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The recent U.S.-led NATO aerial slaughter in the Balkans proves once again that imperialism always leads to war. Clinton, Blair, and other NATO bosses said they were bombing Yugoslavia for "humanitarian" reasons. This was a Big Lie worthy of Hitler. The humanitarian hype about saving Kosovar Albanian refugees was a disgusting, cynical cover for the war's true motives.

The war was primarily a struggle for control of the potential profit bonanza from oil in the Caspian Sea region. On a shaky, temporary basis, it united the imperialists of Western Europe and their U.S. rivals against Milosevic. Competing factions of the U.S. ruling class, fresh from their Clinton impeachment brawl, also briefly got together to swat him down. In neither case did this unity last. U.S. imperialism may have shown that it can still literally get away with murder in defense of its profit interests. It continues to dominate the international scene. On the other hand, the latest Balkan war also sharpened every major contradiction in the world and deepened the main splits among U.S. bosses. It settled nothing. On the contrary: far wider and bloodier oil wars are in the cards, and a brutal struggle is brewing among factions of U.S. rulers over control of state power.

Oil Control Crucial to All Imperialists

The air war over Kosovo shows how much violence the rulers will use to secure even a secondary oil source. Both sides slaughtered workers by the thousands and made hundreds of thousands jobless and homeless. Worse yet will be the after-effects of NATO's "humanitarian" genocide in the years to come. Hundreds of thousands of Yugoslav workers, including the unborn, are now at risk from diseases due to bombing-related pollution.

But this horror is mild compared to the mayhem U.S. imperialists are preparing in the future, as they gear up to fight for the grand prize in the Middle East. A system that constantly forces oil wars on the world's workers has to be destroyed once and for all. Only communist revolution can do this job. Our Party will struggle however long it takes to win this goal. The process requires, among many other things, a constant effort to expose the real reasons for bosses' wars. In order to win, the working class needs a thorough understanding of its class enemy.

The life-and-death struggle to monopolize energy resources, particularly oil, lies at the heart of inter-imperialist rivalry. Oil remains the lifeblood of modern imperialist industry. Any given imperialist's dream of super-power status requires control of oil at every stage-discovery, pumping, refining, transporting, and marketing.

The biggest U.S. oil firms are Exxon-Mobil, Chevron, and Texaco. These descendants of the Rockefeller Standard Oil empire depend largely on Middle Eastern supplies, which make up two-thirds of the world's known trillion-barrel reserves. The Rockefeller interests want U.S. foreign policy and military doctrine focused on the defense of this treasure.

Exxon Rivals Dive Into the Caspian

However, the Rockefeller companies can no longer dictate as absolutely as they once did. The race for Caspian oil provides a case in point. When the Soviet Union broke up in the 1990s, Rockefeller competitors began a stampede for alternate sources near and beneath the Caspian Sea. Leading the charge were British Petroleum (BP) and Amoco (which merged in 1998) and the Russian giant Lukoil. However, getting oil from the Caspian to market isn't easy. The Caspian is landlocked, and therefore oil companies and governments have woven a tangled web of competing pipelines.

The Balkans are crucial to these pipelines because oil destined for Western Europe must pass through them at one point or another. In early 1997, BP and the Texas Halliburton Company proposed a pipeline that would go from Burgas in Bulgaria through Skopje in Macedonia (15 miles from Kosovo) to Vlore, a port in Albania. It was to carry 750,00 barrels of BP Amoco crude to European Union markets.

The Rockefeller oil moguls consider the Balkans strategic for different reasons. Exxon-Mobil has no pipelines of its own there. But they certainly don't want to lose the rich European market to BP Amoco or anyone else. They therefore have a strategic stake in Caspian-related developments. Geography also makes the Balkan region a key stepping-stone to the Rockefeller Middle Eastern interests. So the main wing of U.S. bosses has an interest in keeping Balkan countries divided, weak, and pro-U.S. The first Rockefeller plan for the former Yugoslavia set up its provinces in the early 1990s as "autonomous" regions and put local tyrants in charge of each.

