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Why Kosovo? the Anatomy of a Needless War

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Why Kosovo? the Anatomy of a Needless War Why Kosovo? The Anatomy of a Needless War by Bob Allen July 1999 CANADIAN CENTRE FOR POLICY ALTERNATIVES CAW 567 Why Kosovo? Anatomy of a Needless War by Bob Allen July 1999 ISBN # 0-88627-963-1 Layout: Shannon Daub Thanks to Ed Finn for editing the paper. The contents and opinions contained in this paper are those of the author, and do not necessarily reflect the views of the CCPA. About the Author Bob Allen is Professor of Economics at the University of British Columbia, and a historian specializing in Eastern European and Russian economic history. He received his Ph.D. from Harvard University, and has published three books and numerous articles in professional journals. Bob Allen is a research associate with the Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives–BC Office, and a Fellow of the Royal Society of Canada. Why Kosovo? The Anatomy of a Needless War by Bob Allen After more than two months of bombing, NATO’s war against Yugoslavia has come to an end. NATO leaders and the mainstream media have hailed the war as a moral crusade in which west- ern countries defended the innocent Kosovo Albanians from the genocide and ethnic cleansing perpetrated by the Serbian army and police under the direction of Yugoslav President Milosevic. Indeed, the war was taken to mark the beginning of a new world order in which humanitiarian values will take precedence over national sovereignty. A review of the situation, however, shows that this characterization is biased and propagandistic. While many Albanians have been expelled from Kosovo by Yugoslav security forces, the Albanians are scarcely more admirable than the Serbs in either intentions or actions. American policy is directed as much or more by great power motives as by humanitarian ones. Western countries bear a heavy responsibility for the collapse of Yugoslvavia, of which the Kosovo war was the final phase, and, indeed, for the breakdown of the talks at Rambouillet, which pre- cipitated the war. NATO’s conduct of the war raises serious moral questions: The bombing campaign caused so many civilian deaths and such widespread destruction in Kosovo and the rest of Yugoslavia that NATO leaders may also be guilty of war crimes. Heaping all the blame for the war on President Milosevic is a convenient way for western countries to evade their responsibility for the diasterous turn of events, but is not consistent with the historical record, as will be shown. There are three views about the causes of the current conflict.1 The first corresponds to the NATO line repeated in the mainstream media: The Serbs were aggressors and their neighbours were innocent victims. The solution was to beat the aggressor until he stopped. This view has CCPA 1 been the basis of American foreign policy since the breakup of Yugoslavia. Often there is a tendency to shift the focus from the Serbs to “Milosevic.” This is a natural move in American thought, since a moral crusade is simpler if there is a single devil. Moreover, singling out Milosevic exonerates the Serbs, so the Americans can 1) feel they themselves are not using ethnic stereotypes, 2) say they have no fight with the Serbian people, and 3) say the problem is an evil dictator so that ethnic conflict can be stopped by bringing democracy to Serbia. These statements about Milosevic and democracy are hard to square with the popularity of ethnic nationalism in Serbia and the other parts of the former Yugoslavia, but they correspond to the American concept of “rogue states” that are run by dictators and violate international law. The second view, which is more common in Europe, sees today’s ethnic conflict as the latest outbreak of hostilities that have gone on for centuries. Since ethnic hatred pervades soci- ety, the fundamental problem is not a single individual like Milosevic, nor are the Serbs particu- larly to blame since there is a long record of hatred among all groups. The communists suppressed these passions but did not extirpate them; they have been passed on from generation to generation like a primordial sludge from the Middle Ages. With the advent of democracy, the old hostilities have resurfaced. Removing Milosevic will not solve the problem; some other nationalist leader will simply take his place. Democracy is not a solution either, since ethnic hatreds are so widespread. The problem is how to separate the groups so they will not kill each other. While the Americans have been anxious to reverse “ethnic cleansing” since realizing it would “reward aggression,” the European view has tended, perhaps cynically, to accept a partition of the populations as necessary to end the violence. The third view attributes the outbreak of ethno-nationalism to the economic collapse that began in the 1980s. The decline in ethno-nationalism in Yugoslavia after the Second World War was not solely the result of communist repression, but a response