Guerrilla History - NATO's Campaign Against Yugoslavia, & Relevance to Today w/ Kit Klarenberg & Nemanja Lukić

Episode Date: May 23, 2025

In this fascinating episode of Guerrilla History, we bring on Kit Klarenberg of The Grayzone to discuss the NATO campaign against Yugoslavia, its relevance to today, and the delusion of US air power!  We are also lucky to be joined by Nemanja Lukić as a guest host for this episode.  In addition to being a keen analyst (and former guest of Guerrilla History), Nemanja personally lived through the bombing campaign.  This is a terrific discussion with plenty of history, analysis, and connections being drawn between this event of the past and the ongoing genocide in Gaza.  This is an important one, you won't want to miss a minute! Kit Klarenberg is an investigative journalist and the UK Lead at The Grayzone.  He also runs his personal site Global Delinquents and can be found on twitter @KitKlarenberg. Nemanja Lukić is a Yugoslav anti-imperialist activist who runs the Anti-Imperialist Network website. You can also follow Anti-Imp Net on twitter @antiimpnet.  Additionally, you should check out the article that Nemanja mentioned that he coauthored with our friend (and former guest) Alejandro Pedregal here. Help support the show by signing up to our patreon, where you also will get bonus content: https://www.patreon.com/guerrillahistory 

You don't remember den, Ben, boo? The same thing happened in Algeria, in Africa. They didn't have anything but a rank. The French had all these highly mechanized instruments of warfare. But they put some guerrilla action on. Welcome to Gorilla History, the podcast that acts as a reconnaissance report of global proletarian history and aims to use the lessons of history to analyze the present. I'm one of your co-hosts, Henry Huckimacki.

Unfortunately not joined by my usual co-host, Professor Adnan Hussein, for this conversation as he is currently on a European speaking tour. And I believe he's actually going to be going out of Europe on this speaking tour as well very soon. But listeners, you can find more about Adnan's speaking tour, and hopefully catch some recordings of his talks by following him on Twitter and subscribing to his other show, the Adnan Hussein show, which is available on podcast platforms and on YouTube. I am joined by a guest host today as well as a terrific guest, but before I introduce them, as well as the topic that we're going to be discussing today, I'd like to remind you, listeners, that you can help support the show and allow us to continue making episodes like this by going to Patreon.com. forward slash guerrilla history. That's G-U-E-R-R-I-L-A history. We're on social media as well.

So to keep up to date with what we are producing, the materials that Adnan and I are doing individually as well as collectively, you can follow us on Twitter at Gorilla-U-Pod. That's G-U-E-R-R-R-I-L-A underscore pod. We're on Instagram, Gorilla underscore History. And we also have a free substack newsletter to get you updates periodically once or twice a month directly into your email inbox. You can find that at gorilla history.substack.com. Again, Gorilla 2Rs. So with that out of the way, as I mentioned, we have a guest host today, Namanya Lukic, who listeners will remember from a previous episode, we had Namanya on for our

Argyria Emanuel Association episode along with Torkelowson, Mani Ness, and I believe Joseph was also there, but in any case, listeners, you can go back and find that episode on the Argyria a manual association. But Namanya is a very close friend of mine and is, I guess, director of anti-imperialist.net, anti-imperialist network, a terrific resource. I just gave you a title, Namanya. Hello, how are you doing today? Thank you for invitation. I happen to be here. Very well. Absolutely. So listeners, Namania is somebody whom I rely on the analysis of greatly, but he also has a personal connection with the story that we're going to be telling today, which is why I wanted to ensure that he had this invitation.

to come in as a guest host. We're also joined by the terrific guest, Kit Clarenberg, who's an investigative journalist with the Grey Zone. Also, he has his own website, kitclarenberg.com, if I remember correctly. Yes, Kitclarenberg.com. Hello, Kit, how are you doing? Hey, how's it going?

And well remembered, yes. That is literally it. But it's official title, it's Global Delinquents, which is a term that I shamelessly stole from a Guardian report on how Russia and North Korea are buddies and apparently they're global delinquents and I thought it was funny. So I decided to appropriate it for my own purposes. Yeah, absolutely. Kit does terrific work. I know when I told Adnan that this episode would be happening now he was very sad that he wasn't going to be able to make it because he's a big fan of Kit's work.

And so I'm going to put Kit on the spot right now and tell him that he better come onto the show again. that way Adnan will be able to take part in the next conversation with you on some other topic. Absolutely. Whenever. Great. I'm going to make sure that this stays in the recording and that way I have proof that you will be coming back on the show. In any case, the topic for today is going to be the NATO bombing of Yugoslavia and the relevance to today. now I think that it's of course guerrilla history is a history program and so talking about the historical background is typically where we start these conversations and while that's a very obvious place to start the conversation it is the obvious part to start the conversation so kit you've done a lot of work on the NATO bombing of Yugoslavia and the fall of Yugoslavia can you talk a little bit about the historical moment at which

that bombing campaign was decided that it was going to be carried out, as well as the justification and listeners, there are air quotes here. I know we're in audio-only media, but be aware that those air quotes are there, the justification for the bombing of Yugoslavia. Sure. So, I mean, I think, I mean, at the risk of pulling a Putin in his interview with Tucker Carlson, Like the history here, it dates back a very, very, very long time. So Kosovo was regarded for centuries as the, effectively Serbia's Jerusalem. Okay. And it was a key hub of culture, of science, of religion, etc.

But it always had a mixed population between Serbs and. And Albanians and also other minorities, including Slavic Muslims or also known as Bosniaks, Egyptians, and other Slav minorities. Now, when Joseph Broz Tito, who was the founder of socialist Yugoslavia, died in May 1980, It precipitated an upsurge of demands from Kosovo-Albanian nationalists for secession from Yugoslavia and union with Albania, which neighbors Kosovo. Now, throughout the 1980s, there was what the New York Times branded a war of terror by Albanian nationalists in Kosovo against non-Albanian residents. you know, they were specifically seeking to create a Slav-free Kosovo. In the late 1980s, because there were all sorts of atrocities occurring on a regular basis, such as the burning of Serb villages, you know, knife attacks on young Serbs,

the rape of teenage Serb girls, the Yugoslav federal government, which I might add at the time was led by a Kosovo Albanian, moved the army in to try and keep the peace and prevent the exodus of Serbs from Kosovo. So the spark that's ignited in many ways, the breakup of Yugoslavia, it started in Kosovo. Now, there is a lot of claims and counterclaim that this was an issue that Slobadan-Belosvich exploited for or a false history. area that he whipped up for political purposes. No, the reality was that every Yugoslav Republic, as it was then at the time, was concerned about what was happening in Kosovo. And even the communist leaders of Slovenia who were pushing for secession in the late 80s from Yugoslavia

were concerned about what was happening in Kosovo. Now, throughout the 90s, well, for the first half from the 90s, you had grinding and brutal wars of independence in Croatia and Bosnia, which were supported, prolonged, backed, financed by the US. And this all came to a head in 1995, where you have what was known as Operation Storm, which was the total genocide of Croatia's sub population. There are hundreds of thousands of people forced from lands that they had occupied for, centuries. They, in many cases, had to walk on foot to Serbia. And you also have the date and peace agreement in November 1995, which ended the war in Bosnia. Now, up until this

point, Yugoslavia had been an international, what remained of Yugoslavia, which was Serbia and Montenegro, but also contained Kosovo, was an international pariah. They weren't even recognized by the UN and they were subject to absolutely crippling sanctions which destroyed their economy, led to an explosion in the power of organized crime and suicide, alcoholism and drug use skyrocketed as a direct result. Now, towards the end of the 90s, you have the emergence of a group called the KLA, the Kosovo Liberation Army. Now, this was a CIA, MI6 and B that's the German Foreign Intelligence Service backed terror group and which had connections and received funding from Al-Qaeda, including, you know, Osama bin Laden. And they started carrying out assassinations of Serb politicians and policemen. They started kidnapping, Serbs, harvesting their organs to finance their war of terror on Serb authorities.

And at the same time, you had U.S. politicians like Madeleine Albright saying, well, we didn't do enough during the wars of the Yugoslav Wars of Independence in the 90s, this is an opportunity to put things right and act and intervene, okay? And this was the narrative that started to emerge in about 1998. You also had the insertion into Kosovo of what was known as the OSCE, that's the organization of the security and cooperation in Europe, the Kosovo verification mission, which was led by a veteran deep state operative called William Walker, who was a subject of interest in the Iran-Contra affair and was at the forefront of the Reagan administration's dirty wars in Latin America throughout the 1980s. Now, in November 1998, which is when this is when the affected counter-insurgency between Yugoslav authorities

and the KLA had reached a crescendo, so to speak. There was a UN-negotiated ceasefire between the KLA and Belgrade. And under its terms, Yugoslavia would drew military forces from Kosovo, but there were no concomitant obligations imposed upon the KLA, and they of course exploited the Yugoslav army's absence to continue rampaging across the province. Now, I might add that it wasn't just Serbs in their crosshairs. They also targeted Roma. They targeted other Albanians who rejected their violence or supported

multi-ethnic Yugoslavia. This all leads to an incident in January 1999, known as the Ratchak massacre. Now, Ratchak is a strategic, was a strategically kind of vital vantage point. It was a village situated on a mountain range at the terminus of this major highway between Bristina, which is Kosovo's capital, and other major cities and towns throughout the province. The KLA took over Ratchak and used it to shoot at a, you know, Yugoslav government vehicles or police cars like driving through the area as they often did

and they specifically hoped to draw police and security services into direct battle. Now in 2000 there was a BBC documentary called Moral Combat which was it was about the bombing of of Yugoslavia, there was a Kosovo-Albanian independence campaigner who was unconnected to the KLA, who openly stated, the more civilians that were killed, the chances of international intervention became bigger and the KLA realized that. And there was this foreign diplomat who once told me, look, unless you pass the quota of 5,000 debts, you'll never have anybody permanently in Kosovo from foreign diplomacy. So in effect, the KLA had been given a target of civilian casualties to reach in order to precipitate Western intervention.

