The Owl of Minerva Flies Only at Dusk?

Setting the Stage: Britain, Yugoslavia, and the End of the Cold War

The conduct of foreign policy in the contemporary system of international relations is, more often than not, a conservative endeavor with a strong emphasis on stability and the maintenance of status quo. Traditionally, this tendency has been particularly strong in Britain. That is perhaps unsurprising, considering Britain’s status as a former colonial power with a political establishment steeped in the mindset of holding the floodgates of imperial decline. ⁵ What is surprising, however, is that this commitment to the pursuit of stability and the maintenance of status quo was also evident in British foreign policy at the time of the end of the Cold War. For all the posturing against the Kremlin, the collapse of the Soviet empire was actually greeted with concern in London, as well as in capitals of other Western powers. Margaret Thatcher’s warning “that times of great change are times of great uncertainty and even danger,” which was directed at her American guests in a speech four days after the fall of the Berlin Wall, perfectly captured the general sentiment at the highest levels of Western decision making of that period. ⁶

British concerns about the post–Cold War world were partly related to the unforeseeable and possibly nuclear consequences of the breakup of the Soviet state, but—even more than that—they were also related to the shifting status of a united Germany in Europe and its relationship with the United States. Britain’s foreign policy makers succeeded in replacing their country’s imperial clout with the role of America’s closest European ally after World War II. The reunified Germany, however, threatened to take that place. ⁷ These dramatic changes in the geopolitical situation in Europe also meant that Britain’s policy toward the liberating Eastern Europe—particularly regarding this region’s potential role in the process of (West) European integration—was becoming more important and interesting. The principal dilemmas for the British foreign policy makers here revolved around two questions. First, was the interest in binding united Germany into deeper (West) European integration greater than the danger of the united Germany dominating a more deeply integrated Europe? And second, where was the balance between the proclaimed commitment to the freedom of Eastern Europe and the perceived danger the liberation of Eastern Europe presented both to the regime of Mikhail Gorbachev and to the long-term stability and power of the Soviet state?

When it came to the first question, the Tory establishment under Margaret Thatcher was split, with the dividing line running roughly between the Eurosceptic Downing Street and the Eurorealist Whitehall. ⁸ But when it came to the second question, there seemed to be few disagreements. The balance clearly tilted in favor of stability of Gorbachev and the Soviet Union. Thus, as Gorbachev’s regime twitched on its deathbed throughout 1989 and 1990 with various reactionary relapses in the form of interventions against the peripheral republics of the Soviet Union—from the Caucasus to the Baltics—Britain, as well as other Western powers, showed understanding for Moscow. ⁹ In the words of Sir Percy Cradock, who served as the Chairman of the Joint Intelligence Committee and as the foreign affairs advisor to the prime minister under both Margaret Thatcher and John Major, “We had a deep interest in freedom in Eastern Europe, but an interest in stability which in the last analysis overrode it.” ¹⁰ As Anthony Forster and William Wallace rightly conclude, this perceived interest in stability made the British government in 1990 “the most determined to resist change in Europe’s political and military order.” ¹¹

Britain’s policy toward Yugoslavia during the same period closely mirrored its policy toward the rest of Eastern Europe. The principal dilemma when it came to Yugoslavia, however, revolved around the question of balance between support for the federation’s democratization and its unity. Throughout the 1980s, Yugoslavia experienced a severe economic crisis which dramatically aggravated the communist regime’s crisis of legitimacy built into the very foundations of its rule. By the end of that decade, the political elite and the country as a whole were deeply split on the needed way forward. The Serbian regime under Slobodan Milošević in 1987 launched a campaign for socialist retrenchment, recentralization of the federation, and a heavy-handed policy against the Kosovo Albanians. After significant victories during the following two years, won primarily through the pressure of massive public rallies and demonstrations which successfully married Serbian nationalism and economic socialism, Milošević’s campaign hit a dead end with the staunch resistance of Yugoslavia’s northwestern republics of Slovenia and Croatia. By early 1990, this clash claimed the life of the ruling party—the League of Communists of Yugoslavia. Within months, communists lost the first democratic elections in all Yugoslav republics, except in Serbia and Montenegro. The only semblance of a federal structure was maintained by the still doctrinaire communist Yugoslav People’s Army (JNA) and the weak federal government of Ante Marković which was unsuccessfully trying to push forward a program of economic reforms. The challenge for Britain, as well as all other Western powers, was, therefore, formidable: where to strike the balance between support for Yugoslavia’s unity, which was seen as necessary for the maintenance of regional status quo, and its democratization. Time and again during this crucial period, British foreign policy makers demonstrated that they strongly favored the former over the latter.

