The Last Ambassador: A Memoir of the Collapse of Yugoslavia

Warren Zimmermann

From Foreign Affairs, March/April 1995

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Summary:  In this special Comments section, the U.S. ambassador to Yugoslavia from 1989 to 1992 has written a memoir drawn from his personal diaries that provides a gripping firsthand account of Yugoslavia's slide into civil war. The author evaluates the breakup of Yugoslavia as a classic example of nationalism from the top down -- a manipulated, brutal nationalism in a region where peace has historically prevailed and ethnically mixed marriages comprise a quarter of the population. In one of several vivid portraits of politicians, Zimmermann shows how Serb leader Slobodan Milosevi'c, who wanted only "a unity that Serbia could dominate," became the main wrecker of Yugoslavia.

Warren Zimmermann was Ambassador to Yugoslavia from 1989 to 1992. He is now a Senior Consultant at RAND.

In early 1989, shortly after I was confirmed as the new -- and as it turned out the last -- U.S. ambassador to Yugoslavia, I sought out Lawrence Eagleburger. Eagleburger had been named deputy secretary of state for the incoming Bush administration but had not yet been approved by the Senate. His temporary office was in the small back room adjoining the opulent deputy secretary's office, and there he could be found inhaling a cigarette, which, as an asthma sufferer, he was not supposed to have.

Larry Eagleburger remains one of the foremost American experts on the Balkans. Like an unusually large number of Foreign Service officers -- myself included -- he served twice in Yugoslavia. He and I shared a love of the country and its people. As we talked, we discovered a mutual view that the traditional American approach to Yugoslavia no longer made sense, given the revolutionary changes sweeping Europe.

By 1989 the world had changed dramatically. The Cold War was over and the Soviet Union was breaking up. The East European countries had already slipped Moscow's leash, and Poland and Hungary had achieved quasi?Western political systems, with Czechoslovakia soon to follow. In such circumstances, Eagleburger and I agreed that in my introductory calls in Belgrade and the republican capitals, I would deliver a new message: Yugoslavia no longer enjoyed the geopolitical importance that the United States had given it during the Cold War. Then, Marshal Josip Tito had made Yugoslavia a model for independence from the Soviet Union as well as for a brand of communism that was more open politically and less centralized economically.

Now Yugoslavia had been surpassed by both Poland and Hungary in economic and political openness. In addition, human rights had become a major element of U.S. policy, and Yugoslavia's record on that issue was not good -- particularly in the province of Kosovo, where an authoritarian Serbian regime was systematically depriving the Albanian majority of its basic civil liberties. Finally, I was to reassert the traditional mantra of U.S. support for Yugoslavia's unity, independence, and territorial integrity. But I would add that the United States could only support unity in the context of democracy; it would strongly oppose unity imposed or preserved by force.

Thus equipped, my wife and I arrived in Belgrade on March 9, 1989, after an absence of 21 years. The city had not changed much from the dusty half?Slav, half?Turkish town we remembered. Everybody still talked politics in the outdoor cafes, shaded by splendid chestnut trees. Belgrade was an acquired taste, and I had acquired it. What had changed was the character of the Serbian politics that people were busy discussing. Slobodan Milosevic, an ambitious and ruthless communist party official, had clawed his way to power several years before. In early 1989, his efforts were focused on Kosovo.

Kosovo is to Serbs what Jerusalem is to Jews -- a sacred ancestral homeland. In the postwar period, the Albanians in Kosovo -- about 90 percent of ...

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