Ramsey Clark: Divide and Conquer. The Destruction of the Balkan
Federation by the United States and NATO
2 : Centuries of Balkan History Proclaim The Necessity Of Federation
To Prevent War
http://www.iacenter.org/yugo/divide&conquer.htm
http://www.icdsm.org/more/rclarkUN2.htm
---
PART ONE
Centuries of Balkan History Proclaim The Necessity Of Federation
To Prevent War.
I. Geography, History and Rich Mixtures Of Peoples,
Cultures and Religions Conspired To Create A Special Need For a
Federal Government Capable Of Assuring Peace, Equality and Justice
In The Balkans
The history of the Balkans over centuries has been
dominated by violent struggles of its many parts and peoples,
cultures and religions, for self-determination and independence
from foreign empires. The Ottoman Turks brought yet another alien
civilization to the Balkans beginning in the 14th century which
occupied large areas of the peninsula. For the next half
millennium it introduced a foreign culture in conflict with both
Orthodox Russia and western European civilizations that held sway
over the region. For the next half millennium the Ottoman Empire
both conspired and contended at various times with the British,
Austrian, Germany, Russia and French Empires for domination and
exploitation of the Balkans and the subjugation of its people.
The southern and western Balkans under Ottoman control
experienced near constant rebellion and violence during most of
the 19th century.
The Serbs, Greeks and others struggled for
independence, usually separately, but always aware of the plight
of each other. The Serbian uprising of 1804 began, as is often
the case, from a local conflict that sparked a full-scale war for
national liberation. The other Empires with interests in the region,
Russia, France, Great Britain and Austria, generally found their
opposition to national liberation greater than their opposition to
the Ottoman, or other Empires, much as the European and US empires
with interests in the Carribean opposed the slave rebellion in
Haiti in 1791 more than they opposed the other empires competing
for the wealth of the region. The spoils of rule are ended for
all empires when peoples theretofore subjugated establish their own
free and independent government.
In 1815, a second Serbian uprising against Ottoman
rule achieved limited autonomy in part of Serbia.
From 1812 through 1850 Muslims in Bosnia,
overwhelmingly Slavs whose forebears had converted to Islam,
revolted sporadically against the Ottoman Empire seeking to
maintain and expand the power and privilege they had gained under it.
From the seventeenth century until the end of World
War I in 1918, the Austrian Empire dominated the northern
Balkans. In the year 1848, Serbs and Croats joined Hungarians and
some other nations in political uprisings aimed at securing
national autonomy for their peoples but fearing the Ottoman, under the
protection of the Austrian Empire. The Russians invaded the region
to restore the status quo. At the same time, France invaded Italy
to prop up the western half of the Austrian Empire.
Thereafter the Austrians sought to crush Serbian and
Croatian aspirations for self determination by force. Among its
methods, Austria permitted Hungarian nobility to exploit the
Vojvodina region. Later it used Russia, and then Bismarck's new
German Empire as allies to gain southward expansion of its Empire
into the Balkans at the expense of the Turks.
In 1875 the Serbian national struggle for independence
spread into Bosnia and Herzegovina. Similar revolts occurred
among the Bulgarians and Romanians. In part to annex Romanian
lands as agreed to with the Austrians, Russia engaged the Ottoman
Empire in war in 1877.
With the defeat of the Ottoman Empire by Russia,
European powers divided rule over the Balkans among themselves in
the Congress of Berlin of 1878.
By an agreement between Britain Prime Minister
Benjamin Disraeli and German Chancellor Otto Von Bismarck, Austria
occupied Bosnia and Herzegovina where Serbs were a majority,
depriving them of self rule. To give an appearance of balance
after the subjugation of Bosnia, Serbia and Montenegro were finally
given full independence, which they had largely exercised for some
years. To deter Serbia from any attempt to unite Serbs in one
country, a continuing concern of the empires, Bismarck, Disraeli
and the representatives of other world powers at the Congress of
Berlin agreed that Austrian troops should be stationed in the
Sandjak region dividing Serbia and Montenegro to assure continuing
political separation. In 1908, Austria annexed Bosnia and Herzegovina.
