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Yugoslavs in Arms: Guerrilla Tradition, Total

Defence and the Ethnic Security Dilemma

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DOI: 10.1080/09668136.2010.497015

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 EUROPE-ASIA STUDIES
Vol. 62, No. 7, September 2010, 10511072

Yugoslavs in Arms: Guerrilla Tradition, Total

Defence and the Ethnic Security Dilemma

TOMISLAV DULIC & ROLAND KOSTIC

IN 1991 YUGOSLAVIA BECAME EMBROILED IN A WAR1 that resulted in mass violence

on a scale that Europe had not seen since World War II. The magnitude of destruction
appalled Western intellectuals and gave rise to a number of explanations focusing on
the ideological motives for mass killing and the forced expulsions of civilians.2 Early
explanations centred on how nationalist ideology was used to stir inter-ethnic hatred
and mobilise various groups for fratricidal war (Cigar 1995; Anzulovic 1999). Without
refuting the importance of ideology, this essay aims at exploring a motive for mass
violence that has been largely neglected. Drawing on Barry Posens concept of the
ethnic security dilemma,3 it will be shown how the risk of expulsions of civilians was
greatly increased by the Yugoslav military system known as General Peoples

We are indebted to a number of researchers at Uppsala University for their reading of earlier drafts.
In particular, we wish to thank Erik Melander and Magnus Oberg at the Department of Peace and
Conict Research and Kjell Magnusson at the Centre for Multiethnic Research. We also wish to thank
Dorde  Stefanovic of Toronto University and two anonymous reviewers for their comments.
1
There is an ongoing debate about the character of the conicts in former Yugoslavia, in other words
whether they should be described as civil wars or aggressions. While there was no aggression against
Yugoslavia, the wars in Croatia and in Bosnia & Hercegovina, which was an internationally recognised
sovereign state just prior to the outbreak of war, represent a specic combination of internal conict
and external aggression (Bougarel 1996b, pp. 4950).
2
There are a variety of viewpoints as to how the violence directed against civilians in Bosnia &
Hercegovina is to be dened, i.e. whether it is categorised as ethnic cleansing or genocide. For the
purpose of this essay, we do not engage in that normative discussion. Instead, we use the terms mass
killing in the generic sense, which includes all forms of mass violence from individual massacres to
genocide. For more on the relationship between ethnic cleansing and genocide, dierent views
regarding the case of Bosnia & Hercegovina and the recent ruling at the International Court of Justice,
see Burg and Shoup (2000, pp. 17185), Kre (2007), Mann (2005), Milanovic (2007), Naimark (2001,
pp. 34), Shabas (2007) and Scheer (2007).
3
The concept of the security dilemma is not a new one, and was rst used by John Hertz (1951). It
was not until the 1990s, however, that the concept of the ethnic security dilemma became an object of
scholarly research. For some of the most important contributions, see Melander (1999), Posen (1993)
and Roe (1999, 2005).

ISSN 0966-8136 print; ISSN 1465-3427 online/10/071051-22 2010 University of Glasgow

DOI: 10.1080/09668136.2010.497015
1052 TOMISLAV DULIC & ROLAND KOSTIC

Defence (Opcenarodna obrana, ONO). This version of a nation in arms eventually

contributed to obscuring the distinction between the military and civilian sectors of
Yugoslav society, in the process turning a multitude of civiliansin particular
military-aged meninto potential security threats. In addition, we point to the fact
that the salience of strategic motives probably correlated with the position of an actor
in a societal hierarchy. In other words, while ideology might have been prevalent
among some actors on the central level, security concerns appear to have been more
salient locally.
The essay is divided into four parts. The rst contains a discussion of Barry
Posens concept of the security dilemma, in which he shows how and under what
circumstances mass killings and expulsions can have militarystrategic rather than,
or in addition to, ideological motives. The second part shows how, during World
War II, a Balkan tradition of guerrilla warfare merged with a version of Marxist
military doctrine to form Josip Broz Titos concept of partisan warfare. Part three
focuses on how experiences from World War II amalgamated with the Yugoslav
form of decentralised communism known as socialist self-management, to
eventually create the system of General Peoples Defence. Although the essay does
not aim at providing a detailed empirical analysis of the mass violence during the
war of the 1990s, in the third section we provide some illustrations as to how
military and political actors on dierent levels experienced an increase in the ethnic
security dilemma as a result of the breakup of Yugoslavia. These pieces of
information are summarised in a discussion of Posens theory and its ability to
explain the outbreak of violence in Yugoslavia.

The ethnic security dilemma as a theoretical concept

Most analyses of mass violence trace a process by which emphasis is placed on how
political elites adopt an exclusive nationalist ideology which is then used to ethnically
mobilise an ethnic group. As mobilisation has been reached, a political elite initiates a
campaign of mass violence in order to achieve ethnic homogenisation of a territory on
which it lays exclusive claim (Cigar 1995, p. 4; Pfa 1993, p. 109; Van Evera 1994).
However, Barry Posen has argued that radical nationalism is often the result, rather
than the cause, of conict.4 The reason for this is that violence often occurs because of
the anarchy that follows the fragmentation of state authority and the fears that emerge
because of a concurrent increase in perceived security threats to an in-group. As a
result of the loss of the state monopoly of violence, political opponents will have to
rely on their own capabilities in order to increase in-group security. However, as one
group bolsters its security by acquiring arms or powerful allies, this will automatically
result in a perceived reduction of the security of an out-group.
Posens theory rests on the underlying propositions that a group will always try to
minimise the risk of falling victim to its enemies; and that oensive action is superior
to defensive action, particularly insofar as one side has an advantage that will not be

4
Similarly, Michael Mann (2005, p. 7) has claimed that the decision to ethnically cleanse a
population typically emerges as a kind of Plan C, developed only after the rst two responses to a
perceived ethnic threat fail.
 YUGOSLAVS IN ARMS 1053

