Re: Training the Bosnian army

["Bryan A. Alexander" <bnalexan@xxxxxxxxx>]

Solid post, Chris.  What to add:
        Of course it has all been thougth about - certain actors have long
planned this (one of my favorite Bosnian conspiracy theories, told to me
firsthand by a Bosnian refugee and secondhand by an EU flunky, is that
NATO conspired to bring about the end of Yugoslavia because, after the
collapse of the Warsaw Pact, the only significant armed force left in
Europe outside NATO was the JNA...)!  My comment was directed as part of
an attack on Congressthings (some fool last year - maybe it was Paul Simon
- proposed training BiH troops in Croatia), partly as part of my ongoing
effort to remind academia and the left that military matters, well,
matter.
        So yes, the arming of the Fifth Corps and other less well known
units would represent a complex imposition of foreign control.  The BiH
troops I talked with didn't seem to think about this much, as they had
other more immediate concerns.  But I wouldn't be surprised if the
republic elite *desires* such interference, as a bulwark against current
and future Croat/Serb intrusions.
        But now, as Chris reminds us, we have the NATO assault, which the
Srbs call not inaccurately "a war on the Serbs."  Several preconditions
must exist for this to happen, as the atrocities in Sarajevo were hardly
new, and NATO hit not just the capital but Mostar, Tuzla, and Gorazde as
well.  A few candidates leap to mind: the latest Clinton pax plan, some
Milosevic weaknesses (see Kosovo's uneasiness), the seasonal timing.  But
any mediajunkie will tell you that Tudjman's Operation Storm was the key.
Militarily, the Srbs just got a lot weaker.  Further, NATO can now conduct
an air campaign (excepting the commando teams spotting - this has gotten
little press so far) secure in the knowledge that *someone* was working
along the ground concurrently (more or less).
        But let's trek back towards the list.  Why Croatia?  Outside of
German fiefdom Slovenia, Tudjman's Mussolini-style fascist opera is
exceedingly congenial to the west.  Croatia insists on its western, not
slavic, identity; worships not patriarch nor imam but the Pope; splays
itself eagerly for the invasion of investment, commodities, the lethal
fictions of exchange value.  Low wages are a sign of not trying hard
enough, or of Communism leftover; profits the signal of market's favor.
Tudjman's openly fascistic traits are, as the 20th century tells us,
capital's chosen zone of operations.
        So NATO might use its military surrogate and ideological double
as its pawn in crushing Serbian outreaches - and Bosnian autonomy.
Tudjman will bring the blessing of the latest class war fashions steadily
eastwards.



Bryan Alexander
Department of English
University of Michigan
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