Florida State University Libraries Electronic Theses, Treatises and Dissertations The Graduate School 2012 Civil Wars in Yugoslavia: Explaining the Bargaining Process Toma Sokolikj Follow this and additional works at the FSU Digital Library. For more information, please contact [email protected] THE FLORIDA STATE UNIVERSITY COLLEGE OF SOCIAL SCIENCES AND PUBLIC POLICY CIVIL WARS IN YUGOSLAVIA: EXPLAINING THE BARGAINING PROCESS By TOMA SOKOLIKJ A Thesis submitted to the International Affairs Program in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Master in Science Degree Awarded: Fall Semester, 2012 Toma Sokolikj defended this thesis on November 6, 2012. The members of the supervisory committee were: Mark Souva Professor Directing Thesis Will H. Moore Committee Member Megan Shannon Committee Member The Graduate School has verified and approved the above-named committee members, and certifies that the thesis has been approved in accordance with university requirements. ii I dedicate this to Maca and Late Sokolikj for their unconditional support during my entire educational career. iii ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS I would like to acknowledge the above-mentioned faculty members for their help and guidance, as well my sister Iva and my brother Zlatko for always being there for me. iv TABLE OF CONTENTS List of Figures ................................................................................................................................ vi Abstract ......................................................................................................................................... vii 1. INTRODUCTION ...................................................................................................................1 2. BACKGROUND ON YUGOSLAVIA ...................................................................................4 2.1 Second Yugoslavia.........................................................................................................6 2.2 Political History of Yugoslavia ......................................................................................8 2.3 The Passing of a Marshal .............................................................................................14 3. UNDERSTANDING CIVIL WARS .....................................................................................19 3.1 Explaining the Bargaining Model ................................................................................21 3.2 Commitment Problem in Bargaining ...........................................................................23 3.3 Costly Signals ..............................................................................................................25 4. EXPLAINING THE BARGAINING PROCESS IN CROATIA .........................................29 4.1 What of the Serbs in Tudjman’s Croatia? ....................................................................30 4.2 Resurrecting Interethnic Violence ...............................................................................34 4.3 Fighting for Greater Bargaining Power .......................................................................38 4.4 Third-party Presence and Credible Guarantees ...........................................................44 5. BARGAINING IN BOSNIA: A TALE OF THREE BELLIGERENTS ..............................52 5.1 Scramble for Bosnia and Herzegovina ........................................................................52 5.2 External Intervention in Bosnia ...................................................................................57 5.3 UN Persists: the Vance-Owen Peace Plan (VOPP) .....................................................60 5.4 The Faultlines...............................................................................................................64 5.5 Impediments .................................................................................................................68 6. WHAT OF SLOVENIA AND MACEDONIA – LEAVING THE DREAM .......................74 6.1 Strike to Deter Further Secession: Fighting “Our Slovene Brothers” .........................75 6.2 “Macedonians are Southern Serbs” .............................................................................81 6.3 Conclusion ...................................................................................................................86 7. LESSONS LEARNED..........................................................................................................88 REFERENCES ..............................................................................................................................92 BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH .........................................................................................................97 v LIST OF FIGURES Figure 4.1: Geographic layout of ethnic groups in Yugoslavia before the conflict .......................29 Figure 5.1: Timeline of Yugoslavia’s break-up and international response, 1991-1995 ...............72 vi ABSTRACT Resolving ethnic conflicts is no easy task. In the 1990s, civil wars engulfed Somalia, Mozambique, Rwanda, Cambodia, Yugoslavia…the list goes on. In the Balkans, the disintegration of Josip Tito’s pan-Slavic dream destabilized the security of the region and relations between the people living in the Yugoslav republics. Minorities stranded on the other side of the border following the secession of the former Yugoslav republics were skeptical of the new governments in their internal policies fueled by nationalistic overtones. This caused a backlash of self-determined autonomy of minorities within the newly seceded republics The paper provides a theoretical application of crisis bargaining to explain the wars in Yugoslavia caused by the commitment issues among the dyadic couple. Crisis bargaining between civil war combatants is hindered by incredible commitments, issues of uncertainty and lack of third-party guarantees to safeguard ceasefires and military disengagement. Parties to a civil conflict are therefore unable to successfully commit to peaceful negotiations during periods of heightened vulnerability. Commitment issues arise during such periods which cause prolonged fighting for better position at the bargaining table, and are most likely to prevail in the absence of credible guarantees and honest communication. vii CHAPTER ONE INTRODUCTION It has been over 20 years since Yugoslavia’s dissolution. During this period, political scholars have continuously debated the events that transpired in the Balkan conflict and attempted to understand the tumultuous breakup of a former communist state comprised of more than 6 different ethnic groups. As a result, the international relations academia has split into several camps. While some tend to accentuate the role of ethno-nationalism and others attribute the civil wars to the domino effect of leaderless states following the fall of Communism, one particular camp of political scientists offers an extremely intriguing approach to explain the onset, duration and settlement of the Yugoslav civil wars. The work of James Fearon, Barbara Walters, and other international relations theoretical scholars, focuses on explaining bargaining conditions amid civil wars. Thus, the research presented in this thesis seeks to explain the difficulty to successfully end the bargaining process between the belligerents in both Croatia and Bosnia, and with it provide a more pragmatic application of existing theories of civil war negotiations. Due to the high focus on the ethnic cleansing missions perpetrated by Yugoslav leaders, the killing of different ethnicities in pursuit of secessionist agendas has come to be a likely popular consensus among non-IR individuals. It is time to straighten out the record and provide a well-supported approach to interpreting the events in Yugoslavia. The topic of Yugoslavia is most interesting. To the ones who believe that it has received more than a fair share of analysis and explanations, I argue precisely the opposite. The conflict itself is fairly young. Other than the abundant work of authors who have underlined the role of ethnic animosity and nationalist waves, very little has been said regarding the difficulties of resolving the civil warfare due to 1 classic tip-of-the-iceberg approaches. From an IR perspective, the bargaining model presents an innovative way to explain failed credible commitments as they relate to civil war bargaining. The point of my departure, therefore, is to explain the bargaining conditions between the belligerents in Croatia, and their counterparts in Bosnia and Herzegovina. Recent studies on the Yugoslav civil wars have produced a strong combination of theories that I believe best explain the prolonged violence among Serbs, Croats and Bosnian Muslims. Moreover, a closer look at the bargaining model reveals a distinct opportunity to shed more light on negotiations between civil war combatants. Essentially, the purpose of the paper is to highlight the growing commitment problem among minorities to remain in the republics opting for secession. At the risk of being exploited and attacked during periods of vulnerability, minorities and governments in Yugoslavia measured the cost between fighting for additional bargaining power and peaceful dialogue toward power-sharing agreements. The governments in both Croatia and Bosnia feared that territorial contiguity with an outside lobby republic could enable calls for secession and power-grab attempts by minorities. Conversely, minorities became skeptical of the