Abstract
Things in the politics of small states are not always what they appear to be. Local agendas may succeed or fail dismally according to their compatibility, or lack of it, with great power priorities. The dissolution of Yugoslavia and the breakaway of its constituent parts are certainly events generated by local actors, but the decision to grant or deny them the status of a state can also be explained by the priorities of extra-regional powers. The dynamic intervention of Russia in the controversy over Kosovo's independence streamlines Russian interests in its ‘close neighbours’ with the support of international legality. The US sees little intrinsic value in the Balkans and places them in the periphery of the energy-producing Eurasia and the Middle East. Unlike the other two, the EU is a supranational actor with an interest in the stabilisation and development of its own southeastern neighborhood.
The term ‘Balkans’, a dominant definition of the South-Eastern part of Europe since the mid-nineteenth century, was first used by the German geographer Johann August Zeune in 1808. In late antiquity, the western part of the region was called ‘Illyricum’ and the eastern, ‘Thrace’. The Ottomans used ‘Rumelia’ to define their European realm and thus considered its Christian population the progeny of the Romans, who, in their Byzantine incarnation, had ruled it for close to a thousand years. Since the collapse of communism, Western media and academics have adopted ‘South-Eastern Europe’ to avoid the tainted reputation of the ‘Balkans’, and, more importantly perhaps, to restore the region to its rightful European context.
To place the Balkans in terms of political and cultural geography it is necessary first to define Europe itself. According to the Oxford classicist Sir Ernest Barker, Europe is made up of at least two parts: ‘the southern which was that of the Greeks and their successors the Romans and the northern which has established itself since the beginning of what we call modern history, some 500 years ago’ [1, pp. 295-307]. It is precisely this first, civilised part of our continent, in decline for 500 years, that is now joining a version of Europe that never existed in the past. Traian Stoianovich, a wise historian of the Balkans, calls this region ‘The First and Last Europe’ and advises the European Union to admit it into its natural cultural habitat [10, p. 3].
When did the other players in the region appear? The Russians made an impressive entry on 21 July 1774 at Kutchuk Kainardji, a Bulgarian village where the treaty that brought imperial Russia to the Black Sea was signed with the vanquished Ottomans. This was the beginning of the steady Russian incursion into the soft underbelly of Europe that lasted until the fall of communism. It was because of the 1989 eclipse of the Russian presence in Balkan affairs that the Americans became the ace in the regional deck of cards. With the Europeans unable to manage in unison the Yugoslavian morass, the Americans took the initiative. The 1995 NATO bombing put an end to the Serb advance into Bosnia, and the Dayton Agreement of 21 November 1995 that followed was engineered with perfect timing by the superpower. In Dayton the contours of an ethnically segregated Bosnia were officially settled on paper. The American success in pacifying the Western Balkans also signified the failure of the EU to produce and enforce a viable solution and indeed draft a common foreign policy among its members.
Was it only a question of principles that led the US to undertake that initiative and the subsequent Kosovo war? The report of the International Commission of the Balkans explains why ‘the fate of Islam in Bosnia is of importance for reasons going beyond the country or even the Balkans: (1) it has become a factor in the West's relations with the Islamic world, (2) it might become important for Turkey's relationship with Europe, and (3) it has implications for the Islamic communities of Western Europe’ [11, p. 18]. For the Americans, the role of Balkan arbiter has been a novel experience. With administrations that consider the region an embarrassment rather than a strategic and economic asset, the US has tried to make political capital of the goodwill it showed towards the Muslims as protectors of the people of Bosnia and Kosovo, or simply pass on the cost of regional reconstruction to the EU.
There is another view, however, that vexes the Russians as they seek to make a Balkan comeback under Putin's leadership. In September 1993, US National Security Advisor Anthony Lake defined the American strategy ‘as having passed from “containment” or a continuing territoriality or political isolation of the Soviet Union, to “enlargement” of the market and the world economy’ [10, p. 312].
