Well the Yugoslav Federation (1945-1991) was the only time the different ethnic groups lived in one state in a peaceful way, Tito's brand of socialism was rubbish and incoherent, but I will give him credit for the way in which he dealt with the national question.
Perhaps if you lived there you wouldn't... Also, thinking helps, even if you had no such experience [lucky sod]!
Tito actually did it all wrongly! He killed democracy and with it went all the open negotitations via democratic mediating structures and processes - of all the burning issues. Rulling the way he did actually is the root of all of this. The totalitarian system he created was the context in which all this happened! It was based on sheer force and brutality, from imprisonment and torture to extrajudicial killings. Such grounds had to have an impact on the subsequent structures, processes and the general mindset in the region. [See Hannah Arendt for the proper grounding of the thesis.]
Before 1945, the Serbs were the victims of the ethnic cleansing. A German backed fascist Croat puppet state killed over 200,000 Serbs during WW2 and Kosovo was occupied by a Fascist run Albania, under Italian supervision.
The Serbs themselves knew how to do it to others, worry not... One can possibly claim it wasn't on the level of the state, as in NDH's Ustashi regime, granted [scale wise - although Chetnics operated in NDH and elsewhere with deadly consequences!!!] but... In Serbia proper concentration camps existed, too. Ergo, a bit less nonsense, please...
I'm not excusing the crimes of Milosevic, just that all ethnic groups (Albanians, Roma, Jews, Croats, Muslims, Turks, Serbs, Macedons) have all been victims at some point during the 20th century.
True.
But after 1991, the US, the EU, NATO all had a part in assisting in the strife in the former Yugoslavia, encouraging as many nations to break away and stopping attempts at trying to find a solution that would have upheld a multi-ethnic state. A federation was/is the only solution, given that each nation (Croatia, Bosnia, Serbia, Albania) have claims to the others land, so unless all of the nations existed within a multi-ethnic federation, conflict would arise.
As it is, unqualified, it's a nonsensical statement!
The EU as whole did no such thing! For instance...
Federation, yes. However, what kind of Federation? Milosevic wanted his version. Others were talking of a proper, democratically structured Federation with 2 domes in Parliament etc. [see UJDI, for instance]. Confederation came in as an option too late.
But NATO, the US and the EU were still playing the Cold War, wishing to carve out weaker states so that they could play them off against one another and use them for their own interests, a Yugoslav Federation would have been better able to take it's own path and that was intolerable in the eye's of the US, NATO and the EU.
As above.
It wasn't in their interests at all. The way you put it. You're forgetting the geopolitical changes, the dissolution of the Soviet Union and Americans letting go of YU as being in their "strategic sphere of influence", as Lawrence Eagleburger stated openly, back then etc.
Don't be fooled by the US talking of supporting self-determination of nations in the Balkans. Bosnia has been ruled as a NATO/EU protectorate and the EU has taken over the running of Kosovo. Last Sunday Kosovo did not become independent, it just passed from Serbian authority to outright EU/NATO rule and the new EU mission has the power to veto laws and decisions made by Kosovo's new parliament and it's prime minister, Hachim Tachi.
Indeed! Good to talk sense!
Even before the declaration, since the outside agencies took over, Serbia had no control or say whasoever in Kosovo [since the NATO/EU/UN took over]. But neither did ther Albanians. As in Bosnia and Herzegovina, the outsiders can summarily dismiss the lot of them, all democratically elected.
They did it before, in Bosnia, with good reason, btw...
It's a bloody mess and there isn't much in terms of strategic thinking in all of this!!!