The Rockefellers actually considered Milosevic a potential U.S. ally at the time. Rockefeller agent Cyrus Vance headed the consortium that imported Yugo cars into the U.S. But the Yugo turned out to be a lemon, and, from the standpoint of Exxon and its competitors, Milosevic proved no more reliable than his car.

Rulers Whack Milosevic for Trying to Horn in On Their Oil Racket

Sure, Milosevic is a butcher. He's committed many acts of violence against Yugoslav workers in defense of his own profit interests. But U.S. and other NATO bosses hardly care about that. The initial breakup of the former Yugoslavia was accompanied by a brutal wave of racist expulsions, in which Croatian fascists, backed by U.S. and German imperialists, drove out hundreds of thousands of Serbian workers, killing thousands. From western bosses' standpoint, Milosevic's true offense was hardly a second-rate genocide campaign. After all, nobody takes a back seat historically to U.S. and German imperialism in the matter of mass murder. NATO identified Milosevic as a criminal for one predominant reason: he was trying to grab a piece of the pipeline action and steal a big share of Caspian oil wealth for himself and his clique in Belgrade.

In September 1997, Serbia's state-run oil company began talks with Macedonian bosses about a pipeline running north from Skopje through Kosovo to Belgrade and the Yugoslav refinery at Pancevo (Athens News Agency, 9/7/97). The plan further called for shipping oil along the Rhein-Main-Danube highway to Hungary, Austria, Germany, and beyond. Milosevic clearly intended to become an oil exporter. The 200,000 barrels a day his line would siphon off from BP Amoco & Co. could supply Serbia's needs five times over.

But his ambitions went even further. According to a report from the U.S. Energy Administration (EIA, June 1999), Milosevic was also scheming to get oil directly from Russia's Druzhba pipeline, which runs to central Europe. He further hoped to rearrange the proposed SouthEast European line so that Caspian oil would go from Rumania to Italy through Serbia, Croatia, and Slovenia.

Milosevic's insolence against the gangsters of Big Oil momentarily united them against him. BP Amoco, Shell, France's Total and Elf, Italy's ENI and Agip, as well as their Rockefeller Exxon Mobil competitors, who didn't want Russia's chum becoming a new energy czar, all decided that he was getting too big for his britches and had to be punished.

Clinton & Co. Underestimate Their Enemy

On March 24, Clinton, who generally follows the Rockefeller line, launched a NATO-sponsored bombing campaign. Milosevic was supposed to cave in after three days to the threat that NATO's air war would level Yugoslavia and in the process destroy Yugoslav rulers' ability to refine and transport oil. But he didn't, and Clinton-NATO were embarrassed into carrying out their threat. The "establishment" media only hinted at it during the war, but as the EIA report quoted above makes clear, the main targets were Serbia's oil refineries, oil storage sites, petrochemical plants, and infrastructure of ports and bridges along the Danube River. Thousands of civilians died under the bombs. The long-term public health and environmental consequences probably threaten the majority of the Yugoslav population.

Air War Sharpens Inter-Imperialist Rivalries...

But the Yugoslav working class and Milosevic's dream of oil riches weren't the only casualties. The NATO alliance quickly exposed its own feet of clay. Greece refused to go along with the bombing from the start, because Greek oil companies stood to cash in on Serbian pipeline deals. The Germans, who depend on Serbia's pal Russia for their energy, wanted the war over fast. It will be a cold day in hell before the new nazis of the "Fourth Reich" in Berlin send their troops or Luftwaffe (air force) to fight again under U.S. orders. The French kept going behind Clinton's back to urge a Russian-sponsored deal.

