Yugoslavia

[Uppercut]

The former Yugoslavia seemed to find the best route to communism by the use of workers' councils, rather than by a centralized authoritarian bureacracy. I give Tito respect for going with market socialism. This way, the consumers can still be happy and the workers still have a voice. What do you guys think of the SFRJ?

[mykittyhasaboner]

Your perception of Tito and Yugoslavia are a bit skewed.

This post (http://www.revleft.com/vb/showpost.php?p=1369354&postcount=4) could be a bit of help. Tito did use a "centralized authoritarian bureaucracy", but many enterprises were controlled by the workers themselves in junction with the state. "Market Socialism" is really what led to Yugoslavia's downfall, in such a horrible manner as it happened. What was good about Yugoslavia's economic policies was that the majority of production and employment was present in the public sector of their economy. Mean while, the market structure of part of the economy gave Yugoslavia a great national debt (much like the rest of the socialist camp, but probably worse), this is caused by recessions in the west, which block exports coming from Yugoslavia, beginning the all too familiar crisis of overproduction.

In some ways, it helped to not be allied with any bloc, but it was also problematic to carry out a socialist economy when not being part of the over all socialist camp. Their collapse might have been more peaceful if they were aligned with the CCCP, since it's likely the government would have just dissolved rather than split into viciously hostile factions.

[Ismail]

The book Tito's Flawed Legacy does a good job at debunking the idealization of "Self-Management". It was little different than Chinese 'socialism' today. If any of you would like a long critique of the system, PM me. (It's far too large to post here)


In some ways, it helped to not be allied with any bloc, but it was also problematic to carry out a socialist economy when not being part of the over all socialist camp. Their collapse might have been more peaceful if they were aligned with the CCCP, since it's likely the government would have just dissolved rather than split into viciously hostile factions.First off, Yugoslavia was essentially pro-Soviet by the 60's, since Khrushchev and Tito made up by 1958. Tito took the Soviet line on just about everything post-50's. It supported the Soviet invasion of Hungary (after some hesitation of course since Titoism had some influence before the invasion), Czechoslovakia, supported cooperation with Soviets concerning helping Nasser, etc. The only things that made people not say "it's pro-Soviet" were its dependence on the West economically and its focus on appearing totally non-aligned. Tito still met with Warsaw Pact leaders (not to mention Soviet leaders), took their lines, etc. He was certainly more pro-Soviet than Hoxha, whose lines constantly contradicted the Soviets.

Secondly, the breakup of Yugoslavia had nothing to do with being aligned to the USSR or not. By the 80's you had the Gorbachev types who were anti-communist social-democrats (but of course openly communist) against the hardline types who had vested interest in the existing system. The difference is that these were often based on ethnic lines before simply descending into "meh, fuck socialism, we just hate your ethnicity, you traitorous fucks."


This way, the consumers can still be happy and the workers still have a voice.The "consumers" are the workers under socialism. There's no other class, it's just workers. ("Consumers" isn't actually a class, but yeah)

[Uppercut]

Well, I meant he was less authoritarian than Stalin. I should've stated that. I realize that the consumers are the workers, but I can't see any way to keep up with the demands and wants of the public if we don't utilize some sort of market mechanism. Centrally planned economies have failed many times and always favor corruption

[mykittyhasaboner]

Well, I meant he was less authoritarian than Stalin. I should've stated that.
What is your rationale for Tito being "less authoritarian" than Stalin?



I realize that the consumers are the workers, but I can't see any way to keep up with the demands and wants of the public if we don't utilize some sort of market mechanism. Centrally planned economies have failed many times and always favor corruption
Er, market economies have failed many times and almost always favor corruption.

Planned economies actually have a great track record of industrialization and revolutionizing production in comparison with market economies; which progress at a much slower rate. Tito's Yugoslavia was a planned economy, simply with market structures in some parts of the economy.

