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In the early morning of 8 May 1999, the US-led NATO attacked the mainland embassy in Yugoslavia, killing three people and injuring more than 20 others.
In the aftermath, the United States responded to the tragedy arrogantly and deceptively, insisting that the attack on the Chinese embassy was just a "mistakenly bombing".
Unexpectedly, many years later, US President Clinton suddenly changed his words and apologized in his autobiography.
And, the real "culprit" has already been assassinated?
What's going on?
The beginning and end of the Kosovo War
If we want to understand the truth about the US bombing of the mainland embassy in Yugoslavia, we must first understand the Kosovo War that led to this tragedy.
Why did the Americans start the Kosovo War?
Kosovo is originally part of Serbia and is located in the Balkans, the famous "powder keg" of Europe.
Due to its important geographical location, it has always been the domain of various powerful forces in Eurasia.
The Principality of Serbia was established around the 10th century AD and reached its peak in the mid-14th century.
However, with the rise and expansion of the Ottoman Empire, Serbia was soon invaded by Ottoman forces and completely destroyed in the 15th century.
After the occupation of Serbia, the Ottoman Empire, in order to maintain its rule in the Balkans, resorted to forced religious conversion to convert the local population.
It was not until modern times that the Balkans became independent after World War II after five centuries of Ottoman rule.
However, the centuries-long rule of the Ottoman Empire, especially the implementation of the policy of proselytism, also left a serious risk of division in the geographical Balkans.
And Serbia is the biggest victim of this.
In 1992, Serbia and Montenegro formed the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia.
However, soon after the establishment of the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia, serious separatism emerged in the Kosovo region in southern Serbia.
Since the main inhabitants of the Kosovo region are followers of Islam who had been forcibly converted by the Ottoman Empire, this makes it alien to Serbia, which is an Orthodox Christian.
The contradictions and conflicts between the two ethnic groups are also very serious.
Just when the Kosovars were clamoring for independence, the Americans seized the opportunity and began to intervene.
On the one hand, they are secretly funding Kosovo's independence forces behind the scenes, and on the other hand, they are wantonly attacking the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia on the grounds of "violating human rights in Kosovo" in international public opinion.
This move by the United States is undoubtedly an attempt to split the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia, destabilize the Balkan Peninsula, and profit from it.
But in the end, what prompted the United States to launch the Kosovo War was to attack and suppress its ally, the European Union.
After the end of World War II, the United States took advantage of Europe's eagerness to recover from the post-war period and used various economic aid to achieve comprehensive penetration into the European region.
However, after all, there are legendary figures like Charles de Gaulle who came out of World War II among the European powers, so the tendency of the European continent to resist American control has always existed.
From the European Community to the European Union, all of them were European efforts to unite against the United States.
Such a tendency is a great headache for the United States, which only wants to become the sole world hegemon.
Until the birth of the euro, they were determined to strike at the EU.
On January 1, 1999, the euro was officially born, which is the economic weapon of the European continent to resist US hegemony.
Once the euro is allowed to sit on the throne, it will not only lead to the EU economy completely out of the control of the United States, but also the emergence of an emerging economy that is strong enough to threaten the global hegemony of the dollar.
This is obviously unacceptable to the United States, but it will not be easy to crack down on the development of the euro without tearing its face with Europe.
As a result, the Balkan Peninsula, which was already full of wolves, naturally became the entry point for the Americans to hit the euro.
Because capital always seeks advantages and avoids disadvantages, regional instability will inevitably lead to a large flight of capital.
And this is exactly the best way to fight the euro bloodlessly.
As a result, the Kosovo War turned into a forced Shura field under the wrestling of major powers.
Ridiculous explanation from the United States
In March 1999, under the pretext of resolving the "human rights crisis in the Kosovo region," the United States brazenly launched the Kosovo War without the authorization of the United Nations.
During the war, US-led NATO forces flew more than 1,000 sorties and dropped more than 2,000 missiles and more than 400,000 bombs on the territory of the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia.
As a result, tens of thousands of people were killed or injured in the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia, and direct economic losses amounted to tens of billions of dollars.
And the US military action soon achieved results in the economic battlefield.
The original exchange rate of 1 euro to 1.07 US dollars, after 72 days of bombardment, suddenly plummeted to 1 euro can only be exchanged for 0.82 US dollars, and the euro exchange rate plummeted by 30%.
To add insult to injury, the "Balkan powder keg" caused by the Kosovo war exploded again, causing more than $200 billion in capital flight, further damaging Europe's economic potential.
In this way, with a cheap war, the Americans destroyed the economic challenges from the European Union after the collapse of the Soviet Union and maintained their global hegemony.
It is not enough for the United States to strangle Europe.
Greedy Americans also want to use this war to win more, such as knocking and intimidating other regional powers that might challenge the United States.
As an opposing ideological camp and a talent for development, China is undoubtedly the object that Americans want to beat the most.
At this point, the tragedy of the bombing of the embassy was inevitable.
In the early morning of 8 May 1999, a US B-2 stealth bomber taking off from the Italian peninsula flew to Belgrade, the capital of Serbia, and immediately dropped five precision-guided bombs on the mainland embassy in the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia.
