Recorded March 9, 2008
MP3: 30-Minute Seg­ment
REALAUDIO NB: This RealAu­dio stream con­tains both FTR #627 and FTR #628 in sequence. Each is a 30 minute broadcast.

The broad­cast ana­lyzes Ger­man deep for­eign pol­icy in the Balkans—the seces­sion­ist move­ment in Kosovo in par­tic­u­lar. Of par­tic­u­lar sig­nif­i­cance is the pol­icy of pro­mot­ing “volks­grup­pen­rechte,” or the rights of native peo­ples, as a vehi­cle for effect­ing realign­ment in the post-Cold War world. Super­fi­cially appear­ing to be an enlight­ened, egal­i­tar­ian pol­icy, the strat­a­gem is actu­ally a tac­tic for using dis­si­dent eth­nic minori­ties as a vehi­cle for desta­bi­liz­ing and frag­ment­ing tar­geted rival states—much larger states in par­tic­u­lar. British, French and Amer­i­can pol­icy, while cor­re­spond­ing to the Ger­man stance, did so for ide­o­log­i­cal and hege­monic motives relat­ing to those nations’ own for­eign and national secu­rity poli­cies. Of par­tic­u­lar sig­nif­i­cance for our pur­poses is the fact that the Green party and its coali­tion allies in the Fed­eral Repub­lic sup­ported and con­tinue to sup­port the “volks­grup­pen­rechte” pol­icy vis a vis Kosovo. In pur­su­ing Koso­var inde­pen­dence, the Fed­eral Repub­lic of Ger­many and its Green con­tin­gent are reca­pit­u­lat­ing Nazi pol­icy in the Balkans. Note that one of the antecedents of the KLA is the 21st Waf­fen SS divi­sion (Skanderbeg).

Pro­gram High­lights Include: Review of the deci­sive role of Ger­many in pro­mot­ing the dis­so­lu­tion of Yugoslavia, in con­trast with the stance of the major­ity of other EU mem­bers; review of the “going native” or “volks­grup­pen­rechte” pol­icy as prac­ticed by the Haps­burg polit­i­cal front the UNPO; dis­cus­sion of the Ger­man Green Party’s tran­si­tion from being a “peace” party viewed by the for­mer Soviet Union as a major rea­son for per­mit­ting the reuni­fi­ca­tion of Ger­many into a “war party,” advo­cat­ing the seces­sion of eth­nic groups from the for­mer Yugoslavia—an event that trig­gered the Balkans wars of the 1990’s. (For more back­ground on Germany’s piv­otal role in effect­ing the dis­so­lu­tion of Yugoslavia, see FTR#154. For more about the Balkans wars and Kosovo, see FTR#’s 147, 149, 151, 153, 159, 161, 165, 184.)

1. The broad­cast ana­lyzes Ger­man deep for­eign pol­icy in the Balkans—the seces­sion­ist move­ment in Kosovo in par­tic­u­lar. Of par­tic­u­lar sig­nif­i­cance is the pol­icy of pro­mot­ing “volks­grup­pen­rechte” or the rights of native peo­ples as a vehi­cle for effect­ing realign­ment in the post-Cold War world. Super­fi­cially appear­ing to be an enlight­ened, egal­i­tar­ian pol­icy, the strat­a­gem is actu­ally a tac­tic for using dis­si­dent eth­nic minori­ties as a vehi­cle for desta­bi­liz­ing and frag­ment­ing tar­geted rival states—much larger states in par­tic­u­lar. (FTR#’s 550, 615, 616 also cover the topic of “volks­grup­pen­rechte,” explor­ing how the tac­tic is exploited by the Under­ground Reich. In addi­tion to the Fed­eral Repub­lic of Ger­many, Under­ground Reich enti­ties and allies such as the House of Haps­burg and the Haps­burg polit­i­cal front the UNPO have used this tac­tic to gen­er­ate sup­port for the Dalai Lama and Tibetan activists, as well as for Uighur Mus­lim activists seek­ing seces­sion from China. Note that the advo­cates of “volks­grup­pen­rechte,” per­haps augur­ing efforts to frag­ment a weak­ened, bank­rupt Amer­ica in the future, have cham­pi­oned eth­nic minori­ties within the United States.
(“Ger­many and the Kosovo: How Ger­many Paved the Way for War” by Matthias Kuntzel; 4/16/2000.)

