The Pete Quiñones Show - Episode 1024: The 1990's Balkan Wars - The Finale - w/ Thomas777

Episode Date: March 10, 2024

55 MinutesPG-13Thomas777 is a revisionist historian and a fiction writer.Thomas joins Pete to conclude a short series on the 1990s Balkan Wars. Thomas talks about the fallout and legacy of the conflict.Thomas' SubstackThomas' Book "Steelstorm Pt. 1"Thomas' Book "Steelstorm Pt. 2"Thomas on TwitterThomas' CashApp - $7homas777VIP Summit 3-Truth To Freedom - Autonomy w/ Richard GroveSupport 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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I want to welcome everyone back to the Pekanino show. Thomas is here, and it looks like we're going to finish up the Balkans today. How are you doing, Thomas? I'm doing well. Thanks for hosting me. The degree to which the Balkan wars, particularly the policy decisions that were rendered, which led to how battlefield situations resolved. The degree to which that set in motion a series of things

that impact the present day really can't be overstated. And the paradigm shifts from... I mean, unfortunately, really for everybody, for the world. I'm not trying to sound melodramatic or corny.

It's really unfortunate that... I mean, it's unfortunate that Bill Clinton being president for all kinds of reasons. But, you know, this, the kind of poisoning of relations with Russia began the minute he took the oath of office. And the kind of paradigm shift towards this sort of, you know, this sort of like naked, illogic and strategic questions began with his administration. Now, I know rebuttal that people will assert to that as well, you know, Bush 41, his administration wasn't

doing anything in Bosnia other than slapping an embargo on the battle space. Okay, but I mean, that was the view of Midorand as well. You know, everybody, except Helmut Cole, immediately recognized Croatia. Like I said, I actually think that was the correct play. Because, among other things he was trying to situate the Bundes Republic such that it could assert its own sovereignty again moving forward which unfortunately did not happen but this idea that Clinton did the right thing by picking aside

in a Ross and Krieg I mean that's assamine okay I mean from Cole's perspective Germany stands with Croatia first last and always like mine own some of these are with the Croats but look at how this appeared to the rest of the world and I'll get into, I'll quote some of the actual statements from, you know,

where we were issued by people in the control group and Department of State. You've got quite literally a race war, like an ethnic conflict. You've got the Clay Administration arbitrarily declaring the croats of the good guys under attack and somehow every decision they make

as this like unbiased neutral arbiter kind of comes down against the Russians and the Serbs. I mean, like, people see through that. That's very transparent, okay? Now, if you're going to pursue that course, while insisting that, you know, you represent the community of nations

in, you know, the post-national landscape, you know, you're really, that's not going to buy you anything other than kind of a permanent enmity with the Russians. and it also didn't make any sense. If people remember Wesley Clark, who thankfully is, you know, nobody even remembers him. He's the fool who tried to start a war with the Russians at Pristina Airport, and this British

three-star or equivalent was like, no, I'm not going to actually get that order, you know, basically fuck you. He was prone to these like sweeping statements, like, that the age of nationalism is over and we can no longer tolerate ethnically pure, homogenous states. So while you're saying that you're basically arming and equipping the cross to ethnically cleanse the entirety of territory under their dominion. I mean, like, how does this look to everybody else? Now, like, I'm not even saying, too, that when you proceed on a policy decision, particularly a war and peace decision,

you should take a public opinion poll to planet. But if you're holding yourself out as, you know, kind of the indispensable, nation, yet every single decision you make singles out, you know, Russia and its adjacent states, not just for opprobrium, but for actual battlefield consequences with them down range of your proxies ammo. I mean, that's, you can't proceed like that as in the role that America assigned itself after the wall came down. And the agreement, the agreement, the agreement, agreement with the USSR, which still existed as, you know, as these things are being decided, was that NATO doesn't move one inch eastward and that America basically disarms Congresses

demands on the Soviet Union. Now, I know people say, well, that wasn't on paper. They're missing the point. Okay. It's a matter of good faith. All right. and in war and peace terms there's got to be reciprocity okay um and nobody has to like the russians if people get off on hating the russians i mean i i don't care but you don't get to declare that you know Putin is a is a is a crazed madman and the russians are the enemies of global peace just because they they don't fancy you know being down a range of of american and ukrainian arms i mean that's that's not all things work. It's not workable. I make the point again and again,

and we'll get into the bogg in a minute. However much, like, how we're despicable, I would find the policy of America deciding it was going to tear Russia apart and try and rework, reconfigure, you know,

the world outside of its current dominion in its own image. But if you're going to do that, you've got to have a certain will to do that and you got to have the forces in being to do that. Like America has none of those things. You know, so it's like this, it's this kind of like non-policy of provoking conflict, dragging those conflicts out as long as possible,

lacking both the will and the forces and being to bring those conflicts to resolution, and then streaking that Russia is evil because this conflict isn't resolving the way we want it to. I mean, that's, that's patently harassed. and it kind of maximizes human misery with a minimum of actual returns, you know, and that's why I'm constantly saying to people who thankfully are becoming a shrill minority who defend the indefensible and going to bat for these like gangster regimes like Ukraine. You know, I mean, I don't, it's not a defensible policy. You know, it's an order of saying that you support Nambla. I mean, I mean, because people can, like, defend where the fuck they want.

