FROM TERRITORY TO PEOPLE: NATIONS ADRIFT

Louis Dalmas
Publisher and Editor-in-Chief
Balkans-Info (*)
(20/3 - 2/4, 2001)

Our Western political thought is being skewed by an odd
perversion. In the absence of anything more apt, it could be
given a somewhat torturous definition as its own “ethnification”
or “ethnisitation.” In the thought that dominates our
Euro-American world, with its Near Eastern and African
fringes, the focus is entirely on the component peoples, their
histories, their rights, their conditions and their claims.

The “right of self-determination” has its roots in an
anti-Colonialism meant to break-up the huge British, French,
German and other empires exploiting vast surfaces of the globe
for their own profits. The supporters of “self-determination” did
not struggle for the freedom of any specific ethnicity. Instead,
they sought to do away with the yoke on the backs of all the
populations under foreign occupation.

This is an important distinction. It is based on the difference
between Population and People, two terms all too often simply
interchanged. A population is represented by the totality of
inhabitants within a given territory. It has nothing to do with kin
ties or who “belongs” to whom. Here, the only frame of
reference is the soil (territorial dominance after the Latin jus
solis). When it comes to People the reference shifts to ethnicity
– with its past, its culture, its language and its uniqueness. As is
frequently reiterated, blood is here the defining element (from
Latin jus sanguinus). It is an abbreviated construct devoid of
felicity. It induces dangerous value judgements about “purity”
and “impurity.” It does, however, have one advantage, namely
its distinction from the soil.

The “right of self-determination” was attached traditionally to
territorial Populations as a right to freedom and independence.
It was not one confined to particular Peoples in recognition of
their specificities. It is only in recent times, following the end of
two World Wars, and after the dissolution of colonial empires,
that this “right” became strictly “ethnicised.” It was no longer a
right of oppressed Populations , not even of Peoples with
boundaries hard to establish. It became instead the right
transferred clearly to well-defined communities. The right of
the Peoples transmuted into a Cult of Minorities.

Many things have contributed to this change. The wars, with
endless processions of patriotic stimuli, dealt some terrible
blows to the humanistic ideals of a world citizenship. The fall
of Communism undermined the universality of the workers’
international solidarity.. “Internationalism,” once perceived as a
noble fraternal undertaking to harmonize the Planet Earth, gave
way to a financial neo-Colonialism of an American
super-Power which engenders a variety of local resistances to
its hegemony.

The progress of technology, combined with a virtual
monopoly over the means of communication and the
requirements of economic domination, served to accelerate
social inequalities. In turn, this reinforced the feeling of
alienation and impotence in the common man. The net result is
an increasing need to connect with “roots,” to belong to a
group, to find one’s identity within the anonymous mass.
Defenders of the Multinationals and champions of Europe’s
unification continuously underrate the diversity of languages
which acts to consolidate social fragmentation. Attempts at
Esperanto have all failed while the English language has yet to
conquer the totality of our universe. The ferment of separatist
semantics is all the more active because well-intentioned
imbeciles are promoting revivals of idioms, dialects and
folkloric patois which provide for yet another process of
atomization.

The Great Religions have also had a role to play. The most
aggressive ones are on continuous proselytizing missions
seeking to transcend the spiritual space in order to enhance
their temporal power. The simplest way to attain this is to
become The Religion of a particular group. By appropriating
its cultural patrimony, the Great Religion encapsulates it into a
dogmatism of the Faithful as It jealously protects against the
influences of infidel thought. All of this empowers a particular
ethnic group to the detriment of the broader humanity. To this
must be added an item of cultural evolution, namely the Cult of
Minorities. Inspired and justified by respect for the
empowerment itself, it acquired the right to be different , the
right to communitarianism. To put it another way, this amounts
to a moral obligation to subscribe to ethnic sub-divisions of a
society. Having a preference for that which divides over a
unitary opposite has come to pass, by now, as only “just.” At
the same time, it is barely understood that humanity is
breaking-up into separatist islets, homogeneous and
impenetrable, falling back ever more on the “ethnically pure”
and imagined themselves.

