The Pete Quiñones Show - Episode 1016: The 1990's Balkan Wars - Part 3 - The Hostilities - w/ Thomas777

Episode Date: February 20, 2024

60 MinutesPG-13Thomas777 is a revisionist historian and a fiction writer.Thomas joins Pete to continue a short series on the 1990s Balkan Wars. Thomas talks about the hostilities, Slobodan Milošević, Franjo Tuđman, and others.Thomas' SubstackThomas' Book "Steelstorm Pt. 1"Thomas' Book "Steelstorm Pt. 2"Thomas on TwitterThomas' CashApp - $7homas777Get AutonomySupport Pete on His WebsitePete's PatreonPete's SubstackPete's SubscribestarPete's VenmoPete's Buy Me a CoffeePete on FacebookPete on TwitterBecome a supporter of this podcast: https://www.spreaker.com/podcast/the-pete-quinones-show--6071361/support.

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Those people who love going out shopping for Black Friday deals, they're mad, aren't they? Like, proper mad. Brenda wants a television and she's prepared to fight for it, if you ask me. It's the fastest way to a meltdown. Me, I just prepare the fastest way to get stuff, and it doesn't get faster than Appliancesdelivered.aE. Top brand appliances, top brand electricals, and if it's online, it's in stock. With next day delivery in Greater Dublin. Appliances delivered.com.

Part of expert electrical. See it, buy it, get it tomorrow. Or you know, fight branda. If you've thought about supporting the show, head on over to freemam Beyond the Wall.com forward slash support. You can see the many ways that you can support me there. The best way is right on that website. You can send me something in the mail. P.O. Box 413, Lineville, Alabama, 36266. I look forward to trying to do a lot more this year. with the show and any support you can give me helps with that. Thank you. I want to welcome everyone back to the Pekanino show. Thomas is here and part three of the Balkans. How are you doing? I'm doing well. Thanks for hosting me. Of course. Some people got upset thinking that I wasn't telling the Serbian side of the story. I mean, that wasn't my intention at all. Like, I got

kind of irritated and I wasn't feeling very well. So if I said some things that upset people, I mean in response to some of their complaints, I wasn't trying to be obtuse. The reason why I focused on the Croatian side is for a few reasons. The whole reason on detra of what the State Department did, even after, even post-Bush and Baker, albeit to the Clinton administration, like went about it in kind of an illiterate way in terms of their rationale. I mean, like the military in those days was still pretty, they had.

had their stuff together operationally. But to understand why Helmut Cole did what he did, understand what the view was from Washington, you've got to look at what the Croatians were doing. Okay, that's why. Today I'm going to take up what the Serbian case was and why it was entirely misguided

for them to be accused of starting the war because they absolutely didn't. I mean, that's asked on any way to claim that, you know, ethnic conflict it's like a schoolyard fight and some party combatant. It's always their fault. That's not how things work. And even though he, even though he doesn't gain a lot of sympathy, I mean, even from, like, his own people, like, I found Slobod on the Lozlovich to actually be quite a sympathetic figure.

What was done to him with the Hague, he was quite literally killed by being put on trial. And, I mean, that was grotesque. I've actually always considered myself to be pretty sympathetic to the Chetnik cause. I mean, not because I find common cause with it, but I mean, I'm similar to that to anybody who, you know, whose ambition is to redress the historical grievances of their people in a way that guarantees their posterity in the future. So today, we're going to get a little bit into like the Serbian situation as it was in 1991 and why, you know, Milosevic was basically somebody who was, he was the only as ahead of state, other than. than Jarzelszzy, who doesn't really count. He was the only communist functionary who remained in an executive role

after the Inter-German Border Collapse, which is interesting. So this idea that he was some Arch Chetnik, genocidal maniac, I mean, that, I mean, that's, that's just, that's, that's a propaganda narrative anyway, but, you know, were that,

were those his stripes, I mean, he wouldn't, he wouldn't have enjoyed the posterity he did, which should be obvious. But looking at some of that stuff today. And hopefully people will realize I'm not, you know, trying to assign blame to any party combatant or any side. I mean, I don't do that anyway. I mean, there's rare, one of the reasons why the Ukraine situation is bizarre, because it's a rare case of quite literally a conspiracy to provoke an irrational war. That almost never happens, you know.

But even in that case, obviously, there's conditions on the ground that make that possible. It's not just some sort of spontaneous contrivance or conspiratorial design made real, because that's not how political affairs develop. But the third Balkan War, Misha Glennie, he's a guy who I don't particularly like. I mean, he's basically, he's kind of like a typical, like, globalist liberal, but he did actually write about the only epilogia for the Serbian people that got, like, mainstream promotion, which is interesting. So,

he's more complicated than some of his declared positions on sociological things would suggest. he assigns the onset of the third Balkan war, which is what, you know, people in the West lump, people in the West lump the Homeland War, like the Bosnian War and the Kosovo conflict into like one conflict. I understand why they do that even if it's in complete shorthand for what really is, you know, three discrete conflicts that derive from a common nexus of causality. But something that shouldn't be controversial, June 25th, 1991, that's when hostilities arrived in the Balkans within the conflict cycle that is referred to as the third Balkan war in at least in Anglophone countries. That was the date that the Republic of Slovenia, which led the charge towards secession, it wasn't the Croats initially.

