{"id":938,"date":"2019-03-10T13:48:07","date_gmt":"2019-03-10T13:48:07","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/wsm.prolerat.org\/?page_id=938"},"modified":"2019-10-21T00:50:15","modified_gmt":"2019-10-20T23:50:15","slug":"kosovo-the-real-motives","status":"publish","type":"page","link":"https:\/\/www.worldsocialism.org\/wsm\/kosovo-the-real-motives\/","title":{"rendered":"Kosovo &#8211; the real motives"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<p><em>This extract originally appeared in the Socialist Standard (March \n2001), the monthly journal of The Socialist Party of Great Britain<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n<hr class=\"wp-block-separator\"\/>\n\n\n\n<p>Very occasionally, the bourgeois media cut to the reality of how capitalism operates. Hidden away on the comment pages of\n<em>The Guardian (London U.K.)<\/em>, writer and green George Monbiot \nprovides a compelling case for how Caspian Sea oil was a major factor in\n the Kosovan war after all. With one eye on an article by fellow liberal\n Jonathon Freedland (written at the time of the bombing), which mocked \nthe idea that oil had anything to do with the war effort, Monbiot quotes\n from various prominent sources to demonstrate the opposite.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>The Trans-Balkan oil pipeline (which is coming up for approval) will \ntransport Caspian Sea oil from the Black Sea port of Burgas to the \nAdriatic, passing through Bulgaria, Macedonia and Albania. According to a\n paper by the\nU.S. Trade and Development agency, the pipeline will \u201cprovide American \ncompanies with a key role in developing the vital east-west corridor\u201d \nand \u201cfacilitate rapid integration\u201d of the \u201cBalkans with western Europe\u201d.\n Monbiot says that there is \u201cno question\u201d that this featured prominently\n in Balkan war politics. The then\nU.S. energy secretary said: \u201cThis is about America&#8217;s energy security . .\n . We&#8217;ve made a substantial political investment in the Caspian, and \nit&#8217;s very important to us that both the pipeline map and the politics \ncome out right.\u201d The pipeline does not pass through the former \nYugoslavia, but as the Albanian president said: \u201cno solution confined \nwithin Serbian borders will bring lasting peace\u201d. Monbiot adds that \u201cthe\n message could scarcely have been blunter: if you want Albanian consent \nfor the Trans-Balkan pipeline, you had better wrest Kosovo out of the \nhands of the Serbs\u201d. Subsequently, we can now fully understand the \nstrategic need for \u201cstability\u201d in the Balkans.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>See our previous coverage of the <a href=\"wsm\/kosovo-a-war-for-justice\/\">Kosovo conflict<\/a>   where we said that \u201cwars are fought over markets, investment outlets,  raw material sources and trade routes and strategic points to control  them\u201d. Liberals mocked us at the time. Now, after their support for the  slaughter of our class in Kosovo, they will have to concede that we were  right all along.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<hr class=\"wp-block-separator\"\/>\n\n\n\n<p>Back to the <a href=\"wsm\/politics\/\">Politics page<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Back to the <a href=\"https:\/\/worldsocialism.org\/wsm\">World Socialist Movement home page<\/a> <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>This extract originally appeared in the Socialist Standard (March 2001), the monthly journal of The Socialist Party of Great Britain Very occasionally, the bourgeois media cut to the reality of how capitalism operates. Hidden away on the comment pages of The Guardian (London U.K.), writer and green George Monbiot provides a compelling case for how&#8230;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"parent":0,"menu_order":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","template":"","meta":{"magazine_newspaper_sidebar_layout":"","footnotes":""},"class_list":["post-938","page","type-page","status-publish","hentry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.worldsocialism.org\/wsm\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/938","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.worldsocialism.org\/wsm\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.worldsocialism.org\/wsm\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/page"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.worldsocialism.org\/wsm\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.worldsocialism.org\/wsm\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=938"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.worldsocialism.org\/wsm\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/938\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2617,"href":"https:\/\/www.worldsocialism.org\/wsm\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/938\/revisions\/2617"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.worldsocialism.org\/wsm\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=938"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}