I'm usually appalled by American foreign policy. It's a continuing saga of exploitation and fear-based wars that culminated in an illegal invasion of Iraq that has cost that country at least a few hundred thousand lives.

Libya, too, was a train wreck. I could go on.

But when you write an article about Yugoslavia without mentioning Tito's Stalinist tactics, his mastery of authoritarianism, and his secret police, you're not doing history justice.

Tito held the many nations of Yugoslavia together through the use of state-sponsored terrorism and incarceration of people who disagreed with him.

Once that authority was removed, it was inevitable that the Yugoslavian state would dissolve.

There are lots of places to point out the foibles of American and European foreign policy. But attaching blame to them in this case for the natural progression that followed Tito's death seems a little weird to me.