The monolithic line of the Soviet superpower was promoted by vast campaigns conducted via petitions expressing international solidarity against U.S. imperialism and its lackeys. The “Letter” or the “Petition” expressing the will of the working class or peace-loving nations was a standard Stalinist ploy in public diplomacy. A signature on such a document implied loyalty to much more than the text itself: it was a declaration of fealty to the Kremlin. At the height of the Cold war US actors and intellectuals who had signed Soviet-inspired or CPUSA promoted appeals for peace or international solidarity fell foul of the McCarthyite blacklist.
Ex-Communist opponents of the Kremlin tried to persuade Cold War Washington to imitate Soviet methods of propaganda and mass mobilization in the 1950s, but American-sponsored front organizations and declarations never got going - not least because the Americans lacked a Communist Party-style apparatus to promote participation in the campaign. More recently, however, with the defection of so many ex-Communist apparatchiks in both the East and West to the U.S. camp experienced hands in the propaganda and mass mobilization game have joined the American side.
The most dramatic example of ex-Communist fealty to the otherwise isolated U.S. line on war with Iraq was the Letter of the so-called “Vilnius Ten” published on 5th February, 2003. The signatories from Albania, Bulgaria, Croatia, Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Macedonia, Romania, Slovakia, and Slovenia accepted U.S. claims of an imminent threat from Iraq on the basis of “compelling evidence” presented by Secretary of State Colin Powell. With the exception of Latvia every one of them has a head of state who was a member of the Communist Party. Bulgaria’s deposed child king, Simeon Saxe Coburg Gotha may now be in office there as prime minister, but he has been criticised by the local New European elite (children of the old Communist elite) for being inadequately enthusiastic about Rumsfeld’s strategy - some even point out that Simeon used to be a representative of the French arms manufacturer Thales during his long exile. (If only His Majesty had done the decent thing and peddled Lockheed Martin Marietta’s merchandise of death, then his NATO credentials would be beyond suspicion.) In any case, the ex-Communist Bulgarian President Georgi Parvanov has fallen into line as loyally as his old Party bosses did in the past.
For all their rhetoric about backing America because of their direct “experience of tyranny” (something which almost every signatory had served not opposed), a sense of déjà vu hung over the letter of the Vilnius Ten. With its combination of pathetic adherence to high ideals and hardly veiled threats of force, it recalled the Letters issued by Warsaw Pact heads of state in the run up to “internationalist” intervention against Czechoslovakia in 1968 or the threats to do the same to Poland in 1981 if “anti-socialist elements” were not restrained. Today it is the global order and market democracy which must be imposed by bayonets rather than the protection of the “integrity of the peace-loving Socialist Commonwealth” but the mentality behind signing up to a vassals’ declaration of fealty is more Brezhnev than Bush - or at least so one might have hoped.
Like Soviet-era statements by the Warsaw pact puppets, the New Europeans were not left to draft their Letter unaided. Just as representatives of the International Department of the Soviet Communist Party supervised even the most abject Party barons of Eastern Europe, so America provides consultants to the New Europe to ensure every comma and stop is coordinated with the needs of the New World Order.
The master of ceremonies of the Vilnius Ten was Bruce Jackson, the Chairman of the neo-conservative globalist Project for a New American Century. He took that post after serving for years as vice-president of weapons manufacturer Lockheed-Martin, which he joined after years of service at the U.S. Defense department. Jackson also headed the Republican Party Platform subcommittee for National Security and Foreign Policy during the 2000 US presidential election campaign, drafting an explicit call for the removal of Saddam Hussein well before the neo-cons latched on to the argument that 9-11 had “changed everything.” In fact, he is chairman of the Committee for the Liberation of Iraq.
Mr. Jackson’s ambivalent status as advocate of NATO entry and businessman was revealed in The Baltic Times on 15th November, 2001 when the newspaper interviewed him. It reported that as President of the U.S. Committee on NATO he was “lobbying hard for the expansion of NATO” but at the same time he was “vice-president for strategy and planning at… Lockheed Martin”! Asked about Estonia and Latvia’s decision to buy Lockheed radars, Jackson replied: “I don’t do sales… I am just the guy who files all the paperwork… You see, working for a corporation and working for a volunteer organization are two things we separate more clearly in the United States.” It would require schizophrenia of superpower proportions to think that a human being can achieve that kind of separation!
Just as Mr. Jackson insisted that he did not mix profit and politics, his local acolytes rushed to praise his contribution to their Letter and to claim the credit for drafting it for themselves! On 20th February 2003, the International Herald Tribune published extensive non-sequiturs from Baltic and other East European diplomats under the headline: “U.S. lobbyist helped draft Eastern Europe's Iraq statement." Thomas Fuller reported, “The idea for a statement first came up at a dinner at the Slovak Embassy in Washington attended by Jackson and ambassadors from most of the 10 countries, diplomats say. In a recent interview, Jackson said he was present at the dinner, but he played down his role in helping initiate the text. ”According to Jackson, "The American influence in all this is vastly exaggerated… This was a product of the Slovaks and really the Latvians. They had the pen on this, and they coordinated the process." But according to Fuller, “East European officials involved in the process give Jackson more credit.”
