Srbija u 20. veku

[Lord Protector]

Iz knjige Vorena Cimermana http://www.scribd.com/document/64957263/Zimmerman-Origins-of-a-Catastrophe-Yugoslavia-and-Its-Destroyers-1999 citati o Lorensu Iglbergeru. Meni se čini da je on imao u najmanju ruku rezerve prema njemu...

 

 

In early 1989, shortly after I was confirmed as the new—and, as  it  turned  out,  the  last—U.S.  ambassador  to  Yugoslavia,  I sought out Lawrence Eagleburger, who had just been appointed deputy secretary of state in the incoming Bush administration. Eagleburger's career had been in the foreign service, but there was nothing of the diplomatic stereotype about him. He is a man of  Brandoesque  bulk  with  a  gruff  voice  abraded  by  years  of chain-smoking. He has a wicked sense of humor, which he uses to tease rather than skewer. I found him sitting in the small back room adjoining the opulent deputy secretary's office, furtively drawing on a cigarette, which, as an asthma sufferer, he wasn't supposed to have.

Larry Eagleburger was and is one of the foremost American experts on the Balkans. He and I had shared the experience of serving twice in Yugoslavia. Both of us loved the country and the variety of its people of all ethnic stripes. As we talked, we soon agreed that the traditional American approach to Yugoslavia, born in the cold war years, no longer made sense amid the revolution- ary changes sweeping Europe.

 

 

 

America's support for Tito was geopolitical. The Truman and Eisenhower administrations wanted to show that countries could break out of the Soviet orbit and survive. Yugoslavia's indepen- dence deprived the Soviet Union of a potential foothold in the Mediterranean, from which it could have threatened Italy, Greece, and France. Through good luck, Albania's quarrel with Moscow years later also froze the Soviets out of the only other communist country on the Mediterranean. Tito's shutdown of Yu- goslavia's massive assistance, including an arms supply line, to the communist forces in Greece helped prevent their victory in the civil war there.

Successive U.S. governments believed that Yugoslavia could become a model for independence as well as for an Eastern Euro- pean political system that, though regrettably communist, could be more open politically and more decentralized economically than the Soviet satellites. Yugoslavia's position between hostile Eastern and Western camps made its unity a major Western con- cern. As long as the cold war continued, Yugoslavia was a pro- tected and sometimes pampered child of American and Western diplomacy. Tito and his successors, after his death in 1980, grew accustomed to this special treatment.

By 1989, however, the world had changed dramatically. The cold war was over and the Soviet empire, even the Soviet Union itself, was breaking up. With Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev's acquiescence, the Eastern European countries were beginning to slip Moscow's leash. Poland and Hungary had achieved quasi- Western political systems, with Czechoslovakia soon to follow. In view of these circumstances Eagleburger and I agreed that in my introductory calls in Belgrade and in the republican capitals I would deliver a new message.

I would say that Yugoslavia and the Balkans remained impor- tant to U.S. interests, but that Yugoslavia no longer enjoyed its former geopolitical significance as a balance between the North Atlantic Treaty Organization and the Warsaw Pact. It was no longer unique, since both Poland and Hungary now had more open political and economic systems. Its failures in the human rights area, which the United States had tended to downplay be- cause of America's security interests, now loomed larger, espe- cially in the province of Kosovo, where an authoritarian Serbian regime was systematically depriving the Albanian majority of its basic civil liberties.

Not least, I would reassert to the Yugoslav authorities the tradi- tional mantra of U.S. policy toward Yugoslavia—our support for its unity, independence, and territorial integrity. But I would add that we could only support the country's unity in the context of progress toward democracy; we would be strongly opposed to unity imposed or maintained by force.

As I was leaving Eagleburger's office that day, just before my departure for Belgrade, he said with a grin, which—for anyone of less than his girth—could be taken as impish: "By the way, I'm going to get you in trouble during your first few weeks in Yu- goslavia." He explained that he would soon be called to testify on his nomination for deputy secretary before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee. He would be asked about his relationship with Slobodan Milosevic, who had been a prominent banker dur- ing Eagleburger's ambassadorship in the late 1970s and was now the communist president of Serbia. Milosevic had been in the news for his ruthless suppression of Albanian rights in Kosovo.

Eagleburger told me that he intended to criticize Milosevic sharply in his public testimony. I said I was glad he would do this. His public criticism would be consistent with what we had both agreed I would say privately to Yugoslav officials. It would add credibility to my private remarks, showing that they came from the U.S. government and not just from an ambassador with a per- sonal commitment to human rights.

