Balkan Battlegrounds

Balkan Battlegrounds: A Military History of the Yugoslav Conflict, 1900–1995. Volume 2. Washington: Central Intelligence Agency, 2003. Charts. Annexes. Endnotes. Index. Pp. 580. Available from the Superintendent of Documents: (202) 512–1800, or internet: http://www.access.gpo.gov/su_docs/.

The Serbian Project and its Adversaries: A Strategy of War Crimes. By James Gow. Montreal, Canada: McGill-Queen's University Press, 2003. ISBN 0–7735–2386–3. Map. Tables. Notes. Index. Pp. xiii, 322. $19.95.

Bitka za Vukovar. By Davor Marijan. Zagreb: Hrvatski Institut za Povijest, 2004. Maps. Photographs. Appendixes. Notes. Sources. Index. Pp. 335. Euro 60.

The Muslim-Croat Civil War in Central Bosnia: A Military History, 1992–1994. By Charles R. Shrader. College Station: Texas A&M University Press, 2003. ISBN 1–58544–261–5. Maps. Photographs. Tables. Appendixes. Glossary. Notes. Sources. Index. Pp. xxi, 223. $42.95.

The wars that accompanied Yugoslavia's dissolution ended a decade ago, but there are surprisingly few military histories of these conflicts. So these four books are welcome. But the reader should be aware that each of these studies reflects its author's background. Charles Shrader worked as a consultant for the defense at the ICTY (International Criminal Tribunal for Yugoslavia), and he is sympathetic to the Croatian view of events.¹ James Gow worked at The Hague as well, but for the OTP (Office of the Prosecution), and like the OTP, he tends to be critical of both Slobodan Milosević and the "adversaries" of what he terms "the Serbian project," an effort to create a Greater Serbia.² Davor Marijan has worked in Croatia's military archives and museum, and he is associated with HIP (Croatian Institute for History); he approaches the siege of Vukovar from a Croatian perspective. The authors of the CIA study write as critical American analysts, who attempt to be as even-handed as their sources allow.

The second volume issued by the CIA on the conflicts in Croatia and Bosnia-Herzegovina is intended as a supplement to its predecessor, and it is incomplete without the first volume. Its analysis is uneven, at times simply reflecting its sources, and most citations are of secondary sources, press agencies, newspapers, memoirs, and testimony at the ICTY.³ The authors also tend to sympathize with the JNA officer corps, e.g., they dismiss TO (Territorial Defense) units as "little more than bands of armed civilians" which "JNA professional officers would come to loathe"; they lament the inability of the General Staff to implement its "excellent study in theoretical staff planning"; and they laud the Army for its ability to "undertake multi-front offensive operations under such chaotic conditions."⁴ Their observation that the JNA's lack of infantry "forced" it to use artillery and armor "to bludgeon the Croatians into submission" is problematic, given their account of the advance on Slunj, where the JNA used air attacks and tank and artillery fire to "systematically" destroy Croatian villages, which the Serbian TO (Territorial Defense) then "burned." It seems odd to refer to such attacks as "well-led" and "spirited," especially since their outcome was congruent with the goals of "ethnic cleansing," which James Gow sees as intimately "linked" to Serbian "strategy," making it doubtful that lack of infantry was the only reason that the JNA used "massed firepower" to obliterate its opponents.⁵ Nor does it seem fair to argue that all war crimes in Slavonia were committed by volunteers who had been recruited to make up for a shortage of infantry, especially since the JNA helped to arm these units, which were already operating in Croatia in the spring of 1991.⁶

Like Davor Marijan, the authors of the CIA study conclude that Zagreb lacked the forces to relieve Vukovar or to hold the city, which nonetheless fulfilled its "strategic" role of disrupting the Serbian offensive. But they credit Milosević, not the Croatian Army (ZNG, HV) with stopping the JNA, a conclusion that seems more an exoneration of General Pani&#x00107...