[Uppercut]

Well, He didn't kill as many people as Stalin. Yes, he still used a secret police as well as labor camps, but I just don't see Tito being as oppressive as Joseph Stalin. Tito had a cult of personality around him, like most communist leaders, but I think Stalin's was much more of a deification than Tito's.

[mykittyhasaboner]

Well, He didn't kill as many people as Stalin. Yes, he still used a secret police as well as labor camps, but I just don't see Tito being as oppressive as Joseph Stalin. Tito had a cult of personality around him, like most communist leaders, but I think Stalin's was much more of a deification than Tito's.
I doubt either of them killed very many people personally; but the amount of people "they killed" isnt' a really good way of judging how authoritarian they were; isntead we should look at the governments which they headed. While both certainly had authoritarian tendencies, Tito was actually quite poignant when it came to keeping his party free from opposition. He purged everyone from the party who didn't agree with the efforts to split with the Soviet Union (which was a mistake), and opponents of 'market socialism'; these people were branded as traitors and were restricted from certain benefits and opportunities. Even people who were high ranking officials could become victim to Tito's revisionist purges! My grandfather (who fought in the war with the Partizani) was a military prosecutor who tried war criminals, was kicked from his position after he disagreed with the party's split with Moscow. Really, Tito made numerous mistakes and doesn't deserve most of the credit for the achievements of socialism in Yugoslavia. In fact, he deserves credit for setting Yugoslavia on a path to revisionism, which eventually boiled down to utter chaos and the destruction of Yugoslavia.

[communard resolution]

Mean while, the market structure of part of the economy gave Yugoslavia a great national debt (much like the rest of the socialist camp, but probably worse)

Poland, as an example for an Eastern Bloc country, had enormous debts to Western banks. We had very serious food shortages (meat, bread, endless queues for basic food items, etc).

To my best knowledge, this was unknown in Yugoslavia.


Poland’s hard-currency debt amounted to $26.8 billion in 1984, $29.3b in 1985, $33.5b in 1986, $39.2 in 1987 and $41.4b in 1989. The ratio of debt to exports was 4.8:1 in 1985, 5.15:1 in 1986 and 5.5:1 in 1987. With its interests payments amounting to 41% of export earnings in 1985, Poland came third in the league of top debtors after Argentina and Chile ... the total credits extended to Poland during the years 1971 – 87 amounted to $47.5b, while the total of interest and amortisation payments worked out at $50.6b. Thus, Poland repaid over $3b more than it received, and nonetheless, its debt, the world’s fourth largest, approached $40b”
Source: 'The Collapse of Real Socialism in Poland' by Jacek Tittenbrun.

It looks like Yugoslavia's market socialist structure is not what caused its national debt. Also: since Yugoslavia's national debt did not have such an enormous impact on its people (as in drastic food shortages), it was either not quite as massive or handled more effectively than in the Eastern Bloc countries.

[Uppercut]

Hmm...interesting posts, guys. I like to see both sides of an argument.

[The Author]

To my best knowledge, this was unknown in Yugoslavia.

"A key component of Tito's federalist plan was the redistribution of wealth along ethnic and provincial lines. Generally, the distribution of income during the 1950s and 1960s tended to reward the managers or technicians of the non-productive sector, while paying workers of heavy industry relatively low wages. For instance, the ratio of earnings between the highest productive sector (mining) and the lowest sector (textiles) remained approximately 1:15 in 1971 (Vuskovic, 1975, p. 33). Such a ratio indicated not only the degree of structural inequality of the social system, but also the disproportionately low wages of the Albanian miners relative to Serbian workers.

An equally important economic cause of social inequality was the heavy debt burden incurred by the federal government in the 1970s and 1980s. In 1973, for instance, Tito made the decision to borrow more from the West in an effort to build the Yugoslav economy. This, however, was not the first time Tito had looked to the West for financial help. In the early 1950s, for instance, Yugoslavia appealed to the West for economic relief, which netted the government nearly $46 million dollars in the form of a grant by the US (Ibid).