Eagleburger was as good as his word. On March 15, a week after my arrival in Belgrade, he told the Senate that Milosevic was playing on Serbian nationalism: "What he has done is create a situation which I think is very dangerous. I don't yet say it's come to the point of a real likelihood of shooting. But it is far the worst situation with regard to the nationality question we've seen since the close of the war." A well-known and popular figure in Serbia, Eagleburger had begun to sketch for the Serbs and the other Yugoslavs the outlines of an American policy that preserved a familiar framework but was adjusting to the times. It was a course correction, not a turnabout, but the fine points were not lost in the republican capitals of Belgrade, Zagreb, and Ljubljana where, for good or ill, policy was being made in post-Tito Yu- goslavia.

 

 

 

During his first year in office Eagleburger had kept himself out of direct involvement in Yugoslav affairs as a result of the base- less concern expressed by Senator Jesse Helms (Republican of North Carolina) that he had an important financial stake in the country. In fact, Eagleburger was on the board of one Serbian and one Slovenian firm. Both were trying to modernize the economy and introduce Western business practices; his remuneration was next to nothing. He had mixed emotions about a reimmersion in Yugoslav affairs, but his knowledge and judgment were too valu- able to waste. He was also the U.S. government's coordinator for assistance to Eastern Europe; it would be natural for him to make a personal assessment of Yugoslavia's needs and qualifications.

Eagleburger, who arrived in Belgrade on February 25, met with Prime Minister Markovic and told the press that he had been very impressed with Markovic's reform program. He added pointedly that Yugoslavia's political issues would be easier to solve if the economy were healthier. He also met with his old friend, Foreign Minister Loncar, and with Slovenian President Stanovnik, who did him the courtesy of traveling to Belgrade from Ljubljana to accommodate Eagleburger's schedule. Stanovnik told him that Yugoslavia would pass through a tough period "but will not easily fall apart." On specifics the Slovene president seemed less op- timistic. He lamented, "Yugoslavs are abandoning class thinking only to replace it by nationality thinking." For Slovenia he pre- dicted that the April elections would produce a noncommunist government there that would work for secession. From his lips we heard for the first time a word soon to take on a nightmarish reality: "Lebanonization."

Eagleburger admitted to me a certain trepidation about renewing his acquaintance with Milosevic, whom he had known in the late 1970s when he was U.S. ambassador to Yugoslavia and Milosevic was a banker. "I thought he was a liberal; he talked so convincingly about westernizing Yugoslavia's economy. I just must have been wrong." I don't think Eagleburger was wrong. In his prenationalist phase Milosevic probably did sound like an economic liberal; indeed, he continued to pass himself off as an economic reformer even after Serbian nationalism had pushed economic issues off his agenda. It was his ability to remake—in the modern cliche "reinvent"—himself that made him so impres- sive. What Eagleburger saw on his return to Yugoslavia was a new  color  on  the  skin  of  the  most  artful  chameleon  in  the Balkans.

In his meeting with Milosevic the deputy secretary made a strong case for Prime Minister Markovic's economic program. Milosevic feigned surprise that his own devotion to economic lib- eralization could be questioned in any way. He said that Markovic had actually borrowed the essence of his reform from the Serbian reform program of two years before. He boasted that three thousand private enterprises had been created in Serbia during the past year, neglecting to point out that not a single state-run industry was among them.

Eagleburger expressed concern that Yugoslavia was lurching toward nationalism, separatism, and major violations of human rights. "Why are you blaming Serbia for this? Are you saying that we're the only ones responsible?" asked Milosevic. "My impres- sion is that all of you are responsible," Eagleburger countered. Milosevic challenged Eagleburger's emphasis on human rights. The deputy secretary answered, "The United States has a legiti- mate commitment to defending human rights. Beyond that we have a right to decide how we use our taxpayers' money or which countries to advise our businesses to invest in. If we choose to give priority to countries with good human rights records, that's our choice to make."

The conversation turned to Kosovo. Eagleburger said that Serbia's strong-arm tactics were hurting Yugoslavia's relations with the United States. Milosevic bristled. He conceded no wrong- doing; Serbs had to defend themselves against "Islamic funda- mentalism" and the "narco-Mafia" in Kosovo. "The Albanians are carrying out systematic murders and rapes of Serbian women and children—and this doesn't even take into account the mental murder of the 200,000 Serbs who live in Kosovo. This Albanian strategy is being supported by the Slovenes, who are trying to use the Kosovo issue to destabilize Serbia." The garishness of Milosevic's language on Kosovo—"mental murder" was a new addition to his Orwellian lexicon—contrasted oddly with the rea- sonable pose he had struck in his defense of the market system.