By espousing terrorism the Cult of Minorities has created its
own “ethnicised” slippery slope. Initially, terrorist acts had
social content. Their perpetrators recommended themselves as
fighters against injustice. They invoked the absolute
necessity for violent and timely anarchy in order to change
society. Incrementally, this social demand gave way to a
political claim as the struggle continues to secure
recognition of a group. The terrorists themselves have
become “fighters” perceived alternately as criminals or
heroes yet soldiers of an army. After the Israelis under
British occupation , the Kurds, the Basques, the Irish, the
Chechins, the Palestinians and the Albanians have given
terrorism a new face. It is the face of self-proclaimed
representatives of a would-be impoverished People that can
only be heard through a resort to bombs. The braves of yore
and the Robin Hoods, all isolated marginals meting out
selective justice , have been replaced by militarized extremists
engaged in a clandestine war put together in the name of
patriotic objectives.

The risks involved in this “ethnisation” of modern geo-strategy
are obvious. The introduction and practical application of value
judgements tops the list. In a world broken-up into ethnicities
– especially when these are confounded with religion - there is
strong temptation to show distinct preference for some but
downgrade others. Thus, molded by politics, circumstances and
opinions, the behavior (and even the very existence) of certain
ethnicities is contested while others are viewed with favor. We
are at the Gates of Racism taking roots in ethnicity. As soon as
there is reference to a People, in essence a particular variety
of individuals issuing from the same collective “stock,” it
becomes patently easy to qualify it by attributing virtues and
vices in accordance with specific interests and stands. Here,
Race comes to the fore.
Chosen or Persecuted, as the case may be, it comes along with
unacceptable excesses egged-on by this type of conception.
The collective guilt assigned to “the Serbs” is a case in point,
trumpeted by the International Community since the start of the
Balkan crisis. This was the first large-scale manifestation of
racism since the Jewish Holocaust.

The Cult of Minority’s dominance within contemporary
political thought is in full view. Yet, one can also see that it
can be manipulated in turn. Thus, for example, had the Cult
been followed across the board in ex-Yugoslavia, there would
now be a mini-state of “Srpska Krajina.” Instead, more than
250,000 ethnic Serbs had been “cleansed” out of Krajina in a
single month, with both direct and indirect help of the West.
Similarly, there has been much talk about severing completely
Kosovo from Yugoslavia in support of its ethnic Albanian
minority’s “right to self-determination.” In contrast, hardly
anyone in the West advocates seriously a partition of Kosovo
to accommodate its Serb minority’s “right to self-determination”
as well. Such asymmetries represent the tell-tale sign of
manipulation.

Religious fanaticism presents yet another danger. The very
isolation of religious communities increases among its
members the need to share in a spirituality which bonds
them. The common Faith becomes a cemented shield for a
group finding itself amid strangers, more often than not hostile
as well. This, in turn, leads to calls on Religion to protect.
Given its natural penchant for the conquest of power, the
Religion is only too happy to oblige through its clergy and
spokesmen. The result is the identification with and
inseparability of Religion and People. The spiritual and
temporal controls of a community doubly endow its political
claims with combat on behalf of God, producing oftentimes the
delirious intensity of Righteousness.

One last evil consequence consists of the inversion of values,
confusion of ideas and the imprecision of words. The last
decade of events in the Balkans, especially in Yugoslavia, has
been most revealing in this respect. Here, the “ethnic” approach
literally burned-up all the analyses. There was even an
incoherent start with the beginning of the Nineties. Initial
secessions from the Yugoslav Federation were viewed
uniformly as Population movements (understood as “ethnic”
ones). False finding. The Slovenes, the Croats, the Bosnians
(originally Croats or Serbs and Muslims only through Religious
espousal) and the Serbs –all being Slavs- have been
distinguishable solely by belonging to Catholicism, Orthodox
Religion or to Islam. Over-ridden by the prevailing dogma of
minority rights, this fundamental truth did not prevent the
International Community from recognizing “new “ nations in
the name of justice due to Peoples in the process of gaining
“freedom from Serb domination.” The ensuing conflict at
Kosovo and the recent ripping apart of Macedonia have had the
effect of reinforcing this point of view and all the more so since
it has been served as an “ethnic” confrontation between the
Serbs and the Albanians, two “enemy” Peoples “since
times immemorial.”

