Conflict in Kosovo; Beginning of the End

 

 

March 30,1999

 

One of the darkest predictions this site made for the past year has been World War Three. To many readers the whole concept seems a little far out, but the author believes the seeds of such a future conflict have already been sown. Historically this region in Central Europe is the trigger for world wars, and the current situation may not be an exception. But remember that if such a global war occurs, we are only at the very first stage, which then escalates as more countries become involved and circumstances evolve.

With Y2K looming, the viability of the US military, and the balance of power it currently holds, will be in question. As countries begin collapsing in the next year or so, turmoil-torn regions will see conflicts of potentially unprecedented magnitude, and point to a new world order where the balance of power will shift away from the U.S. as shown in: Global Realignment; Origins of the Third World War

We seem to be setting ourselves up for an historic confrontation between ourselves and Russia and China, and our leaders don't seem to see it. China has halted all diplomatic relations in reponse to the bombing of its embassy in Belgrade, and the reaction is indicative of their true feelings toward the US.

As Yeltsin says in Russia Today, April 19,1999:

"Bill Clinton hopes to win, he hopes (Yugoslav President Slobodan) Milosevic will capitulate, give up the whole of Yugoslavia, make it America's protectorate," Yeltsin said. "We will not allow this. This is a strategic place, the Balkans."

For those who think that a nuclear exchange is unlikely, remember that this is what Russia has been planning for all along. Despite their economic weakness, their firepower is formidable. The U.S. is currently on "launch on IMPACT" (as opposed to "launch on warning" which Russia is still on. ) This means that we would have most of our missiles and silos destroyed in one surprise volley to which, by then, our military forces would be incapable of responding effectively. This would then open the dorr for a China/Russian invasion force to follow-up in a ground war.

The Russian Strategic Rocket Forces are on permanent alert. This gives them a position from which to launch a surprise attack. Also, the sunspot cycle is nearing its peak on the rapid ascension phase. This indicates human excitability and tension will be high in the coming year or so.

With the ongoing bombardment of Kosovo by NATO and U.S. forces, the concern is not whether Milosevic can defeat NATO, but what will be the ultimate international response to this action.

The U.S. has a tendency to view the world through an Ameri-centric media, and therefore does not really get the big picture.

How does much of the rest of the world view us? As God's child on a white horse looking to save the world? Quite the contrary. It is viewed as an imperialist bully and as the "Great Satan." In fact, there are millions who would take pleasure in seeing us razed off the earth if they had the opportunity to so. Contrary to what we hear from American reporters, Russia is not our "friend." They are highly suspicious and resentful of America, and bitter over the collapse of their once great empire, the Soviet Union. Amazingly they blame us for the economic situation thay are in! 98% of Russians oppose the NATO Bombings. The same goes for most of the Middle East, some of Europe, China, and muslim Asia.

Check out this excellent page covering the situation: Stratfor.com

Here is a summary from their report:

Kosovo Crisis Points to Global Realignment - 29 March 1999

Summary

Stratfor predicted both the Kosovo crisis and Serb-Iraqi collaboration in our January 1999 Annual Forecast. We also said that the Russians were critical to these situations. Our reasoning: the world is in a massive realignment designed to create an international system that can limit U.S. power. The Kosovo crisis is not so much a Russian trap for the Americans as an American created trap for itself, a gift to those who want to bring the U.S. down several notches.

Here is the reaction from Russia and the world to the military campaign:

From YAHOO!

MOSCOW (AP) - President Boris Yeltsin was studying plans today to send more warships to the Mediterranean to shadow NATO ships conducting operations against Yugoslavia while his generals considered other possible responses.

Yeltsin also today called for a meeting of the foreign ministers of the G-7 leading industrialized nations and Russia on halting the NATO attacks. But because six of the seven G-7 nations were participating in the NATO operation, it appeared unlikely they would agree to such a meeting.

``Despite Russia's resolute actions, NATO military action against Yugoslavia continues to escalate,'' Yeltsin said in an address on Russian television. ``Such an escalation threatens to lead to a grave disaster, and not only for Europeans. That mustn't be allowed.''

At the same time, officials said, Russia would increase its military preparedness, but no further details were given.

NATO attacks against Yugoslavia have ``raised new objectives for the Russian armed forces,'' Foreign Minister Igor Ivanov said after senior officials discussed the situation at the Kremlin.

Russia has stressed it will not become involved in the conflict militarily, but it has angrily denounced the airstrikes.

One Russian warship was to depart Friday for the Mediterranean and more could follow shortly if Yeltsin approves, officials said.