On political issues, Milosevic argued that a unified Yugoslavia was the only political formation that made it possible for all Serbs to live in one country. His formula for unity was uncompromis- ing—a tight federation with minimal autonomy for the republics. He professed not to have anything against a multiparty system but stressed that it had to operate on a Yugoslav and not a republican basis—"It wouldn't work in Serbia." What emerged was a defense of the preservation of Yugoslavia, but in a rigid mold defined by Serbian interests as interpreted by Milosevic. He made one comment that was soon to take on ominous overtones: "Serbs live all over Yugoslavia. The unity of Yugoslavia is the only way they can live in one country."

 

 

Cimerman dalje o Miloševiću:

 

 

In my view, Milosevic is an opportunist rather than an ideo- logue, a man driven by power rather than nationalism. In the late 1980s he was a communist official in search of a legitimation less disreputable than communism, an alternative philosophy to help him consolidate his hold on Serbia, and a myth that would excite and energize Serbs behind him. He calculated that the way to achieve and maintain power in Serbia was to seize the nationalist pot that Serbian intellectuals were brewing and bring it to a boil.

I don't see Milosevic as the same kind of ethnic exclusivist as Croatia's President Franjo Tudjman, who dislikes Serbs, or Bos- nian Serb politician Radovan Karadzic, who hates everybody who isn't a Serb. Milosevic felt no discomfort in bragging to me, no matter how fraudulently, about Serbia as a multiethnic paradise. Nor, I'm sure, did it disturb his conscience to move ruthlessly against Serbian nationalists like Karadzic when they got in his way. He has made a compact with nationalism as a way to bring him power. He can't break the compact without causing political damage to himself, but it has a utilitarian rather than an emotional value for him.

 

Edited September 21, 2016 by slow

[Korki]

Односно све што сам написао.

Дакле, делови СД су видели Милошевића као либерала који треба да реформише економију СФРЈ.

Милошевић није био типичан нациоанлсита већ је користио национализам а онда су га догађаји прерасли и плашио се да повуче ручну јер би изгубио власт.

[Lord Protector]

.

Edited September 21, 2016 by slow

[Prospero]

Kad se dublje zađe u SD lako će se videti da postoje složeni lični odnosi među diplomatama (tako i onima koji su službovali u Jugoslaviji) i da treba biti jako oprezan kad se pokušavaju uhvatiti njihovi stavovi, plus su imali svoja iskustva koja su ih oblikovala, jer naravno nisu automati.

 

 

Ilustracije radi:

 

 

WILLIAM N. TURPIN

Economic Officer

Belgrade (1952-1955)

William Turpin was born and raised in Georgia and attended Dartmouth College,

Mercer University, and Oxford. After serving in the Marine Corps, he entered the

Foreign Service in 1949. In 1952 he was appointed as Economic Officer to the

Belgrade Embassy.

...

 

Q: What other things did you notice at the time? I certainly notice that people who serve in

Yugoslavia – I’m talking about American Foreign Service people – feel a certain kinship to the

Yugoslavs. I mean, it turned into somewhat of a Yugoslav mafia which, in a way, sort of hindered

us when we had to deal with the breakup, I think.

 

TURPIN: Well, it hindered us because the ambassador, I think, because Ambassador

Zimmerman and most of his crowd were so, so pro-Croat. They hated the Serbs. They ignored

600 years of Serbian history. The only thing anybody ever talked about was Kosovo. And I grant

you that if you went out in the sticks in my day and were talking to a peasant and said something

about Kosovo, yes, you were in the family. But, they never, we never mentioned the two Balkan

wars, the Congress of Berlin, the Bosnian crisis of 19-something, any of that stuff. All of which

convinced the Serbs that – not to mention World War 1 – that A) the west was against them, and

B) they certainly wouldn’t do anything to help them. And that they had been done in time and

time again by the great powers.

 

 

 

 

 

E. ASHLEY WILLS

Cultural Operating Officer, USIS

Belgrade (1988-1991)

Ambassador Wills was born in Tennessee and raised in Tennessee and Georgia.

He was educated at the University of Virginia and John Hopkins University.

Entering the Foreign Service (USIA) in 1972, Ambassador Wills served abroad in

the field of public affairs in Romania, South Africa, Barbados, Yugoslavia and

Belgium and in India as Deputy Chief of Mission. He also served in Washington

as Deputy Director for Southern Africa Affairs for USIA and as Political Advisor

to the US Military Commander in the invasion of Grenada. From 2000 to 2003 he

was US Ambassador to Sri Lanka. His final posting was as Assistant US Trade

Representative. Ambassador Wills was interviewed by Charles Stuart Kennedy in

2008.

...

Q: Regarding Milosevic was there much contact with him?

