- At the top, walking into my new job/fellowship on the Joint Staff and being called The Irredentist! My application for the fellowship discussed the project that became For Kin or Country, so they were wise to my ways. And I was well placed in the Pentagon as this was, indeed, the office of irredentism with both Croatia and Serbia having recently engaged in "Greater" projects and with Kosovo kind of doing the same (with Macedonia's Albanians).
- The time a Hungarian general I was interviewing said: "After a few drinks, everyone is a nationalist."
- The time that Croatia engaged in an irredentist war in Bosnia undermining its claims of being a victim of Serb irredentism AND proved my point that vulnerability does not deter.
- That Somalia which exemplified the window of opportunity argument by attacking Ethiopia as it was in the middle of its own revolution/transition had previously attacked when the time was most unopportune--1963 when Ethiopia was much stronger... and when it was already engaged in irredentist efforts aimed at both British and French colonies nearby.
- The Crimean referendum. So sham-tastic, it really was so laughable.
- My favorite irredentist trick question: in the Israeli-Palestinian dispute, who are the irredentists?
- Tried to name the Bill and Steve JOP article: Reuniting: When Does it Feel So Good? after the song but got spiked by the editors who accepted the article but not a fun title. They probably would not have gone with "Four out of Five irredentists agree...". Of course, it would probably have had to be nineteen out of twenty irredentists agree for the 95% confidence interval reference.
International Relations, Ethnic Conflict, Civil-Military Relations, Academia, Politics in General, Selected Silliness
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Monday, July 28, 2014
Fave Irredentist Stories
A friend asked folks on twitter to share their favorite irredentist stories with me.... So far, no takers, so let me provide a few:
If you were well placed in the Pentagon then you'd know that the Pentagon was involved in flying in Iranian arms to the Bosnian Muslims, and you'd know that the Bosnian Muslim leader, Alija Izetbegovic, was a staunch Islamist and the long-run goals for BiH were to have it under Islamic domination. You'd also know that the Bosnian Muslims staged attacks and did mortar their own people - UN soldiers stationed there have written and testified at the ICTY about it. Of course it doesn't make it into the mainstream (media) narrative - but it was a strategy of the Bosnian Muslims who knew Serbs would get blamed for every sniper attack they (the Bosniaks) committed.
ReplyDeleteYou'd also know that they had torture and concentration camps and the U.S. was of course suppressing that info, and that when the Croat-Muslim war started they put each other in torture prisons/camps that they'd previously held Serbs in.
And you'd know that the U.S. had advisers and agents in there and I have no doubt they were involved in setting up some of those camps against Serbs and the torture methods. Have you ever read Croat Miro Bajramovic's freely given detailed confession on how Croats tortured Serbs? I suspect the CIA behind that...somewhere.