German foreign policy on Croatia was driven by Catholic networks and Bavarian media

Evidence

The breakup of Yugoslavia began in 1991 when Slovenia and Croatia moved toward independence and pleaded with Western European powers for support. The response of the West was defined by Germany, and the response of Germany was in large part defined by the Catholic connection. The Bonn government came under pressure to act from the German Catholic hierarchy, its coalition partner the Christian Social Union party in Bavaria, and the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung and other media. The Bavarian media, in particular, played a crucial role in developing German public sentiment for recognition. “Bavarian TV,” Flora Lewis noted, “much weighed upon by the very conservative Bavarian government and the strong, assertive Bavarian Catholic church which had close connections with the church in Croatia, provided the television reports for all of Germany when the war [with the Serbs] began in earnest. The coverage was very one-sided.” The German government was hesitant about granting recognition, but given the pressures in German society it had little choice. “[S]upport for recognizing Croatia in Germany was opinion-pushed, not government-pulled.” Germany pressured the European Union to recognize the independence of Slovenia and Croatia, and then, having secured that, pushed forward on its own to recognize them before the Union did in December 1991. — Samuel P. Huntington, The Clash of Civilizations and the…, 777

Categorization

• CANDY: That Western recognition of Croatia was ‘opinion-pushed, not government-pulled’ through one-sided Bavarian TV coverage is a compact, quotable anecdote about how media drives foreign policy.
• XREF: Connects to ‘Complaints About Immodesty Go Way Back’ in that religious institutional pressure, like moral panics, piggybacks on one-sided media narratives to drive policy.