However, Tito's debt strategy, while important to fueling economic growth, encountered obstacles. By borrowing large sums of capital from the West to remedy the effects of the recession in the early 1970s, Yugoslavia's economy incurred rising interest rates. More than anything, this made it increasingly difficult to service the long-term debt payments owed to the US. Thus, between the years of 1975 to 1985, the Yugoslav debt rose dramatically from $6 billion to nearly $19. (Udovicki, 1995, p.294). As David Dyker points out:

the ongoing practice of converting credits into dinars represented a failed strategy of imposing any control on the balance of payment; for the Yugoslav government continued to borrow (in some years) on medium and long term in excess of what was needed to cover the current account deficit...(Dyker, 1990, p.114).

With the economic crisis affecting the social and economic conditions in the regions, especially in Kosovo, the federal government attempted to resolve the growing poverty in the Kosovo region by redistributing a disproportionately high percentage of its federal development funds to these provinces. While Kosovo received nearly 46% of the total funds, Vojvodina, which had become considerably wealthier than Kosovo, received a far lower share (Ibid, p. 115).

The redistribution plans had the additional effect of angering Slovenia and Croatia, the two wealthiest republics with the highest return on the non-productive sector (Vuskovic, 1978, p. 28, 38). Both countries criticized the federal authorities of fiscal mismanagement, arguing that they were bearing a disproportionate amount of the financial burden to correct for the federal authorities' poor fiscal self-management. In addition, the Yugoslav educational system, which was based on equal access to all, was beset with economic problems. For instance, in the Federal Republic of Slovenia, 11% of the blue-collar workers experienced falling wages, compared to 4.1% of white-collar jobs (Ibid., p. 38). The main reason why this was significant was, as Boris Vuskovic states, due to 'the inadequacy of grants and residential accommodation that placed emphasis on the essentially private character of our educational system, which works mainly at the expense of children of workers and peasants.' With less than 10% of students receiving grants, it had become apparent that the government showed little interest in addressing these inequities (Ibid., p. 39).

By the mid to late 1970s, the state's economic self-management had begun to threaten the very democratic base that it was intended to promote. As Bogdan Denitch points out, 'decentralization took the form of the extension of the system of self-management,' which consequently came into conflict with the idea of local democracy that comes with increased autonomization. Denitch further states that:

While at best the system was a form of self-government, particularly on a micro-level of the enterprises, it was used most often as a substitute for society-wide organization of power in the interests of workers and employees (unions represented the regime)... What can be fairly said is that there was always a sharp conflict between the idea of self-management, with its stress on direct democracy and the rights of all employees to be involved in decisionmaking and the rule of a single party. Sharply different political cultures of the game proposed for the economy and those proposed for the political system (Denitch, 1994, p.64)."

Source: Cultural Autonomy, Minority Rights, and Globalization. By Steven C. Roach, pages 80 to 82.

[mykittyhasaboner]

It looks like Yugoslavia's market socialist structure is not what caused its national debt. Also: since Yugoslavia's national debt did not have such an enormous impact on its people (as in drastic food shortages), it was either not quite as massive or handled more effectively than in the Eastern Bloc countries.Actually, the real shortages came after Gierek was elected and began borrowing massive amounts of from the west as well; so we see here that the problem is, revisionism, which only allowed for debt and economic sabotage by western imperialist economic restructuring. The ultimate goal for said imperialists was the total "third-worldization" of the entire socialist camp; and quite evidently worked in the form of countless attacks on the working classes of the eastern bloc.

