Celebrated Austrian Writer and Milosevic Supporter Peter Handke Held to Account

This is an interesting article from The American Scholar magazine about Peter Handke, the critically acclaimed Austrian writer Peter Handke, who supported Milosevic and his regime for years.

The Apologist by Michael McDonald

The article discusses his possible motivations within the context of his literary and cultural beliefs. The subtitle of the article summarizes the main plight--should the cultural world hold artists and writers responsible for supporting heinous causes and espousing loathsome ideas?

"Fools' Crusade" Closing Thoughts

Reading "Fools' Crusade" has not been an enjoyable experience, but it has been an enlightening experience--although not, you may be assured, for the reasons author Diana Johnstone intended. I think I understand the motivations behind Bosnian revisionism better than I did before--and they have nothing to do with the truth, or even with defending the cause of Serbian nationalism. As I said before, I don't think Diana Johnstone gives a damn about Serbia or Serbs.

The motivation behind "Fools' Crusade" is simply naked, unrefined anti-Western propaganda. After reading her entire book, painstakingly, and going over each section repeatedly, I detect no other unifying theme. She thinks that her theme is "anti-globalization," yet I have no doubt that Johnstone would be hard-pressed to express what anti-globalization is, other than opposition to alleged American hegemony in the service of global capital.

This is a depressing book, and that is why--Johnstone has no vision of How Things Should Be. Actually, that's not completely accurate, since by reading this book the reader can fairly confidently work out a vision of global order that Ms. Johnstone would approve of.

It would be a world in which the power of the United States and its allies is curtailed at every turn; but various anti-Western rogue nations and petty autocratic regimes are free to act against captive populations at will, and to poison the stability in their regions without fear of reprisal. It is a world in which a vigorous and forceful response by Western-led coalitions to world crises is simply not possible, but instead an ineffective United Nations has a monopoly on the right to intervene in world affairs.

It is a world in which the sovereignty of states is the highest moral good, and trumps the rights and indeed the lives of individuals and populations within a dysfunctional or genocidal nation-state.

It is a world in which the best thing that can be said about a nation's political leadership is that it remains outside of American influence. Where standing up the United States and the West is an automatic good, no matter what atrocities are committed.

It is a world in which competing centers of power are to be applauded, no matter what methods or ruling methods such a challenge to the USA embodies.

We don't have to try very hard to imagine such a world. We don't have to try at all. If you want to see the world as Diana Johnstone thinks it should be, you need only to find images from yesterday's news in Darfur. In the westernmost province of Sudan, a genocide has been carried out under the world's eye; carried out by a regime that knows that the United Nations will always give it one more chance as long as they make token moves and symbolic compromises. A regime that knows that, with Chinese capital behind it, it does not need to kowtow to American pressure or pay lip service to Western sensibilities.

At one point, I believed I would be summarizing this book by saying that it ultimately amounted to no more than a long series of random negatives--that Diana Johnstone knows what she is against, and knows how to take frequent potshots at the West she so clearly despises. But now I see that I was wrong. It was bad enough when I thought this book was simply a reductionist manifesto; a paean to reflexive anti-Americanism. And yet, it's even worse.

"Fools' Crusade" is a book-length attack on secularism, individual rights, and the ambiguities and complexities of truly tolerant and cosmopolitan living. As disheartening and ugly as those sentiments are, the implicit message of the book is even worse. The most damning thing you can say about "Fools' Crusade" is simply to articulate and clarify the implications of her critique. In her turgid chronicle of revisionist lies, we saw all that Johnstone holds in in contempt. In the burning villages of Darfur, we see a terrifying vision of the world ordered as she believes it should be.

"Fools' Crusade" Postscript: Perpetual War [7]

POSTSCRIPT: PERPETUAL WAR

THREATS ALL AROUND

This is the last section of the book, the final 2-and-a-half pages of this 268 page assault on truth and honest inquiry. We are at the end.

So what is the concluding moment of this meandering, sloppy conglomeration of conspiracy theories, revisionism, anti-Western hysteria, and disingenuous propagation of collectivist/anti-democratic dogma? On what note does she plan to end her book? What does Diana Johnstone think it all adds up to?

Well, as it turns out, it adds up to a post-September 11th world in which the primary threat to world peace and stability turns out to be--the United States of America.

September 11th was merely a pretext for a long-planned extension of American dominance, predicated on the shift in tactics and priorities which she ominously considered (without a word about changing global geopolitical and economic realities) in the previous sections.

Most tellingly, she refers to the planning of neoconservatives and old-line Cold War hardliners within the Bush Administration while implying that this demonstrates a continuation of American foreign policy during the Yugoslav crisis of the Clinton Administration. While there is certainly fertile ground in examining the continuity of American foreign policy across many Administrations, Johnstone is not discussing complex underlying themes here--she specifically uses papers and reports commissioned during the Bush Administration to defend her tenuous thesis. There is little depth, and almost no substance, to her argument.

Anyone familiar with American foreign policy since the 9/11 attacks doesn't need this book to be reminded of the "Bush Doctrine" and it's emphasis on preemptive military actions and renewed commitment to using American military power.