Needless to say, the passage most cited by US officials and CNN was not drafted by a Baltic hand. According to Fuller: “Rihards Mucins, counsellor at the Latvian Embassy in Washington, said Jackson suggested the following passage, one of the most compelling sections in the statement: ‘Our countries understand the dangers posed by tyranny and the special responsibility of democracies to defend our shared values.’…” Apparently, the New Europeans needed help coming up with that platitude.
The degree to which Jackson acts as a pro-consul of US power in the old Warsaw Pact was revealed by Radio Free Europe’s report on 10th February, 2003, that Jackson had demanded the dismissal of the Bulgarian prosecutor-general, Nikola Filchev, who had called the Letter-drafting consultant-patriot a “swindler”. Jackson said that Bulgaria’s chances of getting Senate confirmation for its NATO entrance would be enhanced by such personnel changes!
Fuller reveals that, despite its name, the Vilnius Ten are more likely to coordinate inside the Beltway than in the Baltics: “Today, when the Vilnius-10 coordinates its policies, officials of the group's member states usually meet in Washington”! No wonder Jackson could assure journalists, “They clearly wanted to do stuff to impress upon the U.S. Senate the freedom-fighting credentials of these new democracies.” Their freedom comes from Washington not their own efforts.
In fact, the heroes of the New Europe openly explain that defence of their own territory rests with outsiders. They prefer to bet on American intervention than Old European aid. Imants Liegis, Latvia's ambassador to NATO in Brussels, said he felt more confident of the United States securing his country's safety than France.
"There's this feeling that if ever there were any problems in our neck of the woods, perhaps it wouldn't be the French who would be first there on the front lines.” Liegis told Fuller. "It would be more likely to be the Americans.” Well, maybe. Certainly America is much stronger but the recent record of US intervention to protect the weak is hardly less chequered than the French.
Governments and lobbyists in the New Europe may be in harmony about the need to toe the US line, but as the pro-US Transitions on-Line admitted on 10th February “public opinion in Central Europe is running overwhelmingly against the use of armed force in Iraq. Almost without exception, the opposition numbers across the continent are upwards of 70 percent against; this figure shoots up even higher if the question is posed with the United States proceeding militarily without United Nations Security Council sanction.”
Brian Mitchell of Investor's Business Daily collated some polling data on 25th February, 2003 which showed how out of step with their own public opinion the New European ex-Communist leaders were. A “poll by Gallup International finds that [ordinary] ‘New Europeans’ don't see the issue much differently than the French and the Germans. War with Iraq is most popular in Romania, where 45% are for it. It's least popular in Bosnia, where 84% are opposed… The situation is much the same in Poland and Hungary. Large majorities oppose war - 63% in Poland, 82% in Hungary - but their ex-Communist leaders are backing the U.S.”
The former Slovene foreign minister, Zoran Thaler, an enthusiast for NATO and the EU, warned on 22nd February that, in the run-up to Slovenia’s accession votes, “Any exaggerated pro-Bushism could be a dangerous nail in the coffin of the NATO referendum.” While the Latvian President, Vaira Vike Freiberga (the only non-ex-Communist in the Ten – some of her relatives were Nazi collaborators) told CNN on 17th February, 2003, that her country was “particularly aware of the price of not containing tyranny since we paid for it with half a century of totalitarian rule.” When the interviewer put a recent poll saying that three-quarters of her population oppose official backing for an invasion of Iraq, Vike Freiberga replied, “I am surprised that it is only three quarters. I think that with the past we have, and many of us like myself remember war…Of course we are against war.” So even the supporters of war admit that their people are not with them.
Undiplomatically, but not incomprehensibly, President Chirac responded tartly to the New Europeans taking sides in clubs (NATO and the EU) which they have yet to join. Ratification of their admission should be delayed and Chirac was not wrong to say to the Vilnius Ten, “If they wanted to find a way to reduce their chances to enter Europe, they could not have found a better way” because Europe really needs to pause before taking the momentous step of admitting into its ruling counsels and sovereign legal bodies the New Europeans. The United States may be happy for a Trojan Horse of cynical apparatchiks to enter the EU as well as NATO, but West Europeans have much more to lose from sharing power with Rumsfeld’s Fifth Column. Take a look at who they are and what they say.
On 19th February, 2003, Radio Free Europe quoted the ex-Second Secretary of Ceausescu’s Communist Party, now Romania’s numero uno, President Ion Iliescu as rejecting Chirac’s criticism, saying that the age of “you are either for us or against us” is past - but has anyone told President Bush that! What Iliescu meant is that only superpowers can demand subservience and France is not one of them.
