Instead of correcting his attitude, Banac continues to fiercely fight against everyone else. He has succeeded in picking a fight with almost all significant Croatian politicians and can be placed, without any exaggeration and using Banac's vocabulary, among the harlequins of Croatian politics together with Dobroslav Paraga and Ivan Zvonimir Cicak.
Yet, historian Ivo Banac had good prospects at a time and could have integrated into the Croatian society; if he was against official Croatian policy, he could have joined normal opposition. This way, his analyses aren't any more taken seriously by anyone in Croatia; in other words his "musings" have the same "value" as those, for example, of Cicak and Paraga. Maybe Banac has better reception abroad, but that is not that important for this story.
Dr. Banac was born on March 1 1947 in Dubrovnik; in 1957 he emigrated with his mother to the USA where they joined Banac's father, a ship captain, who had emigrated from Yugoslavia 11 years before. Banac was a good student, since as early as 1971 he finished graduate studies at Stanford University. Four years later he successfully defended a doctoral thesis entitled "National problem at the time of the formation of Yugoslavia". Since 1977 he has been teaching history at Yale University in New Haven. He has been a tenured professor since 1988, and from 1988 until 1995 he was the dean of the Pearson Colledge at Yale. He also teaches at (Soros') Central-European University in Budapest. He has written several well received books.
The list of institutions and associations in Croatia which today count Banac as their member is especially interesting. He is a corresponding member of the Croatian Academy of Sciences and Arts, member of the presidency of the Croatian Helsinki Committee for human rights, and he was a co-president of the Open Society Institute in Croatia. Banac has never been able to work in a team and in 1996 he suddenly resigned, although he never gave clear public justification for that move. Since he supports open society, one wonders why he didn't follow the same principles when they applied to himself.
Banac's troubles with Croatian public started almost immediately after the democratic elections in 1990. Roughly at the same time he became a fierce critic of the Croatian authorities. Of course, his criticism is not a problem, but his expectation that Croatia should pay attention to it and modify its policy accordingly is.
Even if his criticism were justified, it is shocking that Banac cares so little about democratic procedure. A clear example is the so-called "Letter of the six" in which, with his co-signatories, he demanded a resignation from president Tudman, only because they didn't support president Tudman's policies. After that, Banac became an even more fierce critic, and frequently his criticism is absolutely personal.
His mostly wrong assessments of the political situation in Croatia are especially surprising, especially since he is a Professor of the contemporary Croatian history. His assessment of the military operation "Storm" shocked the Croatian public; he practically condemned that liberation action accusing along the way the Catholic Church in Croatia. He even made up that "several hundreds, maybe even thousands of Serbs" were killed in that operation. He also tried to anticipate what would happen in the Croatian Danube region, predicting large scale military clashes.
A quote from Banac's interview in Vijenac from April 18 1996 is perhaps the best example of his analytical skills. At the time he said that Albanian society was developing faster than the Croatian society. Later rebellion and street terrorism in Albania demonstrated the value of Banac's "prophesies", and his "objectivity".
It is interesting that Banac believes that nothing good has been accomplished during the last seven years. Average Croatian citizen is irritated by his apocalyptic predictions which stifle all optimism.
The most bothersome in all this is that Banac hides behind the position of an "independent intellectual". If he is convinced that his politics is the right one for this country, why doesn't he finally stand in an election? Of course, he won't do that because he knows that the option he supports cannot win more than one percent of votes in Croatia.