Yugoslavia's total national debt amounted from about $16-19 billion (depending on the source), which is mainly due to massive loans from the IMF (which demanded "economic liberalization"). Both countries were effected by the 1973 oil crisis, which began the suffocation of Yugoslavia's economy which needed to export to the west, but couldn't due to recession and crisis of overproduction. There were signifvant impacts on the lives of working people due to this, and the severity of said effects range from year to year, and the following are effects on the social/public sector: From 1979 to 85 productivity fell 20%, personal wages fell 25%, unemployment in this sector increased from 14 percent in 1984 to nearly 20 percent in 1989. In 1989 an estimated 60 percent of Yugoslav workers lived at or below the minimum income level guaranteed by the state, and the standard of living had fallen by 40 percent since 1982. (http://www.country-data.com/)

While there may have not been massive food shortages (well at least before the war), the effects felt by the Yugoslav working class were still very negative, and only got worse when the entire thing just collapsed. Like revisionist Poland, Yugoslavia could not hope to maintain socialism while depending on large sums of capital loaned by the west.

[communard resolution]

Interesting text. It confirms that Yugoslavia had massive debts to the West and suffered an economic recession - just like Poland and other Eastern Bloc countries, esp. in the wake of the 1970s oil crisis. I'm aware of that. However, it doesn't state the extent of the crisis with regards to the supply of basic goods.

Poland suffered drastic shortages of basic food items such as meat, bread, sugar. People queued for food for hours and were often sent home without.

Were there similar scenarios in Yugoslavia? According to conversations I had with ex-Yugoslavs, there weren't. In case their memory didn't serve them well, I'm prepared to take any new information into consideration.



"A key component of Tito's federalist plan was the redistribution of wealth along ethnic and provincial lines. Generally, the distribution of income during the 1950s and 1960s tended to reward the managers or technicians of the non-productive sector, while paying workers of heavy industry relatively low wages. For instance, the ratio of earnings between the highest productive sector (mining) and the lowest sector (textiles) remained approximately 1:15 in 1971 (Vuskovic, 1975, p. 33). Such a ratio indicated not only the degree of structural inequality of the social system, but also the disproportionately low wages of the Albanian miners relative to Serbian workers.

An equally important economic cause of social inequality was the heavy debt burden incurred by the federal government in the 1970s and 1980s. In 1973, for instance, Tito made the decision to borrow more from the West in an effort to build the Yugoslav economy. This, however, was not the first time Tito had looked to the West for financial help. In the early 1950s, for instance, Yugoslavia appealed to the West for economic relief, which netted the government nearly $46 million dollars in the form of a grant by the US (Ibid).

However, Tito's debt strategy, while important to fueling economic growth, encountered obstacles. By borrowing large sums of capital from the West to remedy the effects of the recession in the early 1970s, Yugoslavia's economy incurred rising interest rates. More than anything, this made it increasingly difficult to service the long-term debt payments owed to the US. Thus, between the years of 1975 to 1985, the Yugoslav debt rose dramatically from $6 billion to nearly $19. (Udovicki, 1995, p.294). As David Dyker points out:

the ongoing practice of converting credits into dinars represented a failed strategy of imposing any control on the balance of payment; for the Yugoslav government continued to borrow (in some years) on medium and long term in excess of what was needed to cover the current account deficit...(Dyker, 1990, p.114).

With the economic crisis affecting the social and economic conditions in the regions, especially in Kosovo, the federal government attempted to resolve the growing poverty in the Kosovo region by redistributing a disproportionately high percentage of its federal development funds to these provinces. While Kosovo received nearly 46% of the total funds, Vojvodina, which had become considerably wealthier than Kosovo, received a far lower share (Ibid, p. 115).

The redistribution plans had the additional effect of angering Slovenia and Croatia, the two wealthiest republics with the highest return on the non-productive sector (Vuskovic, 1978, p. 28, 38). Both countries criticized the federal authorities of fiscal mismanagement, arguing that they were bearing a disproportionate amount of the financial burden to correct for the federal authorities' poor fiscal self-management. In addition, the Yugoslav educational system, which was based on equal access to all, was beset with economic problems. For instance, in the Federal Republic of Slovenia, 11% of the blue-collar workers experienced falling wages, compared to 4.1% of white-collar jobs (Ibid., p. 38). The main reason why this was significant was, as Boris Vuskovic states, due to 'the inadequacy of grants and residential accommodation that placed emphasis on the essentially private character of our educational system, which works mainly at the expense of children of workers and peasants.' With less than 10% of students receiving grants, it had become apparent that the government showed little interest in addressing these inequities (Ibid., p. 39).

