Factors Leading to the Civil War in Yugoslavia

In the hopeful aftermath of the collapse of the Soviet Union, the Western world was mostly shocked that a European country such as Yugoslavia could collapse so violently in the early- and mid-nineties. However, due to structural, political, and economic/social factors within that country, there is no doubt that we should have seen it coming.

Structural factors alone could have indicated that Yugoslavia was heading towards catastrophe. In the aftermath of Tito’s death and the fall of the Soviet Union, it was a weak state, as was clearly demonstrated by the secessions of Slovenia and Croatia. The state’s weakness contributed to the development and strengthening of security concerns among the country’s different ethnic groups, causing many Serbs, Croats, and Muslims to horror for their lives. The security dilemma that followed is a classic example of circular response, demonstrating that no action occurs in a vacuum. By arming themselves in response to their fear of other groups, militias from a particular group exacerbated the security concerns of other groups, leading those other groups to arm themselves, which in turn provoked more fear, and so on. This pattern was particularly dangerous in light of Yugoslavia’s ethnic geography; since ethnic groups were dispersed throughout the territory in varying concentrations, any ethnic conflict was likely to be widespread and bloody for all parties.

Political factors in Yugoslavia also suggested that conditions were right for complete breakdown. The nature of national political institutions had become Serb-dominated, which, in conjunction with the increasingly ethnicity-based national ideologies, spelled disaster for the multiethnic society. Furthermore, in a region in which opposing parties had stated goals such as creating a “Greater Serbia” or “Greater Croatia” using the same territory, it was obvious that the dynamics of intergroup politics in the country would lead towards violent intrastate conflict. While the outside world would not have been aware of the private thoughts and agreements of the region’s leaders, the push towards conflict in Yugoslavia’s elite politics was quite visible through the mass media propaganda of the time.

A number of economic/social factors and cultural/perceptual factors within Yugoslavia suggested that once the conflict began, political elites would have no problem mobilizing the population’s support. Ethnic scapegoating was easy to accumulate in a country facing severe economic problems and where discriminatory economic systems were common (even if it was the scapegoats who often faced the economic discrimination). Culturally, the country was divided between mutually weird group histories and group perceptions that glorified the in-group and demonized the out-group.

During hard times, these histories and perceptions were bound to become core constructs central to the very identities of groups under both real and imagined threats. Once that point had been reached, it should have been obvious that selective perception would allow average people throughout the region to commit and excuse any number of atrocities against out-group members while remaining indignant about similar actions against in-group members. The evidence of many underlying causes of ethnic conflict in Yugoslavia was readily available to the Western world, which should have understood that the Balkans was much like a powder keg, ready to explode.

To ignite the conflict in Yugoslavia, all that was needed was a trigger or proximate cause that would allow the mounting tension from the many underlying causes to erupt. Obvious triggers in the Balkans were the decisions of various republics (especially Croatia and Bosnia) to secede from Yugoslavia. The moment of secession for each republic stands out as a structural change in the conflict from which no party could turn back. In each case of secession, the remaining government of Yugoslavia had to decide whether to allow or deny it; to pronounce secession essentially meant using Force against the breakaway republic. In return, each seceding republic had to determine whether it would defend itself or surrender if attacked. At that point, what many viewed as an irrational ethnic conflict should have been understood as the product of different rationalities acting in extremely predictable ways.