The Precautionary Principle: A Critical Appraisal of Environmental Risk Assessment

Copyright © 2002 by the Cato Institute.All rights reserved.

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Exiting the Balkan thicket / edited by Gary T. Dempseyp. cm.

Includes bibliographical references and index.ISBN 1-930865-17-11. Balkan Peninsula—Foreign relations—United States. 2. United

States—Foreign relations—Balkan Peninsula. 3. United States—Foreignrelations—1993-2001. I. Dempsey, Gary.

DR38.3.U6 E93 2002327.730497—dc21 2001058298

Cover design by Amanda Elliott.Photography © AFP/Corbis.

CATO INSTITUTE

1000 Massachusetts Ave., N.W.Washington, D.C. 20001

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Contents

INTRODUCTION

Gary T. Dempsey 1

PART I BOSNIA AND KOSOVO IN PERSPECTIVE

1. High-Handed Nation Building: The WestBrings ‘‘Democracy’’ to Bosnia

Ted Galen Carpenter 11

2. Making the World Safe for Human Rights: ACloser Look at Kosovo

David Chandler 33

3. Daytonia and the UNMIKistas: My Odyssey ofDisillusion

Stephen Schwartz 49

PART II EXITING THE THICKET

4. Let Dayton Be DaytonRobert M. Hayden 67

5. Drawing Lines in Shifting Sands: TheTerritorial Question in the Former Yugoslavia

Raju G. C. Thomas 81

6. America Should Escape Its Balkan ImperiumJohn C. Hulsman 97

7. Passing the Baton in the Balkans: Europe MayNot Be Willing, But It Is Certainly Able

E. Wayne Merry 109

CONTRIBUTORS 125

INDEX 127

v



IntroductionGary T. Dempsey

Advocates of America’s dual interventions in the Balkans—Bosniaand Kosovo—are in an odd position. History records no instancein which an outside party has successfully forced rival ethnic groupsinto a self-sustaining liberal democracy after a bloody civil war. Theidea that a multiethnic society can be imposed on Bosnia and Kosovo,in other words, has no precedent.

Against that backdrop, members of the administration of GeorgeW. Bush have demonstrated fundamental reservations about usingthe U.S. military for open-ended, nation-building operations in areasof limited national interest like the Balkans. In August 2000, forexample, then-vice presidential candidate Dick Cheney said that itwas time to consider phasing out American ground deploymentsin Bosnia and Kosovo, noting that staying on at this point ‘‘strikesme as an appropriate role for our European friends and allies.’’1 Ashort time later, Bush’s then-presumptive national security adviser,Condoleezza Rice, stated: ‘‘When it comes to nation building orcivilian administration or indefinite peacekeeping, we do need forthe Europeans to step up to their responsibilities. We are not goingto do anything precipitous, but unless we set this as a firm goal, wewill never get it done.’’2 Likewise secretary of state–designate ColinPowell indicated:

Our plan is to undertake a review right after the Presidentis inaugurated, and take a look not only at our deploymentsin Bosnia, but in Kosovo and many other places around theworld, and make sure those deployments are proper.3

Since taking office, the administration has made it clear that itwill not cut and run from the Balkans, but that it is serious aboutrecalibrating the U.S. role there. In February 2001, for instance, Powellassured America’s European allies, ‘‘We are committed to ensuringthat as we review our force posture in the Balkans, we do so together

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EXITING THE BALKAN THICKET

with our NATO allies.’’4 He then added, ‘‘We went in together; wewill come out together.’’5 Taken alone, some interpreted Powell’slast point as a reversal of the administration’s thinking. In fact,Powell’s point was not inconsistent with comments made earlierby Rice that a U.S. troop drawdown would not necessarily mean‘‘withdrawing the kind of support we can provide, like air power.’’6

Nor was it inconsistent with earlier statements by Cheney that theUnited States should draw down its troop presence but perhaps keepa small presence there to gather intelligence and help the remaininginternational force with logistics.7

Powell later reaffirmed the administration’s core view. ‘‘Washing-ton is always looking for ways to reduce its peacekeeping forces inthe region,’’ but any drawdown will not be undertaken withoutclose consultation with European allies regarding the timetable andimplications or mean that all U.S. troops must be out by a specificdate.8

