Two things - I dont want to blow this up out of proportions -:
a) your description of Serb-Slovene relations is incorrect to incomplete. A hint: the war in Slovenia, at the beginning of what led to the disasters first in Croatia, then in Bosnia & Hercegovina, was ten days short only because the serb-controlled army top, after the initial surprise at the hefty and effective defense against planned occupation, realized, Slovenia is not that much important - "let those b*ds go, who cares", at least when compared to the next one on the list, ie Croatia[*]. Mean to say, if there were great-serbian / piedmontese ideas floating in some heads in Serbia, Slovenia was definitely dispensable in those dreams. And from our side, there was always some sort of a flexible "dont you push and we won't push either" approach to the situation. Or, as the traditional lavatory graffiti says: "Step closer, it's not as long as you may think"
b) NATO - the "Serbs-are-coming" hints were possibly used to convince some grandmas and grandpapas to vote for and not against in the referendum. The bigger and more easily sellable argument was safety, security and steady alliances. Plus it should cost us less ("NATO or we need our own airforce" argument)
And that's all my LOL meant to mean. From a certain point on issues all start to look different from each other, even if from far away (NJ?, CA?) they look identical.
RegZ
dj
[*] and we did not move a finger to stop all the army convoys and tanks and hardware move out of the republic... To be put to good use elsewhere (sigh) |
