Being a Bosnian Croat on Twitter can be quite an annoying experience, especially when the topic of NATO and western interventionism is the subject of the day. Every other week there is someone with a big platform spewing Srebrenica genocide denial tweets, usually backing them with Micheal Parenti’s writing on Yugoslav wars(spoiler: He’s wrong on almost everything that happened during them). So many people think socialist Yugoslavia broke up with NATO interventions, I blame that horrible documentary by Malagurski for this. Said documentary is so insane because it’s obviously trying to use communist language to defend right-wing dictator who wanted to establish Greater Serbia on the ruins of Yugoslavia. Socialist Yugoslavia was dead even before the war started. Hell, you can make the case it was dead the second Milosevic came to power maybe even before that although officially it died on the last congress of the Communist Party of Yugoslavia where Croatian and Slovenian members left it. It died because of Milošević’s imperial wishes for Greater Serbia. That was his wish from the get-go. He wanted to establish Greater Serbia through Yugoslavia.
Ever since Putin invaded Ukraine this discourse has been brought back with full force without even considering context and what was happening in Bosnia during the 90s. Without considering what role did NATO play in the conflict, what happened before interventions that get mentioned. Without mentioning how did “international community” react to the war, etc. This is the problem of the western left in general when they discuss former Yugoslavia and its dissolution. Of course, the right-wing does this too but they are not the subject of this article. Truth be told, I can already tell that I will be called CIA/USA shill by all the people who this article is about.
So many people who have been talking about Yugoslavia on Twitter don't know basic things about Yugoslavia and it shows. Yugoslavia has been minimized to an ideological battleground for the west to test out their little theories. They ignore that actual people live there. I think if you are gonna talk about Yugoslavia you should at least learn some basic things about it, its history and similar stuff. Maybe with that knowledge, you wouldn’t come out with these horeshit takes.
I am absolutely against NATO in principle and I understand what NATO stands for and what is its role but my real-life experience living in the periphery of Europe makes me realize that sometimes smaller countries simply have to ask for outside help even if said help comes in the way of NATO intervention. The problem is viewing the world through a really odd binary lens where everything that is against NATO/USA is automatically seen as good. Sure in 80% of situations you are right but in other 20% you end up supporting ghouls like Milošević, Assad, or someone similar.
Discourse on NATO in Bosnia
"NATO is bad” and "Certain countries depend on NATO for security because its only way at the moment" are opinions that can coexist. I am all for its dismantling but we also need to come up with an alternative for countries such as Ukraine, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Croatia, etc. The non-Aligned Movement used to be that alternative but sadly that is gone with the past.
If you think NATO should not have intervened in Bosnia and Kosova then please answer this question. What would be your plan for saving them from being massacred by a massively better equipped and trained military?
The war in Yugoslavia wasn't the U.S/NATO creation. NATO did not run the campaign to break up Yugoslavia either, no matter how hard freaks over at PSL try to claim. The source of the conflict was within Yugoslavia's unresolved national contradictions that were left to fester with the bonus of the unsustainable borrowing of IMF loans and corruption within parties of each republic. There’s widely accepted theory in ex Yugoslavia that it was Tito who was acting as a glue for the country and after he died in 1980 all the cracks and lack of actual fight against nationalism and fascism started to rear their ugly heads most notably with the rise of nationalism and Milošević riding waves of it. There are ways of criticizing those bombings but none of these people make those criticisms, most of their claims end up just being genocide denial of what was happening on Kosova and prior to Srebrenica. Problem is that people who react like this look at those bombings as a singular event, like something in the vacuum and without the context of the previous 9 or so years. Hell, it was NATO that secured the existence of Republika Srpska through them saying that Croatian and Bosnian troops will get bombed if they enter Banja Luka.
Arnesa Buljušmić-Kustura summed it up very well on Twitter:
“I have to say that by far one of the biggest indicators of the naivety of the Western left, for me, is when they act outraged by people in war zones calling for Western intervention. I mean...yeah, obviously they will call for the West to intervene in hopes of stopping the war. The West, particularly places like the US/UK/EU have positioned themselves as major players in the international sphere. For better or worse, they are powerful countries with money and safety, and the ability to make massive international decisions that affect all of us. And it is strange to me that often on here we discuss the US reach or the West's reach...there is a clear under of Western hegemony over the world. That they have the power much of the 2nd and 3rd world or the developing world or the Global South simply does not have. So...when the US or the EU have positioned themselves as major powers with influence...why would it be surprising that smaller countries facings war or strife would not call upon them to intervene and stop it. In fact...what would you like them to do? Who do they plead to? Whether people like or not, the US has been the "world's cop" for a really long time. That is not the fault of the people suffering, of smaller countries...it's just the reality. It is naive to think that if you're stuck with no way out...you won't call for the West to help. & again, we are talking about massive privilege here. Saying you wouldn't call for the West to intervene if it happened to you is quite absurd and ridiculous because you live in the West and are almost 100% guaranteed to never experience an actual war. You are the West, dude.”
