It is hard to give a brief explanation, to be fair. Also my explanation (or that of Mali_Zeus or bosnian_red) would be completely different to explanation of Mihajlovic.
Short story: Milosevic went mad and had a lot of support from practically all Serbian leadership. He wanted the big Serbia and so either started war, or made the situation on that way that the other states will want to seperate. There were four wars on the region. The Slovenian lasted short and didn't had many victims. The Croatia-Serbia was was a bloodshell, but was very balanced (consdering that Croatia was more developed than Serbia and had a quite big population). Serbia-Bosna on the other hand wasn't balanced and was the biggest massacre on Europe since World War 2. The Bosna wouldn't have existed if NATO wouldn't have (although very late) intervened and stopped Serbia from making a new Holocaust in Europe. Still, a hundred thousands or so Bosniaks paid the price of war with thier life. The war with the province of Kosovo (which was occupied by Serbia after Turks left the Balkan - again I'll expect Mihajloic to disagree) at the beginning wasn't ever a war considering that Albanians despite being 90% on the region didn't had much power. Considering that we weren't slavic population (the only non Slavic population in Yugoslavia), Albanians were discriminated and were the second tier of population on Yugoslavia. Anyway, in 1997 there started a Guerrila War which had some victims (mainly on Albanians civil). Miosevic completely lost it, his partner Seselj was even worse, and Serbia started massacres on civils which ultimatelly resulted on NATo bombing them. 15000 Albanians and 4000 or so Serbians paid the price.
Between the wars, Macedonia was seperated from Yugoslavia too. And in 2005, Montenegro did the same, leaving Serbia the only member.
Long story is quite a bit more complicated than a LOTR version of strong evil state vs nice powerless states and it is hard to explain it here. Anyway, Yugoslavia was a very artificial state, based very much on communism and its leader Tito. With his death and with the changes on system, there wasn't much to keep the states and populations together. It might have also been pushed by the success of republics in Soviet Union who achieved indipendence from Russia. The last factor, is that Milosevic indeed went mad (if he was ever sane) and manipulated an entire country to do as he wished. Whatever people say, Serbia was the biggest loser of the wars, and by the end of them it was transformed from the center of a quite powerful and influential state, to a very irrelevant one (add to that, the number of victims on their side and their infrastructure completely destroyed from NATO).
After all those wars, the economy on all the states was very bad. Slovenia and Croatia (especially the fomer) left the past behind them and stred becoming mondern states. The end result is that both of them are members of both EU and NATO, and have nice economies. The others weren't as smart and are still living partially on the past. A lot of leaders are from the time of war (for example, the president of Serbia was the No.2 in Radical Party of Seselj, the prime minister was a very important memeber of that party, while the minister of foreign affairs was the secretary of Milosevic party; in Kosovo, the ex-prime minister - who is now minister of foreign affairs but is de facto prime minister - was the politic leader of KLA). Most of them are heavily corrupted and don't have a vision how to develop their states, but are more interested on becoming very rich people. And feed the people with 'their glorious past'. There have been some steps in the right decision between Kosovo and Serbia on the last couple of years (and some other on wrong direction between Serbia and Bosna at the same time), but there isn't much to say that things will become better.
Well that’s a terribly inaccurate post.
For starters, Milosevic did not want a Greater Serbia. That was the ideology of the SRS (Seselj) who were in constant conflict with the socialist Milosevic. Milosevic, true to his socialist cause, wanted to keep a Tito-style Yugoslavia exactly as it was. In fact, the Serbian radicals hated the communist Slobo for being such a fecking communist who was trying to keep a Yugoslavia together INSTEAD of going for a Greater Serbia. Here's one thing though, maybe you can try to understand this once and for all- yes, we Serbs from Bosnia and I know from many Serbs from Croatia- we did in fact want to live in one country, and that country was called Yugoslavia. Did you get that?