I mean, I think they would have any way, I mean, it's an open-ended question, but they, are the ones who took that step that there to fore, you know, Tujman for all of his talk of creating a truly Croatian republic that, like, reflected, you know, the singular and an exclusive culture, the Croatian people. I mean, he didn't make that move, okay, until after the Slovenians declared independence. after the Republic of Croatia did the Yugoslav people's army which was Serbian led

some people attacked me for suggesting that the security apparatus was Serb heavy Yugoslav National Army was it wasn't overwhelmingly Serbian but the majority of general officers to the tune of about 60% were ethnic Serbs like that they can't be denied what their sympathies were

I mean that I can't tell you I mean I'm sure it buried I mean but the the fact of their majoritarian status can't be denied. The Yugoslav army invaded Slovenia, and that was really when the die was cast. Now, the State Department claim,

as well as what was pontificated about on the floor of the United Nations, which in those days, on the heels of the Gulf War, the UN still had clout, which seemed strange today, But there was this big hope that the UN was going to finally fulfill its intended function since the Cold War was over. And now the reasoning was that decision making is no longer going to be colored by these kinds of strategic exigencies. And now the sort of community of nation is going to emerge and work towards like a truly globalized collective security.

that's assinide in my opinion for all kinds of reasons but that was the belief and coming off of the Gulf War which really even more something the Korean War because I mean the Korean War the Soviets were boycotting the Security Council and so were a bunch of their client states

like this when a Bush's master strokes was the Gulf War and it wasn't just a military operation executed with Prussian efficiency there was truly like a quorum of

civilized nations as it were, including the then still ex-exed Soviet Union. So, when things, what the hell in Yugoslavia, everybody, whether, you know, from Berlin to Paris to London to Tokyo, to Washington was, oh, well, this is a UN matter. We'll come to some sort of,

we'll come to some sort of, you know, solution there. And we'll get into that in a minute. But because, in my opinion, conceptually, even people don't realize they're doing it. And even that coterie of national leadership that was in place in 1991 globally, even the more sophisticated among them, they were still sort of drunk on their own rhetoric,

which for decades by that point had been derived from the judgment levied at Nuremberg. They still were operating according to this idea that, well, warfare has aggressors and victims. or, you know, it has people who strike first and people are defending themselves. So I think a genuine prejudice set in against the Chetnik cause for a lot of reasons. But initially, the claim was, oh, you know, the U.S. law of people's army, that's a Serbian, that's a Serbian military force and all but name. So when the U.S. Laugh National Army intervened in Slovenia, the claim was,

oh, this is an example of Serbia redentism, you know, and that's, that's what's causing all of this. And, of course, Newsweek, which in Time Magazine, and all these kind of print media outlets, which in those days, too, I mean, this is when legacy media was argued in Zenith.

They started running these stories about, you know, ethnic cleansing and mass rape in Bosnia. And the framing of the narrative was, well, this is all happening. happening because of Serbia redentism. You know, and Slobodam-Losevic is this mad dictator, and the only way he's hanging on to power is because he's

taken on a Chetnik guy's. None of which makes any sense. And for context, at the beginning of 1991, Yugoslavia, which still existed, it was a federation of six republics. It was Serbia, Croatia, Slovenia, Bosnia, Herzegovina,

Montenegro, and Macedonia. Plus, there's two autonomous provinces, Voscelina and Kosovo. The eight major ethnic populations that lived in those regions, they approximately correspond in the political divisions of the Federation, and this was by design. And in each region, each region could claim an ethnic concentration that corresponded to their national signifier, but there were deep minority populations in all of these loci.

Now, one big weakness in the narrative, I mean, there's many, okay, but one big weakness in the narrative of Serbs gone crazy is that not all Serbs lived in the geographic region arbitrarily designated Serbia. There were 600,000 Serbs lived in Croatia. The majority of these were urbanized, and it went so far as Tugeman, for all, I've got a lot of respect to Tujman, and for all of his sophistication. as a statesman, and he wasn't military veteran, but he was basically an academic. And he hung around, the Serbians he hung around were in Zagreb, or they were cosmopolitan types, you know, who we'd met in, like, university life. And there was, the urbanized Serbs in Zagreb, they had a symbiotic relationship with their Croatian neighbors.

