AFTER DAYTON: Lessons of the Bosnian Peace Process
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AFTER DAYTON: Lessons of the Bosnian Peace Process A Council Symposium COUNCIL ON FOREIGN RELATIONS AFTER DAYTON: Lessons of the Bosnian Peace Process A Council Symposium Ruth Wedgwood, Editor The Council on Foreign Relations, Inc., a nonprofit, nonpartisan national organization and think tank founded in 1921, is dedicated to promoting understanding of international affairs through free and civil exchange of ideas. The Council's members are dedicated to the belief that America's peace and prosperity are firmly linked to that of the world. From this flows the Council's mission: to foster America's understanding of other nations—their peo- ples, cultures, histories, hopes, quarrels, and ambitions—and thus to serve our nation through study and debate, private and public. From time to time books, reports, and papers written by members of the Council's research staff or others are published as a "Council on Foreign Relations Publication." 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CONTENTS Preface 1 War Crimes and the Political Future of Lawrence J. Korb Bosnia and Herzegovina 67 Antonio Cassese 67 Introduction 3 Theodor Meron 70 Ruth Wedgwood Ruti Teitel 73 Has Dayton Worked? 25 W. Michael Reisman 76 Kofi A. Annan Colloquy 77 The Path to Dayton 29 Refugees, Peacekeeping, and Economic James Gow 29 Reconstruction 84 Laura Silber 31 Soren Jessen-Petersen 84 David Harland 34 Alan G. Stolberg 86 Susan Woodward 37 Christine Wallich 90 Colloquy 42 James Schear 93 Nationalism and the Liberal State 48 Colloquy 95 Julie Mertus 48 Nationalism and Dayton 99 Douglas Rae 51 Misha Glenny Paul Szasz 53 Stojan Cerović 56 Diplomatic Roundtable: The Future of the Yael Tamir 58 Balkans 106 Bruce Ackerman 61 Robert Frowick 106 Colloquy 62 Muhamed Sacirbey 108 Ivan Šimonović 111 Vladislav Jovanović 114 Colloquy 116 Notes 128 About the Authors and Participants 129 Glossary of Places and Terms 136 Glossary of Names 140 Preface he Yugoslav wars seem to con- communities to reintegrate immediately after tinue. Conflicts in Bosnia, Croa- the conflict; it is extremely difficult to revive T tia, and Slovenia ravaged the economies that have not privatized and re- early 1990s and ultimate defeat did not deter main controlled by nationalist political par- Belgrade from lashing out again in 1999 ties; the arrest of war criminals early in the against the ethnic Albanians of Kosovo. The process is necessary to give confidence to bombing campaign by the North Atlantic more liberal political elements; and building Treaty Organization (NATO) against the ethnicity into the transitional structure of Milosevic regime succeeded and the ethnic government may be a necessary derogation Albanian community of Kosovo has begun from classical liberalism. the process of return. But military victory In particular, the Bosnian process should has been followed by a difficult peace that inoculate the international community presents a crisis of nation-building. How can against believing its own rhetoric. The ide- Kosovars, with help from the West, con- alistic goals and aspirations of a peace proc- struct a civil society in the wreckage of a ess and the sometimes fatuous promises of bitter war, with a ruined infrastructure and cooperation from the former antagonists economy, an absence of government institu- should not be confused with what is really tions, and a deadly antagonism among the achievable. The practice of “second-best”— ethnic communities of Serbs, Roma, and Al- or third or fourth best—should guide us on banians? The international organizations as- the ground in these raw circumstances. Bos- signed to help in the task face great difficul- nia teaches that international agencies often ties—how to jump-start economic projects, find it hard to act in a timely way, with suf- quell continuing ethnic skirmishes on the ficient force and police, and with attention to ground, democratize a repressive communist the real levers of power in the societies they society, and deal with a muddle of sover- are trying to reconstruct. eignty and autonomy. Kosovo is to have ef- The explosive chain letter of the Bal- fective autonomy yet remain part of the Bel- kans—in which one conflict melds into an- grade regime; its problems are of intense other—may not yet be completed. The refu- international interest yet it lacks any separate gees from one war are often displaced into international voice. areas overtaken by yet another crisis, and Many of these problems were worked on