During his trip to Kosovo in late July 2001, President Bush calledon Europe to shoulder a greater share of the peacekeeping duties inthe Balkans and urged local and international police to quickly takethe place of NATO combat forces so that American troops can returnhome. ‘‘We must step up our efforts to transfer responsibilities forpublic security from combat forces to specialized units, internationalpolice, and ultimately local authorities,’’ explained Bush.9 ‘‘NATO’scommitment to the peace of this region is enduring,’’ he added, ‘‘butthe stationing of our forces here should not be indefinite.’’10 ‘‘Wewill not draw down our forces in Bosnia or Kosovo precipitously orunilaterally,’’ he assured America’s allies in the region, ‘‘but ourgoal is to hasten the day when peace is self-sustaining, when local,democratically elected authorities can assume full responsibility, andwhen NATO’s forces can go home.’’11

‘‘None of us should be forever using military forces to do whatcivilian institutions should be doing,’’ national security adviser Ricetold reporters upon Bush’s return. ‘‘So the president pushed veryhard while he was in Kosovo in his conversation with the civilianfolks who were supposed to be doing the civilian institutionbuilding.’’12

Some European policymakers are beginning to understand theBush administration’s point. Romanian foreign minister MirceaGeoana, who also serves as the chairman for the Organization for

2


Introduction

Security and Cooperation in Europe, recognizes that the ‘‘U.S. mili-tary is not trained [for] and it’s not supposed to do police-typeoperations.’’ ‘‘So that’s why countries like Romania, Italy, or France,’’he explains, should ‘‘come in with . . . gendarmes or police-typeoperations. I want to say it’s a matter of division of labor, who’sbest equipped at doing what, rather than duplicating everythingacross the board.’’13

The two big questions now facing the Bush administration arehow to translate its genuine concerns into a specific policy, and howthat specific policy should fit into overall U.S. national securitystrategy. This brief book is intended to provide some perspectiveand recommendations on those two questions.

The Analytical Context

To put it mildly, the economic and political conditions in Bosniaand Kosovo are not changing the way many advocates of the originalinterventions had claimed they would. Indeed, both places remainwoefully dependent on foreign largess. What’s more, the U.S. Gen-eral Accounting Office laments that although full-scale military hos-tilities have ceased in both Bosnia and Kosovo, the security situationin the Balkans is still ‘‘volatile’’ and ‘‘local political leaders andpeople of their respective ethnic groups have failed to embrace thepolitical and social reconciliation considered necessary to build mul-tiethnic, democratic societies and institutions.’’14 In other words, theconditions the Clinton administration and others said would becreated in Bosnia and Kosovo are not, in fact, being created.

At the same time, support for the Balkan missions among theAmerican public and its elected representatives is flimsy. WhenWashington committed U.S. forces to Bosnia in 1995, 55 percent ofthe respondents in a Time/CNN poll disapproved.15 During the airwar against Yugoslavia in 1999, less than 50 percent of those polledconsidered vital U.S. interests at stake.16 In May 2000, the U.S. Senatenarrowly defeated a bill cosponsored by then–Senate Armed Ser-vices Committee chairman John W. Warner (R-Va.) that would havepulled U.S. troops out of Kosovo by July 2001.17 The new Congress—which is almost evenly divided between the two major politicalparties—is likely to remain lukewarm in its support for U.S. involve-ment in the Balkans. And the longer the Bush administration delays

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extricating U.S. military forces from the region, the more likely itwill be held accountable if anything goes wrong.

Meanwhile, Europeans have demonstrated an increasing interestin developing their own security and defense structures and haveannounced plans to create a sizable emergency force of their own.The catalyst for this development was the U.S.-led Kosovo air war,which dramatized for Europeans the vast disparity between theirmilitary power and America’s, especially the U.S. superiority at thehigh end of military technology. At the European Union’s December1999 Helsinki summit, the idea of a common European Securityand Defense Policy was cast as a way to give Europeans a formalmechanism for crisis management and to develop their capabilitiesin key military areas. In November 2000 the EU began to give teethto this idea by pledging troops and equipment to create its own60,000-strong rapid reaction force (RRF) by 2003.

