THE ‘IRON LADY’ WARNS AGAINST FAVORING STABILITY OVER FREEDOM IN YUGOSLAVIA AND BEYOND

(Washington, D.C.): In a major address
to a Heritage Foundation audience in
Washington last night, former British Prime
Minister Margaret Thatcher sternly warned
that “Hardline communism is not
beaten yet” in Yugoslavia
and denounced the hapless
“bureaucratic fiction” of
“European nationalism” that was
supposed to protect Western interests
after 1992 from such a virulent force. In
so doing, the ‘Iron Lady’ served notice
on the Bush Administration and its allies
that their “statist” preference
for “stability” at virtually
any cost is a formula for disaster not
only in Yugoslavia but throughout the
Soviet Union, Europe and beyond.

Highlights of Mrs. Thatcher’s remarks
included the following key points
(emphasis added throughout):

“…Some people have pointed
at [recent] developments [in the
Soviet Union and Eastern Europe]
as harbingers of a dangerous
instability in the international
system. They therefore seek to
prop up existing but unfree
federal structures like
Yugoslavia today, or until a few
weeks ago, an unreformed USSR.

“Stability is a
conservative principle….But
conservatives…do not confuse
stability with the diplomatic
error of propping up whatever
unstable status quo happens to be
at hand.

“The conflict in Yugoslavia,
the communal conflicts in Armenia
and Azerbaijan, the ethnic
feuding which pervades the old
Soviet empire — these things are
the consequences of Marxism and
of attempting to crush, ignore,
and override legitimate national
feelings in pursuit of an
artificial bureaucratic
supra-nationalism with no real
roots and precious little
freedom. True stability
lies in creating looser
structures of inter-national
cooperation in which legitimate
nationalisms can both express
themselves and forge links based
on common interests.

“In other words…the
conservative virtue of stability
leads directly to accepting the
legitimacy of nationalism as a
basis for independent statehood.
National pride, in combination
with liberty and the rule of law,
powerfully strengthens democratic
government.

* * *

“So the conservative
response to the problem of
disintegrating empires, like the
Soviet Union and Yugoslavia, is
to allow their constituent
nations and republics to
establish their own democratic,
independent identities….”

Mrs. Thatcher contemptuously
contrasted these fundamental
principles to the behavior being
exhibited in the name of a common
European foreign policy in the
Yugoslav crisis:

“Advocates of a federal
Europe seek to displace French,
British, Italian nationalisms,
which are deep-rooted sentiments,
with a new European nationalism,
which is a bureaucratic fiction.
They cannot succeed.

“But, like the
inventors of Soviet nationalism,
they can sow seeds of
great bitterness in the process.
And the institutions they create,
such as a common foreign policy,
are likely to amount too very
little in themselves — while
crippling the actual foreign
policies of real nations.

“The Gulf War and the
Croatian crisis have tested the
idea of a common foreign policy
to destruction…as the Croatian
people know all too well. Let us
hope most earnestly that the new
cease-fire will hold.

“Under cover of previous
cease-fires, the attacks have
continued against Croatia by the
Yugoslav Army, consisting of
largely Communist Serbian forces,
whose ambition is to create a
Greater Serbia. Some five hundred
or more Croatians have been
killed, some of them massacred
and mutilated — as, for example,
old people at Cetkovci.

“The matter is now before
the Security Council. In the
meantime, the tanks and guns have
advanced into Croatia taking more
towns and cities and cries
for help have received no
practical response.
Hardline Communism, is not beaten
yet.”

The Center for Security Policy strongly
seconds these sentiments. It reiterates
its earlier calls for the United States
to become engaged in ending Serbian
communist aggression through:

• immediate recognition of Croatia,
  Slovenia and Macedonia;
• assumption of a leadership
  position in NATO and the United
  Nations leading to the swift
  introduction of armed Western
  peace-keeping forces into
  Croatia; and
• the adoption of formidable
  economic and political
  disincentives to those disposed
  to use violence to prevent the
  emergence of a new confederation
  comprised of those former
  Yugoslav republics that share a
  common commitment to democracy
  and free enterprise.

In the absence of such a
“conservative” strategy, the
West faces the prospect of sacrificing
yet another nation yearning for freedom
to the expediency of accommodating a
despotic aggressor. Today — as in
Ethiopia, Spain, Czechoslovakia, Poland,
Vietnam, and Lebanon previously — the
sure result of such appeasement is to set
the stage for greater violence against
Western interests down the road.