From: MikePiet@aol.com
Subject: SNET: [piml] On Soveringty from Albright
Date: 18 Jun 1999 18:16:40 -0400
To: undisclosed-recipients:@returns.egroups.com@world.std.com;
-> SNETNEWS Mailing List
>From Carl S.
Lest there be any doubts about where these globalist sob's are coming from -
here it is straight from the horse's as-, er mouth. Mike P
U.S. Adds New Facet To Tough Global Issue Albright's Propo-
sal to Peacefully Transfer Sovereignty to Kosovo Upends
Precedents
By Charles Trueheart
Washington Post Foreign Service
Tuesday, February 23, 1999; Page A13
PARIS, Feb. 22 Arriving at the Kosovo peace conference
south of Paris last week, Secretary of State Madeleine K.
Albright opened a window onto an emerging dilemma of the
post-Cold War era by urging Yugoslavia's leaders to sur-
render peacefully something that for generations nations
have gone to war to protect: a piece of sovereignty.
"Great nations who understand the importance of sover-
eignty at various times cede various portions of it in order
to achieve some better good for their country," she said.
"We are looking at how the nation- state functionsin a
totally different way than people did at the beginning of
this century."
Albright was speaking about a particular conflict, but
her comments resonated against a backdrop in which questions
of sovereignty are being played out in a variety of set-
tings, some of them violent. As the ethnicAlbanians and
Serbs were being asked to rethink their notionsof what it
means to be a self-governing state, another ethnic conflict-
thrust itself onto the streets of European cities when
thousands of Kurdserupted in anger atthe capture of a Kurd-
ish rebel leader, Abdullah Ocalan, by Turkey.
The week's events placed both the ethnic Albanians of
Kosovo and the Kurds squarely on the map of contemporary
consciousness as groups that, albeit for different reasons
and under far different circumstances, are fighting for a
place of their own on a geographic map. The Kurds, like the
ethnic Albanians, have found a moment in history when it
seems propitious to demand their piece of national soil,
generating both sympathy and anxiety abroad.
In general, European leaders have seemed more squeamish
than Albright about urging others to embrace new concepts of
sovereignty and statehood. For many, the reasons are born
of Europe's proximity to many of the world's unsettled
ethnic questions, the century's vividly remembered national
wars, and restive immigrant communities. Nearly a million
Kurds, for example, live in Germany, France, Britain and
other European nations.
Further complicating Europe's reaction is its own
monumental experiment aimed at creating an increasingly
borderless continent, embodied this year by the introduction
of a new, single currency, the euro. Forproponents of a
unified Europe, the key to future strength and prosperity is
the melting away of national borders and differences.
The Kurds -- perhaps 20 million strong, or 10 times the
number of ethnic Albanians in Kosovo -- occupy a territory
that overlaps parts of Turkey, Iraq, Syria, Iran and Arme-
nia, but for centuries they have been stateless. To them
and to their sympathizers, statelessness is equivalent to
powerlessness.
They are not alone. Wars of national liberation that
challenged the established order during the Cold War typi-
cally became part of a much bigger geopolitical struggle
between the superpowers. In that respect they were funda-
mentally unlike the dramatic fractures and separatist explo-
sions of the 1990s. In the fluidity of the post-Cold War
period, pent up nationalisms have erupted.
What used to be the Soviet Union is now a collection of
nations, with others inside Russia still struggling to be
born. What used to be Yugoslavia came apart, and is still
coming apart, with horrible violence and bloodshed. What
used to be Czechoslovakia may be the smoothest kind of
national reconstitution possible.
New international arrangements, too, have presented
themselves, unintentionally greasing the path toward frag-
mentation of nations' constituent parts. Trade zones such
as Mercosur in South America or the North American Free
Trade Agreement, joint currencies such as the CFA franc in
Africa or the euro, and alliances such as NATO made tradi-
tional national systems less essential, or even undesirable
for economic growth.
All this has happened as peoples have rediscovered more
local attachments -- have found their place on their mental
map of the world. An ancient language or heritage, a common
culture within the larger cobbled-together culture of a
larger nation, have fed yearnings for commensurate political
authority. Methodical devolution and decentralization have
also been fashionable in stable political systems in the
last quarter-century -- notably of late in such places as
Scotland and Wales, Flanders and Wallonia, Spain and the new
Inuit homeland in northern Canada. But these reformist
moves likewise have unintended consequences: They can awaken
more appetites than they can accommodate without undermining
old assumptions about sovereignty.
New currents in international justice have also stimu-
lated demands for autonomy and blurred the fixities of
sovereign nations. A retired Chilean dictator can be ar-
rested in Britain on a warrant from Spain, and a Libyan
terrorism suspect may be tried in a Dutch court by Scottish
judges.
To the United States -- in many ways the major country
that has the least experience with internal impulses toward
national fragmentation -- now falls the task of knowing how
to lead, or even respond to, a world impatient with the map
it inherited and ready, even eager in places, to start
redrawing it. President Clinton's successors and Madeleine
Albright's will have to decide whether it matters to the
United States' national interest -- matters enough to wage
war, possibly -- if ethnic Albanians are ruled in Pristina
or Belgrade, if Kurds are ruled in Diyarbakir or Ankara, if
Quebecers are ruled in Quebec City or Ottawa.
No consistent answer, let alone a right one, has
emerged to such hugely complex questions of history, cul-
ture, and ethnicity, of national and sub-national identities
in a global economy dominated by a single military superpow-
er. The more cases arise that invite the rethinking Al-
bright is proposing, the more disturbingly obvious this
becomes.
To many countries, apparently, Palestinians qualify for
statehood and self-rule. Bosnians, too. The East Timorese
might. The ethnic Albanians of Kosovo deserve more autonomy
than they have, but not full independence, not yet.
And the Kurds? It depends. Kurds in Iraq get Washing-
ton's support because the enemy of our enemy is our friend.
Kurds in Turkey, on the other hand, do not, because the
enemy of our friend is our enemy.
Albright reportedly tried to coax the 29-year-old
ethnic Albanian guerrilla leader, Hashim Thaqi, into signing
the deal at Rambouillet by telling him he had a chance to be
the Gerry Adams of his people, a reference to the leader of
the political wing of the Irish Republican Army who steered
his supporters toward a peace agreement in Northern Ireland.
The Albanian side pointed out immediately that if
Albright is holding up Northern Ireland as an example, why
don't they get a referendum for independence?
This is just the problem. How many other Gerry Adamses
are lined up for their moment, how many are willing to put
down their guns and sign a settlement, and how many referen-
dums will the world tolerate?
) Copyright 1999 The Washington Post Company
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