A Balkan Tragedy

...The U.S...

...A working multiethnic society is of course the best solution for the inhabitants of Bosnia and all of what was Yugoslavia...

...Nor does he see that the post-Cold War dropoff in Western support did much to doom the efforts of politicians such as Ante Markovic', Prime Minister from 1989 to 1991, to hold the country together and move it toward democracy...

...Like many Westerners, too, Zimmermann seems convinced that during the Cold War Yugoslavia was closer to capitalistic states like Greece and Spain than to neighboring Bulgaria and Albania...

...This view contends that under Tito today's hostile ethnic groups spent decades in a state of happiness and mutual love...

...The once condemned enemies of Tito—nationalists of all colors" —won the first democratic elections in every republic...

...nonalignment into an unrealistic rejection of free-market economics and real democracy...

...Milosevic and Tudjman already claim the allegiance of Serbs and Croats whose families have lived in Bosnia for centuries...

...But this meant the death of multiethnic Yugoslavia, except in a last fragment the West vowed to preserve—Bosnia, where after the battles in Slovenia and Croatia, the third and bloodiest civil war unfolded...

...The reasoning behind this policy is never given...

...Hardliners from both camps—who are responsible for the division of one of the most beautiful cities in the Herze-govinian south—emerged victorious...

...He arrived in Belgrade in 1989 with a new message: "Yugoslavia no longer enjoyed its former geopolitical significance as a balance between the North Atlantic Treaty Organization and the Warsaw Pact...

...He attempts to show how beginning in June 1991 the successive conflicts in Slovenia, Croatia and Bosnia annihilated the state that once presented itself as a model of "brotherhood and unity," where every worker was free to take part in his factory's "self-management...

...But ethnic barriers constructed during three and a half years of destruction stand f rmly in place, even though the Dayton Agreement says the capital of Bosnia and Herzegovina should be a cosmopolitan city...

...When Zimmermann recalls this as a private person who saw most of those he met in Yugoslavia as people for whom it was "natural" to get along, he tells us one story...

...Last June's municipal elections in Mostar, the first since 1990, showed that Croats and Muslims similarly harbor a "Berlin vision...

...The book also contains new and valuable information culled from many official and unofficial meetings with Tudjman, both Milosevics and numerous other prominent players...

...Zimmermann's portraits of Serbian and Croatian presidents Slobodan Milosevic and Franjo Tudjman, the main actors in Yugoslavia's self-immolation, are exceptionally well done...

...The ideal of a multiethnic, prosperous society faded, and the road to civil war was opened...

...Its quick recognition of Slovenian and Croatian independence in 1991 was based on Woodrow Wilson's doctrine of a nation's right to self-determination...

...Zimmermann's subtitle—Yugoslavia and its Destroyers—implies that he shares the opinion of Western intellectuals and journalists who claim the country fell victim to a few vicious leaders who manipulated the fears and frustrations of its constituent nations...

...The Community apparently did not care that the opening sentence of Bosnia's Constitution declared it a state of Muslims, Serbs and Croats, and stipulated that executive power was to be shared...

...It must be remembered, though, that Tito's state was modeled more on the Soviet Union than on the United States...

...It is not possible to explain the Yugoslav tragedy with superficial theories...

...Ante Markovic's Reformist Party, which advocated a multiethnic modern society, received a mere 5.4 per cent of the vote...

...The Serbs, however, are not the sole villains in the Yugoslav quagmire...

...pride in the system's uniqueness into an inability to change it...

...Those living in it did not learn the lessons of pluralism...

...could only support the country's unity in the context of progress toward democracy [and] would be strongly opposed to unity imposed or maintained by force...

...Second, the EC's decision to recognize Bosnian independence ignored the will of the Serbs, who wanted to remain a part of Yugoslavia...

...Often they mix good intentions and ignorance as they seek to work out the answer to a very simple question: Where was this hatred born...

...Four years later the Serb leader is an indicted war criminal and his dream remains unfulfilled, at least literally...

...But if there was little tension among his constituents, why did Bosnian President Alij a Izetbegovic warn Zimmermann in 1990: "If Yugoslavia collapses and Croatia goes independent, we will be pulled apart...

...Like all Eastern Europeans, the Yugoslavs abandoned their old system in order to revive values and programs that had been repressed under Communist rule—in their case, nationalism and religious beliefs...

