United in failure: Foundations of post-Cold War Europe and the dissolution of Yugoslavia

This study deals with possibly the most important period in the recent history of Europe---the years between the beginning of the end of the Cold War and the conclusion of the Treaty on European Union (1987--1992). It evaluates the process of the laying of the foundations for a post-Cold War Europe by looking through the prism of the West's involvement in the dissolution of Yugoslavia. It thus draws conclusions both about the political foundations of contemporary European affairs and about the West's actual policy in Yugoslavia. What were the preferences and strategies of the European powers (including the greatest "European" power of all---the United States) regarding the dissolution of Yugoslavia? To which extent were those preferences and strategies rooted in different conceptions of Europe's near future? And what were the consequences of the resulting policies?;In addition to the relatively easily available sources such as transcripts, resolutions, and statements from various international institutions, as well as the press reports from the West and the former Yugoslavia---this study also makes extensive use of materials thus far absent from the literature: 150 CIA reports on Yugoslavia declassified through the Freedom of Information Act, the evidence generated by The Hague Tribunal for its trial of Slobodan Milosevic including more than 200 intercepted communications between the Serbian President and his associates, and more than 40 personal interviews with former diplomats and policy makers conducted by the author.;With the goal of situating the dissolution of Yugoslavia firmly into the larger context of European developments, the study shows to which extent the Yugoslav events were actually codependent with the greater international events related to the end of the Cold War. The study's analysis particularly exposes how the realist policies of the West which were aimed at propping up Yugoslavia's continuing existence set the stage for the Yugoslav wars by encouraging the Yugoslav Army and Slobodan Milosevic to pursue violent means. The study also sheds light on the dramatic clash of opinions within the Western alliance on how to respond to the violence, and traces the origins of this clash in the Western powers' different preferences regarding the roles of Germany, Eastern Europe, and foreign and security policy in the future of European integration.