Tucker Carlson is Dangerously Wrong About the Balkans
- Valton Vuciterna
- Jul 21
- 12 min read
Updated: Jul 28
Tucker Carlson has established himself at the forefront of a campaign to revise recent history. In a clip that has recently gone viral, part of an hour-and-a-half-long discussion with British media personality Piers Morgan, Carlson misleadingly framed the Yugoslav Wars of the 1990s while parroting Russian and Slobodan Milošević-era talking points.
This matters far beyond casual debates on recent history. Such irresponsible revision also throws into question the legitimacy and independence of Kosova, a uniquely committed US ally in the Balkans.
This rhetoric is particularly enabled when it is presented to interlocutors who do not possess the historical depth needed to thoughtfully respond – symbolized by Morgan’s silence in the face of historical illiteracy. As a consequence, the burden of taking the time to access the information needed to form full, informed opinions often falls on viewers and readers. It is, of course, difficult to determine exactly how and when we have done our due diligence to be informed. As a general rule of thumb, however, we can confidently state that a YouTube Shorts soundbite from a public figure with no expertise on the matter at hand does not suffice.
Carlson’s assertion came in response to Morgan's claim that NATO is a defensive organization, running as such: "Where were you when they ... were bombing Christians in Yugoslavia? That was pretty offensive ... Who in Yugoslavia attacked NATO?"
This framing implies that the intervention against the then-fragmented Socialist Republic was unwarranted and unforeseen. Carlson's emphasis on the Christian identity of the Serbs also attempts to appeal towards the West’s distant religious ties to Serbia. These postulations are both dangerous and easily dispelled.
Much of the decision to intervene in Kosova began with the aftermath of the Bosnian War and the signing of the Dayton Agreement. According to the Research and Documentation Center in Sarajevo, 81.8% of the civilian population killed during the Bosnian War were ethnic Bosniaks, an intentional culling by the Milošević-led Yugoslav government. One of the massacres which will live in particular infamy took place in July of 1995, when 8,331 Bosniaks, the vast majority men and boys, were eliminated by Serbian units under the command of Ratko Mladić in Srebrenica.
This genocidal event marked a turning point on the international stage. We must note that the UN declared the town a “safe zone” for its Bosniak Muslim residents and deployed an international peacekeeping force. Despite this, Belgrade-backed Republika Srpska forces overran it and proved able to commit the aforementioned acts. This failure tarnished the reputation of the powers involved and significantly contributed to their commitment to prevent their recurrence on their watch. It is this – beyond offensive – act on the part of the Milošević regime which placed NATO on high alert by the beginning of the Kosova War in late February 1998.
We can think of the conflict in Kosova in terms of Ernest Hemingway’s famous phrase: “Slowly, then all at once.” The events were a culmination of five decades of Yugoslav injustice imposed on Albanians in Kosova at the hands of predominantly Serb leaders. While the territory was placed under the control of the soon-to-be Kingdom of Yugoslavia in 1912, the post-World War II communist regime ushered in a new era.
Many view the 1980 death of Socialist Yugoslavia’s consequential first president Josip Broz Tito as the defining turning point towards the erosion of the multiethnic state’s fragile equilibrium. It is important to note, however, that this balance often did not apply to the ethnic Albanian population in Kosova. This was best demonstrated by the particularly severe maltreatment of the territory by ethnic Serb Aleksandar Ranković, chief of the Yugoslav military intelligence agency UDBA and later Vice President of the Socialist Federation.
Albanians made up the vast majority of Kosova’s population throughout the period, yet, along with Hungarian-majority Vojvodina in the North of Serbia, were never granted the status of a Republic enjoyed by Slovenia, Croatia, Montenegro, Macedonia, Serbia and Bosnia. Short of this, Tito’s 1974 constitution granted it the status of an autonomous province within the Socialist Republic of Serbia, which carried with it meaningful autonomy over education, local policing and even a provincial assembly system.
