The Yugoslav People’s Army deployed tanks to attempt to take back the border controls set up by the Slovenes after they declared independence in 1991.
After the death of Yugoslavian leader, Josip Broz Tito in 1980, Yugoslavia was left a divided nation with no clear leader to take his place. Over the course of the next 20 years, this division would fall along the lines of ethnic identity and create tensions that resulted in a series of deadly conflicts, collectively referred to as the Yugoslav Wars. On June 25, 1991, Croatia and Slovenia, two of the six republics of Yugoslavia, unilaterally declared independence and so began the first of many violent conflicts, the Ten-Day War.
The war was fought between the Slovenian Territorial Defence and the Yugoslav People’s Army, both of whom felt strongly about their own cause. After declaring independence, the Slovenes immediately put up border controls, solidifying their independence from Yugoslavia and prompting the Yugoslav People’s Army to deploy troops and tanks in an attempt to overtake several border posts. Fighting only intensified in the following days, and became the most intense on July 2nd with several skirmishes and a failed ceasefire. The Ten-Day War ended on July 7th with the Brioni Accord and resulted in the Yugoslav Military withdrawing and granted independence to Slovenia and Croatia.
Former Yugoslavia was made up of distinct regions, with Slovenia and Croatia declaring their independence from Yugoslavia and the rest of the regions in June 1991.
The hostile string of events that led up to the Ten-Day War gave much of the world plenty of time to anticipate the violence that would ensue in the disintegration of Yugoslavia, but by 1991, much of the Western world had taken a stance that led them to inaction. The Cold War was ending as tensions in Yugoslavia ran high, and the United States viewed these Yugoslavian conflicts as the first major challenge to the emerging world order. The attitude of policy makers in the United States and the Bush Administration on Yugoslavia has been examined in retrospect, as their attitude shifted from previous policy priorities. As then-Ambassador to Yugoslavia, Warren Zimmern conceded, “Yugoslavia no longer enjoyed the geopolitical importance that the United Stateshad given it during the Cold War.” It wasn’t until the nation was on the brink of violence that the Bush Administration switched its stance on maintaining regional sovereignty and began encouraging European Nations to intervene in the region. By this time, the intentions of each side in the conflict were skewed and the ‘good guy’ was hard to identify by outside governments.
Media coverage of the violent events leading to the breakup of Yugoslavia tended to reflect the mixed emotions of the time, with a New York Times article published in December 1991, describing the tensions between intentions and reality. The article details the events of the original skirmishes, but takes a stance aligned with those opposing the Yugoslavian government. This aligned with the United States’ hope to allow for the region to practice self-governing sovereignty, but was a test to the order that had come to stand. A former Yugoslavian army officer, who left to fight alongside the Croatians described the twisted intentions in the article, with the statement that “We have a state, if it hasn’t been fully recognized, and now we’re creating an army. Our enemy doesn’t have a state, but they exist only as an army trying to create a state to belong to”. The army officer captured the sentiment of most American media at the time, that the breakup, while unfortunate, was not unforeseen. The tensions in the region were age-old ethnic tensions that had been given room to bubble to the surface with the fall of the Soviet Union and its satellite nations. Media reflected this new wave of ethnic recognition and would continue to do so as Yugoslavia continued to be split apart in the series of events that would become known as the Yugoslav Wars.
Works Cited
Council on Foreign Relations. “Excerpt: The World and Yugoslavia’s Wars.” Accessed March 21, 2021. https://www.cfr.org/excerpt-world-and-yugoslavias-wars.
Engelberg, Stephen, “Yugoslav Ethnic Hatreds Raise Fears of a War without an End.” New York Times Dec 23, 1991: 2.
Engelberg, Stephen, 1991. “War Preparations by Yugoslav Army” New York Times , May 09, 1991: 1.
Hutchings, Robert L. American Diplomacy and the End of the Cold War: An Insider’s Account of U.S. Policy in Europe, 1989-1992. Washington, D.C: Woodrow Wilson Center Press, 1997.
Sudetic, Chuck, “Croatia Votes for Sovereignty and Confederation.” New York Times , May 20, 1991: 1.
Tagliabue, John, 1991. “Slovenia Reports 100 Wounded Or Killed: Yugoslavia Battles Breakaway Republic.” New York Times, Jun 28, 1991: 2.