By the mid to late 1970s, the state's economic self-management had begun to threaten the very democratic base that it was intended to promote. As Bogdan Denitch points out, 'decentralization took the form of the extension of the system of self-management,' which consequently came into conflict with the idea of local democracy that comes with increased autonomization. Denitch further states that:

While at best the system was a form of self-government, particularly on a micro-level of the enterprises, it was used most often as a substitute for society-wide organization of power in the interests of workers and employees (unions represented the regime)... What can be fairly said is that there was always a sharp conflict between the idea of self-management, with its stress on direct democracy and the rights of all employees to be involved in decisionmaking and the rule of a single party. Sharply different political cultures of the game proposed for the economy and those proposed for the political system (Denitch, 1994, p.64)."

Source: Cultural Autonomy, Minority Rights, and Globalization. By Steven C. Roach, pages 80 to 82.

[communard resolution]

Actually, the real shortages came after Gierek was elected and began borrowing massive amounts of from the west as well

The crisis began to rear its head even before Gierek. There were widespread workers protests against intolerable prize rises in 1970 (workers control was another demand, but that's a separate discussion). When Gierek succeeded Gomulka, his role was to prevent the situation from getting out of control - there was certainly a reason why he started borrowing massive amounts of money from the West. For a short while, the standard of living rose.

But you're right, the real food shortages didn't occur before the end of the decade when it turned out that Gierek's strategy had failed in the long run.


so we see here that the problem is, revisionism, which only allowed for debt What are in your opinion some of the reasons why Eastern Bloc leaders turned to revionist measures, and what were some of the features of the existing system in the Eastern Bloc countries that allowed for the rise of revisionism?

[mykittyhasaboner]

Were there similar scenarios in Yugoslavia? According to conversations I had with ex-Yugoslavs, there weren't. In case their memory didn't serve them well, I'm prepared to take any new information into consideration.

According to family/friends of mine, gas (petroleum) and coffee were in short supply, I don't know how severe though. But it is almost certain that various shortages must have taken place if productivity falls at such a rate, and the price of imports shooting up like crazy.

[communard resolution]

According to family/friends of mine, gas (petroleum) and coffee were in short supply

I don't know about coffee, but yes, I did hear there was a time in the 70s when gas was in short supply and the goverment encouraged people to use their cars only every other day.


But it is almost certain that various shortages must have taken place if productivity falls at such a rate, and the price of imports shooting up like crazy.Would you mind asking your family about this? I will ask my own contacts next time I speak to them.

[mykittyhasaboner]

The crisis began to rear its head even before Gierek. There were widespread workers protests against intolerable prize rises in 1970 (workers control was another demand, but that's a separate discussion). When Gierek succeeded Gomulka, his role was to prevent the situation from getting out of control - there was certainly a reason why he started borrowing massive amounts of money from the West. For a short while, the standard of living rose.

Well noted.




What are in your opinion some of the reasons why Eastern Bloc leaders turned to revionist measures, and what were some of the features of the existing system in the Eastern Bloc countries that allowed for the rise of revisionism?Well its different with each case. It essentially boils down to how well bourgeois ideology is combated within the government itself; pretty much all of the socialist governments failed to do at some point in time. Yugoslavia got caught up in revisionist market policies, likely due to A: the inexperienced membership of the Communist party, which was open to many social-democratic esque trends; this was due to the massive entrance of members into the Yugoslav Communist party during and after the war. As well as B: the split with the Soviet Union. This was a pivotal event, which resulted in the purging of any pro-Moscow officials, and it set the party on the path to a non-confrontational policy with the US.

