Vapormancer wrote:Shofercia wrote:I gotta wonder if Yugoslavia could've been preserved, or at the very least had something like the Velvet Divorce. The claim that it was always going to fall apart was made by the same actors who either supported the WMD in Iraq theory, or did nothing to stop it, so I gotta wonder if Yugoslavia could've genuinely been preserved, or could've been Velvet Divorced, or could've had its power decentralized like Switzerland. Because shit just keeps on happening and happening in that region, and it's fucked up.
The claim that it was always going to fall apart is made by just about everybody these days. It does not take a genius to see how Serbs shit the bed and everyone else didn't want to live in the mess they made. It took Tito (a Croat) to sort the Serbs out. No surprise it fell to pieces like the Kingdom of Yugoslavia and was beaten/bombed/invaded like Serbia historically has been by outside forces.
Edit: I should add an anecdote about Tito's cleverness. He had Croatians learning Serbian and Serbians learning Croatian. When the big tough guy Croats showed up to fight, they couldn't understand Latin Letters and their phrases were all wrong. 4D chess stuff.
People say that countries will fall apart, and then they don't. Back in the late eighteenth century, lots of people were predicting that US would fall apart. As far as leadership goes, it could come from any ethnicity; there's no magical Croat trait that says that Serbs couldn't produce their own Tito. I think that Yugoslavia wasn't given a chance to thrive.
Heloin wrote:Shofercia wrote:I gotta wonder if Yugoslavia could've been preserved, or at the very least had something like the Velvet Divorce. The claim that it was always going to fall apart was made by the same actors who either supported the WMD in Iraq theory, or did nothing to stop it, so I gotta wonder if Yugoslavia could've genuinely been preserved, or could've been Velvet Divorced, or could've had its power decentralized like Switzerland. Because shit just keeps on happening and happening in that region, and it's fucked up.
Yugoslavia probably would exist today if Milošević had never come to power in Serbia. obviously much more complicated then that but I'm only going to speak in broad strokes. Probably would have become more and more federalised with possibly Slovenia breaking away. And if they joined the EU sometime in the mid 2000s they'd probably never break up any further.
So there's a timeline where Yugoslavia could exist. How do you envision that?
Gravlen wrote:Kosovo isn't extraordinarily dangerous, but the issues you point out do exist. You'll feel safe walking down a street in Prishtina, as long as you're aware of potential pickpockets.
I also feel rather safe walking in downtown Groznyy, and I don't even have to worry about pickpockets. What about the Kosovo countryside, or even the seedier parts of the capital's surrounding areas?
Greed and Death wrote:I don't know what everyone is worked up about. It is not like this area of Europe every started a world war or anything.
Oh you!
Diviz wrote:Heloin wrote:Yugoslavia probably would exist today if Milošević had never come to power in Serbia. obviously much more complicated then that but I'm only going to speak in broad strokes. Probably would have become more and more federalised with possibly Slovenia breaking away. And if they joined the EU sometime in the mid 2000s they'd probably never break up any further.
Milošević was given Green light by Americans to try conquer Croatia. The US Ambasador Warren Zimmerman gave him guarantees to "clean the mess". Without that even Croatia would never been recognised and the whole thing would end something like in Catalonia.
Apparently, sometimes it's best not to listen.