The foundations of Britain’s (and the West’s) ultimately disastrous policy failure in Yugoslavia during this period were deeply rooted in London’s unwavering commitment to the continuing existence of the South Slav federation and in what seemed to be a blind spot for the true cause of the federation’s instability and imminent disintegration: the campaign of Slobodan Milošević’s Serbia for control over and the recentralization of Yugoslavia. According to the then ambassador of the United Kingdom in Belgrade, Peter Hall, the response of the Foreign Office to his alarming 1989 and 1990 reports about the destructive impact of Milošević’s campaign was that “they really would much prefer it not to be happening” and that the struggling federation simply had to remain united. ¹² According to a former diplomat stationed in the British embassy in Belgrade at the time, Ambassador Hall’s reporting to the Foreign Office “was very much, and increasingly so, to the effect that [the federation was] a dead duck. You’re not going to have that. He urged London to authorize him to press as hard as he could for a very loose confederation. Something more on the lines of a ‘united states’ in that there would be a tremendous amount of power to the individual parts. . . . But he never, frankly, had any encouragement from London on that.” ¹³

The Foreign Office was by no means unique in such thinking. All Western powers were committed not only to the idea that Yugoslavia had to remain united, but also that it would reap benefits from increased centralization. This stand in favor of Yugoslavia’s centralization effectively meant that the Western powers sided with Milošević and not with Yugoslavia’s northwest republics of Slovenia and Croatia in the federation’s internal quarrels of the period. Such a position corresponded perfectly to the West’s more general stance regarding the maintenance of stability and status quo in Eastern Europe. Many Western diplomats and foreign policy makers even hoped that an unrepentantly communist institution such as the Yugoslav People’s Army—which was obviously in Milošević’s camp—would step in to intervene for a federal Yugoslavia. ¹⁴ In January 1991, their hopes for a JNA intervention almost materialized. The problem was that the army, backed by Milošević, was not planning to intervene for a federal Yugoslavia—it planned and nearly completed a coup against the democratically elected government of Croatia. The army generals in the end backed off, primarily because of Croatia’s temporary acquiescence to their demands, but possibly also because of a warning against the use of force by the British government expressed in a meeting between Douglas Hogg and the Yugoslav ambassador in London on 25 January 1991. ¹⁵ The British delegation’s tour of Yugoslavia exactly a month later—between 25 and 28 February—was, thus, coming at a critical juncture in the federation’s crisis and in its relations with Britain.

Contradictions with Foundations: Foreign Office Assessment of Yugoslavia, Early 1991

The visit of the British delegation to Belgrade, Sarajevo, and Zagreb took place after a lengthy absence of any high-level visits by British officials to Yugoslavia. This lack of direct attention was a source of great frustration for the British ambassador in Belgrade Peter Hall, who repeatedly complained about it during 1989 and 1990 in official and unofficial contacts with Whitehall. ¹⁶ Hall was, however, probably not the only British ambassador in an East European country who found the diplomatic effort of his superiors wanting. Throughout the whole of 1991, for example, no senior minister of the British government visited any of the countries between Germany and Russia, leading many to view Britain’s foreign policy strategy at the time as uniquely oriented toward Western Europe. ¹⁷ The extensive briefing papers provided by the Foreign Office to the delegation led by Douglas Hogg, however, reveal that the lower echelons in Whitehall paid great attention to the events in Yugoslavia and were aware of all the intricacies of its political and economic developments.