Turkey, which controls the Bosporus Straits through which Russian ships must pass from the Black Sea to the Mediterranean, said it had agreed to allow eight warships to pass. Four ships could move through the straits this weekend, three more next Tuesday and one next Thursday.

Secretary of State Madeleine Albright spoke with Ivanov by telephone late Wednesday to express concern about the naval deployment, Russian news agencies reported. Ivanov said the move was to ensure Russia's security and give Moscow a clear idea of what was happening in the region, reports said.

Russia's Foreign Ministry today criticized the U.S. fears, calling them ``absurd in light of NATO's huge forces in the Balkans,'' the Interfax news agency reported.

Even though Russia has decided to deploy ships, Moscow ``has no intention of interfering in the current conflict around Yugoslavia,'' the report said.

Ivanov said today that Russia was still looking for ways to restart peace talks on the Kosovo crisis and several initiatives were under review, but he gave no details. A Russian peace mission headed by Prime Minister Yevgeny Primakov failed to produce a breakthrough Tuesday in Belgrade.

The Kosovo crisis has put the Russian government in a difficult situation, domestically and overseas. It opposes the NATO airstrikes, but has few ways to counter them, while its domestic opponents are using the crisis to accuse the Yeltsin administration of weakness.

The Russian military is in shambles and the nation badly needs Western loans to crawl out of one of the worst recessions ever experienced by an industrial country.

---

From Russia Today

Lebed Urges Moscow to Arm Yugoslavia

MOSCOW, Mar. 30, 1999 -- (Reuters) Russian regional governor and presidential hopeful Alexander Lebed urged Moscow on Tuesday to send weapons to help Yugoslavia combat NATO air strikes.

"It is necessary to give Yugoslavia military help, to send anti-aircraft missiles there," the gruff reserve general told reporters.

"...If we do this (send weapons to Yugoslavia), the aggression will stop immediately," he said.

"And if it doesn't stop, then the whole world will continue its protests against the action of the Americans. Today they throw bad eggs at them, but tomorrow they will start the killing -- this I promise you."

This is what China thinks :

China Welcomes Russia's Yugoslav Intervention

BEIJING, Mar. 30, 1999 -- (Agence France Presse) China on Tuesday praised Russian efforts to resolve the Kosovo crisis as Russian Prime Minister Yevgeny Primakov arrived in Yugoslavia to meet President Slobodan Milosevic.

"China appreciates the efforts of the Russian government to peacefully resolve the Kosovo crisis," Foreign Ministry spokesman Sun Yuxi told a news briefing.

"We strongly urge NATO to stop its air strikes so as enable the Kosovo question to return to the track of political settlement," Sun said, adding China was "disturbed" by the consequences of the air strikes.

While protests abound from Journalstar

ATO airstrikes spark protests at U.S. embassies

ATHENS, Greece (AP) -- Protesters opposed to NATO attacks on Yugoslavia directed their anger at American sites around Europe on Friday, drenching olive branches in red dye and calling President Clinton a "fascist." Up to 10,000 people in Bulgaria gathered in the nation's capital of Sofia to protest the NATO airstrikes.

In Greece, a NATO member, 15,000 protesters marched to the U.S. Embassy chanting "Clinton, Fascist, Murderer." Some waved Greek and Yugoslav flags and carried religious icons, reflecting the Orthodox Christian faith shared by the two countries.

Police clashed with rioting youths who lit fires and smashed cars and store windows. Crowds hurled eggs and rocks at the U.S. and British embassies before they were dispersed. Several light injuries were reported.

The U.S. and British embassies in Moscow were also the scene of demonstrations. The Russian government also ordered NATO representatives to leave the country and said it was suspending all contact with the Western alliance until the airstrikes stop.

Russia, which is not a NATO member, has been highly critical of NATO's decision to use military muscle to force a peace plan between Yugoslavia and ethnic Albanian separatists in the province of Kosovo.

In Chicago, prayers for peace and shouts of solidarity filled Daley Plaza as 1,000 Serbian-Americans crowded into downtown to denounce the NATO air attacks.

The noisy demonstrators waved Yugoslavian, Serbian and Kosovar flags, held signs with caricatures of President Clinton as Adolf Hitler and chanted "Zivela Srbija!" -- Long Live Serbia.

"Hundreds of NATOs can bomb us. They cannot bomb us enough," bellowed Slavko Panovich, president of the Serbian National Defense Council of America, which helped organize the demonstration. "We can endure any bombing." An estimated 350,000 ethnic Serbs live in the Chicago area. Many of the demonstrators were bused downtown from the suburbs.