 

WILLS: Warren saw him often and he wrote some wonderful cables about those meetings. I

remember one had the title There Are Two Slobodan Milosevic’s and the cable went on to

describe how Milosevic, who spoke some English, could meet with foreign investors, American

delegations, people from outside Yugoslavia and be a charming sophisticated man who would

come across as moderate and negotiable, reasonable. Then there was the Slobodan Milosevic

who was the Serbian politician who was as fiery and unreasonable and actually irresponsible as

any dictator one could encounter. Warren had a very keen analytical mind and he was a great

writer. So over the three years, well he was there about two and a half years of my three years

there and he became more and more disenchanted with Milosevic.

...

 

 

 

 

 

GEORGE KENNEY

Yugoslavian Affairs, Bureau of European Affairs

Washington, DC (1992)

In addition to Yugoslavian Affairs, George Kenney served in France, Zaire, and

other tours in Washington, DC. He was interviewed by Michael Springmann on

September 10, 1993.

 

...

Q: So you became the assistant country desk officer? When in your view did American policy

toward Bosnia begin to fall apart?

 

KENNEY: I guess I was called deputy officer in charge. I think we failed to develop a policy

toward the Bosnians from the start of the crisis. If you go back to '90 or '91, it was fairly obvious

that Milosevic intended to destroy the Yugoslav federal system in order to create a greater

Serbia. But the world was sort of tired, after going through the Gulf War. The bureaucracy in

State did not want to encourage the dissolution of any Communist or ex-Communist country

partly in fear that that might encourage the Soviet Union to fall apart. At a higher level, to the

extent, that either Bush or Baker focused on the area, the intelligence was that Yugoslavia would

fall apart fairly violently. So they thought that if the U.S. committed itself to do something about

that potential breakup, we might become involved in a war and might have to commit forces -- a

risk they didn't want to run. So they supported a "hands-off" policy whatever else we might say.

We sent a lot of signals to the Serbs that we would not really get involved. We might act as

neutral mediators, but that didn't bother Milosevic and the Serbs at all. Because there wasn't any

high level interest in looking at the crisis, we never really defined the problem very well. By the

time the conflict began to get out of hand, Eagleburger and Baker were saying that it was a civil

war or an ethnic conflict. They were trying to rationalize the U.S. not getting involved.

...

 

Q: If the desk was urging some action, who was resisting? The Assistant Secretary? The Deputy

Secretary? The Secretary?

 

KENNEY: There are two levels to this. In early January, Eagleburger returned to the Department

from a White House meeting to tell senior officers -- I wasn't there, but I was briefed -- that

whatever we do, we could not get substantively involved in the Yugoslav crisis. We could

proceed with as many diplomatic meetings as we wanted, but we could not commit the U.S. to

do anything. We were permitted to talk to the EC and the Europeans, but that was the limit.

Eagleburger was very consistent on that. He absolutely did not want us to get close to some kind

of substantive involvement. The bureaucracy took those marching orders very seriously.

...

 

 

Q: What was the position of our missions in the country? Did they just toe the line?

 

KENNEY: The Embassy in Belgrade was entirely too cozy with the Serbian government.

Ambassador Warren Zimmermann talked to Milosevic and believed he could deal with him. It

wasn't until he was recalled in July, 1992 that Zimmermann had a change of heart and began to

doubt that Milosevic could be dealt with and that perhaps force might be necessary. He would

send cables which said that on the one hand, Milosevic was a bastard and vicious, but on the

other, he is sort of reasonable and that there were ways to talk to him. After the Ambassador's

recall, we left a Charge in Belgrade who conducted "business as usual," when we should not

have done so. There is an irony right now because although we have an Embassy in Belgrade, we

do not recognize the present Serbian regime and do not conduct diplomatic relations with it. We

do not recognize the so-called Federal Republic of Yugoslavia. We maintain that Yugoslavia is

dissolved; we recognize three of its former republics, but the "Federal republic" exists in a gray

area. Why do we have an Embassy then? The Department wants to maintain an Embassy to have

a listening post and an observer in Belgrade and a facility which permits some communication to

the Serbian leadership. We have exchanged diplomatic notes to provide mutual protection for the

diplomats, but if we are going to be serious about punishing Serbia, we should start by taking

some actions, such as closing our Embassy. If we ever to take any military operations, we should

close the Embassy to prevent our staff from becoming hostage. It seems to me as long as we

have an Embassy in Belgrade, the Serbs must know that a lot of our threats of military action are

hollow.

The Embassy was divided roughly the same way the Department was. The top level, more or

less, was sympathetic with our policy. The working level, with whom I would talk daily, thought

that our policy was completely screwed up. They were looking for ways to change it. I used to

have long conversations every morning with the political section staff. We would explicitly

condemn our latest policy pronouncement or action. The Department's Yugoslav desk and the

Embassy's Political Section were very much of the same mind. We conversed on an open

telephone line, and didn't really care whether the Serbs overheard us. I would talk to my contacts

in the Political Section who would give me the latest up-date on the situation in Belgrade. They

reflected, at least in the "spin" they put on the events, the concerns that we shared. The broader

"think-pieces," usually written by the ambassador or the DCM would be much more in tune with

hopes of the senior officials in the Department and would emphasize the "talk to the Serbs"

attitude.

