Economy of SFRY was already in trouble before USSR started to fall, if you check the early 80s Party Congress reports about trade and financial situation they well show how the whole things was going pretty bad: loans weren't imposed by anyone (in fact Yugo also rescheduled its debt several...
The problem is that the Regime, once sanctions were imposed, started roaring against UK & France and claiming -among the others- Corsica, Tunisia and Djibouti from Paris & Malta, Suez and Somaliland from London; we can have a hell of a diplomatic corps but there's no way that Allies left us...
Quite a stretch as remark, given that one of the most socially progressive Constitutions at the time, with all the democratic guarantees about freedoms you may need in the late 40s-early 50s, was meanwhile been enforced; obviously there were still remnants of the old fashioned paternal...
While enforcement of the sanctions was not strict as one may think, importing coal and other resources from Germany was fundamental to Italy.
Italian territorial claims and political aspirations were clashing with UK and France; unless the King and Mussolini choose to direct their focus on...
The main issue is that both sides are going to find huge problems in mounting a successful offensive. Germany, unless they manage somehow to gain access from the Kingdom of Yugoslavia, lacks a suitable terrain for its blitzkrieg war and the medium highness/extension of the Italian Alps combined...
Brits and French were in Egypt already in 1859 given the Suez Canal works, themselves implying the build up of infrastructures; Italy wasn't even an unitary state in 1859 and it wasn't until after WWI that we could reasonably claim to effectively control Libya. I don't know about you but I see...
It seems a little bit unfair to call it "pathetic", given that until the late Gheddafik's petrodollars those roads and installations were very appreciated by both locals and colonists.
I may concede that they weren't top-tier and that they often didn't offered alternatives on key routes, but...
The claims, when not completely invented out of the blue, were mainly based on rigged intelligence from KGB insisting that NATO countries and Austria were prepared to dismember SFRY just after the death of Tito. :rolleyes:
The main problem in a plan like invading SAP Kosovo is that Albanian forces were, leaving apart their appalling technological backwardness and small size compared to the JNA, doctrinally prepared to fight defensive wars; it wouldn't be a mismatch like Eire trying to seize Northern Ireland from...
Relationships with USSR in Gorbačëv era were quite good, moreover people had already started to lost confidence in claims made by the Party about external enemies attempting to the Federation; the only ones believing into this were parts of the ruling elites, some out of looking for a scapegoat...
People in Goli Otok would have disagree with this; Amnesty International also ran an IIRC annual publication focused on the political prisoners in SFRY in the 80s and what was inside those pages wasn't exactly a showcase of progressivism in management of political dissent. :rolleyes:
There's always a great emphasis on the role of Tito as unifying factor for the SFRY, and it's obliviously hard to downplaying his role; anyway the problems that leaded the country to its own downward spiral were highly connected with its economic mismanagement (basically during the 70s...
Malta wasn't a fortress of any kind in the summer of 1940, the island's best defense was its geography (rocky coastline, hills) not fitting very well with airborne or seaborne invasion; that in itself doesn't mean "impossible to be conquered" but just "hard" or if you prefer "highly costing" for...