جورج کلونی

Comparing Iran and Yugoslavia: A Baseless Analogy One of the more absurd tropes making the rounds these days is the comparison of Iran to Yugoslavia. Anyone who draws such a parallel has clearly never read a single line of Yugoslav history. They’ve simply heard that there was once a country called Yugoslavia that eventually broke apart. In historical terms, nothing could be more irrelevant or misleading than comparing Iran to Yugoslavia. Yugoslavia was a paper state — it came into existence on paper and had absolutely no historical precedent. How can anyone seriously compare it to Iran, which has had well-defined borders for centuries — and I’m not even going back to antiquity? A little about Yugoslavia, so you can judge for yourself. Until 1918, there was no such thing as a country called Yugoslavia. The name literally means Southern Slavs, an idea cooked up by Serbian nationalists before World War I: a state that would unite the South Slavs of Europe. What made this idea possible, however, was the collapse of the Austro-Hungarian Empire — a vast multi-ethnic empire in Central and Southern Europe, which fought alongside Germany against the Allies in World War I. From the late 19th century onward, nationalist and separatist movements were already tearing Austria-Hungary apart. And how did World War I actually start? At the time, the small kingdom of Serbia lay south of Austria-Hungary. Serbian nationalists, both inside Serbia and within the empire, sought to unite and build a greater Serbian state — and thus fought against the Habsburgs. In the course of this struggle, a group of young Serbian nationalists assassinated Archduke Franz Ferdinand in Sarajevo, sparking the war. After the defeat of Germany and Austria-Hungary, Serbian nationalists seized their moment. The prevailing ideology of the time — “the right to self-determination” — lent legitimacy to their ambitions. But what emerged in Eastern and Southern Europe after the war was a chaotic, tangled mess — imagine a hall full of people brawling, with everyone hitting everyone else. That was the scene in the region. In 1918, amid this chaos, the Kingdom of Serbs, Croats, and Slovenes was created “on paper” — not through the genuine will of its peoples. Its demographic makeup was: 44% Serb, 23% Croat, 8% Slovene, 6% Muslim, and 17% ethnic minorities (including Germans, Hungarians, Albanians, and others). Croats and Slovenes favored a federal system, but the Serbs wanted a strong centralized state. The country was riddled with tensions — ethnic, religious, and developmental — that would never be resolved. Yugoslavia’s fragility was laid bare during World War II. When Nazi Germany declared war in 1941, the country collapsed almost instantly and was carved up like a sacrificial lamb. Germany annexed part of it, handing chunks to Bulgaria and Hungary, while establishing the fascist puppet state of Croatia under Ante Pavelić and his Ustaše movement. Partisan groups rose up to fight the Germans — but also turned on each other. Serbian royalist fighters (Chetniks) remained loyal to the monarchy, while communist partisans under Tito sought to establish a communist state. Meanwhile, Bosnian Muslims either joined the Germans or fought their own battles against the other two factions. The infamous “Handschar” division — a Bosnian Muslim SS unit — fought under Nazi command. In short: by 1941, Yugoslavia had already self-destructed, with everyone fighting everyone else. Croats massacred tens of thousands of Serbs and Jews. Serbs massacred tens of thousands of Croats. Bosnian Muslims collaborated with the Germans. Communist partisans killed scores of Croats and Slovenes. So what kept Yugoslavia together after the war? The answer is simple: brute force. The warring factions killed each other off until one emerged victorious: the communists, led by Tito. Declared president-for-life, Tito imposed a softer version of communist dictatorship, eliminating his opponents and holding the country together at gunpoint. When Tito died in 1980, after 35 years of iron-fisted rule, the nationalists — Serb, Croat, and Slovene — wasted no time making themselves heard. With the collapse of the socialist system, the stage was set. The first free elections in 1990 produced deadly polarization, and the Yugoslav wars began the following year — a war with no winners, only losers, some more than others.

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