ABSTRACT
The Bosnian Muslims needed the security of a multinational Yugoslavia. They could not resist being swallowed by Serbia or Croatia or both without federal protection or at least an internationally brokered agreement that the Croats and Serbs would not make claims to the lands of Bosnia and Herzegovina. The Muslims and Croats favored Bosnian sovereignty over Serb domination in a truncated Yugoslavia. The Bosnian Serbs did not relish minority status in an independent Bosnia and Herzegovina. Bosnian Muslims were reminded that their national affiliation was Muslim, their mother tongue Bosnian, and their religion Islam. Because of the international turmoil caused by the collapse of the Soviet Union, the West was caught flat-footed, unable to expend the necessary effort to protect the Bosnian Muslims. The first democratic elections in a Western sense held in Yugoslavia since World War II seemed to be part of the democratic upsurge experienced by Eastern Europe in the wake of the implosion of the Soviet Union.
