ABSTRACT
The war in Kosovo has had different kinds of impact on the population of Yugoslavia and on most Serbs. Obviously the NATO bombing inflicted much suffering among the civilian population. In addition, it placed the Yugoslav regime for the first time in visible conflict with and opposition to the international community. Prior to the NATO bombing, the confrontation between the regime and Western countries had never before taken such direct and explicit form. The bombing of Serb positions in Bosnia in 1995 occurred at a moment when Milošević had already broken most links with the Serb leadership in the Republika Srpska. The sanctions between 1992 and 1995, and since 1999although having a detrimental effect on the population of Serbia-never positioned Western countries in the same confrontation as the war in early 1999. The war in Kosovo, or rather the wars, the bombing of Yugoslavia by NATO on one side and the campaign of mass expulsions and murder in Kosovo by the Yugoslav army and paramilitary groups on the other, had contradictory effects on Serbia itself and on nationalism, which has been a dominant phenomenon in Serbian politics of the past decade.
