This book is aimed at presenting fresh views, interpretations, and reinterpretations of some already researched issues relating to the Yugoslav foreign policy and international relations up to year 1991. Yugoslavia positioned itself as a communist state that was not under the heel of the Soviet diplomacy and policy and as such was perceived by the West as an acceptable partner and useful tool in counteracting the Soviet influence.
Titoist Yugoslavia is a particularly interesting setting to examine the integrity of the modern nation-state, especially the viability of distinctly multi-ethnic nation-building projects. Scholarly literature on the brutal civil wars that destroyed Yugoslavia during the 1990s emphasizes divisive nationalism and dysfunctional politics to explain why the state disintegrated. But the larger question remains unanswered—just how did Tito’s state function so successfully for the preceding forty-six years. In an attempt to understand better what united the stable, multi-ethnic, and globally important Yugoslavia that existed before 1991 Robert Niebuhr argues that we should pay special attention to the dynamic and robust foreign policy that helped shape the Cold War.
The disintegration of Yugoslavia and the Soviet Union in 1991 shed entirely new light on the character of their political systems. There is now a need to re-examine many of the standard interpretations of Soviet and Yugoslav politics. This book is a comparative study of the disintegration of Yugoslavia and the Soviet Union - as multinational, federal communist states - and the reaction of European and US foreign policy to the parallel collapses of these nations. The authors describe the structural similarities in the destabilization of the two countries, providing great insight into the demise of both.
In this work, two former State Department lawyers provide an account of how and why justice was misapplied and mishandled throughout the peace-builders' efforts to settle the Yugoslav conflict. The text is based on their personal experience, research and interviews with key players in the process.
Focusing on the life and career of Slobodan Milosevic from the perspective of both a diplomatic insider and a scholar, this text provides first-hand observations of Milosevic during his rise to power and, later, in the endgame of the Bosnian war.
This book is about the Americanization of Yugoslav culture and everyday life during the nineteen-sixties. After falling out with the Eastern bloc, Tito turned to the United States for support and inspiration. In the political sphere the distance between the two countries was carefully maintained, yet in the realms of culture and consumption the Yugoslav regime was definitely much more receptive to the American model. For Titoist Yugoslavia this tactic turned out to be beneficial, stabilising the regime internally and providing an image of openness in foreign policy. Coca-Cola Socialism addresses the link between cultural diplomacy, culture, consumer society and politics. Its main argument is that both culture and everyday life modelled on the American way were a major source of legitimacy for the Yugoslav Communist Party, and a powerful weapon for both USA and Yugoslavia in the Cold War battle for hearts and minds. Radina Vučetić explores how the Party used American culture in order to promote its own values and what life in this socialist and capitalist hybrid system looked like for ordinary people who lived in a country with communist ideology in a capitalist wrapping. Her book offers a careful reevaluation of the limits of appropriating the American dream and questions both an uncritical celebration of Yugoslavia’s openness and an exaggerated depiction of its authoritarianism.
This landmark biography, now in English for the first time, reveals the life of one of the most powerful figures of the Cold War era. Josip Broz, nicknamed Tito, led Yugoslavia for nearly four decades with charisma, cunning, and an iron fist. An illuminating, definitive portrait of a complex man in turbulent times, a life as riveting as any John Le Carré plot.
What can outside powers do now to help heal the terrible wounds caused by Yugoslavia's wars? Why did the victors in the Cold War and the 1991 Gulf War not act to stop the slaughter? The nature, scope, and meaning of the actions and inactions of outsiders is the subject of this book.
This book develops a conceptual model of legitimacy as a value-judgement in international relations in contrast to Weberian and legal approaches. The model is based on the interaction of the states-systemic value of order with a liberal ideal of the state and a free-market, liberal international economy. Whilst formulated as a principally Western model, the analysis of the rise and fall of Yugoslavia and the international response points towards a wider applicability as well as confirming the value of the concept as an analytical tool.