The experience in the north of the Balkans, Slovenia
and Croatia, under the Austria-Hungarian Empire during the
centuries of Ottoman occupation in the Balkans had been little
better. The people suffered under foreign domination and
exploitation. The violence of several centuries had forced migrations
among the Balkans states with large populations of Serbs moving
into Bosnia, Croatia and Slovenia. Croatians moved into Bosnia
and Hungarians moved into Vojvodina where they settled and lived,
some families for centuries, retaining most of their old ways and
loyalties. Many Croatians, Macedonians and Hungarians moved into
Serbia and thousands of Albanians from Kosovo relocated to Belgrade
and other cities in Serbia where their rights were protected.
To protect themselves from powerful neighbors and
internal strife, small Balkan States sought independence, economic
security and physical safety in coalitions.
In 1911, a loose Balkan League of Greece, Serbia,
Montenegro, and Bulgaria was formed to strengthen its members
against the declining Ottoman Empire.
The following year the First Balkan War broke out
between Turkey and members of the Balkan League which ended in
July 1913 in victory for the Balkan federation. At the conference
in London establishing the terms of peace, Britain and Austria
dominated decisions over new borders. Albania was made independent of
Turkey, which had long controlled it, but placed under
international control dominated by Britain and Austria.
A Second Balkan war followed from the terms of the
London conference in late 1913. Combatants were Bulgaria, Serbia,
Greece, Romania and Turkey. While the conflict was quickly
settled, tensions from it simmered until the outbreak of World War
I.
In 1914 Bosnian revolutionaries seeking separation
from Austria and to join Bosnia with Serbia assassinated Austrian
Archduke Ferdinand in Sarajevo. Austria declared war on Serbia
following the assassination of its Archduke and Crown Prince
Ferdinand. With Germany, Austria planned and carried out a deadly
assault on Serbia.
World War I was extremely violent for the Balkans, the
Serbs suffering more than 800,000 deaths resisting Austria and
Germany. Ivo Andrics' book The Bridge on the Drina remains an
invaluable portrayal of this history, centered in Bosnia from the
arrival of the Turks in the 14th Century to the end of World War I
and told from the perspective of all the peoples who lived in this
oppressed region.
II. The First Balkan Federation: 1919-1941
After World War I, it was clear that a federation of
peoples in the predominantly Slavic Balkans, however difficult to
achieve, was essential to a future of peace in the region and
beyond. No one understood this better than the people who lived
there.
The idea of a federation of South Slav nations had
existed since the end of the 18th Century. It was seen as a
necessary shield against domination by foreign empires fighting
over Balkans soil and bodies and the internal divisions caused by
such conflicts.
A consideration of the history of Yugoslav federation
since 1918 sheds light on the future course required for peace if
history is not to repeat itself once again in this beautiful,
tragic land.
The creation of a Kingdom of Serbs, Croats and
Slovenes in 1918 was a recognition of the necessity for unity
among the conflicting cultures, religions, histories, alliances
and antagonisms of societies within the region. The new union was
supported, if ineffectively, by the League of Nations, which understood
the importance of Balkan federation but was able to contribute
only modestly to its fragile struggle.
Nine difficult years of external pressures, internal
strife and dictatorial measures, were all too similar to the
insecure, painful and divisive experiences under the former
empires from Europe and Asia. Pressures from more powerful
neighbors like Italy and others seeking to dismember it, led the Balkan
Kingdom to enter into a treaty of friendship with France in 1927
in an effort to protect its sovereignty and unity. Growing
tensions culminated in the assassinations in the Parliament of
Croat member Stjepan Radic in 1928. Radic was head of the
Croatian Peasant Party.
In 1929, King Alexander changed the name of the
precarious and struggling nation to Yugoslavia (Nation of South
Slaves) and pressed for reforms in the division of power in order
to hold the ancient antagonistic sectors together.
In 1934 while on a state visit to France, King
Alexander and the Foreign Minister of France were assassinated in
Marseilles by a Macedonian with close connections to Ante Pavelic,
a Croat separatist associated with a Croatian paramilitary group
known as Ustashe, and with Italian and Hungarian authorities.
Thereafter, under King Alexander's cousin Regent Paul,
Yugoslavia was caught in the growing tensions between the European
Axis powers, Germany and Italy, and the principal Allies, Britain
and France.
Struggling to maintain its neutrality from the great
powers to no avail, the Yugoslavia entered into an alliance with
Czechoslovakia and Romania, called the Little Entente.