present later and if security can best be achieved by oensive military action in any
case (Posen 1993, p. 32). Such asymmetric power relations will result in rst strike
advantages if one side is better armed and knows the other side is arming, or if the
costbenet ratio changes as an encircled side believes it faces annihilation in case of
surrender. Moreover, the intensity of violence depends on whether the actors are
bolstered to continue the ght because they believe in the prospect of outside
intervention (Posen 1993; Melander 1999, pp. 3646, 2009; Mann 2005, p. 6). As Posen
(1993, p. 43) argues, these aspects are important to consider, since if outsiders wish to
understand and perhaps reduce the odds of conict, they must assess the local groups
strategic view of their situation. More precisely, his concept indicates that mass
violence may occur even if the political adversaries are defensively oriented, while also
focusing on fear rather than hatred as a key explanatory variable. Finally, he also
shows that ethnic cleansing is often the result of a strategic need to control important
lines of communication and secure access to those material resources that are
considered essential for group survival, such as arms.
As we can see, there is an opposition here between ideological and strategic motives
for ethnic cleansing which necessitate a clarication. By ideological cleansing is
meant targeting civilians because they belong to an ethnic or political group, which for
ideological reasons is dened as an objective enemy of the in-group and therefore
must vanish from a given territory. In other words, the groups members will become
targets regardless of their own actions. Strategically motivated cleansings, on the
other hand, aect organised groups that are perceived to pose a tangible security
threat, those that may do so in the near future, or those that inhabit areas from which
they can threaten vital lines of communication. In order to secure access to resources,
or to deprive the enemy of them, a perpetrator might decide on killing or forcibly
resettling a population from one area to another. In purely strategic cleansings, lethal
violence will only aect those who actively support the opponents and perhaps a
limited number of others that are killed in order to set an intimidating example.
However, one has to remember that these extremes are ideal-types, and it is often
dicult to distinguish clearly between ideologically and strategically motivated mass
violence. In fact, the Holocaust stands out as one of the few clear-cut examples of
purely ideologically motivated mass killing, while the case of the forced expulsions of
the rural population during the Guatemalan war of the 1980s serves as a reasonable
example of primarily strategically motivated cleansings.5 In order to assess the
validity of the ethnic security dilemma one therefore has to be able to hypothesise that
the perpetrators are defensively driven, in other words that they would not have
attacked targeted groups that had not posed a tangible security threat. In the case of
the Holocaust, such a hypothesis is clearly refuted, since the Jews did not pose a
security threat to the Third Reich but still were almost completely destroyed,6 while in

5
As Benjamin Valentino (2004, p. 211) states, the actions of the Guatemalan military as well as the
eorts made by the Guatemalan leaders suggest that the brutality of the campaign is best understood
as a calculated military response . . . against a mass-based guerrilla insurgency.
6
It is important in this context to distinguish between motive, perception and rationalisation. It is
true that the Nazi propaganda presented the Jews as a mortal threat to the Germanic race, but that was
a way of rationalising a genocide that had other motives than to alleviate a security threat. For the
ethnic security dilemma to exist, the weaker side has to be organised and have a capability to inict
1054 TOMISLAV DULIC & ROLAND KOSTIC

the Guatemalan case the government even oered amnesty to those peasants who
agreed to resettle in government-controlled areas. These decisions to remove civilians
were not taken for ideological reasons of ghting the peasantry, but in order to deprive
guerrillas of their support base and supplies. In other words, the security dilemma
might be the root cause of violence, or it might provide one of several important
explanations alongside those of ideology, the prospect of material gain and group
dynamics.

Guerrilla warfare, Marxism and partisan warfare

In order to understand the structure and development of the Yugoslav defence system,
one has to take into account the long tradition of guerrilla warfare in the Balkans,
which was particularly well organised in the so-called Militargrenze along the frontier
between the Ottoman and Habsburg Empires (Sugar 1977, p. 107). By the time the
Militargrenze was abolished in 1881, a tradition of guerrilla warfare had thus
developed that inuenced the military doctrines of the countries in the region. It was
not until World War II, however, that this particular tradition merged with Marxist
military doctrine to form a powerful instrument for the achievement of a political
revolution.
Generally speaking, the Marxist version of a people in arms rested on Clausewitzs
doctrine of total war and the experiences from 1848 and 18701871. In his study of the
Franco-Prussian War, Engels noted that if the healthy remains of the defeated
French army had only organised themselves in smaller units and engaged in
skirmishes, they could have successfully challenged the enemy. However, they would
have to avoid engaging the superior German forces in major and decisive battles, and
instead lure them into rebel territory. By forcing the enemy to overstretch and
compelling him to deploy parts of the troops to protect various lines of
communication, the French could have reduced the military capability of the invading
forces (Engels 1969, p. 94).
Drawing on empirical ndings from a period that was characterised by the
emergence of conscripted armies and mass distribution of easy-to-handle arms, Engels
understood the potential of combining modern warfare with mass mobilisation of the
working class. Thus, as Seselj has noted, Engels theoretical concept rested on the idea
of an armed proletariat and revolutionary avant-garde ghting for the liberation of the
working class.7 In other words, the military force would be in the service of the whole
society, not only of the ruling classes. It should be noted, however, that Engels (1969,
p. 98) also understood the importance of deploying other means in the revolutionary
struggle. The people in arms acted through military formations, but also through
sabotage and diversions, passive resistance and industrial sabotage, kidnapping and
terrorism, organisations for the protection of civilians, and propaganda. Specic social

military damage on the stronger group. The European Jews did not constitute such an organised
group.
7
Vojislav Seselj was one of Yugoslavias experts on Marxist military doctrine. He later founded the
extreme nationalist Serbian Radical Party (Srpska radikalna stranka) and currently stands trial at the
International Criminal Tribunal for former Yugoslavia (ICTY) for his activities during the war in
Croatia and Bosnia & Hercegovina (Seselj 1992, p. 82).
 YUGOSLAVS IN ARMS 1055

and political conditions would determine which type of struggle was to be waged in a
given situation.
According to Engels, the military force represented an aggregation of all human and
military potentials, focused on the protection of a state that essentially served to
guarantee the socialist mode of production. While the standing army would have a
hierarchical structure and be under strict control of the state, the militias were to be
constituted on the territorial principle and in peacetime did not have garrisons or
conduct systematic military training. Most of the militia commanders and ghters
carried out civilian duties and activated themselves only in times of war. In theory, the
main principle of participation was to be that of voluntariness rather than
conscription. In practice, however, participation in the armed forces was viewed as
the societal duty of the working people. Moreover, Engels (1969, p. 84) concluded that
the proletariat would never be able to mobilise all of its strength in the revolutionary
wars, as some of the forces would have to deal with internal enemies.

Yugoslav partisan warfare

Although Yugoslav partisan warfare resembled classic guerrilla activity, it diered in
its emphasis on creating liberated territories governed by revolutionary national
councils. It was the task of the revolutionary organisation rst to establish these
territorial unitswhich can be seen as non-ethnic versions of Posens ethnic
islandsand then to link them up into larger entities that could form the nucleus
of a state controlled by the revolutionary leadership. Moreover, these territories,
which resemble what Mao Zedong (1972, p. 161) referred to as base areas,8 were
essential for the survival of the revolutionary movement since they provided access to
those raw materials, manpower and foodstus that were necessary in order to achieve
a socialist revolution.
Another important feature of partisan warfare was that the revolutionary
organisation should always strive to exchange the loss of one territory with the
acquisition of another, while constantly avoiding frontal combat. Moreover, one
should not only have military considerations in mind when deciding which territories
to acquire. Rather, the idea was always to move the centre of operations to those
regions where the military struggle could have the highest political impact. According
to Mladenko Colics analysis of some 50 military operations in Yugoslavia during
World War II, this combination of military and political objectives resulted in an
extremely mobile form of warfare:

The strategic decision that the armed struggle should be fought throughout the territory of
Yugoslavia and that the loss of one territory should be replaced by the acquisition of another
area, in other words that the strategic concentration of military actions should as soon as
possible be transferred to where one would achieve the largest possible political, military, or

