Events in Yugoslavia have taken us by surprise. Not so much the bombings in themselves (we got used to them with the Gulf War) as the propulsion onto the international scene of a NEW EPOCH, that consigns to the dustbin of History the period following the Second World War, which laid down the international rules we have lived by during the latter half of the century and whose conditions were universally accepted.
The years following the defeat of nazism and the founding of the United Nations were certainly not idyllic; most were marred by the rivalries of the cold war, the nuclear threat and numerous conflicts of all kinds which cost countless human lives.
The great loser of this period was communism, as a state power as well as an ideology and a political force. Two centuries of effort searching for and putting into practice the socialist ideal, whose aim was to build a more just, more humane society, collapsed in a single night, leading capitalism triumphant into the heart of the communist fortress, Moscow, and thence into all the countries of "real socialism", with few exceptions.
The proclamation of the US as sole superpower followed naturally. The US has scarcely an enemy left to fear, while in a parallel development, hardly a serious obstacle remains in the way of its economic penetration and domination.
The Europe to emerge from economic and monetary union cannot be considered a serious opponent to the global dominion of the United States : having taken care to infiltrate the deep levels of the European economy, American capital now plays a key rôle in Europe's economic decision-making.
Economic interests, markets, oilfields and the guarantee of normal production by supranational companies, as well as all that concerns total control by the USA of all the outlying zones of the globe : it's only natural that all this needs to be secured by not only unchallenged economic power but also a concentration of means of destruction without precedent in human history.
For what does the USA want if not to impose its will and interests, with a minimum of control, over the whole surface of the globe ?
We should take a closer look at what constitutes, in our opinion, the dawning of a New Epoch in the history of humanity, as expressed in the war of destruction being waged against Yugoslavia, in order to realise just what is going on under our very noses and what the consequences will be for the life of our countries.
If we analyse these events according to the usual criteria of our age of international law, symbolised by the existence of the United Nations, I'm afraid we shall be wide of the mark.
For what automatically springs to mind is the economic factor represented by the arms industry, whose interests, as everyone knows, are an essential factor in development, as much in the USA as in the major European countries, and for which this new theatre of operations is making a small fortune. For this reason, anyone can maintain that behind the bombings, lie, quite simply, these interests.
It is a known fact that up to now, these interests have led to the organisation of a multitude of local conflicts, which culminated ten years ago in the Gulf War, but without the UN Security Council being sidelined. In any case, the US took care to keep up appearances.
In the case of Yugoslavia, it seemed that not only did the NATO directorate totally ignore the UN, but did everything in its power to ensure that the slight was given full media coverage, as if to make sure the message reached the four corners of the globe.
And the message is clear :
International legality, as laid down in the UN statutes, is abolished,
The meaning and substance of State sovereignty are abolished,
The balance of the world order is abolished.
And what is being offered in their place ?
A new holy alliance with the USA at its head, surrounded by the most powerful European countries, making up the new directorate which uses the framework of NATO to snare and neutralise the other countries of Europe.
The sacred alliance proclaims its military organ, NATO, the supreme organisation whose new constitutive principles are henceforth to be the only law before which all the peoples of the earth shall bow down.
The discovery of "human sensitivity", it has to be admitted, is a clever move, whose objective is to neutralise the reactions that the peoples of Europe and America, and world opinion in general, might have at this first stage of the creation and annunciation of this new instrument of world domination.
In reality, it is not a question of bringing about submission, but enthusiastic identification, such as one can observe in Americans, an identification which in my view, goes far beyond mere economic interests and such commitments.
This identification is reflected in the public opinion of European countries, of actors on the political and social scenes, even among the European left : it is just not possible that, from one moment to the next, they have all been struck blind and can no longer see nor understand the obvious, finding justification for this massive concentration without precedent of the means of destruction of individuals, populations and human achievement.
As if the Balkans were the place, and its inhabitants the children of a lesser god who did not concern them. To talk of the ecological destruction sounds like a bad joke.
So what is going on ?
I am afraid that the Europeans have understood only too well and that they rather think themselves lucky their sovereign has included them among the chosen.
In any case, are they not, one way or another, superior ? Are they not part of the same race ? Did they not provide the vast majority of the immigrants who founded the USA, and now their descendants and henceforth the "planetarchs", the rulers of the planet ? The sovereign is now holding out his hand and inviting them to join with him in laying down the New Order of Things; their ambition is to buttress themselves on the ruins of Yugoslavia, setting a terrible example for those who might be tempted to resist the orders of the new world masters.
In concluding this article, I ask myself whether hiding behind all this, there are not very ancient cultural differences.
Has Western man, freed from his cold war phobias, surveying his enemies collapsing in ruins all round him, high on his own power, felt rising up within him an ancestral lust for total economic, political, military and cultural dominance ?
Has he once more clad himself in the iron armour of the Crusader ?
Have you really understood ?
Is this the dawning of the new Middle Ages ?
© Mikis Theodorakis. Article published in TO VIMA of 26.4.1999. - English : Ariel Wagner
See picture of the Concert or Peace from the same day
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