The Fuse Is Burning Out

A commentator of "Republika" weekly estimated recently that "the Serbian army will soon resemble a Latin American or Asian army more than a European one", and concluded briefly: "God defend me from my own army, from foreign ones I can defend myself".

There's no doubt that Croatia's citizens share the same worries while witnessing the return of the Blackshirts. Many Slovenes wonder if Sergeant Jansa (the Slovene Defense Minister) accepts the fact that he will have to be discharged one day.

Our Balkan neighbors, the Greeks and the Turks, still remember the times when their military dictatorships justified their bestiality by patriotism and the fight against domestic and foreign enemies.

"After the end of the Cold War, the military factor remains important only in internal conflicts", said Dr. Ljubivoje Acimovic of the Belgrade Institute for International Politics and Economy. "All the armed forces in Yugoslavia are turned against each other".

Major-General of the JNA, Dr. Radovan Radinovic, the head of the Institute for Strategic Research, argued that after former Yugoslavia ceased to exist, "the balance of power shifted at the expense of peace" and that the danger of "little" wars and frontier conflicts had increased. He further said that "considerable manipulation with small Balkan states by leading factors in world politics awaits us". "New crisis spots have concentrated in Yugoslavia and it seems that the traditional role of the Balkans, serving as a European powder keg, has been taken over by Yugoslavia", said Dr.Dusan Nikolis of the same institute.

Apparently all the former Yugoslav republics, except the ethnically homogeneous Slovenia, have become a kind of "micro-Balkans", with all the relevant features of a Near Eastern chaos or a Latin American dictatorship, rather than the characteristics of a Middle European parliamentary democracy.

"The unresolved Serbian and Albanian national problems are at the heart of all the conflicts in the Balkans", declared General Radinovic. According to him, the USA, Germany and Turkey have assumed leading roles in promoting the new European order in the Balkans and will thus have more influence than other countries in resolving the Serbian and Albanian problems.

The General fears that, since of all the former Yugoslav republics only Serbia is capable of defending itself and can't be reduced to a vassal state, international political agents will attempt to reduce its territory to the "Belgrade Pasaluk". Slovenia has lost most of its strategic importance; Croatia doesn't even have enough military potentials to defend itself from the Krajina Serbs and can only survive with military support from abroad; Bosnia-Herzegovina has no future as a unitary state; Macedonia could protect itself from Albanian and Bulgarian territorial aspirations only by relying on external help, that is, by the EC guarantees of its independence.

Dr. Acimovic warned that the future of the JNA is not clear, since "no one has yet established clear parameters" of its metamorphosis. In any case, he stressed, the future army of the Serbo-Montenegrin state must be "small but with high potential" and have an "absolutely defensive character". Contrary to this, the commentators of the Belgrade weekly "NIN" stated that "in practice the army already exists and is only waiting for its state to be formed". It seems that its political profile has already been clearly defined, since "it mostly corresponds with the views of the Socialist Party of Serbia". In that context, the weekly mentioned a "promising" 44 year-old General, Vuk Obradovic, the head of the Morale Department of the Ministry of Defense, and said of him that "he has the reputation of a promoter of new, democratic tendencies within the Army...".

The weekly, however, didn't clear the contradiction between the General's "democratic views" and his advocating that the armed forces of the new state be called the "Serbo-Montenegrin Army". Nearly two fifths of "rump" Yugoslavia's population - Albanians, Hungarians and members of other ethnic groups - will find it extremely difficult to identify themselves with the majority nations' armada.

"The post-communist military institutions must open themselves to the world. They must be responsive to democratic political control. They must introduce internal democratization. They must reflect the national composition of their country", said the expert of Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty Research Institute, Ross Johnson ("The Self-Destruction of the Yugoslav People's Army", from the conference on "The Military in Democratic Societies", Sofia, November, 1991). They should also implement democratic political self-control and introduce the principles of internal democratization. Mr. Johnson estimated that "the new Serbia will find little use for the senior commanders and officers of the JNA. They are predominantly Serbs from outside Serbia proper, who will be at odds with and feared by the post-Milosevic Serbian leadership. They do not have a political base in Serbia proper. They carry the burden of international opprobrium and have proved to be militarily incompetent".

The JNA's fear of a total disaster has been supported by comments of the pro-right German and Austrian press, which openly advocate a showdown with the JNA. Since German or Austrian military intervention in the Balkans is out of question, this can only be understood as an invitation to Washington. A vain one it seems, since American strategy is founded on restraining the Balkan warriors by means of a CSCE-tailored net, along with political isolation and economic sanctions against the disobedient.

Putting the army under civilian control is one of the preconditions for its normalization. "For as long as democratic institutions are not fully operational, the Army will interfere with politics. The more democratic we become as a society, the more the Army will be under institutional control", said Radinovic.

"Respect for the CSCE principles is essential", said Dr. Vekaric. "It might be a good idea if all the Balkan states, including the new ones, would consider establishing closer relations with the defense structures of Western countries and the USA". He also mentioned that this is exactly what the ex-communist East European countries, led by Russia, are striving to do. It has been proved, for instance, that being in NATO has helped Greece and Turkey moderate their antagonisms.

Faint signs of a readiness to negotiate a common security system are coming from Slovenia and Croatia. The Slovene President, Milan Kucan, told the German press that Slovenia is advocating the transformation of the Balkans into a "diluted military region". His proposition is in accordance with the initiative of the Austrian Foreign Minister, Alois Mock, for the holding of a conference on the demilitarization of the Balkans within the CSCE.