by Kit Klarenberg
Part 3 - ‘Shock Therapy’
In Syria’s protracted political and economic dismantling, there are eerie echoes of the U.S. Empire’s destruction of Yugoslavia throughout the 1990s. During that decade, the multiethnic socialist federation’s breakup produced bitter wars of independence in Bosnia, Croatia and Slovenia – encouraged, financed, armed, and prolonged every step by Western powers. Belgrade’s perceived centrality to these brutal conflicts and purported complicity in and sponsorship of horrendous war crimes led the U.N. Security Council to impose sanctions against what remained of the country in May 1992.
The measures were the harshest ever levied in U.N. history. At one point, producing inflation of 5.578 quintillion percent, drug abuse, alcoholism, preventable deaths and suicides skyrocketed, while shortages of goods – including water – were perpetual. Yugoslavia’s once thriving independent industry was crippled, its ability to manufacture even everyday medicines virtually non-existent. By February 1993, the CIA assessed that the average citizen had “become accustomed to periodical shortages, long lines in stores, cold homes in the winter and restrictions on electricity.”
The measures were the harshest ever levied in U.N. history. At one point, producing inflation of 5.578 quintillion percent, drug abuse, alcoholism, preventable deaths and suicides skyrocketed, while shortages of goods – including water – were perpetual. Yugoslavia’s once thriving independent industry was crippled, its ability to manufacture even everyday medicines virtually non-existent. By February 1993, the CIA assessed that the average citizen had “become accustomed to periodical shortages, long lines in stores, cold homes in the winter and restrictions on electricity.”
Surveying the wreckage years later, Foreign Affairs noted that sanctions against Yugoslavia demonstrated how “in a matter of months or years whole economies can be devastated,” and such measures can serve as uniquely lethal “weapons of mass destruction” against civilian populations of target countries. Yet, despite such desolation and misery, throughout this period, Belgrade remained resistant to privatization and foreign ownership of its industry or to the pillaging of its vast resources. The overwhelming majority of Yugoslavia’s economy was state- or worker-owned.
Yugoslavia was not a member of the IMF, World Bank, or WTO, which went some way to insulate the country from economic predation. In 1998, though, authorities began waging a heavy-handed counterinsurgency against the Kosovo Liberation Army, a CIA and MI6-funded and armed al-Qaeda-linked extremist militia. This provided the U.S. Empire with a pretext to, at last, finish the job of neutralizing what remained of the country’s socialist system. As a Clinton administration official later admitted:
Yugoslavia was not a member of the IMF, World Bank, or WTO, which went some way to insulate the country from economic predation. In 1998, though, authorities began waging a heavy-handed counterinsurgency against the Kosovo Liberation Army, a CIA and MI6-funded and armed al-Qaeda-linked extremist militia. This provided the U.S. Empire with a pretext to, at last, finish the job of neutralizing what remained of the country’s socialist system. As a Clinton administration official later admitted:
It was Yugoslavia’s resistance to the broader trends of political and economic reform [in Eastern Europe] – not the plight of Kosovar Albanians – that best explains NATO’s war.
From March – June 1999, the military alliance bombed Yugoslavia for 78 straight days. Yet, Belgrade’s army was barely in the firing line at any stage. In all, officially, just 14 Yugoslav tanks were destroyed by NATO, but 372 separate industrial facilities got smashed to smithereens, leaving hundreds of thousands jobless. Markedly, the alliance took guidance from U.S. corporations on which sites to target, and not a single foreign- or privately-owned factory was hit.
From March – June 1999, the military alliance bombed Yugoslavia for 78 straight days. Yet, Belgrade’s army was barely in the firing line at any stage. In all, officially, just 14 Yugoslav tanks were destroyed by NATO, but 372 separate industrial facilities got smashed to smithereens, leaving hundreds of thousands jobless. Markedly, the alliance took guidance from U.S. corporations on which sites to target, and not a single foreign- or privately-owned factory was hit.
NATO’s bombing laid the foundations for Yugoslav leader Slobodan Milosevic’s removal via a C.I.A.- and National Endowment for Democracy-sponsored color revolution in October of the following year. In his place, a doggedly pro-Western government advised by a collective of U.S.-sponsored economists took power. Their explicit mission was to “make an economic environment favorable for private and other investments” in Belgrade. Ravaging “shock therapy” measures were deployed the moment they assumed office, to the further detriment of an already immiserated and impoverished population.
In the decades since successive Western-backed governments across the former Yugoslavia have enforced an endless array of neoliberal “reforms” to ensure an “investor-friendly” environment locally for wealthy Western oligarchs and corporations. In lockstep, low wages and a lack of employment opportunities stubbornly endure or worsen while living costs rise, producing mass depopulation, among other destructive effects. All along, U.S. officials intimately implicated in the country’s breakup have brazenly sought to enrich themselves from the privatization of former state industries.
In the decades since successive Western-backed governments across the former Yugoslavia have enforced an endless array of neoliberal “reforms” to ensure an “investor-friendly” environment locally for wealthy Western oligarchs and corporations. In lockstep, low wages and a lack of employment opportunities stubbornly endure or worsen while living costs rise, producing mass depopulation, among other destructive effects. All along, U.S. officials intimately implicated in the country’s breakup have brazenly sought to enrich themselves from the privatization of former state industries.
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