Реших да започна да пускам части от едно голямо и много пространно интервю с Иво Банац, професор в Йелския университет дълго преди да се случат печалните събития в Югославия и признаван за един от най-авторитетните съвременни историци. По-нататък ще пусна и част от същото интервю, която говори за неговта обективност и която би неутрализирала очакваните разсъждения на някои хора, че щом е хърватин, той е и усташ. Специално този пасаж може да служи като общ ориентир за действителната история на Югославия от последните 15-на години и ролата на Запада в нея - въпрос който сръбската пропаганда трябва да признаем блестящо си е свършила работата (поне в главите на много от моите сънародници). Извинявам се че няма превод, но наистина е много дълго и нямам време да превеждам. II. Western Policy Ali: Would you also say that Tudjman and others who sought the division of Bosnia might have contained their own expansionist ambitions had the West provided support -- instead of settling on the partition of Bosnia-Hercegovina as the best and quickest solution? In the end, or rather from the very beginning, did the Vance-Owen plan, by putting an international seal of approval on the policy of an ethnic carve-up of Bosnia-Hercegovina, encourage both the Serbs and the Croats to secure their share of Bosnian territory? Banac: There is no question that the Vance-Owen plan did precisely that, and the consequences in their fullness are there for all to see. The horrors of Vitez and the escalation of the war between the Croat and the Bosnian government forces, which are now fighting on two fronts, are a direct result of the Vance-Owen plan. As a result, you have the current situation which, in my view, can be solved only in one of two ways. The first would involve a change of heart in the neighborhood. For the present this is improbable. The second would involve the determined support of the international community, which has been sorely lacking. And there are many reasons why the international community should act. To my mind, if Bosnia did not exist, it would be necessary to create it -- precisely because it mitigates the hostilities between Serbia and Croatia. There is another very important reason why Bosnia should exist as an independent state: the Bosnian Muslim community has no other national home. This is why the Muslim community has, to a very large extent, become the cement of Bosnia-Hercegovina. It would be wrong to say that this community is uniquely Bosnian and the others are not -- because there is a great danger that this argument, too, would undermine the unity of Bosnia-Hercegovina. As I mentioned earlier, the Bosnian Croats and the Bosnian Serbs have distinctive cultures that distinguish them from their mainstream cultures that obtain, respectively, in Croatia and Serbia. They are distinctively Bosnian. It is this element which sustains the cultural unity of Bosnia-Hercegovina and explains why so many Bosnian Croats and Bosnian Serbs have supported the Bosnian government. Lifschultz: How do you analyze European and American diplomacy in the 1988-1992 period? Was the dissolution of Yugoslavia inevitable? And, if so, would other policies on the part of the international community have led to a less brutal form of dissolution? Or was all of this irrelevant in the end to the internal dynamic of the expansionist project of a "Greater Serbia"? Banac: In my view, American policy was the most important factor. And the dominant note in that policy was the belief that Yugoslavia was capable of surviving as a unitarist state. This view misunderstood fundamentally the nature of the deep cleavages in the country and the stage of disintegration that had already been reached. By 1991 such a position was not plausible. By stressing the unity of the country, the United States effectively helped Milosevic. Perhaps the most negative moment was in June 1991 when Secretary of State Baker visited Belgrade. Baker delivered exactly the wrong signal at the wrong time to Milosevic and the Yugoslav People's Army. By declaring itself in favor of Yugoslav unity at precisely the moment Milosevic was preparing to undertake military action on behalf of his "Greater Serbia" project, the United States essentially encouraged him. Why did the United States act in this way? One factor is that the disintegration of the Soviet Union was an obsession of American policy at this stage. American diplomats judged both situations as analogous and concluded that the break-up of Yugoslavia would be extremely dangerous and destabilizing. The difference, of course, was that in Yugoslavia the Americans were encouraging precisely the figure who, more than any other, was himself responsible for the political agenda that would finally destroy Yugoslavia. As the political sponsor of a resurgent and aggressive Serbian nationalism, Milosevic had made coexistence impossible for others. Lifschultz: Could the Americans have stopped events from taking the turn that they did? Banac: Absolutely. I think that they could have stopped it all along the line. I'm not saying that nothing was done. There are indications that by the spring of 1991 Washington had acted to prevent a total military takeover in Belgrade. This happened, probably in January 1991, during extremely dramatic negotiations between Tudjman and the military leadership in Belgrade. Perhaps the United States also intervened on another occasion in the spring of 1991. But all these actions were within the framework of Yugoslavia: In Washington it was simply inconceivable to imagine that Yugoslavia had been shattered, and irreparably so. But I think that the real test of American inaction and European inaction came in the fall of 1991 during the bombardment of Vukovar, Dubrovnik, and many other places in Croatia. At any point, a clear message could have been delivered to Belgrade to stop these attacks. This was not done, thereby opening the way to the German initiative in favor of the recognition of Slovenia and Croatia. For this the Germans have been called to considerable account. I disagree. From my point of view, not only was recognition right under the circumstances, but the demoralization in Belgrade that took place after the recognition shows how much more effective such a move could have been had it come even earlier. In fact, at this point precautionary or preemptive measures, especially in Bosnia-Hercegovina, were crucial, but these were not taken. If at this stage, contingents of United Nations troops -- or, perhaps, troops from that Sleeping Beauty, the European Union -- had been introduced into Bosnia, it is possible that many of the things that happened later on would never have occurred. We are talking about the summer and especially the fall of 1991. Lifschultz: Was there anyone in the West at all who saw the necessity of such preemptive or protective action in Bosnia at the time? Banac: Not really, no. This is quite remarkable, isn't it? Ali: Would you say that, in France and Britain, considerations of their historic alliance with Serbia were operating at some level which led them to balk continually at any decisive international action against Serb aggression? Banac: It is difficult to believe that these could be political considerations at the end of the 20th century, but there is probably something to it. I think this has not so much to do with Serbia as with fears of the future role of a united Germany. Historical memory in Western Europe is not as insignificant as many Euro-politicians pretend, and a united Germany did change the political landscape of Europe. Moreover the cost of uniting Germany has created a number of difficulties for Western European economies. So I think that the problem of Germany was then transferred to the Balkan situation, and in a curious way. European actions or decisions were less a response to the question of what path to find for the successor states of Yugoslavia and more a part of the political fencing that went on between the Germans and their western allies. Perhaps these divisions would have come over other issues, but they came precisely over the issue of Yugoslavia, and demonstrated amply, in 1991-1992 -- the year of European unity -- the extent to which Europe was not really united and not really a political entity.