She says:

"Power has its own momentum. Whatever the declared motives, the war against Yugoslavia served as an exercise in the destruction of a country."

And so, on the very last page of her book, Johnstone makes it clear that she hasn't a clue. Yugoslavia was destroyed, all right, but it wasn't NATO aggression that killed it. In the end, this book isn't about Bosnia, or Kosovo, or the plight of the misunderstood Serbs, or Yugoslavia at all. It's about a knee-jerk, irrational hatred of the West and the United States in particular, with Serbs being used merely as props and their alleged tragedy as a convenient tool with which to berate the Western world and it's tradition of individual liberty and secular freedom. I very much doubt that Johnstone cares much about the true plight of contemporary Serbs at all.

After 268 pages, the book peters out on a tired note of knee-jerk anti-Americanism and stale anti-imperialist demagoguery. The mass of footnotes and bibliography that follows only serve to detail and document the vast amount of effort that went into this dishonest and pointless book; a great deal of sound and fury signifying nothing but the stubborn prejudices of an ossified ex-radical and her detachment from reality.

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And so, my months-long slog through "Fools' Crusade" has come to an end. I have a few closing thoughts on the book, which I'll post next time. And then, it will finally be time to put this book aside for good.

"Fools' Crusade" Postscript: Perpetual War [6]

POSTSCRIPT: PERPETUAL WAR

NATO'S BIRTHDAY PRESENT

In this section, Johnstone notes that NATO's 50th anniversary celebration was held during the Kosovo War. The organization adopted a new strategic concept, an attempt to adjust to new post-Cold War realities--in her telling, this was all a cover to increased US hegemony and imperialism. She claims that these three elements of the strategic concept prove US dominance of the alliance:

1. Nuclear Weapons. She claims that the plan ended any hopes of nuclear disarmament by committing the alliance to maintaining their stockpiles. The proliferation of nuclear weapons by non-NATO countries is not discussed here--apparently, only the US is responsible for nuclear arms control

2. Interdependence. This "point" is all about circular reasoning--the link between the US and Europe proves US dominance because the US is the dominant power in the alliance, and that dominance is proved by the link between the US and Europe. Or something like that. The mere involvement of the US is, it seems, enough to prove the worst of intentions.

3. Military action outside of the NATO theater. It is true that NATO is evolving into a regional and even global police force. I, for one, would love to see NATO troops in Darfur. Johnstone is having none of it, of course--the sovereignty of smaller nations like Sudan is more important than asking the hard questions about who will enforce international standards of human rights in a dangerous world.

She ends by noting that NATO now considered their security risks to be terrorism, organized crime, and so on, rather than the Soviet threat. She really seems to believe that NATO has no business redefining its mission even though the Soviet threat, it is safe to say, had already vanished.

"Fools' Crusade" Postscript: Perpetual War [5]

POSTSCRIPT: PERPETUAL WAR

GLOBALIZATION'S FIST

Another one-page section, and easily summarized--the "fist" in the title is the US military. To quote the end of the first paragraph:

"The night fireworks over Baghdad in 1991 and over Belgrade in 1999 were displayed on television screens all around the world was [sic] a reminder of what happens to designated "rogues". "

The connection between Milosevic and Saddam isn't novel to Johnstone--Saddam himself spoke on in support of his fellow genocidal tyrant. The linkage is revealing, however--both dictators certainly fought against American imperialism in order to defend the sovereignty of their states. It is kind of Johnstone to provide such frequent and blatant reminders of her priorities.

The second and final (and long) paragraph implies that aggressive actions by the United States serve to keep other nations in line. She claims that the bombing of Yugoslavia served to intimidate Bulgaria and Romania into complying with the requirements of NATO membership against the wishes of their populations, as if the leadership of those two nations weren't already clamoring to join the Western club. She claims that NATO membership serves mainly as a guarantee that a nation will not be the victim of NATO aggression in the future; I cannot imagine what NATO might have bombed Bulgaria for in 1999, but I suppose there's an oil well somewhere she could blame it all on.

She ends by pointing out that NATO member Turkey gets away with numerous human rights violations against the Kurds. A fair point, except that she both ignores the real pressure placed on Turkey over the years--but even so, this would not be the only double-standard the United States has held regarding its strategic allies. Which does not excuse the hypocrisy, but complaining about the hypocrisy raises this point--which is worse, the hypocrisy of not taking action in Turkey, or the hypocrisy of taking action in Yugoslavia? Johnstone and other critics of American interventions love to point out inconsistencies, but she and most other like-minded scolds consistently fail to articulate what exactly the fault is. If the United States sometimes fails to insist on civilized and humane treatment by other countries, is that a reason to condemn the US when they do?

My question from the previous post still stands--what would Diana Johnstone's response be to unilateral American military intervention in Darfur? I very much doubt she could articulate a reasonable and coherent response to that hopeful scenario.