Various newscasters and commentators have not even been able
to grasp the inversion of their own values. They speak all the
time of pluralism and multi-ethnicity as determining values
without a sense of reality which is precisely the opposite.
Thanks to Western policy , every “People” is to have its own
country, what with: Slovenia, Croatia, Bosnia sub-divided into
Republika Srpska and Croato-Muslim Federation (about to
split in turn), Kosovo, a Serbia which may soon be severed
from Vojvodina and Sandzak , the Greater Albania of tomorrow,
and a Macedonia as a moiety, without mentioning the Czech and
Slovak Republics or the dismantling of the Soviet Union --the
Europe is witnessing the birth of a bevy of nations which are
the most “ethnically pure” of the Continent

Some further particulars need clarification due to a confusion of
terms. A distinction has already been made between Populations
and Peoples. It becomes necessary now to take a closer look at
what are the Nation, Nationality, Citizenship and State.

Let us start with nationality. Its ambiguity derives from the
fact that in contemporary usage it designates the belonging to a
constituent Nation. It is thus said that one ”is of French or
German or Italian nationality” to attest that one is a citizen of
France, Germany or Italy. This is an all too facile use of
language which fails to consider the particular status of Nations
and States, one which is at fault in assimilating nationality and
citizenship. As citizenship defines to which State one belongs,
nationality has a more blurred connotation. It can go as far as to
designate the belonging to a Religion. just as in ex-Yugoslavia
with an existing Muslim State having its own nationals.
Besides, within the Federal Yugoslavia of yesterday,
hostilities between nationalities and republics were
exacerbated by the Great Powers to end in secessions with
their own grotesque attempts at differentiation. Such has been
the practice of linguistic separatisms involving the Croat and
Macedonian languages severed from the Serb. It reminds one of
trying to separate French from the Quebecois, the Bruxellois or
the Valaisan.

With the “ethnicist” evolution, nationality has prevailed over
citizenship, evoking rather the People and not the State. There
are now Scottish, Basque, Corsican, Catalan, Palestinian,
Chechin or Kurdish Nationalities. As of now, there is not much
credible talk in France about the Provencale, Bretonne or
Savoyarde nationalities. These will not be late in coming along,
however. The principal reason behind the “ethnisation” of
nationality is relatively simple: leaders of minorities that labor
at national promotions, as well as those who support them,
know that the “ethnic” word evokes the idea of a Nation. By
baptizing it as nationality they anticipate the future of their
community. Their objective is to transform it into a Nation. By
labeling themselves as “nationalists” they patent
respectability.

The newly arriving nationalisms have encountered some rather
different estimations. In concert with their habits, the
intellectuals sublimate mainly with the most distant aspects; the
politicians praise those who bring them voters who can elect;
the governments , on the other hand, encourage those
obstructing other countries by repressing those apt to spread
troubles at home. In connection with the ex-Yugoslavia
there is the need to mention , at least in passing, the role of
bad faith which has helped the International Community to
support all of the local nationalisms, from the Slovene
separatists to the Albanian terrorists. The sole exception relates
to a falsely depicted “Greater- Serbia” Belgrade, roundly
condemned and ”doomed to end in failure.”

