2022/03/12 (019) Column

Brother War 2.0 – A National Socialist Dejavu!?
How Can We Help Ukrainians? Like MAGA & Not Warlords!
US Stocks Rebound On Tuesday, With The DJI Up More Than 250 points,
While USD Index Stabilized Around 98.50 Points – Pausing A 3 Day Rally.


A National Socialist Dejavu!?

Slobodan Milosevic is considered the mastermind behind the most serious crimes in four Balkan wars that devastated the former Yugoslav republics of Slovenia, Croatia, Bosnia-Herzegovina and the southern Serbian province of Kosovo between 1991 and 1999. Slovenia got off comparatively lightly. 67 people died in the ten-day war in late June/early July 1991 waged by the Serb-dominated Yugoslav Army (JNA) against the territorial defenses of this small republic. The number of dead in the Croatian war (1991-1995), allegedly instigated by Milosevic to “protect the Serb minority,” is estimated at 25,000. The number of wounded is many times higher. Hundreds of thousands were displaced. The symbol of this war is the eastern Croatian town of Vukovar, which was captured by Serbian troops in November 1991 after months of fighting. Around 260 people, some of whom were injured, were transported from the clinic and murdered near Ovcara. Serb officer Mile Mirksic, who lives in Belgrade and is on the Hague wanted list like his former commander Milosevic, was in charge of the conquest. Even bloodier was the war in Bosnia-Herzegovina (1992-95), where Serbs made up 31 percent of the population. The number of dead there is estimated at 200,000, 2.4 million people had to leave their homes. Here the images from the Serbian death camps in Omarska, Karatan, Manjaca, Trnopolje and Bratunac were shocking. After conquering the eastern Bosnian town of Srebrenica in July 1995 – at that time a »UN protection zone« – the Serbs deported 8,000 Muslim men, who were probably murdered. Finally, Kosovo, which is 90 percent inhabited by Albanians: After years of oppression, the systematic expulsion of Albanians began in February 1998, which triggered NATO intervention a year later. Hundreds of thousands of Albanians fled during the war, and the death toll is unclear. Several mass graves have since been discovered. Just this week, 40 Albanian civilians, including eight children under the age of five, were exhumed from a secret mass grave in the Belgrade suburb of Batajnica. In 2002, the Serbian driver of a refrigerated truck reported how he had transported hundreds of bodies from Kosovo to Bor, Serbia.

Already on March 4, Francis Fukuyama wrote an article in the FT with the headline “Putin’s war on the liberal order” and the subtitle “Democratic values were already under threat around the world before the Russian invasion of Ukraine. Now we need to rekindle the spirit of 1989”. Which I can wholeheartedly agree with – want to agree with. Because I, too, was one of those gullible, enlightened teenagers during the 1990s who firmly believed in “the end of history” at the time.

Fukuyama sees that theories of difference, national, religious and ethnic separatism are increasing and radicalizing in the face of capitalist homogenization. Nationalism initially follows from industrialization and democratization – education and the abolition of autocracy allow natural language borders to become national borders. Nationalism stabilizes after capitalist atomization and creates identity and strength. However, Fukuyama believes that nationalism and religion will become meaningless. Another opposing moment could be that with increasing prosperity, the need for leisure time and self-realization becomes more important. So far, however, Fukuyama sees this soon being caught up by the periodic uncertainties of capitalism. Fukuyama writes that cultural imprints are very crucial for democratization and capitalization – and since they are extremely dominant, the near future will be marked by the clash of cultures. Migration from poor to rich countries also plays a major role, ultimately leading to the expansion of the western world. As we can follow with the streams of refugees due to the war in Ukraine, even daily on TV.

Many compare Putin to Hitler! But that only belittles the mass murder of the then six million Jews living in my home country Germany, who all had to pay with their deaths. In order to (un)consciously (un)willingly make more of Putin than he de facto is – to (un)consciously (un)willingly feel (un)rightly morally about him, about Russia! Rather, I would like to compare Putin to Slobodan Milosevic: neither of them are left-wing politicians, let alone liberals, and or also green politicians. Rather, religious right-wing nationalists who, after the fall of the Wall in Berlin and the reunification of West Germany and East Germany, were not looking for a healthy, peaceful, self-assured and free civilized political separation, such as the Czechs and Slovaks, in the early 1990s. Instead, perceive the military deployment as the next step, a failed civilized negotiation, for better or for worse. But one thing must not be forgotten: the end of every military operation always means the beginning of a civilized negotiation! Let’s hope so in this case too – so that everyone involved can step out of the endless pit of war healthy, peaceful, self-confident and free as quickly as possible…

US Stocks Rebound
US stocks rebound on Tuesday, with the Dow up more than 250 points, the S&P 500 rising 1.1% and the Nasdaq advancing almost 2% led by technology stocks as investors returned to faster-growing companies. Shares of banks and other financials also rose on prospects of higher long-term interest rates. Among single stocks, Nike gained 2.2% after it beat quarterly estimates for profit and revenue; and Tesla jumped about 8% after delivering its first German-made cars to customers at its Gruenheide gigafactory. On Monday, Fed Chair Powell said that the US central bank could move more aggressively by raising the interest rates by more than 25 basis points at a meeting or meetings to bring inflation, which is now running at 40 years highs, under control. Meanwhile, Russia and Ukraine failed to make progress on the ceasefire, and the shelling of Ukrainian cities continues.