[Obad Kesic is a program specialist with the Professional Media Program of the International Research and Exchanges Board. He serves as a consultant on Balkan affairs for various US and international organizations, including the Department of Defense and the US Information Agency. Kesic also provides frequent commentary and analysis for a variety of media outlets, including National Public Radio, CNN and the Voice of America. He has published extensively on various Yugoslav and Balkan issues.]
For those that hate one another are not the problem in this world. They always resemble one another. Enemies arae always the same, or become so with time, for they could not be enemies otherwise.
--Milorad Pavic
The violent disintegration of Yugoslavia caught the international powers by surprise and unprepared to deal with the crisis that followed. America was still celebrating its victory over Iraq, televised to an entire nation eager to erase forever the shadow of defeat in Vietnam over two decades earlier. The European Community (and since 1991, the European Union - EU) was celebrating the fall of the Berlin Wall and making plans for greater integration. At the same time, the Soviet union was showing increasing signs of disintegration and was in the midst of an identity crisis, which would plague Gorbachev's successor throughout the Yugoslav tragedy. As the situation in Yugoslavia deteriorated and warning bells rang louder, most world leaders took little notice of this faraway place of which they knew little.
In mosst sports, dance, joke telling, and perhaps even in love, timing is everything. In Yugoslavia's demise timing was critical. As complex array of critical political, social and economic problems - combined with populist politics, fueled by nationalist aspirations and a lack of preparedness on the part of global powers - mixed and set off an explosion which rocked the foundations of international institutions and created fissures in the Western alliance. Early on, the European and American governments abdicated any constructive role which could have avoided the catastrophic consequences of the Yugoslav tragedy. They compounded the melancholy through unwise actions and near criminal mismanagement of several opportunties for peace. The Europeans, Americans and Russians allowed themselves to be swept up in the whirlwinds of the conflicts in Yugoslavia, permitting actors in the former Yugoslavia to play them off one another.
The political leaders in each of the former Yugoslav federal units counted heavily on foreign intervention. The Slovenes, Croats, and later Bosnian Muslims hoped that their acts of secession would be recognized and possibly supported through international military intervention against the Yugoslav National Army (JNA) and Serbia. The Serbs counted on the historic legalistic traditions of international relations, which favored the preservation of internationally recognized state borders and deferred to the sovereignty of the state on internal matters. Each player viewed the possibility of war as simply another policy option, one which could, despite obvious dangers, deliver his ultimate objective.
Most attempts at understanding the roots behind Yugoslavia's disintegration begin with the rise of Serbia's strongman, Slobodan Milosevic, in the mid 1980s. These analyses blame the crisis on the ambitions and actions of this one man; or alternatively, place the bulk of the responsibility for the country's slip into war on an oversimplified and one-dimensional account of Sserbian nationalism and the quest for "Greater Serbia." Although these two factors (Milosevic and Serbian nationalism) did play key roles in Yugoslavia's untimely death, they are but two ingredients in a much larger and more complex recipe that led to disaster.
This chapter, like this book, is an attempt to set aside the emotional sloganeering which has characterized most discourse surrounding the conflicts in the former Yugoslavia, and to provide a brief but thorough account of the Serbian role, motivations, and objectives in the Yugoslav conflicts.
The Evolution of Nationalist Politics
The rise to power in Serbia of Slobodan Milosevic arguably was one of the two most important events in modern Yugoslav politics; the other being the death of Josip-Broz Tito in 1980.\
[note: For detailed profiles of Milosevic, see Aleksa Djilas, "A Profile of Slobodan Milosevic," Foreign Affairs, vol. 72 (Summer 1993); and Obrad Kesic, "Serbia: The Politics of Despair," Current History, vol. 92 (November 1993).]
At the time of Tito's death, Milosevic was a young up and coming apparatchik in the League of Communists of Serbia (LCS). He, like dozens of his generation, displayed unwavering loyalty to the Party and to Tito. What set him apart from others of his generation was a driving ambition, an uncanny political sense, and most importantly, a major protector and sponsor, Ivan Stambolic. Ironically, the latter would become the first in a long and growing list of pawns betrayed and sacrificed by Milosevic in his quest for power and glory.
Whereas most descriptions of Milosevic's rise begin with his famous impromptu words to the Serbs of Kosovo in 1987, his road to power was paved by a series of events in the late 1960s and early 1970s. In the early post war years, the Yugoslav communists spent considerable time extinguishing armed resistance in parts of Bosnia, Croatia, Serbia and Kosovo, where complete control was not established until late 1948. The Tito-Stalin split in 1948 allowed the Yugoslav communists a much needed respite from internal unrest, and created the conditions for a "Yugoslav" nationalism to emerge in the face of the external Russian threat.
The leaders of the League of Communists of Yugoslavia (LCY) justified this "Yugoslav" nationalism through the evolution of the theories of self management and separate road to socialism. But in doing so they also opened the door to greater decentralization. This, in turn, led to the division of decision making within the LCY and paved the way toward the establishment of ten competing party groupings: one in each of the eight federal units, one for the federal government and one for the JNA. Each of these groups pursued its own interests and political agenda. Whereas the groups representing the federal government and the JNA maintained a "Yugoslav" orientation, the other eight groups gradually pursued the agendas of the individual majority ethnic groups (nations) within each federal unit. A delicate balance of interests was maintained through the mediation and arbitration of Tito, who managed to maintain central authority through his periodic intervention in conflicts among the various factions. By the early 1960s, inter ethnic conflict manifested itself in policy debates within the LCY and the federal government began to take on increasingly nationalistic overtones. The bottom line of most of these disputes centered on the desires of the non-Serb republic (national) Party leaders for greater autonomy, which conflicted with the wishes of many Serb leaders for a more unitary and cohesive federation.
The first major clash with nationalist underpinnings occurred within the ranks of the LCY in 1968. The Slovene political and party leadership protested the Federal Executive Council's decision to redirect World Bank funds, designated for road projects, away from a Slovene based project to one that would directly benefit Croatia and Serbia.
[note: For a comprehensive account of the Slovene road to the crisis, see Pedro Ramet, Nationalism and Federalism in Yugoslavia, 1963-1983, Bloomington: Indiana University Press).]
The Slovenes saw this decision as a direct attack on their national interests and pride. Many Slovenian protesters criticized both the federation and the perceived Serbian/Croatian coalition. The seriousness of Slovene nationalist anger was attested to by Franc Popit, then president of the Slovene LC, who was forced to announce that Slovenia had no intention of seceding from Yugoslavia. Besides being unprecedented in post war Yugoslav politics, the Slovene protest also laid the foundation for greater ethnocentric inter republic politics.
The Slovene crisis was followed by a much more serious Croatian crisis. Croat dissatisfaction with the division of financial resources and foreign credits was combined with a perception of disproportionate Croat contribution to the central funds. But Croat anger quickly mushroomed into nationalist demands for state sovereignty. Croatian cultural institutions, such as Matica Hrvatska and its weekly, Hrvatski Tjednik, began an all out campaign to right the wrongs against Croatia. The feeling of being exploited was coupled with ethnocentric views of history, language and culture, which walked a fine line begween legitimate national pride and outright chauvinism and bigotry. Caught up in the euphoria of protest and overwhelming national support, the Croat national and political leaders upped their demands from a desire for greater say in economic and cultural decision making within Croatia to thinly veiled demands for full sovereignty.
