The very best article I've ever seen detailing the background of the ten-year long war in the Balkans was written by Sean Gervasi in the Winter 1992-93 "Covert Action Quarterly", which I was pleased to discover has now been put on their website at http://caq.com/ along with other valuable information. This is a section from Gervasi's lengthy article, which I strongly urge everybody to take a look at in its entirety. ==================== YUGOSLAVIA STEPS OUT OF LINE A crucial change in Yugoslav relations with the West occurred when Yugoslavia balked at carrying out the reforms urged by the west. As Yugoslavia had initiated market-oriented policies before any of the countries in the former Eastern bloc--tasting some the the bitter consequences--its halting of "reforms" in 1990 particularly rankled the U.S. The Bush administration set out to farce the recalcitrant nation to accede to Western demands for a "change in regime." (17) In January 1989, when Ante Marcovic was named federation premier, the U.S. had anticipated a cooperative relationship. "Known to favor market-oriented reforms," (18) the new Prime Minster was described by the BBC correspondent as "Washington's best ally in Yugoslavia." (19) In Autumn 1989, just before the Berlin Wall fell, Marcovic visited Bush in the White House. The president, the New York Times reported, "welcomed Mr. Marcovic's commitment to market-oriented economic reform and to building democratic pluralism." In this friendly atmosphere, Marcovic asked for "United States assistance in making economic and political changes opposed by hard-liners in the Communist Party." He requested a substantial aid package from the U.S., including $1 billion to prop up the banking system and more than $3 billion in loans from the World Bank. He also tried to lure private investment to his country. In exchange, Marcovic promised "reforms," but warned, as the Times put it, that they "are bound to bring social problems [including] an increase in unemployment to about 20 percent and the threat of increased ethnic and political tension among the country's six republics and two autonomous provinces." (20) Marcovic's new austerity plan, announced two months later in Belgrade, deepened the Yugoslav crisis. The plan called for a new devalued currency, a six-month wage freeze, closure of "unprofitable" state enterprises, and reduced government expenditure. Believing it would lead to social unrest, Serbia, the largest republic, immediately rejected it. Some 650,000 Serbian workers staged a walkout in protest. (21) Marcovic's proposal for some first steps toward political democratization--a multi-party system and open elections--fared a bit better and, in January 1990, was accepted by the Central Committee of the Yugoslav League of Communists. Not long afterward, however, the Slovene League of Communists seceded from the Yugoslav League. In April, Demos, the Slovene opposition coalition, described in the U.S. as "an alliance of pro-western parties," (22) won a majority in parliamentary elections in Slovenia. Thus, as the unity of the Socialist Federal Republic of Yugoslavia weakened, a pro-Western, pro-"reform" camp consolidated and pushed for separatism as the only possible way to realize nationalist aims--which would shatter the Yugoslav economy. By June 1990, when Prime Minister Marcovic introduced the second phase of his austerity program, industrial output in Yugoslavia had already fallen some ten percent since the beginning of the year, in part as a result of the measures introduced the previous October. Nonetheless, the second phase of the prime minister's plan called for further reductions of 18 percent in public spending, the wholesale privatization of state enterprises, and the establishment of new private property rights. To make the package more palatable, Marcovic also proposed lowering interest rates and conditionally lifting the wage freeze. Economic "reform" was the crucial issue in 1990 multi-party elections held throughout Yugoslavia. In Slovenia, Croatia, and Bosnia-Herzegovina, separatist coalitions ousted the League of Communists. In Serbia and Montenegro, the ruling party--renamed the Socialist Party in Serbia--won. The federal government, including Prime Minister Marcovic, denounced the separatist tendencies to the two northern republics. President Borisav Jovic resigned as federal president when his proposal for a national state of emergency was rejected. (23) The line was drawn. The new separatist governments in the north wished--at least in the flush of their electoral victories--to join Europe and the parade toward capitalism. The federal government and some of the republics, including Serbia, balked. One European scholar summarized the West's view: "With the ending of the Cold War...Yugoslavia was no longer [a] problem of global importance for the two super-powers...The important factor was the pace of reforms in the East. What lasted nine months in Poland, took only nine weeks in the GDR and only nine days in Czechoslovakia. Yugoslavia lagged enormously behind [in] this process of democratic transformations. " (24) In an ideal world, there would have been a long national debate on the way forward, and the separatist republics, if still bent on secession, would have proceeded through the complex process provided for in the Federal Constitution. That was not to be. GERMANY'S NEW EXPANSIONISM The years following the general adoption of the Reagan Doctrine saw the pace of change accelerate in all the countries of the Socialist bloc. Developments were carrying them toward the "quiet revolutions" the West desired. By the end of 1989, moreover, an equally important change--the third major one in Yugoslavia's relationship to its emergence as the giant of Europe would prove decisive for the fate of Yugoslavia. As Yugoslavia continued in crisis, a much-strengthened industrial and political leadership in Germany looked east. Its influence was rapidly becoming "pervasive, in personal contacts, business investments, and intellectual life." (25) In the post-Cold War era the means for expansion are economic, political, and cultural, rather than military. In Eastern Europe, German trade groups and banks suddenly became very active and German firms sought lower costs, especially lower wages and taxes. By 1991, one third of the trade between Eastern and Western Europe was based in Germany, according to a U.N. study, (26) and Germany became the major foreign investor in Eastern Europe, especially in Czechoslovakia, Hungary, and Poland. German firms now have 1,500 joint ventures in Poland and 1,000 in Hungary. But it was not just economics that drove Germany eastward. Form many Germans, the expansion also made historical sense. Their firms were reviving ties to the East which went back to the pre-Communist era and even to the time of the Austria-Hungarian Empire. And perhaps even more disquieting for partially recolonized Eastern Europe were the cultural campaigns which accompanied economic expansion. These promote the use of the German language, German books, and German culture in general. The German foreign broadcasting service recently announced "a media and cultural offensive in Central, Eastern and Southern Europe." Its director called the new Germany "the most important media and cultural bridgehead between East and West." (27) The aims and scope of Germany's drive east were summed up by the Chair of The East Committee, the industrial group promoting business in the East: "it is our natural market...[I]n the end this market will perhaps bring us to the same position we were in before World War I. Why not?" (28) German expansion has been accompanied by a rising tide of nationalism and xenophobia, igniting old Yugoslav fears. These have been fed by evidence that Germany has been energetically seeking a free hand among its allies "to pursue economic dominance in the whole of Mitteleuropa." (29) In 1990, Yugoslavia lay in the path of that gathering German drive. Given Germany's economic and political power, and its aid and trade ties with Yugoslavia, many expected Bonn to try to draw the region into its orbit. The most obvious beginning would be in the northern republics which had historically been considered part Europe, and especially in Croatia, which had strong German links. During the Second World War, Nazi Germany had installed a clerical-fascist state in Croatia. (30) After the war, more than half a million Croatian émigrés moved to the Fatherland, where their organizations had considerable political influence. Milovan Djilas may have had these considerations in mind, when, more than a year before the secession crises of 1991, he warned: "It is definitely in the interests of the majority of other nations--for example, the Unites States, Great Britain, the USSR--to support the unity of Yugoslavia. ...But I doubt that Yugoslavia's neighbors...are so well-intentioned. I also suspect that in some states, for example, in Germany and Austria, there are influential groups who would like to see Yugoslavia disintegrate--from traditional hatred, from expansionist tendencies, and vague, unrealistic desires for revenge. (31) Louis Proyect (http://www.panix.com/~lnp3/marxism.html)