Having acted as a vital player in the Balkan peninsula since the eighteenth century, the Russians are once again looking for their place in regional affairs. Putin's Russia is determined to veto any Western attempt to recognise Kosovo's independence in the Security Council, invoking Resolution 1244 of 1999, which deems the entity as part of Serbia. We shall return to the debate on this issue later.
The legacy of the past
The legacy of 45 years of communist rule in South-Eastern Europe has left an imprint both on the economies and the societies of the states in question. The command economy isolated the national economies from the world market. Mobility of labour and capital were strictly confined and the drive towards self-sufficiency made every sector an item of planning. Economic growth was rapid in the sixties—as was the case with all less-developed states—but lost momentum in the seventies and stagnated in the eighties. Socialist agriculture was a resounding failure, leading to massive imports of food and animal feed, and low-quality industrial exports failed to correct the balance of payments. The Socialist division of labour within the non-market Council for Mutual Economic Assistance (COMECON) integration was initiated on ‘artificially favourable terms of trade created by Moscow for its allies, as a trade-off for bloc cohesion’ [13, p. 76]. Be that as it may, the COMECON never became the counterpart of the European Community, because many of its members resisted forced integration.
Yugoslavia broke the solidarity of the Eastern bloc in the early fifties, and with Tito's doctrine of ‘self-management’ a measure of economic pluralism was introduced. Corporatism and regionalism, however, undermined reforming market forces. Trade between Yugoslavia and the West secured a steady income from the export of livestock products, raw and semi-processed minerals, and certain industrial goods such as cars, ships and appliances. Capital equipment and consumer goods were the major items in Yugoslavia's imports from the West. The remittances of migrant workers constituted a significant contribution to the balance of payments. Furthermore, Yugoslavia received financial and development aid from Western institutions, but it also borrowed heavily, accumulating a large hard-currency debt in the eighties. Yet in 1970 the country was the first communist state to contract an agreement with European Community and in the 1980 cooperation agreement Brussels accorded Belgrade preferential treatment [13, pp. 82-84].
The crisis and its impact
The process of Yugoslavia's dissolution began ten years before the fall of the Berlin Wall, when the need for economic reform became imperative so that the country could honour its economic obligations towards its Western creditors. During the second half of the sixties and the first half of the seventies, Tito abused the credit facilities that the West had granted to his country. The economic stagnation caused by the second oil crisis, which coincided with East–West détente, increased Western pressure on Yugoslavia to pay back its debts. If the country was to preserve its credit facilities in Western capital markets, it needed to take the stringent fiscal measures recommended by the International Monetary Fund. For such measures to be implemented the federal system ought to have been substantially reformed, with the goal of strengthening the authority of the central government over the Republics. In 1983 the Union of Yugoslav Communists authorised a party committee to study the situation. At precisely the same time many Western countries were exerting pressure on Yugoslavia to liberalise its economy and reduce the powers of the central government in favour of its federated constituents. Yugoslavia after Tito found herself on a procrustean bed, as the West was asking her simultaneously to centralise and decentralise power. On the other hand the protracted economic crisis exacerbated the differences between the more and the less-developed Republics, undermining their common Yugoslav identity [14]. Western media classified them into liberal reformist on the one hand and conservative communist on the other. Given the decentralisation imposed by the 1974 Constitution, however, it was not the central government that opposed the redistribution of income but the political leaders of the more privileged Republics. Slovenia and Croatia, which appeared in the Western press as the most liberal Republics, resisted to the very end the reforms of the federal system that were necessary for the survival of Yugoslavia. In June 1985, their parliaments voted down three bills that aimed at the improvement of the foreign economic relations of the century.
The demise of communism in the Balkans took a heavy toll on the region's economies. Most countries registered a worsening of their macroeconomic situation: declining GDP (gross domestic product), growing current account and trade deficits, higher budget deficits and rising unemployment. These developments, which lasted for almost a decade after the fall of communism, were the natural consequences of economies that had been cocooned from the international market and were steeped in inefficient state bureaucracies.
