Bosnian War
The most recent expression of a Greater Croatia arose in the aftermath of the breakup of Yugoslavia. When the multiethnic Yugoslavian republic of Bosnia and Herzegovina declared independence in 1992, Bosnian Serb political representatives, who had boycotted the referendum, established their own government of Republika Srpska, whereupon their forces attacked the Republic of Bosnia and Herzegovina.
The subsequent war was principally a territorial conflict, initially between the Army of the Republic of Bosnia and Herzegovina and Bosnian Croat forces on the one side, and Bosnian Serb forces on the other. However, the Croats also aimed at securing parts of Bosnia and Herzegovina as Croatian. With the 1991 Karađorđevo agreement between Croatian president Franjo Tuđman and Serbian president Slobodan Milošević, and with the Graz agreement of 1992, the Serb and Croat political leaderships agreed on a partition of Bosnia, resulting in the Croat forces turning on the Army of the Republic of Bosnia and Herzegovina, leading to the Croat-Bosniak war.
The policies of Croatia and Franjo Tuđman towards Bosnia and Herzegovina were never totally transparent and always included Tuđman's aim of expanding Croatia's borders. After Tuđman's death, his successor, Stjepan Mesić, revealed thousands of documents and audio tapes recorded by Tuđman about his plans in regards to Bosnia and Herzegovina. The tapes reveal that both Milosević and Tuđman ignored pledges to respect Bosnia's sovereignty, even after signing the Dayton accord. In one conversation Tuđman told an official: Let's make a deal with the Serbs. Neither history nor emotion in the Balkans will permit multinationalism. We have to give up on the illusion of the last eight years... Dayton isn't working. Nobody- except diplomats and petty officials - believes in a sovereign Bosnia and the Dayton accords.
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“A democracy which makes or even effectively prepares for modern, scientific war must necessarily cease to be democratic. No country can be really well prepared for modern war unless it is governed by a tyrant, at the head of a highly trained and perfectly obedient bureaucracy.”
—Aldous Huxley (1894–1963)