Word: yugoslavias
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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...tone for the year was set. Remember when crazy Communist Gennadi Zyuganov was way up in the polls in Russia? Everyone was worried about that. So Boris Yeltsin starts the year by stepping down and handing power to Vladimir Putin. In Yugoslavia, Milosevic's bloody reign ends with a bloodless election. In Austria, that scary Jorg Haider gives up leadership of the ironically named Freedom Party. We didn't even drop any bombs on Iraq this year...
SLOBODAN MILOSEVIC Serbian people finally cleanse ethnic cleanser. But will Yugoslavia become truly democratic? Like Florida...
...Yugoslavia the people said yes to freedom again, rose up against an illegally elected President, stormed the seat of government and forced a recount...
...Yeltsin still tried to orient Russian foreign policy toward what we may call normal values. Still, there was a shift. In Yugoslavia, for example, Moscow supported Milosevic. Foreign policy began pursuing what these hard-liners call Russian national interests, but which may rather be called the interests of those conservative hard-line circles. Once Putin became president, the idea of a foreign policy change was more openly and publicly expressed. Putin has indicated that he's going to oppose the U.S. whenever possible. He's behaving like old the Soviet leaders by trying to drive a wedge in the Western...
...irony is that Moscow is trying to build alliances to oppose the U.S., but they're not learning the lessons from Yugoslavia. There they tried to support Milosevic even though the Serb people were not keen to support him. Now that the Serbs have overthrown Milosevic, they'll probably turn to the West, which has a lot more to offer than Russia does. So there's a danger in Putin's strategy that when all of these countries open up and overthrow their dictators, they're all going to turn back to the West. What will Putin do then...