They argue that with the disintegration of Yugoslavia only an outside force could have protected an independent Bosnian-Hercegovinian state. The Western powers, especially the United States, encouraged the Izetbegovic government to strive for independence in 1992, but they failed to provide for its protection. One might add that their failure to come to the assistance of an integral Yugoslavia and the eagerness of some, notably Germany and Austria, to recognize the secession of Slovenia and Croatia doomed the prospect for an independent Bosnia-Hercegovina at the outset. Westview Press, 1995. Fifteen specialists from the United States and the former Yugoslavia join the two well-known editors in assessing the final years of socialist Yugoslavia and the beginning of the country's breakup.
Individual chapters cover each of the six erstwhile republics.
This far-ranging volume, one in a series on Eastern Europe after Communism, offers additional insights into the problems of a shattered multinational community. Yugoslavia, the Former and Future. Brookings Institution and United Nations Institute for Social Development, 1995. Eight scholars from the universities of Belgrade, Ljubljana, Sarajevo and Zagreb examine the causes of the breakup and resultant civil war. They all agree that the causes were specific to the social, economic and political situation in Yugoslavia after Tito, and not the inevitable consequence of conflicting or overlapping claims of ethnic groups.