 

...

 

 

 

 

WARREN ZIMMERMAN

Political Officer

Belgrade (1965-1968)

Ambassador

Yugoslavia (1989-1992)

Ambassador Warren Zimmerman was born in Pennsylvania in 1934. He

graduated fro Yale University, received a B.A. and M.A. from the University of

Cambridge and served in the U.S. Army in 1959. Upon entering the Foreign

Service in 1961, his postings abroad included Caracas, Belgrade, Moscow, Paris,

Madrid, Vienna, and Geneva, with an ambassadorship to Yugoslavia.

Ambassador Zimmerman was interviewed in 1996 by Charles Stuart Kennedy.

...

 

Q: Well you came back for Serbian. I would like to talk a little about the Serbian training

because it's a pretty good introduction. By the way I know the, people reading this should know

we talk about Serbian because that is what you learn. I mean it was called Serbo-Croatian, but

there wasn't any nonsense about...

 

ZIMMERMANN: Well there were not Croats in the course that I took. They were real Serbs.

 

Q: Oh boy. So you took Serbian from when to when?

 

ZIMMERMANN: I took it from the summer of '64 to the summer of '65.

 

Q: Could you talk a bit about the teaching of the language and what you got from the teachers.

 

ZIMMERMANN: Well my teachers were undoubtedly the same as yours. Two elderly Serb

émigrés who were in their own way central casting Serbs, particularly Dryden Propovich, who

had been an officer in the Royal Yugoslav Army and fled Yugoslavia because of his hatred of

Tito. He was not by vocation, avocation interest or profession really, a teacher. I mean he was a

military officer; he was a politician; he was anything but a teacher. I had the feeling that nothing

bored him more than teaching. What he really wanted to do was inculcate into his captive

audience all of the Serb values. Of course this was fascinating.

 

Q: In many ways I found that most, the greatest thing we got out of it something which I am sure

both of us are using today to judge where these people came from.

 

ZIMMERMANN: Absolutely right. You got a real understanding of how a real Serb thinks, and

he was a Serb nationalist. I didn't know it at the time. I mean I didn't use those categories, but he

definitely was. Spending day in and day out with a man whose mind works in that way really did

give you a fantastic insight into the way real Serbs think. You don't really get that insight if you

don't have that amount of exposure. The other teacher who was his brother-in-law was Yanko

Yakovich, a very gentle man. He probably also was a Serbian nationalist, but he was too polite to

talk about it very much. One had the sense that again, he didn't much enjoy teaching. I had the

experience sometimes of watching him fall asleep while he was talking in class, but he was an

exceptionally nice man. The two of them would occasionally invite us around...

...

 

Q: You mentioned before the intellectual class has a lot to answer for.

 

ZIMMERMANN: They had a lot to answer for. The Serbian Academy of Sciences was a hotbed

of rabid Serbian nationalism. The same was true in Croatia. Tudjman himself was an historian if

you can call it that. He actually did write histories, very contentious biased histories, but he was a

so-called intellectual. So, they do have a lot to answer for. Of course, once you get nationalist

leaders in power, the press begins to toady to them, or if it doesn't toady to them, it gets taken

over, or if it doesn't get taken over, it remains a lonely voice against the trend. People tend to

jump on the bandwagon when they see the way things are headed. A lot of people who I thought

were moderates in Croatia and Serbia actually turned out in the end to be rabid nationalists. Not

because they started out that way, but because that is the way they saw the wind blowing.

 

Q: I think of particularly receptions or dinner parties when you had a chance to sit down and

talk. Did this become more and more the subject of dinner parties at the embassy and all?

 

ZIMMERMANN: Yes. We thought our job was to bring people together, so we would have

people to dinner and receptions who might disagree with each other. Already the situation was so

bad they would never see each other if they disagreed. We had one dinner party for Katharine

Graham, the publisher of the Washington Post who came, I think that was in early 1991. She

came with her editorial page editor and with one of the columnists, a very high flying

Washington Post group of three or four people. We had a small dinner party. We had the

president of Slovenia who flew in for it. We had a major Serbian intellectual and a couple of

other people, and the Serb and the Slovene started to attack each other in a way that was so

embarrassing to me. I just didn't know what to do. A maid who was serving the table was in tears

about it. Of course I am not sure how Mrs. Graham took it. It was quite interesting certainly for

her. It was illuminating about what the true situation was. But these were two people who both

had extensive experience in the West, had been professors in western universities. The nicest

people that we knew, and they were going at it hammer and tongs, very insulting to each other.

