Word: yugoslavia
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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...have to work with--and fight it out for supremacy. The old habitually say that everything was better when they were young--let's go back. The young are by nature sure that everything will be better when they come of age--let's go forward. In the former Yugoslavia, in Somalia and the Middle East, America has come in saying, "Make a fresh start!" And those caught in their ancestral rivalries reply, "How can we make a pact with the future until we have made a peace with the past?" During the war in Vietnam, an American culture...
Tudjman came to power in Croatia at a critical time in the history of the former Yugoslavia. He won the elections in Croatia by preaching a fiery, intolerant nationalism, rallying Croats to the point of view that only Croats knew how to govern Croats, and that Croatia was for them alone. At a time when ethnic unrest was being stoked on the Serbian side by Slobodan Milosevic, Tudjman jumped in on the other side and denounced Serbs as eagerly as Milosevic denounced other nationalities...
Tudjman did successfully lead Croatia to a break from Yugoslavia, holding off a much more powerful Yugoslavian Army. But in so doing, he perpetrated human rights violations on the Serbian population of Croatia, displacing many, forcing them to swear to loyalty oaths and dismissing them from jobs...
...Yugoslavia found itself in a precarious, fragile situation entering the '90s. There were in large numbers throughout the country moderate citizens and politicians, Croat, Serb, and of other ethnicities, who hoped to see the country transform itself peacefully into a loosely knit confederation in which all citizens would play a part in governance...
...today in Kosovo. Tudjman deserves respect as a head of state, and for his role in creating a new country, no mean feat under any circumstances. But he does share with many others a great responsibility for the conflagration that shattered so many millions of lives in the former Yugoslavia, and it is entirely comprehensible that the West viewed his passing with reservations...