8
Claiming that peasant wars had never succeeded because they were based on the roving rebel
strategy, Mao argued that base areas were indispensable if a protracted guerrilla war was to succeed.
The aim should be to create and link up these areas into larger territorial units, in which a local
administration should be established in order to facilitate foraging and the creation of additional
military units (Mao 1972, pp. 161, 166f, 173f).
1056 TOMISLAV DULIC & ROLAND KOSTIC

other success, brought about a very high degree of manoeuvrability not only in the oensive
but also defensive operations, i.e. resulting in a constant movement and shifts of positions in
the breadth and depth of the operational zones. (Colic 1988, p. 405)

The concept of partisan warfare was put to the test following the invasion and
dismemberment of Yugoslavia in April 1941. After the subsequent invasion of the
Soviet Union on 22 June, the Yugoslav Communist Party (Komunisti cka partija
Jugoslavije) was instructed to organise a guerrilla war on Yugoslav soil. In September,
the Central Committee convened in the Serbian village of Stolice, where strategy was
discussed. Realising that they would have very limited success by engaging the vastly
superior Germans in frontal combat, Tito pointed out the general guidelines for the
ensuing military confrontations, which would form the pillar of the partisan military
strategy during the period 19411944:

Keep to the partisan form of warfare, avoiding entrenched fronts. Demolition of

communications, destruction of transports, ambushes, and surprise attacks are more
successful, and furthermore result in fewer losses. Immobile blockades of towns are not
useful. In the vicinity of such towns, the struggle regularly adopts a frontal character. The
enemy is not allowed to leave the town, so it is not possible to acquire any booty. Around
such towns, the enemy has better ring positions, so he can inict larger losses.9

Following the consultations at Stolice, the Narodnooslobodila cki pokret (NOP)

intensied its oensive military operations against the Axis forces. By September, the
Partisans even succeeded in liberating a considerable territory of south-western Serbia
that became known as the Uzice Republic. The German occupation authorities
responded by a combination of military operations designed to achieve a swift and
decisive victory and the institutionalisation of draconian reprisal measures. The rst
shootings in retaliation occurred in late April. However, it was not until Field Marshal
Wilhelm Keitel issued his infamous Suhnemassnahmen decree in September that the
policy received its ocial sanction from the top echelons of the Wehrmacht.10
Overall, the Wehrmacht eventually achieved most of its goals in Serbia, and the
Communist Party decided in late autumn to move its centre of operations to Bosnia &
Hercegovina. However, the decision to do so created certain problems that needed to
be overcome if the struggle was to become successful. Most pressing was the issue of
inter-ethnic conict, which was recognised by party ocials on various levels. In a
report from a Hercegovinian unit to the leading revolutionary Svetozar Vukmanovic-
Tempo in 2 October 1941, it was said that the relationship between Serbs and Muslims
remained the most dicult question to solve, and that no co-operation could be
achieved until after considerable political work.11 Realising that the Ustasa terror
forced the Serbian peasantry to take up arms, the communists chose to make use of

9
Broz-Tito (1979, pp. 172.). Titos strategy was similar to Maos view of mobile warfare as
preferable to positional warfare along xed battle lines; cf. Mao (1972, p. 108).
10
Zbornik dokumenata i podataka o narodnooslobodilackom ratu jugoslovenskih naroda
[henceforth: Zbornik DNOR], vol. 1, doc. no. 159.
11
Zbornik dokumenata, ser. IV, vol. 1, doc. no. 1.
 YUGOSLAVS IN ARMS 1057

this circumstance for mobilising the Serbian parts of the population, while for the time
being adopting a more passive policy in regards to the Muslims and Croats. In his
memoirs, Tempo claimed that he drew up the following strategy in July 1941:

If we wish the Muslim and Croatian population to go over on our side, the partisan units will
have to avoid attacks on Muslim and Croatian villages. One should not even ask for food or
clothing from those villages. The entire weight of the struggle will initially have to fall on the
shoulders of the Serbian peasantry. We have to guarantee complete security for the Muslim
and Croatian villages. When we have achieved that, we will call on the Muslims and Croats to
join in a common struggle against the occupants and Ustase, as well as against those who
through annihilation of other nationalities try to turn Bosnia and Herzegovina into an
ethnically pure Croatian or Serbian territory. (1971, p. 194)

Tempos statement pointed to a characteristic of partisan warfare that has theoretical

relevance. Posen argues that emerging anarchy may result in an ideological shift, by
which the formerly accepted ethnicity automatically may become perceived as a
potential security threat. In the case of the Partisans, we see the reversed process at
work, by which the actors understood that their strategic needs demanded a nationally
inclusive ideology. Therefore, they initiated an intensive propaganda campaign designed
to counter inter-ethnic hatreds. As an example, a unit in central Bosnia issued a leaet in
November 1941 emphasising that the Partisans were not Serbian nationalist Cetniks,
who at the behest of their Greater Serbian masters committed atrocities against honest
Croatian sons who fought for the equality of the Croatian people. Moreover, the
authors stated that the Partisans did not ght for the re-establishment of inter-war
Yugoslavia, but for the creation of a state in which equality would rule between its
various nations. Another important aspect in their argumentation was to isolate various
quislings from the ethnicity to which they belonged. Thus, they declared that the
Ustase did not represent the Croats, but were the instruments of the German and Italian
occupants, used in order to create dissent among the people. Moreover, the leaet called
on all honest working Serbs, Croats and Muslims to take up arms and ght for a state
in which every honest Croat, Serb and Muslim will have equal rights.12
This and similar propaganda leaets eventually began to have an impact on the
population. However, it was the second meeting of the Anti-fascist Council for the
National Liberation of Yugoslavia (Antifasisti cko vijece narodnog oslobodenja
Jugoslavije, AVNOJ), held in Jajce on 29 November 1943, and coupled with the
military defeats suered by Germany and Italy the same year, which decidedly tilted
the balance in favour of the Partisans. During this historic meeting, which later
became the national day of Yugoslavia, the Party decided that Yugoslavia was to
become a federation of six equal republics and ve constituent peoples (Serbs, Croats,
Slovenes, Macedonians and Montenegrins). Even if another 25 years were to pass
before the Muslims became recognised on a par with the other constituent peoples
(narodi) of Yugoslavia, the fact that Bosnia & Hercegovina received the status of a
dened territorial entity persuaded many Muslims to join or support the communists.
Coupled with the fact that they fought on the side of the allies throughout the war, this

12
Zbornik dokumenata, ser. IV, vol. 1, doc. no. 51.
1058 TOMISLAV DULIC & ROLAND KOSTIC

nationally inclusive strategy provided the Partisans with the ideological means
necessary to achieve political legitimacy within as well as outside the country.
Clearly the party leadership had made a correct analysis of its strategic advantages.
By 1945, the NOP, by then renamed the Peoples Liberation Army of Yugoslavia
(Narodno-oslobodila cka vojska Jugoslavije, NOVJ), had developed into a considerable
force totalling 700,000 ghters. There are several explanations for this remarkable
achievement related to Posens model. For one thing, the Partisans had to ght a war of
annihilation since a rapprochement was impossible for ideological reasons, particularly
as the Nazis introduced the concept of a Vernichtungskrieg (war of annihilation) against
communism. Moreover, their inclusive ideology provided them with an advantage over
the other belligerents, since they could draw their resources from all parts of the
population while at the same time being able to operate throughout the territory of
Bosnia & Hercegovina in order to link up liberated territories. This had two
repercussions for the Germans. On the one hand, it made counter-insurgency operations
much more precarious because it was dicult to predict where resistance would occur.
On the other hand, it meant that civilians could, in theory, be repatriated once the
communists had been cleansed from their ranks. However, being unable to distance
themselves from the Ustase, the Germans became the hostages of Ustasa ideological
killings. By the time they nally succeeded in persuading the Ustase to ameliorate the
persecution of Serbs in late 1942, it was already too late; by then, the NOP had begun to
acquire a growing amount of support from all ethnic groups.