And they specifically sought to, yes, cause civilian deaths in March 1999, the then British Defence Secretary Jeffrey Robinson, who then became the head of NATO, he admitted to Parliament that up until Ratch Act, the KLA were responsible for more deaths and Kosovo than Yugoslav authorities. Okay. So the Ratshack incident was, in the words of the Washington Post, an event that transformed the West's Balkan policy as singular events seldom do. Now, what happened was the Yugoslav security forces and police got into a shootout

with the KLA in Ratchak. And they openly advertised that they were carrying out a quote-unquote counter-ta. terror effort in the village, and this was captured on film by French journalists. This was subsequently reported and framed in the Western media as a massacre of innocent defenceless civilians, and it was claimed that like the children and women had been dragged to a gully by the Yugoslav authorities and executed, shot in the head, behead did, you know, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. And this started to manufacture consent for international intervention in Yugoslavia

in order to prevent a supposed looming genocide. The reality was that, as I stated, like Brachak was overrun by the KLA and it didn't have any civilian inhabitants. The victims of this did not include women and children. It was males of fighting age who had been engaged. in shooting battles with the Yugoslav authorities. But it was so potent the propaganda at the time and the lack of pushback in the mainstream at all

that a large number of people were led to believe, well, okay, so this is what's planned. They're going to go from village to village, town to town and just like kill innocent civilians en masse. And there are lots of illusions drawn to the purported genocide in the Srebrenica in Bosnia in 1995. And again, people like Madden Albright said, well, we need to do this to prevent another genocide from happening.

This, in turn, led to the Rambouet conference in France in, I believe it was March, 1999, or late February 1999. And the, ostensibly, this was meant to be a peace conference where a deal was hammered out between the two sides to prevent Western intervention. As numerous U.S. officials later admitted, Ramboe was always intended to be a war conference. There were, the Belgrade was presented with a set of completely non-negotiable terms, which, i.e. accept this will be bombed, which amounted to, NATO occupation of Yugoslavia and effective secession for Kosovo. And then there was a secret annex of this agreement, which covered total privatization of

Kosovo and the breaking open of its vast mineral resources to Western rape and pillage. I might add as well that under Rambouet's non-negotiable terms, NATO personnel and vehicles would enjoy free and unrestricted passage and unimpeded access anywhere in the country. NATO would be permitted to commandeer any areas or facilities it wished in Yugoslavia. If NATO wanted to make improvements or modifications to infrastructure in Yugoslavia, Belgrade had to foot the bill, and NATO personnel would be immune from arrest of prosecution if they committed any crime whatsoever. Of course, this was an agreement no government anywhere in the world would ever willingly accept, and as I say, this was precisely the point.

So when this derisory non-deal was rejected by the Yugoslav negotiating team, and I might add that while US officials referred to the Yugoslav negotiating team universally as the Serbs, Serbs are in fact a minority. It was primarily composed of Albanians, Bosniaks, Roma, Turks and other minorities, living in Kosovo. Apparently, U.S. officials were rather flummoxed by this, and the aforementioned Madeline Albright was very dismissive towards them. You know, the savour of the Albanians doesn't actually give a shit about what Albanians

actually wanted or thought. So once this non-peace summit fails, it was announced, well, we've exhausted all diplomatic avenues. Therefore, we have no choice but to bomb Yugoslavia. Now, I might add that, like, Slobodan Milosevic, the Yugoslav leader, was so determined to avoid NATO bombing that he went to the extent of offering to join NATO as long as, as long as Kosovo was allowed to remain part of Yugoslavia, but this was rejected by the US. So on March 19th, 1990, it was announced that in five days NATO was going to start

bombing Yugoslavia and they did and this went on for 78 straight days and I think the historical significance of this is absolutely massive I know a great many people who were I mean I'm old enough to

remember like even though I was 10 at the time I remember the media coverage of what happened and reference is to surgical strikes and the butcher of the Balkans and clobber, slobber, and, you know, the tub thumping calls for ever greater aggression, and Tony Blair talking about how, you know, this is a just humanitarian mission that we're on, and it could last as well as long as World War II, if necessary,

because we need to prevent this planned looming genocide. Now, fast forward to 2000, and there was a British, Parliamentary report, which concluded that the NATO bombing actually encouraged Yugoslav authorities to start waging a heavy-handed war against the KLA. And there was no intent to displace, let alone genocide, the general Albanian population. But, yeah, as I say, I think that this is a really important part of history, which many people don't know and it's actually very difficult to understand the kind of past 25 years or now 26 years it was the 26th anniversary in March this year of the of the bombing commencing

it's very very difficult to to understand what actually you know international events and international developments without reference to what happened in Kosovo because this was contrary to how in the 90s, the US was very careful to secure UN backing for its various interventions. That doesn't only include Iraq, but disasters like the incursion into Somalia, Operation Black Walked Down, which resulted in absolute catastrophe. This was conducted without UN Security Council clearance. and therefore making it completely illegal. And I have reported for the Grey Zone,

and you can find it the article's called Kosovo War of 25 Blair's Secret Invasion and put up to Topol Milosovich. Yeah, there are declassified British Ministry of Defence files from time where it is stated very openly that the Chinese and the Russians were very, very, very concerned about the, US and its international vassals going ahead with this without UN Security Council clearance and they thought it would set a precedent for future out of area interventions by NATO. And so it proved.

You know, the Kosovo precedent has been used to justify interventions all over the world. the Iraq war Libya there was a lot of shrieking and crying about how well Kosovo was such a success that we could repeat it in Syria

you know again and you know we recently had victory day in Moscow which was not only a grand ceremony but I think marked the anointing of the multi-polar world

and you know this date back to the bombing of Yugoslavia because the Chinese and the Russians understood as a result of this that, hey, the US is trying to run a unilateral, unipolar world with itself, led by itself with Western, well, most of Europe, just going along with a script drawn up for them in Washington without, you know, unquestioningly. And we don't want to be a part of this and we want a different world order entirely.

I'll step in for a brief second here. I know that there's a lot more to say on this. And I'm sure Nomania will also want to chime in on some of the historical background. But also I know Namani will talk about his personal experiences being there during the NATO bombing campaign. Just briefly, I want to also mention something that you hit in passing, but something which we have a very long episode on. In part of your answer, you said that after the diplomatic options had been exhausted that they decided to move for war, well, one of those, and I'm again using air quotes listeners, as I'm sure you're well aware, one of those diplomatic options that was used was extremely repressive sanctions. And you did reference the sanctions, but I would be remiss to not mention that we have, as far as I remember, a nearly two-hour-long episode with Gregory Eilich on the sanctions on Yugoslavia, the impacts of the sanctions, the intention of those sanctions as well, the stated intention of the sanctions, as well as the more realistic intention of those sanctions, the impacts of those sanctions.

a really terrific episode that we had with Gregory and also talked about kind of that human experience at that time. I know that the episode came out about two and a half years ago at this point, so newer listeners, you wouldn't have heard it yet. But if you look up the episode titled Sanctions and Nation Breaking Yugoslavia with Gregory Eilich, it was part of our sanctions as war series that we had two to three years ago. which we had probably close to 20 parts of that series, really interesting series,

and goes to show that even when the West is exploring, quote, unquote, diplomatic options, their form of diplomacy is still warfare because sanctions are warfare. And that episode lays out in very stark terms exactly the human as well as economic impact, of the sanctions on Yugoslavia, which you mentioned, and after the horrific impacts of those sanctions, then came the horrific military campaign. Now, Namanya, I want to turn to you for a moment here. Kit laid out a lot of the history there. I'm sure you'll probably also have things that you want to say on that, but as I mentioned,

you were present. What was that like? just tell us both your personal experience as well as your analysis of things. Not necessarily at that time because you were pretty young, but looking back as well your analysis. So just as you said, it was horrific the whole experience. I mean, of course, I was actually quite young at the time. So most of the 90s and the whole process of dissolution of Yugoslavia,

the society, socialism, everything. just caught me as I was becoming aware of the world from myself. So, of course, there was no space for political analysis there. But as we were getting closer to the late 90s, actually the whole experience is what motivates me to become an anti-imperalist and actually laid the basis for my future activism. So going back to your question, first the sanctions. It was, so exactly as Gregory Ehrlich laid it out, it was, well, it was war.

We probably the closest, the closest short description of how it was, was this a famous quote by Madeline Oldbright when they asked there was 500,000 Iraqi children. worth it as victims of sanctions and she said yes it was it was pretty similar in our case as well i still remember for example my parents actually had salary of approximately 10 german marks that's about five euro now well of course so if you include if you calculate with inflation it's slightly more, but you have to account that, for example, a pair of Nike shoes would cost 100 German marks. And 10 was something that you had to survive the month, right? And on top of that, we had inflation of about 1,000% per day.