But, you know, it's not, it's not something that, it's not something that sensible or sane people would get behind. You know, and there's something profoundly distasteful about it. But, taking us back to the subject at hand, the way to really understand the U.S. perspective as the Bush administration, me, and the Clinton administration, Peter Galbraith, he was the U.S. ambassador of the newly independent Croatia. His official statement was, quote, I think it's important as we look back on the Croatian war. I would call it the Croatian War of Independence, that this is a war, first a war for independence, but also a war of self-defense. Croatia was attacked by the Yugoslav army and the Serbs of control 30% of Croatia's territory in the Krainia and eastern Slovenia, were supported paid for and put in position by what had become a foreign country, namely Serbia.

this is what he said in 2019. Now it's like basically he's playing lawyer ball there. And again, my sympathy is with the Croats, but the fact of crisis independence, I could make the same case by saying, well, the Confederate States of America or an independent country. You know, the union was then a foreign country attacking them. That's not how we characterize things

in terms of what constitutes an international act of aggression. Okay, I think that's clear. Okay, like number two, again, these Clinton administration people, these were the same people who are declaring that things like national borders are meaningless and that if you control your immigration, you're racist. Yet somehow Croatia is an absolute right

to expel anybody they want to based on immutable traits from their newly declared independent state so long as those people are arguably the proxies of Russia. I mean, what's going on here is clear. I mean, maybe go over there's just an idiot. I mean, that's possible, too. but I speculate because he came of age in the decades preceding the kind of current idiocracy. I speculate he was just a very dishonest man, and apparently he remains one in old age.

So I'm going to get into today, too, and I realize I'm jumping around a lot, but I'm hoping to tie this together by the end of our discussion. We haven't really gotten into the case of the Bosniaks, okay, you know, the Bosnian Muslims. So far in this series, all we've discussed with respect to them is that, that during the NDH era in World War II, Pavolich, who had lived among these people as a boy and a young man, really kind of cultivated them, going so far as to declare Islam to be the second state religion of the NDH. And they were very much adjacent to the Croatian majority. nothing like this happened in the 91 to 95 war.

And in fact, the Crocs and the Bosniaks, a very bloody conflict broke out between them, like a war within a war, from 92 to 94. Now, how that happened, Tujman, as we've talked about, who I think in a lot of ways was a great man. And despite the fact that he'd been a general officer of the Yugoslav army, there was something somewhat unworldly about him. He was very much an academic. He was a political theory guy, okay? I don't think he realized the significance of these kinds of ascendant identities after the inter-termian border collapsed. I don't really think you understood the state of Islam at that time.

And the Bosniaks, and I'm not trashing Serbs here, they were on the receiving end of some pretty horrific stuff in contested battle spaces. Okay, and Serbs were too. But the Bosniaks were coming out on the losing end of a lot of that, okay? Now, Tujman in 92, after the Serbs had established what they called the Serb Republic Crina, which was basically a rump state in what had been Croat majority territory in the Second World War, at which the Croat were still asserting a sovereign right to hold dominion over.

but this was basically the Serbian minority within what is now Croatia had established itself as a rump state within there by fighting off the nascent Croatian army and establishing its own forces in being. Okay, Tuzman at that point, the Croatian army had a real problem. They could probably fight off a general assault on the territory they held, but they were in no position to wage offensive operations. and the Croats in Bosnia-Herzegovina were under increasing military pressure. Okay, they were saying to Zonreb, what the fuck are you doing? Why are you helping us? Okay, so Tuchman was in a very difficult position. He sat down with Milosevic, okay, and Karadzic. Ravidon Karadz. Okay, he was the de facto chief executive of the Serb Republic Kroenum.

And they started basically dividing up like who would get what in Bosnia or Herzegovina. Okay. And this would have required population transfers. Okay. The Bosniaks were basically left out of this, like as if they were just, they didn't exist. Okay. So they looked at themselves as increasingly, now mind you, Croats who lived in mixed areas with Bosniaks tended to have a, if not an affinity, a basic peaceable concord with them. those who did not increasingly began to look at them as the enemy. One of the reasons why, men began streaming into Bosnia, who became known as the Bosniak Mushahaddin. These men mostly came from Yemen, Saudi Arabia, Iran.

