The Suicide of Postwar Europe, Part Two: The Yugoslav War
The scene after the Battle of Koprivnica, November 2005
The US government demanded the immediate expatriation of all of the senior members of the Death’s Heads but the Yugoslav government stalled in the UN. In response, the US began to prepare for war. The mutual defence clause of the NATO agreement was triggered and the Ameircan military began moving supplies and men to Italian and Greek military bases in the Mediterranean. At this stage, it seemed that things may still have been capable of coming to a diplomatic resolution, with the Commonwealth, Brazil, Japan and China all broadly supportive of a military police action against Yugoslavia, although not to the point of committing men and supplies themselves, while the Soviets were ambivalent about any action on the border of the CIS. France was the Yugoslavian government’s major backer by this point, privately back-channeling with Belgrade to come to a non-military solution. However, the negotiations always stumbled on the same point: US intelligence and the confessions of some of the surviving attackers implicated Momčilo Perišić as being at least aware of the planned attack and as such his extradition to the US was integral to Philadelphia’s demands. However, alongside his links with the Death’s Heads, Perišić was also chief of the Yugoslavian military and a close ally of Slobodan Milošević. As such, his extradition was, in practice, impossible for the Yugoslavian government to grant, just as it was politically impossible for the US to give up the demand.
In July, the Soviet government finally gave the implicit nod to the Americans and NATO commenced military action at dawn on 7 August 2005. Air strikes on Belgrade were followed up by a land invasion over the Greek border and an amphibious landing at Durres. The Yugoslavian army was ill-prepared for the invasion (oddly enough, given that it can hardly have been a surprise) and failed to successfully counter-attack. Despite a desperate defence, Belgrade fell on 25 August but Milošević and senior members of the government fled the country. It later emerged that they had been evacuated to Paris in unregistered flights run by the French secret services.
The appearance of the Yugoslavian government in Parisian exile, along with what was becoming clear was a full invasion and occupation of the country rather than a series of punitive strikes, caused a quick but significant realignment of international politics. While the Soviets had, as we have seen, given tacit approval for NATO military action in Yugoslavia, they had not appreciated that this would be a full occupation, followed by, presumably, the fracturing of the country and the installation of pro-American regimes in the region. Vladimir Kryuchkov was acutely aware that his country was rapidly dropping in international prestige of late: not only was its economy significantly smaller than the Commonwealth, the US and China, but it had recently fallen behind Brazil, Japan and even the estimated total assets of the SWF; the repression of protests in 1991 had been an international embarrassment; and the cost of imposing control over the CIS was becoming ever-harder to sustain. What’s more, there was a concern that the ‘liberation’ of Yugoslavia would be a propaganda boon for similar movements in the CIS and possibly the Soviet Union itself. Finding these developments similarly concerning was the French government. They had seen, in the Yugoslavian regime, a bastion of traditionalist conservative values in a continent they believed was being overrun by cosmopolitanism and socialism. They had been forced to stand aside and watch their allies in South Africa be swept away but they were loath to do the same in Yugoslavia.
Thus, the white supremacist government of France and the communist government of the Soviet Union concluded a series of secret agreements to allow for France to use Soviet and CIS airspace to funnel funds, men and supplies to Yugoslavia. By September, the notional Milošević government controlled only a small sliver of territory along the northern border with the CIS and it was here that a force of Yugoslavians and French ‘volunteers’ made their attack. Beginning with a breakout at the Battle of Koprivnica in November 2005, Yugoslav forces steadily counter-attacked and pushed the NATO forces back. Combined with a series of (semi) coordinated terrorist bombings and shooting sprees in occupied Yugoslavian territory, NATO supply lines were thrown into confusion and were forced into a series of withdrawals.
Furious at the French intervention, the US ambassador to the UN John Kerry delivered a thunderous speech to the General Assembly, where he effectively accused the French and Soviet governments of condoning the murder of US citizens in the streets. Behind the scenes, American politicians and diplomats threatened to re-start their nuclear weapons programme unless the French withdrew. With the Yugoslavians and their allies in control of a line of territory along the border with the CIS (ironically home to many ethnic Croats) the fighting settled into a form of stalemate as the NATO forces struggled to deal with the overlapping insurgencies that had been let loose behind the front line.
NATO began a renewed offensive in April 2006 in the south and east of the country, successfully driving right up to the border with the CIS in several places. In response, Milošević sent frantic messages to Petrograd asking for support. Following secret discussions between Paris and Petrograd, a Soviet-lead force also including troops from the CIS, Armenia, Turkestan, Manchukuo, Mongolia and Iran attacked NATO positions in Yugoslavia, driving them back once more. In July 2006 Lee H. Hamilton, the American Secretary of State, suggested an invasion of the CIS through Hanover and Bavaria. However, this caused controversy and resulted in his forced resignation two weeks later.
As had occurred in the previous French-lead assault, the Soviet-backed one eventually petered out and the conflict settled once more into a stalemate, with NATO controlling the west and south of the country and the Franco-Soviet alliance controlling the east and north. Over the course of 2006 and 2007, frantic Commonwealth, Japanese, Chinese and Brazilian diplomats had flown around the world in a desperate attempt to contain the growing conflict between three permanent members of the Security Council. In October 2006, the Oslo Accords were signed by all sides, setting out rules to confine the fighting to Yugoslavia and preventing spillover to the wider region. By the beginning of 2008, however, the war did not look to have an end in sight and an estimated 600,000 people had been killed or wounded on both sides.
With neither side able (or willing) to undertake the actions that would enable them to make a decisive breakthrough, the catalyst for the end of the war would come from a completely different direction.