And in other countries, for example, you would have dealers on the street, selling drugs and we had dealers on the street selling money converting money so you know useless Yugoslav money into German marks so what you had to do is the first thing you had to do when you receive your salary is run to the street go to the street dealer and change your money into German marks so that it would not become worthless by the end of the day literally by the end of the day. So this is one of the things. So I need just money. And to that you have to add all the materials that we didn't have, you know, like sanitary material material or basically things like gasoline. So there was a water. You did. I mean, pretty much everything was scarce. So you actually

had to learn how to live, you know, how to survive basically a daily basis. So this was, so if we throw in a bit of a political analysis into this, this was one of the means how to destroy the industry and economy of a country. And then if you add on top of that this, the whole bombing affair, you actually have what's left of that industry completely destroyed physically. And this was what was happening during the bombing. You would have, so targets were factories, domestic appliance factories and the likes. So one of the vivid memories I had of that period was when they bombed the nitrogen factory in Pancho, it was, I mean, so Pancho is a town very close to Belgrade. so when they bonded

there was a huge cloud of nitrogen and then you know a whole day you have like burning in your eyes so luckily for well for me and I guess for everyone else we typically

had gas masks at home so I had mine always with me just in case you never knew you never knew what's going to happen but to if we are talking about the bombing itself I

one of the whenever people ask me how was it what you feel like I always think about the first day of bombing and the first siren which was

particularly horrifying mainly because you have absolutely no idea what's coming next and that was basically a new routine that you have to learn

how to live with so iron later on you would kind of catch the patterns you know it would start maybe at about 9 o'clock in the evening, stop it at 6. Interestingly enough, there was almost never bombing during the day in the downtown Sweden area.

It was always by night. During the day, they would just fly over, make a lot of noise, but it also had one really nasty, well, apart from the psychological effects, also kind of a social disruption, because you have to fire the alarm, right? And then there was a procedure what cannot be done in such circumstances. Basically, the whole life would stop and then you would have to go to shelter.

But people also had to live their lives. You know, you had to go to work most of the time. You have to, you know, do shopping, you know, to things, you know, normal daily, daily routine. And then if that would catch you in downtown area, And then there was an alarm. Then you would get stranded.

Basically, there's nothing that you can do. You can probably walk home because there was no public transportation and anything for the safety reasons. And then it was all, it was difficult. However, in our case, it was, well, only 78 days. And after that experience, I cannot stop thinking about all the other countries which suffered similar and more severe kind of faith than ours thinking of of

of course Gaza these days and these days past year and a half with more highly destructive bombing campaigns of course so that's about a short overview of how it was

and any other historical point and analytical points that you would like to make on the sanctions and bombing themselves. So I know that Namania listeners is highly involved with analysis of unequal exchange and with analyzing our Gary Emanuel's work. I also know that Namania has looked at the position of Yugoslavia and then post-Yugoslavia in an unequal exchange framework. And I'm interested if you have much to say

on that particular moment within that framework for our listeners here. Of course. My lived experience at that time is something only that helps me understand the theory better. And as we mentioned at the time, I was not really aware of the global picture.

And even today, it's not entirely, let's say, clear how it's happened, what happened and so on. So what we know so far is most of the analysis of this period and the Yugoslavian in terms of bombing and NATO expansion and so on is analyzed in geopolitical terms. So geopolitically, we do know that Balkans was always considered as a gateway. to control other regions, especially Middle East Caucasus and control in terms of logistics and transport and communication lines. And if we put in context what was happening in Europe at that period, and that's construction of European corridors. There's basically communication lines between Europe and the rest of the world.

we would notice one very interesting thing. And that's if you take a look, if you compare the map of Chloridores and where they pass and then take a look where Camp Bonesdil is. Camp Bonsdale is made to base, which was established on Kosovo just after the bombing campaign. So basically the occupational force of that's established there. Camp Bonesdil at the time was,

if I'm not mistaken, the second biggest military base of U.S. NATO in Europe. Now it's most like a third one after the big one in Romania is, well, after it's finished. Either way, it's located exactly between two of the corridors that passed to Balkans, basically securing the, so militarily securing domination over those communications, minds. On top of that, as I briefly mentioned, sanctions in bombing as a means of deindustrialization, what we have as a consequence of, for example, removal of Milosevic in coming to power of, well, opposition of forces headed by Jinjic at that time and all the reforms that he did, we actually see that Yugoslavia was completely delivered to Western capital for, let's say, colloquially call it colonization.

So the biggest companies were basically sold for nothing and then, as it typically turns out, they were completely destroyed. how it all fits in an equal exchange, well, theory aspect and so on. Basically, we see that what was left of Yugoslavia was being reintegrated into global economy, neoliberal global economy at that time, and it was absorbed into it. Of course, so Yugoslavia was,

even during the socialist time dependent on IMF credits which led to structural structural reforms that actually contributed to the whole dissolution of socialism, of state and so on

and that was just reinforced in that period. Basically what happened is that Yugoslavia or the later Serbian Montenegro just got let's say stuck

into their peripheral role in the global, so on the world system, and then their role practically is to deliver cheap commodities to Europe. Most, if I'm not mistaken, one of the biggest export is actually

cables, copper cables to Germany. And about the three-fourths of Serbian economy is completely dependent on EU and, well, consequence to Germany. Yeah, I'd just like to jump in and say, thank you so much, Nomania for that, like, personal view of what of suffering under the sanctions.

I mean, the work of Gregory Ellich, which you mentioned, I mean, I think is indispensable in this regard, and it really cuts to the core of how sanctions are a weapon of warfare and that it was honed in that regard in Yugoslav. So, you know, prior to their levying, which was in May 1992, you know, Yugoslavia, despite having economic issues throughout the 1980s, it still had independent industry. It had worker-owned companies and factories. This is a very, very, very pronounced difference between state by owned enterprises. the major industries in Yugoslavia were run by the people who worked in them in their benefit

and yeah they were completely ravaged by design by these sanctions and then you know I mentioned that drug abuse alcoholism and preventable death and suicides skyrocketed you know you had cases which are documented in academic literature you can find very easily online of like people dying in Yugoslav hospitals because they couldn't afford to heat them and you know similar horrors that there was a a CIA assessment in in the early 90s that that stated that you know the average Yugoslav citizens were accustomed to regular shortages of basic goods including yes, like water and basic medicines, long lines in stores, cold homes in the winter and restrictions on electricity. You know, you jump forward to, I think it's 1999, you know, Foreign Affairs, which is the kind of in-house journal of the Council on Foreign Relations,

which is this, you know, a US imperial talking shot. It published this article on how the sanctions against Yugoslavia demonstrated how, in a matter of months or years, whole economies, can be devastated and sanctions serve as uniquely lethal weapons of mass destruction against civilian populations, right? And then you look at what happened in Syria, where prior to the CIA, MI6, dirty war in Syria, Syria, like, was a regional leader in terms of economic growth. It had its own independent industry. It had free education and healthcare of a very high standard.

you know, this was ground into nothingness as a result of the dirty war. And a lot of the CIA, MI6 people involved in Yugoslavia's breakup were also at the forefront of the regime change and it's in Syria. So, I mean, as I kind of said as said in my intro, I think that, yeah, the influence and the impact of the destruction of Yugoslavia, you know, it resonates today. and we see HTS, the Western-backed ISIS spawn who claim illegitimately to be the leaders of Syria. You know, they are talking about breaking open Syria for foreign investment. They are talking about building a Trump tower in Damascus. And I should also just know why, no, no, no, that's fine. I just wanted to jump in to say, while we have been recording this, so about 15 minutes ago,

Donald Trump just announced that he's calling for the total dropping of sanctions on Syria. Yeah, yeah, yeah. But it's just like, and that's the thing as well is it's just like, you know, if you look at, say, like, the Caesar sanctions, which were passed in June 2020, you know, that was, they were explicitly, and this has written in the legislation, it was to prevent rebuilding Syria after the civil war ended. So like no foreign company or. entity or person could fund rebuilding schools and hospitals or anything else that had been

destroyed. And they knew that this was going to cause mass misery and deprivation and hardship for the local population. And they were actively cheeringness. You know, I mean, and so, and again, as I say, you have several people who were on the ground or like we're overseeing what happened in Yugoslavia who were involved in the in the dirty war against Syria like it's uh it this is a hugely significant um uh chapter in in in in in uh in modern history about which most people are completely ignorant you know and i think that it's uh it it is i mean it's not it's it's not only in the front to history but it's also just like uh it just a crying shame um you know but there is a reason

that people aren't taught about this. It's so they fall for the same lies over and over again. And I think, and I think Naman might have a perspective on this as well, and I'd be interested to hear his thoughts. But you've got to bear in mind that the war in Yugoslavia, this was the bombing of Yugoslavia. Like this was like the very first time that like NGOs, quote unquote, had really been instrumentalized in terms of,

of manufacturing consent for bombing and regime change. Like really, like the very first time that you had U.S.-funded civil society organizations in Kosovo, in Serbia itself, who were saying, oh, well, you know, military action needs to be taken to reign in Milosevic, if not to remove them from power. And then, you know, that's what happened. And, you know, ever, ever since we have seen the role of, you know, Amnesty International, human rights, watch, etc., become more and more prominent.