General Peoples Defence in socialist Yugoslavia

The importance of the World War II experience cannot be overestimated, since the
legacy of partisan warfare, external threats after 1945 and the decentralised form of
Yugoslav communism known as socialist self-management amalgamated into a
version of a nation in arms known as General Peoples Defence (Milivojevic 1988, pp.
1559; Barryman 1988, pp. 192260).13
It took some time, however, before the political climate had developed in a way that
allowed for the decentralisation of the defence system. Initially, the Yugoslav armed
forces were reorganised into a conventional standing army, air force and navy, and
became exclusively responsible for national defence (Pantelic 1969, p. 1). The Soviet
inuence was crucial and Soviet military advisers worked actively on transforming the
Yugoslav army into a conventional ghting force modelled on the Red Army
(Vukmanovic-Tempo 1971, pp. 31). After the exclusion of the Yugoslav Communist
Party from the Cominform in 1948, however, the Yugoslavs responded to Soviet
pressure by forming partisan units and setting up their headquarters throughout the
federal republics (Pantelic 1969, p. 1). Weapons and explosives were set apart for each
area in which partisan units were supposed to operate.14 Although a rapprochement

13
According to Tito (Broz-Tito 1975, p. 159), the opcenarodna/opstenarodna odbrana/obrana was
nothing other than the application of the NOP to the post-war conditions in Yugoslavia. Opcenarodna
is Croatian, opstenarodna is Serbian, odbrana is Serbian, obrana is Croatian.
14
Vukmanovic-Tempo (1971, p. 106) stated that this material was placed in clandestine locations
known only to the members of the units headquarters.
 YUGOSLAVS IN ARMS 1059

with the Soviet Union occurred in 1955, the authorities continued to apply the
partisan military doctrine, albeit as a less important feature in the overall military
strategy (Kvader 1953, p. 47).15
During the 1960s, the Yugoslavs gradually began developing what became known
as General Peoples Defence. The process was initially slow due to the opposition of
Aleksandar Rankovic, the centralist head of the State Security Service (Uprava drzavne
bezbednosti, UDB). Following his removal in 1966, however, the door opened for a
more systematic approach, which culminated with the passing of the National Defence
Law in 1969 (Roberts 1986, p. 157).
According to doctrine, the Yugoslav Peoples Army (Jugoslovenska narodna armija,
JNA) was a unied force consisting of the army, navy and air force. The other branch
was the Territorial Defence units (Teritorijalna odbrana, TO), whose task it was to
activate and wage a military struggle if and when the country was occupied.16 In times
of war, the Yugoslav police (milicija17) would also become incorporated into the
armed forces. Thus, according to Minister of Defence Nikola Ljubicic, the aggressor
would have to face the simultaneous resistance of all elements in the system of
nationwide defence (Roberts 1986, p. 174).18
One factor that was to contribute to the emergence of the security dilemma at the
time of Yugoslav dissolution was the absence of a clear-cut and unied command-and-
control system that fully integrated the Yugoslav armed forces. The basic organisation
of the territorial defence began with the President of the Republic as supreme
commander. Below him were the republics, provinces and municipalities (Canovic
1979, pp. 4850),19 organised into local communities called mjesna zajednica.20 The
National Defence Law stated that the defence stas of local communities were obliged
to execute orders issued by the national defence sta, while also being required to co-
ordinate their operations with the local JNA unit with which they co-operated and to
which they were formally subordinated. However, it was the republican national
defence sta, and not the JNA, which commanded all units in areas temporarily
occupied by the enemy.21

15
Roberts (1986, p. 154) points out that it was not until 1958 that the idea of creating a Territorial
Defence force rst became part of the overall military doctrine.
16
Constitution of the Socialist Federative Republic of Yugoslavia 1974, art. 240 (Ustav SFRJ,
Beograd 1974); Roberts (1986, p. 173).
17
The Yugoslav milicija was an equivalent to the police in the West. Despite its name, it did not
correspond to the concept envisaged by Engels (workerscivilians that activate in times of emergency)
as it was active during peacetime.
18
See also Ljubicic (1978, pp. 16, 18).
19
The municipality (opstina/opcina) was a basic socio-political community (drustveno-politi cka
zajednica) in the SFRY.
20
Every mjesna zajednica had its local council and was an administrative unit on whose territory
resistance would be organised (Kovacevic et al. 1988).
21
One should note that the issue of defence responsibilities and structure was never entirely resolved
and led to a number of opposing interpretations in the aftermath of Titos death and particularly in the
early 1990s. For further discussion see Milivojevic (1988, pp. 2733) and Hadzic (2002, pp. 10223).
See also 1969 National Defence Law, Articles 14, 51 and 52 (Sluzbeni list SFRY, 8, 19 February 1969;
Roberts 1986, pp. 179, 180).
1060 TOMISLAV DULIC & ROLAND KOSTIC

The reason for this decentralised form of defence was that the General Sta
suspected an attack on Yugoslavia would involve a massive invasion by one of the
super powers. In such an event, it was the JNAs task to resist the invasion and thus
facilitate mobilisation of the territorial defence (Ljubicic 1978, p. 17).22 Moreover, the
military forces would conduct operations along fronts as well as in depth, not least in
occupied areas, thus forcing the enemy to disperse their forces even more.23 In order to
achieve these objectives, parts of the JNA would transform into units engaging in
partisan warfare. This dispersion of conventional forces into smaller partisan units
was known as a descending transition in Yugoslav military terminology (Roberts
1986, p. 174).
Unlike classical guerrilla warfare, the Yugoslav resistance was envisaged as a mixed
endeavour. As such, it combined guerrilla warfare with continued frontal operations
in parts of the country that would include the deployment of air and naval forces. In
theory, it was expected that such a struggle in depth could continue until the opponent
became worn down. As that was achieved, the defence forces would attach small
partisan units into larger and more complex formations. The ascending transition
would be accompanied by a change from partisan hit-and-run attacks, combined with
partisan and regular warfare to frontal operations of a more traditional type (Vukotic
1970, p. 173).
Although armed combat was viewed as the primary form of resistance, the
Yugoslav military strategists knew that armed struggle might not be possible all the
time and in all situations. Fighting would pose extensive problems, particularly in
urban areas, which were not suitable for long-term partisan warfare. If and when the
army would be forced to abandon cities, towns and villages, they would leave behind
organised resistance cells:

Naturally, units of the operational army and territorial defence may sometimes nd
themselves in the position of being forced temporarily to abandon further resistance and
evacuate one or another town or settlement. However, they must leave behind a military
political organisation capable of continuing the struggle by political, diversionist and other
forms of action.24

Another important aspect of the Yugoslav defence system was that the 1974
constitution criminalised capitulation by dening it as an act of high treason.25 Such a
provisionwhich drew upon the historical experience of the military disaster and
capitulation in 1941eectively precluded any rapprochement with the enemy
(Roberts 1986, p. 187).