An Opportunity for the Bush Administration

It is unclear what course the Bush administration will chart fortransatlantic relations. Practically, however, it should welcome theESDP and RRF, because these initiatives offer the most realistic hopefor the United States to extricate itself from Bosnia and Kosovo andto avoid similar open-ended commitments in the future. Moreover,by diverting American forces from their primary deterrence andwar-fighting missions to Bosnia-style peacekeeping missions, it ismore difficult for Washington to meet security challenges outsideEurope. In fact, far from augmenting America’s grand strategic pos-ture, in important ways Bosnia-style missions have become a yokethat limits U.S. options. More important, Bosnia-style deploymentssaddle the United States with diversions that can potentially cutinto America’s ability to respond to high-intensity contingenciesshould they suddenly arise. This was hinted at in the wake of theSeptember 11, 2001, attacks on the World Trade Center and thePentagon when 900 Marines had to be pulled out of the Balkans tosupport the military build-up against Afghanistan. Should moretroops and equipment be needed in some other future emergency,Washington could find its Balkan commitments competing directlyfor finite manpower and resources.

The time has come for the United States to let the Europeans takecare of the Balkans and similar parochial matters while the United

4


Introduction

States directs its attention to maintaining its (and by extension,Europe’s) global geopolitical interests. This would satisfy PresidentBush’s call for a ‘‘distinctly American internationalism,’’ an interna-tionalism that is fitting of a superpower, and not that of the world’spresumed babysitter.18

Added Benefits

Left unaddressed, the disparity between U.S. defense spendingand European defense spending could undermine the NATO alli-ance. U.S. defense spending accounts for 3.2 percent of Gross Domes-tic Product, while France spends 2.8 percent; the United Kingdom,2.7 percent; Italy, 2.0 percent; Germany, 1.5 percent; and Spain, 1.3percent. Not only do the Europeans spend less, their defense outlaysare declining. Public and congressional support for the NATO alliancein the United States could prove politically untenable over time ifthe burden-sharing gap continues to widen and America’s Europeanallies are seen as free riders.

Added to the growing defense spending disparity is a wideningcapability gap that is leaving the alliance unbalanced—Americansare increasingly the only ones that can do high-intensity war-fight-ing, while the Europeans sit on the sidelines. Indeed, during theKosovo air campaign, a U.S. Air Force general said the shortcomingsof European aircraft were so glaring—such as the lack of night-vision capability and absence of laser-guided weapon systems—thatEuropean sorties had to be curtailed to avoid unnecessary risks toother alliance pilots and civilians on the ground.19 Unless remediesare found, he added, the alliance will be riddled with ‘‘second-and third-team members.’’20 Europe’s desire for more independenceshould be encouraged precisely because it could lead to reducingthe potentially poisonous burden-sharing and capability imbalancesbetween the United States and its allies.

The post-Milosevic political, economic, and social transition ofYugoslavia will also be helped by Europeanizing the Balkan mis-sions. While Yugoslav president Vojislav Kostunica announced inNovember 2000 that he was prepared to restore diplomatic ties withthe United States, Germany, France, and Britain, he is likely to keepthe United States at arm’s length because of bitterness among theSerbian people over the U.S.-led 1999 bombing, the occupation ofKosovo, and the decade-long economic sanctions that were imposed

5



on Yugoslavia. Belgrade’s mistrust of the United States may leaveEuropean states better positioned to work with Yugoslavia’s newgovernment than Washington. And if a U.S. objective in the Balkansis not to harm the chances that Yugoslavia will become stable, pros-perous, and integrated into Europe, doing so in a way that engrainsEurope’s primary role there should be encouraged.

Organization of the Book

Part I of this book will review the West’s postwar occupation ofboth Bosnia and Kosovo. The first chapter, written by the CatoInstitute’s vice president for foreign policy and defense studies, TedGalen Carpenter, argues that the West’s democracy-building effortsin Bosnia have been anything but democratic. In the section’s nextchapter, David Chandler, a research fellow with the Policy ResearchInstitute at Leeds Metropolitan University, argues that the West’sadministration of Kosovo has had a disempowering effect on thelocal population. Finally, journalist Stephen Schwartz argues in hischapter that the reflexive anti-nationalism of Western administratorshas led them to embrace former communist politicians and to adoptauthoritarian practices in both Bosnia and Kosovo.

Part II of the book presents a variety of scenarios for exiting theBalkans. Robert M. Hayden, director of the Center for Russian andEast European Studies at the University of Pittsburgh, makes the casethat what is needed in Bosnia is a return to the Dayton Agreement asit was originally understood when it ended the Bosnian war in 1995,‘‘as a partition plan, de facto legitimating the separate Muslim, Serb,and Croat polities within Bosnia, but continuing to deny them sepa-rate international legal personalities.’’ Marquette University profes-sor Raju G. C. Thomas suggests in his chapter that the best optionfor getting out of Bosnia and Kosovo might be to play the ball whereit now lies and ‘‘enforce the prevailing territorial status quo as of2001.’’ The final two chapters, written by John C. Hulsman, seniorEuropean analyst at the Heritage Foundation, and E. Wayne Merry,senior scholar at the Lester B. Pearson Canadian International Peace-keeping Training Center in Nova Scotia, look at two mechanismsby which NATO’s operations in the Balkans might be nearly fullyEuropeanized.