This, of course, was far from a magic bullet, as poor living conditions relative to the other regions of Yugoslavia, along with the prevailing wish to secure Republic status, led to what would be dubbed the Albanian Spring of 1981. Though in fact a student-led series of protests calling for equal recognition, it presented the opportunity for the Yugoslav government to frame it as a militarized uprising of a “counter-revolutionary” and “nationalist” character. This facilitated a severe crackdown resulting in over 1,000 protesters arrested and several killed.
Crucially, it is the environment of systematic surveillance, imprisonment and purging of Albanian intellectuals and leaders which developed in the aftermath of the protests that laid the groundwork for the rise of Milošević. Previously a high-ranking official of the Serbian League of Communists, Milošević secured the Republic’s presidency in 1989, in large part by framing himself as a savior of Kosova’s Serbs. Having secured power, he would famously embark on a rhetorical spree, returning to the fore common essentialist arguments about the role of Kosova in the Serbian identity and present.
Crucially, Milošević went on to formally revoke Kosova’s autonomy in 1989. This was followed up by tanks and MIGs sent to surround the provincial assembly in the capital of Prishtina, forcing the ethnic Albanian assemblymen to surrender the path toward establishing a seventh republic.
This blatant act of intimidation marked the onset of a determined drive to disenfranchise Kosova’s Albanian majority. The campaign included the removal en masse of ethnic Albanians from public, educational and health institutions, amounting to an estimated 100,000 state workers. Albanian-language curricula were also banned while universities and schools that taught in the tongue were shuttered or placed under Serb control.
The Path to Armed Resistance
The Kosova Liberation Army (KLA) emerged in the early 1990s as an armed ethnic Albanian resistance movement and a response to the limited success of the pacifist resistance led by Ibrahim Rugova’s leadership of Kosova. Though initially small and underfunded, the KLA gained strength through the middle of the decade as ever more civilians affected by the increasing brutality of Serb forces joined its ranks. Contrary to portrayals by Serb propaganda and some Western media, the KLA did not emerge as an offensive separatist force – and certainly not as an Islamist group, a ridiculous claim for anyone even superficially familiar with the recent history of the region. It rather represented an organized reaction to the systematic oppression of the Albanian population and the absence of any peaceful means of self-determination.
While the Kosova War is indeed complex and multifaceted, it boils down to two main goals on opposite sides: one a population seeking political rights and the assurance of safety, and the other a state apparatus seeking to erase the other ethnic group’s presence and memory. The latter was best exemplified by the many massacres committed by Serb forces in Kosova throughout the armed conflict. These did not occur out of the blue. Rather, they reached back to a longstanding tradition driven by some Serbian political and military thinkers.
Perhaps most telling is the work of Vaso Čubrilović, a Yugoslav scholar who was involved in the conspiracy to assassinate Archduke Franz Ferdinand in 1914. In his 1937 work “The Expulsion of the Albanians,” Čubrilović lays out his vision for the obliteration of the Albanian community in the region, which he would present in Belgrade. He writes in detail about the alleged fanatical nationalistic tendencies of Albanians and gives ample examples on how to best eliminate their presence, noting: “At a time when Germany can expel tens of thousands of Jews and Russia can shift millions of people from one part of the continent to another, the evacuation of a few hundred thousand Albanians will not set off a world war.” While it did not gain full-scale official use, there is no doubt that the Yugoslav state took inspiration from Čubrilović’s ideas, ultimately using the armed conflict with the KLA as a unique opportunity for mass expulsions and killings.
The Legal Basis of the West’s Response
On March 24, 1999, NATO would begin a three-month bombing campaign on Yugoslavia. Carlson argues that this was unprovoked and offensive in nature. In reality, there are three crucial legal justifications for the bombings. The Charter of the United Nations, signed in 1945, is the binding international treaty observed by all official members. As a signatory and member-state, Yugoslavia was unquestionably obligated to follow the Charter’s framework. Yet the state would plainly violate its obligations under international law.
