The Origins and Causes of the Bosnian Civil War, 1992-1995
By Carl Savich
Introduction
The collapse of the Cold War world order beginning in 1989 resulted in the disintegration of the Communist federations of the Soviet Union and Yugoslavia and the other former Warsaw Pact nations in Eastern Europe. The break up of these federations resulted in bloody civil wars both in the former Soviet Union and in the former Yugoslavia. The most destructive and costly in human life was the protracted civil war in the former Communist republic of Bosnia and Hercegovina, constituted in 1945 as a constituent republic of Yugoslavia.
The diplomats and the media knew very little about the background to the conflicts and civil wars in the former Soviet Union. They knew even less about the former Yugoslavia, especially about Bosnia-Hercegovina. In US government and media propaganda, Yugoslavia became ìthe heart of Europeî and ìin the center of Europeî. Before the massive US ìinformation warî, Yugoslavia was regarded as marginal, peripheral, the ìbackwater of Europeî, on the periphery of Europe, not vital to any US interests, not part of the so-called Western civilization and culture, not part of ìenlightened Latin Christendomî, but backward, Byzantine, alien. Karl Marx termed the Balkan peoples ìethnic trashî. His colleague Friedrich Engels dismissed Serbs, Bulgarians, and Greeks as ìrobber riff- raffî. Otto von Bismarck warned that the Balkans were not worth the life of a single German soldier at the time of the Bosnian Insurrection of 1875-1878. Through American media and government propaganda, however, Bosnia became not only the center of Europe, but during the civil war, the primary focus for the entire world. The lack of fundamental understanding and grasp of the historical background and issues on the part of diplomats, academics, scholars, and the media, contributed to needlessly prolonging and exacerbating the conflict.
The civil war in Bosnia and Hercegovina was caused and sustained by essentially three major actors: 1) the United States State Department; 2) US public relations firms; and, 3) the American media. The precedent for such an alliance was the very successful performance of all three actors in the 1991 Persian Gulf War, which the United States with NATO allies Great Britain and France, waged against former ally and client state Iraq. The paradigm of the Persian Gulf War was transposed upon the civil war in Bosnia and Hercegovina with disastrous results. All three actors perceived the civil war in Bosnia and Hercegovina as Gulf War II. The paradigm for the Persian Gulf War itself was established in 1898 with the Spanish-American War. William Randolph Hearst told Frederick Remington, ìYou furnish the pictures and Iíll furnish the war.î Hearst was a pioneer in realizing that the nature of war had changed. War was now about information, not so much weapons and military strategies. The Spanish-American War became an infowar where pictures and images were the crucial elements. Hearst was ahead of his time. Most military historians and pundits missed this revolutionary change in the nature and concept of modern warfare. As one of the founders of the mass public newspaper, Hearst understood that propaganda techniques would be much more important in the modern mass media and mass communication era. The US government would apply Hearstís infowar paradigm in the Persian Gulf War, Somalia, the Krajina conflict between Yugoslavia and Croatia, Haiti, and Kosovo. Indeed, the initial invading force of Somalia consisted of an army of news reporters and camera crews which televised its own landing on the Somalian coast. US policymakers learned from the Vietnam War debacle that military force by itself is not sufficient.
Information is crucial in modern war. To defeat an enemy by force alone is to win only half the battle. To have dissent on the domestic front was unacceptable. Total conformity was needed. Everyone had to think alike, to think the same, so that thought could be controlled. This is where pictures and images were paramount, where propaganda and infowar were decisive. Thus, there was a re-emergence of the infowar, of propaganda techniques and ìinformation warfareî first developed by Hearst in the 19th century.
The US State Department, the US media, and public relations firms caused and maintained the bloody civil war in Bosnia and Hercegovina. They based their analyses consciously and unconsciously on ignorance, deceit, malice, racism, power politics, Realpolitik, and incorrect assumptions and a faulty understanding of the background to that conflict. Truth is indeed the first casualty in war.
Infowar and Propaganda: The Problem: Truth as a Casualty of War
Truth is the first victim in war. This dictum is best exemplified in the media manipulations and distortions which characterized the reporting of the civil wars in the former Yugoslavia, particularly in Bosnia and Hercegovina. The US State Department and public relations firms have likewise distorted and manipulated the facts and the information concerning the civil war in Bosnia. Along with the thousands of human casualties could be listed truth itself. Along with the crimes committed against humanity were those committed against integrity, decency, fair-play, and justice.
Ever since the civil wars erupted in the former Yugoslavia in 1991, the so-called Western media, at first primarily the newly united Germany, but particularly the American media, presented a daily barrage of news accounts and stories from Bosnia which equated the horrors of that war to the worst of World War II. This media blitzkrieg was an unprecedented and unrelenting onslaught which combined modern media techniques and advocacy journalism. The media became an organized, coherent body, aggressive and strident co-belligerents who perceived themselves as active and partisan combatants in the civil wars. The US government gave them their marching orders, told them that the infowar was being conducted in the name of democracy, freedom, and for a worthy and moral cause, to safeguard the ìvictimsî. The enemy were the Orthodox Serbs. Allies were all who were anti-Serbian: Roman Catholic Croats, Bosnian Muslims, Albanians. All the media reportage had one thing in common: The reporting was partisan, anti-Serbian, and had as its sole purpose and goal to force and to coerce Western governments, particularly the United States, to intervene militarily against the Serbs, i.e., to force an interventionist war against Serbs and against Serbia in a replay of the Persian Gulf War scenario with the Serbian people and Serbia cast in the role of Iraq and as ìaggressorsî. If it worked with Kuwait, why couldnít it work in Bosnia? Needless to say, the US had militarily intervened in Central and South America regularly and periodically throughout the twentieth century not as ìhumanitarian interventionsî but as invasions and occupations to install right-wing dictators in the banana republics to maintain US commercial exploitation. The Bay of Pigs fiasco in 1961 against Cuba is an example of just such an intervention.
