Miscalculating Links
Aug 15th, 2008 by Donagh
One part of Irish Left Review which is barely noticed is the Links of Interest feature which appears in a side bar along side each of the articles. It’s based on a del.icio.us widget which means that we can update the site with links to articles with a short summary that readers of ILR might find interesting. It also provides an opportunity to add some further context to recently published articles.
I’ve been updating it regularly enough to ensure that it remains relevant and up-to-date. The biggest problem with ILR at the moment is that it looks from the front page as if nothing is changing very much. In fact, including the links, there are often three or four items added almost every day. ILR is going to be changed soon to reflect this.
However, while I was away, del.icio.us itself changed and now it’s possible to add notes that are up to 1000 characters long. It was harder than I thought writing 250 character summaries (which was the previous limit) of lengthy articles. Now with 1000 characters I don’t have to be so pithy. I realize of course, that if no one read the 250 character summary they’re even less likely to bother with one that is 1000 characters long.
So, to ensure that it wasn’t a complete waste of time I’m adding the latest one here.
It’s a link to an article about Georgia and the miscalculations of the US Administration, by F. William Engdahl.
Engdahl asks whether the US administration is supporting Mikhail Saakashvili in order to force the next US president to back the aggressive NATO agenda of the Bush doctrine.
Significantly, on the day that Poland has agreed to install 10 American missile interceptors, he suggests that the Georgian conflict is part of a wider strategy called Nuclear Primacy. NP is based on the idea that the first to develop an operational anti-missile defense, which is capable of dramatically weakening a potential counter-strike by the opposing side’s nuclear arsenal, has “won” the nuclear war.
Saakashvili claim last night that the Russian attacks on Georgia amounts to ‘ethnic cleansing’ suggests that he wants for Georgia what the US has provided for Kosovo, which was made into a de facto NATO-run territory in March of this year. This resulted in Putin initiating Russian Duma hearings on recognition of Abkhazia, South Ossetia and Transnistria, a pro-Russian breakaway republic in Moldova.
Kosovo is in effect a failed state, which remains completely dependent on the UN, Nato and the EU. However, with the UN now removing itself from Kosovo, as was planned, this dependency means that despite its declared independence it will remain completely under the influence of Washington and Brussels for the foreseeable future.
In a way you cut to the heart of the problem, although I think perhaps we could wait a bit longer before judging whether Kosovo is absolutely a failed state seeing as its barely been extant as an very partially independent polity for any length of time. But it is true that Washington and Brussels will be centrally involved, not least because the Kosovan Albanian majority want them there and were - to some degree suspicious of the more broad based UN presence. I see that as problematic from the other direction that it is precisely a broad based approach that might help assuage Kosovan Serb fears and it is possible that a more pointed EU presence would in conjunction with Serbia develop appropriate linkages. So I guess I’d hope that KFOR would go and that a reworked EULEX might take the lead role. But that, I suspect, would take serious negotiations including Serbia, something that some in the West might not be willing to do.
In a way you cut to the heart of the problem, although I think perhaps we could wait a bit longer before judging whether Kosovo is absolutely a failed state seeing as its barely been extant as an very partially independent polity for any length of time.
Well you are right, for a country that is barely a state at all, and one that until recently was only a region it’s stateliness could hardly be called a failure yet. But as I was in super-summerising mode I was trying to get across this point which was made in the Jeremy Harding article I linked to:
But it was also little dig at the fact that it should be a state in the first place. The reason it is is to ensure that an ethnic minority can be free from the oppressive tyranny of another ethnic group, namely the serbs, but while enjoying their freedom they also have the opportunity to give the serbs that are now within their border plenty of grief. But it also seems to be a case that if, in the future, it cannot survive without the help of the UN, the EU and Nato then I was calling into question why it should have been created in the first place.
But it is true that Washington and Brussels will be centrally involved, not least because the Kosovan Albanian majority want them there and were - to some degree suspicious of the more broad based UN presence. I see that as problematic from the other direction that it is precisely a broad based approach that might help assuage Kosovan Serb fears and it is possible that a more pointed EU presence would in conjunction with Serbia develop appropriate linkages.
Well, it seems that Serbia is very much interested in keeping on the EU’s good side and that it seems that the EU have committed themselves to Kosovo, so with both gaining from Brussels it seems that a compromises in terms of inter-ethnic conflict could be worked out in terms of budgetary allocations.
But it seems that even if Serbia can be mollified that Russia still aren’t very happy about it.