Bosnia and Conflict

Aside from the concerns raised by any war, the problem in Bosnia should be seen as an opportunity being missed, a chance for the intentional community to demonstrate that it can be effective, that it does have moral authority, and that the emerging structure of world politics will be conducted in a way that solves problems rather than merely watching them unfold. The essential problem in the region of Bosnia is one that should have been addressed as soon as the Soviet Union ceased its existence, for what was needed was a controlling power either to keep the three peoples together or to separate them in a more orderly fashion. Any solution to be created or imposed today must of necessity provide for all three groups separately, and even then the tensions are so deep that international monitoring will be necessary far into the future. The recommendation is that any solution must be an international effort, much as it has been, and that inaction will simply not do. Bosnia is a test of whether international cooperation will have any value in the developing post-Cold War community. It is recommended to U.S. policymakers that they avoid taking any unilateral action and instead that they encourage the international community to develop a plan and put it into operation immediately.

The problem is the current ethnic conflict in what was formerly Yugoslavia, and this problem is increased by the fact that it has roots that extend far back into history. The

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was that there was a small intellectual class that dreamed of a union between the Croats, the Slovenes, and the Serbs. The Illyrian Movement came into being in the first half of the nineteenth century in Croatia, and it started as a linguistic and cultural manifestation of a handful of educated Slavs. A crisis in 1848 strengthened the movement and ultimately gave it a more political character. The Croats did not achieve independence as effectively as did the Serbs. They were denied effective self-rule by the Austrians, and when Austria made its peace with Hungary, the Croats were returned to Hungarian rule. Singleton (1976) writes: The Croats felt betrayed by the Austrians and bitterly resented the oppressive rule of the Hungarians. It was natural that they should look again at the possibilities of an autonomous Slav unit--at first within the Monarchy, later outside it (Singleton, 1976, 55). Before 1918, there was no Yugoslavia, and until that time the Serbs and the Croats had never lived in the same state. For centuries, the Slovenes had been attached to Austria. In cultural terms, the Slovenes looked to Vienna in the north rather than to Belgrade in the south. Kosovo is remembered by Serbs today as the heartland of t

Category: Foreign - B