In light of the quality of the briefing materials and the seriousness of the situation in Yugoslavia, the wording of the objectives for the visit by the Foreign Office’s Eastern European Department somewhat oddly suggests the trip was seen as little more than a fact-finding mission. In a 21 February memo to Hogg, the main objective of the visit was defined as “assessing the trend of events in Yugoslavia, the likelihood of it holding together in some form and the consequences if it does not do so.” ¹⁸ The briefing materials which follow this memo, however, reveal the full gravity of Yugoslavia’s crisis in meticulous detail. The 1990 democratic elections in the Yugoslav republics, seen as mostly free and fair in all republics except in Serbia, returned governments with widely different policy preferences. Slovenia’s and Croatia’s governments were labeled as non-communist and independence-minded; Bosnia-Herzegovina’s and Macedonia’s governments were seen as dominated by nationally based parties, whereas Serbia’s and Montenegro’s governments were perceived as neo-communist, though led by “the militant nationalist Slobodan Milošević.” The Yugoslav People’s Army was seen as a “destabilizing element” because of its “determination to hold Yugoslavia together and to preserve [its] own privileged position.” Most notably, the briefing documents commented on the possibility—alluded to by Serbia’s president Milošević and Croatia’s president Tuđman—of redrawing the borders of Bosnia-Herzegovina. The drafters of the briefing documents were, however, skeptical about the wisdom of this plan: “Given the distribution of Serbian enclaves within Croatia, this is unlikely to achieve much unless there is also an exchange of populations. This would cause huge economic and social disruption, and would also be likely to destabilize the already shaky Muslim-Serb-Croat coalition government in Bosnia.” ¹⁹ This discussion demonstrates not only that the possible division of Bosnia-Herzegovina was on the diplomatic “menu” several weeks before the infamous meetings between Milošević and Tuđman in March and April 1991 where they supposedly discussed such a plan, but also that the possible consequences of the division of BiH were correctly assessed by those whose duty was to assess them. ²⁰

The briefing papers were, however, even more impressive when it came to the assessment of the state of Yugoslavia’s economy. They accurately identified the nature and the sources of regional disparities in economic development and preferred economic policy among Yugoslavia’s six republics. They also minced no words when it came to the reform plan of the federal government of Ante Marković which had earned public plaudits from international players during the previous year. Marković’s plans for privatization and a restrictive monetary policy were judged to be “still-born,” either because they were blocked by the federal parliament or because they were ignored by the republics. Moreover, “the impotence of federal economic policy was dramatized by the revelation early in 1991 that the Serbian authorities had illegally hijacked 18 billion dinar [or about 2.6 billion German marks] from the National Bank of Yugoslavia to recapitalize Serbian banks and finance republican social security payments.” ²¹ Ambassador Hall’s additional report on Yugoslavia’s economic crisis was no less harsh in its analysis. The impotent federal government could do little more than watch as the inflation was rising, industrial production plummeting, trade deficit exploding, and foreign reserves melting away. More importantly, “with industrial unrest also approaching critical levels, there [was] no sign of new ideas or personnel likely to haul Yugoslavia out of its current economic mess.” ²² We now know that several months earlier the CIA had reached the very same conclusions in a series of reports which culminated in the National Intelligence Estimate “Yugoslavia Transformed” from October 1990. ²³ And we also know that the White House and the State Department chose a policy of only verbal support of Marković’s efforts because, as the U.S. ambassador in Belgrade Warren Zimmermann later put it, “Yugoslavia looked like a loser.” ²⁴ Strikingly, the briefing papers prepared for the British delegation’s visit supported the very same deeply problematic policy.

The issue with such an approach to Yugoslavia’s economic woes and the reform efforts of its federal prime minister was that it was dangerously illogical and negligent. The Director of European Affairs at the U.S. National Security Council between 1989 and 1992, Robert Hutchings, convincingly exposed (unfortunately, with an eight-year delay) the logical inconsistency and danger of such a policy: if Marković was indeed seen to be Yugoslavia’s last hope as many Western foreign policy makers were publicly professing at the time, then he should have been supported not only verbally, but also financially. And if his reform plans had marginal chances of success, then the West “should have concluded that Yugoslavia was already doomed and begun preparing for its dissolution.” ²⁵ Instead, Marković still received public words of encouragement, but behind closed doors his efforts were even stifled. The Foreign Office briefing papers, thus, reveal that the British delegation was advised that (1) no direct UK assistance should be offered to offset the negative effects of the Gulf War on Yugoslav enterprises; (2) no debt rescheduling should be negotiated before Yugoslavia gets approval from the IMF; (3) no export credit guarantees should be restored; (4) no funding from the Know-How Fund should be offered; and (5) no support should be given to Yugoslavia’s hopes of negotiating an association agreement with the European Community (EC), which was at the time discussed with other East European states. ²⁶ In Ambassador Hall’s opinion, “we should treat with some skepticism any attempt by Marković to complain—as he has done with other EC partners—that his problems stem in part from the unwillingness of those who claim to support the integrity of Yugoslavia to do anything to help him achieve his economic goals.” ²⁷ And, to add insult to injury, in what surely was a stark example of cynical diplomatic humor, Hall advised Hogg to tell Marković—if pressed with the question of what Britain was doing to help—that the British Council was doing important work in Yugoslavia by offering English language courses, as well as science, technology, and management training, which seems to have required an FCO investment of £12,000 over the previous two years. ²⁸