Because of proximity to the Axis powers and greater
coercive acts from them, the Yugoslavian government was forced to
align with the Axis nations and in March 1941 signed the
Tripartite Pact of the Axis. The next day, angry crowds and army
rebelled and established a new government, which renounced Yugoslavian
acceptance of the Tripartite agreement. Despite all these
difficulties, there was a federation and no war in the Balkans for
twenty-two years.
III. In April 1941, Germany, Italy, Bulgaria and Hungary
invaded, divided and occupied Yugoslavia. Slovenia was divided
between Italy and Germany. Germany occupied Serbia. Ante
Pavelic, head of the Ustashe, was placed in control of the independent
state of Croatia, which included all of Bosnia. Bulgaria occupied
Macedonia and part of Serbia. Hungary occupied Vojvodina.
Albania, controlled by Italy, divided Kosovo with Bulgaria.
Hundreds of thousands of Serbs were killed during the
war years, perhaps as many as a million. Some of the worst
atrocities of World War II were committed against Yugoslavia and
directed primarily at the Serbs.
The Croatian Ustashe fascists acting independently and
for the Nazis conducted assaults of liquidation against Serbs,
Jews and Romani or gypsy people. Their concentration camps, the
most infamous at Jasenovac, where as many as six hundred thousand
people died, were among the most vicious in Europe. Vladimir
Dedijer, an internationally respected Serbian writer and human rights
activist, compiled an important report on these atrocities and the
role the Catholic Church played.
Yugoslav Partisan resistance fighters, lead by Tito,
initially centered in Bosnia, waged effective attacks against
German forces and the Ustashe Croats from the mountainous areas of
the country. By 1944 they controlled much of Serbia and had
250,000 men under arms. Yugoslavia resistance was greater and
more effective than that of any other country overrun by the Nazis.
They joined Soviet armies as they approached from the east in the
summer of 1944 and took Belgrade in October of that year. US air
raids on Belgrade on Easter 1945 created lasting resentment. Only
the Nazi aerial bombardment of Belgrade in 1941 had been worse.
Two US planes were shot down over Yugoslavia in 1946 revealing the
continuing anger created by the Eastern assault and as an assertion
of independence.
The Yalta Conference, held among the USSR, the US and
Britain in February 1945, revealed continuing competing interests
in the Balkans and particular concerns of the British, and the
Yugoslavia borders with Italy and Austria. The British Foreign
Minister Anthony Eden expressed opposition to a Yugoslav-
Bulgarian pact or alliance that could have strengthened the
independence of the Balkans. The "Big Three" recognized Marshal
Tito, and called for the creation of a new government on an
agreement he had made. The new Yugoslavia reached out to provide
aid to Greece and Albania and reached out as well, to Bulgaria and
Romania, hoping to create a truly pan-Balkan federation later in
the 1940's.
IV. For Nearly Half a Century, Yugoslavia Progressed
Domestically and Internationally as a Federal Republic: 1945-1992
Arising from the ruins of World War II, Yugoslavia
demonstrated its ability to function effectively with its diverse
religions, histories, traditions, ambitions and interests. A
Federation of six Republics emerged before 1945. It adopted its
first Constitution in January 1946. The Constitution contained
affirmative provisions specifically protecting the three major
religions, assuring religious tolerance and minority rights. It
recognized the different natures and traditions of the six
republics and protected them even from federal interference,
striving for political balance to fulfill the different needs and
interests of its distinct parts and peoples. As early as 1946 and
1947, Yugoslavia discussed federation with Bulgaria, but Soviet
opposition prevented action.
In 1953, a new constitution achieved better balance
and incorporated progressive provisions including limitations on
the terms of office to two and assuring fidelity to the
constitution by empowering the Courts to invalidate legislation in
violation of the constitution.
Initially Yugoslavia appeared to be close to the
Soviet Union, but in 1948 the USSR attempted to overthrow its
government and expelled Yugoslavia from the Cominform, primarily
because of its aggressive modernization of its industry and its
independent foreign policy. Yugoslavia never joined the Warsaw Treaty
Organization.
Thereafter Yugoslavia, despite its history and
location between contending powers, was successful in pursuing an
independent course between pressures from the East and West,
primarily the US and the USSR. President Tito was courted by and
visited both countries.
