This happened to coincide with the end of the Cold War, which for Yugoslavia had devastating consequences. Due to its unique position in the Eastern bloc, Yugoslavia under Tito’s careful stewardship was able to play on it’s position and proximity to the Soviet Union, thus securing US financial backing and $bn of loans. As Yugoslavia was not communist in the Soviet sense, it was important for the US to ally and support Yugoslavia so as to have a strategic base close to the Soviet Union, in much the same way as Cuba was for the East.
The end of the Cold War and Tito’s death left Yugoslavia with some hard questions that needed to be answered. How would Yugoslavia be governed now that the great leader Tito was dead? Certainly it was unlikely that any one man could transcend nationalities to the same extent as Tito could and anyway built into the 1974 constitution (Tito’s last) was a devolution of power that would see more of a coalition governing body presiding over Yugoslavia. Other questions that were raised were more along economic lines: now that the Cold War has come to an end, where is Yugoslavia’s financial backing going to come from? All of a sudden, Yugoslavia lost its strategic importance to the US and with this lost the $bn of loans too.
With Yugoslavia becoming more decentralised and essentially devolved into eight regionally based and separate communist parties, the secret police and the army, the area was ripe for nationalism to flourish. The first of this kind to make any sort of headway was Serbian nationalism under Slobodan Miloševic. Miloševic’s ideal was to take over from where Tito had left off and literally step into his shoes as a kind of King of Yugoslavia. However when this becomes unattainable, and being the opportunist that he is, he plays on Serbian repression throughout Yugoslavia and whips up nationalistic sentiment that sees Serbia challenge the other nationalities to stay in Yugoslavia under Miloševic and Serbian rule, or to fight a war against them. For many of the nationalities this proves too much to bear and war becomes inevitable very quickly. The other nationalities were eventually caught up in the fighting that became the bloodiest wars since WWII.
Essentially it then became a catalogue of in fighting on loosely based nationalistic grounds until the EC, the US and the UN eventually stepped in during the early to mid 1990s. However this was not at first as effective as it should have been. The US’ involvement in Iraq and their pre-occupation with the dissolution of the Soviet Union meant that, at first at least, their interest was somewhat distant. James Baker, Secretary of State under President George Bush summed it up perfectly, albeit bluntly, when he said simply: ‘We don’t have a dog in that fight’.
The question is could much have been done to prevent the wars and the dissolution of Yugoslavia? Tito’s 1974 constitution in similar circumstances to Lenin’s last Testament meant that one leader would not emerge as a replacement to Tito, rather the coalition of nationalities would guide Yugoslavia after his death. Tito could not have foreseen the end of the Cold War and thus the subsequent drying up of US loans. What was more predictable was the rise in nationalism particularly in Serbia, but throughout Yugoslavia more generally as the plethora of nationalities lost their one uniting factor and leader. The coalition was always destined to fail. This was before Serbia hijacked the JNA (Yugoslav Peoples’ Army) and began to assume control or at least influence over much of Yugoslavia. But the principle of decentralising power and devolving it to eight regions meant that even if nationalistic sentiments did not surface immediately, the area was already divided. EC and US involvement was a catalogue of errors. From not knowing which side to take morally or politically to trying to keep out of it altogether as well as the US having conflicting interests in Iraq and the Soviet Union. This all amounted to time wasted and opportunities lost as the troubles escalated and the full consequences of what actually happened becoming clear only now with the trial of Miloševic.
Whilst clearly there were other factors that caused the break up of former Yugoslavia, the subject is so large and complicated it is easier to look at perhaps the four main arguments. Therefore fundamentally, it was a combination of Tito’s death, the end of the Cold War, the rise of Serb nationalism and the incompetence of the EC and US that caused its collapse.
