United States of Yugoslavia
Josip Broz Tito, Yugoslavia’s ‘benign dictator’ and Joseph R. Biden, the current US president, might have agreed that there is a country born out of an idea: for Tito, it would have been Yugoslavia; for Biden, it is the US.
In many ways, United States and the Socialist Federative Republic of Yugoslavia (SFRY) are as different from one another as can be. To make the matter painfully obvious, Yugoslavia, a motley crew of South Slavic polities forged out of anti-imperial struggle, only existed in the twentieth century, first as a kingdom, then as a Socialist federation. Any comparison between the two is thus likely to be dismissed as unwarranted, if not preposterous. And yet, people well acquainted with these two countries, former Yugoslavs, Americans and others alike, see uncanny parallels.
Some people see similarities between Donald Trump and the former Serbian president Slobodan Milošević, who died in 2006 while on trial for war crimes. Others sound more general warnings about the encroaching authoritarianism or the destructive potential of hatred.
The main thing about Yugoslavia these days, however, is that it no longer exists. The reasons for its death are complex but can be boiled down to the choice of extreme right-wing nationalism as a response to a worsening economic situation, increasing sociopolitical fragmentation and the prospect of loss of privilege for the dominant social group. If that sounds familiar, perhaps the comparison is not as far-fetched as it may seem.
To be sure, the differences between the two are real and many, and yet, somewhat similarly to what happened in Yugoslavia, the US went from a status of superpower and undisputed global leader to paralysis in government, catastrophic failure in public health policy and a failed coup in the space of four years, that is to say, practically overnight.
To those of us who experienced the disintegration of Yugoslavia firsthand, the stunning speed with which this breakdown in the US has occurred is eerily familiar. Prior to 1991 and the commencement of the Yugoslav wars, Yugoslavia too had a strong military and a solid international reputation. The burgundy-red SFRY passport was subject to fewer entry visas than even its contemporary US counterpart. There had been periods of explosive economic growth and transformative investment in infrastructure; there was technological know-how, and world-class education and healthcare; Yugoslavia too was exporting technology and expertise around the world. People who are old enough to remember the old country still talk about how you would be perfectly safe even if, for some weird reason, you chose to spend the night on a park bench and how no one ever locked their front doors. And then it all came crashing down. Fast.
The fundamental question of both Yugoslav and American civic nationalisms is social equality and social equality in diverse polities fundamentally depends on the choice of the sociopolitical frame. While Yugoslavia was composed of theoretically equal ethnic South Slavic nations, in reality those nations’ sizes and political histories gave them varying degrees of power. In the US, the contemporary social justice issues remain largely racial issues: de facto segregation, lack of equal access to socioeconomic resources including education, unequal treatment by the judicial system, police brutality against non-Whites, and the electoral college which gives greater weight to votes cast in the largely White smaller states. Although it is race rather than ethnicity that defines the major social groups in the US, the fundamental problem of achieving political stability through equality between major constituent groups is exactly the same as in the Yugoslav case. Despite an improved socioeconomic position for racial minorities, this historical process is in danger of halting or even reversal as the demographic composition of the country changes, a decades-long trend that arguably underlies much of the now painfully evident radicalization and resentment among Whites. The result is extreme, right-wing ethnoracial White nationalism that has much in common with Serbian ethnonationalism that consumed Yugoslavia.
Both nationalisms can be traced back to WW2-era fascism as their most direct, common ideological progenitor. In the Serbian case, contemporary nationalists see themselves as the progeny of Chetniks, a Serbian Fascist collaborationist faction that grew out of the remnants of the Yugoslav royal army which was quickly defeated by the Germans in 1941. In the American case, contemporary White supremacists are the clear progeny of a long line of fringe fascist groups going at least as far back as the 1939 Fascist rally held at New York’s Madison Square Garden. Crucially, both of these nationalisms were brought into the mainstream on waves of popular resentment against the failure of the dominant groups’ (Serbs, Whites) hegemony, manufactured and stoked by political elites.
