Blood On Our Hands: U.S. Shares Blame For Violent Repression of Democracy In Slovenia and Croatia

(Washington, D.C.): On 24 June 1991, the President of the Croatian Republic, Franjo Tudjman, wrote Secretary of State James Baker expressing his people’s profound puzzlement over the United States’ policy toward Croatia and other democratic-minded republics of Yugoslavia. This letter, a copy of which was obtained by the Center for Security Policy today and is attached, conveys — albeit in diplomatic language — the full extent of the betrayal felt by those seeking "peace, freedom and free market economy." President Tudjman’s letter told Baker, among other things:

"Our democratically elected political leaders of Slovenia and Croatia are now installed in positions of public trust, mandating we act in the interests of our courageous voters in seeking their additional freedoms. We will not allow Croatia and Slovenia to now be blackmailed by the Central Federal Government which has openly threatened to use military force to stop the will of the people. Many feel your change of policy encourages the latter. Yes, we are perplexed in now being told, a full year after our democratic governments have in good faith attempted to reach a peaceful solution with the reformed Marxists that we must remain united with them." (Emphasis added.)

 

The Center, which called on the Bush Administration Tuesday to recognize Croatia and Slovenia as part of a new voluntary confederation of sovereign republics, was appalled to discover that — according to the State Department Press Spokeswoman, Margaret Tutwiler, the USSR has adopted a stance "almost literally identical to the United States’ position on" events unfolding in Yugoslavia. As described by the Soviet Foreign Ministry, Moscow’s line is as follows:

"[The Slovenian and Croatian declarations of independence] have not been recognized by the SFRY [Yugoslavian] state bodies and cannot be regarded as promoting the resolution of Yugoslavia’s complex problems….The Soviet Union continues to advocate the unity and territorial integrity of Yugoslavia, the inviolability of its borders (including internal borders) and the right of the peoples of Yugoslavia to decide their own future. It also supports the federal structures of authority that are striving to preserve the Yugoslav state."

 

"The common determination on the part of the Soviet Union and the United States to preserve the territorial integrity of such imperial accidents of history as Yugoslavia — to say nothing of the USSR and Iraq — under centralized, totalitarian rule is emerging as the ironic definition of the so-called ‘New World Order,’" said Frank J. Gaffney, Jr., the Center’s director. "By being party to such policies, the United States stands not only to abandon America’s most precious values and principles but to jeopardize the only real hope for long-term stability around the globe; the proliferation of democracy and free market institutions."

The Center strongly endorses the conditions the Financial Times of London has set out for determining when free nations should recognize the independence of others seeking to join their ranks. In an editorial published on 26 June, the FT said: "Governments should be democratically elected; ethnic minority rights should be fully respected; external borders should not be violated; internal borders should not be changed, except through peaceful negotiations; an explicit commitment should be made to political and economic pluralism."