Defence Reform in Croatia and Serbia--Montenegro by Timothy Edmunds

Author:Timothy Edmunds [Edmunds, Timothy]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: History, Military, General, Strategy, Political Science, Public Policy, Regional Planning, Political Freedom
ISBN: 9781136054808
Google: RcrcAAAAQBAJ
Publisher: Routledge
Published: 2013-09-13T15:57:40+00:00

Expertise and professionalisation

In contrast to the OSRH, the VSCG is an established armed force whose history and traditions stretch back through the VJ and the JNA to the Second World War and beyond. The JNA and even the VJ were perceived by many Western military observers to be the most professional of all the armed forces in the post-Communist region, in the sense of having the appropriate organisation, expertise and competence to fulfil its roles. The institutional professionalism of the JNA/VJ is one reason why Milosevic took so long to establish his full personal control over it.52 In this sense, the VSCG is not subject to the same kind of professionalisation imperatives that are so prominent in Croatia. For example, it has a well-established military education system, including a military academy that provides officer training as well as opportunities for postgraduate study and command and staff training.53 Moreover, unlike the OSRH, the VSCG's human resource management systems did not have to develop under crisis circumstances, and its officer corps has long experience of fulfilling command and staff-level roles. In this respect, the VSCG does not suffer from an ‘expertise deficit’ to anything like the same degree as its Croatian counterpart. Nevertheless, the VSCG faces important challenges. In particular, the professional traditions of the old JNA have been undermined in three ways since the disintegration of the SFRY. First, the JNA/VJ was a key participant in the Yugoslav conflict. While many of the worst atrocities of this period were carried out by militarised structures other than the JNA/VJ, the army cannot evade all responsibility for war crimes and a number of former VJ personnel have been indicted by the ICTY. The VSCG's continuing failure to fully acknowledge these legacies is a persistent obstacle to its development of those elements of professionalism that embrace ethics and responsibility.54 Second, the military performance of the JNA/VJ was poor during the conflicts in Slovenia and Croatia. While the impact of this was lessened – in the eyes of many Serbs at least – by the VJ's drawn-out resistance to NATO's 1999 bombing campaign, it did damage the army's reputation for professional competence. Finally, the politically-inspired purges of the JNA/VJ officer corps in the 1990s undermined the army's professional autonomy and politicised its appointments to command positions.

Addressing these issues will be a long-term process, and will require changes in the way that the VSCG is both organised and educated. These will have to reflect democratic and professional norms and values, rather than those of the Milosevic or SFRY periods. The dismissal of Pavkovic and the army's willingness to start thinking seriously about military reform may be the first steps in this process. Tadic's ten-point plan makes explicit reference to key elements of this professionalisation process, including the development of a new human resource management system for the VSCG, an increase in the proportion of all-volunteer soldiers and a far-reaching modernisation of the VSCG's military education system.55 If these initiatives are to be successful, they will require

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