A lot of them were affiliated with al-Qaeda, and they cut their combat teeth fighting the Red Army. Now, what these guys did was they started defending Islamic areas, and they'd had military experience, so they knew how to do that at like at least platoon level. But they were Arab, they were Iranian, they were Azeri. You know, obviously the Iranians among them were part of the senior minority there. But these guys weren't, they weren't Bosniaks.

But they said, and they, but so they basically became like everybody killers, if that makes any sense. Okay. And the way they put it to the Muslims was look like when, you know, when, when the Serbs and the Croats, like, figure out how this map's going to divided up, literally is going to slaughter you. You know, like you need to return to Islam, you know, like this is your identity, like fuck whatever they're up on. You know, you're not racially Croatian, you're not, none of that. And people were receptive to this. You know, there was a real Islamic awakening kind of like worldwide at that point. Okay. So even when Croas under arms met some of these Bosni acts in these contested territories of Bosnia-Herzegovina,

even if before then there hadn't been anybody like you better believe now there was incidentally the flight seven two of the flight 77 hijackers in 9-11 um they they were guys they were they'd been Bosniak at Kumusha adine okay so I mean this was really

this was a little I'd say after other than obviously the fight in Afghanistan against the Red Army I'd say the Al Qaeda's like biggest like proxy victory that they participated in was um was the Bosnian war and for context

there was absolutely foreign fighters on the Croat side and on the Serbian side. But on the Croat side, like these guys were Germans, they were Austrians, they were Swedes. On the Serbian side, they were Greeks, they were Russians. There was like a racial affinity and often a linguistic one. You know, like these Mujahideen guys, they were able to develop an affinity with the people they were to help based on sectarian matters, but everybody else there, They were total aliens to them and vice versa. And I'm confident that added to the kind of violent enmity, okay?

Because why the hell these Mujahideen were basically, they were holy warriors on tour. Like, why would they care about, you know, the legacy they left with these served or Croats? And vice versa, they served in Croats are like, who are these like brown people talking about Islam? You know, fuck them. 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

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Central Bank of Ireland. You know, ultimately the way it resolved, and there's still some bad blood, the Croats have with the State Department. Basically, the Washington Agreement demanded, and we'll discuss what the Croats got in return for their cooperation. The Washington agreement laid down basically, it basically nullified any. any nascent or in development treaty between Belgrade and Zagreb on the status of Bosnia

and it was it it it guaranteed the religious freedom of Bosniaks indigenous to the Bosnia and Herzegovina and Herzegovina. Okay and looking ahead

the the Pentagon realized as well as the Croatian high command realized they needed to be they needed tactical cooperation with the Bosniaks in order to accomplish what they wanted to operationally.

And what they culminated in was called Operation Storm. And we'll get into that in a minute. And that too, not just in political terms, but in operational terms, that set the tenor really for how worse were waged moving forward in the 21st century, in the 21st century. The 20th century came to a close.

what do I mean by that? Give me one second. Now, the goal always, again, of like in 1991, or Croatia declared independence, the language invoked, you know, like we talked about, like the Bush administration basically said nothing, okay, other than the fact they made it clear that they were not happy

with Berlin's facilitating its assentenance of legitimacy through its formal recognition. But the language of the Clinton administration was very Wilsonian. Okay. Like I just studied Galbraith. You know, he basically resorted to lawyer ball and talked about self-determination. But again, I mean, they were talking out of both sides of their mouth. But be as it may, what was clear was clearly the strategic objective. was an independent Croatia

that would basically be poisoned neutralized any irredentist-Serbian ambition, which in Washington's view is always some kind of Russian ambition by proxy in the Balkans and beyond. Now,

even though Croatia after as of spring 92, it had formal independence but again um the serb republic kriena not only was at this kind of rump state within um Croatia that poised you know like a a strategic challenge to croesus continued existence but it the korea the republics of serbian kriena was able to dominate dalmatia

directly and um that's basically krasa's life's blood okay so the uh it was basically only a matter a time before the Serbians decided to close the noose on the proverbial neck of this independent Croatia. Okay, and that the Clinton administration base went into high gear to prevent that. What this culminated

in was on August 4th, 1995 after you know, almost four years of a of you know, not, of only intermittent, low intensity,

hostilities in Croatia proper. There was this mass offensive of the Croatian army backed up by Bosniac elements who'd been mobilized into the army of Bosnia and Herzegovina. And this was the largest military operation of European soil up to that time since 1990. And it was a true combined arms assault, you know, like close air support, like armor, the whole shot. Okay. So this begs the question as to how this was accomplished, okay? And the answer to that is MPRI, military personnel and resources incorporated. MPRI was really Blackwater before there was blackwater, but in my opinion, they, I mean, I know people have mixed feelings about

