Rajiv. He was assassinated while campaigning on May 21, and his death was widely
attributed in India to the CIA.
Bush's approach to sabotaging and containing continental Europe including doing
everything possible to create a new war on the Balkan flank of that continent. This was
done as openly as possible, through a visit to Belgrade by James Baker. Baker met with
the presidents of the two Yugoslav federal republics which had been seeking either a
loose confederation or else their own outright independence, Milan Kucan of Slovenia
and Franjo Tudjman of Croatia. Baker warned both that they would get no US
recognition and no US economic aid if they seceded from the Yugoslav federation. "We
came to Yugoslavia because of our concern about the crisis and about the dangers of a
disintegration of this country. The concerns that we came to Yugoslavia with have not
been allayed by the meetings we had today. We think that the situation is very serious,"
said Baker. The breakup of Yugoslavia would have "very tragic consequences." Baker
added a very ominously: "We worry, frankly, about history repeating itself." Baker was
talking about Sarajevo and how the conflict of Serbia with Austria-Hungary had
detonated a general war and devastated Europe. Baker had a special meeting with the
Serbian fascist strongman, Slobodan Milosevic, in which Baker encouraged the Serbian
military to suppress any rebellion with military means. The federal army assaults on
Slovenia, and then on Croatia, can be dated from these exchanges, which succeeded in
creating the first war and the first bombing of civilians in central Europe since 1945.
Interviews during this same time frame by Undersecretary of State Lawrence
Eagleburger, the Kissinger Associates veteran who had been on the board of the US
importer of Yugo automobiles, and on the board of a Yugoslav bank involved in drug
money laundering, left no doubt of US intent: in Eagleburger's babbling, every other
word was "civil war."
US brokerage houses waxed eloquent over how the incipient Yugoslav civil war would
prevent investment in most countries of central Europe, and would ruin the economic
hinterland of united Germany. Yugoslavia had been ravaged by the conditionalities of the
IMF during the 1980's, and it was this regime that Bush was imposing in Poland, and
which he wanted to extend to the rest of eastern Europe and the republics emerging from
the USSR.
Gorbachov had been invited to the Group of Seven summit in London as a result of
pressure from the continental Europeans which Bush and Major had been unable to
withstand. But all that Gorbachov could bring home from this meeting was the promise
of "technical assistance" from the IMF, meaning the advice of Jeffrey Sachs of Harvard,
an incompetent charlatan who had presided over the ruin of Poland. On the last two days
of July, Bush went to Moscow for a summit with Gorbachov that centered on the signing
of a treaty on reducing strategic armaments. Erstwhile condominium partners Gorbachov
and Primakov pressed for economic assistance and investments, but all that Bush was
willing to offer was a vague committment to forward to Congress the trade treaty of
1990, which would provide, if approved, for the extension of the Most Favored Nation
treatment to Moscow. Soviet black beret special forces units deliberately massacred six
Lithuanian border guards as Bush was arriving, but Bush maintained a pose of studied