6 - Acting Contentiously

Summary

The Serbian nationalist regime of Slobodan Milosevic would seem to have been the last to be undermined by a social movement. A wily Leninist quick to sniff the winds of change blowing across east central Europe well before 1989, Milosevic undermined what was left of Yugoslav unity by fomenting a war with Croatia and attacking the vulnerable state of Bosnia-Herzegovina through his agents, the Bosnian Serbs. When the horrors of Bosnian genocide led to reaction from the West, Milosevic made a deal with the Americans and western Europeans that left his Bosnian henchmen dangling in the wind.

Politically unassailable as long as he controlled the army and the media, Milosevic's position weakened as the costs of the Bosnian war became clear. But with ruthless cunning, continued control of the press, and the remnants of the old Communist apparat to support him, Milosevic seemed secure in his power until November 1996, when the formerly divided opposition parties mounted a coalition list, Zajedno (Together), for the local elections of 1996. When they won fourteen of the country's local elections, including that of the country's capital, the government declared these victories illegal.

Such a tactic could only work if three things were true: if it was backed by a credible threat of force, if the media were under state control, and if no one from outside the country was watching. But, as it happened, those conditions no longer held.