Croat intellectuals became the primary stokers of nationalist passions - a role copied by their Serb counterparts in the late 1980s. Matica Hrvatska became the beacon of Croat intellectual nationalists and gave voice to their demands. Cloaked in calls for reform of social, economic, and political institutions, these demands remarkably resembled those issued in the much maligned 1986 draft memorandum of a working group within the Serbian Academy of Sciences (SANU). Among other grievances, Croat intellectuals singled out: 1) the lack of a full sense of belonging within their own republic; 2) the subordination of Croat interests to Serbia's interests, 3) the feeling of an inferior position in respect to other nations within Croatia and the federation, 4) the fear of the loss of the basic national identity through cultural and linguistic assimilation, 5) the unjust imposition of collective guilt on the Croat nation due to the Ustashe; (WWII Croat collaboration regime), and 6) a demographic threat to the nation as a result of a declining birthrate compounded by higher birthrates for other nations in the federation. The type of national identity crisis reflected felings of inferiority vis a vis other Yugoslav nations. The sense of exploitation which dominated the nationalist discourse in Croatia during the late 1960s, was not new to the Yugoslav political scene. Similar sentiments had surfaced earlier in Slovenia. In the late 1980s, such feelings reached epidemic proportions throughout the shaky Yugoslav federation, becoming a useful tool in the hands of populist politicians.
The Croat crisis was resolved through the direct intervention of Tito, who direced a harsh campaign of repression and purges. Although almost bloodless, the purge of the Croat party and state structure of officials tainted by naationalism - paralleled by a purge of liberals within Serbia's political elite - directly contributed to Yugoslavia's demise in the 1980s. In addition to removing and jailing the nucleus of naationalist sympathizers within Croatia, the purges also removed an entire generation of liberal reformers in the Croat and Serb political elite, permanently crippling the cohesiveness of the party and opening the door to deep fragmentation. Vojin Dimitrijevic, one of former Yugoslavia's most respected international jurists, has described this purge as resembling a cultural revolution which removed the ablest civil servants, politicians, and thinkers and replaced them with opportunistic, poorly educated, and incompetent apparatchiks.
[note: Vojin Dimitrijevic, "The 1974 Constitution and Constitutional Process as a Factor in the Collapse of Yugoslavia," in Payan Akhaven and Robert Howse, eds., Yugoslavia the Former and Future: Reflections by Scholars from the Region (Washington and Geneva: The Brookings Institution and The United Nations Research Institute for Social Development, 1995). pp. 52-53.]
Tito and the LCY elite sought to insure that the Party would dominate the political process in such a way thaat the republics would become more dependent on it. The 1974 Constitution was an attempt to legislate the Party's dominance. As Dimitrijevic points out, the constitutional changes were an attempt to guarantee that:
Decision making in state organs would become all but impossible without the extraconstitutional intervention of the party and its guidance.... Another clear tendency was to weaken the federation in favor of the republics by delegating more power to the legislatures of the latter, and by preventing the federal parliament from making a decision if it was vetoed by members of a federal unit. The overall effect was to strengthen the party leadership in the republics and to transform them into semi-independent fiefdoms of the republican communist elite. This was probably due to the reinstituted conservatives being only superficial Marxists, abhorring liberal democracy and capitalist entrepreneurs (or, as they called them, "technocrats"), but not entirely immune to nationalism, if it could serve their autocratic ambitions. The thinning ideology created a void that was to be filled by nationalism.
The 1974 Constitution compounded the looming leadership and political crisis by further fraying the forces and institutions keeping the federation together. Its implementation in the late 1970s - at a time when Tito became incapacitated by ill health and as the Party itself came under the influence of rival republican interests - in effect transformed the federation into a confederation. The component units began pursuing their own individual interests, leading to economic instability as uncoordinated planning and duplication of production beset the economy. This disorder even crossed into Yugoslavia's foreign relations. Using the cover of international economic interests, the republics began to pursue independent foreign policies which often collided, contradicted, and competed with the interests of the federal government
Tito's death in May 1980 and the Albanian riots in Kosovo the following year added to the stresses, fragmenting the LCY and the country. After Tito's death the Party leadership lost its stature and authority to control the ruling elite within the federal units. Decision making became prisoner to political inertia, further delegitimizing the LCY and the central government in the eyes of most Yugoslavs. When the JNA and the federal government tried to check the gradual erosion of political authority, they encountered obstruction from the republics and triggered suspicions among non-Serbs who saw recentralization as a code word for Serbian dominance. At the same time, under Milosevic's influence the Serbs also viewed the central government with great suspicion and suspected it of colluding with Slovenia and Croatia in the dismantling of Yugoslavia.
By the mid-1980s, the Slovene and Serbian political elite were showing signs of discontent. Each was unsatisfied with its position within the federation. While Serbia's leadership, at least until Milosevic's soft coup against Ivan Stambolic, remained committed to the reestablishment of a strong central role for the LCY, the Slovenes openly challenged any attempt at centralization. One of the earliest rebellions by the Slovenes against centralization occurred in response to the push for a consolidated educational curriculum throughout Yugoslavia. Viewing it as unnecessary and an attempt to create an artificial homogeneity of national identity through cultural assimilation, Ljubljana opposed it.
[note: Mihailo Crnobrnja, The Yugoslav Drama (Mongreal and Kingson: McGill-Queen's University Press, 1994), p. 101. Some versions of this story state that Milosevic actually said "No one will ever beat you again," while others slaim he said "No one can beat the people." Nevertheless his words were spontaneous and were enthusiastically accepted and passed on into popular myth by Serbs throughout Yugoslavia.]
Locked in a bitter dispute with Serbia, the Slovenes later sought to expand their sovereignty by refusing to participate in the ritualistic commemoration of Tito's birthday and by amending the republic's constitution in a clear attempt to establish its supremacy over the federal constitution.
The history of post World War II Yugoslavia can be charted by the ebb and flow of ethnic crises, which fueled aggressive ethnoregionalism and gradually destroyed the possibility for compromise toward reform of the constitutional order needed to preserve the country. Only an examination of the context of this broader picture of constant nationalist challenges toward the LCY and the central government, and the reactionary attempts by the Party to protect its dominant role in decision making, can provide the basis for true understanding of Milosevic's rise to power and the reawakening of Serbian nationalism. Many outside observers choose to begin their arguments over the roots of Yugoslavia's violent death with Milosevic and the Serbian nationalist furor of the late 1980s, as if the events they describe occurred in a historic and political vacuum. Such approaches fail to understand the systemic and principal problems which truly lie at the root of the conflict. Serbian nationalism, and Milosevic's manipulation of it, added to the seriousness and speed in which Yugoslavia disintegrated, but were not, as often portrayed, the sole cause.