to the rapid economic develop- ment of the country. People left the countryside for the city, received an education, earned more than their parents, and lived in a society that guaranteed them economic and social security. The Albanian population had the same advantages, but started from a lower level and made less progress and so did not distance itself as much from its feudal past. Beginning in the 1980s, the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and World Bank imposed various macro economic re- forms and structural adjustment programs on the country that first checked economic expansion and after 1990 led to widespread collapse and unemployment. The end of socialism removed the 2 Why Kosovo? economic security Yugoslavs had come to expect and made them receptive to ethno-nationalist rhetoric. These three views highlight the themes to explore—the history of ethno-nationalism and its relationship to economic development and decline. The American view that ethnic conflict could be solved by bombing Milosevic, reversing aggression, and introducing a democratic con- stitution is hard to square with the facts. Ethnic conflict has a long history in the Balkans, and the current conflicts can be regarded as one more swing of the pendulum. Economic development moderated ethnic tensions, but economic collapse since the late 1980s has intensified them. While today’s ethnic violence is similar to earlier outbreaks, there are also differences since economic development has refined the primordial sludge of medieval prejudice into more concentrated spirits that are at least as deadly. Early History of Serbia and Kosovo The history of ethno-nationalism must start in the Middle Ages, since the significance of Kosovo derives from that period. The Serbs regard Kosovo as the original site of their nation. Slavs migrated into the Balkans in the sixth century CE. The Serbs in Kosovo and Montenegro were a tribal society until the 1160s when Stefan Nemanja founded the first Serb royal dynasty. It expanded until the death of Tsar Dusan in 1355. The monarchy was centred in Kosovo, and a distinctive feature of this period was the endowment of monasteries that remain Serbian national monuments to this very day. After 1355, the Serbian state began to disintegrate. The decline is usually attributed to the Turkish expansion into the Balkans. The Turks first defeated the Serbs at the Battle of Maritsa in 1371, and again in the fabled battle of Kosovo Polje in 1389. The Serb kingdom lingered on as a vassal to the Turks until it was finally overrun in 1459. Serbia ceased to exist as an independent political entity until 1815, but the glories of medieval Kosovo were celebrated in epic poetry and were preserved in the many monasteries. While Turkish expansionism undoubtedly played a role in the demise of the Serbian state, the process also reflected internal factors—geography, demography, and economics—that still exert an influence. The Serb ascendancy coincided with very high and growing populations across Europe. Population pressure increased settlement in inhospitable mountainous areas like Kosovo, and shifted its agriculture away from livestock towards grain. As elsewhere in Europe, the population pressure generated an agricultural surplus that supported feudal states, cathedrals, and monasteries. CCPA 3 This wave of expansion came to an abrupt end in 1348/9 with the Black Death, which slashed populations everywhere. In marginal regions like Kosovo, the population dropped pre- cipitously, not only due to plague mortality but also because people emigrated to take up vacant farms in more fertile areas. Agriculture in Kosovo reverted to pastoralism, which was insuffi- cient to support a nobility. So the state collapsed, and the region remains poor to the present, as will be seen.2 After the conquest of Serbia, the Turks advanced through Bosnia into Slovenia and Croatia. They were driven out of the latter provinces by the Habsburg armies in 1683-99, and the frontier between the Ottoman and Habsburg Empires was stabilized along the present border between Croatia (which remained Austrian) and Bosnia (which was Ottoman). Kosovo remained predominantly Serbian through the 16th century, but the Serb population declined thereafter. Serb rebellions against the Turks in 1689 and the 1730s were crushed and led to mass emigrations of Serbs. The Great Migration of 1690 ended in the Serb settlements north of the Danube in what became the autonomous province of Vojvodina. In addition, many Serbs left Kosovo to settle on the Croatian side of the Habsburg-Ottoman border where the Habsburgs gave them land and self-government in exchange for military service against the Turks. A large Serb population remained on the Krajina (literally “border area”) until 1995, when hundreds of thousands were driven out by the Croatian and Bosnian armies. The final flight was precipitated by NATO air strikes. The outflow of Serbs from Kosovo in the 17th and 18th centuries opened it to settlement by Albanians.
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