Looking Ahead: Security Challenges in the Balkans Through 2010

Looking Ahead: Security Challenges in the Balkans through 2010 2 Looking Ahead: Security Challenges in the Balkans through 2010 István Gyarmati and Theodor Winkler, Editors Marc Remillard and Scott Vesel, Associate Editors Belgrade ● 2002 3 Looking Ahead: Security Challenges in the Balkans through 2010 Published by: EastWest Institute, New York Geneva Centre for the Democratic Control of Armed Forces Edited by: Ambassador Dr. István Gyarmati Ambassador Dr. Theodor Winkler Asssociate Editors: Marc Remillard Scott Vesel Proofreader: Elizabeth Seuling Cover design: Marija Vuksanović Type setting: Leviathan Design Executive publisher: Centre for Civil-Military Relations, Belgrade Printed by: Goragraf, Beograd © 2002 EastWest Institute and Geneva Centre for the Democratic Control of Armed Forces ISBN–86–83543–06–4 Belgrade ● 2002 4 TABLE OF CONTENTS Foreword – Carl Bildt ...........................................................................................7 Introduction – István Gyarmati and Theodor Winkler ........................................13 A Russian Perspective on National Security Dilemmas in South Eastern Europe – Vladimir Baranovsky and Dmitri Glinski-Vassiliev ............................17 The OSCE and Regional Security in South Eastern Europe – Vladimir Bilandžić ...........................................................................................34 American Perspectives on Balkan Security – James Dobbins ............................57 Regional Security Issues in South Eastern Europe: A Council of Europe Perspective – Hans-Peter Furrer .......................................................65 The Main Issues of Regional Security in South Eastern Europe: A Yugoslav Perspective – Miroslav Hadžić .......................................................81 The Security Situation in the Balkans through 2010 – François Heisbourg .......................................................................................102 The Austrian View on Regional Security in South Eastern Europe – Predrag Jureković ..........................................................................................115 The Stability of the Balkans through 2010: A View from Hungary – Arnold Koltai .................................................................................................121 Germany’s Policy towards South Eastern Europe – Joachim Krause ..............137 Security in South Eastern Europe in the Coming Decade – Zvonimir Mahečić ..........................................................................................147 New Approaches to Security in the Balkans – Sašo Ordanoski ........................163 Albania, the Balkans and the Future – Auron Pasha ........................................173 Yugoslavia: The Economic Dimension of Security over the Next Decade – Norman Scott ......................................................................183 Key Regional Security Issues in South Eastern Europe – Gerard Stoudmann ........................................................................................201 Security in South Eastern Europe in the Next 10-15 Years – Bisera Turković .........................................................................212 A Swiss Perspective on Key Regional Security Issues in South Eastern Europe through 2010 – Philippe Welti .................................................235 5 6 Foreword Carl Bildt Special Envoy of the UN Secretary General for South Eastern Europe There is no other part of the continent of Europe where security issues are as challenging as they are in the Balkan area. And there is no way in which one can look ahead towards their resolution without first looking back at their origins. During the 19 th century, the question of what was then often re- ferred to as the Near East was high up on the international agenda. The Congress of Berlin in 1878 still often figures in discussions concerning the order of the region. As Europe entered the 20 th century, the problems of the Balkans erupted one time after another. The first major political crisis of Eu- rope in the 20 th century was the crisis in 1908 over Bosnia’s sover- eignty, followed by the First and the Second Balkan Wars. Then, the lights went out all over Europe as a result of the sequence of events initiated in Sarajevo on the 28 th of June, 1914. And much as the first decade of the 20 th century was dominated by the conflicts in the Balkans, the last decade of the century was as well. When the evil Soviet empire, and the Soviet Union itself, came crashing down between 1989 and 1991, there was a feeling that we were entering a new period of both peace and freedom, in which old conflicts and confrontations would melt away as open societies and free economies asserted themselves around the world. There was talk about the end of history. But it was in the Balkans that we were first forced to confront the old realities of the new era. Here, we saw the comeback of history with a force that took practically all international actors by surprise. It will be some time until a full account of the different international interventions in the region during these years can be written, but when that is done, it is unlikely that any of the major actors will emerge with much glory. As an international community, we stumbled from crisis to crisis, and from short-term response to short-term policies. It was not our most glorious hour. Today, the guns are silent in the Balkans. Occasional bursts of rifles in Mitrovica or Tetovo do not alter the main picture. But the reality is that the absence of open conflict is more a function of the 7 presence of major international military forces in Kosovo, Bosnia and Macedonia than of genuine reconciliation and reintegration in the region itself. With core issues of the conflicts still open, there is neither the prospect for a fast withdrawal of these forces, nor for the speedy integration into a wider European economic and political framework that has become the new gospel of the region. Thus, the task as we look ahead must be to discuss how we can address the core issues of the conflicts, facilitate compromises that meet the minimum demands of everyone while meeting the maximum demands of no one, provide incentives for the necessary economic and political reforms in the different parts of the region, and thus over time pave the way for the self-sustaining stability and gradual normalisa- tion of the region. This will not be possible without understanding the nature of the conflicts in the region. During the height of the controversies over the war in Bosnia, a school of thought that spoke about “ancient hatreds” was seen as standing against a school that laid the blame for everything on the policies of Serb leader Slobodan Milošević. As the conflict over Kosovo threatened to explode, the spokesman for the US State Department proclaimed that Milošević was not part of the problem of the region, but was in fact “the problem” that had to be tackled in this part of Europe. Today, simplistic notions of this sort have largely disappeared, and we South Eastern Europe the emergence of a broad consensus that stresses both the historical and structural tensions of the region and the irresponsibility of ruthless individual leaders in using and aggravating them. The International Criminal Tribunal for former Yugoslavia (ICTY) is supposed to deal with the latter issue, while wise statesmanship in the region and the international community must tackle the former. What makes this part of Europe different from all others is its long history as part of a series of multi-national empires, starting from the days of Rome and Byzantium, and continuing through half a millennium of rule by Istanbul, and in some cases by Vienna. Throughout these long centuries, they developed a mosaic of cultures and nationalities throughout the region that lead to massive problems as the empires started to crumble and the idea of the nation-state emerged as the organizing principle for a new Europe. The fundamental problem of the region during the past century and a half has been the conflict between the multi-national realities throughout the region and the national rhetoric and ambitions of different leaders. While it was possible in other parts of Europe to draw up borders separating different nation-states from each other, in the Balkans these borders tended to be drawn in blood, as they nearly always separated brothers from each other, and as patterns of majority 8 and minority changed with the way borders were drawn, states were set up or political conflicts were managed. Today, it is obvious that the successive efforts to set up a common state of the Southern Slavs – a Yugoslavia – have failed. Relations between the dominant Serbs and the determined Croats turned out to be too complex to be handled within a common framework. But it was the process of separation between the two that led first to the wars in Croatia itself, centred on its areas with substantial Serb populations, and then in the highly complex and often contested land of Bosnia. One can only regret that this conflict has now been settled primar- ily through a very high degree of ethnic separation. Leaders in Bel- grade clearly aimed at establishing some sort of wider Serb-dominated area, including areas of Croatia and Bosnia, but have instead ended up with the largest number of refugees of any country in Europe. Before 1992, Sarajevo was a symbol of different cultures meeting and living together. It was, in fact, the second largest Serb city in

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