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Inspired by this thread on the war crimes committed by and against Serbs and Kosovars.

Basically, was it possible to prevent the 1991-2001 Yugoslav wars from raging the way it did, with tens of thousands of people becoming rape victims, hundreds of thousands killed, over a million made homeless refugees, and inviting an impotent UN peacekeeping force, followed by NATO military intervention? Say, someone kills Slobodan Milosevic while he was on his way to Kosovo Polje in 1987? Or Yugoslavia joining NATO in a bid for massive amounts of aid in 1980, shortly after Tito's death?

Or would conflicts between Yugoslavia's ethnic groups unavoidably erupt and then inevitably expand to the point it did in our world, complete with war rape, ethnic cleansing, looting, genocide, and NATO at war?

1. References to Red Alert, time travel and similar nonsense forcibly removed to not put History in great pain.
2. Ethnic cleansing is real, punctuation corrected.

Side, I think you should lay out your own scenario on what could have prevented Yugoslavia's ethnic breakdown. A strong post-Tito successor maybe? Oh, and why do you think Milosevic's persona is important? Other nationalist separatists rose as well, and without Milosevic, the wars would also happen. Serbia might not take such an active part there, but you have done nothing to prevent desintegration of Yugoslavia by offing Milosevic, and hence nothing to prevent ethnic cleansing in separated zones.

And stop using Red Alert, time travel, Einstein and other cheap B-movie nonsense, for god's sake, or I'll rip that right out of your post, or flush it to Testing if it doesn't become more productive. This time, I will wipe it out, but the next person who refers to Red Alert in the History forum will get it's thread booted to HOS immediately without any warning.

I think it's important to look at the Yugoslavia collapse in context of the overall turmoil that existed on the USSR borderland following it's collapse.
From the collapse of Czechoslovakia (which was relatively peaceful since ethnic Slovak and Czech were pretty much separated), to conflict in Moldova, contlicts in Georgia, war in Chechnya, Armenian-Azerbaijani conflicts to civil war in Tajikistan the entire borderland of USSR was in conflict.
The thing was that the age old struggles between different nations were simply superseded by overarching Russian influence in USSR proper and the external pressure of the Cold War in the USSR borderland (like Czechoslovakia and Yugoslavia). After the USSR went splat the frozen conflicts unfroze and all hell broke loose.
So no I don't believe that killing Milošević would make a slightest difference.

I've typed out a response earlier but FF crashed on me (Flash sux).

Basically, to the question in the OP I think you could create a conceivable scenario for each of the results. The '89-'91 period when the entire thing was basically decided was very fluid and a lot of results could have happened (and realistically, in '88-'89 if you told anyone on the street that there would be a war they would have been surprised and incredulous). In my personal opinion, the three basic reasons for the result that we've got was (in order of importance):

1. Simply bad and ineffective rotating presidency system after Tito's death in the '80ies. It just didn't work and basically paralyzed any action that requires political capital as opposed to just keeping the system running. And action was required since all the cheap credit Yugoslavia was using for growth stopped flowing, thus leading to a severe economic downturn which led to tensions rising (including the rise of the nationalistic leaders), which less indecisive government could have potentially significantly softened - they only needed to limp to '95 or so when Yugoslavia would have entered the EU and NATO if not for the wars and the generous EU funds for that phase of expansion would have helped stability tremendously. We're seeing the same pattern repeat itself on a slightly smaller scale today in BiH, with its similar institutions of rotating presidency and the power of nationalist leaders do to its ineffectiveness.

2. Tied to the above, within that system there was a lack of true statesman (excepting, depending on your definition, the nationalist ones) that could have opposed the nationalists and either reached compromises on the problem areas in the crucial '89-'91 period, or at least led to a peaceful dissolution

3. The international community, and especially the EU, bungled its response in that crucial period. For most of the time, it was led by the foreign policy of France and UK which was essentially stability and containment at any cost (ie. letting Serbia do its thing to "restore Yugoslavia") which, obviously, was the horrendously wrong choice as the history on the ground has shown. The US, meanwhile, stood on the sidelines until '93 or so when public pressure forced it to support Croatia and the Bosniaks so that the situation would end. Again, crucial time lost. If the EU and the US stepped in in early '91 before the war(s) really started and enforced a peaceful dissolution with firm guarantees it could have ended peacefully. Of course, at that point the US had other priorities (the Soviet Union had still not quite died, Desert Storm was ramping up, etc.), while the only country (out of the big players) that did see the writing on the wall and acted accordingly, Germany, was having its own reunification process and thus had limited political capital to spend on foreign policy.

