Declassified: How US Intelligence Predicted Yugoslavia’s Bloody Demise

Now, from a historical distance of three decades, it is possible to analyse these documents. A particularly interesting question is how the various intelligence predictions about the situation in Bosnia measured up to what actually happened.

The first document in this series is a US National Intelligence Estimate from 1990. It was prescient about Yugoslavia's bleak outlook, predicting that "within a year the federal system will no longer exist; within two years Yugoslavia will probably have dissolved as a state". It further predicted that neither the Yugoslav People's Army, JNA nor the Communist Party would sustain Yugoslavia.

Though then Yugoslav Prime Minister Ante Markovic attempted economic reforms, the National Intelligence Estimate predicted that these reforms would not succeed in keeping Yugoslavia intact. It presciently foresaw what would unfold: "The Serbs, however, will attempt to foment uprisings by Serb minorities elsewhere - particularly in Croatia and Bosnia-Hercegovina - and large-scale ethnic violence is likely." The document further predicted that "Serbian repression in Kosovo will result in an armed uprising by the majority Albanian population".

As for the US response, the National Intelligence Estimate stated that there was little the US could do to keep Yugoslavia together and that the Europeans, too, would go along with the country's dissolution.

In March 1991, an Intelligence Assessment concluded that "Yugoslavia's political fabric is badly frayed and may unravel in 1991". The document further predicted that the JNA would fall apart along ethnic lines and would turn into an essentially Serbian military force.

At the end of 1991, a CIA Directorate of Intelligence Memorandum titled "Bosnia-Hercegovina: On the...