Milosevic and Serbian Nationalism
Many myths have sprung up surrounding the emergence of Serbian nationalism and its role in Yugoslavia's demise. Most of these myths are characterized by a simplistic and idealistic undrstanding of the history, complexity, and persistent nature of ethnocentric politics in Yugoslavia. Many of these myths are tied to the premise that Serbian nationalism (and in general nationalism itself) stems from an orchestrated campaign, led by intellectuals and politicians, who manipulate the fear and passion of Serbs by playing on a collective paranoia and deeply rooted bigotry. In constructing these myths, legitimate Serb grievances, fear and anxiety are disregarded. At the same time, similar concerns of Yugoslavia's other ethnic groups are unquestioningly validated.
Some analyses of Serbian nationalism display a disturbing chauvinistic tendency to portray Serbs and Serbian culture as backward, violent, and even barbaric. Sociologist Stjepan G. Mestrovic provides a good example of this tendency when he cites Arnold Toynbee's explanation of how Belgrade passed from Ottoman hands to become the capital of Serbia only to be occupied by the Austrians. Mestrovic adds his own interpretation to the significance of this observation by stating that Toynbee captured the contemporary charcter of Serbian aggression "as a blend of Habsburg imperialism and suppression of nationalism with Ottoman cruelty."
[note: Stjepan Mestrovic, The Balkanization of the West: The Confluence of Postmodernism and Postcommunism (London: Routledge Press, 1994), p. 136.]
In an earlier collaboration with Slaven Letica and Miroslav Goreta, Mestrovic linked Serbian backwardness to autocratic principles inherited from Byzantium and contrasts this with Croat/Slovene Western principles:
For example, following the collapse of Communism in 1989, Croatia and Slovenia expressed publicly their eagerness to pursue the Western orbit of cultural values, even though neither reublic hada experienced the Reformation or the Renaissance. The Catholic church had maintained a universalist cultural base that is still medieval in many ways but is nevertheless recognizably Western. Thus, Croatia and Slovenia led the anti Communist rebellion of 1989, voted for democracy, tend to favor pluralism, want to join the European Community, seek free market institutions, and declared their independence from a Serbian dominated federal government that emanates from Belgrade.
By contrast, Serbia and Montenegro tend in the direction of an Eastern orbit of cultural values. They typically have had close ties with Russia and are neo communist, following free elections in which democracy was rejected. Orthodox or Muslim in their religious orientation, they seek a pyramidal power structure and are militaristic. For example, Serbia and Montenegro, which had already dominated over 70 percent of the officer corps in the Yugoslav army, pulled the entire Yugoslav army (which is the third largest in Europe) into the defense of what was left of Yugoslavia, namely Serbia and Montenegro. Since 1981, the Serbian government has been accused of perpetuating human rights abuses against the minority in Kosovo.
[note: Stjepan Mestrovic, Slaven Letica and Miroslav Goreta, Habits of the Balkan Heart: Social Character and the Fall of Communism (College Station: Texas A&M University Press, 1993), p. 30.]
This type of analysis of Serb culture and nationalism is based on a form of determinism: Serbs are aggressors because their culture, mentality, and even their genes make them so. Another view of Serbian nationalism holds that although Serbs are like all other people, they have ben brainwashed by cunning leaders into a mass hysteria of murder and mayhem. Both of these understandings of Serbian nationalism are simplistic and fail to stand up to scrutiny. The Croat and Slovene vote for "democracy and pluralism" looks less ideal today, five years after the establishment of independent nation states. Croatia is dominated by an increasingly autocratic single party; Slovenia is run by a former communist clique centered around Milan Kucan and Janez Drnovsek. Furthermore, whereas both Croatia and Slovenia were champions of regionalism and decentralization within the Yugoslav federation, the governments of these two countries are now fervent antiregionalists and diehard centrists, especially when it comes to the issue of minorities.
Some would simply turn a blind eye to the historic evolution and nature of national politics in the former Yugoslavia. They blame all of Croatia's and Slovenia's failures on "Serbian aggression" and the state of war. But could it be that all of the former Yugoslav peoples and their elected leaders are more alike than any of them would like to admit? Could it be that the nationalism of Serbs has both fueled and been fueled by the nationalism of the Croats, Slovenes, Bosnian Muslims, and Albanians? Aggressive nationalism fueled by fear, anxiety, and insecurity fanned the flames that engulfed Yugoslavia. Each ethnic community took actions to enhance its own national position and security. This led to counteractions by other communities who wished to do the same; the chain reaction increased the perception of threat and deepened fears among all the groups.
In Serbia, these perceptions of threat and insecurity had been accumulating over decades; however, they peaked in the 1980s, as the Kosovo crisis emerged and as the Yugoslav political system and core institutions crumbled under the destructive weight of the nationalist politics pursued by republics. The rise of Milosevic and his embrace of a populist/nationalist platform to mobilize the Serb masses only accelerated this process. At the same time, it provided the other republics' leaders with a rallying cry to harness their own peoples' nationalism into a movement toward secession. Milosevic was among the first politicians in Yugoslavia to grasp that Tito was dead and that the new and more unpredictable political landscape called for discarding the founder's legacy and the adoption of new tactics.
Milosevic's overriding initial ambition was to become Yugoslavia's new tito. He sought to make his move through the LCY by manipulating inter-Party rivalries, the army of uninspiring apparatchiks, and the instituional weakness of the LCY, and the central government. As this ambition was frustrated by worsening economic problems, an uncompromising central government and hostility from the Croatian and Slovene Party leadership, he reformulated his plans. Although he still maintained the desire to dominate Yugoslavia, he now saw this Yugoslavia without Slovenia. As the former member of the Yugoslav presidency and a Milosevic ally, Borisav Jovic, writes in his controversial diary,
The main battle will be played out in the 14th Congress of the LCY, in order to protect the integrity of the LCY and democratic centralism, at least formally. The goal is to isolate the Slovenes, so that they are not joined by the Croats, Macedonians and eventually B&H [Bosnia-Herzegovina].
When the Fourteenth Congress was held on January 23, 1990, Milosevic was unable to prevent the Croats from joining the Slovenes in a walkout. This shocked the Serb leader and effectively marked the end of the LCY. Once again, Milosevic had to readjust his plans and lower his sights.
Milosevic's greatest asset is his political sense, his ability to quickly assess a situation and respond with an appropriate strategy. His ability to think in pressure situations allows him the flexibility to be one step ahead of most of his opponents. At no time was this instinct better seen than during his momentous visit to Kosovo in 1987. Milosevic was dispatched to Kosovoby the Serbian LC to ease growing tensions in the province between Albanians and Serbs. Local Serbs were organizing a grassroots movement which threatened to shake all of Serbia and possibly lead to the collapse of the Serbian political leadership. The Kosovo serbs had appealed to the Serbian LC leadership for protection against local Albanian pressures, which, coupled with the horrible economic conditions in the province, had forced the migration of tens of thousands of Serbs and Montenegrins. As Milosevic met with the local party leaders and Serb representatives, the growing crowd outside came into conflict with the mostly Albanian police. A visibly shaken and fearful Milosevic emerged from the building and witnessed the mayhem. As Serbs shouted to him to end the police attacks, Milosevic uttered the fateful words: "No one is going to beat these people." The pepole wildly cheered and applauded, and television footage spread Milosevic's words throughout the Serb communities in Yugoslavia. The myth of the event grew and Milosevic began to understand the power of populist/nationalist politics.
