105).With Kosovo now under the control of Serbia, the time had come to turn the attention of the JNA and the government towards Slovenia, which was, at this time, still teetering on the issue of independence. In typical fashion, Milosevic turned his propaganda machine on the Slovenes blaming them for everything from the price of clothing in Serbia to the price of tea in China. At approximately the same time, Milosevic attempted to cripple the economy of Slovenia by boycotting Slovenian goods and services in Serbia, Vojvodina, and Kosovo. What Milosevic managed to do was not to punish Slovenes for their insurrection but instead punish the Serbs who were dependent on Slovene goods and services. The economy of Serbia was in a downward spiral. Hopeful to raise a billion dollars in investments, Milosevic asked Serbs from all over the globe to contribute to his reconstruction and revitalization fund. Out of the billion dollars that he was expecting and counting on, Milosevic manage!D to get a whopping twenty-five million dollars... hardly enough to solve the economic woes that inflation, poor quality, and over employment were causing (Bennett, 108).Obviously, Milosevic was killing himself and Serbia with these sanctions and other economic activities. In his zeal for a nationalist movement, Milosevic managed to forget that one needs an economy for a nation to exist and he was systematically destroying his. In Kosovo alone, police operations costs amounted to about half of all of Yugoslavias military budget and Milosevics refusal to let anyone outside of Serbia to handle the situation further crippled any hope for a unified Yugoslavia. Serbias actions in Kosovo were one of the key factors in Slovenia, and shortly thereafter, Croatias decision to leave Yugoslavia. Had Serbia not treated the people of Kosovo as second-class citizens within a now, new Greater Serbia, the Slovenes and the Croats would not have feared them as much. As it ...