I mean, I saw some op-eds that were written by the, you know, senior Amnesty International figures during the war in Syria, saying, well, they're not bombing hard enough. And it's like, sorry, you were humanitarian organizations. and the level of death and destruction is insufficient for you, you know. It's really, it's really, it's really quite extraordinary. And, and yeah, like I said as well, I think that another, you know, key aspect to this is, is as I mentioned, that China and Russia got like extremely spooked by what was going on. And there was, in my aforementioned Gray Zone article, the British officials,

in Moscow were well aware that the Beijing and Moscow were not responding well to what they were doing and there was a need to allay their fears that this would be used as a precedent. And then it got used as a precedent over and over and over again. Of course, you know, like, I mean, that was a very clear breach of trust and no doubt caused decision makers in both capitals to reconsider. or whether they could trust what they were being told by British and American and other Western diplomats and politicians. On the subject of the bombing of Yugoslav industry, one of the most remarkable, I mean, this is something that we'll get into in more detail and due course, I think. But one of the most remarkable things about, this is a 70 to 8 day long bombing campaign, which intensified over time.

and I've again reported underclassified British files which showed that Tony Blair, despite being told by British government legal advisors that this was completely unlawful what they were doing. They were targeting TV stations, particularly industrial facilities, which, you know, they left hundreds of thousands of people jobless. Nomania mentioned Panchavo.

There are documents related to that, which talk about how local water was being poisoned by their bombing of, industrial sites there. And that created this huge health risk for like no good, no military purpose whatsoever. Officially, just 14 Yugoslav tanks were destroyed versus hundreds of factories. And, you know, no foreign owned industrial site got targeted. NATO took directions on what to hit from U.S. corporations, including Philip Morris. So Yugoslavia had its own independent tobacco industry, that got

womped by NATO at the direction of Philip Morris. I mean, that's completely insane and a very much forgotten aspect of all of this. Now, you fast forward to today the entire Balkan region, the former

Yugoslavia, like its soil, air and water, is by far the most polluted in Europe by some margin. Serbia is a world-leased, in cancer rates, you know? I know a large number of people who are, you know, my age at the time, which is to say, you know, 10 who have, like, serious health issues, which they shouldn't do because they're now in their mid to late 30s. You know, it's repulsive, in fact. One of the things I want to say on that point, it's something that I looked at relatively

recently, when we're talking about air quality, it's very interesting that until within the last couple of years, Belgrade had the worst air quality of any city in all of Europe. Now, well, it is actually, you know, it's starting to get better. It's still not good, but the metrics have gone in a positive direction in the last couple of years, but still terrible. But that's not the point. The point is that I had some students of mine who were also looking at air quality in various European and Eurasian cities. And Belgrade was such an outlier. And they asked me, can you explain why Belgrade's air quality is such an outlier from the rest of these numbers that we're seeing? You know, in the northern European countries, the big cities there, they all had

fairly good air quality. And in the western most part of Europe, also the fairly large cities had pretty decent air quality. You know, there was kind of geographical trends. But then you got to Serbia and there was this extreme difference. Of course, as you said, the Balkans, they all had fairly bad air quality. But there was this huge, huge difference in Belgrade specifically. And the answer is in some ways a complicated one, but in other ways, it's just a historical one. As you mentioned, with so many factories being destroyed, in order to reindustrialize and to be able to provide any sort of domestic industrial economy, a lot of safeguards had to be foregone, a lot of adequate ecological and environmental planning and frameworks had to be disregarded

in order to reindustrialize coming out of a completely shattered economy and a completely shattered country. And to be able to do so meant that, well, if we are going to be able to provide economically, at least from the industrial side of the economy, we are going to have to cause ourselves to suffer. So you mentioned that there was also huge problems with soil quality and water quality and contamination that were a direct result of the bombings. And of course, some of the air quality problems also would have been somewhat direct results of the bombings in the past, but also there's that historical connection that as a result

of the bombings and what was imposed on the country in terms of having to reindustrialize from that moment, they then had to impose this. terrible air quality on their own citizens. If they didn't, there was no way of accomplishing that re-industrialization. And that's something that a lot of underdeveloped countries are facing is that when they were held back from developing themselves at the same time that the global north of the imperial core was developing itself, in order to try to catch up in the industrial sphere, without technological assistance from countries in the Imperial Corps or other rich global North countries

or countries that are formerly global South but are advancing themselves economically and technologically like China without that assistance where they would have the technologies, the expertise, the materials come in in order to industrialize in a somewhat ecologically a mindful way. The industrialization process in order to try to catch up is extremely ecologically destructive,

but it is necessary given the context of the global system that these countries are having to operate in. And so that's one of the things that Serbia had to face coming out of it. And so this is a long-reaching impact that leads up to today,

like I said, there have been some positive indicators in the past few years, though it is certainly not, as you mentioned, you know firsthand. The air quality in Belgrade is still not good by any stretch of the imagination. But up until just the last couple of years, it was by far the worst air quality anywhere in Europe. And that is a direct and historical result of this bombing campaign, which we have talked about,

which focused on those sorts of sites rather than military sites. Which brings us to your article, collapsing empire, the delusion of U.S. air power. and how there was essentially this lie that the bombing campaign was targeting military sites and was trying to ensure that the military capacity of Yugoslavia would never be able to recover, at least not in the near future, and be prevented from carrying out a genocide. What you then describe, and with citations, it's not like you're just claiming this. is that it was not military infrastructure that was destroyed by the bombing. It was not military sites.

It was not military equipment that was largely affected by the bombing. Can you talk a little bit about what was affected by the bombing? I know that you use statistics in the paper, whether or not you use them in this discussion. I'll have the paper linked in the show notes for listeners to check out. That's up to you. but then also the lie, the kind of the cover-up that comes out after the fact when it is discovered that this is not at all the case. Yeah, sure. So, I mean, this is the article that you mentioned, collapsing empire, the delusion of U.S. air power.

It was something that I've been wanting to write for a long time because, again, based on the declassified British Ministry of Defense paper trail, one of the most interesting things to emerge from this often very revealing tranche. I mean, it's shocking to me that it made it pass the census. Maybe they thought that people just wouldn't care is that over and over and over again, it is stated in these documents. And this is, you know, like the senior British military apparatchiks writing to one another and writing to the 10 Downing Street, the core of political power in Britain, is that the bombing was a complete waste of time.

Now, like, the fact of the matter was that they were just blitzing everything on the ground completely arbitrarily without any degree of precision while claiming that they were reducing to nothingness the Yugoslavia's kind of arguably outsized army given the size of the country but the yeah

that basically that frequently in these documents they lament that well we're not actually achieving anything from a military perspective like you know we are striking symbolic targets like the Belgrade's

iconic Hotel Yugoslav and they stay and they openly state in the in the files well this will this will result in civilian casualties but it's worth the cost which is like you know black and white um evidence of the commission and advocacy of heinous war crimes but yeah that like they they um once the the bombing campaign was over and and uh milosovic withdrew yugoslav forces from kosovo under under russian pressure um there was a a campaign analysis, which concluded that there was zero evidence whatsoever of a disintegration of Yugoslav forces in Kosovo, and they were effectively unscathed by the bombing. They used dummy targets, concealment camouflage, adverse weather conditions to cover their anti-KLA operations. Now, I mean, you can find online, you know, pictures of dummy tanks. which, you know, was like a beaten up old car with a pipe stuck in the windscreen, which from several thousand miles in the air might look like a tank that was bombed by NATO

and claimed as an example of NATO's air prowess. And as I mentioned in my piece, if you look at contemporary, pre-media reporting in the immediate aftermath of the bombing. I mean, I'm talking about, you know, June 1999. You have numerous mainstream publications, including the LA Times and the New York Times, which acknowledged that there were no burnt-out tanks or other military equipment in Kosovo at all. And Yugoslav forces, who were withdrawing, they seemed spirited and defiant rather than beaten, you know, and they took with them hundreds of tanks and personnel carriers and artillery

pieces and vehicles that were completely unscathed. Now, like, you know, I mean, that's, you know, a failure of, of a military campaign, emphasis on military. As we've discussed, it was very effective, but targeting civilian infrastructure and, you know, and they killed an enormous amount of civilians in the process, including many children. But this kind of got concealed by U.S. political

and military leaders and other NATO officials claiming that actually the Yugoslav military had been decimated by the bombing campaign. And this remained the mainstream

accepted narrative of what happened until in May 2000 Newsweek of all publications, you know, not somewhere you would usually go for muck-raking and vestative journalism. They published an article which exposed the cover-up via which the Pentagon had spun its ineffective, quote-unquote, again, air quotes for listeners, attack on Yugoslavia as a victory. and there are all sorts of crazy details in their report about how Wesley Clark, who oversaw the bombing

and made a number of bombastic claims about the extent to which they destroyed the Yugoslav military. When he learned that NATO peacekeeping, quote-unquote, forces, this is something else to potentially get into, entered the province of Kosovo following the bombing. They didn't find any burned-out tanks, or much in the way of damage. So he sent a team of US Air Force investigators to Kosovo

to comb the province by helicopter and by foot over a period of several weeks. They found evidence of 14 destroyed tanks and of the 744 successful strikes on Yugoslav military equipment and installations that were claimed by NATO officials, just 58 were confirmed. They found an enormous amount of evidence by contrast of how effective at military deception the Yugoslavs were and how they had created fake bridges that NATO bombers had, quote, unquote, destroyed many times. And, yeah, like they fate artillery pieces using logs stuck on old truck wheels and all manner of other, jiggery

pokery. But Clark's response was well Yugoslavia has just hidden their equipment and the team didn't look hard enough. So they fabricated this report

whole cloth that validated this fiction that NATO's destruction of Yugoslav's forces had, Yugoslavia's forces was extensive if not almost total. And this was

presented in an official Pentagon report to Congress, although the report acknowledged that there was no supporting evidence for the totals that were included. And the Newsweek Exposé, with eerie prescians concluded that this distortion could badly mislead future policy makers. And it is likely that as a result, you know, the US Air Force will claim the lion's share of Pentagon defense spending and that policymakers and politicians will become wedded to farcical fictional myths like surgical strikes and the idea that wars can be won by air power alone when this is quite clearly not true. Now, again, on the subject of precedence, this distortion has endured ever since.

