Ask Croatian mothers...

Croatian academic Ivo Slaus, president of the newly formed Croatian branch of the "Club of Rome": Sovereignty today is not as it was yesterday Ask Croatian mothers...

Sovereignty today is not
as it was yesterday

Discussing the subject, Split weekly "Feral Tribune", carried in its issue of July 24, 1995, an interview with the Croatian academic Ivo Slaus, president of the newly formed Croatian branch of the "Club of Rome". Slaus says that there are two approaches: one is to reconstruct Yugoslavia in a number of variants - without Slovenia, and without it and Croatia, and the second one is civilizational drawing of borders which would be done between the East and West. My answer is, he says, no matter how these two approaches seem different, they are in their essence the same. In one, we would remain in a deadly embrace with Milosevic, in the other, we get a dangerous border which would permanently turn us into some form of Wild West, to which nobody would like to tie the future of their children. Look at the history of Krajina and you will see that living on the border is not happiness but a nightmare. So this is not in the interest of Croatia, and it is not the interest of Europe, which would like to see in us a connecting factor with the South and Southeast. Besides that, division of Bosnia would probably be the beginning of a quick and nightmarish change of borders in a wider region. As this would not happen, the world is freeing itself of the obsessive vision of borders as hard separators and is turning towards soft borders, which separate less and join more. Simply put, borders should not be changed. If one says that Bosnia is Yugoslavia on a small scale and that in itself is its death sentence he is simplifying, since Europe is ex-Yugoslavia on a larger scale, but, nobody can say that the vision of united Europe is destined to fail. Two attempts at the Yugoslav state were simplification and bastardization of the idea. But, if today it is clear that the Yugoslav experiment should not be repeated, it is also clear that sovereignty today is not as it was yesterday, since nobody is sovereign to do within his borders whatever he pleases, including US. Recently published research conducted in 1990., says Slaus, shows that there were zones of high tolerance in former Yugoslavia - the highest was among the three national groups in Bosnia, then among the Serbs and Croats in Croatia, and then Serbs, Hungarians and Croats in Vojvodina. These people did not go at each others throats themselves, but their evil groups of their co nationals that pushed them into conflict. That is why the formation of the Hague tribunal is maybe the most valuable thing the World did for this region. If the Tribunal starts actually to operate, there is hope that this bloody story would be finally brought to its conclusion, and this would spell the end of the policies which were based on naked and perverted interests without morals. It would be enough to look at the newspapers and it would be seen that it is ludicrous to state: my nation did not participate in this. There are criminals among all national groups. The key is that not only direct executors should be considered as criminals, but also those that still speak that each national group should live in its own state. (Source: Split weekly "Feral Tribune", July 24, 1995)