Like, how much of this owed to the fact that they were the minority, and when you're a minority, you tow the line. That's an open-ended question. But there was even a portmanteau called Herbie, which it's a conflation of Hervati, which means Croats and Serbi,

which means Serbs. So this was like a thing. All right. But the core of kind of Serbian identity and patriotism in Croatia it was a rural was concentrated

in broad swaths of the countryside particularly in Kenin or Canine which is once for context in the medieval period that's like through like the Habsburg Europe that's where Croatian kings were coronated

okay it became a militant home of Serb nationalism okay it's very impoverished people's fortunes and outcomes are very limited even today. It's also on the path literally to Dalmatia, which is essential. It's a life's blood of Croatia and like the Balkans in general, okay, for obvious reasons.

You know, that's the ingress and egress to the Adriatic Sea. these rural Serbs really for the I mean they these were the guys who were then elderly and the descendants of guys who'd fought with you know then the hail of its Chetniks you know like they didn't suddenly become cosmopolins who wanted to live in some Croatian republic and Tugman now mind you he's a guy who came up through that Tito was the apparatus so it's not like he was like some arch-Ustash

or something and he wasn't a fascist despite what people claimed in Belgrade and what a lot of left wangers claimed in Germany and elsewhere. But he did draw upon a lot of Oostashe's symbols and he did say like we're not going to run from our, like, you know, from our

heritage in the independent state of Croatia. Pst, did you know? Those Black Friday deals everyone's talking about? They're right here at Beacon South Quarter. That designer's sofa you've been wanting. It's in Seoul, both concept and Rushbu War. The Dream Kitchen, check out at Cube Kitchens.

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okay serbs use Cyrillic and this isn't a small thing okay like even if you speak the same common language you know even a dialect that's pretty similar if suddenly if suddenly you go outside and like you know the government's not conducting business in an alphabet you can read you're going to feel pretty fucking marginalized. You know, and even beyond that, like symbolically, it,

it made the Serbs feel not just profoundly disrespected, but when you consider that an active war was on, you know, the Slovenes, as well as, as well as both the Bosnian cross and the Bosni acts, you know, the Bosnian Muslims, who in the next episode will get into their story a bit. if that's agreeable.

You know, they were looking around themselves saying, like, there's, there's, there's, there's, there's, there's, there's, there's, there's, hypothetical anymore. There's a shooting war going on between ethnic secessionists and a Uislav army, which at least at the general officer level is majoritarian serve. And Tujman now was saying that Croatia's a state, exclusively for the Croatian people, um, the only democracy that's valid. And Tuchman did run a, um, a democracy.

There were contested elections. That's an arguable. However, as a matter of constitutional mandate, you know, the newly independent of Croatia was exclusively Croatian. You know, and if you didn't identify that way, you better start. Otherwise, you know, you're not one of us. And they jump from that in the wake of a Rosson Creek, which has actually already jumped off, albeit in a different theater, but still. you know, local to where you live, you're going to realize that you could very well find yourself ethnically cleansed. And the guys pointing the banning it at you could be guys who you were totally at peace with, you know, a year ago or a month ago or a day ago, you know. And people think that's not possible.

Like even in America, obviously I'm not comparing the two situations, but like when the Floyd bullshit jumped off, that's right before I got off probation. like right before I got back on the internet and I was like I was living in this like ghetto YMCA that was like 80% black and I was like okay with those guys

but I realized like at the worst of it I'm like you know if things get like really bad like these guys aren't gonna be my friend you know like and it's I think most people don't think that way in this country and I mean I'm a minority here I mean thankfully not in my town

but in the municipality I'm like a minority of one but I mean so this idea that, oh, those people just went crazy, like, your neighbors wouldn't fucking whack you. Yeah, they would. I mean, like, even here, let alone in a place, things are bad enough. You know, I'm not saying people should be paranoid or something or, you know, order mac and cheese buckets from Alex Jones and, you know, pretend that a fucking apocalypse is coming. But this idea that, you know, politics can't turn on you because, oh, we, there was some kind of concord with my neighbors and they like me. Like, that's, all bits are off and, and, and, and, and, and a, in a, and a, in a,

Krieger or whatever equivalent is. You know, so that's, that's basically, that's basically what the perception was. In Yugoslavia, like a lot of the satellite states, you know, one of the reasons why East Berlin was so important to the Warsaw Pact, it wasn't just because that was, you know, the westernmost frontier, the communist world. It was because of the communists, especially because of their pretensions about, you know, the industrial proletariat

and the degree to which they relied upon these intellectual university types to kind of facilitate the program you know they they really it's like the countryside like didn't exist to them you know and even people like