And if you look at modern figures in terms of what is spent. out of the Pentagon budget on Watt. It's the Air Force and the Navy, which, you know, you typically work hand in hand, because, you know, the U.S. has all of these aircraft carriers

that it uses to launch its Air Force. They account for pretty much half of the Pentagon's total budget. And this is based on a lie. The air power is an effective means of winning wars.

Now, I mean, this is something that I've written about a lot. I noticed that today, or it might have been yesterday, depending on your time zone, I'm obviously on Belgrade time. The New York Times published this lengthy kind of post-mortem on the Trump administration's renewed effort to smash Ansarala in Yemen because of their anti-genocide blockade of the Red Sea. And it acknowledged that at no point did the US gain air superiority, the threat of US casualties was almost daily, if not hourly.

The Yemenis were firing drones, missiles, all sorts, at fighter jets, at the US naval ships, etc. It was a completely bruising effort and yeah, in the process, an enormous amount of money was spent on achieving nothing and an enormous amount of equipment was wasted on, yeah, like a totally failed effort. Now, if you bear in mind that like according to official figures, the Operation Prosperity Guardian, was the initial, that was the Biden administration's attempt, first attempt to crush the Ansarala or the Houthis in late 2023, and it lasted until July the next year. According to official figures, and this might be an underestimation, they used 135

Tomahawk missiles to shoot down Houthi drones costing, you know, $2030 apiece with explosives. strat to them. Now, even if we accept those totals to be accurate, and, you know, that's questionable, a Tomahawk costs about $2 million. So, I mean, firing 135, you know, that's approaching 300 billion. Sorry, 300 million. You know, it's a completely crazy, quote unquote, cost off. set. So, yeah, a lot of self-delusion and myths and lies emerged from this bombing camp, from the bombing of Yugoslavia, which, you know, as I mentioned, in declassified British documents, British officials were openly stating, this is pointless and achieving nothing. Just a quick note, since you mentioned that that news came out. Today, we are recording

this on May 13th, but listeners, this episode will come out about 10 or 11 days after that. So be aware that what Kit was just describing happened about a week and a half ago at this point. Namania, feel free to hop in. Yeah, sure. Thank you. So I just want to add a bit to Kit's previous point about the whole Yugosel experience with NGOs and how the whole operation was developing.

So it's a great point because mostly people think about Yugoslavia in terms of strict geopolitics, economy or military terms. But what is a lot more relevant, in my opinion, is to consider Yugoslavia as experimental ground for everything that's to all the strategies in practice that are going to be used in regime changes. in the future. So on one hand, you had a huge PR campaign. So at that time, this is something well documented by Michel Colon, Belgian journalist who spent quite some time in Belgrade actually investigating how the situation was developing and interviewing people. So in the region you had, for example, Croatia and then actually Bosnian forces engaging with PR agencies that would push their narratives in the Western media.

That was on one hand. And then one of those agencies, so representative of one of those agencies said something like in terms of, you know, it's not important if it's true or not. so our role is to generate public opinion at this point and then later on we can so if it turns out to be a lie or false it doesn't matter we achieved our objective in this case so this objective is typically some actually public support

for unpopular military or political move at that point And beyond that, there was this case of, of course, of NGOs, NGOs that were quite active in, that are still quite active in Serbian society, pushing it towards whatever is in the interest of the European Union and the West ideologically and even in terms of infrastructural changes. You know, so we'll have NGOs dedicated to push for legal reforms. And one of the, so just drew a bit of a parallel of how it works. So a couple of years back, we had a situation in Serbia. Now, there was a kind of an urgent change to constitution of the state in order to allow, actually to modify. how judges are elected

and this was to understand the impact of this change one has to look to Romania today and to see how those independent judges were actually pushing for

changing the electoral process and eliminate in candidates which are not really according to the European taste and so favorable to EU politics. So we And what I'm trying to say is that you had even at that time, so we're talking about early to mid-90s in Serbia, such organizations pushing strongly for a certain agenda. And then, of course, one of the my favorite examples of how it all worked out in Yugoslavia is the color revolution.

you had the first ever attempt of a cognitive revolution at that time being an op-pour right that was that later on after after its great success

turned out to be well actually became a foundation that served as a consultancy to all other attempts and whoever analyzed this attempt

in ex-Yugoslavia and knows very well how to analyze all further attempts and actually how to recognize them. So to recognize the patterns, the strategies they actually still reutilized and it's actually

fantastic because if you compare what they were doing in Belgrade in 2009, for example, a rolling battles on the street. So that was their kind of a way to attract attention, right?

Sort of like a marketing move. They actually recycled this one in Belarus, in Minsk. When was it in 2020? 2005, 2005. No, no, no. So it was the most recent one. Oh, 2020. 2020.

Yes, exactly. So they were recycling the same one, instead of battles, they were using big balloons. But it was the same. So if you're careful enough and analyze, basically they're the same school, you actually have the interviews of awkward people who are actually not canvas people, who are saying how they've trained Belarus opposition in this case, as you're saying, in 2005, but they're recycling the same experience.

And from what I personally lived at that time, is also kind of a interesting confirmation of how this works. So there was a TV station called B92, where it was the main opposition media in Serbia. So what the government was doing is they were actually jamming their signals. So basically whenever they would have news on air, they would just basically block it. However, what was happening is that they had access to satellite dishes, actually, to satellites.

And they were broadcasting over satellites to different regions of Serbia. And actually, how do you know, how do you know that? Well, there was this silly documentary, silly documentary about, so it was a TV show that was famous in the 90s, a tropical heat. It was hugely popular in Serbia. So this actor basically turns out out of nowhere visits Serbia and decides to make a documentary about how popular it was and how this particular TV show

and the main character influenced the whole color revolution and removal of dictator, that kind of stuff. And in that documentary, they interviewed one of the guys from B-92 and he openly says, you know, it was US that, you know, provides, us with all the means to broadcast without any problem. And how I'm, I involved, well, how I personally lived this, at some point in the 90s, well, actually, I did go to one of those Ongs belonged to Soros, actually, it was open society.

As a kid, actually, they had this program for IT education of a kind. And they part of this program, they actually took us. to B-92 to show us how they're broadcasting not only or a satellite but over internet at that time so we were talking about 99

and they had this huge super expansive server that they were showing us how it works and then so on and they were basically using this to broadcast signal also over internet so if whoever is old enough

might remember real media streaming service so it was for people who lived this period it's easy to identify those to see those patterns to identify how it all works but for people that didn't I would strongly encourage to investigate this because suddenly everything becomes clear and to add to the story about the contamination, there is actually one, let's say, recurrent topic in Serbia and that's depleted uranium. So it's a controversial topic because from what I understand there was an attempt by the previous government of the previous regime, that's fine, during Milose time to gather enough evidence that mysteriously disappeared after 5th of October.

after the regime change, about the use of depleted uranium, radiativity levels, and so on. And when we're talking about cancer rates, somehow those went sky high after bombing. Well, again, equate, somehow. Of course, if there is a direct link to depleted uranium or some other substance that was used, it's unclear that there was no investigation there. yet, at least. However, there is let's say a big difference in cancer rates before and after that particular event.

When we comes to re-industrialization in this context of contamination, I would say this is a strong pattern of neoliberalism, neoliberalism in terms of deregulation. So one of what is a strong tendency for everything, company is to cut costs and how they cut costs well whatever way they can and one of those ways is to award regulations so whenever you need to implement some measure against contamination well you know it's cheaper to do it without and this is one of the talks that is very often occurring in eco-socialists and so certain

especially around what's called so ecologically unequal exchange or yeah basically what is a tendency is to offload all the costs to the nature and state especially if you're working abroad if you're working abroad then what you want what you really want to do is to have the you know your whole state handle all the costs and the local community to deal with that whatever way they want

and this kind of this kind of argument also brings us today not only in terms of contamination and ecology but also in terms of general safety so the whole people who are familiar with

what's happening lately in Serbia know very well there's a very long round of protests since if I'm mistaken 2nd of November last year

the trigger for that was a tragedy in which if I'm not mistaken 15 people lost their lives basically part of the construction on the train station in Novi Sad fell

and crushed them the reason for this is complete this regard for regulations and, well, not only this regard, but in existence of regulations, that would make sure that those things happen. And this is basically how, this is modus operandi of neoliberalism. I just want to add one thing. This is something that I've mentioned on the show in the past, probably two or three years ago now, the most recent time. You mentioned ecologically unequal exchange. And of course, we'll be bringing Jason Hickel on the show.