Yugoslavia provided important leadership in the
Non-Aligned Movement, which helped maintain some balance during
the Cold War and avoid conflicts which wracked countries in
Europe, Africa, Asia and the Americas. The movement was an
important symbol of the possibility of independence for smaller nations
from foreign militarism, interference in domestic affairs and
economic exploitation.
As the economic collapse of the USSR and its Eastern
European bloc approached in the late 1980's, Yugoslavia was in the
strongest political and economic position of all the Slavic
countries and expected to flourish free of Cold War pressures.
But the United States and other interests were already working for
regime change and the dismemberment of Yugoslavia. The US began
exerting its influence and providing aid for separation in
Slovenia, Croatia, Bosnia and Macedonia. Other European
governments, especially Germany, supported and aided the US
actions.
Foreign influences seeking geopolitical and economic
advantage and no longer confronted by the opposing force of the
USSR, fed old prejudices and ambitions for the fragmentation of
the federation. When Yugoslavia was finally free of cold war
pressure, secessionist movements fostered by powerful foreign
governments, primarily the US, achieved its second dismemberment.
Regime change in Serbia itself was a major ideological motivation
of the US. A socialist government would not be permitted to
survive, however benevolent and flexible its economic and foreign
policies.
V. The UN Should Act Now to Assist in Planning the
Creation of A Federation for the Balkans and Neighboring States.
If the lessons of history are learned, a federation
including Balkan nations will be understood as essential to peace
and prosperity in the area. The General Assembly should assist in
developing plans and support for federations working with the
European Union and nations in the Balkans and adjacent areas.
The European Union has already considered proposals
for a Western Balkans union to include the former republics of
Yugoslavia, except Slovenia, and including Albania. It is
important for such proposals to be developed with all the nations
in the area participating.
The overview of the General Assembly is important to
help find the ideal form of federation and membership and provide
resources to accomplish the purpose. NATO members participated in
the second dismemberment of Yugoslavia and retained economic and
other interests in the region. A new federation including Balkan
nations must not become a southern ghetto for Europe's poorest, but a
free, vital and prosperous part of the world community.
Accountability for the tragedy of the violent
dismemberment of Yugoslavia and stability and prosperity in the
region requires UN guidance and support for the ideal federation
for the peoples of the Balkans.
Federation by the United States and NATO
2 : Centuries of Balkan History Proclaim The Necessity Of Federation
To Prevent War
http://www.iacenter.org/yugo/divide&conquer.htm
http://www.icdsm.org/more/rclarkUN2.htm
---
PART ONE
Centuries of Balkan History Proclaim The Necessity Of Federation
To Prevent War.
I. Geography, History and Rich Mixtures Of Peoples,
Cultures and Religions Conspired To Create A Special Need For a
Federal Government Capable Of Assuring Peace, Equality and Justice
In The Balkans
The history of the Balkans over centuries has been
dominated by violent struggles of its many parts and peoples,
cultures and religions, for self-determination and independence
from foreign empires. The Ottoman Turks brought yet another alien
civilization to the Balkans beginning in the 14th century which
occupied large areas of the peninsula. For the next half
millennium it introduced a foreign culture in conflict with both
Orthodox Russia and western European civilizations that held sway
over the region. For the next half millennium the Ottoman Empire
both conspired and contended at various times with the British,
Austrian, Germany, Russia and French Empires for domination and
exploitation of the Balkans and the subjugation of its people.
The southern and western Balkans under Ottoman control
experienced near constant rebellion and violence during most of
the 19th century.
The Serbs, Greeks and others struggled for
independence, usually separately, but always aware of the plight
of each other. The Serbian uprising of 1804 began, as is often
the case, from a local conflict that sparked a full-scale war for
national liberation. The other Empires with interests in the region,
Russia, France, Great Britain and Austria, generally found their
opposition to national liberation greater than their opposition to
the Ottoman, or other Empires, much as the European and US empires
with interests in the Carribean opposed the slave rebellion in
Haiti in 1791 more than they opposed the other empires competing
for the wealth of the region. The spoils of rule are ended for
all empires when peoples theretofore subjugated establish their own
free and independent government.
In 1815, a second Serbian uprising against Ottoman
rule achieved limited autonomy in part of Serbia.
From 1812 through 1850 Muslims in Bosnia,
overwhelmingly Slavs whose forebears had converted to Islam,
revolted sporadically against the Ottoman Empire seeking to
maintain and expand the power and privilege they had gained under it.
