Subscribe to EIR Online

LaRouche's Record on the Balkans Crisis

Since a 1988 national television appearance warning that the breakup of Yugoslavia could become the trigger for a new world war, American statesman Lyndon LaRouche has demanded that the United States take a leading role in securing an effective solution to the crisis in the Balkans. Excerpts of his statements follow.


Jan. 7, 1991
Interview with Croatian Handwriting

The Balkan war was unleashed by Britain openly, with the support of the Gorbachov faction in Moscow, which backed the Milosevic Serbs, with the idea of creating a bloody situation in southeastern Europe which would prevent the realization of a unified Europe unified in East-West, North-South development.

That's the motivation, and that is Mrs. Thatcher expressing the unbroken tradition from the evil Lord Shelburne and dirty Jeremy Bentham to Major, Hurd, and others in Britain today.


Aug. 11, 1992
From a Presidential Campaign Statement

The United States has an obligation in [the former Yugoslavia] because the war could have been prevented had not the associates of Henry A. Kissinger--specifically Lawrence Eagleburger in the U.S. Department of State and Lord Carrington from London--acted to spearhead actions to unleash the Serbian aggressors against their neighbors, first against the Slovenes and Croats where bloody violations of human rights and aggressive war were conducted, and most recently against the Bosnians....

We are on the verge of what might be called a Final Solution method practiced by the Serbs, Hitler-style, against Croats and Bosnians, and we know not what other peoples tomorrow. We cannot stand by again and watch this happen without doing something....

We must introduce an economic reconstruction program, and realize that economic development is the essence of the works of peace. The best weapon against war is not war, though sometimes we have to take military action; the best action against war, is the works of peace, the positive, affirmative works of peace.


May 5, 1993
From EIR Talks Radio Show

First of all, you have to recognize that George Bush, Margaret Thatcher, and Mikhail Gorbachov unleashed the Serbian fascist allies of a section of British intelligence around Milosevic in an attempt to undercut the southern flank of Europe for geopolitical reasons.... The question is: Will President Clinton lose his nerve and back down piecemeal under pressure from Paris and London--under the pressure of the same Entente Cordiale politics which caused World War I and implicitly World War II; or will the United States take effective action in this situation?

The United States is going to do something. The question is, is it going to be an effective action?

...The Clinton administration should immediately go with, over any objections from Boutros-Ghali, from London or from Paris, a policy of lifting the embargo on arming the Bosnian and Croatian governments as sovereign nation-states, and of providing close air support for throwing the Serbian forces back across the borders of Croatia and Bosnia prior to the outbreak of the Serbian aggression against Croatia and Serbia last year or two years ago.


May 24, 1994
From EIR Talks Radio Show

[The Bosnia ``peace'' plan adopted by Warren Christopher and the foreign ministers of Great Britain, France, Russia, and Spain is] an absolute disaster. It probably is the worst foreign policy catastrophe for the United States government in recent time, in terms of its implications, because this tends to discredit the United States as an international factor in policy shaping.

I think it's impossible to exaggerate the seriousness of the situation; but I shouldn't wish to suggest hopelessness. This is going to deteriorate. This is worse than what Daladier and Chamberlain did at Munich, what the British and their friends succeeded in imposing on the United States. It is far worse, as I say, than what was conceded to Hitler by Chamberlain and Daladier.

We have to see what the next development is. This is not going to stick. This is not going to lead to peace; this is going to lead to extended chaos. We will have to see how the United States government, the Clinton administration in particular, reacts to this.

If this were to continue, if there were to be no correction on the part of the Clinton administration, I would say that the chances of Mr. Clinton's being reelected, would be zilch, on the basis of what the consequences of this would be....

If you unleash genocide, if you unleash mass rape, rape-slave camps numbering tens of thousands of women, if you engage in the ``final solution'' to the Bosnian Muslim ``problem,'' and you imagine that somehow it's going to contain itself within a few foothills in the Balkans and not extend to the rest of the world, you simply don't understand at all how the world works.


July 18, 1995
EIR Talks Radio Show

What has to be done, is that NATO is going to have to, and in the immediate period now, take out all the relevant targets of opportunity, logistical heavy weapons, etc., through largely air strike methods in the Bosnian area, to bring about the defeat of a bunch of war criminals who won't stop committing war crimes and crimes against humanity, as in the case of Srebrenica. That has to be done.

If that does not happen, then the credibility of the United States, the United States government in particular, but the United States as a whole, is gone. It has been the sense of the Senate, of the majority of the Senate, for some time, that this has to be done....

If we do not act, the United States government, which would mean the Clinton administration in this particular case but the whole government, the U.S. military, and the entire United States, has lost strategic credibility, and our attempts to project any policy, any foreign policy whatsoever, will be generally treated with disgust and contempt by nations around the world. And therefore the time has come in which we have to act.

Now, how can we act? ... We can do the job, simply by eliminating very rapidly, the major part of the vulnerable logistical targets of opportunity, and heavy weapons capabilities. If those things are neutralized, the logistics, and the heavy weapons capabilities are decimated, or the attrition is heavy enough and rapid enough, then that changes the situation, which would mean the defeat of the Serbian forces. But there's no way to do the job of protecting troops in there, like Unprofor troops and NATO troops, you can't protect them now unless you defeat the Serbs.

We have to push ahead very quickly, to get a joint agreement, among France, the United States, and other forces, that should be the objective, to implement what [Sen. Robert] Dole is calling for--lifting of the embargo--and go in there and act expeditiously using full military capabilities, both to assist in the protection of the Unprofor troops who are there, but also to take out this Serb atrocity, which must be removed if there's going to be peace, and a solution to the issues of war crimes in Bosnia, and of course, Croatia....

If the United States acts expeditiously, shall we say ``with pungency and force and expedition,'' this whole mess will be under control within a matter of days. We may have a problem with the U.N., we may have a problem with our so-called British ally, but it's time to have it out. We cannot mush around with so-called sensitivity or therapy group types of negotiations, in which the cost of continuing the therapy group chats with the mentally ill from London, is that tens of thousands of people in Bosnia, are butchered. That's not acceptable.

Back to top

clear
clear
clear