Tujman even though in Yugoslavia I don't believe Titoism was ever a doctrine or kind of Marxist Leninism but it definitely the political culture definitely was similar in terms of it blind spots and these guys it's like even in a small country you know it's like it's like the countryside we know where you know 600,000 Serbs live you know who view life and the ethnic

situation the same way they did in 1941 it's like this didn't exist because like oh here in Zagreb you know we were all the same and our serb neighbors you know they might have funny customs to go to the wrong church but they can learn to be Croatian ha ha like there really is something to that and um you know that that really can't be overstated um you know the uh so it was basically in canine or kinine and um basically what became the secessionist kraina serve republic this is where the this is where the croats actually could not afford if there to be some kind of iridescent Serbian movement or some kind of mobilized chittinic response to

what Zagreb was doing. That's the last place they could afford this to happen. And that's absolutely where it did happen. And there's also going to be the toughest Serbs who live in Croatia. That's where they lived. You know, um, the,

uh, so in the first months at Tujamon's election, um, and again, I emphasize that Tudemann was elected. You're going to say, You know, it's kind of like, people have become less friendly to Croatia, the Croatia of history

in academic treatments, you know, now that we're like 30 years out. You know, they're increasingly casting Tudjaman as somebody dictator. I mean, the Croatian system of this day is a strongly presidential system, but Tujman was elected president in a normal election. You know, you can't, you can't,

just like you can't claim, you know, that like Russia is not a democracy. I mean, Croatia's a Democratic as any other country on Earth, okay? And it was in 1991, as it is today. You know, and the lead up to Tuchman's election, again, it was its academic university friends who not only ran his campaign and sort of integrated his platform and his optics into a modern media apparatus, of the kind that, you know, existed in the West. But these are the guys who were advising him on policy also.

You know, and what he needed, I mean, frankly, he needed the defectors from the U.S. I of National Army who knew the situation in the military apparatus, as it stood then, not 20 years ago. You know, he needed guys who could tell him what the situation was on the ground, you know, in the countryside. where, you know, when war came, I mean, that's not only where it's decided, but that's, that's what Croatia would have to capture in order to remain viable as a state. And there was also two, the local cadres that facilitated Tuchman's ascendancy. In contrast to the people who constituted his cabinet, a lot of these guys were probably

what would be viewed under normal conditions as extreme. You know, there were guys who for years or for decades in some cases that they were middle-aged, there were guys who'd basically been like carrying the torch of, of Croat nationalism, you know, inviting their time until the Titoist regime could be torn down.

These guys had a basic antipathy to serves. Like, they can't be denied. you know, so if your ground organization are basically guys who hate Serbs anyway, it doesn't matter what your control group is saying. It doesn't matter what Tujman, you know, playing Mellow Academic is talking about a conciliatory posture between populations. You know, I mean, it's not, it's not something. It's not something that's going to resolve in anything but a violent separation.

Now, I mean, again, like, nobody's an auger, and I think key political figures, even people who had a better understanding, or more realistic understanding of the situation, than perhaps Tuchemont himself did, they couldn't have foreseen the extent of the differences in, like, the degree of the division. and the kind of hostility just beneath the surface, like coming from both sides. And when Tuchman won the 1990 election, what he should have done, regardless of what he intended in terms of, you know, making the civic apparatus, you know, a truly national, democratically, exclusively, crud apparatus. Pst, did you know, those Black Friday deals everyone's talking about? They're right here at Beacon's South Quarter. That designer's sofa you've been wanting? It's in Seoul, Boe Concept and Rosh Bu Bois.

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Volkswagen Financial Services Ireland Limited. Trading is Cooper Financial Services is regulated by the Central Bank of Ireland. Like he absolutely should not have done anything provocative until it was clear where the cards were going to fall in terms of succession and what the response in Belgrade was going to be. But in the same time, too, this is a 2020 hindsight. And even in a relatively unfree country, which Croatia was not again, but even under conditions where an executive doesn't have to abide some sort of direct ballot mandate. I mean, every, every chief executive is bound by the tenor of the opinion in the body politic. You know, so, I mean, I, Tudemont wasn't part of being kind of carried on a current of, of zeitgeist, that probably was irrepressible. And there's also, I mean, there's always, there's always something of, I mean, as you know, because of where you live now, and

compared to the locale of your birth and upbringing, there's always some kind of disdain that the city has for the country. Like all these people, they're just simple fucking people. Like, they're passive, they're going to tolerate whatever we kind of put on them. Like, that's never the case.

You know, and particularly not when there's a tradition of partisanship that breaks down rigidly on ethnic lines. I mean, like there wasn't Croatia. But, you know, again, a lot of this, I think, is out of, I mean, I'm a Higelian, a lot of this is out of

hands. Um, you know, and it's also the, uh, one thing people did say at the time, and, you know, Tito himself was a Croat, and he successfully suppressed Serb-Croat enmity during the totality of his rule. But I mean, I think that's misguided too, man. I mean, one of the things is Tito, he derived his mandate not from the fact that Croats had served suddenly decided they love one another. It's because the genius of Tito was he found a way to keep both Uncle Sam and the Soviets out, you know, and I mean, even the most kind of sectarian-minded, ethnically chauvinistic-minded Croat or Serb

or Bosniak would realize that, you know, within this paradigm, you know, we stand together or we at least tolerate the situation as it is or we all die. You know, I don't think that's entirely fair. You know, and there was other things too. I mean, this was documented.