Some of the features of the system that allowed revisionism to take hold was the military structure of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union during and right after the second world war, which meant suspended democratic norms, and the desperate need to rebuild. Ultimately, when Khrushchev came to power, revisionist trends were pretty much common place and accepted (proof is Tito and Khrushchev "making up" for the qualms between Tito and Stalin), except for in China and Albania (the former having fallen to revisionism as well, at a later time though).


Would you mind asking your family about this? I will ask my own contacts next time I speak to them. Other than coffee and gas, there were no real shortages from the beginning of the economic crisis till the complete collapse, according to what I've been told. Although, imports were incredibly expensive which led to less people being able to buy goods.

However, nearing the beginning of the war when economic sanctions were put in place against Yugoslavia, there were severe shortages of everyday things like cigarettes, gas, food, etc. This led to an all-encompassing black market, of course with the price of goods changing 3 or 4 times a day due to the rise and fall of the dinar.

[punisa]

However, nearing the beginning of the war when economic sanctions were put in place against Yugoslavia, there were severe shortages of everyday things like cigarettes, gas, food, etc. This led to an all-encompassing black market, of course with the price of goods changing 3 or 4 times a day due to the rise and fall of the dinar.

Economic sanctions nearing the beginning of the war?
Just exactly what war are we talking about here comrade ? :lol:
As far as I recall sanctions were put in after the war started, otherwise the existence of such sanctions could not possibly be justified.


From this source: http://www.ndu.edu/inss/books/Books%20-%201997/Imposing%20International%20Sanctions%20-%20March%2097/chapter3.html

A bit that deals with sanctions and how they came about.



In June of 1991, notwithstanding Serbia’s objections, Slovenia and Croatia unilaterally declared their independence, and fighting began, first in Slovenia between Slovenian militia and the Serb dominated Yugoslav federal army, then in Croatia between Croatian militia and Croatian Serb paramilitary groups supported by the Yugoslav Federal Army. Serbia’s concern for the well being and safety of Croatian Serbs in the event Croatia became independent was not entirely unfounded, given the experience during World War II when fascist Croats joined Hitler’s occupation forces to massacre a large number of the Serbian minority in Croatia.



It should be noted that because Serbia used the Yugoslav Federal Government and the Federal Army as proxies, the fighting in Slovenia and Croatia could be viewed as solely intended "to preserve the union," a purely domestic matter, not unlike the U.S. Civil War, in which other nations and the United Nations should not interfere.
In Slovenia, where few Serbs resided (no ethnic minority exceeded 3 percent of the population), a month after the fighting broke out a cease fire was signed with the federal government, through the mediating efforts of the European Community ("EC"). The Yugoslav army eventually departed from Slovenia, as if tacitly acknowledging that the Slovenes had a right to self-determination within their borders.



However, in Croatia, where the significant Serbian minority was highly concentrated in certain provinces, the notion of independence without reconfiguration to make these enclaves a part of Serbia, or at least autonomous from Croatia, was unacceptable to Serbia and to the Serb-dominated Yugoslav army. Although the EC mediated a cease fire on June 28, 1991 and sent monitors to Croatia with the consent of the Yugoslav federal Government to observe compliance by the warring parties, fighting persisted in Croatia.



In an attempt to pressure the parties to comply with the cease fire, on July 5 the foreign ministers of the EC decided to impose an arms embargo on Yugoslavia and to freeze all EC financial aid. Acting unilaterally 2 months before the EC, the United States had suspended OPIC insurance of U.S. investments in Serbia in May, pursuant to the human rights provisions in the Foreign Assistance Act of 1961, as amended. On July 11 the Bush administration endorsed the EC arms embargo and suspended all U.S. sales and transfers of any arms and defense articles to Yugoslavia. The EC considered sending peacekeeping forces to Yugoslavia to assist in compliance with the cease fire, but when it was unable to reach a consensus, largely due to objections of the United Kingdom, several of its members, particularly France and Austria, urged the United Nations to become involved.