You’re painting a picture of four independent states, three of which were attacked or invaded by a foreign army. The truth is that according to the very badly drafted 1974 constitution, a secession of individual republics would have to be agreed with ‘all people’. The Serbs who lived in the Yugoslav Socialist Republic of Croatia did not want to live in any other country than Yugoslavia. The Yugoslav National Army was supposed to protect any internal attempts to disintegrate the Federation. It was crucially important that the issue of minorities of any newly formed states is being discussed and agreed upon before such states can be given a full independence.
The argument was, that if the HDZ unilaterally declares independence from Yugoslavia, then the Serbs from Krajina would declare independence from Croatia. Half a million Serbs living in the Yugoslav Socialist Republic of Croatia weren’t going to accept an overnight loss of their homeland (Socialist Federative Republic of Yugoslavia) and wake up in a nationalist HDZ nightmare (check the infamous murder of the Serbian family Zec, in Zagreb).
This is just briefly to point out that this “Milosevic went mad” crap is nothing but ridiculous. And for the record, before I proceed, no I am not a Milosevic fan boy and it think he should have been tried for a few things internally in Serbia.
Bosnia: quite the same thing. The Serbs, who lived in Bosnia since god knows when, did not all of a sudden want to lose their homeland (Socialist Federative Republic of Yugoslavia) and live in a country ruled by an egotistic maniac and former criminal, the muslim Izetbegovic. You tell me, only yesterday I lived in a country called Yugoslavia, why on earth should I tomorrow want to live in a Muslim dominated country called Bosnia where my people would overnight become a minority? The Serbs thought well feck this, if Yugoslavia is falling apart, then Bosnia and Hercegovina might fall apart also- so we created Republika Srpska- basically splitting the Socialist Republic of Bosnia in half, half for us, and half for the Muslims. That was in January 1992. The war hasn't even started. In February 1992 all parties agreed to the Lisbon Plan, which you never mention in your joke of a post. In February 1992 everything could have been resolved. According to Cutiliero, Izetbegovic suddenly pulled out and demanded the whole Bosnia. Well that was never going to happen. Subsequently we got treated quite nicely by our Muslim neighbors in Sijekovac and Brod in March 1992, you might want to look it up. And this is how the war started.
You might want to check your figures as they are not up to date. 100k casualties in BiH include tens of thousands Serbian and Croatian casualties.
Btw, I see you’re not mentioning the internal war between the Muslim parties (Izetbegovic vs. Abdic), and you’re not mentioning the war between Croats and Muslims. Ah well, just blame it all on the mad Milosevic.
Don’t want to go into too much detail on Kosovo, just to point out a few facts. You need to read the official reports from the OSZE from that time who prior to the bombing of Serbia reported that there are no issues apart from the Serbian police fighting against an armed terrorist group UCK. That’s the same UCK that got labeled terrorist group by the US State Department. As for Kosovo’s economy, that was pretty much fecked and it affected equally every single person who lived in Kosovo, whether Serb or Albanian. Again, check your causality figures prior to March 1999 as, unsurprisingly, they are ridiculously inflated.
The rest of your post contains some truth, re. Yugoslavia being an artificial country, yes, should have never been formed in the first place. The rest of the stuff is pretty much non-sense, pinning down everything on Milosevic who had no influence on what happened in Bosnia as he and Karadzic were in constant conflict, who had no influence over Babic in Krajina (half a million Serbs in Croatia can speak for themselves), and you’re also not mentioning the Ustasa loving Tudjman and that mujahedeen loving Izetbegovic.
What you have today is a total mess with losers on all sides. I think only Slovenia is OK, but considering their size and geography, I wouldn’t expect anything less. Croatia is a semi-fascist state with a bad economy, comparable to Serbia’s bad economy. So that’s how bad it is. Kosovo is a failed state completely. Macedonia is a NATO protectorate. Bosnia is a joke of a country and is forcibly kept together- for god knows what reason the same idiots who supported the disintegration of Yugoslavia are supporting the existence of a mini-Yugoslavia. Luckily we have our own entity and the Muslims have their own. Peace and quiet guaranteed.
- if only we would have kissed Clinton's and Albrights old ass, and just played along nicely.