Married for the Sake of Children: Talking to Yugoslavia’s Federal Officials

Fortunately for Hogg, it seems Marković did not put him or Britain on the spot quite so bluntly that he would have had to resort to the British Council defense. The meeting between the two delegations, however, was far from cordial. The Yugoslav prime minister opened by thanking his guests for the visit and sarcastically joking how “it was good to know we still existed.” He then proceeded into a long monologue on the merits of his government’s program, the obstacles he was facing from the republican governments, and—most importantly—the lack of international support for his efforts. “In the past two years, Yugoslavia had experienced an excessive outflow of capital,” he complained. It had repaid nearly 8 billion dollars of its debt, while at the same time receiving only about 800 million dollars of fresh credits from the IMF, the World Bank and the European Investment Bank. The Paris Club, with British support, had even insisted upon the repayment of a 680-million-dollar debt, instead of allowing a rescheduling. “On the other hand,” Marković lamented, the West was “generous to everyone else, even the Bulgarians.” This forced his government to consider a moratorium on the payment of a 4.3-billion-dollar debt which was due in 1991. The money was needed, Marković continued, “not only for the continuation of economic reform, but also for the preservation of Yugoslavia.” His plea was desperate, but also prescient: “Don’t wait until you have to deal with Yugoslavia.” ²⁹

The only issue which seems to have grabbed Hogg’s attention was the possibility of Yugoslavia’s debt moratorium. “Potential creditors would want to know what benefit would accrue from new loans, since fresh money might buy time, but would not solve the internal problems,” he explained. The creditors wanted assurance that Yugoslavia would remain “a unitary state” and not fall apart into six different countries. ³⁰ It was a catch-22 that was at the foundation of Marković’s unenviable predicament vis-à-vis Yugoslavia’s Western creditors. He needed cash to stay afloat and fend off the challenge from the nationalists in the republics, but the West would not give it to him until he fended them off in the first place. Moreover, in the eyes of his British interlocutors, his desperation was apparently making him “not particularly impressive,” “clearly tired and depressed,” and in an “unattractively hectoring mood” which “lessened the appeal of his case for greater support from European countries and financial institutions.” ³¹

Hogg was on the same message in his appointments with two other federal-level functionaries—the Chairman of the Foreign Affairs Committee of the Federal Assembly Aleksandar Simović and the Deputy Foreign Minister Milivoje Maksić. Simović’s timid question whether a more engaged involvement of the EC could help Yugoslavia overcome its problems was answered in no uncertain terms: “An active policy of getting closer to the Community would not solve Yugoslavia’s primary concerns. The country would have to organize its own affairs first and the EC could do very little to assist. Although the UK did see a long term widening of the EC, it was unlikely that membership would be enlarged substantially in the next 10 years.” The main point, Hogg told Simović, was that Yugoslavia had to remain a unitary state. “Its structure needed to be compatible with EC needs and the more power which was delegated down, the more difficult it would be to mesh with the EC.” ³² As he furthermore agreed with Maksić (who was the highest-ranking Serbian official in the federal secretariat for foreign affairs) Yugoslavia maybe was an unhappy marriage, but it was one where the parents should stay together for the sake of the children: “The republics had a right to determine their own future but it was not in their interests to go their separate ways and they should, therefore, try to agree a settlement that kept them together in some fairly close relationship.” Lest there be any confusion what was meant by “not in their interests,” Hogg offered a bleak vision of future for those republics which would decide to go toward independence: “The republics must understand that it was a very cold world outside . . . the prospects for a small independent state were not good. The break-up of Yugoslavia into a number of independent states would not be in the interests of those who wished to establish closer relations with Europe, and it would be a mistake for the republics to delude themselves about their prospects.” ³³ Hogg seems to have been channeling a common EC position, as his words were only mildly less stark than the statement of the Italian Foreign Minister Gianni De Michelis who, as the outgoing chairman of the EC Council, in his interview to the Belgrade daily Borba on 1 January 1991 suggested that “if in some republics pressures for separation and dissolution become dominant, those republics will not be able to survive without the establishment of political relations with Europe. And until then, they will risk being crushed because of their wrong decisions.” ³⁴

