This is a war of aggression.

From the beginning, this was a war of secession, with the breakaway republics originally staging armed rebellion against dissenting parts of their population and the Yugoslav federal government. Wise or not, the latter's decision to try and defend the state's integrity was fundamentally legitimate, both with respect to its constitution and international law, as this is the way all governments - our own one during the Civil War included - deal with this type of issue. More generally, it is a civil war over land of a disintegrated state. Throughout it, Serb forces have mostly controlled areas where their ethnicity has had a significant or almost exclusive presence for hundreds of years, and thus had a legitimate claim on.

"All factions in the former Yugoslavia have pursued the same objective - avoiding minority status in Yugoslavia or any successor state - and used the tools most readily available to achieve that end. America has supported all such claims except one - that of the Bosnian Serbs. As one Serb officer confided to a member of my staff, he did not understand why his people had been 'satanized' for insisting on the same right of self-determination that had been accorded for all others."

"[...] In short, the Serbs are not trying to conquer new territory, but merely to hold on to what was already theirs."

Civil war as a resolution of growing internal tensions.

"Aggression in the context of a civil war is a contradiction in terms. The conclusion that aggression has occurred in the former Yugoslavia is based entirely on the decision of the United States, the members of the European Union (EU), and the United Nations to recognize the independence of Croatia and Bosnia over Belgrade's vehement objections. By declaring the Yugoslav state defunct and disregarding Serbia's desires to keep the federation intact, the United States and its European allies arbitrarily redefined a civil war-which had been under way since June 1991-as one of external aggression.[...]

When Croatia and Bosnia declared independence, those Serb communities, fearing that they would be the targets of discrimination or even outright persecution, launched secessionist bids of their own. Howard University professor Nikolaos A. Stavrou contends that ill-considered action on the part of the United States and its European allies exacerbated an already dangerous situation. 'With amazing haste, administrative and geographic borders had been converted to international ones without much concern for the ethnic makeup of these new entities,' he writes. 'No serious consideration was given to the implications of recognizing new states prior to legally securing autonomy for ethnic groups within these states.'"

"The conflict is not, as it has been so often depicted, a conventional case of aggression by one state (Serbia) against another (Bosnia). "

"The true cause of the war was the structure of reciprocal fears that existed within Bosnia on the eve of the conflict. Each group feared domination by others, and not unreasonably so. [...] The Serbs reasoned in essentially the same way. As part of Yugoslavia, their interests would be secure; as a minority in a unitary Bosnian state dominated by the Muslims, they foresaw a repetition, at best, of the discrimination they had suffered in Kosovo when its status was elevated in the 1974 Yugoslav constitution--and, at worst, of the horrors they had suffered during World War II when Bosnia formed part of the Nazi supported Croatian Ustasha state."

"Indeed, one needs hardly to invoke the notorious tribal hatreds and violent propensities of the Balkan peoples to account for the war, for secession has nearly always in history been attended with armed violence. It was so on the two occasions when it was attempted in our own experience as a nation (in 1776 and 1860). Daniel Webster's famous assertion in 1850 - 'Peaceful secession, Sir! Your eyes and mine are destined never to see that miracle' - stated a fact applicable not only to the American Union but to the normal experience of all states, which hardly allowed any other conclusion but that secession was and would ever be an act of war."

"Another persistent element of the propaganda onslaught involves legitimate ownership of land. The BSA could never have "overrun, seized, or captured" 70 percent of the country as Bosniac government verbal gimmicks state. While they controlled 70 percent of the territory during much of this conflict, the BSA certainly did not possess the military manpower to overrun, seize, or capture it. The media and PR firms employ these inflammatory words only to obfuscate the pre-war situation. Due to their agrarian way of life, the Serbs formed a plurality in 64 percent of the territory at the beginning of the war while the more urbane Muslim business-oriented people resided in the cities."

"The modern-day question, though, concerns legitimacy. Does Bosnia as a sovereign state have a right to control its territory? Undeniably. Nonetheless, it must meet the minimum de facto criteria for sovereignty, and it apparently has failed to do so. Most importantly, it remains incapable of defending its own territory against Bosnian Serbs who choose to exercise their legitimate right of secession in the same manner as Bosnia seceded from Yugoslavia. Simply stated, the situation amounts to a civil war within a civil war."

"Some Muslim apologists have attempted to advance the preposterous argument that this conflict should not be considered an internal affair since Bosnia has become a member of the UN. Rather, they wish to view it as a Serbian proper war of aggression. While President Milosevic of Serbia certainly aggravated the conflict with his nationalistic bombast, evidence for Serbian involvement has been fabricated or exaggerated. In terms of this UN membership logic, Americans might ask where our country would be today if the UN had been around in 1776 or 1861. Much to the UN's credit, it realizes that it cannot impose a solution to the Bosnian civil war - but this situation remains unacceptable to the Muslims who do not yet understand the concept that "freedom is not free" and demand protection from others while promulgating their status as innocent victims and practicing their own territorial aggression."