The Russian bosses couldn't stop Clinton/NATO from bombing Yugoslavia, but they emerged stronger from this war. Russian capitalism may be in an economic mess and badly in debt, but it showed its potential to rise from the political ashes. Russian rulers brokered the deal that set up the present uneasy cease-fire in Kosovo. When they didn't like the way Clinton & Co. were riding roughshod over them, they dispatched a military contingent to seize the vital airport at Kosovo's capital Pristina. This act was primarily symbolic, but it's a sign of things to come. Even though in the short term, the power struggle in Moscow saw the dumping of Yevgeny Primakov, who has led the main anti-U.S. faction, the long-range outlook seems to favor the rise of the Russian political forces who consider U.S. imperialism their key strategic enemy.

British rulers, who are supposed to be the most steadfast of U.S. allies, proved reliable for only one faction of U.S. bosses. British Prime Minister Blair demanded ground troops to secure BP Amoco's pipelines. Rockefeller's Exxon Mobil was content to flatten Milosevic's oil facilities and transportation network. Exxon wants to reserve ground troops for use in the Middle East. This split not only divided the Rockefellers from their British buddies. It also intensified the rift within the U.S. ruling class.

...And Deepens Splits Among U.S. Fascist Moneybags

The question of ground troops stood at the center of the dispute among billionaire murderers. From day one of his "humanitarian" aerial genocide, Clinton had vowed that he would never invade Kosovo. But Milosevic's ability to withstand weeks of bombing exposed the miscalculations by NATO's strategic planners. Five weeks into the war, he was still in control. A chorus of U.S. politicians began lambasting Clinton's conduct of the war and echoing Blair's call for ground invasion. In the forefront stood Arizona Sen. John McCain, who demanded a land force to "defend our interests and values" (May 4 speech to the Senate).

These "interests" turned out to be none other than the pipelines BP Amoco, Texas-based Halliburton (the world's largest oil facility builder), Bechtel, and other Rockefeller rivals were building. They were the ones most directly threatened by Milosevic's own pipeline maneuvers. Sen. Richard Lugar began singing McCain's invasion song. Lugar hails from Indiana, where BP Amoco just happens to have huge facilities at Hammond and Whiting.

In the policy dogfight over the Yugoslavia war, it's hard to pinpoint who was calling the shots when. We don't know just how much collusion took place between the Rockefeller Mafia and its BP Amoco Halliburton competitors. However, it is certain that within two months of the first bombardments, two diametrically opposed outlooks had emerged. The BP gang wanted U.S. and British troops to safeguard BP's Balkan pipelines and die for them in droves if necessary. At the same time, Rockefeller yes-men were warning that the U.S. had "an incentive to remove its troops from Kosovo. They may well be needed elsewhere-on the Korean peninsula...or in the Persian Gulf" (Michael Mandelbaum, of the Rockefeller Council on Foreign Relations, New York Times, 7/7).

But the plot thickens further. McCain and Lugar also led Senate faction fights to allow oil drilling in Alaska's Arctic National Wildlife Refuge and to permit the export of Alaskan crude. These measures, which the Rockefeller oil companies oppose, would benefit BP more than any other company. BP holds the lion's share of Alaskan oil investment. McCain, incidentally, was the 1996 Dole presidential campaign's national security advisor. Much financing for this campaign came from anti-Rockefeller domestic oil money.

Amoco Breaks Away From Rockefeller Oil and Rockefeller Banks

Amoco, now merged with BP and Arco, is an interesting case study in ruling class internal contradiction. Formerly Standard Oil of Indiana, it has changed in 40 years from a loyal Rockefeller vassal into the opposite. Of all the Standard Oil firms, the Rockefellers had the smallest stake in Amoco, which began distancing itself from the fold in the early 1960s. CEO John Swearingen decided "that the New York bankers were not going to run Standard" (Emmett Dedman, Challenge and Response, a company-commissioned history of Amoco, pp.98-9). Amoco further freed itself from the Rockefeller financial empire by becoming the first industrial company to issue "commercial paper," that is, to borrow directly from the money market and thus bypass the banks.