The Serb leader eagerly embraced the role of defender of the Serb nation; his populist rhetoric took root in the very fertile soil of Serbian nationalist mythology and collective feeling of inequality within Yugoslavia. After over four decades of communist rule, many Serbs (especially intellectuals) had come to feel besieged by and unequal to the other constituent Yugoslav peoples. As the most populous nation and the one which had suffered tremendous casualties in the two world wars, many Serbs felt that they had sacrificed more for Yugoslavia than any other nation/group; and that instead of receiving compensation for these sacrifices, Serbia had intentionally been placed in an inferior position within the Yugoslav federation. They pointed to the division of Serbia into two provinces, while other republics with similar concentrations of minorities, such as Croatia and Macedonia, were kept whole. Furthermore, many Serbs also voiced their displeasure at the economic disparity in the living conditions. In Slovenia and Croatia, the per capita GDP was well over the Yugoslav average, while Serbia barely made it over the average. The disintegration of Yugoslavia's social and political fabric in the 1980s further fueld Serb insecurities and contributed to the general crisis gripping the country.
Driven by an overwhelming ambition for power, Milosevic realized that the socialist system was quickly giving way to centrifugal forces unable to be checked by the inept political elite, and that a new ideological momentum had to be impelemented to mobilize popular support and loyalty. Playing to the grievances of an insecure Serbian nation, Milosevic directed the energy of mass demonstrations into a malleable tool for his own advancement. His message was siimple; he would offer the protection and stability longed for by Serbs, and he would restore Serbia to its rightful place as first among equals within the Yugoslav federation. If this could not be accomplished within a reformed Yugoslav federation, then these guarantees would be fulfilled in a unified Serbian state.
Ironically, in order to harness the potential of Serbian natinalist/populist politics, Milosevic had to transform himself from an uncompromising and dedicated communist into a convincingly committed nationalist. He managed to accomplish this by opening up the public arena to previously taboo topics of discussion, such as Serb grievances against other nations within Yugoslavia, as well as the suffering of the Serbs in Tito's Yugoslavia. The fact that Milosevic was later to discard his nationalist self as quickly as he discarded his communist self, is testimony to his opportunism, his lack of ideological commitment, and to the shallowness of his nationalist conversion. His manipulation of Serb fears and perceptions of inferiority was aided by similar outbursts of nationalism, fueled by perceptions of Serbian dominance and hegemony in other parts of Yugoslavia. A vicious chain of fear, defensive nationalism, and uncertainty gave rise to a more deadly chain of hostility, aggression, and violence. As each group took steps to enhance its own national position and security, this led to counteractions on the part of other groups/nations. These moves, in turn, weakened the already frayed political and social structures of the country, deepened fears, and rapidly increased the perception of threat amongst all peoples.
While Yugoslav citizens found themselves swept up in a tide of collective fear and nationalist euphoria, the politicians manipulated these emotions and coldly calculated their next moves. All of them, from Milosevic to Bosnia's Alija Izetbegovic, knew that political inflexibility at such a dangerous time could plunge the country into a bloody conflict. However, they refused to back away from their maximalist agendas, and at some point each one willingly chose war.
Embracing War
Milosevic's newly found ability to mobilize the Serb masses after the Kosovo incident in 1987 allowed him to quickly consolidate power within Serbia. He ousted all possible rivals in the Serbian LC during a plenary session of its Central Committee in October 1987. He extended his hold on media, especially television, which needed little coercion to rally around Milosevic's "antibureaucratic revolution." A tradition of self censorship and party loyalty amongst Yugoslav journalistts, allowed Milosevic to recruit media to his cause through appeals to collective loyalty to the nation.
In addition, he also coopted the grassroots movement of Kosovo's Serbs, using their mass rallies to keep his potential rivals off balance and to leverage the interrepublic dispute over Yugoslavia's future political and economic reorganization. "Rallies of truth" became the proletarian brigades of Milosevic's revolution, toppling the political leaderships of Kosovo, Montenegro and Vojvodina, and threatening to devour all others slow to endorse the Serbian leader. Each rally added to the nationalist euphoria and self confidence of Serbs throughout Yugoslavia, but also further deepened the fear and apprehension of the other Yugoslav peoples.
The rallies culminated in March 1989 with the promulgation of a new Serbian constitution, which limited the autonomy of the provinces and consolidated the authority of the central government. As Serbs celebrated what they perceived to be the righting of a historic injustice, they wee equally angered by the hostility and animosity directed at them by other Yugoslav peoples, especially the Slovenes. This further fueled the belief of many Serbs that the other peoples were only satisfied in a Yugoslavia built around a weak and divided Serbia. Serbs withdrew even deeper into a cocoon of romantic and mythic nationalism. These attitudes rendered them even more malleable to Milosevic's manipulations, allowing him to raise the political stakes and confidently issue ultimatums to his counterparts.
Held in 1990, the first multiparty republic level elections destroyed any hopes of keeping Yugoslavia together; natinalist politicians won in every republic. Hopes for compromise quickly faded as the nationalist victors in Slovenia, Croatia, Serbia and Bosnia made it clear that their maximalist ambitions were nonnegotiable. While Milosevic maintained a "Yugoslav" nationalist facade, his counterparts throughout Yugoslavia openly committed themselves to their national causes. Every issue, regardless of significance, became a matter of national pride for the Yugoslav peoples. Nowhere was this more true than in Serbia and Slovenia. The politics of intransigence and a game of political "chicken" were played by the Serbian and Slovene leaders. Each republic's leader equated compromise with defeat, and each calculated that the other would blink rather than risk losing everything.
The Slovenes saw the only good option for their aspirations within Yugoslavia as being a complete restructuring of the country's political and constitutional system. They advocated an association of sovereign states; anything short of this was deemed unacceptable and would force them to unilaterally break from the federation.
[note: For a thorough and detailed account of the role and motives of Slovene leaders, se Susan Woodward, Balkan Tragedy: Chaos and Dissolution After the Cold War (Washington, D.C.: The Brookings Institution, 1995).]
This position came into direct conflict with Milosevic's attempts at restructuring Yugoslavia along the lines of a more unitary and centralized state, which he hoped to dominate. Milosevic saw little incentive in backing down from his ultimate objective in the face of Slovene threats of secession, as he believed that Slovenia's exit from Yugoslavia would be acceptable. In his mind, Yugoslavia could still be maintained without the Slovenes. He believed that the departure of the Slovenes would increase his leverage over the remaining republics, making it easier for him to extract their consent for the restructuring of the country according to his wishes.
