yugoslavias implosion

finance the war and to enrich those close to the regime, reflects the
fact that nationalism is not a doctrine of human rights, but rather
a doctrine which repudiates human rights, even of the members
of one’s own nation. This also means that encounters with other
nations are seen as zero-sum games, in which a gain for one side
is seen as necessarily coming at the expense of the other side. This
way of thinking about nationalism allows one to speak of degrees
of nationalism: in practice, the more radical nationalists are those
who are the most consistent in acting out the principles enumerated
above. Viewed in these terms, it is clear that nationalism is anti-individualist,
anti-liberal, and inclined to xenophobia. But there is
more: because there is a correlation between nationalism and violence
toward outsiders and because, at a certain level, such violence
affects the entire society, politically active nationalists may be said to
do injury to their own nation, as well as to other nations.
At this point in time, the alternative to nationalism should be
obvious. The example set by France and Germany after 1945, in setting
aside old resentments, quarrels, and distrust, and in building a
new relationship based on mutual respect, trust, and cooperation,
provides a model for other nations. Moreover, the European Union
itself may be understood as a community of states working for the
common good, and rejecting zero-sum thinking. The challenge for
Serbia today is to escape the vicious cycle of denial, self-righteousness,
self-pitying, and – in the case of more extreme nationalists
such as Bosnian Serb President Milorad Dodik – refusal to accept
documented evidence about past events. For Dodik and those Serbs
who prefer myth to documentation, it is easy to claim that 700,000
Serbs died at Jasenovac; the truth, however – as historical researcher
Nataša Mataušić has shown – is that just over 80,000 persons were
killed at Jasenovac and that, among these, just over 45,000 were Serbs.
The insistence on a much higher figure, especially when demographic
research has shown that the total number of Yugoslav dead
13
Foreword