2. Not­ing Germany’s empha­sis on “Going Native” or “volks­grup­pen­rechte” as a key strat­a­gem of Ger­man for­eign pol­icy, the pro­gram relates this strat­egy to Germany’s grow­ing posi­tion in the post-Cold War world. Whereas the US for­eign pol­icy vis a vis the carv­ing up of Yugoslavia remained rel­a­tively ambigu­ous dur­ing the Clin­ton admin­is­tra­tion, it ulti­mately con­formed to the Ger­man par­a­digm defined by “volks­grup­pen­rechte.” Be sure to read the entire essay in order to grasp nuanced aspects of Amer­i­can Balkans pol­icy, and how British, French and Amer­i­can pol­icy, while cor­re­spond­ing to the Ger­man stance, did so for ide­o­log­i­cal and hege­monic motives relat­ing to those nations’ own for­eign and national secu­rity poli­cies. “In 1991, a del­e­ga­tion of the Ger­man Bun­destag vis­ited Kosovo for the first time in order to talk with Kosovo Alban­ian nation­al­ist lead­ers. This prompted – as early as 1991! – the warn­ing by a senior mem­ber of the Yugosla­vian par­lia­ment that ‘the British and the Ger­mans would cre­ate a com­mon inter­ven­tion force with 70,000 sol­diers in order to inter­vene in Kosovo.’ Indeed an early and accu­rate prophecy! So what about Germany’s role in prepar­ing for the Kosovo war? There were and there are strate­gic dif­fer­ences between Ger­man and the US poli­cies about how to retain or enhance hege­mony. ‘As a wealthy sta­tus quo power, the United States has an inter­est in main­tain­ing inter­na­tional order’, wrote Joseph S. Nye, Jr, a for­mer US deputy sec­re­tary of defense. ‘In a world where there are some two hun­dred states but many thou­sands of often over­lap­ping enti­ties that might even­tu­ally make a claim to nation­hood, blind pro­mo­tion of self-determination would have highly prob­lem­atic con­se­quences.’ Berlin, how­ever, in seek­ing to cre­ate con­di­tions for an ongo­ing expan­sion of Ger­man influ­ence (that means: chang­ing the inter­na­tional order) does not share this pri­or­ity. As Rupert Scholz, the for­mer Ger­man sec­re­tary of defense, explained: ‘The aim of main­tain­ing ‘sta­bil­ity’ in Europe seems to be a most dan­ger­ous one. There will not be any real sta­bil­ity, which is able to main­tain peace, if indi­vid­ual nations are held pris­oner in unwanted and unnat­ural (‘unnatür­liche’) state orga­ni­za­tions, which have been imposed upon them.’ Since 1990, Ger­man for­eign pol­icy has ‘con­stantly per­sisted in actively advo­cat­ing a uni­ver­sal right of self-determination.’ . . .”
(“Ger­many and the Kosovo: How Ger­many Paved the Way for War” by Matthias Kuntzel; 4/16/2000.)

3. The Ger­man “Going Native” pol­icy in rela­tion to the Kosovo was sup­ported and per­pet­u­ated by the Green Party, its allies and ide­o­log­i­cal advo­cates: “ . . . This idea of push­ing the Kosovo´s Alba­ni­ans towards a mil­i­tary con­fronta­tion with Milo­se­vic in order to cre­ate a Kosovo pro­tec­torate from now on became the cen­tral point of Germany’s Kosovo pol­icy – either by the Kohl/Kinkel CDU gov­ern­ment or the Schröder/Fischer SPD-Green coali­tion. One con­di­tion was that inter­na­tional troops be sta­tioned on Kosovo soil. As early as March 1998 Ger­many accord­ingly put this mat­ter on the agenda at the Lon­don meet­ing of the inter­na­tional Con­tact Group on Yugoslavia. . . .” (Idem.)