De Michelis’s statement was obviously a thinly veiled threat against the Slovenes and the Croats that in case they moved toward independence, they would be left at the mercy of the Yugoslav People’s Army, which was the only force in Yugoslavia with the power to “crush.” This issue was also the subject of an intriguing exchange between Hogg and Maksić. In his discussion of the Soviet Army interventions in the Baltic republics which had taken place just weeks earlier, Hogg felt it necessary to stress that “the United Kingdom deplored the use of force by the Soviet government in the Baltics, but there was a distinction between force used to prevent ethnic violence and force used to assert political control. For that reason we could understand what had happened in Azerbaijan.” Quite understandably, “Mr Maksić was grateful for that clarification. Force should not be used to alter democratic institutions but if inter-ethnic conflict threatened human lives, force could be used to prevent it.” ³⁵ Hogg’s statement was basically a qualification of his demarche against the Army’s intervention in Croatia which he presented to the Yugoslav ambassador in London a month earlier, and a more or less clear blueprint for how a possible JNA intervention could be marketed to the West.

Dangerous and Reasonable? Listening to Milošević

Unsurprisingly, in his meeting with Slobodan Milošević the following day, Hogg heard a pretty faithful version of his own argument about the acceptable nature of a possible JNA intervention from the mouth of the president of Serbia. “As to the intentions of Serbia towards her neighbors, there was no intention of taking aggressive action. The JNA would only be used in accordance with the democratically-expressed will of the people for the maintenance of civil order,” Milošević stated. His close association of Serbia’s intentions and the use of the JNA was no accident—it was a strong signal of his true aims and available tools which he did not even attempt to conceal in his conversation with the British delegation. Yugoslavia had to be a federation, or the borders between the republics had to be altered. “The territories occupied by Serbs in Croatia were not part of Croatia. If they were incorporated within Croatia, Serbs would need to decide whether to live in or outside of Yugoslavia . . . if the Croats wished to leave Yugoslavia that was their right and force would not be used as a means of compelling them to change their minds or to impose other arrangements. But the Croats could not take Serbs and Serbian land with them out of Yugoslavia. If they sought to do this, the Serbs would not take matters calmly,” he stated resolutely, while also using inflated figures of supposedly three million Serbs living in other republics and nearly one million in Croatia (instead of the official census figures of less than two million Serbs living in other republics, of which about 530,000 in Croatia). ³⁶

Hogg’s response to Milošević was that any redrawing of frontiers “could prove a difficult and complicated exercise” and that “the prospect of such an action made blood in Western Europe run cold.” ³⁷ According to a later statement by the Assistant Under-Secretary of State for Soviet Union and Eastern Europe, Michael Tait, who accompanied Hogg in his meeting with Milošević, the Serbian president was seen as “aggressive” and “scary,” but his argument was considered to be “reasonable.” When prompted to answer whether he or the rest of the UK delegation thought Milošević’s “reasonable” argument for border changes based on dubious demography should be extended to Kosovo or whether they had considered what its consequences would be for the multiethnic Bosnia-Herzegovina, Tait responded: “That is a different issue. We were just dealing with Croatia at that point. We were not dealing with anything else.” ³⁸ The British delegation was indeed placing a premium on Serbia’s relations with Croatia, or—to be more precise—on Milošević’s relations with Croatia’s president Franjo Tuđman. Milošević agreed with his interlocutors “that the future of Yugoslavia depended almost exclusively” on the relations between him and his Croatian counterpart. And in response to Tait’s pointed question whether Tuđman “was a person with whom he could do business, [Milošević] hesitated before saying with apparent conviction, that he thought that Tuđman was such a person.” ³⁹ Tait’s line of inquiry was possibly influenced by the meeting of the British delegation with the leaders of the Serbian opposition earlier that morning, during which the representatives of both the liberal Democratic Party (DS) and the nationalist Serbian Renewal Movement (SPO) hardly left the impression of being more capable or reasonable than the Serbian president. ⁴⁰