relatively soon, at least we have his contact and we're reaching out to him whether or not he confirms is a different question. So probably shouldn't say that on air. But anyway, listeners, that's our aspiration, is that Jason will join us on the show relatively soon. Of course, one of my best friends, Salvatore Engel de Mauro, also looks at these things. He just has a book on eco-socialism, which came out. And then he and I also collaborated on a book recently, which also touches on these things. Communism, the highest stage of ecology, which is out now from Iskra Books. You can download the free PDF at Iskrabooks.org. Listeners, I don't know why you haven't downloaded it yet. But there is one other point that I wanted to make. And this is the mention that I've made before

regarding offloading some of the dirtier side of things to the global south. It's the summer's memo. So I'm sure many of our listeners are aware of the summer's memo. But just to reminder. The Summers Memo was a memo that came out in 1991 when Lawrence Summers was chief economist at the World Bank. Lawrence Summers, of course, eventually became Secretary of the Treasury under Bill Clinton and National Economic Council Director under Obama, President of Harvard University, in between. In any case, he was the chief economist at the World Bank. And this memo came out that was written by Lance Pritchett and was signed by, by Lawrence Summers. It's worth mentioning. They both claim that this was sarcastic, but

I don't know. It doesn't, it would not strike me if it was not sarcastic. I'm actually going to read this part of the memo for you listeners, and I think that it'll underscore a lot of what Namania was saying, although not necessarily in the same context. So again, this is while they were at the World Bank. Dirty Industries, just between you and me, shouldn't the World Bank be encouraging more migration of the dirty industries to the LDCs, least developed countries, I can think of three reasons. One, the measurements of the costs of health-impering pollution depends on the foregone earnings from increased morbidity and mortality. From this point of view, a given amount of health impairing pollution should be done in the country with the lowest cost, which will be the country

with the lowest wages. I think the economic logic behind dumping a load of toxic waste in the lowest-wage country is impeccable, and we should face up to that. 2. The costs of pollution are likely to be non-linear, as the initial increments of pollution probably have very low cost. I've always thought that underpopulated countries in Africa are vastly underpolluted. Their air quality is probably vastly inefficiently low compared to Los Angeles or Mexico City. Only the lamentable facts that so much pollution is generated by non-tradable industries, transport, electrical generation, and that the unit transportation costs of solid waste are so high prevent world welfare enhancing trade in air pollution and waste.

Three, the demand for a clean environment for aesthetic and health reasons is likely to have very high income elasticity. The concern over an agent that causes a one in a million change in the odds of prostate cancer is obviously going to be much higher in a country where people survive to get prostate cancer than in a country where under five mortality is 200 per thousand. Also, much of the concern over industrial atmosphere discharge is about visibility-impering particulates. These discharges may have very little direct health impact. Clearly, trade and goods that embody aesthetic pollution concerns could be welfare enhancing. While production is mobile, the consumption of pretty air, is a non-tradable. The problem with the arguments against

all these proposals for more pollution in LDCs, intrinsic rights to certain goods, moral reasons, social concerns, lack of adequate markets, etc., could be turned around and used more or less effectively against every bank proposal for liberalization. Now, listen to us again, you can see that in some of the language it is satiric, but if you look at the way in which global neoliberal linkages in the world economic system have been made and were being made at that time is that really that far from the truth

of what was being done you may be satiric in your wording of the memo but if we actually analyze that's much of what was happening and actually I think speaks to the phenomena that Namania was describing in his previous answer just wanted to throw that out there

since it's a memo that again I'm sure many of the listeners are familiar with but I think all of the listeners should be familiar with. So there you go, listeners. Well, yeah, I mean, it was all just a huge joke, wasn't it? They were just being sarcastic. No, I mean, I think. But while doing it, of course.

Yeah, yeah, yeah, well, while actually doing it. And it's like, I mean, I think that Michael Chavarovsky and both Michael Parenthi, they have, they have, they're out. output on third worldization as they refer to it. This ties in completely with what Summers and Pritchett like we're talking about, which is the reduction of like the reduction of the world to effective markets, not only for U.S. goods, but also for U.S. trash. And it's like in central and eastern Europe, you have a large number of countries which are effectively paid to take the rubbish of western or the garbage for uh us listeners um uh of western countries so western

countries can say oh we're being green um and then it's like burned in poland um and and in other places um yeah like the the the um the the the level of contempt for um uh you know uh the global south or indeed, you know, kind of like non-imperial core countries is rarely spelled out as adroitly and candidly as it is in this memo. But I mean, you know, this is the, you know, direct upshot of the policies these kind of people support. Like, you know, I mean, in Serbia there was quite a intense public punch-up. last year about a proposed lithium deal whereby Germany was seeking to quite dangerously and with posing risks to the local environment, start a lithium mining operation in Serbia.

This is despite Germany itself sitting on vast lithium reserves, but because it would be dangerous and damaging for Germany to do that, they're just going to outsource it elsewhere. etc. And, you know, this produced an enormous amount of anger locally, you know, and there were some, there were some town hall meetings where scientists and just generally concerned citizens, you know, spoke up and they were saying, you know, this is about the, fundamentally about the kind of country and the kind of land that we leave to our children and our grandchildren and their children, you know, in turn. Which is rather lost on the Western countries which are pushing this.

But it is a, you know, very palpable sense that people in the, well, the people who remain in the Balkans still have. And there's another point to make here as well, which is like, you know, in a bitter irony, and this is something that I've again written about for my website, shameless plug. Politico, of all places, you know, a reliable megaphone for CIA. MRA 6 propaganda. They published an article at the start of 2024 called How the US Broke Kosovo

and it has I would urge your listeners to check this out in full because it's just it's quite, it's weird it's extraordinarily candid and I do wonder

what the rationale for publishing this was maybe it was because Joe Biden was in office at this time and they wanted to demonstrate that his son's brazen corruption in Ukraine was not exceptional

in terms of the US history. But the political piece goes into immense detail about how US officials, particularly US officials who were intimately involved in the destruction of Yugoslavia sought to enrich

themselves via privatisation which was led by US aid, of course, in Kosovo. And you have, you know, Madeleine Albright. I attended a massive street party in Belgrade when she died, which is us, a fond memory of mine. You know, she bought up the pretty much entirety of Kosovo's formerly state-slash-worker-owned telecoms industry for her, you know, for her own purpose. personal enrichment, without much in the way of controversy or pushback, you then have the

aforementioned Wesley Clark, who oversaw the bombing, who has been attempting to profiteer in Kosovo ever since 1999 and is openly, quote, unquote, unapologetic about his efforts to reap financial benefit from his reputation as one of Kosovo's saviors. There are streets named after him in Kosovo. There aren't statues yet, as there are statues of Madeline Albright and Tony Blair and Bill Clinton, but I mean, I'm sure it's only a matter of time. And like, yeah, like, Wesley Clark had been, as a chair of a Canada-based company, NVIDity Energy, had been trying to access Kosovo's coal reserves, which is like the fifth largest in the world, for his own personal enrichment. The puppet government of Kosovo,

they tore up laws on environmental protection and restrictions on foreign investment in mineral wealth and it was only because the UN published the scaling report that basically stated the entire project was corrupt and criminal that it didn't go ahead. But he's been undeterred and he's still going ahead with it. Like, you know, he's still trying to make money out of this. And it's like, I think that one of the grand ironies, even though it's not very funny, of the West's destruction of Yugoslavia, is it was hoped that in the spirit of third worldization, as articulated by Michael Parenti, et, et cetera, that they would create in the former Yugoslavia a reserve army of labor who would be willing to work for subsistence way. for U.S. corporations, that they would have ready and easy access to the region's vast resources. You know, Chris Hedges in the late 90s spoke about Starry Trigg, this mining complex

in Kosovo, which it's a source of gold, silver, zinc and lead. And, like, yeah, they were hoping for easy returns, but by stoking and exacerbating ethnic tensions and political problems in the region, they actually made it very difficult to profiteer in Yugoslavia. So, you know, by effectively wrenching Kosovo out of Serbia and creating this illegitimate and to a significant extent unrecognized state in Kosovo. It created all sorts of issues around who owns what. So it's like, right, so there's this mining complex, which is in Serb territory in quote unquote independent Kosovo, who actually owns it, given that it was a formerly like a state slash worker owned enterprise. And they haven't been able, the imperial brain trust hasn't been able to wrap it,

rapid collected mine around how to do that. And we see, we see this all over the region. where, you know, like low, you know, low wages, lack of job opportunities and, you know, ever-rising living costs. They've, like, precipitated, you know, mass brain drain, population collapse. I know an enormous number of people who've left the region because they don't believe that the, you know, the opportunities are there. They sort better lives elsewhere. And it's like, well, you still need people to work for.

for subsistence wages for your corporations, but they're not there, you know. It's quite a remarkable kind of boomerang. In the spirit of, you know, you break it, you bought it. Well, they broke it, and now they don't really know what to do with it. And to link this back to Syria, you know, the Western powers, along with Qatar and other regional players spent over a decade trying to get rid of Assad while they've finally done that and oh it's created

all of these issues um you know uh like the central government doesn't have any legitimacy the Kurds in the northwest want to create their own state um the uh Israel wants a chunk of of Syria but is worried about Turkish expansion in the region um they want the Russians to stay um even though the Russians are like you know like kind of priming to leave um so it's like yeah that like as as depressing as the destruction of of Yugoslavia and indeed yes like the bomb the the the bombing campaign was and all of the destruction death and misery it inflicted um it hasn't actually produced the desired gains from the perspective of uh the u.s empire and it won't Namani, I know that you wanted to say something.

