Such high-handedness is only the latest reminder that no one in the US client states of the Balkans has a free hand, not even a former Party secretary with a North American wife, Sonja. The US Embassy in Zagreb has fostered an alternative power centre to Racan's government. No one doubts the US-backing for Stipe Mesic, the freshly elected President of Croatia, who achieved a stunningly improbable victory in the February election to replace the dead Tudjman. Mesic's blind adherence to every jot and tittle of State Department policy means that Racan's genuine power-base in the old Communist institutions like the trades unions and apparatchik elite can be held in check by the considerable presidential powers Mesic has inherited from Tudjman, and whose diminution he now resists despite his campaign promises. It seems that at the start of the 21 st century American imperialism has not only overtaken Communism in the race for world domination but also in the tactics it is employing to get there.
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