22
In the event of an attack by a neighbouring country (a country of similar military size) the
Yugoslav Peoples Army would assume most of the responsibility for defence, and the territorial forces
would have an essentially auxiliary role (Roberts 1986, p. 174).
23
It was envisaged that the mountainous region of Bosnia & Hercegovina, where the Partisans
successfully challenged the German and Ustasa forces in 19411945, would be maintained as a free
area from which the rest of the country would be liberated (Vukotic 1970, p. 173).
24
1969 National Defence Law, Article 74, Sluzbeni list SFRY, no. 8, 19 February 1969.
25
Constitution of the Socialist Federative Republic of Yugoslavia 1974, art. 238 (Ustav SFRJ,
Beograd 1974).
 YUGOSLAVS IN ARMS 1061

ONO and civilian society

Yugoslavia was far from the only country in the world that developed a defence
system and military doctrine, which included some form of trained auxiliary force that
could be activated in the event of war. The Swedish concept of Hemvarn (Home
Defence), as part of Totalforsvaret (Total Defence) together with Civilforsvaret
(Civilian Defence), has its similarities to the Yugoslav system.26 The major dierence
is that the ONO also stipulated that civil servants and other ocials, including
members of the Red Cross and re brigades, were obliged to resist the aggressor and
were prohibited from participating in the enemy infrastructure (Roberts 1986, p. 179).
This type of defence organisation rested on the idea of citizenssoldiers as
conceptualised by the ideologist Edvard Kardelj (1979, p. 16). In addition, it made the
term military involvement extremely vague, since every citizen who is involved in the
defence against the aggressor with arms or in any other way is a member of the armed
forces of the Socialist Federative Republic of Yugoslavia.27
This ambiguity between the civilian and military sectors of society was also
expressed in the following paragraph of the National Defence Law of 1969:

Taking as a point of departure the socialist, self-managing and democratic character of the
Yugoslav community of equal nations and nationalities, and the nature of modern war as an
all-embracing armed conict in which boundary lines between the front and the rear, and
between the people and the army, disappear, socialist Yugoslavia, utilising the experience of
the Peoples Liberation War, is developing its own concepts of opcenarodna obrana as the
only possible method of opposing armed aggression.28

The Yugoslav military was aware that the regulations of the ONO were in conict with
the Geneva Convention, and discussed the issue in terms of a need for international
understanding for the peculiarities of the Yugoslav defence model (Jovanovic 1978,
pp. 40).
Another factor that contributed to the blurring of the distinction between non-
combatants and military personnel was that the ONO included training of civilians for
war. The League of Communists of Yugoslavia (Savez komunista Jugoslavije, SKJ)
and the presidency emphasised the importance of including the youth in the defence
system,29 and various educational institutions were given the task of teaching Marxism
with an emphasis on the issue of societal self-protection. Military training became
integrated in all forms of education and upbringing, including politics, sports, culture
and entertainment. Military instruction was to be permanent and continuous, with
compulsory military service as the pinnacle of training in military skills (Komorski
1977, p. 19).

26
For a comparison between the Yugoslav, Swiss and Swedish concepts of Total Defence, see
Roberts (1986).
27
Constitution of the SFRY, art. 240 (Ustav SFRJ, Beograd 1974).
28
From Section II of the Introductory Principles of the National Defence Law (Sluzbeni list SFRY,
8, 19 February1969 and quoted in Roberts (1986, p. 172)).
29
Osamnaesta sjednica predsjednistva SKJ (1972), Drustveno-politicke i drustvene organizacije u
opstenarodnoj odbrani (Javorovic 1977, p. 9).
1062 TOMISLAV DULIC & ROLAND KOSTIC

One distinguishing feature between the ONO and its Western equivalents was that
the training in military skills became integrated in the school curricula. In primary
schools, military upbringing (odgoj) started in the rst grade, while education
(obrazovanje) began in the fth grade. As part of the programme, instruction in courier
skills and reconnaissance took place during physical education in grades 57, while the
keeping of secrets was dealt with during history lessons and the weekly class meetings
in grades 6 and 7. Explosive devices were studied during technical education lessons in
grades 5 and 7, while chemical weapons were covered during chemistry lessons in
eighth grade (Hudek 1977, p. 26).
The subject of Defence and Protection was taught in the rst and second grade of
secondary school, and its aim was to further familiarise students with the ONO, in
particular with how to use weapons, explosive devices and various types of equipment
for protection against chemical, biological and nuclear warfare (Komorski 1977, p.
18). At graduate school level, students studied the subject Basics of ONO in the
SFRY which consisted of 120 teaching hours. The subject was primarily theoretical
and its aim was to complement the students knowledge of these matters in order to
prepare them for participation in ONO in their workplaces (Komorski 1977, p. 18).
The training of students not attending secondary education was divided according
to gender. Young 16-year-old boys studied a programme similar to Defence and
Protection. Young girls attended a special programme of the republics territorial
defence headquarters that was conducted within the overall framework of population
training (Komorski 1977, p. 19). Moreover, voluntary youth and student organisa-
tions organised defence courses outside of the school system for secondary school and
undergraduate students between 17 and 25 years of age. The training was managed by
the JNA, lasted 20 days and included themes such as tactical training, and small-arms
shooting practice (Komorski 1977, p. 19).
It was one of the main objectives of the Yugoslav defence system to secure the
successful functioning of society and the political system in times of war.
Consequently, the military planners did their best to organise the economy in a way
that would make it compatible with the overall requirements of the ONO. The
Organisations of Associated Labour (Organizacija udruzenog rada, OUR), in other
words various factories and larger companies, were seen as key subjects of the ONO.
In the case of an attack, OUR would take over the tasks pertaining to local self-
management in situations where workers councils could not hold meetings. The
economic system was to be preserved and production was to be maintained despite the
war, while intensifying production and stockpiling material reserves, particularly
insofar as military equipment was concerned, became a primary task. One of the key
tasks of the defence system was to prevent the attacker from exploiting the countrys
resources and establishing a functioning occupation system. This was to be achieved
by the destruction of objects and resources that fell into enemy hands (Vucinic 1977,
pp. 15). Being the main production units, the OUR had a number of tasks in a
conict situation: to make preparations for the continuation of production; to make
preparations for the protection of civilians and material assets; to make preparations
for the military struggle (within the framework of the territorial defence); and to train
the workers for the tasks they may be assigned to during the war, including the
protection of the secrecy and security of peoples defence (Vucinic 1977, p. 10).
 YUGOSLAVS IN ARMS 1063

Sources: Maurer (1988, pp. 97123) and Roberts (1986, pp. 17295).

