A leader, NAM, some concerns and optimism

Josip Broz Tito was one of the founding leaders of the Non-Aligned Movement (NAM). He was undeniably a significant world leader loved by many around the globe, and was also harshly criticised by many people—especially by the non-Serbs in former Yugoslavia for not doing enough to deter the Serbian hegemonic aspirations, despite anticipating the outcome far ahead.

Tito was born and raised in the idyllic Zagorje region of Croatia. His mother was Slovenian and his father Croatian. He started out as a locksmith. He first became a member of the Social Democratic Party of Croatia and Slavonia—not to be confused with Slovenia—at a young age, and later joined the League of Communists of Yugoslavia, gradually rising to leadership.

Tito was a popular leader. He mobilised people with socialist aspirations in the territories of Yugoslavia during World War II against the Nazis, fascists and other groups. After winning the war, he led the Yugoslav communist revolution.

In the early years of his leadership, Tito intended close relations, but felt pressure by the Soviet Union under Joseph Stalin. In order to counter Soviet influence, he began to receive outside help, including military assistance from the Western countries. In 1953, he made a tripartite Balkan Pact with NATO members Greece and Turkey, with the aim to act as a deterrence against the Soviet expansion. Although Tito was known to have reservations about the Western influence and pluralist systems as threats to his own ideal communist state, the pact was obviously intended to protect Yugoslavia from the USSR.

The death of Stalin in 1953 would not diminish the looming Soviet threat against the Socialist Federal Republic of Yugoslavia. Sharing the concerns of other countries caught between the two powerful blocs, Tito, together with the leaders of India, Egypt, Ghana and Indonesia, co-founded the Non-Aligned Movement (NAM).

Both the Five Principles of Peaceful Coexistence of the Sino-Indian Agreement in 1954 and the Bandung Principles inspired the foundation of NAM.

After the end of the Cold War in the early 1990s, many things changed in the international arena. Although many countries were progressively reformed, some took the opposite direction. The economic reliance of many NAM members, especially on the West, was the new trend in the international order after the Cold War.

With the winds of change in the former Eastern Bloc countries, popular demands for transition to a multiparty and more liberal system began to rise in Tito's Yugoslavia as well. Unlike the USSR and other former Eastern Bloc nations, the transition was excruciating in Yugoslavia. The Republic of Serbia, as an "internal hegemonist" of the federation, disrespected legitimate demands of other constitutive units for peaceful breakup of ex-Yugoslavia and undermined peaceful transition. Serbia saw the transition as an opportunity to expand its borders.

Slobodan Miloševic's Serbia shattered the spirit of coexistence from the Tito era and tried to replace it with Serbian domination and nationalism. A seemingly socialist regime would make the Serbian Orthodox Church the mouthpiece of Miloševic's hate speech and propaganda, while the Yugoslav Army a guardian of Serbian nationalism through the ethnic Serbian generals. Miloševic, who later turned out to be a war criminal, created paramilitary groups by driving thousands of crime machines like Željko Ražnjatovic Arkan into battlefields. As the dominant power among the republics of former Yugoslavia, Serbia had constantly violated the basic principles of NAM through its actions. Serbia, during that time, attacked the territorial integrity and sovereignty of the other constitutive units, resorted to violence, interfered in their internal affairs, and breached the principle of equality and peaceful coexistence of all people and nations in the former Socialist Federal Republic of Yugoslavia. Serbia's aggression also sparked wars and humanitarian crises in Croatia, Bosnia and Herzegovina, and Kosovo. Slovenia, Northern Macedonia, and Montenegro were also affected, but they survived more easily than the others. The culture of conflict that prevailed did a lot of damage to the Serbs as well.

More than 20 years have passed since the wars of ex-Yugoslavia.

While the Western Balkan countries are prioritising the integration process to the European Union and everyone is expecting a more prosperous future, Serbia is, unfortunately, signalling new fears again, through aggressive rhetoric and by using Serbian elements in Bosnia and Herzegovina, Kosovo, and Montenegro. Taking the actions that can lead to repeating old habits can be the biggest mistake in the Western Balkans.

The current president of Serbia, Aleksandar Vucic, was an MP from the ultra-nationalist Serbian Radical Party in the National Assembly of Serbia during the Bosnian War. During the Kosovo War, he served as the minister of information. President Vucic, who has never expressed regret for his aggressive rhetoric and damages caused in the past, is now paraded as a "moderate leader" of the Serbs, which is yet to be seen. During the high-level commemorative meeting on the occasion of NAM's 60th anniversary, Vucic pretended to be keeping Tito's ideals alive. Instead, the event turned out to be a propaganda ground by the Serbian leadership, targeting Kosovo exclusively. Serbia, still reluctant to give up its hegemonic dreams, parades itself as the sole inheritor of the former Yugoslavia, when the legacy of Yugoslavia belongs to all its constitutive units, as much as Serbia.

Ideals of living under one federation were destroyed mostly by those responsible for the murder of more than 150,000 innocent people in former Yugoslavia. Marshall Tito, a leader who earned the hearts and minds of people from many NAM countries, passed away in 1980. His spirit of unity was gradually destroyed in the past 40 years, mostly by the hegemonic ambitions of Serbia. This conjuncture led to the emergence and increase of influence of other nationalist movements as well.

The people of the Western Balkans are virtuous. They will eventually find a way to have good neighbourly relations in a pluralistic and democratic environment. The only solution can be reached by genuinely adopting the values of the modern European Union by all Balkan countries. The European Union, despite some issues, will remain a miracle of the 20th century and a model system for the world. Without repeating mistakes of the past, the leaders of the region—especially of Serbia—could relieve their people of the feelings of hostility, and make them look to a peaceful future. We can only achieve it together as independent states by championing mutual respect and democratic principles.

Güner Ureya is the ambassador of the Republic of Kosovo to Bangladesh.