Dreaming of Unitary Yugoslavia: Conversations with Republican Leaders

Hogg was forced to interrupt his visit to Yugoslavia in order to attend a Cabinet meeting in London on 27 February, but the British delegation, led by Tait, proceeded according to schedule to Sarajevo where it met with the republic’s president and the leader of the Muslim Party of Democratic Action (SDA), Alija Izetbegović; the president of the Chamber of Municipalities of the Assembly of Bosnia-Herzegovina and one of the leaders of the Serbian Democratic Party (SDS), Petko Čančar; and the prime minister of Bosnia-Herzegovina and one of the leaders of the Croatian Democratic Community (HDZ), Jure Pelivan. The briefing papers prepared for the British delegation’s visit to Sarajevo suggested discussing whether BiH would consider border changes as “acceptable in the interests of a long term peace.” ⁴¹ Judging by the reports from the delegation’s Sarajevo meetings, the subject of borders does not seem to have come up. It is possible that Tait felt uncomfortable raising such an issue with the Bosnians without his superior present, though it is also possible this part of the conversations was too controversial to be put on paper. The rather uneventful reports suggest the talks were dominated by Bosnian complaints about the effects of the Gulf War on ongoing projects of BiH construction enterprises in Iraq and Kuwait and about Britain’s opposition to their compensation, as well as by Tait’s insistence that his government supported a “unitary Yugoslavia.” Tait even refused to offer support to Bosnia-Herzegovina’s and Macedonia’s plan which at the time tried to find middle ground between Serbia’s federal and Croatia’s and Slovenia’s confederal proposals. ⁴²

The following day Hogg returned to Yugoslavia and joined his delegation for a series of meetings with Croatian officials in Zagreb. This time, border changes and the destiny of Bosnia-Herzegovina were the subjects of conversation. In his exchange with the president of Croatia’s parliament Žarko Domljan, Hogg laid Milošević’s cards openly on the table. “[Hogg] commented that Mr Milošević had told him that if the Federal solution proved un-negotiable and Croatia declared itself independent the administrative frontiers of Croatia would have to be revised so that ethnic Serbs could be united with their compatriots in a Greater Serbia.” Domljan rejected such an option by pointing out that Serbia was not the only Yugoslav nation dissatisfied with its borders, “but attempting to re-draw them would only lead to chaos.” Hogg, however, pursued the subject further and “asked if Croatia would nonetheless be interested in re-drawing its borders if this were offered as a solution.” Domljan once again rejected the idea, in spite of its possible appeal for Herzegovinian Croats who maybe wanted to unite with Croatia, and instead proposed a moratorium on inter-republican borders akin to Helsinki arrangements on the international level. He pointed out that Serbia, if its preferences were applied universally, stood to lose not only Kosovo which had a large Albanian majority, but also border areas with Romania, Bulgaria, and Hungary. “The problem was that the Serbs wanted these rights for themselves but would not recognize them for any others,” he concluded. ⁴³

Foreign Office’s records of Hogg’s meeting with Croatia’s president Franjo Tuđman in restricted and open session do not reveal whether border alterations and the destiny of Bosnia-Herzegovina were the subjects of their conversation—though they might reveal it in the future, once their redacted portion is also declassified. A high Croatian official present at the meeting, however, confirmed that BiH and border changes indeed were discussed by the two delegations. ⁴⁴ According to his notes, made on the day of the meeting and in possession of the author, Hogg revealed to Tuđman that Milošević had told him “either federation, or Greater Serbia,” to which the British minister claimed to have responded that “this is a dangerous path.” Hogg then pointedly asked the Croatian president whether Croatia would be willing to cede the area around the Croatian town of Knin which was at the time the center of the mutiny of the Croatian Serbs. He also intimated that he was “most concerned by the division of Bosnia. He was aware that this could not be done without arbitration.” ⁴⁵ It is unclear what the response of the Croatian president was regarding the destiny of Bosnia-Herzegovina and the potential of border changes—the high Croatian official was not forthcoming on the issue—but it appears that the subject was broached by the British delegation, as a test of acceptability of Milošević’s plans to the Croats.

