No American Intervention in the Balkans During the '90s

Maybe a better question would have been, what if the West got involved in Yugoslavia early on in the war (like 1991)?

Oh if only. A lot of folks here would like to believe that things would have been settled much sooner and with much less blood.
 
Midwest Proton Radiotherapy Institute? Sinister name, i agree, but... :D
Just kidding. Military Professional Resources Inc., i guess. Strange, i don't remember hearing about it back then. Was it that important?

I'm not surprised with Croat military succes. Its army had to be built from scratch, while Serbian assorted militaries had gradually expended their JNA inherited assets.

Ah well. I thought you were implying KLA is going to turn islamist. Taking help is one thing, giving something in return another.

Yes. So much so that there was some discussion of them at the Hague War Crimes Trials for their part in Operation Storm. Doctrine, staff training, etc. was all MPRI.

Side note: They also run a lot of theater-specific training in Kuwait for forces getting ready for Iraq. They do a pretty decent job, IMO.

As for the KLA, another valued MPRI client, I doubt they would go Islamist. Certainly depending on the amount of aid/training/volunteers Islamists provided, they could incorporate some of the rhetoric eventually. But that's a long-term thing, and I doubt they would give it more than lip service.
 
Bosnia, easy if caught early enough.

Croatia, harder, because you'd need to arm-twist Tudjman into not crapping all over the Serbs, and then you'd have to arm-twist the Serbs into accepting rule from Zagreb. You'd probably have to enforce some sort of limited autonomy, which both sides would hate.

OTOH this is more or less what was done at Ohrid in 2001 for the Macedonians, and [glancing at calendar] it's on its tenth year now and still going strong. So, good chance.

Kosovo, hardest of all. Milosevic's legitimacy was built on [explicitly] abolishing Kosovo's autonomy and returning it to Serb rule and economic and political dominance, and [implicitly] immiserating and punishing the Albanians. Transforming the province into an explicitly racist police state wasn't a bug; it was the whole point of the policy.

In the short run this was doable because the Albanians were poor, unarmed, and isolated. In the long run it was just not sustainable. OTL the KLA arose from the particular circumstances given upthread, but if none of those things had happened, something very like the KLA was sure to emerge eventually anyhow. And at that point you'd quickly see the downward spiral that was seen OTL in 1997-9.

That said, I don't think it's quite impossible to imagine a peaceful resolution of Kosovo. Up until 1996, most Kosovar Albanians would probably have been content with a return to the pre-1989 status quo. A tripartite federation with Montenegro was also discussed for a while; Rugova was interested, and this was in the days when people paid attention to Rugova.

On the Serb side, obviously you'd need someone other than Slobo. One problem is that some of the other candidates around in the 1990s (Seselj, Vuk Draskovic) were just as hardline on Kosovo. Maybe have Milan Panic beat Slobo in the election of 1992?


Doug M.
 
I doubt they would give it more than lip service.

Reasons Wahabbism, Al Qaeda, and other hardline Islamist doctrines will never gain traction in Albania:

1) No drinking

2) No short skirts, tight tops, bare midriffs, gold lame bustiers or big hair on the ladies

3) Would require pledging loyalty to something other than Albanianism

Seriously, that last one is the killer.

-- Kosovo is probably the most conservative society in the Balkans; PDA is frowned on, and the news kiosks aren't stuffed with porn. But it's still the Balkans. It's like trying to export Oklohoma Baptism to Rio.


Doug M.
 
The U.S. is better regarded in the Balkans, the efforts of the KLA fail (keeping Kosovo in Serbia as a result) and all of the western Balkan states not already in the EU by 2010 are candidates for membership. I wonder though, if this strengthens opposition to the Iraq War/Russian intervention in Georgia during 2008.
 
Why would the US be "better regarded"? The Serbs would like us a lot more, sure, but the Croats, Bosniaks and Albanians would like us less.

Kosovo still being part of Serbia: that's possible, but it's not a good outcome for either the Serbs or the Albanians.

You've got an ethnically distinct region that doesn't want to be part of the larger country, and a popular violent guerrilla movement with safe havens just across the border and access to funds and support from a diaspora abroad.