...

 

Q: But in a way you are really talking about we no longer were sort of the bulwark for

Yugoslavia against the Soviet Union. Not only was it not important to us, we weren't important to

them I take it in a way.

 

ZIMMERMANN: Well, we certainly weren't important to Milosevic. He didn't really care what

the United States did or said, and he wasn't going to react on the basis of whether we held out the

hand of friendship or the mailed fist. Either he was very smart about that or he was intensely

stupid because in the end he paid, at least in economic terms. I am sure he will pay the ultimate

price in the end for it, but it is true. He didn't care what the west thought. Now, Tudjman did

care. Tudjman was different in that sense. He wanted to be considered a western statesman, and

so what the Germans thought, what the French thought, what the Americans thought was

important to Tudjman. Not to Milosevic.

 

Q: While you were there did they go through, what happened to Markovic?

 

ZIMMERMANN: Markovic just dwindled away. During 1991 you got the Croatian and

Slovenian declarations of independence. Markovic tried very hard to block that. He even tried to

sic the army on the Slovenes. He was a party to the army's attack on Slovenia. He lost power

when the European Community came back into the picture in the summer of 1991 trying to

broker arrangements between the different republics so as to forestall violence, and then

ultimately setting up a big commission under Lord Carrington, former British foreign minister, to

try to get the different republics to define their relations with each other, so that if they were

going to be recognized as independent, there would be in place a series of guarantees against

violence. That was the whole point of what Carrington was trying to do. Carrington didn't even

deal with Markovic in that situation. He would deal with the heads of the republics. He would

deal with the major parties like Karadzic, who was the head of the Bosnian Serb party. Markovic

didn't even have a role. That was a very big mistake I think by Carrington. I think Cyrus Vance

also made a mistake in ignoring Markovic. We should've been doing the best we could to prop

up Markovic as a figure for reform and democracy whereas we just cast him aside and dealt with

the nationalists. He ultimately resigned, I think, in December of '91, a failed figure, a Yugoslav

Kerensky.

 

Q: Very sad. Tudjman, you say he was paying attention or at least got to be perceived as a

positive figure, did you deal with him at all?

 

ZIMMERMANN: A lot, yes, because when it was a country, I was accredited to the whole

country. I went a lot to Croatia and Slovenia because they were such key players in everything

that was going on. Even after Croatia and Slovenia declared independence, I was received as if

nothing had happened. I had a little trepidation about that because they were now independent. I

was not, according to them, the American ambassador any more, but they received me as if

nothing had happened. Tudjman would give a lunch for me. I had access to everybody including

the leaders. So, it was a very weird Alice in Wonderland kind of situation, but we went on

having conversations. All during the war, the Croatians had with the Yugoslav army, I went

several times to Croatia, had meetings with Tudjman. He seemed to have it in his mind, I think

he got this from Croatian émigrés in the United States, that the United States was going to

intervene militarily on the side of Croatia against the Yugoslav army. I exerted a lot of energy to

try to persuade him that wasn't true. It wasn't going to happen; he shouldn't count on it. But he

seemed to believe it nevertheless.

...

 

Q: Well, were you getting from a segment of the Yugoslavs particularly the Serbs because you

were located there but also sort of why didn't you do more type of thing or what's the United

States going to do about this, or were the Serbs, even the people that would be closer to us, were

they caught up in the...

 

ZIMMERMANN: We were cordially criticized and disliked by all the protagonists. The

nationalist Serbs argued that we were not really for the preservation of Yugoslavia. We wanted

to break it up because we weren't supporting the army in its efforts to put down the Slovene-

Croatian uprisings. The Slovenes blamed us because we were trying to hold Yugoslavia together,

meaning in their view that Milosevic was going to run things. The Croats had the same view that

we were doing Milosevic's business by trying to hold Yugoslavia together. The only people that

supported us were the anti-Milosevic opposition in Serbia, the independent press in Serbia, some

moderate Croats who didn't like Tudjman, most of the liberal Slovene communist party, all of the

moderates in Bosnia from Serb, Muslim and Croatian sides. All the Kosovar Albanians liked us

because they knew we really were opposed to Milosevic on the Kosovo issue. The Macedonians

liked us because we were trying to hold Yugoslavia together somehow.

...

Q: Did you ever talk to Karadzic?

 

ZIMMERMANN: Karadzic, I talked to him a lot, yes.

 

Q: How did he strike you?

 

ZIMMERMANN: I think quite mad. I think he was quite mad, a raving nationalist. Soft spoken

so you don't get the full effect of it until you actually listen to what he is telling you, which is

that Muslims are iniquitous, they always lie and cheat and steal. You Americans don't understand

them because you haven't lived in the Balkans and I have, but that is the way they are. The only

way to deal with them is to oppress them. It is the only way. A southern racist from 1850 would

have sounded smoother than that.

