What shall we call it? Great moments in foreign agency?
One of the points of Talking Points is to give you a peek behind the curtain and let you see how Washington really works. Well, here’s a revealing, tragicomic, ugly example.
There’ve been a number of items in the news of late about the on-going efforts to bring various Balkan war criminals to account.
But let’s go back to 1992 and ’93.
Back then, one 
of the contested areas was the part of Croatia called the Krajina. This was essentially an ethnic Serb enclave within the borders of Croatia and as you might imagine this became a volatile crisis point in the fighting between Serbs and Croats. In any case, United Nations peace-keepers were sent into the region in the beginning of 1992 to maintain the peace. And did a reasonably good, though by no means perfect, job at it.
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For a while, the matter was thus placed in suspense, until 1995 when then-Croatian President Franjo Tudjman gave the UN Mission an ultimatum to leave. Eventually the Croatians rolled in and retook the region with some quite ugly consequences.
As we noted a couple months ago, Croatia got help laying the groundwork for this rampage from a DC PR and lobbying shop called Jefferson Waterman International. JWI agreed to help the Croatians deal with whatever bad press might ensue from reasserting their ethnic rights in the region.
So how exactly does a lobbying outfit make this sort of pitch to a foreign head of state? How do public relations and war crimes mix? Well, today we’re proud to show you.
Click here to see JWI’s proposal for yourself. Trust me, it’s worth a look.
