WI:Yugoslavia doesn't give up in 1999?
- Thread starter Armored Diplomacy
- Start date
MarshalBraginsky
Banned
Until 2006 when Montenegro became independent, and two years later, Kosovo became independent.
Second verse, same as the first.
Yugoslavia was GONE. You had Serbia doing its best to keep two regions that wanted to nothing but get the hell away from them.
Yugoslavia died with Tito. It just took a bit for the body to fall apart.
Angel Heart
Banned
From what I understood public opinion was mixed or against the war for different reasons. As you said the Greeks have been traditional friends of the Serbs for almost a millenia.
Anyone who knows it better can feel free to correct me if I am wrong but one of the reasons why the Italians were against the bombing was that they had absolutely no interest in accepting thousands of Albanian refugees.
Germany is an interesting case. Schröder, Fischer and Scharping could medially
I can't tell the motivation of France. Chirac was a racist who regarded us savages* so personally he would have likeley been okay with it if Belgrade was nuked. Maybe the French administration, on the contrary to the US, didn't want an escalation of the conflict.
* His exact words were "Serbs are a nation without law and faith, they are a people of robbers and terrorists". Jaques Chirac, ladies and gentlemen.
Yes and no. It's kind of a funny story. On April 1992 what was left of Yugoslavia (Serbia and Montenegro) was
MarshalBraginsky
Banned
Joe Biden had a bunch of nasty comments on the Serbs too, but his comments are extremely harsh and offensive compared to Chirac.
Angel Heart
Banned
True, but Biden is the American equivalent of Vojislav Šešelj (a militant demagogue, a primitive and a carricature of a human being), so racist remarks from people like them aren't that unexpected. Chiraq on the other hand has, at least in my opinion, no such excuse.
MarshalBraginsky
Banned
Not to mention that FRY still had Arkanovi Tigrovi in Kosovo, though they may have withdrawn already. If Yugoslavia doesn't give up, this may have had an effect on Arkan since I am not sure if he would survive the assassination which killed him a year after the Kosovo War, leading to Ceca's withdrawal from public life.
Angel Heart
Banned
Arkan's Tigers were at this point (since 1996) transformed into the JSO (for those unfamiliar they were the Serbian equivalent of the Green Berets and the Spetznaz) led by his pal Milorad Ulemek "Legija". Arkan himself was during the Kosovo War more of a "mascot" than an actual commander.
To be honest, you usually don't need a mandate when you're on NATO's side, look at the Coalition in Iraq.
Unofficially, the motives of the Croatian government would be to extend their influence in BiH, quite possible leading to an annexation of Herzegovina, with a semi-puppet Bosnia, which is given the Republika Srpska. Marko is quite right on his comments about the Croatian military. Between the end of the Bosnian War and 2000, the Croat military got a lot of funding and training and was quite well equipped. By contrast, the Russians had given the Serbs nothing much but moral support. The Serbian military was bled white, and it's not ASB to have the Croats fight their way into Beograd (although personally I think NATO forces from Hungary would get there first). But this is a bad thing. More war crimes are bound to happen in that scenario. Finally the youth of most Balkan states are losing the hate. In this scenario, the hate would be much stronger, especially amongst the Serbs. It would be a Balkan analogue to Post WWI-Germany. Probably worst in intensity, considering Balkan nationalism. In the long term, it destabilises the Balkans, opening up a whole new can of worms.
Cook
Banned
That’s pretty much the entire history of Yugoslavia, from inception through to collapse.
While it's certainly possible that the Bosnian Croats and Muslims were planning to use the confusion of the war to destroy Srpska, I have serious doubts that NATO would want to support another civil war in a territory they had occupied. How could such a war help them them in defeating Yugoslavia, anyway?
So the Croatian government was hoping that they would be rewarded with Herzegovina for their help?
Also, Srem was historically part of Croatia. Wasn't there some desire to regain this territory?
I don't know about Italy, but I remember that the war was very unpopular in the new Eastern European members of NATO (perhaps not Poland, including the former East Germany. In Hungary, there was particularly a fear that the Hungarian minority in Vojvoidina would negatively impacted by any ground war, so Hungary might not very keen to actually participate in such an offensive.
(Bridges do not needed, not until the Danube (and Belgrade))
That means one thing and one thing only: the return of Vojvodina to Hungary.
2 mins later the shit hits the fan - the Balkan Clusterfuck evolves to a new level.
And also destabilize Bosnia again. Though that's probably not something
Also, the Croatians are to be allied with the Bosniaks while at the same time plotting to take Herzegovina? Not a very stable arrangement
With Srem being mostly Serbian, that probably won't end well...
As Kalamona pointed out, the only way to this would be by annexation of Vojovodina (or at least the Hungarian territories there). And I think that many European members of NATO would object to a war based on irredentism and revenge.
Probably not the whole of Vojvodina - the Croats would be trying to take Srem. Most likely, the Hungarian majority areas. But if the Croats actually get away with annexing Srem, then they might try for annexing Bachka.
Even though Slovakia and Romania weren't yet members of NATO, these two in particular will not be amused.
Angel Heart
Banned
Iraq was a bit different and less complicated situation IIRC. Wouldn't a Croatian military strike or any other adventurism against the Republika Srpska contradict the Dayton Agreement in which the West put so much effort into?
I also heard a theory that one of the reasons Tuđman halted the offensive towards Banja Luka was to keep the Republika Srpska as some kind of a "necessary evil" as without the Srpska the Muslims would have become too powerful which would have put the Bosnian Croats in an uncomfortable position. Does someone know about this?
I'm not a military expert and anyone who is is always more than welcome to correct me, but I remember reading a discussion on a Croatian forum where an eventual advance of the HV and ArBiH towards Belgrade in 1995 was discussed. The consensus was, IIRC, that attacking is always harder than defending (there was also an analogy to Vukovar).
One problem I can see coming out of a prolonged NATO struggle against Serbia is a possible shift of the public opinion.
This shift could be enhanced, if:
a) more NATO planes are shot down or NATO troops die in accidents (like the Apache pilots killed in a crash during a training mission).
b) more airstrikes with civilian casualties take place. In OTL there was the occasional bombing by NATO of refugee columns, mistaken for Serb troops or unfortunate incidents like the bombing of that railway bridge at the moment a passenger train was crossing it.
Now if some investigative journalist shows up and demonstrates to the world, exactly what NATO wanted from the Serbs in the secret Rambouillet Agreement's parts (more or less giving up their national sovereignity, by allowing free passage of NATO troops), then you may really have a change of attitude in many European countries first and ultimately perhaps even in the US.
This shift could be enhanced, if:
a) more NATO planes are shot down or NATO troops die in accidents (like the Apache pilots killed in a crash during a training mission).
b) more airstrikes with civilian casualties take place. In OTL there was the occasional bombing by NATO of refugee columns, mistaken for Serb troops or unfortunate incidents like the bombing of that railway bridge at the moment a passenger train was crossing it.
Now if some investigative journalist shows up and demonstrates to the world, exactly what NATO wanted from the Serbs in the secret Rambouillet Agreement's parts (more or less giving up their national sovereignity, by allowing free passage of NATO troops), then you may really have a change of attitude in many European countries first and ultimately perhaps even in the US.
On the contrary, Croatian and BiH armed forces nearly good fired upon by US troops in 1995. The advance was halted after the 17th phone call from Galbraith (sp) to Tuđman in less then 6 hours giving HV, HVO and ABiH two hours to conclude our operations or we will suffer Air and Missile strikes launched from US ship in the Adriatic.