Does this sound familiar? It should. There are any number of analogies from the late 20th and early 21st centuries:

Sri Lanka v. Tamils
Turkey v. Kurds
India v. Kashmiris
Morocco v. Polisario
First and Second Palestinian Intifadas
Ethiopians v. Eritreans
Sudanese v. South Sudanese

Looking at that list, we see the following outcomes:

-- After 20+ year war costing billions of dollars and thousands of civilian casualties, Serbia wins and pacifies Kosovo, forcing Albanians to accept Serb economic and political dominance, (Sri Lanka, Turkey)

-- Serbia wins in sense of maintaining occupation, but only by militarization of the province and massive human rights violations; there are thousands of civilian casualties, but stubborn resistance continues; Serbia pays diplomatic price and is internationally isolated (Kashmir, Palestine)

-- Serbia wins by ethnically cleansing half the population, reducing Albanians to manageable number (Morocco)

-- After over a decade of incredibly bloody, expensive and fruitless war, Serbia gives up and withdraws (Eritrea)

-- After over a decade of incredibly bloody, expensive and fruitless war, Serbia accepts a negotiated solution that leads to independence for Kosovo (South Sudan)

I don't see any of these as better than OTL, for either side.


Doug M.
 
The right comparison here is not Sudan, but Chechnya. The West will complain about Serbia responding with armed force to the problems in Kosovo. Middle East volunteers and funding sources will be the primary support for the Kosovar Alabanians, but their campaign will be a losing one.

Sri Lanka does not hate the United States for staying out of the strife there, but has expressed displeasure over American objections to Sri Lankan tactics employed against Tamil fighters. U.S. aerial bombardment is NOT going to enhance American standing in South Asia. The only group here that might object are the Tamils.

American fondness for Morocco is only reciprocated as long as the U.S. is indifferent to the Sahrawis seeking independence, and it's not as if the Mauritanians and Algerians actually care about the U.S. position on Morocco and Western Sahara.
 
Without the US actively supporting WEU forces (in the 90s most of Western Europe's armed forces were geared towards defence in Western Germany, they lacked independent air refueling, satellite communications, HQs, ground surveillance, ... as countries like Germany relied on the US to provide these in case of war or the US contributed to these), we'd probably see a later escalation of the conflict, as the WEU member states would have to stand up their own HQs (e.g. Eurofor was formed in 1995, Eurocorps in 1992, but air and maritime components were only formed in the 2000s) and gradually improve their indepedent warfighting capability (communication and reconnaissance satellites, air refueling, field hospitals - those were ususally staffed by reservists during the Cold War, ...). Regarding Kosovo, it will all depend on the escalation of the conflict. I've we see a destabilization of neighboring countries (Albania and Macedonia), the Western European will intervene. However, Russia would probably contribute to a peacekeeping force and get some high ranking posts within the command.
 
The right comparison here is not Sudan, but Chechnya.

I'm sorry, but it's not a very good comparison actually.

Chechnya involved about 1.1 million Chechens against 145 million Russians. Kosovo was more like 1.8 million Albanians against 7 million Serbs.

The two Chechen Wars cost the Russians about 10,000 dead and over 20,000 injured. Serbia has about 1/20 Russia's population; it would have a much harder time sustaining and justifying those sorts of casualties. Note that the casualties of the Battle of Vukovar -- about 1100 dead and 3300 wounded -- were so shocking to the Serbian public that JNA never undertook another such assault. It's very hard to imagine Serbia tolerating ten Vukovars.

The wars also resulted in almost all ethnic Russians leaving Chechnya. Stability of a sort has been established by the creation of an ethnic Chechen government under Razman Kadyrov. Kadyrov's regime has been granted a high degree of autonomy as long as it stays loyal to Moscow. That's not an outcome that could plausibly happen in Kosovo.

The continued possession of Chechnya is extremely expensive; the Russian state pumps several billion dollars a year into the province to prop up Kadyrov's government. This would simply not be plausible for Serbia.

So while it's interesting to compare Kosovo to Chechnya, I don't think that one is a good model for the other.


Doug M.
 
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