Published online by Cambridge University Press: 20 November 2018
In April 1994, the Croatian government of the late Franjo Tudjman demanded that all “non white” UN troops be removed from Croatia, claiming that only “first-world troops” were sufficiently sensitized to Croatia's problems. In Western circles, however, it was Tudjman's Serbian counterpart, Slobodan Milosevic, who was often portrayed as a racist. Ramet, for example, argues that “Milosevic built his power on a foundation of hatred and xenophobia …”; Zimmermann refers to “the ethnic hatred sown by Milosevic and his ilk …”; and Duncan and Holman compare Milosevic to Russia's Vladimir Zhirinovsky, claiming that the latter's “blatant appeals to racism bear a striking resemblance to those of Milosevic's Serbia.” For her part, Madeleine Albright, speaking on national television as US Secretary of State in February 2000, described Milosevic as a man “who decides that if you are not of his ethnic group, you don't have a right to exist.”