From the seventeenth century until the end of World
War I in 1918, the Austrian Empire dominated the northern
Balkans. In the year 1848, Serbs and Croats joined Hungarians and
some other nations in political uprisings aimed at securing
national autonomy for their peoples but fearing the Ottoman, under the
protection of the Austrian Empire. The Russians invaded the region
to restore the status quo. At the same time, France invaded Italy
to prop up the western half of the Austrian Empire.
Thereafter the Austrians sought to crush Serbian and
Croatian aspirations for self determination by force. Among its
methods, Austria permitted Hungarian nobility to exploit the
Vojvodina region. Later it used Russia, and then Bismarck's new
German Empire as allies to gain southward expansion of its Empire
into the Balkans at the expense of the Turks.
In 1875 the Serbian national struggle for independence
spread into Bosnia and Herzegovina. Similar revolts occurred
among the Bulgarians and Romanians. In part to annex Romanian
lands as agreed to with the Austrians, Russia engaged the Ottoman
Empire in war in 1877.
With the defeat of the Ottoman Empire by Russia,
European powers divided rule over the Balkans among themselves in
the Congress of Berlin of 1878.
By an agreement between Britain Prime Minister
Benjamin Disraeli and German Chancellor Otto Von Bismarck, Austria
occupied Bosnia and Herzegovina where Serbs were a majority,
depriving them of self rule. To give an appearance of balance
after the subjugation of Bosnia, Serbia and Montenegro were finally
given full independence, which they had largely exercised for some
years. To deter Serbia from any attempt to unite Serbs in one
country, a continuing concern of the empires, Bismarck, Disraeli
and the representatives of other world powers at the Congress of
Berlin agreed that Austrian troops should be stationed in the
Sandjak region dividing Serbia and Montenegro to assure continuing
political separation. In 1908, Austria annexed Bosnia and Herzegovina.
The experience in the north of the Balkans, Slovenia
and Croatia, under the Austria-Hungarian Empire during the
centuries of Ottoman occupation in the Balkans had been little
better. The people suffered under foreign domination and
exploitation. The violence of several centuries had forced migrations
among the Balkans states with large populations of Serbs moving
into Bosnia, Croatia and Slovenia. Croatians moved into Bosnia
and Hungarians moved into Vojvodina where they settled and lived,
some families for centuries, retaining most of their old ways and
loyalties. Many Croatians, Macedonians and Hungarians moved into
Serbia and thousands of Albanians from Kosovo relocated to Belgrade
and other cities in Serbia where their rights were protected.
To protect themselves from powerful neighbors and
internal strife, small Balkan States sought independence, economic
security and physical safety in coalitions.
In 1911, a loose Balkan League of Greece, Serbia,
Montenegro, and Bulgaria was formed to strengthen its members
against the declining Ottoman Empire.
The following year the First Balkan War broke out
between Turkey and members of the Balkan League which ended in
July 1913 in victory for the Balkan federation. At the conference
in London establishing the terms of peace, Britain and Austria
dominated decisions over new borders. Albania was made independent of
Turkey, which had long controlled it, but placed under
international control dominated by Britain and Austria.
A Second Balkan war followed from the terms of the
London conference in late 1913. Combatants were Bulgaria, Serbia,
Greece, Romania and Turkey. While the conflict was quickly
settled, tensions from it simmered until the outbreak of World War
I.
In 1914 Bosnian revolutionaries seeking separation
from Austria and to join Bosnia with Serbia assassinated Austrian
Archduke Ferdinand in Sarajevo. Austria declared war on Serbia
following the assassination of its Archduke and Crown Prince
Ferdinand. With Germany, Austria planned and carried out a deadly
assault on Serbia.
World War I was extremely violent for the Balkans, the
Serbs suffering more than 800,000 deaths resisting Austria and
Germany. Ivo Andrics' book The Bridge on the Drina remains an
invaluable portrayal of this history, centered in Bosnia from the
arrival of the Turks in the 14th Century to the end of World War I
and told from the perspective of all the peoples who lived in this
oppressed region.
II. The First Balkan Federation: 1919-1941
After World War I, it was clear that a federation of
peoples in the predominantly Slavic Balkans, however difficult to
achieve, was essential to a future of peace in the region and
beyond. No one understood this better than the people who lived
there.