According to Article 1(3) of the UN charter, member-states must “achieve international co-operation in solving international problems of an economic, social, cultural, or humanitarian character, and in promoting and encouraging respect for human rights and for fundamental freedoms for all without distinction as to race, sex, language, or religion.” The systematic campaign to remove Albanians from education, public administration and cultural life, coupled with the later mass killings and the expulsion of over 850,000 Kosovar Albanians from their homes amounts to a blatant violation of this article. These acts were not incidental to war but rather part of a systematic program to ethnically homogenize the region.
Article 56 further compels UN members to “pledge themselves to take joint and separate action in cooperation with the Organization for the achievement of the purposes set forth [by the Charter].” Yet Yugoslavia refused any international or humanitarian oversight, continuing the mass cleansings in Kosova. The international community attempted for over a year to reach a peaceable diplomatic solution, most notably through the March 1999 Rambouillet Accords, which the KLA overcame internal resistance to sign, while the Yugoslav party flatly refused to comply. Yugoslavia’s defiance of the UN’s requirement for humanitarian coordination rendered their actions direct violations of the Charter.
Perhaps most damning of all is Article 73, which details several requirements that Yugoslavia’s actions directly contravene. The article goes on:
“Members of the United Nations which have or assume responsibilities for the administration of territories whose peoples have not yet attained a full measure of self-government recognize the principle that the interests of the inhabitants of these territories are paramount, and accept as a sacred trust the obligation to promote to the utmost, within the system of international peace and security established by the present Charter, the well-being of the inhabitants of these territories, and, to this end:
To ensure, with due respect for the culture of the peoples concerned, their political, economic, social, and educational advancement, their just treatment, and their protection against abuses;
To develop self-government, to take due account of the political aspirations of the peoples, and to assist them in the progressive development of their free political institutions, according to the particular circumstances of each territory …
To further international peace and security;
To promote constructive measures of development … cooperate with one another and, when and where appropriate, with specialized international bodies ...
To transmit regularly to the Secretary-General for information purposes ... statistical and other information of a technical nature relating to economic, social, and educational conditions in the territories for which they are respectively responsible …”
Yugoslavia’s state and military institutions infringed upon each of these obligations, all laid upon decades of maltreatment of the Albanian population. By removing Albanians from state positions, prohibiting their language in schools, firing their teachers and targeting their representatives, the Yugoslavs violated the first, third and fifth points. By corroding Kosova’s autonomy, coercing their assembly to back down by means of force, imprisoning those who spoke out against Yugoslav rule and refusing to cooperate with international bodies such as the UN and NATO, they contravened the second and fourth points.
In order to get a full picture of the severity of Yugoslavia’s actions and the necessity of NATO’s response, it is vital to consider the massacres brought upon the Albanians in Kosova. One such atrocity was the Meja Massacre, in which 377 civilians, 36 of whom were under the age of 18, fell victim to the Yugoslav security forces and Serbian police on the 27th and 28th of April 1999. While this was a clear attempt at ethnic cleansing, the victims were both Muslim and Catholic Albanians, demonstrating that the crisis in Kosova was not determined by religious dimensions but rather an attempt to remove an ethnic group from the territory.
The graveyard of the victims from the Meja Massacre, Catholic and Muslim Albanians alike.
Investigations following the war found the bodies of 287 Albanians from Meja and its surrounding areas in Serbia proper, namely in the mass graves of Bajtanica near the capital of Belgrade. These bodies, under the organization of the Yugoslav Ministry of the Interior, were transported by truck to Bajtanica, and thrown into hastily dug pits. A total of 345 individuals from Meja would eventually be discovered and returned for burial in Kosova, with thirty-two remaining missing. The graves at Bajtanica carried a total of 744 Albanian men, women, and children.