FIGURE 1. STRUCTURE OF GENERAL PEOPLES DEFENCE IN YUGOSLAVIA

Summarising the developments, one can conclude that the Yugoslav defence
system underwent several changes throughout the post-war period, the most
fundamental of which was the establishment of the ONO. As such, this system
represented a distinctly decentralised form of military organisation, although the
initial decision to distribute command-and-control functions among the republics
was eventually revoked. Nevertheless, the fact remains that the republics, as well as
the municipalities and in some cases local communities, were clearly dened subjects
of the ONO.
Another problem was that the Yugoslav authorities organised a system of defence
that widened the concept of military involvement to include not only the regular
armed forces and the Territorial Defence. By including military training in the
education system and preparing resistance in the administration and in workplaces,
the ONO widened the whole concept of a nation in arms to include all spheres of
public life. This, combined with the transformation of the armed forces into
partisan units, the virtual erasing of the distinction between non-combatants and
military personnel, and the leaving behind of potential terrorists in regions
occupied by the enemy, would have created a very dicult situation for an
occupation force. It would face the dicult task of trying to rely on the local
administration, or deploy a considerable force in order to achieve at least
rudimentary control over territory. In combination with the ban on capitulation,
this would lead to a sharp increase in the security dilemma, as the invader would
have no legitimate counterpart to negotiate peace with, while, at least theoretically,
the defenders would have to ght a war of annihilation. This gradual blurring of
the distinction between civilian and military sectors of society had a direct and
dangerous impact on developments in the 1990s.

From an instrument of peace to a tool of war

As long as the state and the population adhered to the concept of brotherhood and
unity, the ONO functioned as an important deterrent against military aggression. In
1064 TOMISLAV DULIC & ROLAND KOSTIC

time, however, the biggest strength of the system also became its foremost weakness.30
In the 1980s it became clear that the League of Communists failed to establish a
framework for sustainable economic and political development. As a consequence of
economic stagnation, the population and leaderships began questioning the viability
of socialist self-management. Concurrently, the dispute between centralism and
(con)federalism reached its peak in 19891990 when the federal government under
Ante Markovic failed to acquire enough support among the republican leaderships.
This process ended with the dissolution of the League of Communists in 1990, which
presaged the end of the socialist federation and plunged the state into emerging
anarchy (Hadzic 2002, p. 73).
Concurrently with the gradual ethnication of the political system, the JNA
commanders tried to adjust to the new political realities in the country. An
examination of the system and concept of ONO was conducted, especially of its
parts referring to the role of the armed people and the socialisation of defence.31 A
number of JNA commanders eventually went so far as to view the concept of total
defence as a great deceit, arguing that the TOs were from the beginning built not as an
expression of socialist self-management but as a base and framework for republican
armies (Hadzic 2002, p. 91). This led to the conclusion that the TOs had to be brought
under the command of the JNA in order to prevent a fragmentation of the defence
system. However, even if the manpower of the TO was reduced from 293,000 soldiers
in 1987 to 86,000 in 1991 (Hoare 2004, p. 21), the reform attempts came too late. As
Veljko Kadijevic, the Minister of Defence, pointed out in 1990, the TOs were
increasingly turning into republican, provincial and even municipal forces (Hadzic
2002, p. 101). There were even rumours that some top generals considered staging a
military coup in order to prevent the disintegration of the country, but it was believed
this could not succeed due to insucient support from non-Serbs (Milivojevic 1988, p.
41).32 As anticipated by Posen, one can thus see how the ideological shift from
inclusiveness to particularist nationalism was perceived to narrow the range of
political options.
During the phase of emerging anarchy in the early 1990s, various elites used
exclusive nationalism to mobilise their ethnic in-groups in order to secure power in the
republics of Yugoslavia. The question of possible secession by Slovenia and Croatia
resulted in discussions regarding the principles for separation, based on the Yugoslav
constitution from 1974. The Slovenian and Croatian leaderships argued that the right
of secession rested with the republics, while the Serbian elite believed the constituent
peoples rather than the republics had the right to secede. This unresolved
constitutional issue created an incentive on the one hand for Franjo Tudman,  the
President of Croatia, to revoke the Serbs status as a constituent nation in Croatia. On
the other hand, the Croatian Serb elites had an incentive to proclaim their own
Serbian autonomous regions, which threatened to secede from Croatia in the case of

30
Adam Roberts (1986, p. 217) mentions that the ONO rests on fragile social and political
foundations, which might be perversely misused for civil war.
31
For example see Adzic (1990, p. 24).
32
In addition, the JNA was incapable of providing a political alternative that would be acceptable
internally as well as by the international community (Hadzic 2002, p. 195).
 YUGOSLAVS IN ARMS 1065

Croatian secession from Yugoslavia. The issue was not resolved until the EU-
sponsored Badinter Commission in late 1991 decided to support the Slovenian and
Croatian views, thus also creating a legal framework for the secession of Bosnia &
Hercegovina (Woodward 1996, p. 168).
As the crisis deepened, many ranking JNA generals allied with the Serbian leader
Slobodan Milosevic, who presented himself as the protector of Yugoslavia.33 The JNA
ocers tried to take control of the TO, which suited the Serbian leadership well as it
thought itself to be able to win the allegiance of the army in the event of war.
Considering the JNA an occupation force, the Croatian and Slovenian elites realised
that they would have to rely on their own capabilities in order to obtain security. Not
surprisingly, there developed a struggle over resources kept in TO storages, while arms
smuggling also increased. This, in turn, made Belgrade anxious that the Croats were
preparing a war.34 Being stronger but realising that this strength would not last,
Croatian Serb militants struck immediately after the proclamation of Croatian and
Slovenian independence in June 1991, and took control over those areas in Croatia
which had a strong Serbian presence. The Croatian and Slovenian governments were
bolstered to ght because they counted on US support and on the weakness of the
Soviet Union. This process repeated itself in Bosnia & Hercegovina, where the
Bosnian Serb leadership established autonomous regions in late 1991, and threatened
to secede should Bosnia & Hercegovina become independent (Hayden 1999, p. 93).35
Due to the ethnic composition of Bosnia & Hercegovina, which had no majority and
where the ethnic groups were dispersed across the region in various ethnic islands,
there developed a much more precarious security situation than the one in the
relatively homogenous Croatia.
In the case of Bosnia & Hercegovina, after the elections in November 1990, the
winning coalition of the three ethnic parties, Serb SDS (Srpska demokratska stranka),
Croat HDZ (Hrvatska demokratska zajednica) and Bosniak SDA (Stranka demok-
ratske akcije), divided up power and resources in public institutions and services. This
also meant that each party took control over police and TO resources in their areas of
demographic control (Bougarel 1996a, p. 100). Consequently, it was to be expected
that the most intense conicts over resources would develop in areas where there was
no clear ethnic majority.
Memoirs of ranking ocers as well as the few studies that have been made show
how the TOs evolved into separate ethnic armies as a result of the collapse of federal
institutions. From the diary of General Stjepan Siber, an ethnic Croatian general of