It wasn't just propping from Belgrade, like upon the ascendancy of upon a two time's election, there was like a mass demotion and termination as serbs from high and intermediate government positions. You know, literary Croat

literary Croatian. It had to be spoken in administrative positions of officialdom. It wasn't just the Western alphabet had to be used by everybody, but you were basically prohibited from speaking with a Serbian accent. I mean, that's stuff like that

as a flex you know I mean it doesn't um there's no other way to characterize it um and the um

the failed uh conflict resolution model again um I mean frankly uh however misguided

in terms of the assumptions people held in 1991 about the potentiality of a truly sort of a global collective security at least thank God it was that coterie

at Department of State and not this current crop of insane sinous and out and out mental sub-normals I can't even imagine what that would play out but the um the big believe it or not

the big question was on the UN General Assembly and the Security Council like is this an international conflict or is it a civil war? And that significance was key, okay? Because the United Nations misguided as it may have been, you know, philosophically to suggest that such a thing could be viable.

The charter was written with an eye for restraint in part because, you know, obviously Stalin's representatives had to be placated. And ironically, you know, as Yaqui pointed out again and again, I mean, it actually had the effect of imposing restraint upon Washington dominating the world and facilitating its social engineering regime and the office of the collective security. But the UN General Assembly, they had no grounds to vote a resolution on a civil war as regards, you know, sanctioning the party combatants or directly, or the, and, you know, UN security accounts led no grounds to intervene, you know, unless there was an international dimension to the conflict. You know, it would be suggested by people, one of the reasons why in the era everybody loved to bandied genocide and accused people he didn't like of permitting it.

This is arguably the genocide convention superseded the UN charter as a de jure grounds for intervention. If one accepts international law paradigms as legitimate. But obviously, in 1991, it wasn't credible to talk that way. I mean, it wasn't particularly in subsequent years, but you can't levy it. You can't levy an accusation of genocide within, like, ones to the onset of hostilities. Like, it'd obviously be a propaganda, glory. But, you know, Belgrade, which Belgrade at the time, it was, and really until the conclusion of us,

hostilities, the Serbians identified as the Union of, you know, the U.S. Lovian Union of Serbia and Montenegro. You know, they never claimed, like, oh, we are Serbia where, you know, we're creating, you know, like an ethno-national state of Serbians mirroring Tujman. They claim Yugoslavia is, you know, where the U.S. in government and secession is against the law. These people are engaged in, they're waging war on the sovereign government of Yugoslavia, you know, which is,

which is, which is, which is both illegal and as well as an internal affair. You know, um, and that was key. The, uh, until the end, the official position of Belgrade was that this is a civil war.

You know, and, Yugoslavia never ceased to exist, you know, and the people are claiming that it's a dead letter that Yugoslavia is kaput are fascists who have, you know, a racialized view of high politics. Like over dishonest that may have been, depending on your perspective, I mean, it was, you know, Serbia never succeeded. Serbia never claimed that the Yugoslavian constitution was null in void. that were we constituting as a Serb Republic. Crayina did constitute itself as the Republic of Serbia.

But, you know, this is important. It's not just legalese. It had real war and peace and tactfulness. But it's also the, I mean, the key shortcoming of the United Nations in executive terms. And aside from the fact, however much, philosophically, these things aren't viable. I mean, what, what, what, what, what, what, what, what, what, what, what, what, what, what, what, what, what, what, what, what, what, what, what, what, what, what, we're going to, what, what, what, the United States, um, been able to explicate how this works. And even in situations, like in Lebanon after 82, where the United

nation deploys. The United Nations deploy permissively because all party combatants allow it to deploy. You know what I mean? It's not, you know, you can't speak of international law when it's when categorically it can't be compulsory. So it's sort of paralysis set in, but it's also

there's a broader problem that we touched on in the first episode. If the UN had come out and said this is an international conflict, Just in absolute terms. It's not a civil war. You know, that would have, at this time, there was still a truly conciliatory posture

towards the Soviet Union, which was about to dissolve, albeit. But saying suddenly, this is Croatia versus Serbia, with Bosnia caught in the middle, and the Bosniaks kind of just trying to survive. It's like, well, Cole already immediately recognized the independent state of Croatia, you'd essentially be sowing the seeds of a wider ethnic conflict between Germany and Russia, like each backing their client regime, and a sort of

of a zero-sum paradigm developing. I think that was underway anyway, but again, you've got to put yourself in year 1991. You know, this wasn't accepted thinking. The idea, was that this is sort of a blip on the path to, you know, a global collective security arrangement. People are still seriously talking about the Bush Baker model of we're going to, we're going to total, the Soviet Union is going to totally disarm its strategic nuclear forces and draw down its conventional forces to bimer levels. And like, we're going to, we're going to, we're going to, we're going to, we're going to, we're going to withdraw from Germany and like, NATO basically isn't going to exist anymore. Like, this was the way people were thinking, not just. talking. So that's important to consider. You know, and again, the, if,