Oh, no, actually, I didn't. I only had a shameless plug. Please. About an article that we had for Brill, actually for Journal of Labor and Society about green imperialism, which is setting analytical framework, how to interpret, well, ecologically and equal exchange and all the surrounding. theories of impalism and ecology. I can provide a link, of course.

Yeah, and of course I'll include it in the show notes, but why don't you tell the listeners a little bit more about that? Oh, I actually forgot what. I was just a co-outer. Okay, well, let's pause for a couple seconds, and we'll cut this bit out. Yeah, sure. Okay, so let's turn to the last part of this conversation. Now, of course, the last part of this conversation could go on for quite some time

because it is taking this to today. So, Kit, you know, when we discussed how we were going to frame this episode, it was the bombing of Yugoslavia and the breakup of Yugoslavia and the relevance to today. Now, this has many relevances. I know that you talked a bit about Ansarala, and of course we can talk much more about that and the anti-imperialist and anti-genocide blockade in the Red Sea that they are carrying out. and the anti-imperialist defense of their nation against U.S. imperialism and the extreme costs that the U.S. is bearing as a result of that. I know that you've already touched on that, but there is much more that we could say. There's also all of the contemporary relevances within Serbia and within post-Eugoslavia more generally, which we have been kind of dancing on in terms of how we're answering these questions,

bringing up how these things are connected with today. But I would like to just put this big topic on the table to allow you to really dive into it and we can take these different branches until the end of the conversation. What is the relevance of this history that we began the conversation with today to today? Yeah, sure. So, I mean, I think that like the relevance here is that this represents the kind of pinnacle of unipolarity, but also the seeds of its destruction being laid. I think that's like the the core lesson.

I also think that another aspect of this, and we've touched upon its relevance to other conflicts and other geopolitical developments ever since is that, yeah, it created a model which Western elites have sort, to reproduce over and over and over and over again to ever diminishing returns. And it speaks to the lack of imagination and the myopia of the, call it the Anglo-American Global Empire, call it the US-led unipolar world, that they almost can't see the wood for the

trees in terms of how this stuff doesn't work anymore. I mean, we are witnessing in real time the collapse of the International Criminal Court, which was an outgrowth of the international criminal tribunal for the former Yugoslavia, which was set up in the early 90s to prosecute primarily Serbs, but also ostensibly other war criminals in the former media slavia um the people who were involved in this um tried uh the same model over and over and over again um in respect of rwanda in respect of syria and again yes as i say you know ever diminishing retires um and i think that uh as well that like you know i mean um um um um um nomania mentioned like camp bond steel which was i mean this was created with much fanfarers like

you know, one of the, one of, if not the biggest U.S. military bases in the world, if not Europe. If we, you know, you fast forward to today and the, it's meant to have around 10,000 soldiers there. Actually, and the site covers, you know, 1,000 acres. It's absolutely massive. But there's only about a thousand troops stationed there. and to the extent they've been nicknamed the forgotten battalion because they just sit around doing nothing. And Politico noted,

those troops are the only thing standing between Kosovo and Serbia. You know, I genuinely don't think it will be very long before Camp Bomsteel is transformed into a museum of NATO occupation. You know, like my dear friend of Boishe Malich, He has this great line which plays in my mind frequently, which is, well, you know, like from the Serb perspective, well, the Turks, you know, did us some damage. The crowds did us some damage. The Anglo-Americans have done us some damage. But, you know, the Turks are nowhere to be seen. The crowds are gone. And the Anglo-Americans are looking wobbly, you know. In the spirit of the Taliban, when they spoke, said to the US, you know, you have watches, we have time. Like, you know, for all of the the sound and fury surrounding supposed US power and influence, actually this event, which, as I say, represents the kind of pinnacle of the unipolar world,

it actually demonstrates the weakness of the US-led global, or US-dominated global order and how fragile it is. And I think the people might be very surprised by how quickly all of this evaporates. Namania, what about for you? If we're talking about the relevance of the events of the late 90s and early 2000s in terms of intervention in Yugoslavia and the breakup of Yugoslavia, both in terms of sanctions, in terms of rhetoric building, in terms of the bombing campaign itself, what is the relevance? of those events at that period of time to today. And again, we can talk broadly, globally,

or we can talk regionally. Right. So as I said, it was an experimental ground for pretty much everything that's about to come at that time. So whatever we could see in the past, well, 25 years,

26, if we're counting since the bombing, we could see that whatever worked in Yugoslavia was repeated in other countries. So kids spoke about Syria. That's a clear example just there. Beyond that, what was clear that is that the US really set precedent how legally one can occupy a country, which is something that now it's being repeated

as an argument, especially by Russia in case of what was it, Crimea. So basically we can see that there are also legal consequences on an international level of such geopolitical moves, right? Locally and regionally, we can see that basically the whole operation brought

chaos, chaos, instability, and just perpetual state of latent conflict. What you can actually see is that whenever there is a need, the conflict is reignited. So the way it was resolved, let's say, politically to create some illusion of stability in Balkans is just that it's an illusion. never meant to be stable or permanent. One of the ideas behind this is actually well illustrated by U.S. policy on Kosovo during Rambouye agreements.

So basically, just before the bombing, in France organized negotiations in Chateau-Rambouet, clearly in France, between Serbian and Albanian, Kosovo Albanian delegations. Of course, it was all headed by, well, spearheaded by U.S. delegation. And interestingly enough, the person that was directly involved in every aspect of it was former U.S. Ambassador Hill.

the whole agreement had this idea of actually forcing Albanians to accept a deal with Serbia in such a way that they would not get independence at that point, which obviously made him very mad. However, the whole maneuver was designed in such a way that what Albanians would get would be, enough power to block any kind of decision of Serbia politically within their state. The Rambwee agreements were designed, so the political provisions were designed in such a way that there would be no real stability. And this is also how the relationship with Serbia, Bosnia and, well, Croatian, and other actual republics is existing in this moment. There is basically no clear part of collaboration towards peace. It's a constant state of hidden and hidden conflict.

Of course, what was the outcome of Rambwe agreement was actually debombing, And the reason for that was not, in fact, the humanitarian crisis. It was stated officially, it was the rejection of Yugoslav delegation to accept what was called annex A and B of the agreement. And that was explicitly requiring occupation of Yugoslavia by NATO forces. So obviously no sovereign country would accept that And that was the practical cause of the whole bombing campaign Interestingly enough, talking about consequences and coming to this day Wuchich's government accepted those provisions

I think in 2008 or 11, well, sometimes later Actually, during his period basically de-occupation so political diplomatic immunity was given

to all NATO forces and the freedom to move all across the state yeah

one of the things that I just want to take a moment to reflect on and I know that we're

getting pretty much to the end of the conversation here each of you has mentioned

how law international law has been weaponized and this is something that we talk about on the show pretty frequently. I'm going to be paraphrasing myself. I always say that when you think about international law,

of course there are some good provisions in international law, but who writes international law? International law is written by and codified by the hegemonic powers within the global system or operating within a neoliberal capitalist global system. Therefore, international law is written by and codified by the imperialists, the neoliberal capitalist imperialists. Now, the law that they're writing, of course there's going to be a veneer of human rights, a veneer of fairness, a veneer of sovereignty, a veneer of transparency, a veneer of what is just morally right.

However, you know that they're not writing international law in order to create a just and equitable global, community, a just an equitable global economic political order. International law is written for the purpose of and codified for the purpose of perpetuating the hegemonic system, which again is a neoliberal capitalist, imperialist world system. You know that international law has the intention of ensuring that that system stays in place. And so, international law is always used as this arbiter of moral good as a weapon to beat those nations, those states, those groups that operate against or just outside of the hegemonic global system.

Whether we're talking about countries that actively are trying to shake up the global system, talking about the Soviet Union in the past or Cuba or China, both in past and present. If we're talking about the attempt at creating a multipolar world by the BRICS countries, international law is always weaponized against those states. They will find something that has been codified within international law, again, written by the imperialists in order to use against those states that are trying to push against the system as it currently exists. But even if the states are not actively trying to push against that system, they're just operating outside of it or operating not in lockstep with it,

it's still weaponized against those states. So thinking about states like the DPRK, for one, they are not currently trying to overthrow the global, economic system. They're operating outside of it. Although the system within that state, of course, is fundamentally opposed to the global system. International law is weaponized against them all the time. In the case of Yugoslavia, international law was weaponized against them for talking about Syria. Syria was not a communist, you know, state.

I know that, you know, the Ba'ath Party was the Ba' Arab Social. Party, but, you know, they weren't calling for global revolution in the creation of a global socialist world system. But they were operating outside of the neoliberal norm. And so that state had to be dismantled. And international law was frequently used as justification for that. Libya under Gaddafi. Another case and point of a state where once they try to step out of the bounds of what is being imposed by that hegemon, the international law is once again used as a justification for the most barbaric things that are then carried out against those countries. This is something that we've talked about on the show ad nauseum over the years. This is something that you can see very

starkly within the episode that we've carried out today. And I know in the near future we're going to have Professor Nina Farnia on to talk about lawfare and we're going to have an examination of this topic in much more depth, specifically. on the program. So do stay tuned for that upcoming episode. It'll be in the pretty near future. Professor has agreed to come on. So that's something that I just want to make sure that the listeners are keeping in mind is that we often will use international law to say what is right or what is wrong. Even those of us that are on the anti-capitalist left, we'll talk about how the settlements in the West Bank are illegal under international law

and they are illegal under international law and that is an international law that is a fairly sensible one but if we're speaking of international law in a way that justifies this system of international law wholesale we have to be careful because international law is created by the imperialists that are upholding the neoliberal liberal capitalist world system, and that international law as a whole, as a system, is made in order to uphold that. So we do have to keep that in mind and be careful when international

law is being weaponized against states that are operating against, or not necessarily against, but just not in conjunction with countries within the imperial core, those hegemonic countries that dictate what the global system is. So now I'm going to turn it over to both of my guests. Yeah, absolutely, Kit. I was going to turn it over to you for final thoughts and to tell the listeners where they can find you. So feel free to respond as you do that.