Conditions after the war
The military conflagrations in the former Yugoslavia certainly exacerbated the already problematic economic situation, but attracting capital inflows would not have been an easy task even if the war had not occurred. Even in the early twenty-first century unemployment was rife in Kosovo (40%), Bosnia-Herzegovina (40%), Serbia (30%), and Croatia (20%) and Albania (20%). The gap between South-Eastern and Central Europe has not yet been reversed. Whereas the latter states began to improve their economic performance from the mid-nineties, the Balkans remained mired in stagnation and negative growth rates until recently [12, Introduction].
Some analysts are tempted to draw an analogy with the end of the Second World War in evaluating the region's prospects. Even putting forward the idea of a new Marshall Plan draws some of its justification from such an analogy. There are, however, important differences in the circumstances. First, at that time there was no process of state formation and dissolution and, therefore, no ensuing conflicts; this fact favoured the process of economic integration through the European Coal and Steel Community. Second, a clear distinction existed between victor and vanquished. This is not the present case in the Balkans, where borders are still questioned. Third, the Marshall Plan meant, primarily, an infusion of funds for energising economic reconstruction in an area that possessed the institutional ingredients of a market economy. Fourth, there was an external and internal common enemy: communism. Who is the common enemy, at least in the region of the former Yugoslavia? It is generally accepted that extreme nationalism and irredentism are the main culprits. However, a more pernicious candidate is underdevelopment. Such enemies, however, are not perceived by Western Europe and the US as a threat to their own interests. The US is able therefore to experiment with a selective form of self-determination without consequences for its own welfare. The European Union cannot afford to be insouciant. In fact, there is need for a plan that goes beyond the scope of a European Marshall Plan. Such aid must take into account the complexity of intra-regional relations, the area's still-murky political geography and the existence of latent conflicts.
Tackling the problems of South-East Europe requires a vision that frames the policies of both domestic (local governments) and external actors. This vision and policy must consider the consequences of years of immense destruction brought about by military conflicts, the failures of reform efforts and the very complicated nature of relations inside the region, all in conjunction with the challenge of development.
The EU's early failures during the dissolution of Yugoslavia proved to be a learning process once Javier Solana was appointed High Representative in 1999. Along with Chris Patten, European Commissioner for External Relations, Solana was instrumental in bringing the EU's attention to the region and organising a military commitment of 60,000 troops in the field for crisis management. The democratic transition in Croatia and Serbia in 2000 facilitated the renewed stabilising task of the EU in the region. Its role in the 2001 Ohrid Agreement that defused the crisis between the two larger ethnic groups of the Former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia (FYROM) was pivotal. Throughout the last seven years, three of the seven European Special Representatives were preoccupied with Balkan issues. In spring 2003 the EU was handed the responsibility for police operations in Bosnia, which had been originally assigned to the UN. Furthermore, in the summer it took over from NATO its function in the FYROM, followed by a police assignment in December. In 2004 an EU force of 7,000 men replaced the NATO Stabilisation Force in Bosnia and Herzegovina (SFOR) mission in Bosnia with the task of deterring organised crime [4, pp. 100-101].
Despite the European Security and Defense Policy (ESDP) deployments in Bosnia and the FYROM, the EU has not superseded NATO on security issues nor in the latter's ‘Partnership for Peace’ initiative. The EU, however, holds the most important carrot for stabilising the region—future membership in an organisation that will act as a locomotive of development and democratisation. No other state or institution can compete with the EU in this respect. The Stabilization and Association Process (SAP) opened for the western Balkan States a process for their eventual integration into EU structures. SAP entailed the conclusion of comprehensive treaties with each state and ‘deployed important policy instruments, in particular in the areas of trade and assistance’ [5, p. 399].
The Thessaloniki Summit of June 2003 made it clear that the future of the Balkan States was in the EU. Benchmarks for membership included progress in setting up democratic institutions and improvements in administrative functions. “The prospect of EU membership linked to the step-by-step implementation of the SAP has become the major source of the EU's influence in the region” [5, p. 400]. Carl Bildt, the former High Representative in Bosnia, proposed that the EU should move on from Stabilization and Association Agreements towards a multilateral arrangement that would make the whole region of the Western Balkans part of a customs union, and other associated policies [3, p. 112].
