The Tito-Stalin Split and Yugoslavia's Military Opening toward the West, 1950–1954: In NATO's Backyard. by Ivan Laković and Dmitar Tasić (review)

The relationship that developed in the early 1950s between Communist Yugoslavia and the United States and its democratic allies is one of the more fascinating episodes of the Cold War. The break between Josip Broz Tito and Iosif Stalin in 1948 had not been foreseen by Western governments, but it provided the United States with an opportunity to pry open the Soviet bloc and demonstrate that Soviet imperialism, not Communism in and of itself, was a danger to the free world. Tito was an unusual and often reluctant partner in this endeavor, retaining his commitment to socialist principles and, above all, to his country's survival. To secure the latter, he accepted U.S. military assistance and even appeared open to membership in the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO). Over time, however, he forged a rapprochement with the USSR and soon became adept at balancing one power against the other. Rather than adhere to either bloc, Tito eventually emerged as one of the leaders of the Non-Aligned Movement, and by the late 1950s he moved away from some aspects of the relationship he had established with Western countries and with NATO. The rise and fall of the military relationship between Yugoslavia and NATO is the subject of this volume in the Harvard Cold War Studies Book Series by Ivan Laković and Dmitar Tasić. Laković is a research assistant at the Historical Institute of the University of Montenegro, and Tasić is a postdoctoral fellow at the Centre for War Studies, University College Dublin. Both have written extensively on Yugoslavia and its military policies.

Laković and Tasić use the military aid programs involving Yugoslavia and the West in the late 1940s and early 1950s as the framework for their analysis, believing that such programs are a good way to assess relations between states. In addition to readily available sources, they cite published works not available in English and materials from Yugoslav (now Serbian) archives. The latter illuminate the actions and reasoning of Tito and other officials and bring a vital new dimension to the subject. Throughout the book, Laković and Tasić emphasize the differences in the goals that Yugoslavia and the West had for the military aid program. The Yugoslavs, in 1945 and again in 1947, had reorganized their military to follow Soviet norms. The break with Stalin denied them additional Soviet aid and supplies of spare parts, and the looming threat of a Soviet attack made the modernization of the Yugoslav armed forces even more crucial to the country's survival. Out of necessity, the Yugoslavs turned to "yesterday's enemy," the United States and its NATO allies, who "extended the hand of salvation" (p. 2). However, the main goal of U.S. and Western military aid centered on securing Yugoslavia's adherence to NATO and a commitment to the defense of the Ljubljana Gap. The authors provide detailed accounts of the often torturous aid negotiations undertaken by Yugoslav and Western officials as they sought to reconcile their conflicting goals. LakovićandTasić also recount Yugoslav objections to several aspects of the American Military Assistance Staff's operations. Using Yugoslav sources, they demonstrate that such objections were motivated by more than Yugoslavia's chronic feelings of insecurity and suspicions of mistreatment at the hands of the West. The divergence in the aims of each party precluded a truly harmonious relationship.

A particularly noteworthy portion of the book analyzes the troubled history of the Balkan Pact, a centerpiece of the West's plans regarding Yugoslavia. The authors devote considerable attention to the long-standing territorial and political conflicts between Greece and Turkey on one hand and Yugoslavia and Italy on the other and the role these disputes played in undermining the alliance. Western governments eventually came to see the Balkan Pact as a political rather than a military...