The Rambouillet Ultimatum In Retrospect

The original headquarters of Radio Televizija Srbije (RTS) in Belgrade, Serbia. The building was hit with a missile on April 23, 1999 during NATO's 78-day air bombing raid of Yugoslavia; 16 employees were killed during the attack. To this day, and as pictured above, the building remains the same as it was on the day it was fire-bombed.

If there is one thing that the late Slobodan Milosevic should regret, it is agreeing to travel to Rambouillet in the first place for the U.S.-led "peace talks" and "negotiations" that took place between February 6, 1999 and March 22, 1999. He of course rightfully rejected the terms of the Rambouillet ultimatum and, as he mentioned in a personal conversation with his defense lawyer Christopher Black, told the United States to "go fuck themselves" (sic). The terms were completely abhorrent and objectionable because they essentially were tantamount to blackmailing Yugoslavia (or whatever was left of it) into opening themselves up to the invasion of U.S. capital interests, agreeing to an illegal occupation by U.S. forces, the legitimate government of Milosevic virtually having no last say in decision-making, and into agreeing to the illegal partitioning of Kosovo by NATO (which eventually did happen). The first article called for a free-market economy, while the second article called for the privatization of all government-owned assets. As for the article on the "self-government" of Kosovo, Diana Johnstone wrote,

"Kosovo's "self-government" was to be run by a NATO official, with the title of Chief of the Implementation Mission, or CIM. The CIM would have the final say over virtually everything and everybody. Kosovo would be occupied by a NATO force called KFOR. No ceiling was placed on the size of KFOR forces, which would have full control of airspace over Kosovo, be immune to prosecution or liability under local law, and have free access to the rest of Yugoslavia--a license to invade the rest of the country on one pretext or another. The agreement called for withdrawal of Serbian police and armed forces, but the fate of "other forces" (no mention of the KLA, which thus escaped any commitment or obligations) would be decided later by the KFOR commander."

Subsequently, Milosevic's rejection of the ultimatum was used as a pretext for the 78-day NATO bombings in that same year, from March 24 to June 10, 1999. The Rambouillet conference was indeed a trap and one that Milosevic should never have attended  -- although understandable given the fact that his nation was under attack and Yugoslavia was being disintegrated throughout the decade. But other than that, it was a farce in retrospect because it was apparent that the U.S.-led coalition knew full well that he would never accept any of the terms of the ultimatum; if anything, they were clearly looking for the "perfect spark" to give them the go-ahead for the 78-day bombing campaign which was not given any UN approval. Thus, they engineered the "spark" in the form of an ultimatum that was so obviously objectionable.

Tragically, Yugoslavia had no defensive long-range missile deterrents and no international allies that posed as significant military challenges to the United States because, by that time, the Soviet Union had already been dismantled and there was no way Boris Yeltsin -- a Western ally and puppet -- was going to lend a helping hand to the former USSR's historical Slavic allies in Belgrade. A number of Russian military personnel purportedly tried to petition the Yeltsin administration to help their old ally; if true, it was to no avail and it most likely was swiftly kiboshed by Yeltsin. Besides, it would have been suicidal for 1990's Russia to give aid to Belgrade, considering that it had just signed onto a new IMF loan a week after the bombings began. Russia would not re-emerge as a significant challenge to U.S. hegemony until the rise of Vladimir Putin (who, unlike Yeltsin, condemned NATO's war on Yugoslavia and the illegal partitioning of Kosovo). That, however, is another story.

A year later, on October 5, 2000, Milosevic was ousted by the U.S.-engineered colour revolution with the military assistance of NATO; this brought to power a neoliberal government that would be more subservient to U.S. interests in Serbia. The U.S. sanctions may have been lifted after Milosevic was toppled, but it was too little too late as U.S. companies wasted no time profiting from the destruction of the former Socialist Federal Republic of Yugoslavia by stealing and selling $1 billion worth of its state-owned assets, which fulfilled the terms laid out in the first two articles of the Rambouillet ultimatum. Serbia received its neoliberal "shock therapy" and the Serbian people continued to be punished by NATO and the European Union (EU) over the years:

"It was a “mono-ethnic privatization” based on undervalued prices favoring ethnic Albanians. Anticipating the worst, Serbia is seeking to regain $30 billion in “lost investment” should Kosovo gain statehood, IPS reports. The Ahtisaari proposal accounts for a mere $250 million worth of moveable property to return to Belgrade’s control.  

In Serbia dollars have accomplished what bombs could not. After U.S.-led international sanctions were lifted with Milosevic’s ouster in 2000, the United States has emerged as the largest single source of foreign direct investment. According to the U.S. embassy in Belgrade, U.S. companies have made $1 billion worth of “committed investments” represented in no small part by the $580 million privatization of Nis Tobacco Factory (Phillip Morris) and a $250 million buyout of the national steel producer by U.S. Steel. Coca-Cola bought a Serbian bottled water producer in 2005 for $21 million. The list goes on." 

Not to mention, the highly abundant Trepca mines that were worth around $5 billion were among those aforementioned assets stripped of their publicly-owned status and seized by U.S. private investors. IMF conditions also prohibited government fiscal policy that stimulate economic growth and prevent high inflation rates. And unemployment skyrocketed in Serbia thanks to "low, flat tax rates and “flexible employment regulations” which allow employers to dismiss employees easily and inexpensively," (p. 27) as Stephen Gowans explains in Promoting Plutocracy: U.S.-Led Regime Change Operations and the Assault on Democracy.

Throughout the course of the war, and before the province was even partitioned, Serbs were being ethnically cleansed and driven out in large numbers from Kosovo by the U.S.-backed terrorist and violent separatist group known as the Kosovo Liberation Army (KLA). As for the Serbs and other non-Albanians who were unable to flee, they are now being forced to live in ghettos in Kosovo where they are impoverished and are severely lacking in heating, electricity, potable water, and sanitary water. Some even still live in burnt or half-destroyed houses. They cannot even leave the parameters of these ghettos without UN escorts because if they do, they would be assaulted or lynched by Albanian militias. In contrast to the mass hysteria put forth by Western media that demonized and smeared Milosevic as a 'genocidal monster', no such special attention was paid to the plight of ordinary Serbian citizens.

By now, it should be clear that the carving up of Yugoslavia and NATO's "humanitarian" bombings were never truly about "democracy" and "human rights", nor were there any organic and popular "revolutions" to be found in the Western-supported separatist groups and the ousting of Milosevic. More than anything, the war was always a well-planned and carefully crafted economic-plundering scheme at its core; encouraging ethnic divisions and isolating one group (Serbs) was the divide-and-conquer strategy that helped to increase the vulnerability of the former pan-Yugoslav state that was unfriendly towards U.S. interests. Also, Milosevic had to be murdered in his cell at the UN war crimes tribunal's detention centre not only because NATO had to save face, but since there was no evidence of such crimes that the U.S. accused him of committing, he was about to be exonerated; and if he had walked out as a free man, it would have helped to pull the "humanitarian" facade off of that imperial venture in the Balkans.