YUGOSLAVIA: AN APPROACHING CRISIS?

• Document Type: CREST
• Collection: General CIA Records
• Document Number (FOIA) /ESDN (CREST): CIA-RDP84B00049R001604110011-2
• Release Decision: RIPPUB
• Original Classification: S
• Document Page Count: 3
• Document Creation Date: December 20, 2016
• Document Release Date: June 27, 2007
• Sequence Number: 11
• Publication Date: December 3, 1982
• Content Type: MEMO

SECRETI
Approved For Release 2007/06/27: CIA-RDP84B00049R001604110011`1-2
1J
National Intelligence Council
3 December 1982
MEMORANDUM FOR: National Foreign Intelligence Board Principals
SUBJECT : Yugoslavia: An Approaching Crisis?
1. Yugoslavia is entering a difficult passage. Added to its
endemic problems--national and ethnic tensions and rivalries, an
inefficient economic system, etc.--are now the additional economic
pressures stemming from circumstances beyond Belgrade's control and
a lack of dynamic or savvy political leadership. Because the situation
in Yugoslavia is potentially volatile and because of that country's
importance to the US, the Director of Central Intelligence has directed
the production of a Special National Intelligence Estimate, tentatively
titled "Yugoslavia: An Approaching Crisis?" Our intended completion
date is January 1983.
2. In accordance with our standard procedures, please designate
your agency's representatives as soon as possible. The NIE chairman
is Stanley Moskowitz, National Intelligence Officer for USSR-EE, and
the principal drafter will be EUR-EE. A draft Terms
of Reference is attached. We plan to discuss it at a meeting in
Room 7E62, CIA Headquarters, at 1000 hours, Friday, 10 December.
Please have your representatives call their names and pass appropriate
clearances to by COB 8 DecemberC,;,,
Attachment:
Terms of Reference
This memorandum is
classified SECRET
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Chairm
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Yugoslavia: The Strains
Begin To Tell
Key Judgments The Yugoslav political system may prove incapable of coping with the
information available country's international financial difficulties, domestic economic problems,
as of 12 November 1982 and growing ethnic tensions.
was used in this report.
We believe that the country's collective leadership of both party and
government is a key factor. Tito created and bequeathed this system to give
all Yugoslavia's ethnic groups a say in national decision making so that
none would be tempted to break away. The mechanics of the structure-in-
eluding rotational leaderships with brief tenures, unclear divisions of
responsibility, and reliance on consensus-make the system indecisive.
Instead of becoming the central nervous system of the larger political-
economic organism, the federal party leadership in Belgrade has lost
initiative to regional and other federal power centers. Nowhere was the
leadership's ineptitude more in evidence than at the party's Twelfth
Congress in June-the first without Tito. The party emerged from its
congress deeply divided both within its leadership and also between the
leadership and the rank and file, not only over immediate policy issues, but
also over the need for basic reform.
We believe that the Yugoslav system is likely to receive additional shocks
in the months ahead-including perhaps a need to reschedule its debts-
and that disagreements within the party will increase. The longer term risk
is that the federal party will slip into an irreversible process of decay and
become increasingly unable hold the Yugoslav state together.
Should these trends continue, it is conceivable that Yugoslav reformers
could gain the backing to move their party toward more democratic
practices and their country toward a more genuinely market-oriented
economy. But, given Yugoslavia's economic problems and history of
destructive competition among its constituent ethnonational groups, we
believe it more likely that the nation will revert to a condition of endemic
instability, perhaps held together only by the armed forces.
The stakes for the West in the Yugoslav drama are high. The Soviets
would be tempted to take advantage of an unstable situation; a Soviet
success could have potentially profound consequences for the Balkans and
perhaps the balance of power in Europe.
This information is Confidential.
Secret
EUR 82-10130
December 1982
Approved For Release 2007/06/27: CIA-RDP84B00049R001604110011-2