Throughout his confrontation with the Slovenes, and later with the others, Milosevic maintained and flashed his trump card: the possibility of unleashing unchecked Serbian nationalist passion if he did not get his way. His entire strategy depended on cowering the other Yugoslav leaders by implying thata he was capable of resorting to force to get his way. For this to work, Milosevic had to be prepared to go to war if necessary. He believed that, faced with an obviously superior opponent, other republic leaders would back away from confrontation. He miscalculated as to the reluctance of his political opponents to risk war. In fact they, like he, saw conflict as a means to facilitate their own ambitions.
Milosevic believed that the other republics would be foolhardy to challenge intentionally the most populated nation in Yugoslavia, especially given that the Serbs were heavily armed and could receie substantial support from the JNA. Since he could not be absolutely sure that the JNA would fully support him in a crunch, he created a parallel army in the Serbian Ministry of Internal Affairs (MUP). Serbia's MUP forces now outnumber the new Yugoslav Army (JA) and have artillery and armored units. Slovenia and Croatia were also using their ministries of interior as nuclei for the creation of national armies. Weapons were being smuggled in Yugoslavia in large quantitiesoriginating from Germany, Hungary, Singapore, Lebanon, and Russia. While the paramilitary formations grew and the nationalist bluster of all republic leaders increased, the authority of Prime Minister Ante Markovic's federal government and the JNA further eroted. Milosevic warned: "If we have to, we'll fight. I hope they won't be so cracy to fight against us. Because if we don't know how to work and do business, at least we know how to fight."
He thought that any fight would be a quick one and that the international commuity would not interfere in the internal affairs of Yugoslavia. Even if the secessionist republics did find international backing, this would not preclude changes in the territorial borders between the republics. Milosevic's strategy was not to defeat the Croats and the Slovenes, but simply to redraw borders decisively through the use of overwhelming force, and then to sit back and wait for international ratifications of the battlefield results. Likewise, the other political leaders also developed a war strategy based on secret guarantees of support from international actors and a firm conviction that an armed conflict would be brief, even against superior Serb forces. They came to believe that the use of force would convince the international community to abandon its commitment to the preservation of a single Yugoslav state.
It is little wonder that the last ditch efforts by the leaders of the republics, known as Yu-summits, did little to bridge the gap between the unitarist position of Serbia and the push for sovereignty by Croatia and Slovenia. Each leader believed that even if the worst case scenario of war was realized, it owuld bring acceptable political gains. As a result, each went through the motions of negotiating in good faith while maintaining extreme intransigence on all the main issues of dispute. With the first multiparty elections providing the mandate for nationalist politics, each leader now felt comfortable pursuing his agenda in the name of the people; and each perceived his actions as insuring the future destiny of his nation. The summits simply became another platform forrepublic leaders to voice populist slogans which would further their support at home, while maintaining a facade of cooperation for the international community.
[note: On June 6, 1990, Macedonian President Gligorov and Bosnian President Izetbegovic proposed a compromise plan for restructuring the Yugoslav federation, which preserved some of the central demands of both the Croat/Slovene and Serb/Montenegrin proposals.]
Markovic's federal government and the JNA stood on the sidelines, immobilized by the nationalist machinations of the federal leadership and by a tradition of passivity in the face of LCY internal politics.
[note: In his book Moje Vidjenje Raspada, (Belgrade, Politika, 1994) former JNA commander, Veljko Kadijevic, claims that the JNA acted to keep Yugoslavia together, but that it was beset by ethnic polarization within its own ranks and by the incompetence of the civilian political leadership to which it was subordinate. He also infers that Milosevic purposely manipulated the seriousness of the crisis within the JNA in order to discredit it in the eyes of the people and to eliminate it as a potential threat.]
The amount of weapons available, the eagerness of extremists in all camps for a fight and the absolute lack of progress in the negotiations made war only a matter of time. Tensions building up in Croatia or Slovenia would spark the conflict many leaders threatened, some sought, and few feared.
The Politics of War
When Slovenia's parliament proclaimed sovereignty on the evening of June 25, 1991, unilaterally changing Yugoslavia's international borders, its members knew full well that they had pushed the country over the brink and into conflict with the JNA. At the same time, this action left Slovenia's Croat neighbors in the lurch. Croatia was not yet fully prepared to meet the costs of such a decision, but did not want to be left behind in a Serb dominated rump Yugoslavia. It also forced the Bosnian Muslim and Macedonian leadership to move away from their procompromise positions and to choose sides. The Slovene war lasted ten days, but ignited a series of events which would usher the rest of the country (except for Macedonia) into a four year bloody conflict.
[note: Some, such as Silber and Little, have referred to the fighting in Slovenia as a phony war, one in which the Slovenes provoked the conflict, manipulated international perceptions of it and managed to attain independence at a relatively low cost through a deal with Slobodan Milosevic which betrayed Croatia's interests.]
The conflict in Croatia simmered for close to a year before finally exploding in July 1991. Using the JNA and Serbia's MUP as conduits, Milosevic armed Croatia's Serbs. He provided logistical assistance for paramilitary formations from Serbia and created special shock troops, such as the notorious Tigers commanded by Zeljko Raznjatovic (Arkan). At the same time, Croatia purged its police force of Serbs and transformed it into a heavily armed militia. Extremist members of the Croatian ruling party, the Croatian Democratic Union (HDZ), did their best to provoke conflict. Croatia's defense minister, Gojko Susak, even led a small group of party leaders in firing Armburst rockets at the Serb village of Borovo Selo. Once war broke out, extremists on both sides plunged into a frenzy of destruction, killing and looting.
Under the cover of the war, Milosevic quietly rid himself of the last threats to his complete control of power. The Yugoslav central government simply ceased to exist. The JNA was pushed into fighting an unproclaimed war against foes, who until recently, were colleagues and countrymen. Milosevic never declared war, never visited the troops, the wounded, or the refugees; and he purposely limited the resources and manpower provided to the JNA. In this way he gradually watched the last true Yugoslav institution break apart. He neutralized the opposition by coopting their nationalist platform and by allowing some of the parties, such as Vuk Draskovic's Serbian Renewal Movement and Vojislav Seselj's Serbian Radical Party, to assume some of the responsibility for the wary by helping them send volunteer units to Croatia.
The war homogenized politics in Serbia, destroyed the last remnants of Yugoslav institutions, and consolidated Milosevic's hold on power. The gratuitous violence and destruction of cities and villages only served as a chaotic cover for Milosevic's real agenda.
[note: Paul Shoup, "The UN Force: A New Actor in the Croatian-Serb Crisis," RFE/RL Research Report (March 27, 1992), pp. 17-20. Shoup explains the change in Belgrade's policy in respect to supporting an international peacekeping force and how Milosevic intimidated Krajina leader, Milan Babic, to accept the UN deployment.]
Franjo Tudjman's policies in Croatia, although more true in their nationalist orientation, were no less cynical. In order to attain the international recognition he so desperately sought, Tudjman sacrificed cities and soldiers in the name of a greater national cause. The tragedy of Vukovar illustrated just how far Milosevic and Tudjman were willing to go to attain their personal ambitions. Politics in Serbia and Croatia were homogenized around nationalist battle cries calling on citizens to rally around the respective homeland and leader.