Eric Prince, and I'm sure he's very good at what he does in terms of, you know, organizing military operations that suit his clients needs that can be carried out effectively. But the guy has weird politics. I don't think that can be denied. Those who don't believe me, the scale book just called Blackwater, I realize scale's got some of his own conceptual biases, but Prince is a weird guy, okay? and he's his view of he's not a neocon

he's a neocon adjacent excuse me and that colors a lot of his views in the Islamic world and things and PRI in my opinion was a lot more kind of grounded in real polity it was based in Alexandria Virginia its president and CTO

was General Blanche Craddock um and the president was Blanche Craddock The CEO was Carl Vono. General William F. Kernan was another, like, heavy hitter of the Cold War, Land War establishment. These guys were heavy hitters, okay? NPRI was commissioned to, after the Washington Agreement, which, you know, again, brought this concord between the Bosniaks and the Croats. they're commissioned to take on training and preparation of the Croatian army, okay?

There was an NGO and a slush fund was incorporated called the Democracy Transition Assistance Program. This brought up this series of complexes in Zagreb. It would have been the Petars Rinsky Military School. Okay, so basically you had the force of American private. equity with, you know, kind of of Cold War military talent and the guys who planned to fight Warsaw Pact to the folded gap, you know,

coalescing to basically put the Croats and the Bosniaks, but mainly the Croats, so they were the lead element into fighting shape. Okay. And I'll say this too. The Croats are, they've got a reputation as a martial race, okay? The Vermeck thought so,

Adolf Hitler himself thought so, Frederick the second thought, so this goes back to the 30 years war. I guarantee you that a lot of these army brass were kind of like, we're kind of salivating, like, okay, this is a perfect, this is a perfect sort of like what the Germans called mentioned material element to sort of like test out. You know, if you want, if you're going to like a perfect test subject to say we're going to throw all the tech and training we can at these guys, you know, and apply all of our revolution in military affairs doctrine to actually fight a Warsaw Pact element and see what develops. you cannot ask for like kind of more perfect variables within the bound of rationality

we're trying to accomplish. Okay, and knowing the way that military guys think, I guarantee you that was part of it. There was a book and actually a pretty objective book on PMCs. It's a bit dated now, but it's called the Market for Force. The Consequences of Providing Security.

It's by this lady academic named Deborah Evans. And then she pointed out, I didn't know this before, but Jason NPRI was a French Foreign Legion organized training camp near Zadar in Croatia. And that's really interesting, too. Because the French Foreign Legion, they've remained relevant in kind of the post-Cold War era in a way that people would not have thought. You know, they kind of took their wealth and military knowledge and experience. They kind of repurposed it for an increasingly kind of privatized and, like, fluid like national security and landscape. It's really interesting. But in any event, the way

Washington deflected criticism of this, like now it kind of goes without saying there's going to be some sort of private military contract or security element engaged in a, in a, in a, you know, any war where there was, you know, like real, um, where there's real, like, strategic stakes involved, okay, particularly where there's United States, Russia, Turkey, you know, China or, or any constellation of those powers are involved. But in the 1990s, this still was highly controversial. The Journal of the U.S. Army War College, after analyzing Operation Storm, we'll get into how this resolved in the battlefield in a minute. They claimed that, well, you know, there was no meaningful impact on the resolution of combat and Operation Storm based on, you know,

the kind of knowledge supposedly conveyed by NPRI to the Croat forces that's completely dishonest or it's characterizing it the wrong way, okay? Like the issue was NPRI was teaching these guys those of whom had experience at NCO an officer level in the Yugoslav

National Army, which was a Warsaw Pact Army, okay, and all but name. Okay, um, they, they were, they, the aim was to break them of bad habits and habituate them to modern command and control

and essentially kind of like bring the Croats back and like the fold of the Western way of war and they absolutely did that, okay? The issue wasn't was NPRI, you know, like literally like, you know, dictating them with the order of battle would be and, you know, how in operational terms elements would be, you know, like actually deployed and a stop four.

I mean, that's not the way things work anyway. And PRI also, they began training the army of the Federation of Bosnia and Herzegovina. Around the time the Dayton Accords were being hashed out. Obviously, so I mean, obviously, I mean, again, that's a rebuttal to whatever the World College says. Because if they hadn't, if NPR had been credited with success, there, they would not have gotten this kind of grant, particularly because, again, at that time, there was real stakes involved, and despite the kind of foolishness of the Clinton administration, you still had some people in the Pentagon who understood how to prioritize these things.

