Engineering Revolution. Marlene Spoerri
The decision to deny Panić such assistance was not without controversy. In the United States, a small band of senators, spearheaded by Republican Senator Richard Lugar of Indiana, were alarmed by the administration’s refusal to assist Serbian democrats and they mounted a collective appeal for democracy aid. For Lugar in particular, Panic’s defeat was a rebuke of the Clinton administration’s approach to the Serbian opposition. In October 1993, Lugar underscored such doubts in a letter to then Secretary of State Warren Christopher22 in which he implored the United States to “interpret UN sanctions on Serbia in ways that will promote more equitable participation in the Serbian elections by pro-democratic candidates and parties,” and “exempt from international sanctions those U.S.-origin proposals intended to promote democracy in that beleaguered country.”23 Lugar’s sentiments were shared by members of the U.S. Foreign Relations Committee. In 1993, the Committee voted unanimously to exempt democratic assistance to Serbia from UN sanctions.
Despite the support of the Foreign Relations Committee, however, aid was not forthcoming. For most working in the aid industry and Western governments, the thought of assisting opposition groups—even those opposed to Milošević—was simply unpalatable. According to Robert Benjamin, director of NDI’s Central and Eastern Europe programs, NDI assistance to Serbian parties simply wasn’t seen to be a possibility in the mid-1990s; in fact, there was no discussion about Serbia’s democracy whatsoever.24
Still, some individuals did want to help. One such individual was Paul McCarthy, a senior program officer for NED. As one of the few supporters of democracy aid to Serbia, McCarthy says he was both a donor and an advocate. He “believed that unless you looked at the internal situation in Serbia, the whole region would be lost.”25 But, as he himself admits, that was not a popular position to take in the early and mid-1990s. To the contrary, as the decade unfolded, the attention of the United States and Western Europe increasingly came to rest on neighboring Bosnia—where reports of rape camps and genocide were being called the worst atrocities since the Holocaust.
One unfortunate consequence of the international community’s (belated) concern for the Bosnian war was that it came at the expense of Serbia’s domestic democratic opposition. Thus when in early 1996 voices in USAID began suggesting that the American aid agency start focusing on Serbia, it quickly became apparent that not everyone wanted to touch Serbia at the time.26 To the contrary, no one in the State Department was willing to give the green light for providing democracy aid to Serbia—the perceived aggressor in the Bosnian conflict. Yet for those advocating aid to Serbia, this refusal was “disturbing,” not simply because of what it meant for Serbian democracy, but “because the problems in Bosnia were being driven from Serbia.”27 Senator Lugar shared such concerns.
In a 1996 opinion piece published in the Washington Times, Lugar chastened U.S. policy makers for refusing to “provide material support to moderate and pro-democratic forces in Serbia,” opting instead “for timidity and distance.”28 In yet another letter sent to then Secretary of State Warren Christopher in March 1996, Lugar urged the administration “to take an immediate, vigorous and concerted initiative to support the independent sector in the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia, particularly in Serbia.”29 He complained that his government had “deferred to the international sanctions regime by rejecting or delaying proposals for democratic programs of the National Endowment for Democracy (NED) and other pro-democracy organizations proposing to work with indigenous groups striving for an open society.”30 This was all the more pressing because “the leaders of the independent sector in Serbia and Montenegro have made know[n] their strong desire for U.S. support and have been greatly discouraged and disappointed by repeated U.S. refusals to assist them. They cannot understand why we continue to deny them vital support.”31
Lugar’s efforts were to little avail. Foreign diplomats and special envoys ultimately opted not to engage Serbia’s opposition parties and politicians, preferring instead to deal exclusively with Milošević.
Engaging Milošević, at the Opposition’s Expense
Throughout the 1990s, high-level officials—including Secretary of State Madeleine Albright and President Bill Clinton—met directly with Milošević, whether to negotiate a peace in Bosnia or, later, to thwart the impending NATO bombing of Serbia. Unlike Milošević, however, leaders from major opposition parties like the SPO or DS were refused contact with senior government officials. In his memoirs, the late U.S. diplomat Richard Holbrooke (1999: 358) acknowledged that neither the United States sent no senior officials to Belgrade to bolster the opposition’s profile. In his words, “Washington missed a change to affect events; except for one ineffectual trip to Washington, Zajedno had no contact with senior American government officials” (Holbrooke 1999: 345). But Washington was not alone. Neither the United States nor the EU did anything to bolster the prospects of opposition victories in the aftermath of the 1996 local-level elections, and the EU in particular took steps that ultimately worked against the opposition’s interests.
In the winter of 1996–1997, Serbia’s opposition staged a stunning electoral upset in local elections across the country. Having banded together under the unified mantel of Zajedno, Serbia’s opposition shocked Milošević and the world, by staging municipal victories in cities and towns across Serbia—including Belgrade, Niš, and Novi Sad. When state authorities subsequently annulled the opposition’s victories and demanded that elections be reheld, students and disaffected citizens took the streets, demanding that the original electoral results be reinstated. For weeks, protestors endured freezing temperatures to insist that democratic electoral results be respected. Yet rather than support Serbia’s democrats in realizing their lawfully won electoral mandate, the international community left them in the cold.
Particularly disturbing, from the perspective of the opposition, was the EU’s decision on 22 November 1996 to release a statement echoing Milošević’s calls for a third round of local elections—despite Zajedno’s claims to have won major victories. While the European Council’s presidency urged Serbia’s authorities to investigate the opposition’s complaints of electoral irregularities, it seemed to side with the regime by requesting electoral re-runs, which the opposition opposed. The statement won a furious reply from the Zajedno leadership.32 Nor was Zajedno amused when on what was the twenty-third day of Zajedno’s mass protests, Italy’s foreign minister Lamberto Dini publicly dismissed the opposition’s demand for the reinstatement of Zajedno victories, arguing that such a result was simply “not in the cards.”33 In fact, the Los Angeles Times reported that Serbian opposition leaders “were coming under increasing pressure from Western mediators to accept new elections, which would mean abandoning their principal goal—recognition of the victories they already obtained.”34 Though European officials would ultimately back away from such positions, their seeming indifference caused considerable resentment among leading members of the Zajedno coalition.35 Goran Svilanović, a minister of foreign affairs in post-Milošević Yugoslavia, dubs it “a cold shower.”36
Such actions would feed into the prevailing narrative among members of Serbia’s democratic opposition that Western powers were not in fact interested in working for the best interests of Serbian democracy. Indeed in a 2001 article, Svetozar Stojanović (2001), a longtime dissident and staunch Milošević critic, opined that “The West long helped Milošević to remain in power.” The sentiment was shared by many in Serbia. For years, Serbian politicians and opinion makers lambasted the United States and the EU for supporting Milošević. Politicians, including Vesna Pešić and Goran Svilanović, argue that until the very late 1990s, the United States and the EU legitimized Milošević’s rule while undermining theirs.
Understanding Aid’s Absence
There were several reasons why the major powers for so long refused to lend their support to Serbia’s political opposition. The first has already been hinted at. When war broke out in Bosnia in the summer of 1992, it sparked a humanitarian disaster the likes of which Europe had not witnessed since World War II. As news of atrocities surfaced, the international aid community’s attention came to lie on Bosnia, often at the expense