Estimating Yugoslavia <http://www.balkanalysis.com/2006/12/22/estimating-yugoslavia/>
12/22/2006 (Balkanalysis.com) By David Binder That was a strange assembly on the fifth floor of Washington’s Woodrow Wilson Center on Dec. 7: about 70 aging intelligence agents, diplomats, academics and the odd journalist - mostly male - brought together by that now arcane topic: Yugoslavia. The group was convened by the Government’s National Intelligence Council and the Wilson Center to discuss the United States intelligence community’s “National Intelligence Estimates” of what was going to happen in and with Yugoslavia from November 1948 through October 1990. “Estimates” is the term intelligence professionals use for educated guesses. Thirty-four original estimates, long classified “secret,” were published in their entirety in conjunction with the conference entitled From “‘National Communism’ to National Collapse / US Intelligence Community Estimative Products on Yugoslavia 1948-1990.” Altogether the secrets, distributed to the participants, weighed 5 kilos. For some the conference brought surprising revelations: What had been guarded so long as seemingly holy scripture turned out to be collections of fairly banal and sometimes obvious observations of the Yugoslav scenery. One participant said the information in the estimates “tracks with much of the scholarly literature” – meaning that it did not rely on clandestine sources. In contrast to the widespread impression that NIEs were the supreme product of the intelligence community, an image cultivated by some at the Central Intelligence Agency itself over the years, the practitioners played down the impact of their work. Dennis Bennett, a retired CIA analyst with a good sense of humor, remarked, “you might have the impression that a policy maker would sit at his desk and say, I’ve got to make a policy, where’s the goddamn NIE?’ That didn’t happen.” Others pointed out that intelligence estimates, sometimes running 27 pages, simply could not be digested by busy senior policy makers. One of the participants remarked that he he “missed Yugoslavia” and was happy with that construct. At least four other participants echoed his sentiment. The Yugoslavia NIEs were praised by most of those attending the conference for their balance and perceptiveness, although some academics like Susan Woodward quibbled about their real value; the English journalist Misha Glenny, complained about their lack of attention to some contemporary events and the former German diplomat, Geert-Hinrich Ahrens, mixed some praise with his estimate that he understood Yugoslavia better than any American analyst. A. Ross Johnson of the Hoover Institution commented: “The estimates get high marks for description and analysis and for forecasting the plausible.” He went on to say, “The 1971 estimate, for example, saw the chances of Yugoslavia holding together after Tito as only slightly better than even. Not great odds, suggesting the need for more attention to “then what?” Among the estimates most discussed at the conference was NIE 15 (the 34th in the published series) from October 18, 1990. It contained a series of “key judgments,” the first of which was “the old Yugoslav federation is coming to an end because the reservoir of political will holding Yugoslavia together is gone. Within a year the federal system will no longer exist.” The essence of NIE 15 was disclosed 41 days later in the New York Times under the headline, “Yugoslavia Seen Breaking Up Soon - CIA Paper Predicts Action in 18 Months And Adds Civil War Is Likely.” That caused a sensation in Europe, but not in the United States, which was preoccupied with the collapsing Soviet Union and the reunification of Germany. Strikingly, it was the only one of the NIE’s whose basic conclusions become public. An appendix to The Wilson Center documents asserts that NIE 15 “evidently was leaked to the New York Times.” But the reporter (me), who attended the Wilson Center conference, stated this was not true, that he never saw the NIE until now. Among others attending were Mile Bjelajac of the Institute of Recent History in Belgrade; Ljubodrag Dimic and Radina Vucetic of the University of Belgrade; Tvrtko Jakovina of the University of Zagreb; Svetozar Rajak of the London School of Economics; Dusan Reljic of the Institute for International and Security Affairs in Berlin and Rudolf Rizman of the University of Ljubljana. An interesting sidelight was provided by Ana Lalaj of the Albanian Academy of Sciences, who pointed out the attention given to the Kosovo issue in an NIE (Number 42-1) as early as 1952. At that time, Yugoslavia was organizing groups of Kosovo Albanians to undermine the regime of Enver Hoxha. The real star of the occasion, however, was Lawrence Eagleburger, former secretary of state and an old hand in Yugoslavia, starting as a junior economic officer in the US embassy and ultimately serving as ambassador. He regaled the grizzled spies and specialists with anecdotes from his various terms in Yugoslavia How he got restaurant musicians to strike up “Tamo Daleko” when his party entered, which earned him a reprimand from the Foreign Ministry; how George F. Kennan made a demarche to President Tito asking that he not allow criticism at the 1962 Nonaligned Conference of the recent US atomic bomb test only to see Yugoslavia join in condemning the American test. Kennan was so infuriated, Eagleburger recounted, that from then on every cable he sent Washington recommended cutting off US aid to Yugoslavia. Eagleburger also said he had completely misjudged Slobodan Milosevic whom he met early in his industrial and banking career, seeing him as a promising young executive. “If I had known of the multiple suicides in the Milosevic family I might have judged him differently.” He went on to muse out loud if it might have been better to authorize the assassination of Milosevic. “Think of the lives that would have been spared…the blood that would not have been shed…” In trying to connect these wide-ranging thoughts to the ruminations of the intelligence specialists, Eagleburger paused and said, “You see, in terms of intelligence it is important to know the persons you are dealing with.” In fact, the US intelligence community did work up a Milosevic NIE in 1994. But that is another story. ……………………………………… *David Binder (born 1931) was a correspondent for The New York Times from 1961 until 2004. He specialized in coverage of central and eastern Europe, based in Berlin, Belgrade and Bonn. The current piece was published in Belgrade’s Politika <http://www.politika.co.yu/cyr/default.asp.htm> on December 16, 2006. (Under)Estimating Yugoslavia <http://www.balkanalysis.com/2006/12/22/estimating-yugoslavia/> http://www.balkanalysis.com/2006/12/22/estimating-yugoslavia/