The biggest question mark on the future of EU efforts in the Balkans lies with Europe itself. The failure of the constitutional treaty in the French and Dutch referendums betrayed the enlargement fatigue that has overtaken some EU members. If, however, the EU ceases to expand, its reformist promise will lose its impetus in the Balkans. Although the US cannot match Europe's modernisation promise, it will certainly regain its virtual monopoly of influence if the EU fails to deliver membership in the relatively foreseeable future. 1
For better insight on the regional dilemma of the EU, see [8].
The EU was confronted with the dilemma of recognising Kosovo's independence once it was declared by the Protectorate's Albanian majority on 17 February 2008. Falling in line with the Atlantic Alliance without considering the implication of such a recognition on the stability of the region may bedevil the influence of the EU in the Western Balkans as a force for democratic principles and development. Of all the ethnic clusters in search of self-determination within the former Yugoslavia, the example of the Republika Srpska within Bosnia-Herzegovina stands out.
The case of Bosnia-Herzegovina constitutes an unusual international commitment to the integrity of a state that has gained little by keeping its constituent ethnicities together. There are two possible explanations for the tenacious effort of the West to finance and maintain an unwieldy federation of reluctant partners. The US and the EU are determined to create a multicultural entity in the wake of a fratricidal war, perhaps to make up for their indecisiveness when the Bosnian Muslims were being slaughtered by Serbs and Croats. Since a guilty conscience is rarely a sustaining motive for policy decisions, especially in the field of international relations, one must adopt James Gow's explanation for why Bosnia and Kosovo have been the two Balkan territories to receive the greatest material attention from outside. Both have been crucibles of multi-ethnic confrontation but, more significantly, Western nations have been eager to protect the Muslim communities in these two territories from human-rights abuses. These two countries became, therefore, the primary laboratories of change after the collapse of Yugoslavia. In James Gow's words: ‘Because of this heritage, both were key icons of how the EU, with partners and allies, could handle questions of community cohesion and multicultural policy, as well as symbolically ensuring that Muslim communities with secular character and centuries’ old traditions rooted in Europe were not excluded’ [6, p. 470].
Be that as it may, the rights of Muslim communities in Europe acquired a special significance in the post-9/11 world. The EU and the US sought to embrace the secular Muslims of Europe as part of a positive strategy in the Global War on Terror, and produce a showpiece of multiculturalism that would convince the Middle Eastern states that the West did not discriminate between Muslim and non-Muslim victims of aggression. Is it possible, however, that many Bosnians are reluctant participants in this multicultural experiment and might prefer a peaceful dissolution of their segregated state? Bosnia-Herzegovina was the sole Federated Republic in Tito's Yugoslavia that was not established on ethnic premises. Out of a population of 4,364,570, according to the 1991 census, 43.7% were Muslim (Bosniaks), 31.3% Serbs, 17.3% Croats and 5.5% Yugoslavs. Given that no ethnic group has an absolute majority, this can never become a state dominated by one people [9, p. 172]. After Dayton, all major decisions affecting Bosnia-Herzegovina are made by the international protectorate that determines its future.
As a protectorate, Bosnia has settled issues referring to its security concerns and its economic survival. Because of the international peacekeepers of SFOR and EUROFOR since November 2004, the state does not maintain a monopoly on the use of force. The sustained aid Bosnia has been receiving since the Dayton Peace Accord of 1995 has made the economy incapable of surviving without ongoing foreign fixes. Early on, Laza Kekic coined the term ‘aid addiction’ to describe Bosnia's economic condition and pointed out that ‘growth regressions indicate that external aid has had a very weak positive impact on the performance of transition countries’ [7, 20]. Ten years after Dayton, the country's unemployment fluctuated between 37 and 40% [2, p. 43]. Much of the national budget is allocated to perpetuating the structural inefficiencies of a complex system of regions and entities destined to keep the three constituent ethnicities apart. The Dayton Accord granted the ‘Serb Republic’, covering 49% of the entire territory of Bosnia-Herzegovina, far-reaching autonomy. The Federated Bosnia-Herzegovina (a loose federation of Croats and Bosniaks) was decentralised to encompass ten regions, five Bosniak, three Croat and two with a mixed population. The central government is weak and its authority has in fact been wielded by the Office of the High Representative (OHR) of the EU, who has replaced members of the elected Bosnian authorities, annulled laws voted in parliament and even dissolved political parties. Voters do not represent a ‘demos’ but rather their three ethnic groups. The Central Bank is also run by an international official.