But be as it may. Oversion Storm August 4th, 1995, the Croatian Army, they attacked across the 390-mile front against the against the the Republic of Serbian Crayna they were supported the Croatian army was supported by the Croatian

special police which is their special forces elements and to this day their their divisional insignia it's like the sword with the flash just like army special forces that's what they are okay they advanced from the Vellipant Mountains and the army of Bosnia and Herzegovina

assaulted across what had become called the Bihak pocket and the army of the of Serbia Crane is rear okay so this is basically like hammer and anvil kind of stuff the objective was 4,000 square miles the territory representing 18.4%.

But the total territory claimed by the Serb Republic of Ukraine. The remainder was obviously to be seated, perhaps not obviously, but the remainder was to be seated to Bosnia control in Western Bosnia. Yeah. Within 72 hours, the operation was declared complete, which is incredible, frankly. There was pockets of resistance remained until August 14th. But this changed everything. Okay, I mean, yeah, the Gulf War changed a lot of things, but the Gulf War was the kind of conditions that, like basically what happened to the Gulf War almost never. ever happens. Okay. Um, what's normal for warfare. I mean, every, all combat is different,

but it's all the same too. But, uh, the size of the front, that's, you know, the, the, um, the quality and, um, scale of arms, um, the, uh, the level of training and, um, experience, uh, the forces involved. Um, Auburgeon Storm was, like, textbook for like 21st century warfare okay they can't be denied i stand by that i mean guys who've got experienced down range i don't think they disagree with me but if they did i mean that's fine i still stand by that okay now for context what was serbian kriena they were a very game force okay this has got to be they were very very tough i mean the serbs are a tough people i mean they're they're as hard as the croasians are they're a martial race in their own right that's one of the

reasons why the Russians are consider them to be so essentially adjacent. It's not just cultural and sectarian. There's so much rugby on sports extra from Sky. They've asked me to read the whole lad at the same speed I usually use for the legal bit at the end. Here goes. This winter sports extra is jam-packed with rugby.

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It's basically it's the kind of sociological infrastructure of it ossifying. In August 1990, an actual insurgency kicked off. known as the log revolution. I don't know why. And I've tried to find data as like why it was branded that and I have not. Basically

the serve majority areas in the Dalmatian hinterland, specifically around Canin, but as well as in parts of Lika, Cordon, and Bonavio, or Benovina. As well as settlements in eastern Croatia with significant Serb minorities.

They basically began to form like, you know, even though they got no recognition from anybody internationally, but they began to form proto-states, okay, and they began small-scale, ethnically cleansing of small-scale ethnic cleansing of non-Serbians.

Okay. Obviously this formally escalated in March 1991 when the Croatian War of Independence kicked off, but what became the Republic of Serbia Ecrina was arguably already in existence. Okay. It got assistance in the form of manned material arms from Belgrade, you know, after the formal onset of hostilities and probably even before then. But this was an organic development,

okay? And the fact that the fact they got knocked out fast doesn't tell you anything. Modern warfare results rapidly these days. You know, this was very, this was very, very tough. These are very, very tough people to defeat and eject, okay? And they definitely, the Croats definitely paid for it dearly, okay? The, what basically drew international attention, and again, this isn't, I'm not tracking the Serbs here, the, the, the Bosniak Mujahideen, although they very much run the receiving end of a lot of the worst of things. I mean, they carried out terrorist acts, the Croats in their own right. I mean, they carried out tiff-for-tat massacres and ethnic cleansing operations. But I'm saying this rightly or wrongly, what brought world attention to the situation in the Republic of Serbia, Kriana, was a fairly large-scale ethnic cleansing operation against corrupt civilians.

by around summer in 1991, around 84,000 Croats had fled, had fled Serbian territory. Now, why they did that, whether they were at the build of a gun, whether it was because they realized an unfriendly regime was emergent, whether they were in fear for their lives, that's not important for purposes. This mass movement of population is what created the narrative of, oh, the Serbs are ethnically cleansing. the territory is another dominion and obviously they're doing this because they're a Russian proxy but of course to categorically no matter

what the State Department was saying a Croatian victory would entail and did entail that sort of activity and kind okay so it's not you know you can't you can't really villainize the serves as well saying that oh but you know it's different when

you know this occurred reciprocally there were not good guys and bad guys in this conflict, which is, you know, the fact the fact that Clinton administration insisted on characterizing it that way, I think that was the beginning of America like forfeiting any credibility it had as like an arbiter of war and peace in the post-Cold War Landscape. Like I really, I really believe that. Like at the time, it jumped out at me. Like, what, like, what is this? You know, and it's, I was still a, I was still a young person. I didn't, I didn't

