What is incorrect in the story about “American fingers in the breakup of Yugoslavia”?

Photo: Freepik/@ user20248055 On November 27, 2022, the Facebook page Dostojni Srbije (Достојни Србије) published a nine-minute video titled “American fingers in the breakup of Yugoslavia”.

The first part of the video shows a 1999 speech by the American writer Michael Parenti on the breakup of Yugoslavia, translated into our language, in which he claims that there was a conscious intention to “split and break up” Yugoslavia:

What I want to say is that there was a conscious intention to split and break up Yugoslavia.

(…)

…in November 1990, when President George Bush went to the US Congress and pressured them to pass the Foreign Appropriations Act, which called for the cancellation of all financial aid and loans to Yugoslavia. Trade without credit can be disastrous, especially for a country that does not have a hard currency. This had a devastating effect on the country. The law also required that, if any Yugoslav republic wanted to receive aid from the US, it had to secede from Yugoslavia and declare independence.

At the end of the video, printouts are shown on the screen which claim the following:

Recently, information and numerous documents have come to light that show how, back in 1979, the German secret service formed a team of secret agents in Zagreb with the mission of supporting politicians who will promote ethnic hatred in Croatia and Bosnia and Herzegovina and which will lead to the destruction of Yugoslavia. The Germans made this plan in cooperation with the secret services of the USA because it was significant how small ethnic states can be easily controlled while generating large profits for the USA and Germany.

It is incredible that even during the administration of Ronald Reagan, a plan was created to destroy the free market economy of independent Yugoslavia, that plan was properly documented under the name: National Security Directive number 133.

America even created a counterpart to the CIA in the form of NED (National Non-Profit Organization for the Promotion of Democracy), which bribed and manipulated Yugoslav journalists, opposition politicians, bankers, private individuals, public figures and all those that money could buy, and all with the intention of destroying the citizens’ desire to maintain a common state and to first create economic chaos, and then political chaos. Around the same year that the NED began to operate in the territory of Yugoslavia, in mid-1984, the first economic shortages and an inflationary crisis began.

By the date of writing this analysis, the clip from the Facebook page Dostojni Srbije has been shared over 8,000 times and has collected around 559,000 views. At the end of November, the same video was published on the TikTok account called dostojnisrbijeofficial, where it was viewed by ten and shared by more than 7,000 users. Although this video in particular has gained popularity in the past few months, the claims made in it have been circulating in the domestic public space for years. This video was originally published in February 2021 on the Facebook page Matrix, and the excerpts from the end of the video were taken from an article published on the web portal Matrix World in 2015. During 2021 and 2022, the video was published on several more Facebook profiles and pages (1, 2), as well as on the Odsyee platform.

What is actually written in the American documents that “reveal” the alleged plans of the USA regarding Yugoslavia?

The Foreign Operations, Export Financing and Related Programs Act, a 1990 US law that Parenti claims contains provisions ending financial aid to Yugoslavia and stipulating that republics can receive aid if they secede, is available online in PDF form. Concerning Yugoslavia, it states the following:

SEC. 599A. Six months from the date of entry into force of this law, (1)

none of the funds appropriated or otherwise made available according to this Act shall be used to provide any direct assistance to the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia, and (2) the Secretary of the Treasury Department shall instruct the US Executive Directors in all international financial institutions to use their voice and that of the United States of America to oppose any assistance from the appropriate institution to the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia:

Provided that this section shall not apply to aid intended to support democratic parties or movements, emergency or humanitarian aid, or the advancement of human rights: Provided further.

That this section shall not apply if all six individual republics of the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia hold free and fair multi-party elections and are not involved in a pattern of systematic gross human rights violations: further.

Notwithstanding the failure of the individual republics of the Socialist Federal Republic of Yugoslavia to hold free and fair multi-party elections within six months of the effective date of this Act, this section shall not apply if the Secretary of State certifies that the Socialist Federal Republic of Yugoslavia is taking significant steps toward compliance obligations under the Helsinki Agreement and encourages any republic that has not held free and fair multi-party elections to do so.

So, as can be clearly read in the quote above, the USA cancelled financial aid to Yugoslavia with this law. The condition for receiving aid again, as is crystal clear, was not that the republics secede from Yugoslavia, but that each of them held fair and free multi-party elections, which ultimately happened in the republics of that time (1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6). It is also clear from the Law that there are exceptions, that is, that the section of the Law does not apply to humanitarian aid and to aid intended to support democratic movements and the advancement of human rights. As the New York Times reported in 1991, financial aid to Yugoslavia was in practice suspended for only 20 days, after which the administration of then-President George Bush began sending it again. Finally, although the United States of America was partially involved in the political situation in Yugoslavia during that period, it is not true that they asked the republics to declare independence. The National Security Directive on Yugoslavia, signed in 1984 by then-US President Ronald Reagan, which is said to document a plan to destroy Yugoslavia’s independent economy, is also available online. It is a three-page document in which, among other things, is stated the following:

As pointed out in the inter-agency report on the relations of the United States of America with Yugoslavia, an independent, economically viable, stable and militarily capable Yugoslavia is in the interest of the West and the USA. Yugoslavia is an important obstacle to Soviet expansionism and hegemony in southern Europe. Yugoslavia also serves as a useful reminder of the benefits of independence from Moscow and the benefits of friendly relations with the West to countries in Eastern Europe.