The State itself is an administrative and political entity
incorporating its members as citizens. This basic definition of
principle does not contain even the slightest hint of ethnicity.
The citizens can be of different nationalities reflecting a
variety of Peoples. Inversely, a Federated Nation can envelop
all the citizens of States in the Federal structure, irrespective of
their ethnic origins. The method of making such a structure
possible is of rather slight consequence. Its essential feature
is that the State and the citizens merge (or should merge)
collectively into an undifferentiated and purely juridical
system of governance in which the same Law applies to all.
That, at least, is the theory. In practice, the solidification of
minorities (perceived as the discovery of “self” by some and
as subversion by others) has been instrumental in introducing
discriminations within the citizenry as an integral part of the
ways in which certain States actually function. As a result, the
fundamental neutrality of the system of government goes out of
the window. As our premier and most beloved comic of
France, Coluche, used to say, “ We are all equal but there are
some who are more equal than others.” The State is confounded
with nationality or a single People to the detriment of a
segment of its constituents. It is sad to have to note that the
actual “ethnicist” evolution thus impels the State to betray its
mission.

Finally, the Nation is a collective shaped by history, geography
and culture which are its flesh while the State provides the
bones alone. The richer the Nation’s past, the less it is prone to
see itself reduced as a representation of a single People. That
has been the case of all the Great Nations of Europe, including
Yugoslavia, that have been able to reassemble their diversities
within a Population consisting of various ethnicities occupying
the same territorial space. In this arrangement it is the soil
that acquires primacy over the blood. State structures can be
different: Confederations, Federations, Centralist States,
Regional Autonomies. Yet these are all reunited in a single
enabling construct which agglomerates, integrates and
assimilates through a common language and shared values. The
differences are confined to a nook instead of being paraded
where everyone can see them in spades. The real Nation is, in
effect, a “melting pot” and not a mere assembly of specs.

Such a concept of a polymorphic Nation is contrary to the
prevailing “ethnicist” tendency. It provides the only barrier
against racist ferments which generate the abusive cult of
Peoples or minorities.. This is so on the sole condition that it
upholds its essence, expressed through total indifference to
origins. The slightest shortfall in this absence of discrimination
immediately justifies all the ethnic claims while betraying the
national calling which defangs them through a rigorous respect
of equality. If a Nation and a State, as its legally mandated
repository, know how to treat, without exceptions, in exactly
the same manner, all of the component ethnicities willing to
enter into the covenant , they both have a right that cannot be
contested. It is the right to suppress anything that menaces the
social covenant to insure the order required for the very
existence of a Nation and State.

All of the already discussed definitions of principles seem to be
reasonably clear on paper but it becomes more difficult to
discern them in the real world. There are two basic reasons for
this, namely manipulations through propaganda and
contradictions in the testimonies. The most powerful shaper of
public opinion today happens to be unabashed disinformation.
Through progress in technology and communications, it has
reached the proportions of a totalitarian assault on human
conscience. Given the veneer of “political correctness” it has
become virtually impossible to recover even a small fragment
of truth from the fog caused by outright lies. We have some idea
of this here, “at the “Balkans-Info,” journal that this author
has kept alive for some five years so far. It has been a
publication devoted to combat the boggling of the mind
in connection with the drama of the Balkans. During the years
as a professional journalist , I have never seen so many stage-
managements , such distortions of even basic facts, the high
elevations of poison in both the audio-visual and scribal
media, the myriad fakeries and the parades of untruths. With
total scorn for ordinary decency, “the Serbs” have been
satanized while their adversaries were endowed with virtual
sainthood. All sorts of pretexts were advanced in order to
dismantle Yugoslavia, to implant military colonies in Bosnia
and at Kosovo, and to bomb Serbia itself. At the point when the
political regime changed hands in Belgrade, with the lavish
support of American dollars, the wretched of yesterday became
the saints of today. Simultaneously, the West’s former Albanian
allies became worrisome as a disruptive element through a
parade of information items doctored as much in this new
sense as they had been tampered with previously in the older
one.

How does one get to some proximity to truth? Were the
Kosovo’s Albanians marginalized, according to their own
claims , by the monopolizing Serbs? In order to advertise their
presence, did they do right to boycott the helping hand
tendered officially by Belgrade? Did they really need to
unleash a civil war in order to secure their freedoms?
Or, as the Serbs counter-claim, did they not enjoy the same
rights, the same access to positions at work and advantages, to
the same education at identical levels of learning? Were they a
deprived minority or a band of rebels always more demanding,
accepting nothing less than an independence which would lead,
in its wake, to the expulsion of everything considered “alien?”

