Greetings readers and Fans of Mead. My name is Damir Marusic, and I’ll be one of the people contributing to this wonderful blog in Walter’s absence (or better put, reduced presence) during the next two weeks. Working at The American Interest pays my bills, but it’s safe to say that I’d be an avid reader of this blog even if I wasn’t associated with the magazine. Thus it’s a real honor and privilege to have been asked to contribute what I can.
I was born in Zadar, a Croatian town on the Adriatic coast, and though my entire education—from first grade through graduate school—has been in the United States, my entire family still lives in Croatia. If I can claim some specific expertise, it’s got mostly to do with that broader region. The Balkan Wars of the 1990′s prefigure many of the conflicts we (the West, broadly speaking) have participated in during the 2000′s. They provided a template for how we might act militarily outside of the full legitimation of the UN. They were nasty, medium-intensity wars between groups of people we never fully understood, fighting for reasons we still cannot fully fathom. And in the case of Bosnia and Kosovo, they provided an early glimpse into the intractable problems of state-building which continue to bedevil us to this very day in Iraq and Afghanistan. In short, though I’m passionate about international relations, I’m also quite skeptical of most of what we’ve gotten up to in the past decade.
I’m also an avid technologist, and like Walter, I’m generally optimistic about what the increasing acceleration in change ultimately means for our society. This acceleration is certainly not without its social disruptions, and we must remain vigilant that the things we hold dear as a society are not trampled underfoot in the stampede towards the next great thing. For example, the increase in the complexity of our world that naturally accompanies technological change presents special challenges for democracies—especially ones like ours in the United States which are subject to sporadic irruption of populist sentiment. How can we balance the imperative of keeping people engaged with the reality that many of the problems we face are so complex that they even confound experts? How do we cope if it turns out that Bryan Caplan’s The Myth of the Rational Voter
But enough about me in these broad strokes. I’m very much looking forward to writing regularly, and I hope I can offer you some posts worth commenting on. Let’s get down to business!
I don’t know if you take requests Mr. Marusik, but if you do, it would be great to read more about the Balkins. It seems to me that this is a part of Europe not discussed nearly enough in the United States. Interesting topics might include the recent International Court of Justice’s opinion affirming that Kosovo’s declaration of independece was legal and the decision of the War Crimes Tribunal in the Hague to retry a Kosovar militia leader who it had previously acquited (I know that the status of Kosovo is probably more consequential to Serbs than Croatians). It would also be very interesting to learn more about the current status of things in the former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia.
I went back and checked by copy of Rebecca West’s “Black Lamb Gray Falcon and was surprised to see that Zadar wasn’t mentioned despite the fact that she travelled extensively in Croatia and Dalmatia. It would also be quite interesting to learn more about your home town.
I was very much hoping to do more about that recent ICJ ruling regarding Kosovo’s independence. There are a wealth of issues to be explored. Within the region itself, Bosnia’s Serbs are sure to feel emboldened in their drive to make Republika Srpska a statelet of its own. Further afield, it’s impossible to parse Russia’s dismembering of Georgia without at least a glance towards the legal precedents being set in the Balkans, and telling that Georgia is not appealing to international justice to censure Russia’s actions.
Regarding Rebecca West—and I don’t have a copy of BLGF handy—Zadar may have been known to her by its Italian/Venetian name of Zara…?
Yes, Mr. Marusic, she mentions Zara several times. By the way, for searching for specific references, the Kindle is fantastic and BLGF is available for Kindle.
Here’s what Rebecca West says about Zara:
1) She says that the “Treaty of London” signed by the Allies and Italy in 1915 promised Zara (and the entire Adriatic coast) to Italy if they came into the Great War on the side of the Allies.
2) She said that after the War, when Zara was handed over to the Italians, many Zara residents, rather than live under the Italians moved to Split.
3) West suggests that very few of the people who lived in Zara before the founding of Yugloslavia were pro-Yugoslav.
4) She tells the story of a battle in 1571 when the Ottoman Turk, Uliz Ali, attacked the Dalmatian coast. West mentions that the “cur of a Venetian Governor” who commanded that part of Dalmatia ran away and hid in Zara while the women and children successfully defended the town of Korchula while their husbands fought the Turks at sea.
I have always wondered whether people from the former Yugoslavia were generally aware of West’s opus and whether they liked it.
Rebecca West’s legacy is a mixed one. If she raises hackles among those that have read her, it’s because of her tendency to exoticize the region and its peoples—a tendency with tangible consequences, as Robert Kaplan’s Balkan Ghosts followed in her footsteps and at least in part led to President Clinton and his aides misunderstanding the nature of the conflict. But it’s an undeniably fun read, and not a bad place to start for getting an impressionistic feel for the convoluted history of the Balkans.
If you’re inclined to dig deeper, a good place to go would be Ivo Banac’s The National Question in Yugoslavia
. It’s a detailed academic study of the first Yugoslavia between the World Wars, but the historical background provided on all the peoples and their ideas and self-understanding is some of the best in the English language. It’s also quite readable. Though, yes, he is Croatian, he treats the subject very evenhandedly in my opinion. (Sadly, no Kindle version…)
Thank you very much for your suggestion Mr. Marusic; I will look forward to getting Banac’s book out of the library.
A few years back, Random House published a list of the 100 most important books of the 20th Century and Black Lamb made the list. What’s interesting about it is that in a certain way, the Balkan states are merely the canvas on which West was painting; it offered her the opportunity to opine on subjects far and wide. There were fascinating discussions of the assassination of Arch Duke Franz Ferdinand; interesting digressions about the nature of the late Ottoman Empire and plenty of opinions expressed about West’s contemporaries in Britain.
Most importantly, the book which was published on the eve of World War II, provided West with an opportunity to comment on the nature of German fascism. Gerda, the wife of “Constantine” (in real life the Jewish-Serb poet and author Stanislav Vinaver) served as West’s metaphor for the Nazi ascendancy.
By the way, I’ve heard that story about how the Clinton Administration relied on Kaplan’s “Balkan Ghosts” in formulating its policy towards the former Yugoslavia. To me, it sounds apocryphal. I find it hard to believe that someone as smart as Richard Holbrooke (who played the lead role for the Clinton Administration in working on the Balkans) would base American policy solely on a book intended for the average reader.
Anyway, thank you again for your recommendation. I look forward to your post on Kosovo should you decide to write it.
Just a quick note on Balkan Ghosts: I certainly don’t want to overstate its importance. As far as Richard Holbrooke, he’s the last person I had in mind when I wrote what I did above.
What I was getting at, with regards to both West and Kaplan’s work, is that they present a picture to a casual reader of the Balkans as a wild and complicated place populated by passionate peoples bearing inscrutable grudges against each other. It’s just not that simple, unfortunately.
As I noted in a short piece I did for The American Interest a few years back, Holbrooke was not so easily taken: