The Former Yugoslavia: Debunking the Myths of the Dominant American Media

As a young immigrant born in, and during one of the last years of the existence of Yugoslavia, my experience as a Serbian-American growing up in California felt uniquely singular to me—despite living in a community that was otherwise full of diversity. The dichotomy between existing as a bilingual immigrant from a nation no other fellow student was from and looking like a white passing, average American teenager largely defined my identity as a young adult and how I navigated the course of my academic existence. It was also during my younger school years that the disintegration of the Former Yugoslavia happened, and the American sanctioned NATO bombings of my homeland took place—greatly impacting my personal identity, especially due to the biased angles of dominant American media and the propaganda it feeds to the American public.

According to mainstream American media, the dismantling of the Former Yugoslavia was centered around the violence its capital country, Serbia, was imposing on the remaining five republics—Bosnia and Herzegovina, Croatia, Macedonia, Montenegro and Slovenia—as well as the conflicts and power struggle with its neighbor Kosovo. An internal war was being waged, and Serbs were the only perpetrators of acts akin to ethnic cleansing or genocide, as the narrative went. In reality, the issues were far more complex than the tale of one villain perpetuating harm on all others. In Kosovo, long after the conflicts ended, the remains of nearly 3,000 civilians were uncovered, most of them being Serbian casualties of internal violence. The Croatian military was also committing crimes against and causing the deaths of thousands of Serbian civilians, and civil unrest against Serbs was extremely elevated before the fall of Yugoslavia in all of the Yugoslav nations. Yet the complex cultural issues responsible for much of the internal conflict happening in the former republic were largely ignored by the dominant American media in exchange for one, convenient to target villain—Serbia and Montenegro, and consequently just Serbia to follow. 

By 1999, the United States intervened in the conflict happening between the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia and the Kosovo Liberation Army. In what was justified as an oxymoronic “humanitarian war,” NATO launched a 78 day bombing campaign that killed hundreds of Serbian civilians, decimated many schools and hospitals, destroyed major public infrastructure and buildings, bridges, roads, and left Serbia’s major cities in a deadly wasteland of uranium rubble with the forgotten soul of a once vibrant land. The extremities of the violent actions against Serbia and Kosovo remain controversial to this day as they did not gain approval by the UN Security Council before being initiated, and were encouraged most especially by the American government—whose true interests in pursuing a bombing campaign were centered around attempts to westernize another seemingly undeveloped nation and removing the Russian influence to the area for total American control. Under the guise of attempting to “save ethnic Albanians from the cultural genocide imposed via the Serbian army in Kosovo,” the American government effectively led a bombing campaign that obliterated the Former Yugoslavia as it was once known, while also attempting to stronghold Kosovo under strategic American rule and demonstrate to Russia its international dominance by any means necessary. The American government was not moved to take action by the notion of saving Albanian lives, nor were Serbian people the only perpetrators in the conflicts happening at the time—despite American media’s attempts to make it seem otherwise. 

The complexity of the issues were never addressed in dominant American news outlets because the American government needed to garner domestic support for yet another international intervention that was in reality inhumane, unnecessary and ultimately devastating to an entire population of people and their land, even to this very day. The Serbian economy, infrastructure and its people never successfully recovered from the damages caused by the bombings. For subsequent generations Serbia would witness a significant decline in its population as many well educated, young professionals moved to other countries with greater economic opportunities—leaving Serbia with depleted resources in public health, public service, technology, and medical facilities which all affect Serbian citizens in various negative ways. The lack of economic strength combined with destroyed public infrastructure drove neighboring countries like Slovenia to bring in their businesses and rebuild parts of Serbia, because the capacity to do so by native institutions was nonexistent. The residual depleted uranium from the fifteen tons of bombs dropped onto Belgrade and other Serbian cities during the bombing campaign had lasting health consequences, like rare forms of cancer caused specifically by high levels of uranium found in the bodies of many terminally ill Serbian patients. After the bombing ended, Serbia started reporting the highest number of new cancer patients in all of Europe, despite having a significantly smaller population than many other European nations. The soul of the Serbian people was wounded so greatly from the inhumane acts of violence and the thousands of deaths of civilians that the once vibrant country still struggles to reclaim its agency from the damage imposed by international warfare. 