The serious financial situation facing Yugoslavia could pose a serious threat to Yugoslavia’s ability to maintain relations that are in our interest. We must work closely with our allies and other major industrial democracies to support Yugoslavia’s determination to remain an independent and viable power on the southern side of the Warsaw Pact. It is in the interests of the USA that Yugoslavia be able to resist the pressures of the Soviet Union and the Warsaw Pact. We will also continue to encourage the long-term internal liberalization of Yugoslavia.

Therefore, it is clear that this document presents guidelines and plans for improving cooperation between Yugoslavia and the USA with the intention of strengthening Yugoslavia as an “obstacle to Soviet expansionism and hegemony in southern Europe”. This is not so unusual because, at the time this directive was written, the Cold War between the USA and the USSR was still going on. However, contrary to the claims in the viral video, this document, as is evident from its reading, does not reveal any plans by the US government to destroy the Yugoslav economy.

The economic crisis in Yugoslavia

The foundations of socialist Yugoslavia were laid in 1943 at the second session of AVNOJ held in Jajce, after the partisans led by Josip Broz Tito and his communist party defeated the Germans and their collaborators in World War II. On November 29, 1945, the Federal People’s Republic of Yugoslavia (FNRJ) was proclaimed. The country was renamed the Socialist Federal Republic of Yugoslavia in 1963. As explained in the Encyclopedia Britannica article, after 1945 the communist government nationalized large land holdings, industrial enterprises, public utilities and other resources and initiated the process of industrialization. A special characteristic of the Yugoslav system was “worker self-management”, which took its full form in the Act on Combined Labor in 1976. According to this law, individuals participated in the management of Yugoslav enterprises through the labour organizations into which they were divided. Through this system, significant economic growth was recorded from 1953 to 1965, after which development began to slow down, Britannica explained. Namely, in the absence of a real incentive for efficiency, workers’ councils often raised wage levels above the actual earning potential of their organizations, usually with the favour of local banks and political officials. Inflation and unemployment emerged as serious problems, especially during the 1980s, and productivity remained low. Such deficiencies in the system were “corrected” by massive and uncoordinated foreign borrowing. As Vladimir Gligorov, an associate of the Vienna Institute for International Economic Studies, explained to Radio Free Europe in 2016, Yugoslavia’s external debt in the early 1980s amounted to about 20 billion dollars, which was about 30% of the gross domestic product. At that time, interest rates rose significantly, so Yugoslavia went bankrupt in 1982, explains Gligorov. This, he stated, did not happen because the debt was high but because refinancing was expensive, and Yugoslavia had a very high foreign trade deficit, so there was no income. Before the breakup of Yugoslavia, in the early ’90s, the external debt decreased to 16 billion after the then Prime Minister of the SFRY, Ante Markovic, began privatisation and liberalization of foreign trade and financial flows. Thus, the Yugoslav economy was in a major crisis years before Reagan’s 1984 directive and the 1990 law suspending financial aid to Yugoslavia.

Cold War, foreign influence and espionage

The Cold War was an open but contained conflict that developed after World War II between the United States of America and the Soviet Union and their allies. It was conducted with the help of political, economic and propaganda means. During the war, the USA and the USSR did not directly clash militarily but did participate in military operations in other countries to stop their allies from defecting or to overthrow regimes that did so. Although in the beginning, Yugoslavia was on the side of the Soviet Union, in 1961 it participated in the formation of the international organization called the “Non-Aligned Movement”. The member states of this movement believed that they should refrain from taking sides with either of the two conflicting powers in the Cold War. The condition for membership was, as stated in the Britannica encyclopedia article, that the country was not a member of any multilateral military alliance (such as NATO) and that it had not signed a bilateral military agreement with “one of the great powers” in the context of the conflict at the time. Although it is very possible that during the Cold War, the conflicting superpowers tried to exert influence on Yugoslavia, the claims that the USA created a “counterpart of the CIA” in the form of the National Endowment for Democracy in 1984 to create political and economic chaos in Yugoslavia are unfounded. The National Endowment for Democracy (NED) is an American non-profit organization founded in 1983 whose goal is to empower and strengthen democratic institutions around the world. Every year, NED gives grants to support projects of non-governmental organizations that work to achieve democratic goals in over 100 countries of the world, including countries that used to be part of Yugoslavia. NED is largely funded by the US Congress. There is no evidence that NED was active in the former Yugoslavia in 1984. Raskrinkavanje contacted NED with a request to confirm whether they were active in Yugoslavia during this period. They said that the claim that NED was active in 1984 was incorrect and that the first activity in Yugoslavia was realized only five years later – in 1989. After all, the economic crisis in the former state began several years before the NED even existed. Let us remind you that Yugoslavia went bankrupt in 1982, and NED was founded in the USA only a year later. Regarding the alleged activities of German secret agents in Zagreb in 1979, we were unable to find any documentation or credible sources that would confirm the accuracy of the claims from the video by Google search in our, English and German languages. Finally, contrary to the claims of Michael Parenti, there is no clear evidence that the United States of America had the intention of consciously splitting and separating Yugoslavia. The “evidence” presented in the video turned out to be mostly baseless and inaccurate. Given all the facts, we assess the claim that the US conditioned the Yugoslav republics to secede in 1990 if they wanted to receive financial aid, as well as the claim that the US plan to destroy the Yugoslav economy was documented in National Security Directive No. 133, as disinformation. The claim that the National Endowment for Democracy began operating in Yugoslavia in 1984 to create political and economic chaos is considered fake news and a conspiracy theory. We evaluate all transmissions of this claim as the distribution of fake news and conspiracy theory. We also rate the claim that there was a US plan to deliberately split and separate Yugoslavia as a conspiracy theory. (Authors: Emir Zulejhić and Nerma Šehović, Raskrinkavanje.ba)