>>As I indicated in post to Bill, I think that just eradicating a gov considered unfriendly seems to create more antagonism over there. Perhaps segregating and supporting some which are closer in Weltanschauung is a better strategy. Seen from here the separation in former Yugoslavia was a success, but perhaps Dragan can give more and better data.
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>Yup, all success. The wars weren't as bad as it was claimed to be, just looked so under the media scrutiny. The end result is that instead of one moderately developed, independent and generally successful country, now there are six or seven mostly unviable ones, or at least nothing to envy them for, completely dependent on any bidders that come along, deeper in debt than ever, living under the IMF dictatorship. And the market is a free-for-all. Anyone's free to try and anyone here's free to try to take a share in the loot.
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>Someone here had a nice quote, "sit back and enjoy the crisis". The only mistake is that the word crisis is inappropriate, as it assumes a temporary state.

sounds somewhere between bitter and sarcastic. In hindsight, what course of action would you have preferred from UN / NATO ?

In my hindsight all ethnic groups were spread unevenly across former Yugoslavia (even the main "borders" defining those groups are unclear to me, I do know that there is at least a trend involving "typical" religion, population growth and economic standing, but further than that I draw mostly a blank, not even knowing how close the respective languages are) and were well underway to create a mess while trying to splinter into smaller, self-autonomous and ethnically seperated regions. "mistake" perceived(publicized?) over here was the serbian attempt to either boycott referenda or plan to annect parts they saw as "mostly serbian". Personal guess is a tit-for-tat strategy (if you want to separate, allow the serbs within your region to do the same to your new country if you succeded) would have been hard to argue against.

Otherwise for me it was "those idiots are still killing each other down there" (paraphrased from Herberts novel with the Jaspers fungus) and NATO troops doing less than people "down there" hoped did not kindle more action and they were not perceived as invaders all locals had to unite against. Which is a problem western troops have in Mesopotamia