TRUTH & JUSTICE
The View from Washington
The State Department’s War Against Croatia
By Jeffrey T. Kuhner

The U.S. State Department has finally shown its true face regarding its policy toward Croatia. And this face is an ugly and racist one.

Last week, Congressman Thaddeus McCotter, Michigan Republican, began to circulate an amendment that expresses the growing concern among Republicans on Capitol Hill regarding Carla Del Ponte’s assault on Croatia’s freedom of the press. In particular, the McCotter Amendment, as it was referred to, focused on Del Ponte’s recent indictments against Croatian journalists Ivica Marijacic, Stjepan Seselj, Domagoj Margetic and Markica Rebic. It was to be introduced in Congress and then attached to the Foreign Relations Authorization Act, which is the bill that funds the State Department’s initiatives toward international organizations like the ICTY. The amendment sought to “withhold U.S. contributions to the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia (ICTY) until the tribunal dismisses all criminal charges against four journalists who have filed reports critical of the work of the ICTY.”

“The actions of the ICTY are a direct threat to the evolution of liberty in the former Yugoslavia, and we should be more determined in our efforts to defend a strong, free media as the ferment of every democratic process,” Congressman McCotter said in the press release sent out by his office.

The amendment, however, was strangled in its infancy by State Department operatives. Sources on Capitol Hill said that select members of the House International Relations Committee, which was overseeing the amendments process to the bill, were told by State Department officials to vote against the McCotter Amendment. Fearing that he didn’t have the necessary votes, Congressman McCotter declined to introduce his amendment—thereby, effectively killing it.

What is most stunning is not that the amendment failed (this happens all the time in Congress and is part of the messy legislative process). But State Department officials were willing to resort to openly bogus and racist arguments in order to dissuade congressional members from backing the amendment.

“What people from the State Department were telling people here in Congress was that these four Croatian journalists are not ‘real’ journalists,” said a source closely involved in the amendments process to the Foreign Relations Authorization bill.

“The State Department was also saying that journalists in Croatia are not ‘real’ journalists. It was frankly, unbelievable that they would say such things,” the source added. “But I guess it worked.”

Hence, according to the State Department’s logic, because Croatian journalists are not “real” journalists they are not entitled to basic democratic protections. Even for the State Department this is a new low. It is no secret that the State Department has been a staunch supporter of the ICTY. Yet by actively working to quash the McCotter Amendment the State Department is showing it is willing to go to any lengths, even if it means betraying deeply held American values and principles, to prop up Del Ponte—no matter how many unjust and anti-democratic indictments she puts forth.

The State Department’s actions reveal the deep-seated racism and amoral cynicism at the heart of its policies toward Croatia. The State Department actively defends the rights of journalists to be free from censorship and intimidation in the Middle East, Latin America and China. But when it comes to Croatia—and the peoples of the former Yugoslavia in general—the rights of journalists are not important. In fact, they are considered impediments to the State Department’s drive to impose its internationalist, neo-imperialist ambitions upon the region.

Since the late 1980s, following the fall of the Berlin Wall, the State Department’s approach to the region has been characterized by one over-riding objective: maintaining stability at all costs. This realpolitik amoralism values order above democracy, and regional stability—as expressed in supra-national states like Yugoslavia—over national self-determination.

This is why the State Department opposed the break-up of Yugoslavia in 1991, as was clearly dramatized on June 25 when then-U.S. Secretary of State James Baker pronounced that Washington “supports the territorial integrity of Yugoslavia”—giving Serb strongman Slobodan Milosevic the green light to launch his invasions of Slovenia and Croatia. The State Department was extremely reluctant to recognize Croatia’s independence, despite the overwhelming evidence of Serb atrocities. Moreover, during the 1990s it was the State Department that actively supported maintaining the U.N. arms embargo on both Croatia and Bosnia—in the hopes of freezing Serb gains on the ground, which would compel Zagreb and Sarajevo to return into some kind of union with Belgrade. Finally, it was the State Department—along with the British Foreign Office—that ferociously opposed Operation Storm.

Even to this day, many within the State Department are anti-Croatia, hoping to reconstitute some kind of a loose Balkan union. Hence, this explains Foggy Bottom’s unflinching support for the ICTY, the indictment against General Ante Gotovina, and closer “regional integration.” Ultimately, the State Department believes that Croatians are essentially third-class citizens of Europe: they are not fit to have their own country and their democratic aspirations as a people are to be ignored. It is this racist and condescending attitude that explains why State Department operatives can, with a straight face, lobby members of Congress to not protect basic human rights and journalistic freedoms in Croatia.

The State Department’s war against Croatia will continue until the Croatian press stands up and speaks out against Washington’s injustices. Croatian journalists are real journalists. In fact, some like Ivica Marijacic and Josip Jovic (another columnist facing a possible indictment by Del Ponte for “contempt of the tribunal”) are outstanding journalists—not only by Croatian standards, but by the standards of any country in the West, including the United States.

The most common misperception in Croatia today is that the State Department is the official policymaker for the American government. It isn’t. The U.S. government is not a monolithic entity; it has numerous, competing centers of power, the State Department being only one of them. Former President Franjo Tudjman, his principled Defense Minister Gojko Susak and Gen. Gotovina understood this, which is why they circumvented the career bureaucrats at the State Department and made their pitch for Operation Storm to the Pentagon and the CIA. Their brilliant strategy worked, and Croatia secured its independence as a result.

It is now high time for the Croatian government and media to do something similar: to begin a concerted effort to expose the State Department’s backward, anti-democratic and disastrous policies to other American centers of power, such as Republicans and Democrats on Capitol Hill (who control and determine the State Department’s funding), the Pentagon, the National Security Council, the CIA and most importantly, the Bush administration. This public relations campaign should not only focus on Del Ponte’s assault upon Croatia’s democracy and freedom of the press, but also on the dangers of the Gotovina indictment, which aims to destroy Croatia’s foundations as an independent state and will establish the basis for a Greater Serbia.

Such a public relations campaign worked in 1995; and it can work again in 2005. But to do so Croatia’s elites must finally stand up and defend their democracy, their press freedoms, their Homeland War and ultimately, their country. If they do not, then they will eventually lose their country and control of its destiny, as has happened so often throughout Croatia’s long, tortured history, to foreign powers—whether it is the State Department, the British Foreign Office, The Hague or Brussels.

Croatia has been asleep for too long. It is time it arose from its slumber and seized its destiny as a free, proud and full member of the Western community of nations. This can only happen, however, if Croatians realize the immense value of their democratic freedoms and hard-earned national independence. They are gifts from God. They are not to be squandered or taken for granted. I only hope that Croatians are up to the challenge.

Jeffrey T. Kuhner is a regular contributor to the Commentary Pages at The Washington Times.