The growth of alternative capital sources has been crucial to the relative weakening of Rockefeller power. Now even Wal-Mart is offering banking services. The recent BP-Amoco merger is another threat to the Eastern Establishment. Amoco alone used to get most of its crude from North American sources. It didn't share in the Exxon Saudi gold mine. But the merged BP Amoco is another story. As Exxon's second biggest rival, it would have a bonanza of cheap sources if it got untroubled access to Caspian crude.

The oil giants' profit battle has spilled over to Wall Street. Goldman Sachs, one of the world's top investment houses, long loyal to Rockefeller, has now joined forces with BP Amoco. When Goldman Sachs went public this spring, a board of directors replaced the old partnership:

• one of the seven new directors is Sir John Browne, chairman of BP Amoco
• Peter Sutherland, BP's co-chairman, is a managing director of Goldman Sachs
• Henry Paulson, Goldman Sachs's chairman and biggest shareholder, is backing McCain for president (Business Week, 4/19/99)
• fomer Treasury Secretary Robert Rubin, an ex-Goldman Sachs partner, quit Clinton's cabinet during the Kosovo policy debate

BP Amoco And Exxon-Mobil Wrangle From Balkans To Iran

BP Amoco seems to have a two-pronged energy strategy: Russia and Iran. It has borrowed heavily from the German Dresdner Bank to buy up Russia's ailing oil giant, Sidanco. Its intention to move into BP's old monopoly, Iran, under the current regime, brings it into even sharper conflict with Rockefeller. However, French oil has a leg up on BP in Iran. That's probably why Goldman Sachs is fighting against the French giant Elf's plan to take over Total.

BP Amoco needs the Balkan pipelines as badly as it needs mouthpieces like McCain and Lugar. Halliburton, the builder of BP Amoco's pipeline between Bulgaria and Albania, has considerable Washington clout. Halliburton CEO Dick Cheney was a Secretary of Defense. Halliburton director Lawrence Eagelburger was a Secretary of State. Halliburton co-chair Anne Armstrong heads a major anti-Rockefeller think-tank, the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS).

But BP Amoco wasn't the only Exxon-Mobil rival trying to protect Balkan oil routes. Last January, senior executives of Conoco, Enron, Briton, Texaco, Unocal, Pennzoil, and El Paso Energy, as well as BP Amoco, met in Houston, Texas, with Greece's development minister. Greece is basically an oil broker for the Russian energy giant Lukoil, The topic: the Bulgarian-Greek oil pipeline and gas distribution in Greece, Turkey, and Bulgaria. Meanwhile, Texas governor George W. Bush was proclaiming the Greek ambassador's wife an "honorary citizen of Texas" (Athens News Agency, 1/28).

Billionaires' Brawl For State Power Will Intensify...

The stakes are very high for all these bosses. McCain is running for president. So is Bush. The Rockefeller mob will stop at nothing to beat back the interests threatening their Middle Eastern cash cow and Wall Street dominance. The 2000 electoral campaign will surely see a sharpening of the power struggle that led to Clinton's impeachment. The Rockefellers may have declined, but they are still the most powerful U.S. capitalist faction. The other bosses will defend their treasure chests with equal ruthlessness.

So estimating which gang of bosses won and lost in the latest Yugoslavia war depends on the faction being talked about. U.S. imperialists, as a class, proved that they can still launch wars of this type and encounter very little real resistance. This situation will probably continue for some time to come. U.S. bosses got a military beachhead in the Balkans. The Rockefeller gang was able to prevent the land invasion they had wanted to avoid-for the time being. The BP-Amoco-Halliburton crew forced the issue of air war but didn't get the ground troops they had demanded. So it appears as though each of the two main factions got a little something and also lost a little something in the short run.