I think some of the, I think some of what was alleged in terms of ethnic cleansing and mass rape, it like organized, like, sexual violence, some of that was overstated. Some of it was not, okay? I'm reluctant to use the term war crimes because it's that bandied so much to the floating signifier has become meaningless but there is direct testimony

that I from you know NCOs and junior officers who were witness to these events and they had no reason to lie about it and every reason to deny it and I find that testimony persuades

and these weren't guys to themselves were under indictment you know and I think anybody doesn't believe those kinds of things happen in a ross and crees being naive. And I think everybody agrees that that kind of stuff is horrible. But again, it's like, what do you, it's never been clear with the people who claim that the UN should have, quote, done something. So, like, what do you do?

You know, you deploy the combined arms and assault the U.S. army. So, like, now you're at war with Serbia. Like, I don't know. You have this idea that somehow you can enter a combat zone, like an active conflict zone. you know, with combined arms and be like the police or something and people stop what they're doing. You know, like you just become a party combatant when you do that. You know, you're joining a gunfight that you didn't have to.

You know, and that's basically it. You know, it doesn't, there's not, there's not, there's not, there's not some equitable resolution because, oh, they represent the United Nations. You know, it's preposterous. Now, there was a claim, Bosnia-Herzegovina, which I think everybody will agree was on the receiving end of the worst excesses by all party combatants. Under Article 25 of the UN Charter, member states can vote to intervene. in a conflict zone where to not intervene would be inconsistent with the fundamental protection of human rights and things of this sort. The language is ambiguous, but the fact of the situation in Bosnia were arguably there was no majoritarian ethnos. And even if you disagreed with the idea that, you know, the Yugoslavian, the Balkan, the Third Balkan War was an international conflict.

obviously whatever government had could be said to exist in Bosnia's totally broken down that would have been the best case if you were going to rely upon United Nations legal rationales to intervene but again like what would

that force have been made up of you're going to send like the Bundesphere in there so he got like a German army you know marching in or the opposite of the UN saying oh but we're here you know to represent all nations you're going to have the Russians a piece of that you know again like the the degree to which

real politic emerged in earnest of a sort that was somewhat more complicated than during the Cold War just in terms of that kind of conflict diets potentially that were emergent like that can't be overstated too I mean so then it's some of you're left with like even if the political will is there

even if there's some sort of operational roadmap to resolve or you know to enforce a ceasefire like who do you deploy you're gonna get a bunch you're gonna get a bunch of like third world like

dealisters from like Ecuador or uh to you know to to police Bosnia I mean that's on some level um you know there was kind of a hard lesson

driven home about what a foolish move it was the destroy Europe and kind of like robbed its constituent states, the sovereignty. Because when something like this happens, like you need Hasbro-Empire to intervene, or you need a Germany

intervene, or you needed Germany and a Russia to intervene and kind of decide among themselves what sphere of influences. You know, people can say all they want. Like, well, that doesn't matter if we're talking about the rule of law. It absolutely does matter. You know, because like, the human

dimension always matters, and we're talking about human affairs. So, it was this kind of paralysis that just dragged on and Lawrence Eagleberger I'm actually more sympathetic to it than a lot of people I mean I'm more sympathetic to him as a man I mean he's dead now but

and as well I'm more sympathetic to him than a lot of the Holy Poloy say nasty things about him not unlike that Kissinger but he was under secretary of state for a time in the Bush 41 administration

he said immediately the onset of hostilities, look, you've got to let this conflict cycle punch itself out because if you intervene, you're just going to upset the balance, you're going to drag out hostilities. You know, and there isn't a solution. Basically, you know, the new Croatia and the new Serbia and whatever the fate of Bosnia, it's going to be decided on the battlefield. And obviously he was, you know, raked over the colds and media, like, oh, how dare you say? this, you're encouraging mass rape and genocide.

I mean, no, actually, exactly what Eagle River said, like, ended up happening in 91 and 95. America intervened the facilitated Operation Storm, which was the Croatian liberation of the Kriena, which, you know, was the belated victory in the homeland war for Croatia. But that was, that was only the, that was only, that was, America facilitated that by use of a PMC outfit called MPRI, which was incorporated essentially for that purpose, you know, for an operation in Croatia. which is very interesting and in the final episode we'll get into that but basically

you know for all the talk about what Evoberger was saying was was horrifically callous I mean that what it came down to was what resolved the conflict the 91-995 conflict cycle was exactly what he said you know the party combatants exhausted

their ability to wage war. And battlefield victory in Crayina, albeit with you know, American assistance is what resolved for all time. The disputed,

or the contested objective that was Criena. I hope people will back off a bit. I'm saying that I hate Serbs or I'm saying bad things about them or that I've got got some conceptual bias and favor for Asia.

