Posted on 06/22/2004 2:02:00 PM PDT by quidnunc
Belgrade, Serbia – Belgrade is a city where contrasts meet — East and West, Hapsburg and Ottoman, Turkish coffee and espresso. If Serbs are renowned in Europe as fiercely nationalistic, that is because they had to fight so many occupiers over so long a period for their independence. They won those battles — the last of which was the Second World War in which Serbs were on the side of the allies against the Germans, though Serb communist Partisans and Serb monarchist Chetniks fought against each other at least as fiercely in order to control postwar Yugoslavia.
The communists won and, under Tito, put the national and political evolution of the country into deep freeze until Yugoslavia began to break up in the early 1990s. Serbia, led by cynical communists who sought legitimacy by embracing a hyper-nationalism that smelled of the 1930s rather than the '90s, promptly embarked on a series of wars with their post-Yugoslav neighbors to salvage a Greater Serbia from the wreckage of Titoism.
Serbia lost the second set of wars. That cynical communist par excellence, the former president of Serbia, Slobodan Milosevic, is now on trial at the Hague for war crimes. And the Serbs are attempting to come to terms with the political facts of life in modern Europe.
The first such fact is that losing wars has consequences. There will not be a Greater Serbia. Indeed, the Serbia that exists is almost certain to lose its province of Kosovo, where the Albanian majority seeks independence, when "final status" negotiations on its future get under way. Even Montenegro, its semi-reluctant partner in the rump federal state of Yugoslavia, may well break away.
It already uses a different currency — the euro. In the circumstances, the question for Serbs, formulated by a shrewd observer of Serbian politics, Damjan de Krnovic-Miskowic is a simple one: Will Serbs seek to pursue their interests or their resentments?
-snip-
(Excerpt) Read more at suntimes.com ...
The last thing in the world this country needs is some medieval thug hiding behind a crown.
"The Balkans cannot be stable unless Serbia is stable too."
ROTFLMAOPIMP
The only reason Yugoslavia lasted so long was because of the Damocles sword of the USSR hanging over the population's head.
Balkans <> stable (ever)
More then one sword, NATO on other side and it is NATO who at last destroy Yugoslavia, that is Germany and US in alliance with Al Quida, Saudi Arabia, KLA and all other Islamics.
Yugoslavia was silent NATO ally 1948-89, and enjoyed the financial benefit out of it. When berlin wall fell, West simply shut off the money pipe and Yugoslavia collapsed.
The lesson for all nations who want to live off geoplitical location: it does not pay in the end.
Well that was partly becase Yugosalvia changed from being the most relatively free Eastern European society to the most repressive.
Gavrilo Princep represents all Serbs about as much as Lee Harvey Oswald represents all Americans.
Your thesis and post are absurd and offensive, and, though it should not matter, I'm not even remotely Serbian.
Princip was an agent of the Serb Military, Perhaps you and Oliver Stone believe Oswald was an agent of the US government, but nobody else does.
What ho, Curmudgeon? When the Austrians demanded concessions and reparations from the Serbs for shooting Ferdinand, the Serbs agreed! Yes, the Serbs were willing to meet just about every Austrian demand.
The Austrians attacked anyway, and promptly had their clocks cleaned in a series of massive defeats administered by the outgunned, outnumbered, and poverty-stricken Serbs (and Montenegrins)! Quite a campaign ... shot'em up real good.
The Czar mobilized to protect the Serbs, the Germans mobilized to bail out the Austrians, The French Mobilized to back the Czar, etc.
Now how is this the fault of the Serbs? OK, shooting Ferdinand was not a good thing, but jeez, the Serbs said they were sorry! (I can hear those Serbs now: "Relax, It was just a splinter group. Crazy Radicals. We'll pay. Wadda you Austrian guys want? Name it. It's yours") True, the Serbs (and Montenegrins) were mighty perturbed that they had just whipped the Turks and that Austria was going to grab Bosnia. But the Serbs did accept pretty darn near all of Austria's demands.
What the Serbs contributed to the origin of WWI was the agitation and trouble they stirred up among Serbs lining in the Austro/Hungarian empire on behalf of the pan-Slav movement.
The introduction of state sponsored terrorism into European balance of power, and you think this was a lark? Sad.
I'm familiar with the story, and the Black Hand, etc. etc. They did not create or enforce the tangle of mutual defense treaties that was the real cause of WWI, nor did they ever represent the Serbian people as a whole.
To point at Serbia as determinant of world military and political policy is both simplistic and false.
Perhaps you and Oliver Stone believe Oswald was an agent of the US government, but nobody else does.
Your use of bogus strawmen serves only to discredit you. I hold no agreement with the ravings of Oliver Stone, nor with your puerile attempts to put me in a box with him.
If your opinions have merit, you need not resort to such pathetic and desperate measures to advance them.
Review: What led to World War IBut it really didn't matter whether Serbia accepted or rejected the ultimatum, Fromkin says. Austria had decided to go to war against the Balkan kingdom, regardless of its response. The ultimatum served to Serbia, deliberately worded to elicit a rejection by any nation prizing its own independence, had been drafted two weeks before the murder of the Archduke. The assassination was only a convenient excuse.
"The Hapsburg leaders wanted to destroy Serbia before the assassination. They would have launched their campaign not in 1914, but in 1912 or 1913, had they not been blocked," Fromkin writes. "The opinion of Europe had stood in their way, as did the fear of Russia and as did the lack of German support."
However intense Austria's urgency to crush Serbia, the fragile Empire would not have embarked without German support on a military adventure that almost surely would draw Russia, France, and Britain onto the battlefield. And Germany, regardless of the Kaiser's erratic pacifism, wanted that war as badly, precisely to provoke the Russians into entering the battlefield. Why?
Even as Austria was afraid of Serbia, Germany -- especially its chief of the Great General Staff, Helmuth von Moltke (known as Moltke the Younger) -- was anxious about Russia.
TOO many onions in your post, my eyes are watering
If you put a matchstick in your mouth, it helps. ;^)
"The ultimatum served to Serbia, deliberately worded to elicit a rejection by any nation prizing its own independence"
Now why does that sentence sound so familiar? Guess NATO and Clinton learned something from history after all.
Germany provokes war with Britian, France, Russia because the Field Marshal is anxious about Russia. Well, now that that is settled, ....
Actually, constitutional monarchy can be a highly effective system in a country such as Serbia. In economically backward and politically volatile countries, constitutional monarchs are usually less likely to turn into thugs than elected officials. In fact, Constitutional Monarchs can be an effective means of stopping thugs from coming to power, as Juan Carlos proved back in the 1970's.
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