Milosevic: Portrait of a Tyrant - Hardcover

Branson, Louise

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0684843080 ISBN 13: 9780684843087

Publisher: Free Press, 1999

Synopsis

Who is Slobodan Milosevic?

Is he the next Saddam Hussein, the leader of a renegade nation who will continue to torment the United States for years to come? Or is he the next Moammar Qaddafi, an international outcast silenced for good by a resolute American bombing campaign?

The war in Kosovo in the spring of 1999 introduced many Americans to the man the newspapers have called "the butcher of the Balkans," but few understand the crucial role he has played and continues to play in the most troubled part of Europe. Directly or indirectly, Milosevic has waged war and instigated brutal ethnic cleansing in Croatia, Bosnia, and Kosovo, and he was indicted for war crimes in May 1999. Milosevic's rise to power, from lowly Serbian apparatchik to president of Yugoslavia, is a tale of intrigue, cynical manipulation, and deceit whose full dimensions have never been presented to the American public.

In this first full-length biography of the Yugoslav leader, veteran foreign correspondents Dusko Doder and Louise Branson paint a disturbing portrait of a cunning politician who has not shied from fomenting wars and double-crossing enemies and allies alike in his ruthless pursuit of power. Whereas most dictators encourage a cult of personality around themselves, Milosevic has been content to operate in the shadows, shunning publicity and allowing others to grab the limelight -- and then to take the heat when things go badly. Milosevic's secretive style, the authors show, emerged in response to a family history of depression (both of his parents committed suicide) and has served him well as he begins his second decade in power.

Doder and Branson introduce us to the key figures behind Milosevic's rise: his wife, Mirjana Markovic, who is often described (with justification) as a Serbian Lady Macbeth, and the Balkan and American politicians who learned, too late, about the costs of underestimating Milosevic. They also reveal how the United States refused to take the necessary action in 1992 to remove Milosevic from power without bloodshed -- not realizing that he uses such moments of weakness as opportunities to lull his opponents into traps, thereby paving the way for a new consolidation of power. Now, in the wake of the victory in Kosovo, it remains to be seen whether America will learn this lesson or whether we will allow this deeply troubled man to continue to pose a threat to European peace and security as the twenty-first century dawns.

Who is Slobodan Milosevic?

Is he the next Saddam Hussein, the leader of a renegade nation who will continue to torment the United States for years to come? Or is he the next Moammar Qaddafi, an international outcast silenced for good by a resolute American bombing campaign?

The war in Kosovo in the spring of 1999 introduced many Americans to the man the newspapers have called "the butcher of the Balkans," but few understand the crucial role he has played and continues to play in the most troubled part of Europe. Directly or indirectly, Milosevic has waged war and instigated brutal ethnic cleansing in Croatia, Bosnia, and Kosovo, and he was indicted for war crimes in May 1999. Milosevic's rise to power, from lowly Serbian apparatchik to president of Yugoslavia, is a tale of intrigue, cynical manipulation, and deceit whose full dimensions have never been presented to the American public.

In this first full-length biography of the Yugoslav leader, veteran foreign correspondents Dusko Doder and Louise Branson paint a disturbing portrait of a cunning politician who has not shied from fomenting wars and double-crossing enemies and allies alike in his ruthless pursuit of power. Whereas most dictators encourage a cult of personality around themselves, Milosevic has been content to operate in the shadows, shunning publicity and allowing others to grab the limelight -- and then to take the heat when things go badly. Milosevic's secretive style, the authors show, emerged in response to a family history of depression (both of his parents committed suicide) and has served him well as he begins his second decade in power.

Doder and Branson introduce us to the key figures behind Milosevic's rise: his wife, Mirjana Markovic, who is often described (with justification) as a Serbian Lady Macbeth, and the Balkan and American politicians who learned, too late, about the costs of underestimating Milosevic. They also reveal how the United States refused to take the necessary action in 1992 to remove Milosevic from power without bloodshed -- not realizing that he uses such moments of weakness as opportunities to lull his opponents into traps, thereby paving the way for a new consolidation of power. Now, in the wake of the victory in Kosovo, it remains to be seen whether America will learn this lesson or whether we will allow this deeply troubled man to continue to pose a threat to European peace and security as the twenty-first century dawns.

About this title

About the Author:

Dusko Doder, a native of Yugoslavia, has been a foreign correspondent for The Washington Post and other publications for more than thirty years, covering Eastern Europe, the Soviet Union, and China.

Louise Branson is the Washington correspondent for The Scotsman (Edinburgh) and was the Balkan bureau chief for The Sunday Times of London from 1990 to 1996, following assignments in Moscow and Beijing.

Doder and Branson are the authors of the New York Times bestseller Gorbachev: Heretic in the Kremlin, and Doder is also the author of The Yugoslavs and Shadows and Whispers: Power Politics Inside the Kremlin from Brezhnev to Gorbachev. They live in Vienna, Virginia.

From Kirkus Reviews:

Two experienced international reporters examine the life and political career of the Yugoslav president. Doder (foreign correspondent for the Washington Post) and Branson (correspondent for The Scotsman), who most recently teamed to write Gorbachev: The Last Tsar (1990), begin this highly critical biography in March 1999 as US envoy Richard Holbrooke tries in vain to convince Slobodan Milosevic to sign a Kosovo treaty with NATO. They turn then to charting the career of Milosevic (whose first name derives from a Serbo-Croatian word for ``freedom'') from his ``humble and inauspicious'' birth in 1941 to Serbian parents to his tragic miscalculation of NATO's resolve during the bombing campaign of 1999. A talented student (first in his high school class and near the top of his law school class at Belgrade University), Milosevic rose slowly to power by attaching himself to the more ambitious and charismatic Ivan Stambolic and then ousting him, principally by stirringand shakingthe ``potent cocktail of Serb nationalism. From the subtitle on, the authors can barely restrain their contempt for their hero. They condemn his ``consummate capacity for lying, intrigue, and secrecy'' and dub him ``the Saddam Hussein of Europe'' and ``the high priest of chaos. Drawing on their many years of experience in Yugoslavia, Doder and Branson guide readers skillfully through the murky labyrinth of Balkan history, pausing to explain the sources of the ethnic hatreds that erupted when the years of Communist domination came to an end, and summarizing with brilliant clarity such recent diplomatic events as the Dayton peace accords and the subsequent talks in Rambouillet, France (a ``debacle,'' they conclude). No one in the region, we learn, wears a white hat. Doder and Branson remind us, for example, that Albanians fought with Germany during WW IIand massacred Serbs in the process. A clear, well-crafted guide to a volatile region; a devastating analysis of the depravity of a despot. (1 map, not seen) -- Copyright ©1999, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved.

About this edition

• Publisher: Free Press
• Publication date: 1999
• ISBN 10: 0684843080
• ISBN 13: 9780684843087
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 320