particular was so lethal that even a CIA report described three weeks later in the Nov. 27, 1990, New York Times predicted it would lead to a bloody civil war.
A section of Law 101-513 suddenly and without previous warning cut off all aid, trade, credits and loans from the U.S. to Yugoslavia within six months. It also ordered separate elections in each of the six republics that make up Yugoslavia, requiring State Department approval of election procedures and results before aid to the separate republics would be resumed. The legislation further required U.S. personnel in all international financial institutions such as the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund to enforce this cut-off policy for all credits and loans.
And how is that Amer. Imperialism to cut off trade and foreign aid to a Central Govt that was prepared to use genocide to keep the Old Yugoslavia together??
Not a UNILATERAL decision either. MANY western nations participated. That's not --- imperialism..
There was no genocide taking place and crippling Yugoslavia economically was not the correct decision if one wanted to stop such a genocide from occurring. That policy can only exacerbate tensions, everyone knew it and it did. As I said, in order to understand the conflicts that took place in the former Social Federal Republic of Yugoslavia you should understand this as the first step to the neocolonialism that followed with the implementation of the Dayton Accords.
Avalon Project - Dayton Peace Accords
and
Dismantling Former Yugoslavia, Recolonizing Bosnia-Herzegovina
Neocolonial Bosnia
Resting on the Dayton accords, which created a Bosnian “Constitution,” the US and its European allies had installed a full-fledged colonial administration in Bosnia. At its head was their appointed High Representative, Carl Bildt, a former Swedish prime minister and European Union representative in the Bosnian peace negotiations.3 Bildt was given full executive powers in all civilian matters, with the right to overrule the governments of both the Bosnian Federation and the Republika Srpska (Serbian Bosnia). To make the point crystal clear, the Accords spelled out that “t
he High Representative is the final authority in theater regarding interpretation of the agreements.”4 He is to work with the multinational military implementation force (IFOR) Military High Command as well as with creditors and donors.
The UN Security Council had also appointed a “Commissioner” under the High Representative to run an international civilian police force.5 Irish police official Peter Fitzgerald, with UN policing experience in Namibia, El Salvador, and Cambodia , was to preside over some 1,700 police from 15 countries. Following the signing of the Dayton Accords in November 1995, the international police force was dispatched to Bosnia after a five-day training program in Zagreb 6.
The new “Constitution” included as an Appendix to the Dayton Accords handed the reins of economic policy over to the Bretton Woods institutions and the London based European Bank for Reconstruction and Development (EBRD). The IMF was empowered to appoint the first governor of the Bosnian Central Bank, who, like the High Representative, “shall not be a citizen of Bosnia and Herzegovina or a neighboring State.”7
Under the IMF regency, the Central Bank is not allowed to function as a Central Bank: “For the first six years … it may not extend credit by creating money, operating in this respect as a currency board.”8 Neither was Bosnia to be allowed to have its own currency (issuing paper money only when there is full foreign exchange backing), nor permitted to mobilize its internal resources. Its ability to self-finance its reconstruction through an independent monetary policy was blunted from the outset.
While the Central Bank was in IMF custody, the EBRD heads the Commission on Public Corporations, which supervises since 1996, operations of all public sector enterprises in Bosnia, including energy, water, postal services, telecommunications, and transportation. The EBRD president appoints the commission chair and is in charge of public sector restructuring, i.e., the sell-off of state- and socially-owned assets and the procurement of long-term investment funds.9 Western creditors explicitly created the EBRD “to give a distinctively political dimension to lending.” 10.
As the West proclaimed its support for democracy, actual political power rests in the hands of a parallel Bosnian “state” whose executive positions are held by non-citizens. Western creditors have embedded their interests in a constitution hastily written on their behalf. They have done so without a constitutional assembly and without consultations with Bosnian citizens’ organizations. Their plans to rebuild Bosnia appear more suited to sating creditors than satisfying even the elementary needs of Bosnians. The neocolonization of Bosnia was a logical step of Western efforts to undo Yugoslavia’s experiment in “market socialism” and workers’ self-management and to impose the dictate of the “free market”.