...

 

Q: I am told there was even some that came out of WWI got reused again and again.

When you came back what sort of a... What did they do with you? What were you up to?

 

ZIMMERMANN: Well, I came back and I immediately started to work as the head of the

refugee bureau. I was back in the Bosnia picture again because we were beginning to have a lot

of refugee problems. But I debriefed. I talked to a lot of people including Baker and Scowcroft

and Eagleburger. Being out, I began to think, and that's when I began to lobby rather hard for air

strikes. I hadn't come out for air strikes while I was in Belgrade. When I got out and began to put

things together a little bit, I began to realize what we really needed to do was to take out the

Serbian installations over the hills in Sarajevo for example, the communications lines and so

forth, and I was convinced then as I still am, that had we done that, it would have been relatively

cost free, and we would have driven the Serbs to the negotiating table where they would have

settled for a lot less than they settled for today. We would have saved 100,000 lives.

 

Q: Well, what happened?

 

ZIMMERMANN: I had a long talk with Scowcroft. Eagleburger was strongly against the use of

force for Vietnam reasons. People who had experience in Vietnam simply didn't want to go

down that road again and he felt this was going down that road again. Scowcroft, of course, had

been in Vietnam as had Colin Powell. I had the feeling that Scowcroft was listening to me more

than the others were. He kept me longer in the office than he should have. We looked at

scenarios, where would you bomb, how would you do this and so forth. I had the feeling that

maybe he was thinking about it. But I think in retrospect it wasn't going to happen. It was an

election year. Bush was running. He didn't want to get mired down. I think he himself was hard

over against the use of American military anyway. Then I took a month vacation. I came back in

the fall. I went quite often with Eagleburger to deputies committee meetings where policy was

being thrashed out. It was very clear by the way those meetings were being run by the national

Security Council, that we weren't going to do a thing. The Pentagon and the Joint Chiefs and the

office of the Secretary of Defense representative would come in absolutely hard against any use

of American soldiers. If you were a uniformed American soldier, you had to get permission from

the Secretary of Defense even to go to Bosnia. Every initiative that was proposed for

humanitarian relief that involved the U.S. military was opposed by the Pentagon. Opening a road

from the coast to go to Sarajevo, nixed by the Pentagon. Using air force planes to beam

television images so people could get a more objective view, killed by the Pentagon. No fly

zones, killed by the Pentagon. Air drops of relief of places you couldn't got to by road, killed by

the Pentagon. Ultimately many of these things were done very successfully but over the dead

body of the military.

 

Q: Was it the Vietnam sort of a Weinberger doctrine?

 

ZIMMERMANN: The word Vietnam, you never heard it, not in those meetings anyway, but it

was definitely Weinberger Powell doctrine. You don't engage militarily unless you have

absolutely a 100% chance of success. Unless you have an exit strategy whatever that means or

unless you have assurance that there would be no casualties or very few. We would never have

gone into the Gulf War if we had applied those rules because they were expecting a lot of

casualties in the Gulf War. Our casualties were much less in the Gulf War than were expected,

and Bush had the courage then to go in and do it, do what had to be done. But he didn't have it in

Bosnia.

[hazard]

 

ZIMMERMANN: Well, we certainly weren't important to Milosevic. He didn't really care what
the United States did or said, and he wasn't going to react on the basis of whether we held out the
hand of friendship or the mailed fist. Either he was very smart about that or he was intensely
stupid because in the end he paid, at least in economic terms. I am sure he will pay the ultimate
price in the end for it, but it is true. He didn't care what the west thought. Now, Tudjman did
care. Tudjman was different in that sense. He wanted to be considered a western statesman, and
so what the Germans thought, what the French thought, what the Americans thought was
important to Tudjman. Not to Milosevic.

 

 

Retardijno prve klase, politicar samo za unutrasnju upotrebu. Neko ko nikada nije smeo da bude vise od gradonacelnika ili ministra.

[Tribun_Populi]

Retardijno prve klase, politicar samo za unutrasnju upotrebu. Neko ko nikada nije smeo da bude vise od gradonacelnika ili ministra.

Pa toliki mu je bio domet, jbg, mada je to kako si ga okarakterisao mislim najtačnija definicija - političar za unutrašnju upotrebu.

 

Poražavajuća je, po meni, najpre situacija da je takav jedan uopšte bio potreban Srbiji krajem osamdesetih.

[Lord Protector]

Mentol je umislio da je novi car Lazar pošto mu je u glavi non-stop odzvanjalo "Slobo slobodo!" sa mitinga. Tome ništa do mozga nije dopiralo sem onoga što mu je hranilo bolesnu sujetu. Nije tu bilo vremena za američke ambasadore i diplomatiju.

