The preferred narrative of the Balkan conflicts attributes the fighting to native "ethnic tensions". I think that in reality the situation is better understood in terms of imperial domination. Modern Croatia, although never discussed, came into existence as a Nazi puppet state, one that set and exemplary example: "Between 1941 and 1945 some 30,000 Jews and 750,000 Serbian Orthodox were murdered in a Catholic crusade, and some 240,000 Orthodox forcibly evicted (Alexander Cockburn, The Golden Age is in Us: 216)."
Serbia's role following the collapse of the Soviet Union seems to have been aimed at, far from setting into motion a genocidal program, the prevention of the succession of the Balkan constituent countries. Granting Serbia, or Serbs at any rate, committed many terrible crimes, it is understandable that they would want to keep Yugoslavia together. Certainly the United Sates wouldn't sit idly by if, say, Vermont, chose to succeed, perhaps then choosing to align itself with the OAS. Whether the Balkan countries ought to have succeeded is difficult to say. It is unlikely that an unified and independent Yugoslavia would have lasted even if there wasn't some internal desire for this to happen. The Basques, e.g., clearly have some legitimacy in making a claim for independence from Spain and France. But it, like the Balkan case, it is not strait-forward--besides, it is not an outsider's place to say what should or should not happen.
But perhaps the breakup wasn't natural at all: it isn't clear, although I have my suspicions, how significant a US (probably CIA) role there was in the breakup of the federation. If US interference turns out to have been significant (as it definitely was in the case of Kosovo), then we have to consider whether the whole Balkan conflict wasn't in reality just an eximplery application of the Roman principle of divide an conquer. Backing certain ad hoc "groups" (in realitity there is no significant racial distinction between Croats and Serbs, e.g.) and pitting them against others and whist carving the once admirably cosmopolitan region up into nation-states (in reality Western dependancies) based on ethnic or religious criteria: in the case of Kosovo making it an ethnic-Albania state that persecutes the Serb minority--in other words, creating collection of more or less inherently fascist states with strong nationalist sentiments and all that this implies.
Perhaps the "ethnic tensions" were entirely, or to a significant degree, manufactured ones to begin with (now, of course they are very real). If this turns out to be the case, it shouldn't be surprising. Africa, Nigeria in particular, provides and excellent case-study of how conquest is accomplished in this way.
On Jul 9, 2007, at 9:05 PM, C. G. Estabrook wrote:
> This post is a model of accuracy and concision. For a detailed
> account, see
>
> Noam Chomsky (1999). The New Military Humanism: Lessons from Kosovo
> ____________ (2000). A New Generation Draws the Line: Kosovo,
> East Timor and the Standards of the West
>
> --CGE
>
>
> Peter Hart Ward wrote:
>> Compared to (say) the US-backed Indonesian terror in East Timor
>> around the same time, the crimes committed in Yugoslavia, as terrible
>> as they were, don't count as genocide, unless we seriously diminish
>> the meaning of the word...
> ___________________________________
> http://mailman.lbo-talk.org/mailman/listinfo/lbo-talk
>