33
The growing alliance between Serbias leaders and the JNA generals was based on the common
interest of protection of some kind of Yugoslavia, common ideological interest, as well as on their
national aliation. For detailed description see Hadzic (2002, pp. 197203). Even if a majority of the
ocer corps were Serbs by ethnicity, one has to remember that many of them were pan-Yugoslav
rather than pro-Serbian in their political orientation. That is why Milosevic never fully trusted the
army and eventually even purged the ocer corps of its pro-Yugoslav cadres (Edmunds 2005, p. 117).
34
On 25 January 1991 the Yugoslav television service broadcast a JNA-made documentary that
showed a high ranking Croatian ocial, Martin Spegelj, organising illegal arms imports from Hungary
to Croatia (Silber & Little 1996, p. 118).
35
For in-depth analyses of the dissolution of Yugoslavia and its connection to the ethnic security
dilemma, see Burg and Shoup (2000), Cohen (1995) and Melander (1999).
1066 TOMISLAV DULIC & ROLAND KOSTIC

the Bosnian armed forces, one can see how Serbian ocers increasingly perceived
Croatian and Bosniak members of the TO as potential enemies. In August 1991, for
instance, Drago Vukosavljevic, the ethnic Serbian commander of the Bosnian TO,
reportedly said that all training of TO forces should cease since we should not train
the army of the enemy, in other words people who will shoot us in the back (Siber
2001, p. 16).36 The situation became further exacerbated in late 1991, when it was
demanded that all heavy armaments be handed over to the JNA. Thus, the JNA
sought to disarm the Bosnian TO units in Muslim and Croat majority areas . . . while
arming the TO units in Serb-majority areas (Hoare 2004, p. 203), which resulted in a
complex struggle for military resources when the Bosniak and Bosnian Croat TO
forces tried to retain control over armaments.
At the time of the outbreak of war, the security situation worsened because of the
decentralised command and control system, which, as mentioned previously, was a
key feature of the ONO. The JNA commanders demanded that the TO personnel and
ocers become subordinate to the Ministry of Defence in Belgrade. Not being able to
trust the increasingly Serbianised armed forces, the government in Sarajevo issued a
proclamation, according to which it assumed control over the TO forces of Bosnia &
Hercegovina. The end result was the dramatic disintegration of the TO along ethnic
lines.37
As the Bosnian war erupted in April 1992, members of the TO and local
politicianswho were often the same individualsbecame frequent targets of
violence. In the strategically important road and rail hub of Prijedor, for instance,
the Bosnian Serb political authorities began their attacks by taking control of the TO
and removing or liquidating its non-Serbian members.38 This was to a large degree
facilitated by the fact that Serbs constituted a relative majority (40%) of the towns
population (while the Bosniaks were a relative majority in the municipality as a whole
with 43%). Nearby Kozarac, however, was overwhelmingly Bosniak-inhabited and
was situated on the main communication line leading to Banja Luka. In late May
1992, the locals proclaimed allegiance to the government in Sarajevo and organised
their own defence units, which were armed with weapons from the local TO storages
(Gunic 2000, p. 61; Hodzic 1998, p. 273). After a three-day struggle, the Bosnian Serb
forces over-ran the town and committed a massacre, while many defenders withdrew
to Mount Kozara where they remained for several weeks before surrendering.39
The fact that the local commanders were acting in accordance with the ONO and
that control over the TO became paramount due to the Serbianisation of the JNA

36
For more on the fragmentation of the defence system and the arming of the ethnic groups in
Bosnia & Hercegovina prior to the war, see Siber (2001, pp. 1536).
37
In his memoirs, Stjepan Siber mentions how in 1992 mainly Croatian and Bosniak TO ocers
chose to join the Army of Bosnia & Hercegovina (Siber 2001, pp. 39, 22123).
38
During the Serbian takeover in Prijedor, for instance, the authorities began by disarming non-
Serbian members of the TO (The Prijedor Report, UN S/1994/674/Add.2 (Vol. I), Part One, Section
IV), available at: www.ess.uwe.ac.uk/comexpert/anx/V.htm, accessed 25 May 2010.
39
A similar event occurred in central Bosnia in May 1992, when local Serbian forces refused to
subordinate themselves to the Presidency of Bosnia & Hercegovina. In early June, the Bosniak-led TO
of Zenica allegedly attacked and cleansed the Serbian villages that were situated along the main road
between Zenica and Sarajevo in a Bosniak-dominated area (Toholj 2000, pp. 51316).
 YUGOSLAVS IN ARMS 1067

has been conrmed by numerous witnesses at the International Criminal Tribunal for
former Yugoslavia (ICTY). Enver Hadzihasanovics statement regarding the situation
in central Bosnia serves as a particularly interesting illustration of one actors view of
the situation:

We applied the principles of organization and the establishment of an army as we had been
taught at military academy. . . . The problem of the entire region of BosniaHerzegovina lay
in the fact that the previous law envisaged a Yugoslav Peoples Army as an operative army
and the system of territorial defence as units to protect an area if there should be an
aggression against the former Yugoslavia. But in view of the fact that the JNA, at that
moment in time, joined, that is to say, was the army of the aggressor . . . just the structure of
territorial defence remained in BosniaHerzegovina, and when an immediate danger of war
was proclaimed, territorial organizations started, according to the principles and laws. So
these units of territorial defence were commanded by the wartime presidencies of the
municipalities and districts [cf. the revolutionary national councils during the Second World
War] and the political and economic system of BosniaHerzegovina. In that way, there was
no united command because each unit had its own area and territory, and nobody was able to
dislocate it and remove it from one region to another. In view of the fact that the law
provided for the creation of an armed force in BosniaHerzegovina, that is to say, the army of
BosniaHerzegovina, it was necessary to have this territorial principle translated into the
principle of an army which was able to function and manoeuvre according to requirements
and the assessments of the danger that existed and towards the axes from which the danger
came, and that was precisely my task. (ICTY 1995, pp. 23,101)

A considerable amount of empirical evidence suggests that security concerns lay

behind some of the worst violence during the war. This is, for instance, true in the case
of the Bosnian Serb eorts to take control over the Posavina region in the north, and
the ghting around the town of Jajce in central-western Bosnia. None of these areas
had a majority Serbian population, but both were of strategic importance for linking
up or facilitating communication between Serbian-dominated regions. Moreover, the
expulsions of Croats that were organised by Bosniak forces in central Bosnia, for
instance, may well have been committed primarily out of security concerns, since the
Bosniak side needed to establish control over important communication lines once the
conict with the Bosnian Croat forces broke out in 1993. One could even hypothesise
that such dierences in motives at the regional level may have correlated with diering
aims at the top political level between primarily Bosnian Serb and Bosniak war aims.
However, more empirical research has to be done before it is possible to establish
exactly how and to what extent security concerns inuenced local decision making.