"Fools' Crusade" Postscript: Perpetual War [4]

POSTSCRIPT: PERPETUAL WAR

2. THE REAL EXISTING NEW WORLD ORDER

In which Johnstone deliberately mixes different uses of the same word:

"Another irony is that the crusade against "nationalism" in Yugoslavia was led by the United States, which has no qualms about pursuing its own national interest with the clamorous support of a population whose flag-waving nationalism has no rival in contemporary Europe, or perhaps even in the world."

There is, I am sure, a distinction to be made between Fourth of July fireworks and cornball Stars-and-Stripes patriotism on the one hand, and a nationalism based on mythic blood-purity with religious connotations on the other. Pity Johnstone can't see it.

From there, she segues into a discussion of globalization as American hegemony in disguise, in that the supplanting of the traditional nation-state by international institutions such as the IMF and GATT are bound to be American-dominated and/or in sync with American interests. What she envisions, apparently, is a world in which the USA retains its sovereignty and everybody else loses theirs. Or, if not everybody else, then the "smaller nations" of the world. By which I doubt she means Luxembourg or Andorra; but most certainly means authoritarian, anti-Western holdouts such as Milosevic's Serbia. Once again, Johnstone puts the sovereignty of the state above the welfare of individuals.

We're deep in conspiracy land now--international finance is the primary tool by which imperialist America dismantles the sovereignty of other nations and eliminates rivals to the "New World Order" that she would like to believe has been at the forefront of American planning since George Bush Sr. made that phrase infamous. She would like very much for the reader to believe that is all part of some sinister, well-designed, masterfully implemented policy directed from the shadowy backrooms of the American Empire, out of sight of the clueless flag-waving hicks.

Unless, of course, it's time to rattle some sabers and kick some ass. Then it's time for the military to put some muscle behind this imperialist project--the subject of the next section of the book.

"Fools' Crusade" Postscript: Perpetual War [3]

POSTSCRIPT: PERPETUAL WAR

PARTNERS IN CRIME

The "partners" in the title of this section refer to the NATO allies allegedly duped into cooperating with the United States; the "crime" refers to the plot to "destroy Yugoslavia." If that seems more than a little off, wait until you read the opening sentence:

"The NATO war against Yugoslavia might be studied by ethnologists as a contemporary example of the familiar role of blood rituals in sealing the unity of groups."

Feel free to re-read that sentence again; I'm sure most of you experienced some sort of double-take. I certainly did. Please note--I am not discounting the possibility that modern nation-states are incapable of participating in pre-modern rites and rituals. There are continuities of human existence and human societies which can and should humble the hubris of contemporary humanity. That is not the point--the point is more specific--is this true? I think that anyone with even a shred of respect for the facts and the truth knows that the answer is 'No'.

This imagined blood ritual, Johnstone believes, bound the NATO countries into a collusion with an aggressive United States "even if they secretly knew better." She compares this enforced, guilt-ridden solidarity to the racist imperial ideologies of the 19th Century.

Having established the self-evident truth of this thesis in her own mind, Johnstone then proceeds to detail a "dangerous precedent" set by NATO involvement in Yugoslavia. She goes so far as to call this delusional pattern a "formula for transforming contemporary internal conflicts into pretexts for military intervention." The "formula" is as followed [each point is the first sentence from the original text; this is all quotes]:

1. Economic "reforms" weaken the state.
2. The weakening of the central state aggravates ethnic or regional particularities and conflicts.
3. The ethnic troubles are interpreted as a "human rights crisis."
4. The United States and/or NATO go to war to resolve the alleged "human rights crisis."
5. The resulting chaos is turned over to an "International Community."

If you have been following me through the preceding 261 dreary pages, you can fill in the rest of the text on each point (each are a short paragraph). We have already seen this entire "argument" developed at length throughout this book. There is no point in slogging our way through her twisted logic and revisionist retelling one more time; instead, ask yourself one question--what would Johnstone's reaction be if the United States and NATO did what should have been done years ago, and gone into Darfur to put a stop to the genocide there? Would she apply the same "formula" to a Western-led intervention to save the impoverished black Muslims of western Sudan?

Here's hoping we find the answer soon, by the way.

The section closes with a long paragraph that asserts that:

"The unilateral procedures adopted by NATO for Yugoslavia amounted to asserting a Western monopoly on determining what is a "humanitarian catastrophe" and what should be done about it. A genuine, unquestioned humanitarian emergency could be dealt with legally through the United Nations."

The first sentence involves an odd sort of circular reasoning--there is apparently something wrong with Western societies determining how they interpret and respond to global events. The second sentence is, of course, highly ironic given the counterproductive and anemic actions of the United Nations in Bosnia, Rwanda, and now Sudan. While Johnstone parses factually unsubstantiated hypothetical situations and abstract legalisms, people continue to die under the watchful eye of the "lawful" United Nations.

The section ends with Johnstone asking:

"What is to stop a ruthless group, ready to sacrifice some of its own people to reach its goals of taking power over a territory, from staging fake massacres in order to gain the prinze of being able to "use NATO as its air force"?

No bonus points for whoever guesses what she's implying here. General MacKenzie and her should do lunch sometime.