6


Introduction

Since the essays included here come from analysts and observerswith differing perspectives and professional backgrounds, they dis-agree on a few points here and there. What all the book’s contributorsagree on, however, is that it is time for new thinking on the Balkans,not the same old thinking redoubled.

Notes1. Quoted in Michel Cooper, ‘‘Cheney Urges Rethinking Use of U.S. Ground

Forces in Bosnia and Kosovo, New York Times, September 1, 2000, p. A22.2. Quoted in Michael Gordon, ‘‘Bush Would Stop U.S. Peacekeeping in Balkan

Fights,’’ New York Times, October 21, 2000, p. A1.3. Quoted in James Kitfield, ‘‘Peacekeepers’ Progress,’’ National Journal, December

23, 2000.4. Quoted in Alan Sipress, ‘‘Powell Vows to Consult Allies on Key Issues,’’ Wash-

ington Post, February 28, 2001, p. A22.5. Ibid.6. Quoted in Gordon.7. Cooper.8. Quoted in James Hider, ‘‘Powell Tells Kosovo Leaders to Focus on Poll, Not

Independence,’’ Agence France Presse, April 13, 2001.9. Quoted in Bill Sammon, ‘‘Bush Asks Europe to Boost Balkans Peacekeeping

Role, Washington Times, July 25, 2001, p. A1.10. Ibid.11. Ibid.12. Quoted in ‘‘The People’s Justice in the Balkans,’’ editorial, Washington Times,

August 6, 2001, p. A16.13. Ibid.14. General Accounting Office, Balkans Security: Current and Projected Factors Affect-

ing Regional Stability (Washington, April 2000), p. 27.15. Brett Schaefer, ‘‘Public Opinion on U.S. Foreign Policy and Defense Issues,’’

Issues ’96: The Candidate’s Briefing Book (Washington: Heritage Foundation, 1996).16. American Enterprise Institute compilation of public opinion data on Kosovo

cited in Steven Metz, ‘‘The American Army in the Balkans: Strategic Alternativesand Implications,’’ Strategic Studies Institute, U.S. Army War College, January 2001,p. 20.

17. Eric Pianin and Helen Dewar, ‘‘Senate Sinks Proposal for Kosovo WithdrawalDeadline,’’ Washington Post, May 19, 2000, p. A10.

18. Quoted in Dan Balz, ‘‘Bush Favors Internationalism,’’ Washington Post, Novem-ber 20, 1999, p. A1.

19. William Drozdiak, ‘‘U.S. Allies’ Air Power Was Lacking in Conflict,’’ OrlandoSentinel, July 11, 1999, p. G1.

20. Ibid.

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PART I

BOSNIA AND KOSOVO IN PERSPECTIVE

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1. High-Handed Nation Building: TheWest Brings ‘‘Democracy’’ to Bosnia

Ted Galen Carpenter

With the signing of the Dayton Agreement in December 1995, theWestern powers committed themselves not only to help bring peaceto Bosnia but to help build a viable democratic political system inthat country.1 More than five years later, it is all too apparent thatthe results bear almost no resemblance to the original intentions.Far from becoming a functioning democratic state, Bosnia is littlemore than a colony of the West run by increasingly arrogant andautocratic international officials.

A potent symbol of the political reality in Bosnia was conveyedin a January 2000 front-page story in the Washington Post. Accordingto the Post account, the three members of Bosnia’s collective presi-dency were called to the New York home of U.S. ambassador to theUnited Nations Richard Holbrooke, the principal architect of theDayton Agreement. Once there, they were pressured by Holbrooketo sign a new three-page statement affirming an intensified commit-ment to political cooperation and measures for greater ethnic integra-tion. The three elected presidents responded that the document wasfar too complex and had far too many political ramifications forthem to sign it without careful, extended scrutiny. All three menalso told Holbrooke they had social commitments that evening andsimply did not have the time to give the document an adequatereview. Holbrooke reportedly responded that they could not leaveuntil they accepted the document. Ultimately they did so, and theU.S. government hailed the accord as another step toward ethnicreconciliation in Bosnia.2

The spectacle of a U.S. policymaker holding the top elected officialsof another country hostage until they agreed to a diktat from Wash-ington should be a jarring image for anyone who supports democ-racy. Yet that episode in Holbrooke’s apartment is an appropriatesymbol of the policy that the West has been pursuing in Bosnia. It

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is a policy based on disdain for the electoral process, a fondness forruling by decree, and contempt for even the most basic standardsof freedom of the press. It is in every respect a perversion of demo-cratic norms.