These massacres were not rogue incidents. They were a part of Operation Horseshoe, a military effort coordinated by Yugoslav intelligence with the aim of ethnically cleansing Kosova, taking inspiration from the foundation laid by Čubrilović. This operation was accelerated by Serb forces after the NATO bombing campaign, as Yugoslavia sought to finish what she started and obscure its evidence from international eyes.
It would also be remiss not to mention the effect of the war on Albanian women in Kosova. Abhorrently enough, an estimated 20,000 ethnic Albanian women faced rape carried out by Serb soldiers. It was a brutal strategy and tool of war utilized by Milošević’s military to its fullest extent in an attempt to harm both the morale and dignity of the Albanian population.
Later revisionists and sympathizers often point to the lack of explicit Security Council authorization for NATO’s bombing campaign as proof of illegality. However, this view ignores key information. On March 26, 1999, Russia introduced a draft resolution in the UN Security Council to condemn NATO’s air campaign and demand an immediate end to the operation. The motion failed, with twelve members in opposition and only Russia, China, and Namibia voting in favor. As Russia soon came to find out, the majority of the international community understood the need for action.
Moreover, NATO’s intervention was deemed consistent with the evolving norm of the “Responsibility to Protect” (R2P), later formally endorsed by the UN in 2005. R2P affirms that when a state fails to protect its population from genocide, ethnic cleansing or crimes against humanity, countries around the globe have the responsibility to intervene – including militarily.
Neither can the rank hypocrisy of Russian outrage about the intervention be brushed over. In both the invasion of Georgia in 2008 and that of Ukraine in 2014 and 2022, Russia unilaterally carried out attacks on sovereign states’ territories without Security Council approval, which demonstrated clear offensive intent. The Kosova intervention, by contrast, followed months of negotiation, OSCE documentation and exhausted efforts to find a peaceful settlement.
Carlson’s Misguided Religious Distinction
We proceed with Carlson’s religious framing and subtle appeal to a shared heritage. The use of the Orthodox faith to promulgate the disenfranchisement of ethnic Albanians carries a long, deeply troubling history in the region. The Orthodox Church’s entanglement with aggressive chauvinism is an example of ethnophyletism, defined as the conflation between church and nation, which was declared a heresy by the Ecumenical Patriarchate of Constantinople in 1872. By promoting the intertwinement of the Church in the war by blessing ultranationalist Chetnik soldiers, spreading revisionist myths about “defending Christian lands” from “Muslim invaders”, and most recently stockpiling weaponry in churches in the north of Kosova, the Serbian Orthodox Church has repeatedly made itself accomplice to violence, thereby violating the Holy Synod.
As noted above, Carlson also fails to understand the nuances of religion in the Balkans. In contrast to most of their neighbors, Albanians do not subscribe overwhelmingly to one faith and their national identity is based on an acceptance of religious pluralism, as expressed by numerous founding thinkers of the modern state. As such, to frame the conflict as one between Christians and Muslims as such is patently false.
Concluding Thoughts
NATO’s intervention in Kosova was not only legally and morally justified – it was necessary. The campaign prevented the complete removal of a people from their land. The bombing campaign was neither an assault on a Christian power – on the face of it an odd framing considering this was a socialist federation – nor an offensive move. It was rather a last-resort defense against a state machinery that had already committed genocide in Bosnia and was preparing to repeat similar crimes in Kosova, where it arguably perceived itself as having even steeper historical incentives to do so.
In order to fully grasp the intense and complex history of the conflict, and avoid the unprepared response exemplified by Morgan, it is vital for onlookers and even members of the ethnic groups involved, to engage with the established historical record, not myths.
The atrocities committed in Kosova were not abstract or accidental. They were rather the result of a deliberate state policy of repression, forceful exile and violence. Downplaying this reality only undermines the principles of justice, truth and international law. Nor, importantly, does it advance the worthy goal of durable peace in the region. These can only be accomplished through careful, good-faith remembrance and reflection, not revision.
Comments