Vol 2, No 7 2000 pp. 403 - 404
NEW BOOKS REVIEW          BUCHBESPRECHUNGEN
ON NEW WORLD HEGEMONY
Towards the end of last year, Student Cultural Centre from Niš published a book not large in volume as in significance, titled New World Order and the Balkans by Ljubiša Mitrović, Ph.D. and a professor at the Faculty of Philosophy in Niš. As the author himself points out in the foreword, the book consists of text already known to the professional public, either as oral presentations at domestic conferences or as published articles in journals and other periodicals. The central issue in the book is the author's study Globalization, New World Order and the Balkans  which was presented as an introductory report and basis for a debate on New World Order and the Balkans, held as a round table discussion at the Faculty of Philosophy in Niš on the 18th  of June 1999.
The round table discussion was organized by the Institute of Sociology within the framework of the research macroproject named Regional Cultural Cooperation in the Balkans and financed by the Ministry of Science and Technology of the Republic of Serbia. The author's appeals and reactions to the aggression on FR of Yugoslavia, as well as his interview published in the newspaper "Borba", are given in the Appendix to the book.
Why did NATO attack Yugoslavia? Ever since the first day of the war, aside from or above the motives officially proclaimed by the members of the Alliance, foreign and domestic analysts have listed a number of various motives for that military action, ranging from the broadest ones - geopolitical, over economical and political, to ideological. The time to come will show the (un)justification of each of the reasons individually and as a whole.
Even if protection of human rights was the real and main reason for the aggression, a question still remains: how can one accept the suffering and death of thousands of people in Serbia and the greatest part of Yugoslavia, i.e. how can one accept the demolishing of the country and the destruction of certain basic assumptions of civilized life? Are the two thousand killed and about five thousand wounded civilians, the incessant terror of living under air-raid emergency sirens and fifty damaged or destroyed churches and monasteries a part of a deeper systemic, social and interest-based background of the NATO aggression?
From the horizon of the world as it is and as it will shortly become, bearing in mind the authoritarian nature of the existing system in this county and the spreading of nationalism, induced from abroad and historically retrograde, the author poses a brave question: where does contemporary liberal democracy lead? In the ensuing answer, he detects the most prominent characteristics of Western civilization on the borderline of two millennia: globalization of transnational company power, pseudo-democracy, "planetarization" of fear, rationalization of interest and position of the leading political, economic and intellectual elité, etc.
Analysing the terms "mondialism", "globalization" and "neoimperialism", trying to construe the origin of the new world order as well as the current position of national states and summing up certain characteristics of the geopolitical  situation in the Balkans - professor Mitrović designates the United States of America as the main source of such disfigured attitudes of the contemporary Western world (which does not mean that there do not exist different social processes and tendencies in U.S. foreign policy, although of secondary importance, as well as awareness within a small part of intellectual elité of the danger which current U. S. policy may present for the country itself and for the whole world).  Disrespect of the minimum of the general principle of right to sovereignty and independence of other countries and the lack of equality and democratic decision making in the UN have been designated as the main shortcomings of the totalitarian U. S. foreign policy and its satellites.
It is an endeavour of high value to take the veil off the fundamental objectives of the foreign policy of the holder of global domination behind the curtain of political rhetoric concerning the aggression on Yugoslavia. On one hand, towards south-European countries (intimidation of the neighbouring countries which would defy the will and interests of the West, retention of political instability, forcible "westernization", using the territories of these countries as cites for military bases and industrial and nuclear waste disposals), and on the other, on a wider scale and not only in military and strategic respect (forcing Russia to withdraw towards Siberia, testing of China, destabilization of euro currency, instigating rivalry between France and Germany, disposal of sophisticated weaponry at the world market, etc). In the case of Balkan states the most obvious is violation of basic principles of civilized relations in the world - freedom in determining the ways of individual and social development, which brings to the foreground the actual responsibility of social researchers of the Balkan region to help build an idea about the regional identity  of its peoples and a rational and democratic regional action strategy for engagement of numerous participants.
At the very first individual appearance, the texts that make up this book have underwent critical observation. They have had a considerable effect on the public, both in their oral and printed form, so that this compilation has its scientific and social justification. First of all, it is valuable as a signpost to Balkan countries, torn between the process of retraditionalization and modernization, in finding the optimal forms of cooperation and partaking in the global and regional processes of European and world integration.

Dragan Todorović