have a particularly developed sense of things as I do now, but I think it was obvious to anybody. But the news that was coming out of there at the time was the stories were all over the place. You just didn't know what to believe. Was that just because of the amount of NGOs and, I mean, all these interests that had just just insinuated themselves into there that were just spewing their own kind of propaganda to get their own way. I mean, it was impossible. I spoke to some guys who were quote-unquote peacekeepers there to get some, to find out a little bit more at the time. But the, it just seemed like everything was, that was like the beginning of you didn't know what the news was reporting.

No, that's true. And there was also, there was some, you know, this was the very, very early 90s when this first jumped off. And part of it was deliberate disinformation, as well as NGO, is kind of putting their own narrative out there. But it's also, you know, like I just said, regardless of how anyone feels what the Bosnia cause or whatever, or whatever, or whatever, you literally had Al-Qaeda showing up there,

radicalizing people, becoming a meaningful combat element. And, like, the U.S. State Department's basically, like, doesn't even know anything about these people. You know, it's like they didn't exist. It's like, oh, so the Serbs and the Croats are dividing up Bosnia, and there's just these other people there. It's like, well, I mean, it's like, what kind of intelligence are you getting? You know, like it didn't, like, that didn't make any sense that, you know, like I said, in Tugman's side, I think Tudgman was in a terrible position. And I think he was a great man.

I'm not trashing him. I don't think he was just saying, like, oh, fuck these people, like, I'll throw him to the wolves. I think he didn't know what to do. But on the side of supposedly these, like, American and UK type, who were like, oh, we're going to find some kind of balanced solution here. It's like, it was just, there was just like raw ignorance. You know, it's like the Bosnia X, just like these other people who are kind of Muslim, but we don't really know about them.

Like, it's like, well, you know, they're a third of the population you're dealing with, man. Like, you better end of, and battle-hardened men who are prone to terrorist activity or streaming in there. Like, maybe this is relevant. You know, it's, um, I think, uh, I think that was part of it. And the Russians, like, if, if Russia was not, literally falling apart at the time, the Serbs would not have gotten treated as badly as they did. In actual terms, with their people being dragged before these kangaroo courts,

and the court of world opinion, with them just being kind of burned and effigy as bad guys. You know, like, this was a mess, and there was concern that after Cole, after Cole Cole's move when Germany was solidly behind Croatia, you know, this was also when unification was underway. You know, people were like, okay, what if Germany suddenly decides, like,

we're going to deploy to help our friends. You know, now you got like a German army, like running around in Serbia proper. You know, it's like, no matter what's going on on Russia, there was going to be a response to that. Like, this potentially was very, very, very dangerous. You know, and you still had

Europe is still full of tactical nuclear weapons which had definitely not been put beyond use and probably were still operational if Mary did their launch vehicles I mean this this was incredibly dangerous man you know and it I think in a lot of ways I think Bill Clinton arrived at the worst

possible time and this is one of those examples and I mean I think in humanitarian terms I mean like actual terms of like alleviating human suffering as much as it was possible. The fact that Operation Storm did go off with like Prussian efficiency and that, you know, it basically like resolved that, that most dangerous aspect of, you know, the kind of six

discrete wars that constituted the Balkan Wars in 1990s. I mean, that's a godsend, okay, because that conflict had dragged on indefinitely, you know, great powers would have gotten sucked into it. And unthinkable as it is today, it wasn't then, like, some, you know, a genuine conflict dyad with Germany and newly unified Germany and the Russian Federation were just falling apart anyway, like opposite, you know, a burning military crisis. That was not impossible. Okay, so, yeah, I think it was all those things. Plus, world media, you remember, because you're old enough to remember, obviously.

In the very early 90s, it was weird, man. It's like, on the one hand, there was like this proto-cote and, internet, so you could get stuff kind of like in real time, but not really. And like legacy media, it, you know, it, it had, there was enough cellular technology that they could get, they could get dispatches in real time, but they couldn't really be verified. You know, it was a weird kind of transition phase. And, um, plus also it, uh, you know, America wasn't really, a lot of these guys, even people who weren't just, you know, like these crazy people, like Wesley Clark, like a lot of these guys, Department of State, and especially in the intelligence establishment, I mean, they just didn't know what the hell was going on. Because in there, from the time they were like teenagers until, you know, the wall came down when they were, you know, like in their 50s and 60s, it's like, well, you know, ethnicity doesn't really matter, you know, in some kind of backwards places behind the, behind the iron curtain, it might matter. But, This isn't important, you know, it certainly isn't going to become, you know, an animating element in any future conflict.

