Yugoslavia, Relations with

YUGOSLAVIA, RELATIONS WITH

YUGOSLAVIA, RELATIONS WITH. The lack of any significant and tangible U.S. interests in the Balkans through most of American history has meant that the United States often has dealt with Yugoslavia in the context of larger international struggles and interests, particularly World War II and then the Cold War. American policy primarily has been dictated by greater concerns, not by any intrinsic value the United States places on Yugoslavia.

American relations with Yugoslavia date back to the creation of that multiethnic state in December 1918, a result of the collapse of the Austro-Hungarian empire at the end of World War I. Although Yugoslavia was ostensibly a reflection of Woodrow Wilson's principle of national self-determination, the twentieth-century Yugoslav state brought together under one government several peoples, including the Serbs, the Croats, and the Bosnian Muslims.

In the period between the world wars, U.S. policy toward the new nation was practically nonexistent. There were no significant American economic interests in Yugoslavia. There was little American capital invested there, and the volume of trade was minimal. During World War II, Yugoslavia became a matter of concern to the United States once it too became a victim of Nazi aggression in March 1941. U.S. policy was to support resistance forces in Yugoslavia fighting against the German and Italian armies. Even so, the United States tended to let the British, who had more experience in the region, take the lead. Following Winston Churchill, the United States gave aid first to Chetnik forces loyal to the prewar royal government, and then shifted its aid to Josip Broz Tito's partisans toward the end of the war, when it became apparent that they were the more effective fighting force. The only hard and fast rule Franklin Roosevelt's administration had regarding the region was its steadfast resistance to the idea of introducing American combat troops anywhere in the Balkans. The American military refused to entertain the idea at any point in the war. With that one restriction, the single American concern was to damage the Axis powers.

After the war, American policy toward Yugoslavia became a function of the Cold War. From 1945 to 1948, while Tito (who prevailed in the internal power struggle) was Joseph Stalin's loyal communist ally, the United States was implacably hostile to the Yugoslav regime. After Moscow's heavy-handed attempts to dominate Yugoslavia led Tito to split with Stalin in June 1948, the United States slowly inched closer to Tito, supporting his regime rhetorically, economically, and finally militarily, all in the name of keeping Yugoslavia out of the Soviet orbit. The United States and Yugoslavia signed a bilateral military agreement in November 1951 that had the practical effect of incorporating the communist state into NATO's defensive plans for Europe. Tito came to rely on a steady stream of U.S. economic aid to prop up his economy, and the United States grudgingly tolerated his attempts to organize Third World nations into a neutralist bloc, as long as he remained independent of Moscow and thus a useful example for the United States of a communist leader who was not under the thumb of the Kremlin.

This remained American policy throughout the Cold War. It was not based on any fondness for Tito, his ideology, or his government, but on a desire to place a thorn in the side of the Soviet Union. When the Cold War came to an abrupt end, the United States was left with no policy for Yugoslavia. Having viewed the country through the prism of World War II and then the Cold War for nearly fifty years, Yugoslavia had no clear meaning for the United States in the absence of a common enemy.

Upon Tito's death in 1980, no single leader emerged to replace him. Instead, the Yugoslav government was run by the leaders of the republics, who shared a revolving presidency. The state limped along through the 1980s, but the collapse of the Soviet empire in eastern Europe in 1989 removed the last force holding the republics together. Slovenia, Croatia, Bosnia, and Macedonia all declared their independence of Yugoslavia and set up separate states. The wars that followed the breakup of Yugoslavia presented a new challenge to American policy. Throughout the 1990s, America's struggle to define a coherent and effective policy vacillated between a desire to act to end the bloodshed and a fear of becoming trapped in a foreign policy quagmire.

President George H. W. Bush avoided any direct American role in Yugoslavia, and his successor, Bill Clinton, initially followed suit. Eventually the fear of a wider war that might destabilize Europe and international outrage over atrocities committed (particularly by Serb forces in Bosnia) forced the Clinton administration to act, both diplomatically and militarily. The United States brokered the Dayton agreement in 1995 that ended the fighting in Bosnia, and American-led NATO air strikes in 1999 forced the Yugoslav government of Slobodan Milosevic to allow NATO occupation of Kosovo. At the start of the twenty-first century, American military forces were part of NATO peacekeeping forces in both Bosnia and Kosovo, but the often stated preference of George W. Bush to withdraw American forces from peacekeeping missions seemed to signal a return to a more hands-off American policy in the region.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Beloff, Nora. Tito's Flawed Legacy: Yugoslavia and the West, 1939– 1984. Boulder, Colo.: Westview Press, 1985.

Brands, H. W. The Specter of Neutralism: The United States and the Emergence of the Third World, 1947–1960. New York: Columbia University Press, 1989.

Heuser, Beatrice. Western Containment Policies in the Cold War: The Yugoslav Case 1948–53. London and New York: Routledge, 1989.

Lees, Lorraine M. Keeping Tito Afloat: The United States, Yugoslavia, and the Cold War. University Park: Pennsylvania State University Press, 1997.

Mark S. Byrnes

See also Kosovo Bombing .