We should talk a little bit of sloping down. I mean, it's in a lot of people's lifetimes. Yeah, and I understand why if I was a Serbian and I was in America or the UK, like I feel very much like a population designated for hostility. You know, I understand that completely. Okay, but um I don't think people... One of the reason I focus so much on the Third Reich is because

the international system and the entire sort of conceptual horizon that's been crafted around World War II, you've got to deal with the Third Reich as sort of like the primary, like, agent, like in that narrative. Okay?

So I'm not just like fixated on these things. At a smaller scale, if you're talking about the Yugoslavian wars or what you know the um the third Balkan war

at least the 91 95 phase that led to the creation of an independent Croatia like you've got to deal with the Croatian political culture and what and basically you know what the West's view of Croatia was and what Tuchman was doing

that's what was the dispositive variable okay so I begin with discussing their Croatian situation. Also, because Croats are like German adjacent and thus like Western adjacent, I frankly know more about them than I do Serbians, but

in my defense, again, what was happening in Zagreb and it wasn't the sole proximate cause of the conflict, but it was the essential cause, okay? What Croatia did,

decided the course of the war and the ultimately became the political resolution like where like when the shootings stopped you know the the frontiers were established and accepted it wasn't what Slovenia or Macedonia was doing it wasn't what the Bosniaks were doing like those things had the impact but again like that's why so um I mean I would have dealt with the Serbian perspective anyway but I thought it was especially imperative um do so for for that reason. But, um, Milosevic himself,

I mean, again, he was, it was a career communist separat chick. He rose to a general secretary position or equivalent around 1987. And actually, the late Reagan administration looked at him as their guy.

Like he was going to be like this big liberalizer. Like he was basically like you, he was supposed to be like the Yugoslavia and Gorbachev. Okay. Um, that's one of the ways he got swept into power was able to consolidate his authority

the way that he did. You know, like, so this, like, this kind of, this ex post facto rationalization, you know, that really began in earnest in 91 and kind of just went, became totally irrational and punitive during the Clinton regime. That Volosevic is like this madman like Chetnik.

Like, that's completely at odds with reality and history. Like, the, he, he, he, he, he, he, he, he, he, he, he was this big like liberal moderate that's how he enjoyed the kind of patronage that he did. And honestly, you know, Milosovich's fall from grace and power

within his own country. Kostunisha was elected president on October 5, 2000. And part of the big reason why Kostunica or Kostunichia forgive me if I'm

picturing the pronunciation one of the big reasons why he was able to break through is because he was a Serb nationalist and Milosevic, the big criticism of Milosevic within Serbia was he turned his back on the Serbian refugees he didn't care about our people

you know, he didn't fight hard enough for the coast of our Serbs you know like he wasn't this big Chetnik, you know, like he was basically pragmatic and um this claim that, you know, most of the grossest excesses, wherever one falls in their sympathy or background

or whatever, I don't think anyone would disagree that the worst excesses carried out by all party combatants took place in Bosnia. Okay. And the idea that from Belgrade, Milosevic was somehow directing, like, the Bosnian Serbs to do his bidding. Like, it's just not, I mean, it's not the way command authority works in a modern state. But it's also, like, like, Like the Bosnian stirs might as well have been in a different country. Okay. Like, I'm not saying that, you know, the, the affinity that their co-ethics had for them was misplaced. I'm not saying that at all.

Like, it was not misplaced. But the point is, it was almost, it was a totally, it was a totally different socio-political political situation. You know, like it'd be, um, it'd be, it'd be like saying like Jefferson Davis was, like, was ordering buddy Bill Anderson to do things. I mean, that's like, it sounds asinine, but the claim that I just raised is as asinine, and people accepted this as, oh, Volosovich's as a bad guy. And, like, again, I think, I think something that's just like, you know, the propaganda being distilled down into the most kind of idiot's caricature of reality. But it's also, you know, the problem with assigning legalist, legalisms,

and legalism legalist paradigms and legalisms the high politics as was done at Nuremberg is it creates these perverse sort of narratives where there's there's command authorities who are bad actors

you know and they're the proximate cause of conflict and everybody within that chain of command is accountable to this bad actor like this is just not reality you know the I guarantee you

that some of them was hardened Shetniks in Krayna and in Bosnia and probably never even heard most of it speak in their lives like even on the radio you know like he had nothing to do with their conceptual horizon other than he was

like this remote like boss who in Delgrade who yeah we like that he's Serbian but other than that you know it's ridiculous you know um and it's also too I mean basically if you look at the model