So, like, these guys couldn't even tell you, like, what the difference was between, like, serves and Croats. They couldn't even tell you that there was, like, Muslims who, like, lived in Europe and had been there for, like, a thousand years. You know, they had, like, no idea. You know, and, um, I, uh, I remember even one time this one op-ed, it was in the National Review, which has always been fucking stupid. I remember it vividly, like, um, he was saying. that Clinton's an idiot, which is true, but not for the reasons he said.

He's like, because everybody knows, like, Europeans don't kill each other of retinicity because we're beyond that. So this is ridiculous. There's not really a war going to happen to US. It's like, what are you talking about? You know what?

But this is like what people thought. Like, they think that they thought, oh, U.S. Lovia's white people. The former U.S.L. White people, so it's like going to England or something. Like I, you know,

I mean, people really, people are ignorant. I mean, and especially in those days, they're really, there's a kind of complacency of the Cold War of bread like the way you think of it

like in some ways guys like Jerry Pernel and guys on the true cutting edge like the spearpoint and strategic military technology and the guys planning these things like Thomas Schilling like they were very serious people

and they very much knew the stakes but some of these guys like mid-level intelligence operatives and diplomats it was like that old cartoon where it's like there's like the sheep dog and the wolf

and the sheep's trying to steel and the wolf's trying to eat the sheep and the sheep dogs protecting them but they clock and it's like hey hurry like hey bob they like go through the motions of like this bullshit there was like an aspect of that man you know um especially in and especially in intelligence and stuff where it's like well you know the ivan's know who we are we know where they are so we'll pretend to be diplomats and attend each other's like embassy parties but this doesn't really matter because you know we'll have some kind of early warning or at least a crisis emergent if something bad's going to happen And they didn't, the idea that, like, race wars do happen, they're the norm, not the exception.

I mean, warfare is not the norm. It's the exception. But when wars do happen, generally, it breaks down on these lines. I mean, this was like, they had no concept of that. You know, like, it's a real fucking complacency, man. But, um, so I think it's like all those things. And it's a real, you know, and again, like I said, man, like, I don't, like, the Islamic awakening and which I totally understand. and which actually had positive energy in a lot of ways at the beginning.

Tragically, they got co-opted by tech theory extremists and murderous people. But some of this could have been avoided. You know, and the fact is, if the Bosnia hasn't been brought in from the cold at critical moments, instead of kind of like leaving them bees, the only people who are protecting them, like literally their lives, like Al-Qaeda operatives, I mean, like, that's fucked up. Okay, I mean, like that, that was totally avoidable. You know, if you want people to act like Europeans, particularly people, kind of like on the periphery of civilizations, well, maybe give them an incentive to act like Europeans, you know, instead of just, you know, kind of leaving them to self-help, which generally has the most corrupting of outcomes when you're talking about a burgeoning race war. But, I mean, that's, you know, and there's an element of all warfare arrives like the seasons.

I mean, some of this, too, is, I mean, in the hands of God, like corny as I might sound to people. But it's, yeah, I think the administration that was in place was uniquely ill-equipped to handle it, morally, intellectually, ethically, and otherwise. Even if there had been, like, a more sensible regime, it was, you know, unfortunately, it was a, you know, Bush 41 was a one-term president and, you know, the transition period would have created certain challenges anyway. You know, I think,

and for, you know, for conduct's sake, or just a, there was, in 93, fall in 1993, the United Nations, uh, high commissioner for

refugees. It identified about about half a million displaced persons like all like Serbian proot and like Bosniak. You know like in these

contested battle spaces who are now accounted for in one of six UN protected areas. And I mean that's in a in countries the size of the ones in question. I mean, that's an incredible catastrophe. I mean, I'm not just talking in terms of like a human tragedy.

I mean, just material and logistical terms, like managing something like that. I mean, is, you know, who the hell wanted to take on responsibility for that? You know, and then the people who were in a position to, which at that time, and it would have been Germany. I mean, because, again, like, Russia was falling apart. It's like, okay, so you give a German. military element, like de facto control over these neutral spaces, like adjacent to battle space. I mean, you'd be looking at a, I mean, that itself would be an inflammatory act. You know, so there was no, there was like no real solution, but it, but basically at every juncture,

you know, the U.S. administration, like, made the wrong move. I mean, again, like I, in military terms, if the objective was to, you know, liberate Croatia and facilitate it to becoming a viable, you know, like national democracy or like ethno state, yes, that was accomplished. And yes, my sympathy is with the Croas. But that's not, but that's to, but that's not what the Department of State claim to be up on. And it's not, they didn't, they didn't do what they should have done to finesse, to bring the serves to the table in a way that they would feel like, you know, they were being afforded some kind of equity. And what happened later with like, with like the cost of a bullshit, I mean, it's just unconscionable. And that's ridiculous. You know, what it, um, that's kind of outside the scope of where we're at in this discussion.