However, as early as January 1992, Milosevic had signaled that he had tired of the war and that utility of the nationalist card was coming to an end. By accepting the Vance Plan for Croatia and by forcing his clients in Knin to accept it, Milosevic signaled that he was willing to sacrifice the goals of the nationalist cause when they no longer proved to be cost free. At best, he hoped to achieve a Cyprus-like stalemate, which would allow him de facto control of over one third of Croatia. At worst, he needed to buy time in order to isolate his nationalist opposition, allowing the war hsyteria in Serbia to taper so that eventually he could normalize relations with Croatia, even if it meant abandoning the Serbs in Croatia.
Faced with international sanctions and isolation, Milosevic was prepared to cut his losses and settle for a smaller rump Yugoslavia comprised of Serbia, Montenegro, Bosnia-Herzegovina and Macedonia. He had even met secretly with Tudjman to discuss the possible partition of Bosnia. Germany, the principal supporter of Croatia's and Slovenia's independence bids, signaled Belgrade that such an arrangement would be acceptable.
[note: Woodward in Balkan Tragedy and Lord David Owen in his book, Balkan Odyssey (New York: Harcourt Brace & Company, 1995) indicate that border changes may have been acceptable for some members of the international community.]
The American push to recognize Bosnia in March 1992 seemed to catch Milosevic and the Europeans by surprise. Everyone - from Izetbegovic to EU mediator, Lord Peter Carrington - had warned that such a move would almost certainly mean war in Bosnia. Faced with a situation in which even his more limited territorial aspiration were jeopardized by the American move for recognition, Milosevic once again unleashed the JNA to draw new borders.
In many ways, the Bosnian war(s) best captured the cynicism and true intentions of the various political figures. While Milosevic and Tudjman bartered over Bosnia's territory, each of the local Bosnian leaders (Alija Izetbegovic, Muslim; Radovan karadzic, Serb; and Mate Boban, Croat) sought to create territorial homelands for their people. Once fighting broke out, each was quick to exploit the conditions created by the war to firmly install one party dominance over his territory and to neutralize any opposition. Whereas Karadzic and Boban were always clear in their intentions, Izetbegovic had advantages in that the Muslim dominated central government was internationally recognized as the country's legitimate authority.
As the most numerous group in Bosnia, the Muslims had the luxury of representing themselves as defenders of the ideal of a multiethnic state in which, of course, they would dominate. However, when it came to being a minority in a multiethnic Yugoslavia dominated by Serbs, Izetbegovic and the Muslim leadership chose national self determination. Many American scholars and journalists have portrayed Izetbegovic as a naive figure who allowed himself to be surprised by a war he never believed would come. The truth is that he, like every other Yugoslav leader, was fully aware that war was possible and chose it as a means to attain statehood for Bosnia.
As early as November 1991, seeing the war raging in neighboring Croatia, Izetbegovic had approved secret arms purchases for newly created, mostly Muslim militia and paramilitary formations loosely organized around loyal Territorial Defense Forces and police units. On December 2, 1991, in a secret meeting, chaired by Izetbegovic and attended by twenty two leading members of his Party of Democratic Action in Hrasnica, a plan for the defense of Bosnia was approved. There was a push by some of those present for a pre-emptive strike against the JNA and local Serbian forces in Bosnia. They called for Muslim forces to take control of strategic towns in the Drina valley and to destroy all bridges linking Bosnia with Serbia and Montenegro.
This proposal was voted down after Izetbegovic and others stated that such a preemptive strike would jeopardize international recognition and could leave the Muslims without international support in the event of a Serb and Croatian move to partition the country. Izetbegovic's commitment to recognition, regardless of cost, was clearly stated in his speech to the Bosnian parliament on February 27, 1991, when he announced: "I would sacrifice peace for a sovereign Bosnia-Herzegovina, but for peace in Bosnia-Herzegovina I would not sacrifice peace." This was not the statement of a naive man prepared to compromise on his maximalist ambition of a nation-state for the Bosnian Muslims in order to avoid war. The problem with Izetbegovic's determination to attain his ultimate objective was that the Serbian leaders were also prepared to go to war in order to prevent that from happening. Each of the three sides in Bosnia practiced a similar brinkmanship; each predicted war, but was confident that if it came it would bring a quick victory to its side. While the Muslims were organizing militias and developing plans of action, the Serbs and Croats in Bosnia were doing the same, but they had a benefit of a head start. The war in Croatia had consistently blurred BOsnia's borderes and had led to fighting between the Muslim and Croat communities.
In addition to the logistical support provided to Serb and Croat forces in Croatia, cross border shelling and raids were common occurrence. Attacks on the JNA and the excessive response o the army to these attacks were everyday events during the summer and fall of 1991. Given the demography and geographic proximity of Bosnia to the conflict in Croatia, it was impossible to prevent the conflict from spilling over its borders. Despite this politicians in Sarajevo and the international community continued to pretend that Bosnia was still at peace. Croat leaders in western Herzegovina were openly admitting that they had 16,000 men under arms. It was also equally apparent that the JNA was not only arming Serbs throughout Bosnia, but that it was positioning its forces to intervene on their behalf.
For the Bosnian Serbs, the Muslim/Croat decision to hold a referendum on sovereignty on February 29 and March 1, 1992 was a clear provocation. Throughout the period of Socialist Yugoslavia, Bosnia was governed on the principle of consensual decision making: the leaderes of each of the three main ethnic communities had to reach decisions by consensus. The decision to hold a referendum broke the constitutional bond which held the country together. In effect, it disenfranchised one ethnic group/nation, the Serbs, who would not be able to protect their interests in a majoritarian decision making process in which the Muslims and Croats could combine to outvote them on all issues of importance. The American led recognition of Bosnia ended any hope of compromise; and the maximalist positions held by the Muslims gave little incentive for further negotiations.
The Bosnian Serb leadership relied mostly on Belgrade and the JNA to provide the military muscle. They embraced Milosevic's strategy of not pushing for complete military victory against their foes; instead they sought to decisively draw new borders through force and then hold on until the international community stepped in to legitimize the new demarcation lines. During some of the heaviest fighting in April and the early weeks of May 1992, the Bosnian Serbs were totally dependent on the JNA and the political leadership in Belgrade. The JNA did not report to Karadzic and the other Bosnian Serb leaders, but directly to Belgrade. As a result, the Bosnian Serb war strategy for the duration of the conflict was predetermined by Milosevic's orders to the JNA. With the transfer of JNA forces to the Bosnian Serb army and the appointment of General Ratko Mladic commander in May 1992, the BOsnian Serb leadership finally acquired a large degree of autonomy in military decision making. Despite this Belgrade still retained ultimate authority in crucial situations.