few of the uprooted families of the former in Bosnia as well, and applying the lessons Yugoslavia have been able to go home. The learned there may help those who have to West’s determination to reverse ethnic confront the challenges of Kosovo. For that cleansing in Kosovo represents a new com- reason, the Council on Foreign Relations has mitment by NATO and the Organization for decided to make available the record of a Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE) detailed assessment of the Bosnian peace and the European Union (EU), as well as by process conducted by the Council and Yale the United Nations. Looking at the lessons University. It is a snapshot from Bosnia, of the past, we may be able to avoid detours which is still an ongoing effort, taken ap- in the future. proximately one year into the process. The Lawrence J. Korb coincidence of timing gives a useful analogy Maurice R. Greenberg Chair to Kosovo, where the same splintering of Director of Studies communities has taken place. Council on Foreign Relations Some lessons emerge from the Bosnian experience: it is naive to expect antagonistic 1 Introduction Ruth Wedgwood he war in Bosnia flattened the political leaders wanted a string to pluck, to fizz in the West’s post–Cold War retain power after communism’s fall, and to T champagne. After winning the announce their importance as new men. The Cold War and ending the division of the easiest way to mobilize the demos was the European continent, the West could be for- siren song of nationalism. given a moment’s heady delusion that his- Nationalism is not always illiberal. In- tory was over, forgetting that societies might deed, in the nineteenth century, the nation- fracture in other ways. Ironically, it was the alism of the Italians, the Greeks, and other most liberal of the central European com- old or created peoples helped to overthrow munist regimes that was to shatter apart. The empires; nationalism was a subversive prin- Yugoslavia of Marshal Tito, champion of ciple that countered imperial power. This decentralized workers’ self-management, was certainly true in the dissolution of the founder of the Non-Aligned Movement, Austro-Hungarian and Ottoman empires in darling of the West as the only central Euro- the early twentieth century, and it will re- pean leader to survive a confrontation with main for historians to estimate how impor- Stalin, proved the most delicate in the mo- tant nationalist resistance was in undermin- ment of transition from the hegemony of ing communism’s empire in the Soviet Un- communism. Testament to Tito’s great po- ion and central Europe. Stripped of an impe- litical skill, or an unmasking of his authori- rial opponent, though, resurgent nationalism tarianism, or perhaps evidence of the inabil- is often less attractive. ity of any communist regime to fully as- The fabric of Yugoslavia began to un- similate the angers left from the raw civil ravel in the mid 1980s. The land of the conflict between fascist Ustashi, royalists, “southern Slavs”—with its two alphabets, and communist Partisans in the Second three religions, four languages, five rivers, World War, Tito’s death in 1980 left Yugo- and six republics—had a constitutional slavia without a center of gravity. Ethnicity framework that delicately balanced the inter- became a new divide in postcommunist ests of its several “constituent peoples.” Yugoslavia and a warning about how other Since the Second World War, Croats, Slo- societies might rupture. Leaders of each venes, Macedonians, Montenegrins, Mus- cultural community exploited nationalism as lims, and Serbs had co-existed in a political a political principle, manipulating the core structure that decentralized power to the six of worthy feeling on which it may draw. republics and checked the weight of Serbia Serbian intellectuals called for a revival of by carving out the autonomous provinces of Serb nationalism in the mid-1980s, Muslim Vojvodina and Kosovo, with their large leaders talked of the future of Bosnia as an Hungarian and Albanian populations, within Islamic state, Croatian politicians looked the Serb state. Tito’s 1974 constitution was back to a period of wartime independence read by some to preserve a legal right of na- that was violent and illiberal, and Slovenian tional secession as well. After Tito’s pass- entrepreneurs openly preferred the economic ing, an ominous rise of Serb nationalism un- company of neighbors in Italy and Austria dermined Belgrade’s claim to represent an and wondered why they were roped to less- international Yugoslav personality.