In 1991, the risk of an invasion by the Soviet Union and its Warsaw Pact allies was no longer a concern, and the Federal Government of Yugoslavia was in the process of stripping the republican militias of their heavy weapons. In Croatia and Bosnia-Herzegovina this process had been almost completed when the fighting began. Accordingly, although the arms embargo was applied uniformly on all the warring factions in Yugoslavia, it was having a very uneven impact, providing an unfair advantage to the Yugoslav Federal Army and its Serbian paramilitary allies in Croatia and later in Bosnia-Herzegovina. Neither of these Serbina militaries needed to procure foreign weapons or equipment because they had access to Yugoslav federal military stockpiles and to most of the defense plants producing armaments in Yugoslavia. This may explain why the Serbian-dominated federal government consented to the arms embargo, and why it failed to deter Serb attacks in Croatia and later in Bosnia-Herzegovina.

At the beginning of September 1991, the EC foreign ministers convened a peace conference at The Hague to seek an overall political resolution of the crisis in Yugoslavia. On October 18 the EC proposed the "Carrington Plan," named after Lord Carrington, former Secretary General of NATO and U.K. foreign minister, who chaired this conference. The plan contemplated a loose confederation of sovereign republics cooperating on trade, fiscal, and security matters, which would be patterned after the EC. There would be no change in the existing internal borders between republics but minorities within these borders would be granted a second nationality, their own schools, and their own legislatures. This plan was initially accepted by all the republics except Serbia (and the leadership of the Yugoslav Federal Army). Unfortunately, the EC’s inflexible insistence on sanctity of the "internal borders" of the six republics would prove the major stumbling block to reaching any agreement with Serbia.

On November 8, in an effort to bring about compliance with the cease fire in Croatia, the EC imposed trade sanctions on all parts of Yugoslavia and unsuccessfully urged the United Nations to impose an oil embargo. On November 9, during a press conference in The Hague, President Bush announced that the United States would also impose some trade sanctions comparable to the EC sanctions. When asked by a reporter whether these would be any more effective than those imposed against Iraq, he replied quite candidly, "Well, I’m not sure how effective sanctions by themselves will be. The decision to take the sanctions was to strongly back the efforts of the EC. As I mentioned, they are not complete yet. We are going to go to the United Nations to try to strengthen the concept of an oil embargo. But I don’t think anybody can predict with any accuracy that sanctions alone will solve the problems in Yugoslavia, in Haiti, or in Iraq, or in other places"

[mykittyhasaboner]

Economic sanctions nearing the beginning of the war?
Just exactly what war are we talking about here comrade ? :lol:
As far as I recall sanctions were put in after the war started, otherwise the existence of such sanctions could not possibly be justified.


From this source: http://www.ndu.edu/inss/books/Books%20-%201997/Imposing%20International%20Sanctions%20-%20March%2097/chapter3.html

A bit that deals with sanctions and how they came about.

Your correct, I had heard otherwise. My mistake, those shortages took place during the war.

[punisa]

Your correct, I had heard otherwise. My mistake, those shortages took place during the war.

No problem, I had to double check myself :lol:
In the end these sanctions did nothing to help the people, they just collapsed the economy of a war torn country.
Why? So capitalists could have a great harvest !
In the end they did just that, destroyed a country and put their people in.

Wanna hear a horrific story comrades?
Today Croatia is dominated by large outdoor billboard ads and a single company has almost a monopoly on those and are making millions.
Guess when they acquainted/bought hundreds of their locations? 1991, when the whole country was mobilised and fighting a bitter war.

While people were getting killed fat cats like those made some sweet business agreements.
To hell with them, each document they signed is signed in blood.
I have more respect for the separatist Serbian soldier that tried to kill me then I have for those bastards.