For instance, Poland’s President, Aleksander Kwasniewski, a minister under General Jaruzelski in the 1980s (when his current premier was in the Politburo) now declares, “If it is President Bush’s vision it is mine.” Donald Rumsfeld is happy to embrace Polish Prime Minister, Leszek Miller, a member of the Politburo until the bitter end, but then Rumsfeld was happy to shake hands with Saddam when it suited him. Slovakia’s long-serving Foreign Minister, Eduard Kukan, who is always in the front row backing the US use of force, received his diplomatic training in Communist Czechoslovakia when he served as ambassador to Mengistu’s Ethiopia. Other prominent ex-Communist apparatchiks across the region repeat oaths of fealty to America as once they parroted the Brezhnev line.
Although the New European media hurried to pour scorn on France and accuse President Chirac of acting like their government’s former patron, Leonid Brezhnev, the reality is that France clearly lacks the network of willing agents which the United States has built up in the former Communist bloc since 1989 (at the latest) to do its bidding. In fact given the CIA’s role in funding the so-called “independent” media in the last days of the Warsaw Pact, it is hardly surprising that across the region journalists whose outlets have received generous handouts scurried to praise the paymaster behind their paper or station and to denounce French “bullying.” For instance, Western intelligence provided the equipment and money which made the Polish Gazeta Wyborcza’s Adam Michnik into a dollar multi-millionaire after 1989 and a voice for Big Brother. (He is also one of the loudest ex-dissident voices calling for reconciliation with Jaruzelski while scorning Poland’s equivalent of the Christian Right, but that doesn’t worry George Bush.)
Media control is vital in any political order. As capitalism demands as much sacrifice and social upheaval as Communism once called for, it is little wonder that Orwellian “free media’ programmes sponsored by the USA have almost invariably concentrated media control in the hands of an unholy alliance of ex-dissidents and ex-Communists, such as in Poland.
The costs of joining NATO are not inconsiderable and the United States has repeatedly twisted the arms of the New Europeans to ensure that they meet their NATO defence upgrades by buying only US weapons, radars, etc. The Czech Republic, for instance, had originally preferred the Anglo-Swedish Grippen fighter pane, but after intervention in the 2002 parliamentary elections by the usual surrogates (the US-funded and organised NGOs, security institutes, and minority but affluent parties) switched its purchasing policies to U.S. companies.
Poland, for instance, has savagely cut health services but is to spend more than US$3.5 billion on F-16s! Cheaper European models were rejected.
Bulgaria was so loyal to the old Kremlin that it was routinely derided as the 16th republic of the Soviet Union. Today it is desperate to achieve that status of 51st state in the Union. Even its sale of the state tobacco monopoly to a German predator had to be revoked after the US embassy reminded Sofia that Bulgaria was not yet in NATO. Needless to say, the re-run of the auction produced an American buyer.
Of course, more than a decade after the fall of one-party rule even in the New Europe another generation is coming up. Unfortunately, youth does not guarantee a skeleton-free cupboard. Almost invariably, the next generation of ascending politicians and bureaucrats favoured in the New Europe by Bush and Blair would have been on the upward slopes any way because they are the children of the old Communist nomenklatura. Born into privilege they went to the special schools which taught fluent English well before 1989, and then onto the elite institutes which already housed programmes in capitalist economics and methods. They were well-prepared for the end of Communism and able to ditch the Komsomol for a preppy style without batting an eyelid. Naïve Westerners inculcated with a Rousseauist belief in the innocence of youth routinely swooned when some Polish scion of a Communist dynasty wafted into their institutes and offices mouthing in impeccable English Thatcherite nostrums - only to drop the old bird once she was out of power and to reveal themselves born-again Euro-integrationists - but of course always in tune with Washington’s line.
US tax-dollars have played a major role in churning out this next generation of the New World Order. The Soros foundations too have closely cooperated with Western governments in selecting the crème de la crème for special training. I remember in 1996 the British Foreign Office and the Soros Foundation jointly funding scholarships at Cambridge for Albanian graduate students. The regime there had only collapsed in 1991 and its restoration was well under way (achieved in 1997), but what was striking was how far the pre-selected candidates from Albania had only one thing in common: 100% success in their Marxism-Leninism courses at school and university before 1991! The locals staffing the US and Western European polit-NGOs in East-Central Europe almost invariably come from old Party backgrounds. They have gone from being Stalin’s grandchildren to George W. Bush’s favourite kids but has the mentality of inherited privilege and power changed?
Just as the Party line changed several times in the past (1921, 1928, 1939, 1956…) and each time the nomenklatura expected the proles to follow their about-face without question, so the transformation of the Communist elite after 1989 into the natural representatives of the West has followed the same assumption of infallibility. Whatever the elite believes must not be questioned until it changes its mind, then everyone must fall behind the new direction.
|
