ROUND TABLE

Good morning. I must start by expressing considerable gratitude for being invited. I love coming to this country. Although Croats do not think so, it is a new, splendid place. I would like to start off by saying that I absolutely agree with Robin Harris and Noel Malcolm about British policy. I do not know why we got it so wrong. But from the very start of this crisis, the influence of the British has been very bad. The origins of all this is what I really want to talk about. I would also like to try and give some sort of explanation as to what went wrong. I absolutely agree with Noel Malcolm when he said that the business of clearing people out of population transfers is really horrible. And when one sees the Economist arguing for this, I think one’s duty is to protest. When I was in Turkey a few months ago, I went to an Orthodox area which was cleared of the Greek population. It is horrible to see this. It is a place which needs its local population. This local population, half a million of them, were sent off to Athens to where they all became communists. It was shocking to see that, and I think that President Tudjman was right when he told the Serbs of the Krajina region not to go.

How does one account for British policy in this country? Dating back to the nineteenth century, there was a tradition of Protestant approval in Serbia. Looking at Serbia, it is a country that is neither Turk nor Austrian, and so there was a long tradition of people supporting the Serbs. If one is to look at literature from the 19th century, one would see that it is very pro-Serb.

Then there are people like A.P. Taylor who is a very remarkable historian. An intelligent man, he looked at the whole history of this part of the world and said that the only way to make sense of it is Yugoslavia. Next, there is the business of World War II when people like Fitzroy McClean would write splendid books of literature on the Yugoslav idea. That is the background to the way the British handled it - they got it very wrong.

When it all started in May, June of 1991, the Evening Standard asked me to write an article about the independence of Slovenia. There were two ,things I knew - I had studied the history of the Austrian-Hungarian army and I knew something about Slovenia. There were not too many people familiar with this history. The second thing that really qualified me for writing was that I understood the relationship between nationalism and communism. I had read a book which ought to be remembered in this later part of the 20th century which said that communism was a dreadful business, and the only alternative to it was nationalism. When you find Slovenes, Croats, and Ukrainians claiming to be as such and wanting to get out of communism, they have to take up a nationalist line. I always said that they needed to be supported. I was absolutely right about that and I cannot really see why the British foreign office would not take up that point. Sometime in 1987, I was out having dinner with Douglas Hurd when he asked, “What do you think we should be looking for?”, and I replied by saying that Lithuania would declare independence within a year. He said that they did not want to know about that sort of thing. That was the same sort of attitude they took regarding Croatia - they did not want to know about it.

However, they all said to keep Yugoslavia together. Of course that did not work, and eventually one thing led to another, and the whole situation in Bosnia blew up. Fitzroy McClean was taken over to the British cabinet. He was asked simply to speak to the government on what the position was. Half of them did not want to intervene at all. McClean said that if Croatia was to be recognized, Bosnia would blow up. Bosnia has no future except as part of a Greater Croatia or Greater Serbia. That was the background to it in 1991. Subsequently, the army had taken over and it was simply defending its career. The army really does not have much of a function and so it decided to carry on with the peacekeeping mission. I think that the British have now finally seen that they were absolutely wrong about this, and that we more or less won the argument. I also believe that Croatia is going to become like Spain. The word going around the city and in the banks is that Croatia is going to boom, and from the very bottom of my heart, I strongly wish this to be so. Thank you.

Ante Beljo: Thank you Dr. Norman Stone. Among us is another respected historian. I ask that Count Tolstoy please say a few words.

Nikolai Tolstoy