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155 The InTernaTIonal CommunITy and The Fry/BellIgerenTs, 1989-1997 ◆ Matjaž Klemenčič ◆ For almost four decades after World War II, the international community supported socialist nonaligned Yugoslavia as a symbolic and even strategic crossroads between the polar world of the cold war. Billions of dollars of aid flooded the country in the belief that it was important to support Tito’s Yugoslav experiment .1 When the crises leading to Yugoslavia’s dissolution mounted in the last years of the 1980s, both the United States and the Soviet Union/Russian Federation tried to maintain the status quo and hold together a Yugoslavia that had become an empty shell. Instead of seeking to facilitate a peaceful transformation of the country’s dissolution, the international community attempted to support a unified Yugoslavia and thus arguably bears some responsibility for the violence and insecurity that followed. Both the United States and Russia, along with other states, ignored the basic truth that no state, whatever its origins, can expect to survive without the support and at least the passive allegiance of most of its citizenry .2 What role did the international community play in the Yugoslav crisis in the first half of the 1990s? Could the bloody demise of Yugoslavia have been prevented if the international community had reacted sooner? Scholars disagree in their assessments of the real intentions of the world powers toward Yugoslavia . According to most Western authors, in the late 1980s political leaders from most of Europe and also the U.S. desperately wanted to preserve the territorial integrity of Yugoslavia. In contrast, others (and also almost all the pro-Milošević Serb politicians) suggest that the breakup of Yugoslavia was the ultimate goal of the West.3 Slobodan Milošević started his defense in The Hague by blaming foreigners for the breakup.4 Some authors, such as Russian historian Elena Guskova and Polish political scientist Marek Waldenberg, blame the West not only for the dissolution but also for the violent nature of the breakup.5 One can argue that the 156 ◆ MATJAŽ KLEMENČIČ dissolution was unavoidable, but one can also contend that the process might have been more peaceful if the international community had acted differently. The U.S. was closely involved in the international diplomacy related to the dissolution of Yugoslavia, although its policy toward Yugoslavia was inconsistent from the very beginning. Three phases characterize U.S. policy: (1) an initial reluctance to interfere in a primarily European problem, (2) an attempt at diplomacy , and finally, (3) armed intervention.6 Its policy was in part determined by domestic public opinion polls and the actions of the U.S. Congress. Interestingly, the ethnic background of members of Congress and their constituencies played a role, as did activities in the United States of the leaders of different immigrant ethnic groups from the territories of the former Yugoslavia. How aware were U.S. politicians of the situation in Yugoslavia? The CIA predicted in an October 1990 report that Yugoslavia would cease to function within one year and would probably dissolve within two years. According to its report, economic reform would not prevent the breakup. The agency predicted that Serbia would block Slovenian and Croatian attempts to secede from the Yugoslav confederation , that there would be a protracted armed uprising by the Albanians in Kosovo, and that Serbia would foment uprisings by Serbian minorities in Croatia and Bosnia. It noted the possible danger of ethnic violence becoming an organized civil war between republics but considered that unlikely. It concluded that there was nothing the United States or its European allies could do to preserve unity and that Yugoslavs would see any such efforts as antithetical to the principles of democracy and self-determination. The CIA discussion on historical background and the economy, as well as the maps and tables that followed in the report are accurate. As then U.S. Ambassador to Belgrade Warren Zimmermann wrote in his memoirs, this prescient analysis erred only on Kosovo, which remained tense but quiet, and on the timetable for civil war, which unfolded even faster than predicted. In its main elements, the estimate proved deadly accurate.7 From an historian’s point of view, this report is a relatively good analysis of the situation in Yugoslavia at that time.8 In spite of CIA warnings, it became clear that the United States did not want to get intensively involved in the Yugoslav crisis and that it would let the European states, especially the EC, try...

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