The Persian Gulf War established the precedent of the modern infowar. The infowar propaganda paradigm was followed during the Yugoslav conflicts. The Bosnian Muslims and Croats hired prominent American public relations firms to advocate and to lobby for their agendas and political programs. These firms manipulated, distorted, and falsified information and facts to support the anti-Serbian policy of the US government and media, working in a symbiotic relationship. These public relations firms racked up phenomenal and spectacular propaganda victories and successes for their clients, the Bosnian Muslims, Croats, and Kosovo Albanians.
The US sought to penetrate Eastern Europe and the Balkans politically, militarily, and commercially, to create a neo-imperialist and neo-colonialist market and sphere of influence in a region where it had been largely excluded. To further these goals, the US State Department became an active and strident sponsor and advocate of secession movements in both the Soviet Union and in Yugoslavia. The State Department perceived that ìsponsorshipî of ìnew statesî would be in the American national interest and would advance ìfreedom and democracyî around the globe. All the neo-imperialist catch-phrases were trotted out which were anachronisms from the Cold War propaganda or information war. NATO, an anachronistic ìdefensiveî military alliance from the Cold War serving no useful military function became the instrument with which the US spearheaded its drive into Eastern Europe and the Balkans. By breaking up and dismembering states in Eastern Europe, the US was promoting ìdemocracyî, ìthe will of the peopleî, ì economic prosperityî, ìfreedomî, and ìfledgling democraciesî. The US State Department thus became, like the US media, a partisan, co-belligerent advocate and actor in favor of secession states. The State Department declared war against the geopolitical status quo that was not in the US national interest: Disintegration, secession, and the creation and emergence of ìnew statesî was good, maintenance of the status quo was bad. Needless to say, this support was highly selective and was based on whether it advanced US political, military, or commercial interests. An independent and free Palestinian state was not supported, Palestinian statehood and freedom were not supported. Likewise, Kurdish autonomy or independence was not supported in Turkey, a NATO member. An independent Corsica and independent Basque state were opposed because France and Spain respectively were NATO members. Freedom and democracy Ýfor them would have to wait. The State Department embarked on a program to unconditionally support and back the secession movements in the Soviet Union and Yugoslavia because those nations were not allies, client states, or members of NATO. They were, in short, states with adverse interests to those of the US. Needless to say, such reckless and irresponsible actions resulted in bloody and entangled civil wars which have not been resolved but have resulted in Vietnam-style quagmires for the US.
The Origins and Causes of the Bosnian Civil War, 1992-1995
The civil war in the former Yugoslav republic of Bosnia and Hercegovina was caused and maintained by three principal actors; 1) US public relations firms; 2) the US media; and, 3) the US State Department. The origins and causes of the inherent ethnic, political, and religious conflicts and antagonisms in Bosnia were ultimately caused by the mutually exclusive national and political agendas of the three Bosnian factions: the Bosnian Serbs, the Bosnian Muslims, and the Bosnian Croats, all Slavic and all speaking Serbo-Croatian, but all divided by religion, by culture, and differing national visions. The Bosnian Muslims sought to secede from Yugoslavia but yet to maintain Bosnian borders and the political structure as it had existed in the Yugoslav federation. That is, the Muslims sought an unrealistic and uncompromising maximal position, an all or nothing approach, they wanted to have their cake and eat it too. The Bosnian Serbs perceived that the destruction of the Yugoslav federation would necessarily result in the destruction of what it maintained and instituted, the Bosnian Republic, Bosnia-Hercegovina. If Yugoslavia was destroyed, then the internal borders that Yugoslavia created would be destroyed. The so-called international community de-recognized Yugoslavia but recognized arbitrarily the internal borders created by Yugoslavia. In short, to establish Bosnia as an international entity there would have to be bilateral agreement between Yugoslavia and a successor state, Bosnia. But this was precisely what Germany and the US sought to prevent, advocating instead unilateral and unconditional recognition of the internal borders of Yugoslavia. Yugoslavia was handed a fait accompli. The Bosnian Croats wanted first to detach Bosnia from the Yugoslav federation and then to create their own Croat mini-state, Herceg-Bosna, which would unite with Croatia. These three mutually exclusive and antagonistic agendas were at the root of the conflict and the crisis. Civil war, however, was not inevitable. Otto von Bismarck called politics and diplomacy the ìart of the possibleî. But no diplomacy was apparent. There were no discussions, negotiations, or agreements. Instead, Germany and the US supported unilateral recognition. Germany and the US presented a fait accompli instead of diplomacy. Germany and the US did nothing to prevent a civil war but in fact did everything to encourage and foster it. With the absence of diplomacy or a political agreement, the three Bosnian groups resorted to what Karl von Clausewitz called ìpolitics by other meansî, war. The actions and policies of the US State Department, public relations firms hired by the Bosnian Muslims, Croats, and Albanians and financed by radical and militant Islamic states, and the US media were the direct cause of the civil war which followed and which continued from 1992 to 1995 Ýand greatly contributed to sustaining and exacerbating that war. The key actions and policies of these three key actors will be examined and analyzed in turn.
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