The relationship between the Bosnian Serb leaders and Milosevic was very rocky from the start. karadzic was named leader of the Serbian Democratic Party (SDS), but Milosevic waited over a month before inviting him to Belgrade for a meeting. Unlike Milosevic, the Bosnian Serb leaders truly believed in the nationalist rhetoric they espoused, and while Milosevic was prepared to sacrifice their national cause at anytime, they were not. Caught between Belgrade's lukewarm support for the national cause and international pressure generated by the atrocities and human rights violations committed by their forces, the Bosnian Serb leadership never fully developed a coherent set of war goals. They displayed indecisiveness both in military action and in peace negotiations; and for the next four years they found themselves trying to maintain the military status quo. They expected that the international community would eventually accept and legitimize their breakaway state, Republika Srpska (SR), whose borders had ben drawn by force. Although the Dayton Agreement of November 1995, did in fact bestow recognition on a much smaller RS, it fell short of recognizing it as a sovereign entity and forced the Serbs to remain as part of a "unified" Bosnian state.
During the course of the war a serious rift emerged within the Bosnian Serb leadership between the political and military commands. pressed by Milosevic who was eager to have international sanctions eased and concerned about possible American military intervention, the RS political leaders had come to believe that a negotiated end to the war, in time, would recognize their war gains. As a result, they often sacrificed military advantage for the illusion of an imminent peace settlement. This greatly frustrated General Mladic and his war commanders, who believed that a peace settlement favorable to the Bosnian Serbs could not be attained without a decisive military victory over their enemies. The military deplored the political leadership's hesitance to take the measures necessary to achieve this victory, which would include declaring a state of war, instituting a war economy and calling for full mobilization. To Mladic and his coleagues, the politicans showed indecisiveness bordering on incompetence.
[note: Obrad Kesic, "Politics, Power, and Decision Making in the Serb Republic," Problems of Post-Communism, vol. 43 (March-April 1996), pp. 56-64.]
As the war dragged on from one year to the next, the military warned that given the shift in the military balance of power, especially with the emergence of a powerful Croatian military, it was becoming unfeasible for the army to maintain the extended frontlines indefinitely. Milosevic, who had decided early on to abandon the drive for a joint state with both the Bosnian and Krajina Serbs, exploited this split in the Bosnian Serb leadership, playing one side of the other. The fall of Krajina to the Croatian offensive in August 1995, sealed the Bosnian Serb military's compliance with Belgrade's policy on ending the war.
Milosevic's decision to abandon the Krajina and the Bosnian Serbs stemmed from two main factors: his desire to end the economic devastation produced by the international sanctions, and his wish to rid himself of troublesome local leaders who, in his eyes, had cost Serbia too much, both economically and politically. He increasingly came to view them as a potential political threat. The war relatinoship between the Bosnian and Krajina Serb leadership and the opposition parties in Belgrade troubled Milosevic. He viewed this flirtation as a sign of ingratitude and lack of loyalty. Furthermore, Milosevic oculd not tolerate the increasingly autonomous decision making which the Bosnian Serb leadership displayed. Milosevic's own lack of loyalty in his relationship with others made it only a matter of time before he would strike to neutralize these perceived threats to his authority. Lord david Owen observed: "One aspect of Milosevic's character is his readiness to regard individuals as disposable: to use them and then discard them."
The final straw came when the Bosnian Serb leadership publicly humiliated Milosevic on May 5, 1993, by rejecting his appeals to their parliament to accept and ratify the Vance-Owen Peace Plan. No Serb leader had ever dared to offer such a public challenge to his authority, and Milosevic would do everything in his power to insure that this rebuff would be avenged. He found willing partners in the international community also enraged by the stubbornness of the Bosnian Serb leadership.
Strange Bedfellows
Many American journalists and scholars have portrayed the international community's behavior at best as amoral in the face of Serbian "aggression and genocide," and at worst, as being direct accomplices to Serbian actions. Using moralism as a rudder, well known observers have chosen a simple argument to back these claims. In their view, the conflict in Bosnia was a war between good and evil and those that do not intervene to check the evil are accomplices to it. For example, The New York Times columnist, Anthony Lewis, condemned the European complicity to Serbian aggression saying:
Europe's role in the Bosnian genocide has been scandalous. After the victory over Nazi savagery and the grat, successful effort to keep Western Europe free during the cold war, one might have expected leaders of Britain and France especially to be sensitive to the rise of nationalism and murderous aggression in Europe. Instead the record reeks of Munich. [note: Anthony Lewis, "War Crimes," a review of Slaughterhouse by David Reiff in The New Republic (October 25, 1993), p. 32.]
Lewis cleverly used the images of the Nazis, the Holocaust, European appeasement of Hitler and the Communist threat during the Cold War - issues with a clear-cut moral right and wrong - in order to make the same moral case for interventino in Bosnia. Patrick Glynn condemned American foreign policy using this same imagery of the Holocaust:
At a time when a museum to Holocaust victims was opening in Washington to great fanfare, history will record that two administrations refrained, in the face of overwhelming evidence, from countering a blatant program of genocide in Bosnia whose scope and nature they fully understood. [note: Patrick Glynn, "See No Evil," The New Republic (October 25, 1993), p. 23.]
This moral outrage often found the United Nations as a vulnerable target for criticism; its peacekeepers found themselves caught in the middle of a war they were neither mandated nor equipped to end. It also came into direct and passionate conflict with the observations and convictions of the military and diplomatic officials involved in the Bosnian quagmire. These officials tended to view the nature and origins of the war in shades of gray and not in the moral black and white laid out by some journalists and scholars. Major General Lewis MacKenzie, the first commander of UN forces in Bosnia, saw the dynamics of the war in quite different terms from those of Lewis and Glynn:
The Muslims are in a box. Even if they recover the territory they had before the war, they won't have very much. Izetbegovic wants the entire country back. Quite frankly, the only way he can get it is by convincing the international community to intervene by massive military force, ridding him of his Serbian enemies. It's in the interest of Izetbegovic to keep the fighting going, in the hope that the world would come to his rescue - provided he can make it look as if the Serbs are solely responsible for perpetrating the chaos. God knows, overall, the majority of the blame does rest with the Serbs; however, whenever we arrange any cease-fire, it's usually the Muslims who break it first. In addition, there is strong but circumstantial evidence that some really horrifying acts of cruelty attributed to the Serbs were actually orchestrated by the Muslims against their own people, for the benefit of an international audience. [note: Lewis MacKenzie, Peacekeeper: The Road to Sarajevo (New York: Random House, 1995), p. 135.]
Lord David Owen described his own dilemma in dealing with the moral dimension of the war in the following way:
It was enough to deal with present outrages and future peace. What should have been done before the dissolution of Yugoslavia was an interesting but very divisive question. Also, the facts were not all as I had first thought. While the terms 'aggressor' and 'victim' were being brandished as weapons in a propaganda war, the true situation was obviously far more complex than the dichotomy implied - and anyhow, theywere terms better avoided publicly by a negotiator.
The viewpoints expressed above clearly illustrate the enormous chasm that developed between observers of the Bosnian war and those involved in trying to work out a peaceful settlement to the conflict. These conflicting views set the parameters for the involvement of the international community. On one hand, an end ot the war had to be found based on the realities both on the ground and of what means and costs the members of the international community were prepared to commit to attain this goal. On the other hand, these realities crashed head on with the perceptions held byinfluential domestic constituencies who insisted that anysettlementmust be based on the moral imperatives of punishing aggression and protecting the victim.