The documents of the Foreign Office and the account of the former Croatian high official are, however, in agreement that the bulk of the conversation between Tuđman and Hogg revolved around a likely JNA intervention against the Croatian government and Croatia’s request for international mediation. In their exchange in restricted session, Tuđman shared with Hogg his prediction regarding future JNA actions. He believed the Army was determined to move prior to 15 May—the day constitutionally scheduled for the rotation of functions in the federal presidency, after which the representative of Serbia Borisav Jović was to be replaced by the representative of Croatia Stjepan Mesić as president. He also believed Croatian intelligence would give his government a 5- to 10-day head start in preparations for the impending JNA intervention and he was determined Croatia would resist. In case of the Army’s move against Zagreb, his government would “look to the West, not for military intervention, but to issue statements on the unacceptability of the use or threat of force . . . [and] it might also request outside mediation, either in the CSCE/Helsinki framework, or from the United Nations.” Hogg’s response was to repeat Britain’s opposition to the use or threat of force, but with a qualification that “if real unrest erupted, e.g. in Serbian enclaves in Croatia, it might be the case that militia, or JNA, action could reasonably be considered necessary to restore order. It was therefore essential that Croatia should do nothing to offer justification for such action.” ⁴⁶ As for international mediation, Tuđman’s proposal seemed to Hogg to be a non-starter since Serbia would not agree to it. During their meeting in the open session, the whole British delegation mooted the possibility of international mediation. Hogg left the option of “good offices” open, but also “doubted whether the Helsinki procedures would be acceptable to Serbia since a precondition would be the recognition of existing borders.” Hall thought it would be difficult to find an arbitrator seen by all as impartial. And Tait pointed out that the CSCE procedures were not possible without the agreement of the federal government. In response, Tuđman noted his awareness of the diplomatic procedures, but asserted that the international community simply had to find a way to deal with states in transition. “The First World War had begun on the territory of Yugoslavia,” he added. “Tito had tried to heal the differences between Yugoslavia’s peoples but his approach had failed, and it would be a mistake to allow the Serbs to turn back the clock.” ⁴⁷

Hogg, however, remained committed to the suggestions he received in the briefing papers prior to his visit. The Yugoslav federation was to be served best with the maintenance of status quo, and Britain was simply not to get involved in any shape or form—either through financial assistance to the federal government, or through mediation efforts among the feuding republics. This was a policy full of perilous contradictions. Marković was still publicly touted, but at the same time he was actively undermined. Milošević was told his plans were dangerous, but at the same time these plans were considered reasonable and were even tested with other Yugoslav parties. The use or the threat of force was labeled as unacceptable, but at the same time a clear avenue was provided for the Army to market its intervention to the West as the protection of law and order. Last, but not least, the northwestern republics were told they technically had the right to demand independence, but at the same time they were told such a move would leave them without West’s help and exposed to predatory attacks by Belgrade. Two weeks prior to his meeting with Douglas Hogg, Slovenia’s foreign minister Dimitrij Rupel told a Yugoslav weekly Danas how “At moments it seems that the international community would most like to close its eyes and continue to dream [of] a unified Yugoslav state, which it sees as a guarantee of peace in this region.” ⁴⁸ His conversation with the British minister, during which it was made clear to him that neither independence nor a Yugoslav confederation would be in Slovenia’s or Europe’s interests, could have only confirmed such a view. ⁵⁰

Reaping What You Sow: Echoes and Consequences

According to Sir Percy Cradock, “the disintegration and accompanying bloodshed [of Yugoslavia] had been accurately forecast by the CIA and the JIC.” ⁵¹ The visit of the British delegation in February 1991 certainly should have contributed to such a forecast as it gave the delegation a clear picture of policy preferences and aims of all major players. The federal government of Ante Marković was obviously embattled and powerless. Milošević’s Serbia was intent on redrawing the borders of Croatia and, implicitly, Bosnia-Herzegovina. Slovenia and Croatia, on the other hand, were intent on pursuing either independence or a loose confederal arrangement and were determined to resist any intervention by the Serb-dominated Yugoslav People’s Army. Finally, the destiny of Bosnia-Herzegovina hung in the balance, with its division (and likely accompanying brutal violence) very much on the table of the local players. In reference to the briefing papers prepared for the British delegation prior to its tour of the troubled federation, “the trend of events in Yugoslavia” was extremely negative; “the likelihood of it holding together in some form” was extremely low; and “the consequences if it does not do so” were still very much in the air and highly dependent on Western involvement. The delegation, however, appears to have left Yugoslavia with a more positive outlook. As Michael Tait later remembered of his own and Douglas Hogg’s prevailing sentiment after the visit,