Opposition to the bombing also escalated in Italy, another alliance member. Outside parliament in Rome, dozens of protesters waved olive branches dyed red to simulate blood.

In Banja Luka, Bosnia, thousands of Serb teenagers and students protesting against NATO for the second day shouted down Bosnian Serb moderate leaders Friday.

Although the three leading figures of Sloga, the moderate pro-western Bosnian Serb coalition, have condemned the airstrikes, the youth whistled, jeered them and called for ousted ultranationalist President Nikola Poplasen instead. Police eventually used teargas to break up the demonstration.

Smaller rallies also took place in Vienna and the Polish capital of Warsaw.

Closer to Kosovo, the protests were more heated.

Riot police blocked demonstrators trying for the second day Friday to reach the American Embassy in Skopje, the capital of Macedonia. More than 10,000 NATO ground troops were sent to Macedonia for a possible peacekeeping role in neighboring Kosovo.

After peace talks fell apart, the NATO force in Macedonia was left awaiting new orders. Some troops have begun patrols along the 120-mile border with Yugoslavia.

But their presence has touched off concerns that Macedonia could face retaliation from larger and more powerful Yugoslavia. Police cordoned off parts of Skopje to try to avoid a replay of Thursday's attacks of Western embassies and NATO personnel.

Quotes:

"There is profound error and harm in the disoriented claims of bourgeois ideologues that there will be no victor in a thermonuclear war. " -A.S. Milovidov, Russian Military Theorist

"The principle of the employment of nuclear weapons in combination with other means of destruction follows from the fact that it is impossible to destroy all varied objectives on the battlefield with nuclear weapons alone. It is believed that nuclear weapons, as the main means of destruction, will be employed only for the destruction of the most important objectives; all other targets are neutralized and destroyed by the artillery, aviation, and the fire of tanks and other weapons. " -Colonel A.A. Sidorenko, Soviet Strategist

"All warfare is based on deception. Hence, when able to attack we must seem unable; when using our forces, we must seem inactive; when we are near, we must make the enemy believe we are far away; when we are far away, we must make him believe we are near. Hold out baits to entice the enemy. Feign disorder, and crush him." -Sun Tzu

Nuclear Warfare:

The Soviet Art of War "The rapid deployment of the [intercontinental] missile is due to its extremely advantageous characteristics. This weapon has unlimited range, enormous speed and high trajectory, great accuracy and maneuver of fire, and can carry a nuclear warhead of any yeild. Ballistic missiles, employed en masse, are still practically invulnerable to existing means of air defense, and their employment is almost independent of weather conditions." -- Soviet Military Strategy , p. 298.

"For the Soviet strategist nuclear war is not merely an exchange of nuclear strikes, but a military operation involving huge masses of infantry, tanks, and ships. The key to victory in such operations is: exploit, exploit, and again, exploit. The idea is to use one's missiles to make huge holes in the enemy. Next: move rapidly through those holes before the victim can recover." -- Origins of the Fourth World War, p. 201

"The assertion that nuclear war will not be a continuation of politics is completely fallacious." -- Colonel General Makhmut Al. Gareev

"The Armed Forces of the Soviet Union and the other socialist countries must be prepared above all to wage war under conditions of the mass use of nuclear weapons by both belligerent parties." -- M. I. Cherednichenko

"If the attack succeeds in destroying the defender with the very first nuclear volley, he will no longer be able to offer resistance to the attacker with either nuclear or conventional weapons." -- Colonel A. A. Sidorenko

"Preemption in launching a nuclear strike is considered the decisive condition for the attainment of superiority over him and the seizure and retention of the initiative." -- Colonel A. A. Sidorenko

"Not only the enemy's armed forces, but also the sources of his military power, the important economic centers, and also points of military and state control as well as the areas where different branches of armed forces are based, will be subjected to simultaneous destruction." -- Colonel M. Shirokov

"The Soviet strategic literature indicates that chemical and biological agents will be used against 'unsalvageable' populations, even after they have been disorganized and disarmed. As the Communists define it, an unsalvageable population is thoroughly and irredeemably bourgeois. Such people are past the point of benefitting from any sort of re-education. Therefore, all unsalvageables will be subject to a Kremlin-inspired 'Final Solution,' probably by way of biological attacks." -- Origins of the Fourth World War, p. 205

"The Soviet leaders have estimated that they might lose between 5% and 8% of their population in a war. They would not mind 20% casualties if victory was assured. Remember: It does not matter how you play the game -- as long as you win." -- Origins of the Fourth World War, p. 211