When I say that NATO interventions into Bosnia were good people think I am being some kind of shill for the west. They don't understand that The West absolutely betrayed Bosnia in multiple ways during the war and that they will do it again if a new war breaks out. Genocide in Srebrenica happened because the UN allowed it to happen. Around 10 000 civilians in Sarajevo died while UN troops stood by and watched it.
The main problem is that lots of people think their annoying contrarianism is actually anti-imperialism. It’s not, you don’t need to have a kneejerk reaction to everything The West says. Every time I see idiots like these say shit like “Srebrenica wasn’t a genocide, it was made up by the USA to justify NATO intervention” it makes me wanna do some nasty shit. Maybe, just maybe genocide actually happened and you have a very incoherent ideology that centers on the same imperial center you seem to be against in theory. You aren't helping anyone by centering NATO and The West in every conversation, you are doing quite opposite of that.
I say that they are against it in theory because their “anti-imperialism” is actually support for other imperialists outside of The West. It’s just a team sport for them because it’s just that easy to masquerade your beliefs.
These idiots are not your friends, the only reason why they are on the surface against NATO is because of the 1999 and 1995 bombing which stopped Serbian forces from achieving their full goal, and every time you mention these two events without talking about what Serbia was doing during the 90s you are pushing their bullshit. So many people center Serbia as the main victim which perpetuates the victimhood of Serbian nationalists and helps them politically. By doing this you are siding with people who committed numerous war crimes. Same these people are right now holding support protests for Putin. Same these people are on the payroll of Serbian president/dictator Aleksandar Vučić acting as his own street gangs for clamping down on any protests or worker’s uprising. Not so left-wing right? Well, that’s what you get with them.
So many people saw the seemingly anti-NATO message and name Red Star and thought to themselves “ah yeah communism” when that could not be further away from the truth. Yes, sports clubs Red Star and Partizan were formed by Yugoslav communists post WW2 but neither of those is what they used to be. Nowadays they are filled with far-right Serbian nationalists and the best proof of that is their connection with Arkan and his paramilitaries, google it, you won’t believe what you will find or if you are too lazy to do it here’s an article about him and his “tigers”
They aren’t against NATO because it’s an imperialist alliance. They are against NATO because NATO is one of the reasons why Greater Serbia failed and honestly best proof of this is that one of the places they mention is “The Republic of Srpska”, which is today a Serb entity in Bosnia and Herzegovina. They don’t even have the guts to say that it was Bosnia because they think genocide committed by the army of the Republic of Srpska was good and it should continue. Nothing more or less, it’s just that and you should stop embarrassing yourself. It truly feels like according to some people's logic if you get bombed by NATO everything bad you did before it gets written off. It truly feels like they think only NATO and The West are capable of committing horrible war crimes. People who were in Arkan’s paramilitary forces back in the 90s should be the last people to spout this because they aren’t for peace, they live for killing more Bosniaks and Croatians.
With each new day, I am being convicted more and more that some American leftist suffers of "American Guilt" and the kind of behavior I have been talking about in this piece is the expression of that phenomenon. And yet again it's really fucking amazing how well the Bosnian Genocide works as a test of moral character for people talking about politics. Every time you pressure any of these grifters they will come out spewing far-right Serbian nationalist bullshit because they have no other way of justifying their insane beliefs.
“History reproducing itself becomes a farce. Farce reproducing itself becomes history.” — Jean Baudrillard on the Bosnian War and “The International Community”
Before I end this I wanna leave you with some resources that should give you a better picture of Yugoslavia and its fall:
Documentaries and books:
Destruction of Yugoslavia - Branka Magaš
Bosnia, Kosova and The West - Mike Karadjis
No Pity For Sarajevo - Jean Baudrillard
Making and Breaking the Yugoslav Working Class The Story of Two Self-Managed Factories - Goran Musić
Thinking about Yugoslavia - Sabrina P. Ramet
Podcasts, organizations, and other sources:
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Lastly there is no mention of the dreadful aftermaths of the Kosovo intervention, which actual historians of the topic would argue proved genocide cannot be fixed with more genocide from our friendly humanitarians over at NATO. Which has proved again consistently in Libya, Syria, etc.
I understand this is a passionate topic for you, and this article is trying to combat vulgar narratives perpetuated by dishonest actors in the west, but the analysis you provided in this was dreadfully ahistorical and lacking. Not all westerners who criticize NATO intervention in Yugoslavia are vulgar genocide deniers. The fact is this article dangerously downplays the west’s consistent expansionism into the Soviet blocs. It also operates under the assumption that the west makes geopolitical decisions based on some humanitarianism, which is far from the truth. Aside from the passing mention of IMF loans the role of imperial financial capital is ignored in this piece. Many questions are left unanswered, such as why the west ignored other genocides in the Yugoslav wars not committed by Serbs. You fail to discuss the fact that Milosevic was first and firstmost the west’s man. Also no talk about the unethical targets of the Kosovo bombings including hospitals and economic infrastructure. Why did NATO have to destroy crucial infrastructure and target civilian centers during their so-called humanitarian intervention? Like I said, I understand this article is combating vulgar narratives but this article itself is a mess of emotion with little insightful analysis . Combatting vulgar narratives with more vulgar narratives is not the way to go.