I just, I know, I'm so sorry for cutting you off. I just, no, please. I mean, this is, I mean, this is absolutely worth a, an episode within itself. And I, um, I look forward. I look forward to your future. conversations. I just think that in terms of, I mean, I mentioned how international law is being basically like overturned and how the, yes, the system of quote unquote, the rules-based order

created in the 90s with Yugoslavia at the forefront of it. Like the ICTY was a forerunner of the ICCC, the international criminals. court. You know, I think, I mean, we've spoken about blowback and boomeranging from this, from everything that the US was doing in Yugoslavia and has done since. You know, the birth of the ICTY was a CIA document in February 1993, which outlined policy options for Yugoslavia, which proposed, amongst other things, establishing a war crimes tribunal for the express purpose of publicising

Serbian atrocities, and it warned against publicising the transgressions, quote unquote, of its Bosniak and Croat proxies. And then three months later, you have the creation of the ICTY, which is regarded in legal circles as a, what's the word,

a kind of gold standard, even though, you know, bias and, distortion was hardwired into it from its, from its inception. And, you know, you fast forward to, I believe it was June last year when Karim Khan of the ICCC said that he was searching for, that he was looking for, um, uh, warrants for Benjamin Netanyahu and Yoav Gallant, who is the, um, Israeli defense minister. And he, um, was told by a senior official that the court was built.

for Africa and thugs like Putin, not the West of and its allies, you know, and it's like tying in with this, there was an essay published by the Loop, which is the EU European Consortium for Political Research blog, and it talks about the quote-unquote Kosovo precedent, and it states, the Kremlin justifies its actions in the Ukraine, by blaming the West for flouting international norms

and cites the Kosovo precedent to justify its military activity in Ukraine. So did the Kosovo precedent create conditions that allowed Russia to violate fundamental United Nations principles of sovereignty and undermine the credibility of international law? The answer, in short, is yes. You know, like it, when the empire was riding high throughout the 90s, it never occurred to them that this could boom around on them at all. And, you know, I think that like in terms of, yeah, in terms, in terms, in terms of blowback, the empire in all of its meddling, whether it's in, you know, Serbia or Libya or Syria or elsewhere, has created more blowback for itself. than it can handle.

And that is one of the reasons that we are seeing the rapid emergence of the multi-polar world. You know, the foundations were laid in the 90s in Belgrade, in Sarajevo, in other capitals, in the former Yugoslavia. So then, you know, that's where we are now. But I shall cease here because at the risk of us going into another hour of conversation. But it's been great.

Thanks so much for having me on. yeah just as one other quick example and then i'm going to have you tell the listeners where they can find your work kit and maybe if you have something that you would like to tease about upcoming things that you have coming out that'll be an opportunity for that too but one of the things that just struck me as as funny i have seen people try to find ways using international law to complain when china carries out and sentences someone to the death penalty for extortion. When there's large-scale embezzlement at the scale of hundreds of millions or even sometimes billions of dollars, China will sentence these people to death because in China you can't embezzle hundreds of millions of dollars

and these cases are sometimes publicized in the Western media. And when I say I have seen people, I'm not just talking about random people on Twitter, listeners of the show will know I'm not really online these days. but I'll see people writing in places like the Hill's opinion pages and whatnot, people that are writing, that have some sort of reputation. They'll be writing things looking in international law to show that China is breaking international law by sentencing these people to the death penalty for committing things,

white-collar crimes, large-scale white-collar crimes that are, you know, taking money out of people's pockets. at a mass scale. But they never acknowledged the fact that the death penalty is also carried out in the United States. I just saw that in the last week or two, there was an article that came out. I want to say I saw it in Reuters. I'm going to have the details wrong. So listeners, if you have the details, do feel free to tweet it at me.

Again, I'm not really online, but I'll see the notification. I want to say that there was a death sentence that was actually carried out in South Carolina. That's the name that's jumping out in my mind right now. And it was done by firing squad. And the report was that it was botched completely. Now you'd think that in the United States, the country where mass shootings are something that happens every day that they would be able to carry out in execution by firing squad, apparently it didn't quite go according to plan. And so that was written in the newspaper.

But there's no complaining that death sentences are carried out in the United States. States against poor people and that that would be a contravention of some international law. Instead, they flock to the codes of international law to try to find a way in which China carrying a death sentence against an incredibly rich person for a white-collar crime would be against international law. Of course, they never quite come up with anything specifically, but I do see the attempts, and that's quite interesting to me, and does speak a little bit to this weaponization that I was talking about before. I just wanted to bring that up since I don't know,

the idea of death penalty in China hit me in the head for a moment. But Kit, tell the listeners where they can find your work, please, before I keep rambling. Sure. Well, you can find on website, www.kitt Clarenberg.com. You won't be able to find it on Google. I've tried. You can also find me at Kit Clarenberg just on Twitter or X. And as I say, I am the head of Grey Zone UK.

You can keep up with my investigations there. But I'm also a regular contributor to Minn Press, The Cradle, Al-Mai Dene. So, yeah, keep an eye out. I'm a busy dude, to say the least. Thanks so much for having me on, Henry. God bless you. Absolutely, and we'll have you on again whenever you would like to be on. Namania, can you tell the listeners where they can find you,

anti-imperialist net is a resource that I often share things from to people. So if you ever see in your site traffic that there's people in Russia who are reading, that's either me or one of the people I work with reading it. So you're wagging your finger. That means that you know that when I'm reading your articles. Okay, that is me. In any case, tell the listeners what you're working on and what they can do to find your work. I've been wondering who is visiting me. from Russia. It's not the FSB, it's me. Well, I don't mind, I don't mind.

I mean, at least my FSB can also see how good of a job we're doing as well. Okay, I have some people I can give it to. Excellent, excellent. In fact, we do have a few texts in Russian as well translated. So that might continue to the whole thing. A bit of foreign, I just want to mention briefly the article that I mentioned before, that I co-authored with, well, so the author is Alejandro Pedreal, our friend, we do have one section which is theoretically contributing to this whole conversation about

law, let's say indirectly, our conception of imperialism as a system contemplates superstructure, which is basically saying that as a system, it needs to have elements that support it, and reproduce it, and in this case, this would be the law, among other things. As for myself, you can find at NT-impolis.net, and on Twitter as anti-imprin-pnet handle. Thank you for having me. Absolutely. And since you mentioned our mutual friend, Alejandro Pedrigal, I will also just mention

that he has been on the show before. Listeners, it's not that old of an episode. So even if you're a relatively new listener, you may have heard it. We had Alejandro on in December of last year. The episode is titled Tri-Continentals Early, 1967 and 1971, socio-ecological dimensions, a very interesting episode. So I highly recommend listeners go back and listen to it if they missed it the first time around. As for me, listeners, I guess first I should tell you that, again,

Adnan was not able to make it today because he's on a speaking tour at the moment, But you should definitely keep up to date with him. He's on Twitter at Adnan A. H-U-S-A-I-N. And you can also follow the Adnan Hussein show, which is on YouTube and also on most podcast apps. As for me, this will be the first time that I've announced publicly, but I have another series that's going to be coming out imminently. The guy whose desk is adjacent to mine at my workplace is a doctor of historical sciences and a specialist in, well, he's a specialist in a lot of history,

but particularly in Russian history. And we have always lamented the fact that there's not any good, non-negative, and detailed portrayals of Russian history. And so we have an upcoming show coming out. Again, it'll be out relatively soon on YouTube and hopefully also on podcast platforms. Not video. Don't worry. You don't need to see us, listeners.

But he's going to have some information on some, slides for you that you can also follow along with. The show is going to be called Tsars and Commissars from Rus to Modern Russia. And it literally is from the early Slavic tribes pre-foundation of Rus up to today. It's going to be a 25-part series that covers all of Russian history. So do stay tuned for that. The YouTube channel is going to go live very soon. It may not be up by the time this episode comes out. But if you follow me on Twitter at Huck-1995, H-U-C-K-1995. I will give updates on where and when you'll be able to find those episodes, which will be co-hosted by me and the much smarter guy, Gennady Sefanov,

who is, again, the doctor of historical sciences whose desk is adjacent to mine in my office. So, with that being said, to remind you, listeners, you can help support guerrilla history and allow us to continue making episodes like this one by going to Patreon. on.com forward slash gorilla history. That's G-U-E-R-R-I-L-A history. And keep up to date with everything that we're doing individually and collectively by following the show on social media on Twitter at Gorilla underscore pod, G-U-E-R-R-I-L-A underscore pod, Instagram, gorilla underscore history. And again, you can get updates directly into your email inbox by signing up to our free email newsletter. I guess I'll also have the SARS and Commissars update.

in there when it's ready. You can get that at gorilla history.substack.com. Again, Gorilla with two R's. So on that note then, and until next time, listeners, solidarity. You know what I'm going to do.