The propaganda spread by American media against the Serbian people impacted how others viewed me as I grew up, and thus molded my identity. During my years of school after the bombings I was dismissed by my peers, judged by my teachers and questioned by strangers whenever I would reveal my Serbian immigrant identity. The first look any individual would give me after I would say those words was alone very telling to all of the ignorant, confused and uncertain judgments playing in their minds about my background, and after some time I began regretting sharing that part of my identity with others in an effort to maintain my sanity. For a long period I would simply lie and say I had a Greek background and the attitudes toward that response were noticeably different, so with enough time I began to embody a falsified notion of my personal identity more than my actual truth. My personal distancing from my cultural roots also strained my relationship with my extended family for a regrettably long time, and I lost valuable years of connecting with my relatives due in large part to my internal struggle. It took more than a decade for me to reclaim my cultural agency and unapologetically be a Serbian-American with pride rather than the shame I was made to feel whenever spoken to by misguided Americans. While I always understood the true reality of my former homeland and the complexities of the issues that led to its disintegration, it would still prove impossible for me to not embody some level of discomfort after years of being met with misinformation and misguided judgments from people I interacted with, especially from such a young age. The sobering sadness was immense on my travels to Belgrade months and years later after the bombing as I would return to the utter destruction of the buildings, bridges and monuments I fondly remembered as well as feel the emotional and physical effects that the violence left on my loved ones who still lived there. I found myself wedged between yet another personal dichotomy—the unwanted shame of being from what was considered a “problematic” area through the lens of most Americans, and the profound sadness I felt seeing the vibrance of my culture and people so darkly dimmed by senseless, destructive violence. 

The 1999 bombing intervention and involvement of the American government in Yugoslav affairs coupled with the manipulation of its perceived agenda to fit a more palatable, heroic narrative for consumption by the American public is just one in a list of similar international offenses, and has made a long lasting impact on the Serbian economy, its people, and the culture. The animosity perpetuated towards Serbian Americans heightened especially during this time and guided the general American public towards a negative yet ignorant view of us as a people. The hostile attitude towards Serbian Yugoslavs was so omnipresent, a new word was even derived from it—balkanization, a term which refers to the division of a region into smaller but mutually hostile states or groups, and it became used in a more universal variety of settings to describe various economic collapses, cultural conflicts and political unrest. This type of sentiment further encouraged discriminatory attitudes, blatant antagonism, and frequent targeting of an entire ethnic group, most of whom naturally played no role in harming their fellow Yugoslavs. The dominant American media led unquestioning Americans to believe they had reason to direct hatred towards Serbs, who were perceived to be villainous characters in a story where American heroism liberated an entire republic from the terror and tyranny of the Serbian people, and this had lasting disastrous consequences that Americans would never have to actually witness from abroad.

The falsified narrative against the people of Serbia perpetuated by the United States via dominant American media and with support from Western Europe was a long and intentional work in progress that started well before the bombing campaign of 1999. For almost a decade before that, the propaganda machines started working hard to indoctrinate their populations in support of an aggressive war against Serbian Yugoslavs under the guise of Albanian liberation in Kosovo. In reality, American imperialism had every interest in seizing the nation to impose westernization and having done so successfully turned what was once a sovereign, independent and socialist Yugoslavia into six weakened semi-colonies designed by the west, plus a United States military outpost that was a province once known as Kosovo. The destruction of the Former Yugoslavia via United States’ led NATO intervention is a cautionary example of the dangers of American imperialism and reveals a pattern that continues to this day. Since 1999, the United States has co-opted the North Atlantic Treaty Organization into a type of imperialist police force that services transnational monopolies to exploit global labor and resources—and has repeated its actions in other areas of the world, such as Venezuela. The lessons learned by the fall of Yugoslavia are important to remember because they serve as valuable review on how NATO powers carry out their process of war preparation, and to highlight similarities in other instances as they happen again.

The United States has repeatedly involved itself in international affairs since the days of Yugoslavia and consequently decimated other nations, their people and economies, and altogether demonstrates the truly damaging lasting effects of the spread of misinformation. The United States needs domestic support in matters of international involvement, and mainstream media is extremely effective in exacerbating American xenophobia by portraying foreigners as evil, unruly, undeveloped and uncivil people, and that westernization will always be the answer to their liberation. In reality American intervention has proven time and again to overwhelmingly do more damage than it does good, and can be plainly seen by those willing to look past the imposed dominant narratives and political agendas. As American forces continue to wage a propaganda war against other nations, the world—and the American public, most especially—should always remember the lessons learned from the assault on Yugoslavia by using it as a guide towards dissent from further American imperialist efforts, and to prepare for the struggles this will bring. Allow the circumstances surrounding Yugoslavia’s disintegration to illuminate the importance of looking beyond dominant media sources, employ critical thinking skills, and ask valuable questions that uncover the truth behind what is—and what is not—being told to us by dominant media outlets.

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