Muzzling the Media

One of the most troubling aspects of the international nation-building mission in Bosnia is the lack of respect shown for freedomof expression. From the beginning, officials from the North AtlanticTreaty Organization, the Organization for Security and Cooperationin Europe, and the United Nations showed an almost casual willing-ness to harass or suppress media outlets that were critical of theDayton Agreement, the conduct of the NATO peacekeeping force,or the decisions of the special war crimes tribunal. That trend hasonly grown worse with the passage of time. The flip side of thatpolicy is a belief that media outlets controlled by the internationalauthorities—or by their political allies among the country’s threeethnic groups—are an essential tool in carrying out the provisionsof the Dayton Agreement. Beyond that goal, there is an implicitassumption that a ‘‘tame’’ media would be an essential componentin the transformation of Bosnia into the cooperative, multiethnicmodel society visualized by the nation-building bureaucracy. Theresult has been a rigged, manipulated, and censored media moretypical of those found in dictatorships than in democratic countries.

Western officials portray their actions in a different light, of course,contending that they are endeavoring to introduce greater mediadiversity and a wider range of viewpoints. The UN high representa-tive, the chief international civilian official in Bosnia, complained in1997 that the major political parties controlled most media outletsand that those nationalist elements ‘‘spoke to one nation only.’’ Thepopulation had ‘‘the right to hear other opinions too, and thereforewe are trying to establish a principle of pluralism in public lifethrough the opening of the media.’’3 The OSCE’s Media Branchstressed that outside financial as well as political and moral supportwould be necessary to bring about greater pluralism. ‘‘The OSCEmust join other international organizations in supporting mediaorganizations identified by our regional and field officers and byother international organizations as enriching media pluralism inBosnia, but who must be supported to survive.’’4

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High-Handed Nation Building

The conduct of the international officials, however, suggests that‘‘media pluralism’’ is a synonym for enthusiasm for the DaytonAgreement and the objective of a united, multiethnic Bosnian state.Because the Dayton Agreement gave the OSCE authority to super-vise elections and make certain that they were open, competitive,and honest, OSCE officials argued that they also had an impliedmandate to ensure freedom of expression and the press. To thatend, OSCE’s Provisional Election Commission drew up an electoralcode of conduct in early 1996 that included specific standards forjournalists and their media outlets. The PEC also created a MediaExperts Commission, headed by former U.S. State Department offi-cial Robert Frowick, to monitor compliance with those standards.The MEC held its initial meeting in May 1996, and shortly thereafterheld a roundtable discussion with Bosnian journalists and broadcasteditors. It was apparent from that discussion that the MEC hadsome rather peculiar ideas about the permissible extent of debate onpolitical issues. For example, MEC functionaries chastised journalistsfor using the ‘‘rhetorical jargon of war’’ in their news accounts.Referring to the ‘‘Bosnian Serb entity’’ or the ‘‘Muslim-Croat federa-tion’’ rather than focusing on Bosnia-Herzegovina as a nation wasdeemed an example of such warlike jargon. As one scholar notes inhis detailed study of the West’s nation-building effort in Bosnia,‘‘Terms in common use in the international media were held tobe inflammatory in Bosnia itself, and the framework was alreadyestablished that the media in Bosnia should be pressured to playdown the segmented reality of Bosnian politics and to challenge thenationalist outlook.’’5

The standards became even more restrictive as Bosnia’s municipalelections approached in 1997. PEC rules required all Bosnian officialsto adhere to the provisions of a new document, the Standards ofProfessional Conduct for the Media and Journalists, adopted in Marchof that year. Many of those standards seemed reasonable, even high-minded, but they were also terribly vague. For example, all mediawere obligated to report the news in a manner that ‘‘is factuallyaccurate, complete, fair, equitable, and unbiased.’’ Moreover, jour-nalists ‘‘shall not engage in distortion, suppression, falsification,misrepresentation and censorship, including systematic omission ofinformation.’’6 Some forms of reporting were emphatically out ofbounds. ‘‘Media and journalists shall avoid inflammatory language