Serbian state under Milosevic and now and you look at the modern Croatian state under Tudjman and now like basically everything they're suggested to be this kind of like a horrible undemocratic feature of Serbia or what they called Yugoslavia after the secession of Croatia and Slovenia I mean those are basically features common into Croatia, you know, there's what we would consider a basically chauvinist, you know, nationalism

that, you know, characterized the party politics. There's a basic, this trust of pluralism and casting candidates who talked about, like, you know, a multi-ethnic Croatia were

viewed as traitors. You know, bad relations with the West, and admittedly they had more to do with what the West was doing than what Serbia and Croatia were doing. But, you know, consistent economic stagnation, you know, reliance on subsidies and, you know, a handful of kind of key, like, national industries. I mean, this is like everything they say about Serbia, like, being dysfunctional is like a mirror image of the reality in Croatia. So, I mean, there's that, too. Like, I, I mean, I'm not saying it to be punitive.

I got, I think the Croatans serves are both great people. and I respect the fact that they've resisted, you know, the social engineering regime as staunch as they have. But you can't cast Serbia in this light but say, oh, but Croatia's not like that, because they're basically mirrors of each other, like, structurally. You know, and frankly, Tujman, he was a lot different than Milosevic, like, in terms of his character and in terms of, like his background, like we talked about in the first episode. but he in terms of he was no more autocratic than Milosevic was like arguably I mean Tujman once the war kicked off

I yes Tudemann was elected yes there were fair elections in Croatia but I don't think he could have been removed like during us you know the state of active war okay arguably he was like more like Milosvich was more susceptible you know to like removal

by due process than Tudemann was so there's that too like you can't this attempt to like other like the Serbians is bullshit. Okay. And I mean I thought that I conveyed that clearly in our previous discussions, but because

apparently I didn't, I wanted our Serbian or Orthodox friends to know that I take that very seriously. And I'm not disdaining them or their considerations. But it's also, too, one of the reasons why Milosevic, in his favor, one of the reasons why

he enjoyed the the incumbent seated for 13 years. You know, like, he did implement a market economy in a way that didn't completely crash the country, you know, unlike Yeltsin, for example. He did tolerate multi-party elections. I mean, admittedly, like, the political culture was exclusively, you know, kind of like Serb-centric. But, I mean, again, that's appropriate in a national democracy.

there was an actual opposition. You know, they did have media access. I mean, this wasn't like all the kind of poll stars that these NGO types claim, like, constitute, you know, like a democratic state we approve of, like he met those. Okay, I mean, Serbia is a hell of a lot more free than Israel is. I'll tell you that much. I mean, if that's, you know, if that's any, if that's the Metro.

you know, you can't, you can't claim that it was, it was like Saddam's Iraq or, or like, it was this dictatorship or something. You know, I mean, it basically, one of the reasons why, again, like Reagan's people and then Bush's people, initially, Milosevic was their guy. It's because he was basically doing, he was basically acting like a, like a post-communist, the, like, European politician is supposed to act. You know, um, so this, the, the fact. fact he was hailed into the hague. You know, I think, but, you know, he, he, he died when he was on trial, and I, but I, I thought he acquitted himself very honorably. You know, I, like, well, and we'll get into that in the, um, in the bookend episode.

Um, I think, uh, it's about all I got for today. Like, frankly, I, I don't mean to be a, I don't mean to be a, uh, uh, and F-A or P-H-A-G-D-O-T, but I'm in a lot of pain right now. No problem. Go ahead, I'm sorry. Yeah, no problem at all. Just hit up whatever you want to promote, and, yeah, we'll get out of here. Oh, that's great. Thank you, Pete.

You can find me on SubstacREAL-Thomas-777.com. I'm having a report, too, Anilipil Publishing. They're dear friends of mine, and they publish some really incredible books. and I hope to pose with them in the future. But I'm participating in their creators program whereby if you enter my code when you order from Anilop Press, regardless of the size of the order, you get 5% off.

The code is lowercase, 3, T-H-R-E-E, 7 S-E-V-E-N number 5. And not only you get 5% off, but like I get a kickback from that too that helps my brand, so just keep that in mind. You can find all the info on the substack. I posted up a little piece about it. You can find me on Twitter

at Real, capital, R-E-A-L-R-E-A-L-U-S-S-7777. You can always find me on my website. site, it's Thomas 777.com. That's number seven, H-1AS, 777.com. You can find me on YouTube at Thomas TV, number seven, HMAS TV. I'm uploading some videos I shoot, just kind of like out and about and with some of the people I talk to and things. So that's going to, I'm hoping that's going to pop a little more as I upload more stuff, but that's what I got. All right, until the next time. Thank you.