...As International Oil Rivalries Slowly Build Toward WWIII

Over the long haul, however, this war advanced the process that will eventually force a confrontation between an isolated U.S. imperialism and all of its main rivals. As we pointed out above, Russian rulers, despite their many internal problems and weaknesses, are on the road to reconstituting themselves as a major threat to U.S. imperialism. Chinese rulers are on the same road: the U.S. air force's "accidental" bombing of the Chinese Belgrade embassy wasn't a step toward cementing friendship. European rulers' main reaction to the war was a decision to develop their own integrated military, independently of NATO.

None of these developments will happen in a hurry. U.S. economic, military, technological, political, and cultural (if you can call the crap coming out of Hollywood "culture") strength remains high. The Russians and Chinese have a long way to go before they can mount an effective challenge to the U.S. on the battlefield. German-led European bosses have not gone beyond the talking stage of their strategic breakaway from NATO. So the process is unfolding slowly.

But it is unfolding, and warfare is a constant aspect of it. Since the collapse of the Berlin Wall and the break-up of the former Soviet Union, U.S. bosses have been involved in virtually non-stop military adventures. Look at the record: an invasion of Panama in 1989, Persian Gulf I (1990-91), Somalia (1992-93), Bosnia (1995), Persian Gulf II (the air war, 1998-9), and Yugoslavia (1999). In addition, there have been a series of occupations (Haiti (1994-), Bosnia (1995-), and Macdeonia (1995-). And the U.S. maintains its bloody track record in Latin America, where there is now talk of a multinational force to defend U.S. imperialist interests. Many hundreds of thousands of workers have died in these "humanitarian" profit wars. So even though the qualitative leap toward direct confrontation between the world's major bosses is maturing gradually, the general direction is clear.

Sooner or later a showdown will take place within the U.S. ruling class over foreign and domestic energy policy. Will the Rockefellers win out and launch another Middle Eastern ground war? Will the BP Amoco Halliburton forces gain the upper hand? We have long maintained the estimate that a new Middle Eastern ground war-to defend Exxon profits in Saudi Arabia and possibly take over Iraq's vast reserves-is highly likely.

Workers Have No Side To Choose In Rulers' Faction Fights

But even if the Rockefellers lose the power struggle, war and fascism are in the cards one way or another, as the current Balkan butchery proves. These billionaires will spill as much workers' blood as they think necessary to protect their profits and class dictatorship. Our class has absolutely no interest in lining up behind any of them.

From Hitler's "Master Race" to Clinton/NATO's airborn "humanitarian" terror, the rulers invent one Big Lie after another to disguise the profit motive of their wars. But no Big Lie can alter the profit system's fundamental nature. No media hype can ever make imperialism serve the working class. The road to revolution will be hard and very long. But communism's ultimate triumph is certain. Each war, big or small, gives us an opportunity to develop our line, to put it into practice, and to improve as the leadership of the working class.

Absence Of Mass International Communist Movement Lets Bosses Get Away With Murder-For The Time Being

Since the collapse of the old communist movement, worldwide imperialism, headed by the U.S. hasn't had to face an armed, organized class enemy with state power. NATO arose after World War II mainly as an alliance of rival bosses who overcame their differences to unite against the menace of communist revolution embodied by the once-socialist Soviet Union and later Red China. NATO could never have launched this war over Yugoslavia while Stalin led the Soviet Union.

But these threats to the imperialists have disappeared, because socialism's internal flaws led to the restoration of the profit system. Now Russia and China are imperialist powers themselves, with the long-range goal of replacing U.S. domination.

For the time being, revolutionary class struggle is very weak, and no other imperialist, including Russia, China, and the European Union, is strong enough to challenge the U.S. militarily. Therefore, at the moment, despite their own many internal divisions and weaknesses, U.S. rulers retain great maneuverability and the power to commit murder almost at will.

