De-Politicisation and Transition Delayed

Abstract

On the morning of 6 October 2000, it was obvious to all involved that the military had played an important role in facilitating the overthrow of Milošević. The tanks did not roll onto the streets to shore up the crumbling regime, and the generals refused to obey some of the more destructive orders given by Milošević in his moments of despair.¹ That this happened through inaction rather than through a concerted effort by the top brass to intervene only served to underline the fact that the military was an independent actor that the new democratic authorities would have to learn to control in order to help consolidate democracy. In order to do that they would need to tackle a number of aspects of the civil-military relations dynamic inherited from Slobodan Milošević’s era.