Bosnia-Herzegovina is managed by the foreign authorities of the protectorate and the three governments are run by parties deeply entrenched in ethnically based politics that often impede mutually beneficial reform. ‘Reforms at the state level, such as the introduction of a state command over the armed forces of the entities and the establishment of the State Investigation and Protection Agency (SIPA) and of the judiciary have all been instigated by international actors, most prominently the OHR’ [2, p. 57].
This body's slow progress and the resistance of at least one of its three constituent parts to any joint existence—the rationale for any state is the willingness of its people to live together—has only secondary importance in Western priorities. 2 One may wonder if the right of self-determination granted to Montenegro and Kosovo would not have a beneficial effect on the settlement of frozen conflicts if extended to the Bosnian entities.
‘Political community is the basic requirement for statehood, without an agreed political community, then any state is likely to be subject to internal pressures, with politics focused on the nature and essence of the polity rather than on decisions over day-to-day life’ [6, p. 474].
Although postmodern multiculturalism appears to be the preferred option of the supranational EU, this option cannot be force-fed to a people who resist acting as a showpiece of Western policy. Post-modern nation states follow, after all, the maxim of the popular will, often at the expense of central authorities. Should the Republika Srpska of Bosnia-Herzegovina be given the right of self-determination, then the breakaway Kosovo might become palatable to Serbia. A package agreement, however, that will rid the Western Balkans of two sources of tension and discontent vis-à-vis the West may cause vexation to those Westerners who have done their utmost to maintain the integrity of Bosnia-Herzegovina.
Following Kosovo's declaration of independence on 17 February 2008, America's certainty that this is a special case among entities seeking self-determination has prodded several EU states to fall in line. In fact, Kosovo is in no sense unique. There are striking similarities with a host of other entities, including Republika Srpska of Bosnia-Herzegovina, Nagorno Karabakh of Azerbaijan, Abkhazia of Georgia, the West Bank under Israel, Kashmir in India and a host of others. Europeans willing to give Kosovo the benefit of the doubt are perhaps trying to make amends for having failed to take concerted action during the Bosnian carnage. Favouring victims of past aggression may soothe a bad conscience, but if not applied universally could cause a major rupture in international legality. EU failure to produce a common foreign and security policy in the nineties invited the US and its decisive military action into the region. Championing the cause of the underdogs in the Yugoslav struggle for territory, the Americans hoped that they would promote multicultural democracies in the Western Balkans. It appears that they have merely succeeded in setting up two Western protectorates, run and financed by Western states, that are hardly multicultural. Bosnia-Herzegovina is a federal state with its constituent ethnic groups totally segregated from each other, while Kosovo (95% Albanian) is probably one of the most ethnically homogeneous places in Europe. It is equally doubtful that the US has secured Arab or Iranian approval as a result of its pro-Muslim humanitarian action in Bosnia and Kosovo.
Until recently, American policymakers considered the region a periphery of the Caucasus and the Middle East, both hubs of energy, rather than valuable in and of themselves. The eclipse of Russia's regional presence, however, appears to be over and its comeback is spurred by the advantage its position in the energy sector affords it. According to Russia, the status quo established by Security Council Resolution 1244 has been violated by states that have granted Kosovo recognition.
It is difficult to foresee the full spectrum of consequences that Kosovar independence will generate. In principle it will create a precedent that will make it impossible for Western states to deny self-determination to other candidates under similar circumstances. Russia will probably take full advantage of the opportunity to maintain low-intensity conflicts to control her own neighbourhood in such states as Ukraine, Georgia, Moldova and Azerbaijan. Be that as it may, the EU still remains the best hope for the Western Balkans to return to normality and prosperity.
Footnotes