“violence was always inevitable in Croatia in Bosnia, where the Serbian-controlled JNA were never, ever going to let the territory go without a fight”

Croatia had a de-Serbisation of its police force long before the secession. But the crucial factor for the Serbs was that they were denied the “constituent nation” status that they had in the Yugoslav republic Croatia. This was subject of elaborate negotiations and the Croatian rigidness on this and other issues was crucial in the start of the hostilities. Later Croatia further increased the harassment with the “loyalty declarations” that served as an excuse to rob many Serbs of their jobs. Rumor has it that Tudjman believed that there were too much Serbs in Croatia and that he deliberately picked a fight.

Bosnia has its Cutileiro peace plan of February 1992 that was signed by all sides. Unfortunately Izetbegovic later withdrew his signature.

So yes, independence for Croatia and Bosnia was very well possible without their Serbs starting a war.

The problem with secessions is that they have a tendency to degenerate into harassment of minorities. There are two reasons for that:
– secessions are usually led by small minded people who have been obsessed by independence for decades.
– even without a war there are usually considerable short term costs connected to independence. So in order to fulfill the implicit promise in independence (that life will become better) these politicians need to pilfer somehow those minorities – who didn’t support them anyway. (for how Slovenia did this Google on “erased Slovenia”).
The only way to stop this is explicit negotiations. The Western premature recognitions prevented this.

For Kosovo it depends on which year you are looking at:
– in 1999 independence might have been difficult to achieve although even then the prospect of a large Albanian block in the Serbian parliament would have pressed the issue in the long term.
– After the war quite a few Serbian politicians have made proposals to divide Kosovo. And although they didn’t say it often explicitly the implicit message was that the Albanian part would become independent. Listen to Serbian politicians talking to Western journalists about Kosovo and you will hear them complain about the unilateral character of the present developments and about how the Albanians get everything they want and the Serbs get a pittance that seems insufficient even to guarantee the long term survival of the Serb community in Kosovo. Just as the US Serbia has a culture were politicians often use big words. But that doesn’t mean that they can’t be pragmatic.

To achieve real negotiations is it is crucial that the Western countries become a neutral factor that only sets boundaries. No Albanian politician will involve in real negotiations as long as he believes that he can get what he wants for free from the US. Unfortunately the West hasn’t been neutral in the past 10 years and at the moment it seems less so than ever.

Saying that “even Slovenia was not spared fighting” seems to me a bit too friendly towards the Slovenes. It was the Slovenes who started the fighting. It is generally believed that by setting this precedent they contributed to a climate were differences were solved by the gun.

I didn’t mean “spared” in the sense of being granted mercy, just that even Slovenia didn’t escape fighting. And I don’t know if accept your notion that they “started the fighting”: if they’d had their own way, their secession would have happened without a shot being fired, I think, and it was only the sending in of the JNA that started the fighting. Yes, of course the military of a sovereign state has a right to secure its own borders, and I’m not denying the justification of the JNA in Slovenia at all, but I don’t think you can characterise the Slovenes as having been bent on violence or having planned a violent secession.

I don’t think the precedent was set by Slovenia at all; violence was always inevitable in Croatia in Bosnia, where the Serbian-controlled JNA were never, ever going to let the territory go without a fight—and where the seceding forces were more than willing (certainly in Croatia’s case) to fight wars of independence.

You state that “hundreds of thousands” dies in the Yugoslav wars. That is an exeggeration. In Bosnia about 100,000 died and in Kosovo about 5000 (HLC figures). Only for Croatia I don’t know about definitive figures but the estimates vary between 5 and 10,000.

I suppose it depends on where you get your figures, but most estimates seem to be 150,000 and some even more than that; it’s pretty pernickety to see the phrase “hundreds of thousands” as not fitting that figure, especially when you take into account the inordinately large number of displaced and wounded people.

You claim that the unilateral independence of Kosovo and its recognition contributes to peace. I beg to differ. We used to have a balanced situation were Serbia could grant independence and Kosovo could make territorial consessions and consessions on minority rights. That was a good basis for negotiations. Unfortunately Washington chose to sabotate negotiations, then held some fake negotiations under Ahtisaari and then pushed unilateral independence. Now we have a sitation were Kosovo doesn’t need anything from Serbia and feels free to treat its minorities however it feels – except for some international criticism.

It was a situation where Serbia never would have granted independence, though. I definitely agree that the issue of minority rights is highly problematic in Kosovo, and most certainly that UNMIK and EULEX are approaching the situation in wholly the wrong way, but I don’t see why the previous situation was any better.

Before, the issue was of minority Albanian rights in Serbia; now the issue is of minority Serb rights in Kosovo. Neither situation is desirable, but it seems that the current one is the easier to solve politically, affects a smaller number of people, and is less likely to devolve into serious violence (beyond the spats that seem to happen regularly between the two groups).

Thanks for the comment, by the way, I’m a big fan of your blog—one of my most-read RSS feeds :)

You state that “hundreds of thousands” dies in the Yugoslav wars. That is an exeggeration. In Bosnia about 100,000 died and in Kosovo about 5000 (HLC figures). Only for Croatia I don’t know about definitive figures but the estimates vary between 5 and 10,000.

You claim that the unilateral independence of Kosovo and its recognition contributes to peace. I beg to differ. We used to have a balanced situation were Serbia could grant independence and Kosovo could make territorial consessions and consessions on minority rights. That was a good basis for negotiations. Unfortunately Washington chose to sabotate negotiations, then held some fake negotiations under Ahtisaari and then pushed unilateral independence. Now we have a sitation were Kosovo doesn’t need anything from Serbia and feels free to treat its minorities however it feels – except for some international criticism.

Of course, the idea of border changes, and by extension the idea that states should be organised along ethnic lines, create their own troubles. What about the Bosniaks in the Sandžak? The Hungarians in Vojvodina? The Kosovan Albanians in pre-independence Kosovo, and the Kosovan Serbs in post-independence Kosovo? In an area where ethnicities refuse to constrain themselves to political boundaries, even hypothetical ones, nation states seem to be a self-defeating concept.

But what are the alternatives? Multiethnic states in the true sense seem not to work in the former Yugoslavia, as Bosnia has depressingly shown us. Condemning ethnic groups to minority status is dangerous when the majority is as nationalistic as, say, the Croatian government under Tuđman was. It’s an impossible situation, but the west compounded that by not picking any strategy at all. All I’m arguing is that if they’d recognised Slovenia’s, Croatia’s, and Bosnia’s independence as a political reality, backed that up with a ceasefire agreement tempered with the threat of intervention, and then even considered dealing with border changes later, they could have perhaps avoided bloodshed—though at the cost of a potentially nightmarish political settlement.

So practically from your articles you say that all peoples in Jugoslavia have a right to independence and to secede except for Serbs?

Even Albanians can create 2 Albanian nations, but NO!!! Serbs have no right at all and must be ethnically cleansed or go to little Serbia?

According to you, forget about International Laws and Sovereignty of Nations, as long as we can keep squeezing those darn Serbs!!!