This moralism, in effect, paralyzed decision makers in Europe and the United States. At times, they failed to place their full support behind the various peace plans worked out by international mediators. At the heart of this failure was fear of being charged with rewarding aggression and genocide. This was especially true of the Clinton adminstration which, from the very beginning, had used moral rhetoric in defining its Bosnia policy. It is this very reason tht mae the Clinton administration's decision to tie its negotiating strategy to Milosevic so controversial.
Slobodan Milosevic had been described by officials in two different American administrations as a war criminal and as the individual most responsible for the wars in the former Yugoslavia. Overnight, he turned into the hope of American plans to end the war. milosevic's decision to abandon the Krajina Serbs during the Croatian offensive in August was perhaps the most important factor in convincing the Clinton administration that the time ws right to launch a two progned initiative, military and diplomatic, to bring the war to an end. The shift in the balance of military power after Krajina, which put the Bosnian Serbs on the defensive and opened the door to the territorial delineation between the combatants along the lines envisioned by the 1994 Contact Group Peace Plan, convinced Washington that pressure oculd be applied on the Bosnian Serbs through air strikes and the advancing Muslim and Croat forces. Washington no longer feared that the war could escalate or that Milosevic would unleash the Yugoslav army to rescue the Bosnian Serbs.
On August 27, 1995, Milosevic was able to extract from the Bosnian Serb leadership an agreement to serve as the sole negotiator on their behalf with the Americans, and that he would have the deciding vote determining the strategy and the details of the upcoming negotiations. The formal announcement of this agreement was made on August 29th, the eve of NATO air strikes against Bosnian Serb targets. Milosevic gleefully announced to Assistant Secretary of State, Richard Holdbrooke, his victory on august 30th, as NATo bombs were hitting Serb targets in Bosnia. Milosevic failed to even raise the issue of NATO air strikes in his negotiations with the Americans that day, and throughout the two week air campaign made very little noise about it; he even limited the amount of coverage of the bombings in Serbia's controlled mass media.
Interestingly enough, the bombings also served Milosevic's purposes. They taught the stuborn Bosnian Serb leadership a lesson and undermined the image and the potential of the Bosnian Serb military. This made it easier to force them to roll back their forces form large stretches of territory in southwest Bosnia, so that they would comply with the percentages set out in the Contact Group Peace Plan (49 percent of Bosnia-Herzegovina for the SR and 51 percent for the Muslim/Croat Federation).
Once the issue of territory was resolved, the way to an overall agreement was opened. By the conclusion of the Dayton Peace Agreement in November, the Bosnian Serb political and military leaders were reeling from several surprises pulled by Milosevic during the negotiations. Milosevic himself had gained the grudging support of the principal American negotiator, Richard Holbrooke. The Serb president made himself invaluable to the success of theDayton negotiations and the implementation of the agreement. He was also able to deal a sever blow to the unruly Pale ("capital" of SR) leadership, insuring through the details of the agreement that the Republika Srpska would be marginalized as a potential political factor in Serbia's internal politics. In seeking to destroy the mythical "Greater Serbia," the Americans had helped Milosevic create a "Greater Milosevic," allowing him to consolidate his hold on power. Once again, Milosevic had successfully repackaged himself and improved his political position at home and abroad.
Back to the Future
Dayton may have ended the fighting in Bosnia, at least for as long as the International Implementation Force (IFOR) remains in place; and a deal seems to have been reached between Tudjman and Milosevic stabilizing the relationship between Serbia and Croatia. However, peace remains a long way from being guaranteed. In order for this to happen, the fundamental issues which led to the war must be addressed. Bosnian Serb vice president, Nikola Koljevic, in an interview in January 1992, stated:
The Muslims want a sovereign Bosnia, the Serbs do not want it, and the Croats have said that they want it. The Muslims want a unified Bosnia, a Bosnia that is not split apart. I think that it is unrealistic to have both. I can understand the Muslim need or fear, if you wish, of Serbian or Croatian domination, and I can see that quite clearly. But you cannot make up for that by placing the Serbs in the position of a minority, nor can you put the Croats in the position of a minority. I say to them that it must be decided whether it will be a unified Bosnia that will not be absolutely sovereign, or a sovereign Bosnia that will not be absolutely unified, meaning a Muslim Bosnia. Let a Muslm Bosnia be sovereign. Can Bosnia be both sovereign and unified, integral, at the same time? Hardly.
In many ways Koljevic's observation remains valid today, despite almost four years of war and thousands of deaths. The Dayton Peace Agreement is built on shaky ground, the Muslim-Croat federation is in its death throes, unless major international intervention and resources are brought to bear on both sides. The Bosnian Serbs are no more prepared now to accept minoritys tatus in a Muslim dominated Bosnia than in 1992. More importantly, the demographic picture of Bosnia has been completely altered with the emergence of three ethnically homogeneous territories. The September 1996 elections confirmed and reinforced the deep ethnic divisions. Each side has a symbolic minority and all sides have shown little interest in trying to return to the pre-war multiethnic Bosnia.
In failing to understand the dynamics and history of Yugoslavia's demise, the international community succeeded in assisting the realization of the very things they fought so hard to prevent. Borders have been changed by force, states have been created on the basis of ethnicity and the individuals most responsible for the war(s) are firmly entrenched in power. The three natinalist parties within Bosnia and the nationalist/poulist leaders in Belgrade and Zagreb have been assisted in consolidating one party poltical dominance and varying degrees of authoritarianism. Opposition parties, although less than inspiring, have been marginalized and almost totally ignored by the international negotiators. The economic prospects of Bosnia and the entire region seem bleak and the potential for social unrest is great. Nonetheless, the Dayton Agreement has provided a much needed cessation to the fighting; and some valuable breathing space has been created for local leaders to use in order to resolve the many outstanding issues which remain. It is up to them to decide if they will squander yet another opportunity for peace.
Slobodan Milosevic, although firmly in power and boosted by the events of the last five months of 1995, still finds himself having to constantly play the game he plays so well. He must manipulate and neutralize any potential threat to his power, while continually measuring his compliance with ever increasing demands from his new partners in Washington. All the countries that have emerged in the space of the former Yugoslavia are engaged in political battles for power and economic recovery. Milosevic will seek to bolster his poular support through economic growth and through greater repression of opposing voices. His efforts to silence the independent media began under the cover of international preoccupation with the implementaton of the Dayton Agreement.
Ironically, the nationalist passions which Milosevic helped unleash are now the most serious challenge to his rule. Among the plethora of problems awaiting him are: the plight of hundreds of thousands of refugees from Krajina and Bosnia, the deep national humiliation resulting from his capitulation to international pressure and his betrayal of the Krajina and Bosnian Serbs, a disastrous economy, and an increasingly vocal opposition. These could explode at anytime and put his ability to overcome crisis to a severe test. Milosevic can no longer use as effectively the threat of war to silence his opponents and sweep problems under the rug. In the end, the words of a Bosnian Serb soldier have a haunting premonition: "The war is over, or so they tell us. But no one can tell for how long."