On the other hand, as the present situation in Kosovo shows, each war tends to over-extend the U.S. imperialists and reduce this maneuverability for the future. As Stalin wrote shortly after World War II, "To think that [rival imperialists] will not try to get on their feet again, will not try to smash U.S. domination and force their way to independent development, is to believe in miracles" (Economic Problems of Socialism in the USSR, 1952).

We communists in the Progressive Labor Party don't believe in miracles. We know that the imperialist leopard can't change its spots. We believe in the working class's potential to rule society and in the slow, difficult, day-to-day struggle to build our Party. Again and again, the rulers will launch their mass murders for profit. Every one of these wars can help us build our movement and move closer toward ending the era of capitalist rule.

U.S. Imperialism''s Record Of "Humanitarian" Genocide From Iraq To Yugoslavia

For nearly seven weeks between late March and early June, U.S.-led NATO warplanes committed daily acts of mass terror against Yugoslav workers. The military results were negligible, as news reports in the bosses' media after the war indicated after the cease-fire. But the real targets probably weren't military.

The real targets seem to have been Yugoslavia's oil and petrochemical industries. According to a report released on June 28 by the Regional Environmental Center for Central and Eastern Europe (REC), NATO bombed at least 23 petrochemical plants, oil refineries, and fuel storage depots, as well as another 121 major industrial plants.

A lot was made at the time of civilian deaths cynically labeled "collateral damage." Even the tightly-controlled capitalist press couldn't hide atrocity stories about the bombing of school buses, hospitals, apartment houses, and bridges. Thousands of workers undoubtedly perished during these raids.

But the body count has just begun. According to the REC report, which provides 46 pages of painstaking detail, the carpet-bombing of Yugoslav industry released thousands of tons of highly toxic chemicals into the air, soil, and water of a country about the size of Kentucky. These poisons pose an important short-term health threat.

A longer-term menace threatens Yugoslavia's water and soil, which may remain contaminated for years. Then there's the matter of radioactive waste from depleted uranium (DU) weapons, to say nothing of the virtual leveling of Yugoslavia's transportation infrastructure. The REC report is available from: [http://www.rec.org/REC/Announcements/yugo/contents.html]

It's possible to make a ballpark guess about the number of workers whose lives may be ended or destroyed by Clinton's philanthropic bombs. The ongoing death toll in Iraq provides a good guideline. Bush's 1991 Desert Storm killed several hundred thousand Iraqi soldiers and workers outright. U.S. imperialist sanctions have killed hundreds of thousands more since 1991. Many of these deaths are due directly to disease, including horrible forms of cancer, and birth deformities caused by the toxins released through Bush's bombs.

The nature of NATO's targets in Yugoslavia leaves no doubt that this was an oil war. And the REC report makes absolutely clear that although the imperialists may compete with each other for profits, they are all absolutely united in their ferocious willingness to kill as many workers as they consider necessary in pursuit of their greedy class interests.

The Web Of Competing Pipelines And Oil Bosses' Pipedreams

IRAN--The shortest path from the Caspian wells to the open sea runs south through Iran to the Persian Gulf. But the U.S government opposes an Iranian route because it would strengthen Islamic fundamentalism and boost the profits of Elf and Total, French firms that dominate Iran's oil trade. Mobil favors an Iranian route but only if the Islamic regime can be ousted--as the U.S. media hopes. No pipeline construction has begun.

CHINA--Beijing's call for a 4,000-mile link to the Caspian falls short of practicality. But it underscores China's growing rivalry with the U.S. for access to the world's oil.

TURKEY--The long route that Clinton supports, one from Baku in Azerbaijan to Ceyhan on Turkey's Mediterranean shore, would avoid Iran and Russia, but BP Amoco, the majority owner of the Azeri oil consortium, has rejected this route as too costly.

