FREEDOM OVER YUGOSLAVIAN TERRITORIAL INTEGRITY: RECOGNIZE NEW CONFEDERATION OF SOVEREIGN REPUBLICS

(Washington, D.C.): With the
announcement today that the Yugoslavian
republics of Croatia and Slovenia
declared their independence from the
federal government, the United States and
its allies are faced with a choice of
immense significance: On the one hand,
they can support those committed
to democracy and free-market opportunity
now exercising their right of
self-determination and, in the process,
end — or at least dramatically
restructure — the communist state of
Yugoslavia. By swiftly
recognizing the new, voluntary
confederation of sovereign states being
created by Croatia and Slovenia, and
presumably in due course Bosnia
Hercegovina and Macedonia, the Western
nations can help deter brutal
repression of this move for
independence.

Alternatively, the West can demand
that the Yugoslavian nation be preserved at
all costs — penalizing the
independence-minded republics through
what would amount to an economic embargo
on trade and sanctioning the use of
violence if deemed necessary by the
Serbian dominated central authorities and
army to “restore order.” Such a
view may be as much motivated by a
widespread concern on the part of states
from Canada to the Soviet Union, Belgium
and Czechoslovakia to the countries of
Africa, that endorsing break-away
republics in Yugoslavia may establish
troubling precedents for their nations.

Whatever the reason, a number of
countries — including the United States
and others represented in the Conference
on Security and Cooperation in Europe and
in the European Community have, in recent
days, signalled that they are inclined to
favor the latter course. A
typical statement issued before
the Croatian and Slovenian announcements
(and obviously intended to dissuade those
declarations of independence), came from
Jacques Poos of Luxembourg: “[The EC
would recognize the independence of these
republics] only if such
independence were the result of
negotiations and of an internal agreement
accepted by all.”

Now that Croatian and Slovenian
independence has been declared, however, it
is crucial that such threats not
be implemented. Instead, a
policy must be devised — one that
encourages the creation of a new
confederation, born of a common
commitment to democracy and free
enterprise, and that offers incentives
for Serbia, Montenegro, Vojvodina and
Kosovo as well as Macedonia and Bosnia
Hercegovina to participate on the basis
of these principles.

Importantly, at the end of May and
pursuant to the provisions of the
Nickles-Bentley Amendment to the FY1991
Foreign Operations Appropriations Act,
the United States established a basis for
pursuing such an alternative approach. At
that time, the Bush Administration
differentiated on human rights grounds
between the repressive,
communist-dominated regimes of Serbia and
the rest of the Yugoslav republics by
denying the former Overseas Private
Investment Corporation insurance
coverage.

The Center for Security Policy
believes that, by applying this approach
more broadly, the United States and its
allies can create a genuine basis for
encouraging the movement toward a
restructured, free association of
democratic and sovereign republics in
Yugoslavia while discouraging the efforts
of those who hope to thwart such a
development.