Wednesday, November 14, 2018

The Balkan White House: Slovenia (Melania) vs. Croatia (Mira) ...


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Friendship pins Slovenia-Croatia

From the New York Times: "Melania Trump Says an Aide [Ms. Mira Ricardel] ‘No Longer Deserves the Honor of Serving in This White House’" [see also.]
A fixture in Republican foreign policy circles, Ms. [Mira Radielovic] Ricardel has honed a reputation as a hawk on policy and as a hard-edge bureaucratic infighter. During the early 1990s, she advised Senator Bob Dole on the Balkans, drawing on her own Croatian background, and later worked for Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld in President George W. Bush’s administration.
From Wikipedia:
"Born Mira P. Radielovic, she is of Croatian descent. Her father came from Breza, Bosnia and Herzegovina and left Yugoslavia in 1954 and arriving in the United States in 1956. Mira grew up in Pasadena, California, and at home spoke the Croatian language. Her family followed the Croatian Catholic Church and worshipped in Arcadia, California."
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From the New York Times: "In First Lady’s Hometown in Slovenia, the Business Is Melania"
SEVNICA, Slovenia — Melania cake. Melania cream. Melania wine. Melania tea. Melania slippers. Melania salami. Melania chocolate-coated apple slices.

There are few products that the enterprising burghers of Sevnica, a small, rural Slovenian town where Melania Trump spent her formative years, have not sought to brand in honor of the first lady of the United States.
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Full disclosure: I served as a U.S. diplomat in the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia, 1995-98. Re one of my many memorable adventures there, see my "Richard Holbrooke’s Public Diplomacy: The Case of the US Cultural Center in Belgrade," Huffington Post (2011). BTW, my favorite graffito in Belgrade at that time: "Separatists of the world, unite!"


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1 comment:

  1. Zagreb of oldNovember 16, 2018 at 9:03 AM

    I agree with your analogy of the Balkan Wars, as a Croatian expat.

    But you omit that Bob Dole was of Albanian background. Mira was his presidential run advisor. Relevant? Maybe? Bosnian Croats are known to be the most virulently nationalistic.

    However entertaing the Balkan War frame is, more constructive would be to ask what would Nancy Reagan or Michelle Obama have done if someone from the State Dep’t was bullying them as FLOTUS?

    Hillary Clinton fired long term personnel from the travel office...etc. etc.

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