Both nationalisms thrive on obvious, brazen and stubborn lies, mythical narratives and absurd conspiracy theories fanned by faux outrage. We can see the similarity in the lies from the attempt to recast the January 6 Capitol Hill riot as ‘tourism’ in the US, and the similarly brazen attempt by the wartime Serbian leadership to convince the international media that people in Sarajevo, which their forces held under siege for almost four years, were bombing themselves. Mythical narratives, such as the 600-year saga of the 1389 Battle of Kosovo (against the Ottomans) that served to ignite the implosion of Yugoslavia, seem to be a Serbian specialty, but Americans are not far behind (cf. ‘virgin’ continent, American exceptionalism). The many recent American conspiracy theories from birtherism to the Pizzagate to the hunt for bamboo in ballots in Arizona require no explanation. Serbian conspiracy theories, on the other hand, are less recent but every bit as fabricated, paranoid and ludicrous. Good examples include the still widespread belief in the Vatican origins of all manner of ploys against Serbia spanning centuries and the bizarre case of Zetra, a major Olympic games facility in Sarajevo. The name for the Zetra sports complex, a blend of the South Slavic words ZElena TRAnsverzala(literally, green transversal or green corridor, in the parlance of Sarajevo’s urban planning authorities), and the site of ice competitions at the 1984 Olympics, was held up by Serbian nationalists in the late 1980s and early 1990s, and even recently, as proof of a vast conspiracy to reestablish colonial Ottoman rule in the Balkans by linking several predominantly Muslim (‘green’) areas stretching from Bosnia to Turkey.
The ‘trauma’ of the loss of privilege due to the failure of hegemony as well as changing demographics have fueled anger, feigned and real, and demands for the redressing of bogus grievances (“You will not replace us.”). However, the classic and politically most dangerous move is the attempt to redraw borders. The 1990s Yugoslav wars began with armed Serbian vigilantes in the other republics proclaiming autonomy and demarcating territories they considered rightfully theirs amid an absolute frenzy of regional map redrawing. This too is already happening in the US. While the sporadic talk of Texas seceding from the union has always been somewhat frivolous, the initiative to take rural counties out of liberal Oregon and into conservative Idaho, though unlikely to succeed, appears less so.
Worryingly for Americans, once a national community has been deliberately fractured the path to bigoted authoritarianism, radical sociopolitical upheaval and, ultimately, even large-scale violence seems wide open. Aggressive nationalism proceeds to demand the institutionalization of inequality, segregation and domination as a bulwark against the (imaginary) threat(s), as well as a covert way to reinstate hegemony and privilege. Think: restrictive voting rights legislation.
With Joe Biden in the White House, it is all too easy to dismiss these concerns and conclude that the US is sufficiently different and, post-January 6, perhaps even immunized from this political disease. A final cautionary tale. The last Yugoslav prime minister, Ante Marković, inherited increasing volatility but quickly introduced order by instituting monetary policy which resulted in economic stabilization and (momentary) relaxation of political tensions. He became a popular figure and launched a pan-ethnic political party, the Reformists, to compete in the 1990 general elections. In public, in some pre-election polls as many as 90% of voters declared their support for the Reformists; in private, only about 10% ended up voting for the Reformists. As the country drew closer to the abyss, Marković warned of the consequences to follow: “Are we to turn the wheel of history back and pay again the price we’ve already paid? Must we go through another calvary to realize that it is our best interest to live together? Our delusions will push us into poverty, spiritual corruption and marginalization.”
Thirty years on, the former Yugoslavia remains politically volatile and economically stagnant. State-sponsored commemorations of V-E Day now feature historical revisionism and Fox News-style alternative facts. Young people are leaving the region en masse. The rumors of a looming war are growing louder.
For the US, the choice is clear: true multiracial democracy or Balkanization.