The idea of a federation of South Slav nations had
existed since the end of the 18th Century. It was seen as a
necessary shield against domination by foreign empires fighting
over Balkans soil and bodies and the internal divisions caused by
such conflicts.
A consideration of the history of Yugoslav federation
since 1918 sheds light on the future course required for peace if
history is not to repeat itself once again in this beautiful,
tragic land.
The creation of a Kingdom of Serbs, Croats and
Slovenes in 1918 was a recognition of the necessity for unity
among the conflicting cultures, religions, histories, alliances
and antagonisms of societies within the region. The new union was
supported, if ineffectively, by the League of Nations, which understood
the importance of Balkan federation but was able to contribute
only modestly to its fragile struggle.
Nine difficult years of external pressures, internal
strife and dictatorial measures, were all too similar to the
insecure, painful and divisive experiences under the former
empires from Europe and Asia. Pressures from more powerful
neighbors like Italy and others seeking to dismember it, led the Balkan
Kingdom to enter into a treaty of friendship with France in 1927
in an effort to protect its sovereignty and unity. Growing
tensions culminated in the assassinations in the Parliament of
Croat member Stjepan Radic in 1928. Radic was head of the
Croatian Peasant Party.
In 1929, King Alexander changed the name of the
precarious and struggling nation to Yugoslavia (Nation of South
Slaves) and pressed for reforms in the division of power in order
to hold the ancient antagonistic sectors together.
In 1934 while on a state visit to France, King
Alexander and the Foreign Minister of France were assassinated in
Marseilles by a Macedonian with close connections to Ante Pavelic,
a Croat separatist associated with a Croatian paramilitary group
known as Ustashe, and with Italian and Hungarian authorities.
Thereafter, under King Alexander's cousin Regent Paul,
Yugoslavia was caught in the growing tensions between the European
Axis powers, Germany and Italy, and the principal Allies, Britain
and France.
Struggling to maintain its neutrality from the great
powers to no avail, the Yugoslavia entered into an alliance with
Czechoslovakia and Romania, called the Little Entente.
Because of proximity to the Axis powers and greater
coercive acts from them, the Yugoslavian government was forced to
align with the Axis nations and in March 1941 signed the
Tripartite Pact of the Axis. The next day, angry crowds and army
rebelled and established a new government, which renounced Yugoslavian
acceptance of the Tripartite agreement. Despite all these
difficulties, there was a federation and no war in the Balkans for
twenty-two years.
III. In April 1941, Germany, Italy, Bulgaria and Hungary
invaded, divided and occupied Yugoslavia. Slovenia was divided
between Italy and Germany. Germany occupied Serbia. Ante
Pavelic, head of the Ustashe, was placed in control of the independent
state of Croatia, which included all of Bosnia. Bulgaria occupied
Macedonia and part of Serbia. Hungary occupied Vojvodina.
Albania, controlled by Italy, divided Kosovo with Bulgaria.
Hundreds of thousands of Serbs were killed during the
war years, perhaps as many as a million. Some of the worst
atrocities of World War II were committed against Yugoslavia and
directed primarily at the Serbs.
The Croatian Ustashe fascists acting independently and
for the Nazis conducted assaults of liquidation against Serbs,
Jews and Romani or gypsy people. Their concentration camps, the
most infamous at Jasenovac, where as many as six hundred thousand
people died, were among the most vicious in Europe. Vladimir
Dedijer, an internationally respected Serbian writer and human rights
activist, compiled an important report on these atrocities and the
role the Catholic Church played.
Yugoslav Partisan resistance fighters, lead by Tito,
initially centered in Bosnia, waged effective attacks against
German forces and the Ustashe Croats from the mountainous areas of
the country. By 1944 they controlled much of Serbia and had
250,000 men under arms. Yugoslavia resistance was greater and
more effective than that of any other country overrun by the Nazis.
They joined Soviet armies as they approached from the east in the
summer of 1944 and took Belgrade in October of that year. US air
raids on Belgrade on Easter 1945 created lasting resentment. Only
the Nazi aerial bombardment of Belgrade in 1941 had been worse.
Two US planes were shot down over Yugoslavia in 1946 revealing the
continuing anger created by the Eastern assault and as an assertion
of independence.