...Markovic had his hands full: It was at this point that the bill for the Yugoslav peoples' "agreement with Mefisto"—their pact with Tito and the illusory prosperity and freedom he brought—came due...

...In other words, every important decision was supposed to be approved by all three groups...

...In addition, the whole region controlled by the Bosnian Federation forces has been strictly divided between the dominant Muslims and the Croats...

...Still, it is difficult to believe the former ambassador's suggestion that the only real fighter for a multiethnic state was Izetbegovic, especially since there are no Serbs or Croats in his approximately 100,000-member party...

...With Origins of a Catastrophe: Yugoslavia and its Destroyers, Zimmermann adds to the short list of analyses that deserve serious attention...

...Milosevic is a "schizoid figure" consisting of "Milosevic One," the bloodthirsty would-be founder of Greater Serbia, and "Milosevic Two," a seeker of "reasonable solutions to Yugoslavia's problems...

...The European Community (EC) did not seem to understand the situation...

...The determination of the two men to divide Bosnia indeed spelled catastrophe...

...Milosevic was the principal bowman...

...He does not see that its lauded "difference" and facile mimicry of democracy were precisely what led to its implosion...

...Writing about Bosnia, Zimmermann correctly describes it as a "mixture of Muslims, Serbs and Croats whose stability depended on the stability of Yugoslavia, of which it was a multinational microcosm...

...As hostilities heated up in Slovenia and Croatia in 1991, the President told him: "It might be a good idea [to separate Bosnia's ethnic groups] if it were possible, but it's not possible because the populations are too mixed...

...In this connection two significant events leading up to Bosnia's civil war are underplayed by Zimmermann...

...Yet it dangerously linked national unity to democratic reform, encouraged the secessionists by banning force against them, and, in another sense, flashed a green light to ethnic division in Croatia though not in Bosnia...

...That is not to say the moral indignation over subsequent war crimes isn't fully justified...

...Ambassador to Yugoslavia Warren Zimmermann in 1992, shortly after war broke out in the newly independent republic...

...And as Zimmerman himself stresses, in Bosnia "the West could have saved the situation and didn't...

...Moreover, there might well have been a bloody confrontation in Bosnia without the hasty recognition it was granted, but the odds would have been much lower...

...Nevertheless, in recent years thousands of articles and hundreds of books have done precisely that...

...Reviewed by Batic Bacevic Senior writer, columnist, "NIN" "Yes, our vision of Sarajevo is [for it to be] like Berlin when the wall was still standing," Bosnian Serb leader Radovan Karadzic' told then U.S...

...First, the Bosnian election in 1990 was dominated by three nationalistic parties, headed by Izetbegovic, Karadzic and Croat leader Stjepan Kljujic...

...Yugoslavia was a dictatorship, Zimmermann writes, "But it was a dictatorship with a difference...

...That sometimes leads to gaps in logic...

...Yet it is also fair to say that the international community's approach to the dissolution of Yugoslavia was one of the crucial factors that culminated in the brutal Bosnian civil war...

...Yugoslav Communists were themselves different"—confident, brilliant, liberal in their outlook...

...But despite his insider's knowledge, Zimmermann fails to answer basic questions and often draws dubious conclusions...

...A diplomat who spent six years in Yugoslavia during the late 1960s, then was ambassador in the critical 1989-92 period, he is an informed and important witness to the turbulence that attended the country's death...

...Tudjman is memorably described as an authoritarian, impulsive, intolerant "martinet...

...Zimmermann, who does not hesitate to acknowledge mistakes made by the United States and the EC, says at the conclusion of a list of reasons for Yugoslavia's demise: "Nationalism was the arrow that killed Yugoslavia...

...They won 84 per cent of the vote and then formed a coalition government...

...He further notes that Milosevic and Tudjman resented the fact that the three ethnic groups "had coexisted more or less peacefully" in Bosnia...

...All the apparent advantages of the experiment suddenly became great disadvantages: "Brotherhood and unity" were transformed into mutual hatred...

...He does not adequately bridge the gap between the two, or between the peaceful populace and the "nationalist leaders who coopted, intimidated [and] circumvented" all opposition...

...Zimmermann correctly points out the "deadly symbiosis" between Tudjman and Milosevic that drove events there...

...When he slips into the mode of a professional diplomat, we hear something else...