Book Description

Could we, should we, have prevented the break up of Yugoslavia? Can genocide be prevented or halted? The author examines the dire consequences of the rapid economic reforms demanded by the West and asks where responsibility lies when external pressures destroy a nation and lead to genocide. Bosnia and Beyond: The "Quiet" Revolution That Wouldn't Go Quietly is, in part, the story of how the West destroyed a country through the imposition of economic and political reform. Promoted as a way to modernize Yugoslavia and bring it into the mainstream, the program was in fact meant to bring down the Communist government in a "quiet revolution" of the type that was envisaged for other former Soviet bloc countries. Showing how Western plans for the liberalization of the country resulted in ethnic polarization and the election of ethno-nationalist leaders, the book then goes on to describe the events of the war. The struggle of the republics for independence was yet another proxy war, which the West encouraged in order to chastise Milosevic and nudge him into becoming the man that they wanted him to be. While no formal plan has surfaced to show that the whole thing was engineered to provide a base for US/NATO troops, on the other hand, the situation was so egregious that intervention was highly sought and that the West had an obligation to clean up its mess, which it finally did. Many have been emotionally manipulated into being grateful for NATO intervention, and then it was quite convenient that a NATO base existed. But how does one say that intervention was needful, and then point the finger at the intervening forces? One can claim that Germany, Austria and the Vatican were in favor of Croatian and Slovenian secession and the United States came late to the game to demand Bosnian independence. It can also be claimed that Britain and France did not stand in the way of Serbian secession within Bosnia and Croatia but rather promoted their goals. Yugoslavia was a case of secession within secession, raising the question of who was supported by whom in either case. The work considers the research and views of a wide range of scholars, historians, journalists and humanitarian writers such as Cohen and Reisman, Udoviki and Ridgeway Eds, Norman Cigar, Laura Silber and Alan Little, Danielle Sremac, Michael Walzer, Ed Vulliamy, Peter Maas, Samantha Power, Peter du Preez, Lawrence Freedman, Hoffman, Johansen and Sterba, Ervin Staub and Thomas Mockaitis.