RUSSIA and GEORGIA--Most of the export pipelines operating or under construction from Azerbaijan and Kazakhstan now terminate at the Black Sea. Some, like the Russian line through warring Chechnya, end at Novorossiisk in Russia, others at Supsa in Georgia. From these ports tankers must carry Caspian oil through Turkey's Bosporus strait, which military action could close at any time. "Export routes which bypass the Bosporus will eventually have to carry most of the Caspian oil exports" (EIA report, December 1998).

BALKANS--With the Turkish route economically undoable (but still pushed by Clinton), oil barons cast their gaze on the Balkans. In the mid-1990s, discussions began on a line between Burgas in Bulgaria to Alexandroupolis in Greece. This project will be constructed by the U.S.'s Bechtel and owned by Hellenic Petroleum, which last year "pooled interests" with Russia's giant Lukoil. Several competitors of Exxon-Mobil, including BP Amoco, Conoco, Enron, Texaco, Unocal, and Pennzoil support the Burgas-Alexandroupolis route (Athens News Agency, 1/28/99).

Because the ground invasion BP Amoco demanded never happened, Russian troops and pro-Russian elements in Serbia threaten BP Amoco's route from Bulgaria to Albania. Serbia's pipeline dreams may have gone up in smoke, but Russian rulers' interest still lie in developing oil sources and outlets with allies who oppose the U.S.

A Rogues' Gallery Of Characters In The Splits That Divide U.S. Rulers: Who Owns Whom And What

The Presidential Candidates

The struggle exposed by Kosovo now shifts to the 2000 presidential campaign. The White House is the key to state power in the U.S. George W. Bush personifies the capitalists' tug of war. Financiers from several camps have poured $37 million into Bush's campaign hoping to win his heart and mind, which seems to be a blank slate. Bush offered no substantive comment on Kosovo. His backers on one side include Halliburton CEO Dick Cheney, Enron CEO Kenneth Lay, Ray Hunt of Occidental Petroleum, Robert Herbold of Microsoft, and Bechtel's old boss, George Shultz. On the other hand, Condoleeza Rice, a Stanford scholar who does work for the Rockefeller Brothers Fund, advises Bush on foreign affairs. Rice stresses the U.S.'s need to fight "big wars" against Iraq and North Korea. John McCain has the endorsement of Goldman Sachs's chairman, Henry Paulson, who once worked as an aide to John Erlichman in Nixon's White House. A bitter struggle at Goldman earlier this year put BP Amoco's chairman on the firm's board and sent its old chairman, Jon Corzine, packing. Corzine is now running as a liberal Democrat in New Jersey for a U.S. Senate seat. Richard Notebaert, CEO of Ameritech, is another McCain patron. Ameritech counts Ken Starr's Kirkland & Ellis as its main law firm. Clinton clone Al Gore gets funds from Steven Rattner of Lazard Freres. Lazard may be the last surviving pro-Rockefeller investment house. It handles a lot of Exxon's deals and its ex-boss, Felix Rohatyn, serves as Clinton's ambassador to France. Also for Gore is Steven Spielberg, who glorified infantry invasions in "Saving Private Ryan." Dark horse Bill Bradley seems to be the Eastern Establishment's back-up for Gore. Bradley's moneyman is Chase Manhattan CEO Thomas Labrecque. "Dollar Bill" termed Kosovo "a potential quagmire." (Source: Business Week, 4/19/99 and other publications)

Other Key Players

Kenneth Starr led the battle to impeach Clinton. For three years, Starr served simultaneously as special prosecutor and senior partner at Chicago's Kirkland & Ellis, Amoco's chief law firm. Starr has ties to the Bradley Foundation (Rockwell aerospace money) and to Mellon family heir Richard Scaife.

Under Jimmy Carter, Zbigniew Brzezinski helped lead the original military build-up to Desert Storm. But when he became a paid consultant to Amoco, Brzezinski began demanding a ground invasion of the Balkans.

