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Title: Broken Bonds: Yugoslavia's Disintegration and Balkan Politics in Transition by Lenard J. Cohen ISBN: 0-8133-2477-7 Publisher: Westview Press Pub. Date: June, 1995 Format: Paperback Volumes: 1 List Price(USD): $30.00 |
Average Customer Rating: 5 (3 reviews)
Rating: 5
Summary: Excellent
Comment: i had to write a paper for a geography class and figured why not do it on yugoslavia. while researching, i came across this book, and thought it was a marvelous read. it is a fascinating look at the decline of yugoslavia from Tito, who ran the country remarkably well and who had a miraculously peaceful tenure as "Emperor." then Milosevic showed up and [messed] it all up. the thing i find very excellent about this book is that it describes very well how milosevic got that power. he used nationalism to his advantage to get the serbs behind him. this nationalism lead to the bloody split-up of croatia, slovenia, bosnia-herzegovina, macedonia, and finally kosovo. this book shows one of the best (or worst, depending on how you look at it) examples of nationalism and the effects of nationalism. it is especially good to observe what happened to Milosevic in light of recent events throughout europe, with the hard-right gaining popularity, in such places as Romania, Hungary, and even in more tolerant France and the Netherlands. it is a worthwhile read to observe similarities between what milosevic said and did and what these new right-wing leaders are saying and doing.
Rating: 5
Summary: Superb account of Yugoslavia's destruction by outside forces
Comment: This is an excellent book by a Professor of Political Science at Simon Fraser University, British Columbia, Canada. 'International History Review' said of the first edition that it was "far superior in its factual coverage and balance to its various competitors in the field. .. He has told the story as completely and as impartially as we are liable to get." Cohen gives a brief history of Yugoslavia in the first chapter. The rest of the book gives a detailed account of Yugoslavia's breakup and the war.
Yugoslavia existed as a state from 1918 to 1991. Under Tito it had a devolved and federal constitution. This gave parity representation to each of the six republics in the Yugoslav federation, even though Serbia was by far the biggest. Tito selected people for jobs by 'ethnic arithmetic' and rotated top officials annually. But these policies signally failed to unify Yugoslavia. The constitution encouraged those who wanted to split the country. They had a two-track strategy. They aimed to move from federation to confederation as a step towards independence; at the same time they formed separate institutions designed for complete independence.
Outside forces seized on these internal failings. In January 1991 the US and German Ambassadors pressed the Yugoslav National Army not to intervene to keep Croatia in Yugoslavia. In early 1991 Germany and other countries sold arms to Croatia and Slovenia. On 25 June 1991 Croatia and Slovenia unilaterally declared their independence. The Croats were desperate for foreign intervention: "The Tudjman government believed that immediate internationalization of the Yugoslav crisis was absolutely crucial."
When the Yugoslav Government deployed the National Army to hold the country together, the EC secretly threatened to cut off all aid to Yugoslavia. On 4 October 1991, the opening day of the EC Conference, its chairman Lord Carrington presented an agenda "premised on the assumption that Yugoslavia no longer existed." The EC announced that all the Yugoslav republics "are sovereign and independent with international identity". As Cohen wrote, "the EC had apparently made a political decision to dismember the Yugoslav federation." Hurd warned in December 1991 that recognising Croatia and Slovenia would escalate the war. Carrington warned that recognition would weaken diplomatic efforts to achieve a ceasefire and a settlement, and would also spread the war to Bosnia. Despite, or because of, all these good reasons, the EC, including Britain, recognised Croatia and Slovenia in January. The UN did too, despite its "internal divisions about the propriety of intervention in a sovereign state's domestic disputes."
The war did spread to Bosnia. In July 1991 the Moslem Bosnian Organization tried to negotiate a Moslem-Serb accord to prevent war in Bosnia and to preserve Bosnia's territorial integrity. Karadzic accepted this for the Bosnian Serbs, but Izetbegovic, the leader of the Bosnian Muslims, rejected it. Izetbegovic is a member of the fundamentalist 'Fida'iyane Islam', which wants to turn Bosnia into an Islamic Republic, although Muslims are only a third of the population. Bosnia's Prime Minister Haris Silajdzic tried to justify the composition of his government by saying "It is a fact that Moslems make up 99% of the Bosnian defense forces so it is natural that they form the government." In so doing he gave the lie to the nonsense that Bosnia is some form of multicultural democracy. These armed forces have been "strengthened with thousands of volunteers from various Islamic countries" and by illegal arms shipments, often through Slovenia, especially from Iran, Saudi Arabia and Turkey.
In his 1970 Islamic Declaration, which he reprinted in 1990, Izetbegovic wrote, "The Islamic movement must and can take power not only to destroy the non-Islamic power but to build up a new Islamic one." Cohen noted "the more militant and religiously nationalistic majority in the party led by Alija Izetbegovic (who had spent eight years in jail under the communists for his Islamic fundamentalist beliefs)." Cohen analysed "the role of traditional religions in generating ethnic conflicts" in Yugoslavia.
Again, in February 1992 Izetbegovic sabotaged the Lisbon Agreement for Moslem-Serb-Croat power-sharing. He "later conceded that Bosnia might have avoided a violent war if it had stayed together with Serbia and Montenegro in a reconfigured Yugoslavia." In early 1992 his dash for Bosnian independence was "prompted by the opportunity for quick recognition by the EC." Even the US Ambassador to Yugoslavia called his decision 'disastrous'. Cohen pointed out that "the lack of a political settlement among the major ethnic groups within Bosnia-Herzegovina actually justified postponing recognition of that republic as another new state in April 1992." But the EC and the UN went ahead with recognition. In the autumn of 1993 Bosnian Moslem government forces killed "thousands of civilian Croats in central Bosnia".
The United States has throughout the war campaigned for US intervention. As Cohen pointed out, it used hyperbolic calls of genocide to try to justify intervention. It has vilified the Serbs and whitewashed the Bosnian Moslems and the Croats. To defeat the Serbs, "the United States, though not ostensibly taking sides in the war, had effectively engineered the Moslem-Croat agreement." Cohen showed how "behind the scenes, Washington was gradually expanding its military support for the Moslems and Croats". Clinton approved the initiative of a group of former US military officers to assist Croatia's armed forces.
Cohen finished by writing hopefully, "The imperatives of economic survival and reconstruction, as well as geographic proximity and other earlier interdependencies, suggested that such cooperation would eventually resume despite the recent episodes of terrible, ethnic, religious, and political violence." But there is no chance of this vital peaceful reconstruction happening with 60,000 foreign troops in the country. Their presence will prolong the war in Yugoslavia, and also runs a high risk of spreading it to other countries. It will certainly worsen the tension between the NATO powers and Russia. Bulgaria and Greece will not appreciate the presence of so many NATO troops so near to them.
Rating: 5
Summary: Allana's Review
Comment: I really enjoyed this book and I hope it will help me on my Project.
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Title: The Balkans: Nationalism, War & the Great Powers, 1804-1999 by Misha Glenny ISBN: 0140233776 Publisher: Penguin USA (Paper) Pub. Date: 28 August, 2001 List Price(USD): $20.00 |
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Title: Yugoslavia: Death of a Nation by Laura Silber, Allan Little ISBN: 0140262636 Publisher: Penguin USA (Paper) Pub. Date: February, 1997 List Price(USD): $16.00 |
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Title: The Serbs: History, Myth and the Destruction of Yugoslavia by Tim Judah, Timothy Judah ISBN: 0300085079 Publisher: Yale Univ Pr Pub. Date: September, 2000 List Price(USD): $18.00 |
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