If the Albanians’ autonomy was real, if their citizenship was
co-equal, the Serbs had every right to defend themselves
against assassinations and suppress a terrorism without a leg to
stand on. And, in such a condition the International Community
had no right to intervene under an humanitarian pretext of its
own making , designed to justify its bellicose action. Even if the
Serbs had not been completely innocent of the anti-Albanian
bias they were tarred with, there was nothing around to
authorize anyone to wage an illegal war against the Serbs for
the would-be purpose of “re-establishing peace.”

Besides, it is worth observing that the realities we had
described throughout the years at the “Balkans-Info,” realities
disengaged from a wave (more aptly, a Tsunami) of manipulated
information and contradictory testimonies do serve to obviate
the unilateral demonization of the Serbs . More than that, our
findings have obtained a posteriori verifications. Macedonia is
defending itself today against the same Kosovo Liberation
Army (KLA or UCK in Albanian) that had attacked the Serbs.
The only difference is that the International Community is now
allowing to Skoplje what it had refused to Belgrade. The
would-be heroes of the national liberation of Kosovo did not
transform themselves, between just yesterday and today, into
dangerous assassins. This is precisely what they have always
been. In turn, this fact reveals that the Serb Army and police
were absolutely justified to attempt a KLA wipe-out.

It is unfortunate that, again, the ethnic approach brings in its
perverted effects. After championing the causes espoused by
the Slovenes, Croats and Bosnian Muslims, and after
destroying the multi-ethnic Yugoslav State, the very same
Western sorcerer’s apprentices have mounted the Albanian
horse. They never even came to ponder the fact that Yugoslavia
was a model of pluralism. Even at the peak of the anti-terrorist
repression at Kosovo, the Serbs had not come to denigrate
“Albanity” itself as they pursued the murderers. This is in
sharp contrast to the hate constantly expressed toward
“Serbianity” by the same men. It cannot be stressed enough that
Serbia of today continues to be a refugee haven for dozens of
different nationalities.

It is probable that the Balkan tragedy of the last decade could
have been avoided, with its hundreds of thousands of the dead
and the displaced. The victims of pillages and expulsions
could have been spared the agonies through a pre-condition.
Instead of honoring the pretensions of the self-styled Peoples in
need of independence, the International Community needed to
take a firm stand at the very start of the intra--Yugoslav
discussions by declaring that it would not tender its recognition
to any secessionist State of ex-Yugoslavia. Its failure to so do
was due to a blindness caused by the adulation of minorities.

Having said that, it is necessary to probe a little deeper. If many
of the political heads in the West happen to be notoriously
incompetent, especially in matters affecting foreign affairs, one
should not conclude that all the damages they had caused were
involuntary or accidental. Without bringing-up the fiction of
secret cells created by the all-powerful plotters out to control
the world , there remains the necessity to disconnect from such
a scenario the actual existence of quite real occult plans and
non-admitted goals. Among them, “ethnisation” is not the fruit
of stupidity on the part of our leaders. It corresponds to a desire
and the will to bring about regionalisation and tribalization
meant to weaken certain national centralisms and thus
undermine the very structure of a Nation.

