From: josip@eng.umd.edu (Josip Loncaric)
Subject: Re: Croatian dreams
Date: Mon, 14 Dec 92 17:14:43 GMT
Organization: University of Maryland

In article <1992Dec13.194052.15279@enea.se> sommar@enea.se (Erland Sommarskog) writes:
>Josip Loncaric (josip@eng.umd.edu) writes:
>>Not all Serbs are evil.  Within Serbia, Milosevic's 1991 push for war
>>was not universally accepted.  Warmongers won the argument pretty much
>>because of their claim that EC/UN would accept Serbian conquests as fait
>>accompli (after grumbling for a couple of months).  Had Slovenia/Croatia/etc.
>>been recognized early, this argument would have been shown wrong.  Without
>>recognition, the warmongers seemed to be on the right track.  The train
>>of war left the station in July 1991 and picked up speed, and now it's very
>>hard to turn it back.
>
>Looks very good paper, doesn't it? The only problem is that the
>first road blocks came up in Knin about a year earlier.

Yes, but Croatia responded by waiting for Knin to come to its senses, i.e.
to reach agreement with the Croatian government peacefully.  As long as the
JNA/Milosevic were willing to use Knin as a wedge to break up Croatia, this
policy could not make much headway.  Knin had been looking towards Belgrade
but needed to understand that it should negotiate with Zagreb.  Quick
recognition would help make this clear.

>I didn't say that the Croatian leadership wanted war. I said that
>they played the game Milosevic & co wanted them do. The game that
>would give them enough excuses to start the war. Simply: they walked
>right into the trap.

No, Croatia negotiated about a peaceful resolution as long as there was
any chance, however slim, that this war might have been avoided.  The 
moment Milosevic/JNA went to war there was no turning back.

>>Given Milosevic's push for war,
>>the Croatian leadership did the best they could.
>
>There were a lot more things they could have done. They could have
>clearly denounced Pavelic's regime. They could have scrapped the
>Croatian coat of arms, which, although centuries old, for many Serbs 
>was the symbol of fascism, Ustasha and genocide. They could have 
>elected another president with a less funny litterature background.

None of this would have stopped Milosevic, and besides, you are wrong
to think that Croatia had not clearly denounced Pavelic's WWII regime.
Croatia elected a president who had FOUGHT AGAINST this regime.  As long
as you chase the red herring of symbolism, you miss the basic idea that
none of this matters:  Milosevic wanted Croatia, and any excuse would
have done just as well for him.  So the basic question is how Croatia
could defend itself.  It would appear that Croatia, with its emphasis on
centuries-old Croatian statehood, fared somewhat better than 
Bosnia-Herzegovina, with its emphasis on bending over backwards to
satisfy Serbian concerns.  The point is, what you said simply does not
matter: what matters is that Milosevic wanted war and any excuse would
do for him.

>No, there were a lot more of things they could have done to prove
>for for Serbs in Croatia that Croatian independence would not be
>dangerous. Psychology seems to be an over-looked subject in the
>Croatian leadership.

How did psychology help Bosnian leadership?  Did psychology stop Hitler?
Or did Chamberlain's appeasement actually encourage him?

>>Fighting back when attacked has a long tradition, and it is an honorable
>>thing to do.  I might add that the Bosnia-Herzegovina government would
>>be in a lot better position today had it had more luck in self-defense.
>
>But can folliness be considered honorable?

What are you talking about?  Oh, yes, Europe should have been given to
Hitler, because resisting him led to so much bloodshed...  I do not buy
your argument.

>>Today, the B-H government is being denied the opportunity to defend its
>>people from genocide.  This is deeply wrong.  Unless the UN is willing
>>to act to protect Bosnia, it must allow it to defend itself.  Otherwise,
>>the UN charter and the Helsinki accords and Geneva conventions are not
>>worth the paper they are written on.
>
>Yeah, you're right, there are too few weapons in B-H today. Throw in
>some more and give equal share to the Muslims and the Croats so that
>they kill each other, when they're done with the Serbs. Sure, that
>will give us peace in B-H.
>-- 
>Erland Sommarskog - ENEA Data, Stockholm - sommar@enea.se

A time comes when one must stand up for what is right.  What you are
proposing (leave victims defenseless) just isn't right.  Moreover,
argument can be made that it is precisely the lack of defensive
weapons which is creating the carnage in Bosnia-Herzegovina.  Do you think
that an imbalance of power between the USA and the former USSR would
have helped peace?  No way.  Every minute that the UN embargo perpetuates
imbalance of power in Bosnia-Herzegovina adds to the carnage there.  

Regards,
--Josip



Xref: sparky alt.politics.europe.misc:201 soc.culture.yugoslavia:10047