The Yalta Conference, held among the USSR, the US and
Britain in February 1945, revealed continuing competing interests
in the Balkans and particular concerns of the British, and the
Yugoslavia borders with Italy and Austria. The British Foreign
Minister Anthony Eden expressed opposition to a Yugoslav-
Bulgarian pact or alliance that could have strengthened the
independence of the Balkans. The "Big Three" recognized Marshal
Tito, and called for the creation of a new government on an
agreement he had made. The new Yugoslavia reached out to provide
aid to Greece and Albania and reached out as well, to Bulgaria and
Romania, hoping to create a truly pan-Balkan federation later in
the 1940's.
IV. For Nearly Half a Century, Yugoslavia Progressed
Domestically and Internationally as a Federal Republic: 1945-1992
Arising from the ruins of World War II, Yugoslavia
demonstrated its ability to function effectively with its diverse
religions, histories, traditions, ambitions and interests. A
Federation of six Republics emerged before 1945. It adopted its
first Constitution in January 1946. The Constitution contained
affirmative provisions specifically protecting the three major
religions, assuring religious tolerance and minority rights. It
recognized the different natures and traditions of the six
republics and protected them even from federal interference,
striving for political balance to fulfill the different needs and
interests of its distinct parts and peoples. As early as 1946 and
1947, Yugoslavia discussed federation with Bulgaria, but Soviet
opposition prevented action.
In 1953, a new constitution achieved better balance
and incorporated progressive provisions including limitations on
the terms of office to two and assuring fidelity to the
constitution by empowering the Courts to invalidate legislation in
violation of the constitution.
Initially Yugoslavia appeared to be close to the
Soviet Union, but in 1948 the USSR attempted to overthrow its
government and expelled Yugoslavia from the Cominform, primarily
because of its aggressive modernization of its industry and its
independent foreign policy. Yugoslavia never joined the Warsaw Treaty
Organization.
Thereafter Yugoslavia, despite its history and
location between contending powers, was successful in pursuing an
independent course between pressures from the East and West,
primarily the US and the USSR. President Tito was courted by and
visited both countries.
Yugoslavia provided important leadership in the
Non-Aligned Movement, which helped maintain some balance during
the Cold War and avoid conflicts which wracked countries in
Europe, Africa, Asia and the Americas. The movement was an
important symbol of the possibility of independence for smaller nations
from foreign militarism, interference in domestic affairs and
economic exploitation.
As the economic collapse of the USSR and its Eastern
European bloc approached in the late 1980's, Yugoslavia was in the
strongest political and economic position of all the Slavic
countries and expected to flourish free of Cold War pressures.
But the United States and other interests were already working for
regime change and the dismemberment of Yugoslavia. The US began
exerting its influence and providing aid for separation in
Slovenia, Croatia, Bosnia and Macedonia. Other European
governments, especially Germany, supported and aided the US
actions.
Foreign influences seeking geopolitical and economic
advantage and no longer confronted by the opposing force of the
USSR, fed old prejudices and ambitions for the fragmentation of
the federation. When Yugoslavia was finally free of cold war
pressure, secessionist movements fostered by powerful foreign
governments, primarily the US, achieved its second dismemberment.
Regime change in Serbia itself was a major ideological motivation
of the US. A socialist government would not be permitted to
survive, however benevolent and flexible its economic and foreign
policies.
V. The UN Should Act Now to Assist in Planning the
Creation of A Federation for the Balkans and Neighboring States.
If the lessons of history are learned, a federation
including Balkan nations will be understood as essential to peace
and prosperity in the area. The General Assembly should assist in
developing plans and support for federations working with the
European Union and nations in the Balkans and adjacent areas.
The European Union has already considered proposals
for a Western Balkans union to include the former republics of
Yugoslavia, except Slovenia, and including Albania. It is
important for such proposals to be developed with all the nations
in the area participating.
The overview of the General Assembly is important to
help find the ideal form of federation and membership and provide
resources to accomplish the purpose. NATO members participated in
the second dismemberment of Yugoslavia and retained economic and
other interests in the region. A new federation including Balkan
nations must not become a southern ghetto for Europe's poorest, but a
free, vital and prosperous part of the world community.
Accountability for the tragedy of the violent
dismemberment of Yugoslavia and stability and prosperity in the
region requires UN guidance and support for the ideal federation
for the peoples of the Balkans.