The five bombs attacked the embassy on the mainland from multiple angles, killing three journalists, Shao Yunhuan, Xu Xinghu, and Zhu Ying, and injuring more than 20 embassy staff.
The brazen attack by the United States on our embassies abroad is undoubtedly extremely bad.
According to the Convention on Diplomatic Relations, embassies abroad are equivalent to the territory of each country, and therefore attacking embassies is tantamount to waging war.
However, the Americans had no remorse for such a heinous act and mistake, and only calmly said afterwards that it was just a "mistakenly bombing."
According to the Americans' own explanations, the reason why the embassy on the mainland was "bombed" by mistake was that the US military bought outdated maps, and the location of the Chinese embassy was not correctly marked on the map.
In addition, the location of the Chinese embassy is not updated in the database of the US intelligence services.
As a result, when they reviewed the action plan, they found no anomalies.
However, the US explanation is undoubtedly extremely clumsy.
On the one hand, the excuse that the wrong map and the information base has not been updated is untenable.
Because at that time, the United States had already bombed the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia for dozens of days.
With such a major military operation, it is impossible for the Americans to get it without figuring out the landmark information of Belgrade.
On the other hand, the five precision-guided bombs that attacked our embassy were attacked from different angles.
This was clearly a deliberate plan of attack, and it was by no means a "mistakenly bombing".
But why did the Americans suddenly attack the Chinese embassy that was not involved in the conflict?
Truth and Mystery
There have been different opinions as to why the United States attacked the Chinese embassy.
One version is that it was to attack the President of the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia, Slobodan Milosevic.
According to the British "Guardian" later disclosure, at the time of the incident, Yugoslav President Slobodan Milosevic was secretly coming to the Chinese Embassy, and the Americans planned a beheading operation to attack the Chinese Embassy in order to assassinate him.
This argument is widely circulated in Europe, but there are too many unreasonable reasons in it.
First, the United States has a great chance of assassinating Milosevic, and there is absolutely no need to seriously offend China for this.
What's more, attacking the embassies of other countries abroad is itself subject to tremendous pressure from international public opinion;
Second, even if there were air strikes on the embassy, it would obviously be too difficult to kill Milosevic with just a few bombs.
For the self-interested United States, this move is a serious asymmetry between benefits and risks.
Therefore, this claim is not reliable, and another relatively reliable theory is that the United States acquired the wreckage of the F-117 in order to destroy China.
The F-117 is an advanced stealth fighter from the United States.
Not only is its external aerodynamic layout and stealth materials very advanced, but the engine is also the main model of the US military.
In the course of the attack on the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia, an F-117 of the US military was shot down by the troops of the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia.
US military intelligence shows that the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia secretly sold the wreckage of the F-117 to China, and it was hidden in the Chinese embassy.
Due to China's strong reverse engineering capabilities, these wrecks are likely to contribute to the rapid development of China's military industry.
In order to limit the development of military science and technology on the mainland, the United States decided to attack the embassy and destroy the wreckage.
However, this statement is the same as the assassination of Milosevic, the cost and benefit of the US military are not equal, and it is difficult to guarantee the effective destruction of the wreckage of the fighter plane.
Therefore, the US attack on the Chinese embassy was not a whim-spur incident, but a political event that had been planned for a long time.
It is the political factors involved in this that are the root cause of the tragedy.
After the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991, the United States saw China as its next competitor.
As a result, they have been doing everything they can to provoke and suppress China, as exemplified by the 1997 "Milky Way Incident".
Since China has always had close relations with the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia, this has made the United States even more aware of its self-perceived crisis.
In the end, it makes sense that the Americans planned the attack as a way to knock and test China.
In fact, in 2004, former US President Clinton, who had been out of office for three years, also mentioned this incident in his memoir "My Life".
He first denied that the incident had anything to do with him, claiming that the CIA had bypassed him to give orders.
Second, he wrote, the Chinese did not believe it was an accident at the time, but a political test against China.
Clinton did not deny or admit this viewpoint, and his attitude was ambiguous.
In this way, the truth of the matter may only be known to those who carried out the attack plan.
However, the person directly responsible for knowing the inside story died mysteriously later.
In the face of China's anger, the U.S. government eventually scapegoated William Bennett, a CIA employee who was directly responsible for the attack, and fired him.
What is interesting is that the person directly responsible was suddenly attacked in 2009 and died on the spot.
Since then, the truth about the US bombing of the mainland embassy in the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia has become an eternal unsolved case with Bennett's death.
epilogue
There is no doubt that behind the attack on the embassy was by no means an accident, but a political test orchestrated by the Americans to knock, provoke and test China's bottom line in order to seize the opportunity to nip China in the bud.
At that time, we could not do anything about the brutal behavior of the Americans, but now, with years of development and self-reliance, the mainland has the strength to defend its own dignity and interests, and only then can we truly prevent the recurrence of such incidents.
Dignity has always been only above the edge of the sword.
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LIU Chang,LIU Chang. Analysis of China's Decision-making Mechanism and Process of Diplomatic Crisis: A Case Study of the 1999 "Bombing of the Pavilion"[J].Journal of International Relations,2018(02):79-108+156.)