In this game, at once secret and formidable, Germany first,
with the United States right behind, hold the top place. In the
April 1997 issue of “Balkans-Info,” General Pierre Marie
Gallois, one of the very best geostrategic specialists, revealed
the existence of a “European Center for the Study of the Lot of
Minorities,” financed by the Bonn Government. It is but one of
the agencies which engender and fund special missions to
various countries of the Continent to gratify Germany’s
will-to-power as ruler of Europe and implement it by
supporting the centrifugal forces among the potential opponents
of Germany’s Continental hegemony. It is not a novel
enterprise since Nazi Germany had already sided with the
Breton and Flammand separatists in the course of its occupation
of France. The New Germany pre-empted everyone else in
saluting the Yugoslav secessionists and induced, by its own
example, the international recognition of “new nations” in the
process of devouring the Yugoslav Federation. During the war
in Bosnia, Germany equipped and armed the Serb adversaries
and did exactly the same with the “Kosovo Liberation Army”
(KLA). The lasting nature of German ambition is self-evident.
By helping Peoples to orbit out of Nations, Germany can
decidedly weaken all the rivals. This strategy has undergone a
magisterial and most detailed depiction in a remarkable book
penned by Pierre Hillard and just published by
Francois-Xavier de Guibert. As its preface-writer Paul-Marie
Couteaux describes the contents, they deal with “what could
well become one of predominant themes in the next few
years.” The key here is the Awakening of Ethnic Irredentisms
all over Europe with consequences of a potentially huge reach.
All of it is due to the patient and consistent work of Germany
everywhere, so as to bring them to life, to fortify and use them
for its political aims.

The United States hardly hide their intention to dominate the
World. Their hegemonist policy of Economic and Financial
Imperialism emanates from their current status as the sole
remaining super-Power. The pillars supporting this type of
Imperialism lead directly into such internationalized entities
as the World Bank, the International Monetary Fund, the
OSCE, NATO and the Criminal Tribunal at the Hague. It must
be admitted that this lethal American strategy , underpinned, to
boot, by the stupidity and cowardice of its European
accomplices, finds itself at the moment in a state of
complete success in the Balkans. Yugoslavia, the only state
capable of inconveniently standing in its way, has been
dismembered. Serbia, as the last stumbling-block, has
been tossed into the pot with the rest of Yugoslavia’s
ex-members, and, one might add, through a change abundantly
subvented by the outgoing Clinton Administration. All the
others have been reduced to the level of colonial protectorates
or orbiting satellites heavily dependent on the U.S. financial
aid. The new candidates for membership in NATO, that is to
say into supervised docility and compliance, are slated to enrich
America’s munitions and arms makers, by having to deflect
and spend financial fortunes in order to attain the “NATO
standards.” The environmental and economic harm done has
already opened up gigantic markets for reconstruction but one
payable in dollars only. New avenues for the transport of oil
have been opened, along with new military bases (like the huge
Camp Bondsteel at Kosovo), and the encirclement of Russia is
now complete. In fact, Washington rules today over a field of
ruins. It will be allowed to vegetate, with the acquiescence of
Germany and Great Britain, even if this “partnership” may not
be of long duration as rivalry develops between Germany
and the United States.

The most acute angle of this “ethnicist” optic has just been
cleared in connection with the conflict exploding in
Macedonia. It forces our Oracles into some diversionary
acrobatics. For example, Lord David Owen, who has had a
major role in drafting several plans designed to resolve
Yugoslavia’s problems, has sounded a clarion call with an
article published in Le Monde (23/3/2001) Under the heading of
“Redesigning the map of the Balkans,” he advocates border
re-adjustments within the Balkan Peninsula to coincide with
irredentist claims. He has been closely seconded by Fareed
Zakaria in the Newsweek (2 April 2001) where he proposes,
with cold-blooded detachment, the following devolution:

“It is high time for NATO to come to grips with
transfers of power to every single (ethnic)
community that demands it, in Bosnia and Kosovo,
and perhaps persuade, privately, the Macedonian
Government to do the same.
The Albanian enclave in Macedonia can easily be
detached to form its own Entity. If, thereafter, the
Albanians at Kosovo and Macedonia wish to unite
or stay separate, well, that is their own business.
If the Bosnian Serbs wish to join Belgrade, good
luck. If the Croats wish to join the New Croatia,
mazel tov. From the moment on when all of this
takes place, through negotiation and without
bloodshed, what importance, if any, can be
attached to all the small statelets bound to
surface. The desirable outcome is that there
will be some more seats at the United
Nations.” (1)

It is entirely clear where the blind support of Peoples has led
so far. There are now rump States, ethnic “mini-nationalities”
and Great Nations in a state of degeneration. That was the goal
pursued and the result obtained. Is it at all possible to cope
with the present-day mess that promises nothing but troubling
tomorrows?