Kane Starkiller wrote:I think it's important to look at the Yugoslavia collapse in context of the overall turmoil that existed on the USSR borderland following it's collapse.
From the collapse of Czechoslovakia (which was relatively peaceful since ethnic Slovak and Czech were pretty much separated), to conflict in Moldova, contlicts in Georgia, war in Chechnya, Armenian-Azerbaijani conflicts to civil war in Tajikistan the entire borderland of USSR was in conflict.
The thing was that the age old struggles between different nations were simply superseded by overarching Russian influence in USSR proper and the external pressure of the Cold War in the USSR borderland (like Czechoslovakia and Yugoslavia). After the USSR went splat the frozen conflicts unfroze and all hell broke loose.
So no I don't believe that killing Milošević would make a slightest difference.

So to avert an explosion of ethnic tensions, you must keep the government (Soviet, Yugoslav, etc.) strong enough to silence the firebrands and convince the ethnic groups that fighting each other is a very bad idea, which means you must keep the economy strong enough to keep industries running, people employed and collecting paychecks, and not hungry and on the streets and ready to direct their anger at whatever scapegoat the firebrands choose?

Sounds tough. Can anyone provide links to better, more detailed information sources than Wikipedia, one that explains why the economic reforms failed so spectacularly?

Netko wrote:1. Simply bad and ineffective rotating presidency system after Tito's death in the '80ies. It just didn't work and basically paralyzed any action that requires political capital as opposed to just keeping the system running. And action was required since all the cheap credit Yugoslavia was using for growth stopped flowing, thus leading to a severe economic downturn which led to tensions rising (including the rise of the nationalistic leaders), which less indecisive government could have potentially significantly softened - they only needed to limp to '95 or so when Yugoslavia would have entered the EU and NATO if not for the wars and the generous EU funds for that phase of expansion would have helped stability tremendously. We're seeing the same pattern repeat itself on a slightly smaller scale today in BiH, with its similar institutions of rotating presidency and the power of nationalist leaders do to its ineffectiveness.

2. Tied to the above, within that system there was a lack of true statesman (excepting, depending on your definition, the nationalist ones) that could have opposed the nationalists and either reached compromises on the problem areas in the crucial '89-'91 period, or at least led to a peaceful dissolution.

I've read multiple essays by political commentators, and multiple novels by writers with liberal/libertarian tendencies, which claim such "power-sharing" governments are ideal for ensuring peace in ethnically diverse states. I probably shouldn't be surprised these ideals are idiotic, doomed to worsen the problems they're meant to solve.

Sidewinder wrote:Can anyone provide links to better, more detailed information sources than Wikipedia, one that explains why the economic reforms failed so spectacularly?

I believe there was enough spoken about it on this very forum, if you use the search function.

Basically, (1) breakdown of centralized state (2) privatization into the hands of oligarchs who liquidated production assets in exchange for mass luxury goods, or traded them for foreign imported consumption goods which they sold on the market. Basically, cannibalization of a nation's productive capitals - on very cheap prices! - to allow for consumption of foreign goods. This lead to de-industrialization and industrial collapse. End of line.

Stas Bush wrote:Oh, and why do you think Milosevic's persona is important? Other nationalist separatists rose as well, and without Milosevic, the wars would also happen.

Because the US media consistently portrayed Milosevic as the instigator of the Yugoslav wars, just as they portrayed Kaiser Wilhelm II as the instigator of WWI. I apologize for my gullibility; I should've known CNN, Newsweek, and Time were sprouting shit.

A strong post-Tito successor maybe?

Question: why was there no strong post-Tito successor, someone who said, "Cease this nonsense about 'Greater Serbia,' 'Free Croatia,' 'Free Kosovo!' We are Yugoslavs, and we must remain united if we're to have the strength to weather the current troubles!"

The Break-up of Yugoslavia was inevitable after Tito's death he was the only person that all sides respected and with this stop the wars, so unless you finda way to make Tito immortal then it would only be a matter of time before a Tudjman or Milosevic got into power and started the ball rolling so to speak.

