CRISIS IN YUGOSLAVIA STUDY SHEET

WORLDWIDE FACTS

ü Before 1989 the world was bipolar, or made up of two major world powers.

ü These two major world powers were the United States and the USSR.

ü Today the world is no longer bipolar but unipolar, or made up of one major world power, the United States of America, which leads NATO.

NORTH ATLANTIC TREATY ORGANIZATION (NATO) and THE WARSAW PACT

ü North Atlantic Treaty signed in Washington in 1945 to counter the “Iron Curtain” created in Europe by the USSR.

ü Member countries include: Belgium, Canada, Czech Republic, Denmark, France, Germany, Greece, Hungary, Iceland, Italy, Luxembourg, the Netherlands, Norway, Poland, Portugal, Spain, Turkey, United Kingdom and United States.

ü In 1954 the Federal Republic of Germany was admitted into NATO, and this made the USSR uncomfortable.

ü The Warsaw Pact was signed in 1954 by the USSR and its satellites to counter NATO; this furthered the COLD WAR between the U.S. and the USSR.

ü The Warsaw Pact is made up of communist nations with the USSR as its leader.

ü In 1989 with great influence from NATO, the Berlin Wall fell in Germany.

ü The Czech Republic, Poland, and Hungary were once part of The Warsaw Pact, which was made up of communist nations, but when communism fell in these nations after 1989, they were admitted into NATO as its three newest members.

ü In 1991 just two years after the fall of the Berlin Wall, the Warsaw Pact dissolved.

ü The North Atlantic Treaty Organization is still going strong today, and is currently heading the situation in Yugoslavia.

YUGOSLAVIA FACTS

ü The President of Yugoslavia is Slobodan Milosevic.

ü Before the situation in Kosovo, Milosovec had attempted “ethnic cleansing” in areas of BOSNIA and CROATIA.

ü Ethnic cleansing refers to the elimination of a particular ethnic group in an area, much like the Nazi leader Adolph Hitler’s “ethnic cleansing” of the Jews in Germany during W.W.II.

ü Milosovic has never been convicted for his involvement in the ethnic cleansing.

ü He is currently resisting NATO attacks, and refuses to withdraw Yugoslav troops that are in Kosovo.

ü NATO is heading the attack on Yugoslavia, and refuses to stop the attacks until all Yugoslav forces are withdrawn from Kosovo.

http://www.policy.com/issuewk/1999/0420_69/Intro69.html

http://www.hartford-hwp.com/archives/60/index-a.html

http://www.saclantc.nato.int/nato/handbook/

http://cgi.pathfinder.com/time/reports/nato/frame.html

http://cgi.pathfinder.com/time/daily/0,2960,22558,00.html