The dream of Universality is now encapsulated in an
internationalism of the New World Order or, to put it
differently, in an Empire of the banks, the multinationals and
American money. Its mirror image is to be found in an
industrialized and monetarised Europe which totally neglects
the social aspect of imposing such a Continental Union.
One possible opposition to this “Summit Internationalism” is
already on its way through basic anti-Globalisation movements
which are spreading beyond their mainly local points of
response. At the moment, they are corporal, poorly organized
and politically confused. They do not grasp as yet that Bove’s
enemies are those of Milosevic as well; that these are the same
individuals who decide to impose embargoes, who embellish
with poetic license their (military) interventions and diktats and
who have already bombed Belgrade. Yet, the sheer potential of
these contesting movements is very real. Above all, they have
the advantage of being able to cut horizontally into the vertical
which reflects the people, to re-discover the separateness of
labor and capital. In a word, to replace the ethnic with the
social. It happens to be a moment in time when every
communal body, with its strata of the privileged, comes to
disregard the gap between those who exploit and the
exploited, comes to realize that the social strata leap across
frontiers and puncture the bloated communitarianism and
its false and conniving attachment to blood. If these
movements can modernize the living tradition of an earlier
international solidarity, if they can focus on putting the fight
against economic injustice ahead of defending minorities, and if
they target imperialism itself, they can indeed come to provide
serious hope for a better future.

While awaiting for this response to the New World Order to
gel, the safest pillar to rest the resistance on amounts to what
can be called an open concept of the Nation. It is a concept
enriched in France over several centuries through the
respective additions of the Monarchy and the Revolution. It is
the same concept that belongs to ex-Yugoslavia (one still extant)
and which, incidentally, renders the betrayal of friendship
between the two countries even more reprehensible. If I evoke
France, there is no need to search in this act some sort of
patriotic vanity. The France of Enlightenment, of equality
among her citizens, of a land open to strangers, guaranteeing
the right of sanctuary, the freedom to secularism, enjoying the
structure of a homogenous republic and the integrity of her
natural frontiers – that was, for a long time, a France that
inspired, as a model, not a few nations. It is a modern concept
of life together which must not be deprived of its vitality either
through chauvinistic phobia against immigrants or the chilly
protectionism of another Era, or, yet, by a blind acceptance
of Globalization and the abandonment of a sovereignty which
is essential to independence. The path between self-enclosure
and a too obliging openness is indeed a narrow one. But, it
must be found because this form of a Nation, with a common
patrimony and beyond discrimination, in any form, is the most
desirable antidote to “ethnisation” and racism. The undertaking
itself will be a difficult one, to be sure. It will be absolutely
necessary to resist at the same time the sirens of financial
internationalism and the insisting on communitarian claims, to
be concerned more with conditions of life within Populations
than with the interests of particular Peoples. In short, to favor
the Social to the Ethnic desiderata.

It is a price that must be paid in order to prevent a decline. If
countries other than France alone, follow this pattern of
renewal, Europe will have an entirely different face. It will be
the face of an assemblage of civilized nations unified by the
tradition of cultural osmosis and equality of its citizenry. It
will not be a collection of tribes obsessed by their singularities
and run by chieftains devoured by their own petty ambitions. It
will be the face of a Humane Continent.


(*)With tenacity and fairness, Louis Dalmas,
a French journalist of long standing, and
his “Balkans-Info” have refused to capitulate
to the Western propaganda mills as these
sought to impose a contemporary “history”
of the Yugoslav fratricidal drama. . It
is clear, in retrospect, that “Balkans-Info”
will become an essential research
repository for anyone interested in
finding an approximation of truth. (added by
R.K.Kent)

---

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