Edited September 21, 2016 by slow

[Prospero]

Opet čitate ukoso i pod dejstvom blentave feljtonsko/kafanske ocene da Milošević "nije primao Cimermana" i da je to bilo nešto vau.
 
Za početak:
 

KENNEY: The Embassy in Belgrade was entirely too cozy with the Serbian government.
Ambassador Warren Zimmermann talked to Milosevic and believed he could deal with him. It
wasn't until he was recalled in July, 1992 that Zimmermann had a change of heart and began to
doubt that Milosevic could be dealt with and that perhaps force might be necessary.

I ono što je politički mnooogo važnije je - kad je sranje već započeto, za šta su tačno Miloševiću bili potrebni Amerikanci osim da mu ne smetaju u precrtavanju granica? Sve što je mogao od njih da očekuje, s obzirom na kurs kojim je krenuo, je na početku i dobio.

 

KENNEY: ...We sent a lot of signals to the Serbs that we would not really get involved. We might act as neutral mediators, but that didn't bother Milosevic and the Serbs at all. Because there wasn't any high level interest in looking at the crisis...

ZIMMERMANN: ...had meetings with Tudjman. He seemed to have it in his mind, I think he got this from Croatian émigrés in the United States, that the United States was going to intervene militarily on the side of Croatia against the Yugoslav army. I exerted a lot of energy to try to persuade him that wasn't true. It wasn't going to happen; he shouldn't count on it. But he seemed to believe it nevertheless.

 
 
Kao da bi Amerika na bilo koji način 1991/2. formalno legitimizovala Miloeševićevu težnju da u toku raspada Ju pokuša da prekroji granice i podržavi™ srpske pozicije zapadno od Drine samo da je on to od nje jaaaaako lepo zatražio. I kao da bi on od toga odustao da ne bi uvredio Vašington.

 

Za šta su mu bili potrebni pre toga? Da im kaže da će na Kosovu biti sve OK, kad Kosovo nije bilo tema sledećih 7-8 godina?
 
Nekompatibilnost odabranih ciljeva i datih okolnosti - nije moglo i srbovanje i "drugovanje sa Cimermanom", something's gotta give. Tu prosto nije bilo nesporazuma koji je trebalo objasniti, nego suviše velikog raskoraka u ciljevima, a nemogućnost ovog "drugovanja" je prosto oportunitetni trošak odabranih ratnih ciljeva.

Edited September 21, 2016 by Prospero

[Lord Protector]

Cimerman u knjizi kaže da Milošević nije hteo da se vidi sa njim zato što ga je optuživao da je organizator bojkota zapadnih diplomata spektakla na Gazimestanu. Dakle krelac se ponašao kao uvređena mlada, izbegavao je kontakt zbog sujete i umišljene veličine a ne zbog neke taktike.

[Lord Protector]

Što se tiče ovoga

 

ZIMMERMANN: ...had meetings with Tudjman. He seemed to have it in his mind, I think he got this from Croatian émigrés in the United States, that the United States was going to intervene militarily on the side of Croatia against the Yugoslav army. I exerted a lot of energy to try to persuade him that wasn't true. It wasn't going to happen; he shouldn't count on it. But he seemed to believe it nevertheless.

 

Tuđman je bio u pravu, samo je omašio tajming za par godina

Edited September 21, 2016 by slow

[Prospero]

Pa ne može se tako blanko verovati ocenama, tj ono što Cimerman misli da zna i šta MIlošević stvarno misli nisu nužno iste stvari.

Edited September 21, 2016 by Prospero

[Korki]

Па, Милошевић није имао неки грандиозан план. Погрешан човек у погрешно време који је само хтео да влада а догађаји су били превелики за њега. Да би владао покушавао да је споји противречности, комунистичку структуру на чијем челу је био и национализам који га је дигао, а није био капацитет да то контролише, па онда иде лудачка прича са ЈУЛ-ом...Што опет не значи да у САД нису благонаклоно гледали на њега током осамдесетих, као што се може горе видети, због економије.

Edited September 21, 2016 by Korki

[Korki]

Истине ради, ни Загреб није био Београд по значају. Туђман је у Загребу могао да представља десничара коју обара окошталу комунистичку структуру али како би такав покушај прошао 1990/91 у центру, тамо где су све команде и службе?

Пример је 9. март 1991. који по свему судећи, то вероватно нећемо никада 100% сазнати, је организован од стране КОС-а(тј. данашње Војне безбедности) као опомена Милошевићу и његовим људима. Излазак тенкова и транспортера на улице је била много већа порука Милошевићу него грађанима Београда.