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But then the Croats attacked, and new differences arose. No sooner had bombs begun falling on Knin than the French government formally condemned Zagreb's entry into the war, a sentiment that was swiftly echoed by the British. The U.S. and Germany, however, merely paid lip service to condemning the attack and privately applauded the Croats for doing what the West has been unwilling to do for so long: punish the Serbs. German Foreign Minister Klaus Kinkel released a statement expressing "regret" about the offensive but concluded by saying, "We can't forget that the years of Serb aggression ... have sorely tried Croatia's patience." Similarly, the Clinton Administration, which signaled its ambivalence by issuing a ritual call for "restraint," pointedly noted that the Croatian offensive "was provoked initially by a Krajina Serb attack on the Muslim enclave of Bihac." The Russians, who have close ties with the Serbs, expressed particular anger at the German and U.S. responses. The Russian Foreign Ministry declared that "unnamed" Western governments "showed solidarity with the military action of the Croat side."
Kinkel and Clinton both may have had a point when they implied that the Croatian Serbs courted their own fate. The Krajina region is, after all, recognized as part of Croatia, and a government has the right to assert its authority over its own territory. But in the Balkans, nothing is ever this simple. In 1991 Tudjman helped touch off the ethnic explosion that has swept across the entire peninsula by recklessly pushing his country into independence from Yugoslavia. Goaded by the example of Slovenia, the breakaway province to his north, Tudjman rushed to free Croatia without bothering even to acknowledge the concerns of, much less offer guarantees to, Serbs whose fears of Croatian brutality trace back to World War II, when Zagreb's pro-Nazi Ustasha government massacred hundreds of thousands of them.
In the climate of uncertainty and terror that seized the disintegrating Yugoslav confederation during 1991, a credible effort to assuage the worries of Croatia's Serbian communities would have made an immense difference. But Tudjman managed to achieve the opposite effect, by tolerating and at times even encouraging his government's enthusiasm for reviving the fascist and anti-Serb slogans that had once been the signature of the dreaded Ustashas. Even worse, when Croatian Serb communities in Krajina and elsewhere rebelled, Tudjman's police began pushing Serb civilians from their jobs and communities. This early form of "ethnic cleansing" eventually took on a more chilling tone as Serbs displaced, detained or murdered entire villages. While the Bosnian Serbs subsequently, and rightly, stand accused of the worst abuses of "ethnic cleansing," the Croats' role in inspiring such atrocities should not be forgotten.
Croatia's ill-trained and poorly disciplined troops might have held their own during the rebellion, but Tudjman grievously underestimated the willingness of the powerful Yugoslav National Army, controlled by Serbian President Slobodan Milosevic, to intervene on the side of the Croatian Serbs. By January 1992 the fighting subsided into an uneasy truce, and the Croats had lost roughly one-third of their territory.