Concluding remarks
To what extent can the ethnic security dilemma explain the onset of mass violence in
Yugoslavia and what are the implications of ONO for Posens model? It should be
obvious from the preceding discussion that the Yugoslav belligerent parties
experienced feelings of insecurity as a result of the anarchy that developed once the
dissolution of the country was set in motion. Being temporarily stronger, the Serbian
leadership and its allies had an incentive to make use of a military superiority they
1068 TOMISLAV DULIC & ROLAND KOSTIC

understood might become reduced over time. This perception was probably
strengthened by the key structural weakness experienced by the Serbian political
elite, namely that the Bosnian and Croatian Serb forces were superior in arms but had
to contend with limited resources in respect to manpower. This is pointed out in the
CIA analysis Balkan Battlegrounds, where the authors mention that for the Bosnian
and Croatian Serbs limited manpower was to become an increasingly dicult and
eventually insoluble problem as the war dragged on (CIA 2003, p. 271). The Bosniak
and Croatian sides, on the other hand, gradually strengthened their positions.
Moreover, they relied on their ability to withstand an attack, which in part was
because they counted on various forms of aid from outside. Combined, these
structural factors created incentives on the part of the elite in Belgrade to strike rst
before their opponents became too strong.
From the standpoint of the perpetrators mindset, it appears the policies of mass
violence could even be considered successful, as within a matter of weeks it made
guerrilla warfare of the partisan type well-nigh impossible to conduct. This is
corroborated by the previously mentioned CIA study, according to which

misunderstandings regarding the nature of the forces involved have led to a perception in
some quarters that the 19901995 wars involved a large number of insurgents operating in the
mountains as part of a protracted guerrilla war. With the sole exception of the Ten-Day War
in Sloveniawhich escapes classicationthe Balkan conict involved conventional,
positional warfare, more akin to World War I than by Titos partisan struggles in World
War II. (CIA 2003, p. xv)

It is unclear whether this shift in military strategy was taken after the belligerents
realised that they could not obtain the necessary support on the ground to conduct
partisan-style military operations, or whether such a realisation came after the
cleansings had been largely achieved. As historians gain access to the belligerents
internal documentation, one might also nd that dierent actors had dierent motives
for a campaign of mass violence that aected all ethnic groups, albeit with varying
degrees of intensity. In addition, there is the need to understand that individuals within
each collective may have had dierent motives depending, among other things, on
where they were placed in the social hierarchy. In a recent study, Stathis Kalyvas
emphasised that [t]he process of inferring on-the-ground dynamics from the
macrolevel will likely generate biased inferences, while it is [also] incorrect to explain
the behaviour of individuals by reference only to the actions of elites or vague
groups (Kalyvas 2005, p. 391).
We strongly support his argument in respect to placing more emphasis on the
interaction between the macro and micro levels. We also concur with Erik Melander
when he says that the ethnic security dilemma needs to be further developed in this
direction. When analysing elite behaviour, one important task is to understand how,
and under what circumstances, elites try to manipulate the grassroots into believing in
the threat of an imminent attack, even if such an attack in reality was not expected
(Melander 1999, pp. 218.; de Figueiredo & Weingast 1999), or in other words how
central actors use costly signalling in order to prevent co-operation at the local level
and create a security dilemma where none exists.
 YUGOSLAVS IN ARMS 1069

FIGURE 2. MOTIVES FOR ETHNIC CLEANSING AND COSTLY SIGNALLING

Theoretically, this means that elites may have ideological motives for resorting to
violence, while the grass-roots act out of perceived security threats. Moreover, it
appears safe to assume that feelings of insecurity correlate with geographic proximity
to the violence, which leads to the hypothesis that the salience of security concerns
increases the lower one is positioned in the social hierarchy. If conrmed, such a
hypothesis could explain why elites frequently tend to emphasise the depiction of the
out-group as a danger and security threat rather than the economic, cultural, racial or
other obstacles on the road to the betterment of the in-group that characterises
ideological exclusion.
Drawing on the available evidence, it appears safe to conclude that some cleansings
in Bosnia & Hercegovina were strategically motivated, while strategically important
regions were disproportionately aected by violence. One of the reasons is that the
ONO became dysfunctional once the ideology of brotherhood and unity was
abandoned for the benet of exclusive nationalism. As a result, military planners and
political elites had to contend with what they perceived to constitute a potential
security problem, including the fact that militarily trained individuals from the
opponent group inhabited areas that were considered essential for in-group survival.
This in no way justies the atrocities that were committed, since from a legal
perspective it matters little whether the victim was attacked because of hate, fear or,
for that matter, the prospect of economic gain. Nevertheless, it is important to
understand the role of ONO when assessing how and why the Yugoslav defence
system contributed to the emergence of an ethnic security dilemma.
When studying the mass atrocities in Bosnia & Hercegovina from the perspective of
the ethnic security dilemma, one might be tempted to explain the violence exclusively in
terms of strategic motives. This, however, is not the point we wish to make. Posens
concept is based on the fundamental principle that violence might occur even if the
actors are primarily defensively oriented. Paul Roe has questioned whether this indeed
was the case, at least in respect to the Bosnian Serbs (Roe 2000), and one must remember
that the war to a large extent was the result of expansionist designs hatched in Belgrade
and Zagreb. Moreover, for the argument to be perfectly valid one would have to be able
to hypothesise that acts of mass violence would not have occurred had the actors not
1070 TOMISLAV DULIC & ROLAND KOSTIC

perceived a threat. This, however, is unlikely if one takes into consideration that violence
also aected regions that were of limited strategic importance.
The main argument of this essay is that one cannot explain the ethnic cleansing in
Yugoslavia by exclusively focusing on the ideology, and it is an oversimplication to
view participation in terror as the result of political indoctrination and hatred alone. It
would be similarly awed to explain everything by reference to the fear and insecurity
deriving from the ethnic security dilemma. Instead, we have shown that there was an
interplay between ideological and strategic motives for targeting civilians, the latter of
which have not received due attention in scholarship. We have also argued that
dierences in motives probably correlated with the position certain actors had in the
social hierarchy. In other words, ideological motives may well have dominated at
the level of the elite, while fear and insecurity might have been the decisive motives at the
local level. In this regard, the ethnic security dilemmawhich fed upon the
disintegration of the ONOthus provides an important additional piece to the overall
puzzle. Ignoring it will leave us with an explanation of the violence that overemphasises
the role of ideology and hate, while overlooking how fear and perceived security threats
can exacerbate a volatile situation and generate violence.

Uppsala University

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