Former Secretary of State Lawrence Eagleburger, now a Halliburton director, has calling for the "massive use of military force" in Kosovo (Washington Post, 2/8/1993) for six years now. So has Pentagon hand-turned-Pennzoil lobbyist Brent Scowcroft.

The Think Tanks

Bankrolled by the Rockefeller Brothers Foundation and boasting a Rockefeller on its board, the Brookings Institution urged a negotiated pull-out from Kosovo. Brookings published grim estimates of what a ground war would cost in casualties. It worried that a U.S. military fiasco in the Balkans would jeopardize plans for an invasion of the Mideast.

The Center for Strategic and International Studies serves many business interests, but anti-Rockefeller types like CSIS advisor Bzezinski and co-chairman Anne Armstrong, a Halliburton director, have the upper hand. CSIS scholar Anthony Cordesman said in April, "NATO will either have to fight some kind of ground war in Kosovo or accept defeat."

The Heritage Foundation said the U.S.'s intervention in Serbia was misguided. William Simon, Heritage's leader and founder, works for the Saudi princes who pump their petrodollars back into U.S. companies like Bechtel, Lockheed, and Citicorp. While Brookings fronts for Exxon-Mobil, which needs to buy Mideast oil, Heritage represents those who get rich from selling it and don't want competition from the Caspian.

The Cato Institute, funded by the Koch U.S. oil dynasty, says the U.S. should get out of both the Balkans and the Mideast. The Kochs (pronounced "Coke," no relation to the former NYC mayor) lead the U.S.'s domestic independent oil industry and have made big inroads into the Republican Party.

A Brief Report Card Of PLP's Work During The War

Our Party recognized the general character of this war within a week of the first bombings. We explained repeatedly in our newspaper, Challenge-Desafio, that it was a struggle among imperialists for control of Caspian energy wealth and pipelines. We were therefore able to expose the cynical lies behind Clinton's disgusting humanitarian hype. We also understood the growing splits within NATO and U.S. rulers' general political isolation. This was positive. We showed that, although U.S. imperialism remains dominant for the time being, this war was in many ways a boomerang the moment it started.

However, a certain one-sidedness characterized our analysis. Throughout most of the seven-week bombing attacks, we didn't fully grasp the character of the internal struggle among U.S. rulers, which we have described above in shorthand as the conflict between Exxon-Mobil and BP Amoco. This lack of clarity led us to characterize the situation on the basis of the viewpoint expressed by one side or another. For example, from day one forces in the Rockefeller camp called the war a defeat and demanded a rapid settlement. We were too quick to accept their analysis as valid for all of U.S. imperialism. We didn't grasp the essence of the policy dispute over the use of ground forces. We didn't see that a defeat for Rockefeller isn't necessarily a defeat for BP. Therefore, we were somewhat hasty in exaggerating the U.S. predicament, although we correctly pointed to many of U.S. rulers' real weaknesses, including their growing internal disunity.

We've tried to rectify this one-sidedness in our newspaper and in the present article. Underestimating the enemy's strength can lead to serious errors, such as underestimating the difficulties our side faces and the length of time necessary to overcome them. Nonetheless, we did give political leadership on the most important question. We never wavered on the matter of oil war.

Our organizing efforts produced some modest successes. Most notable among these was the fight PLP led in Los Angeles among Central Area teacher reps to condemn the bombing and Clinton's "humanitarian" lies. We also raised our line on the war among industrial workers and soldiers, as well as among students and in numerous mass organizations. Thanks to this work, thousands of people got a taste of communist ideas about imperialist war. On the whole, we found that many who had initially fallen for the humanitarian hype were open to political struggle.

We have a long way to go before becoming a revolutionary force capable of leading soldiers and workers to turn the guns around against the war makers. But this war enabled us to take a few, still too-tentative, steps in the right direction. The road we're traveling is long and hard, but it's the right one. The next war is coming, perhaps sooner than we think. It will open many opportunities for communist organizing. We can improve, and we will.
Progressive Labor Party; USA