MR Topic: The Dismantling of Yugoslavia (Part I)
A Study in In humanitarian Intervention (and a Western Liberal-Left Intellectual and Moral Collapse) by Edward S. Herman and David Peterson Jump to Part: II , III , IV | Glossary | Timeline The breakup of Yugoslavia provided the fodder for what may have been the most misrepresented series of major events over the past twenty years. The journalistic and historical narratives that were imposed upon these wars have systematically distorted their nature, and were deeply prejudicial, downplaying the external factors that drove Yugoslavia’s breakup while selectively exaggerating and misrepresenting the internal factors. Perhaps no civil wars—and Yugoslavia suffered multiple civil wars across several theaters, at least two of which remain unresolved—have ever been harvested as cynically by foreign powers to establish legal precedents and new categories of international duties and norms. Nor have any other civil war...