We thought there would still be some negotiable way out of it. Maybe I’m a bit naïve, because I liked Yugoslavia and the idea of Yugoslavia. These people are all Slavs and they all speak the same language. And it just seemed a retrograde step, to see them staggering into these little countries, more or less viable, but very small and under-resourced, and balkanized. It seemed not like progress, but regress. I wanted them to stay together and cooperate and be sensible. It isn’t just Yugoslavia—it’s every country in the world. Every little village head man wants to be head of state. And his mate can be foreign secretary, and this chap can be minister of the interior. . . . What’s the point? There’s no cohesive force. The cohesive force of realpolitik and history has been erased from these people for the time being. It will come back, of course, but for the time being in our lifetime it’s being erased. ⁵²

Tait’s fondness for Yugoslavia was, of course, not uncommon among British diplomats and foreign policy makers, nor was his distaste for the “little village head men” from its republics. Such thinking had a long tradition, probably going back to the very foundations of the South Slavic state after World War I. ⁵³ But the tendency to hope beyond all reasonable hope that violence would be avoided—without any active involvement of the West, no less—was staggering. Ambassador Hall is probably correct in suggesting that the problem partly lay in the fact that “there was an element of wishful thinking. People would have been content to leave Yugoslavia in a neat and relatively favorable spot on the shelf.” ⁵⁴ In addition to wishful thinking, the commitment of Whitehall to Yugoslavia’s future as a unitary state probably also had its foundations in the sheer eventfulness of the period—with crises in Central and Eastern Europe, as well as the Persian Gulf. In the words of Sir Percy Cradock, “Policy recommendations were made by overstretched advisers working at breakneck speed and digested by leaders under even greater stress. This meant a dependence on idées reçues, drafts on a dwindling intellectual capital amassed years before.” ⁵⁵ The continuing unity of Yugoslavia was probably one of such “received ideas.”

Does this interpretation, however, offer us a full and satisfactory explanation of Britain’s policy toward Yugoslavia during this period? Lord Salisbury may have been right when he more than a century ago remarked that “the commonest error in politics [is] sticking to the carcasses of dead policies.” ⁵⁶ But the record of British policy in the region throughout the breakup of Yugoslavia and the wars in Slovenia, Croatia, and Bosnia-Herzegovina seems to suggest that there was more at play—because Britain stuck to its guns well after it became clear that Yugoslavia was dead and buried in the massive destruction of Croatia’s towns like Vukovar and Dubrovnik at the hands of Serbian and JNA forces in the summer and fall of 1991. The rhetoric remained uncannily similar, for example, at the time of Slovenia’s and Croatia’s declarations of independence in June 1991 when Douglas Hogg’s subordinate Mark Lennox-Boyd suggested in the House of Commons that “the Yugoslav federal army might have, under the constitution, a role in restoring order if there were widespread civil unrest. . . . We and our western partners have a clear preference for the continuation of a single Yugoslav political entity.” ⁵⁷ Or in November 1991—in the midst of heavy attacks by JNA forces on Croatia and just after Milošević rejected the EC’s peace plans—when Douglas Hogg explained to the Foreign Affairs Committee of the House of Commons that “if the parties wanted to make adjustments to frontiers, by your prior recognition [of republics’ independence] you actually have an obstacle in the way of that.” ⁵⁸ Or in August 1992, at the time of the public discovery of Serb concentration camps in Bosnia-Herzegovina, when Hogg told the BiH government, “There is no cavalry over the hill. There is no international force coming to stop this.” ⁵⁹

The roots of Britain’s seemingly detached policy, therefore, appear to have been far more problematic. The Foreign Secretary Douglas Hurd later claimed how Britain “had no strategic interest in the Balkans, no commercial interest, no selfish interest at all. We simply wished that quiet should return.” ⁶⁰ The question was, however, what could guarantee the return of that quiet? Time and again throughout the Yugoslav crisis—both before and during the wars—British foreign policy makers seemed to believe it could only be Belgrade. It was a perfect example of the British brand of political realism. Since its interests were not directly at stake, London chose to rely on the exploits of the stronger regional party. That is why the preference was for a “unitary Yugoslavia” with a strong center in Belgrade. That is also why Milošević’s expansionist plan was tolerated. And that is why understanding was shown for the JNA. As the former foreign secretary and chairman of the EC Conference on Yugoslavia, Lord Carrington, later succinctly put it, the Yugoslavs were “all impossible people . . . all as bad as each other, and there are just more Serbs.”⁶¹