It, um, the, uh, what was to keep in my duper context, the, um, the, um, what was, to keep in my duper context, the, um, The winter of 1994, the siege of Bihak, it was a major theater of operations. And the belief was that if the Serbian army or the Yugoslav National Army, which was the Serbian army, assisted by elements under arms representing the Serbian Republic of Raina, if they had been, they laid siege to Biok, if they've been able to capture it in a route the army of Bosnia, Herzegovina,

that would have basically allowed them to either defend or assault in depth from the Republic of Serbia, Ukraine, and that would have put a nail in the coffin of any Croatian military victory moving forward. That was the catalyst for

the demand for cooperation, even though Penn had already gone to paper and the Washington Agreement for Washington and demanding, you know, a cessation of hostilities between the Croats and the Bosniaks, as well as what, as well as what, um, probably the catalyst for, okay, like, we, we need to plan, like a, we need to plan to oust the Serbians from, um, not just contested territory and what Croatia now holds, at least nominally, but, you know, we need to, like, eradicate the republic of Serb, Serbian craneer. And then that was, so, I mean, it was, that was, that was, that was

sound military logic, but again, if the perspective was, we stand with Croatia first, last, and always, then say that. Telegraphing to the world that we're going to claim that, you know, we're a neutral arbiter

and a peacekeeper nation. I mean, however stupid that is, like, it's not important. But if that's your official line, but then every single time you make a move, somehow Russians and Serbians are like downrange of your hardware and munitions. That's not really workable. Okay. I mean, or if that's your notion, fine, but don't scream that Vladimir Putin is most evil man ever if he doesn't like you shooting at him.

I mean, like I, you know, I mean, this shit goes out saying, but there's like a staggering, like, ignorance. I, beyond even the kind of normal levels of stupidity that I run across in power political affairs when it comes to, like, Russia era, And again, I've tried to I've tried to convey the Syrian perspective as fairly as possible. I know a lot more about praise the new Serbia. And I'd be happy to deal more with Serbian stuff, but what we should get, we should get a guy who speaks the language and knows the culture, like on the panel. I mean, it would be my suggestion.

But I don't at all dislike Serbs or Russians or think bad things about them or think that they're bad things. Now that you said that, the comments section on the video is just going to be filled with, recommendations of people to have come on a panel. I know a guy. I don't, I don't out him because if he's not about, I don't have to feel pressured or embarrassed if he's not about it. But I got a guy in mind who I think would probably do it.

And he'd be a good guy to come on board. But I'm, I'm going to say, let's, let's call it for the day. Because I frankly, I'm a lot of pain, man. Like, sorry to be, um, a killjoy. No problem. We'll, um, we'll call it.

Yeah. No, that's great. And well, I'm going to be out of town from the 14th to the 17th, but we can record any time before or after that. And if there's more you want to cover on the Balkans, we can do that too. Like I was going to make this a concluding episode, but there's more stuff you wanted to take off. We can do that. If we wanted to put, if we wanted to add something on with someone with a Serbian perspective, maybe we can set. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

That'd be like a supplement. We'll add it right into the. the playlist on Odyssey and everything. All right. Do plugs. Let's get out of here. Yeah, apparently Twitter, like, I assume because people who've been like flagged as like bad or something or evil people

have been, um, they've been searching my name. So it said that my name, Thomas 777 is a hate word. Like, I'm not kidding you. So I had to change it to the real Thomas. But it's still like at the same thing. It just like displays differently. It was just funny. but um you know you can find me there on youtube uh i'm trying to upload more and more video content um

out of my youtube which is it's thomas tv number 7 h m as space tv you can find me on substack that's actually been blowing up pretty good like popping pretty good it's real thomas seven seven seven seven that com and uh yeah i'm i'm been trying to double down on like pod content and video stuff, man. So that's where I'm at. And yeah, that's where you can find me. Oh, you can always find me at my website, Thomas 777.com. It's number seven, h-o-m-s-777.com.

Yeah, that was a funny post this morning where you were like, I literally have a website where everything is there and everybody's like, I can't find you, man. Yeah, so it's like, yeah, if you do like literally like a Google search my name and like one and a half seconds later, it's like, the hell's a man of you, man. I'm like the easiest freaking person to find, better or worse. all right man until the next time i appreciate it yeah like please