4. More about the Green sup­port for Kosovo inde­pen­dence: “ . . . Even Germany’s red/green coali­tion gov­ern­ment does not want to rec­og­nize Kosovo as being a province of Yugoslavia. That is the rea­son why in his last major state­ment Joschka Fis­cher – Germany’s vice-chancellor and sec­re­tary of state – let the ques­tion of ‘the future sta­tus of the Kosovo’ open claim­ing that it would be impos­si­ble to resolve this now. In an inter­view with a French news­pa­per, how­ever, he made clear that he had no doubts about the Kosovo’s future sta­tus: ‘The inter­na­tional com­mu­nity is present in Kosovo and the Balkans in order to show that – accord­ing to the exam­ple of resolv­ing the ‘Ger­man ques­tion’ in 1990 – the ‘Alban­ian ques­tion’ could be resolved only with the agree­ment of the neigh­bor­ing states.’ . . .” (Idem.)

5. In pur­su­ing Koso­var inde­pen­dence, the Fed­eral Repub­lic of Ger­many and its Green con­tin­gent are reca­pit­u­lat­ing Nazi pol­icy in the Balkans. Note that one of the antecedents of the KLA is the 21st Waf­fen SS divi­sion (Skan­der­beg). (For more about the his­tory of the Skan­der­beg divi­sion and other Balkan Mus­lim Waf­fen SS divi­sions, see—among other programs—FTR#’s 414, 456.) “ . . . Just like 1991 Ger­many again stood nearly alone against a huge major­ity of coun­tries in Europe and the world. Just like 1991 Ger­many again sup­ported a move­ment with a back­ground rooted in the Nazi past, because the KLA is partly led by the sons and grand­sons of extreme right-wing Alban­ian fight­ers, the heirs of those who fought dur­ing World War II in the fas­cist mili­tias and the ‘Skan­der­beg Vol­un­teer SS Divi­sion’ raised by the Nazis. The ‘National Front of Alba­nia’ (Balli Kom­be­tar) which col­lab­o­rated with Nazi lead­ers in 1943/44 today boasts about its influ­ence within the KLA which has a pro­gram that seems to be a mod­i­fied ver­sion of the 1943 Nazi utopia. Thus the pro­gram of ‘eth­nic cleans­ing’ which Ger­many exported into the Balkans in 1941 remained alive within the move­ment of the Kosovo Alban­ian nation­al­ists dur­ing the 80s. ‘The nation­al­ists have a two-point plat­form’ wrote the New York Times in 1982: ‘First to estab­lish what they call an eth­ni­cally clean Alban­ian repub­lic and then the merger with Alba­nia to form a greater Alba­nia.’ When­ever the KLA talks about ‘lib­er­a­tion’ or ‘free­ing’ this has been up to now under­stood in the Nazi-sense of ‘free of some­thing’ i.e. ‘free of Jews’ (‘juden­frei’), ‘free of Gyp­sies’ or ‘free of Serbs’. No one could be really sur­prised when, begin­ning with June 1999, the de facto rule of the KLA turned out to be a daily and a deadly trap for thou­sands of non-Albanians, espe­cially defense­less Serbs. . . .” (Idem.)

6. We should not fail to note that “volksgruppenrechte”—applied to Ger­manic minori­ties in other countries—was a key diplo­matic weapon exploited by the Third Reich. Nazi annex­a­tion of the Sude­ten­land and Czecho­slo­va­kia as a whole was a par­tic­u­larly dra­matic exam­ple of this. The 1939 book Armies of Spies by Joseph Golomb doc­u­ments and ana­lyzes early Nazi use of “volks­grup­pen­rechte.” The book is avail­able for down­load for free.) FTR#’s 615, 616 set forth con­tem­po­rary “volks­grup­pen­rechte” exer­cised on behalf of the Ger­manic minor­ity in North­ern Italy and used as an ide­o­log­i­cal ally and oper­a­tional par­a­digm for the “going native” strat­egy man­i­fested by the Dalai Lama’s milieu.