Also its not entirely true that Mile started the war in Croatia, remembering back to reading the news back then it was when Tudjman said in a speech "Hrvaska za Hrvarti" (Croatia for Croatians) what was until that time posturing turned to full blown war. Now for people of non-Yugoslav background those three words to the Serbs is the equivalent to the German Chancellor saying in a speech Ein Volk.... in a speech.

Tito was a very strong leader, but there's no need to turn him into a legend. There's no reason to believe that there was no man in the public service that could have replaced Tito, at least to the extent of preventing total social collapse. Netko outlied why no man did replace Tito due to the bad (in retrospect) idea of having rotating presidencies in the new constitution.

Also, I believe that the new constitution itself redefined Yugoslavia as a 'confederation' rather than a 'federation', and resulted in many new mechanisms--other than rotating presidents--that empowered the different sub-regions rather than the central government

Had the new constitution emphasized the central government more, or had someone like Koliševski retained power after Tito's death despite the constitution, I don't see any real reason why Yugoslavia would have collapsed with the same level of violence as it did.

Something I read about the Yugoslav conflict was that part of the problem was the failure on the part of many of the constituent states to disarm the federal Yugoslav army, which was mainly in Serb hands. Serbia tried to assert control over Slovenia sometime in (I think early) 1991, but they weren't having any of it. The Slovene police forces and what military of their own they had simply confined the Serb federal troops to barracks under threat of arms and told Milosevic to back off. He didn't take it seriously and tried something with helicopter borne troops. The Slovenes simply shot them down and then tossed the Serb forces out on their ear.

The key to the whole thing was that they saw what was coming and pre-empted it. When the shit hit the fan, Slovenia had already cleaned house enough that troublemakers didn't have the tools and troops to do anything.

My post may be somewhat (or even more than somewhat) inaccurate, since it is based on my memory of a documentary I watched several years ago.

EDIT: Ten-Day War Wikipedia article. I wasn't too badly off for something I saw the better part of ten years ago.

Pretty much. One of the key problems in the early days for Croatia and Bosnia was that their Territorial Defense units were disarmed (equivalent to US National Guard) leading to them not having the capability.

In both there was also the problem that unlike Slovenia which had limited federal troops stationed, both had bases all over the place. And the federal forces were mixed, but Serb dominated (the fact that it was mixed also helped a lot in some cases like Vukovar because once the defections started happening, the Army's TOE was shot to hell in terms of officers and senior NCOs so its effectivness was similarly affected).

Croatia fought back relatively effectively with Battle of the Barracks, where it managed to capture enough heavy equipment to form the basis of ZNG/HV (Zbor Narodgne Garde - Concil of National Guard, Hrvatska Vojska - Croatian Army, respectively). On the naval side, the often overlooked fact is that there was enormous deal making to make sure the Yugoslav Navy withdrew more-or-less peacefully. There were some battles in the southern Dalamatian area, however all the northern forces (Pula, Lošinj bases) withdrew without issue - the human side actually prevailed in that one - people stationed for years in cities that they considered home did not want to fight fighting retreats from them, damaging them in the process (see both bases on Google maps, it would have been a nightmare for both sides). Of course, in that time they also made friends and family in those cities, which was also a factor. On the other hand Croatian forces did not have the strength to outright force the issue (in the Dalamatian theater in almost all cases such attempts ended with the scuttling or successful fighting retreat of the Navy's ships).

Of course, Bosnia (or Bosniak forces to be more precise) were not successful in similar efforts. In some cases in Croatia, the units surrounded in the barracks negotiated safe passage out - that was directly into Bosnian Serb territory. Besides leading to all the nastiness that happened there do to the disparity of power, it also made the Bosniak forces very much an (light) infantry force. Something that is painfully obvious even today with the integrated BiH military where most of its heavy armor and almost all air assets are from the VRS (Vojska Republike Srpske - Military of Republika Srpska). Something very well known and even legalized in a idiotic way (the federal military officially loans equipment from the entities), which should be yet another painful moment if something happens again in that poor country (and, as noted in an earlier post, with its horribly inefficient and ineffective government, that is far, far, far from being impossible).