Bratislava conference
The Bratislava Conference was a defense meeting of the US State Department and the American Enterprise Institute held in Bratislava from April 28-30, 2000 .
The theme of the conference was “Is Euro-Atlantic Integration Still on Track? Opportunities and Obstacles ”(“ Is Euro-Atlantic integration still on the right track? Opportunities and obstacles ”).
Participants were prime ministers, foreign ministers, defense ministers and the personal representative of the NATO commander in chief.
Report by Member of the Bundestag Wimmer
In an open letter from a participant, the German MP Willy Wimmer , then Deputy Chairman of the OSCE Parliamentary Committee , to the then Federal Chancellor Gerhard Schröder , Wimmer summarized the eleven most important statements of the organizers:
1. On the part of the organizers (US State Department and American Enterprise Institute) it was demanded that the allied forces recognize an independent state of Kosovo under international law as soon as possible.
2. The organizers declared that the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia was outside of any legal system, especially the Helsinki Final Act .
3. The European legal order is an obstacle to the implementation of NATO considerations. The American legal system is also more suitable for this when applied in Europe.
4. The war against the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia had been waged to reverse a wrong decision made by General Eisenhower in the Second World War . A stationing of US soldiers had to be made up there for strategic reasons.
5. The European allies took part in the war against Yugoslavia in order to de facto overcome the dilemma that resulted from the Alliance's “New Strategic Concept” adopted in April 1999 and the tendency of Europeans to a previous mandate from the UN or OSCE have resulted.
6. Without prejudice to the subsequent legalistic interpretation of the Europeans, according to which the war against Yugoslavia was an exceptional case in NATO's extended field of activity beyond the treaty area, it is of course a precedent that anyone can and should refer to at any time will.
7. With the upcoming expansion of NATO, it is important to restore the spatial situation between the Baltic Sea and Anatolia as it was at the height of Roman expansion .
8. To this end, Poland must be surrounded by democratic states as neighbors to the north and south, Romania and Bulgaria must ensure the national connection to Turkey, Serbia (probably to ensure a US military presence) must be permanently excluded from European development.
9. To the north of Poland, full control over access from St. Petersburg to the Baltic Sea is required.
10. In every process, the right to self-determination should take precedence over all other provisions or rules of international law.
11. The finding was not met with opposition, according to which NATO had violated every international rule and, above all, relevant provisions of international law in the attack against the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia.
Wimmer comments on his impressions of the conference that the American side seems to be consciously and deliberately trying to undermine the international legal system developed as a result of two wars in the last century in a global context and to achieve its goals. Power should take precedence over justice. Where international law stands in the way, it will be eliminated. When a similar development hit the League of Nations, the Second World War was not far off. “A way of thinking that sees one's own interests so absolutely can only be called totalitarian.” Wimmer warned against valuing the unrestricted military ability to act more highly than the international legal legitimation of their actions: “If we do not return to the global legal order, we will get it Law of the thumb. "
Individual evidence
- ↑ Willy Wimmer: “The Americans see themselves as successors to Rome: Strategic Conflict Patterns in the Balkans” , in: Blätter für deutsche und internationale Politik 9/2001, pp. 2–13.
- ↑ Willy Wimmer: “The Americans see themselves as successors to Rome: Strategic Conflict Patterns in the Balkans” , in: Blätter für deutsche und internationale Politik 9/2001, pp. 2–13.
- ↑ Jochen Bölsche: Anatomy of a Crisis: "Americans come from Mars, Europeans from Venus" , in: Der Spiegel from February 19, 2003, accessed on December 12, 2014.