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which encourages discrimination, prejudice, or hatred, or whichencourages violence, or contributes to the creation of a climate inwhich violence could occur.’’7

There were two major problems with such standards. First, despitethe euphemism of ‘‘standards of professional conduct,’’ the docu-ment was a censorship code replete with enforcement provisions.It seemed more than a little inconsistent to teach the people of Bosniathe virtues of Western-style freedom of the press by starting withthe imposition of far-reaching restrictions on that freedom. Second,the standards were so vague that international officials had virtuallyunlimited latitude in interpreting them. The potential for bias, arbi-trary decisions, and the outright suppression of views disliked byOSCE, NATO, or UN policymakers was all too real.

The potential of the standards to chill meaningful press freedomswas mild, though, compared to the potential of the enforcementprovisions to do so. For example, a journalist or media outlet accusedof violating the standards was required to provide the MEC ‘‘anyinformation, including copies of documents, or any materials,including audio and video tapes’’ requested by MEC officials.8 Itshould be noted that members of the American press corps have fordecades resisted attempts by law enforcement agencies to subpoenaaudio- or videotapes or reporters’ notes or force disclosure of theidentity of a source. A good many American journalists have goneto jail rather than sacrifice that principle. Yet, there has been littleprotest from that same journalistic community about imposing suchrequirements on the Bosnian press.

MEC functionaries were given breathtakingly broad authority toimpose penalties and ‘‘remedies’’ for violations of the standards.They could require alleged violators ‘‘to publish or broadcast specificmaterials, at a time and in a manner determined by the MEC.’’Moreover, media outlets could be required to do such penance evenif other parties committed violations. ‘‘Publications or broadcast sta-tions can be required by the MEC to publish or broadcast suchmaterials to redress Government or authorities violations.’’9 In addi-tion to such so-called remedial measures, the MEC was given avirtual blank check to impose clearly punitive measures (includingfines ‘‘or any other appropriate penalties’’) or to take ‘‘other appro-priate action.’’10 The extent of the ‘‘other appropriate action’’ provi-sion became evident in May 1997 when the high representative

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acquired the authority to suspend or curtail any media broadcastor publication the output of which contravened the letter or the spiritof the Dayton Agreement.11

It quickly became apparent how the self-anointed media monitorswould use their vast powers to make a mockery of freedom ofexpression in Bosnia. Even before the 1997 guidelines went intoeffect, the intent to silence nationalist voices was evident. The SerbianDemocratic Party (SDS) was ordered to forfeit $50,000 for statementsthat allegedly threatened the territorial integrity of Bosnia and, there-fore, the Dayton Agreement. What was especially notable was thereason for the alleged violation. SDS speakers were penalized notbecause they directly challenged the Dayton Agreement’s provis-ions, but because they ‘‘continually stressed the substantial auton-omy granted to the Republika Srpska (RS) in the General FrameworkAgreement, to the total exclusion of any reference to the unity ofBosnia-Herzegovina.’’12

In June 1997, the MEC ruled that a Croat-controlled televisionstation in the city of Mostar had broadcast an ‘‘inflammatory’’ speechby a former police commander. The MEC then admonished theeditor-in-chief of the station and ordered him to broadcast an edito-rial reply condemning the speech. Instead, the station rebroadcastthe original speech and followed with an editorial endorsing mostof its content. The MEC ruled that the editorial was also inflamma-tory and ordered the station to broadcast an OSCE-prepared state-ment on the evening news for four consecutive days. If the stationdid not comply, the Croat political party that had provided it withfinancial support would have candidates stricken from the ballotfor an upcoming municipal election.13

As the Mostar episode indicated, defiance of MEC edicts wasguaranteed to bring the full wrath of the international bureaucratsdown on recalcitrant journalists. That point was underscored inSeptember 1997 when Serb Radio and Television, based in the nation-alist stronghold of Pale, signed an agreement under duress to refrainfrom ‘‘inflammatory reporting’’ against the NATO-led StabilizationForce (SFOR) and international organizations supporting the DaytonAgreement. Coercing a station to agree to such terms was badenough, but the diktat also required the station to provide an hourof prime-time programming each day for the airing of other politicalviews and to give the high representative a weekly half-hour prime-time slot.14

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SRT broadcasters committed a fatal act of defiance the followingmonth. A video of a press conference by the special war crimestribunal prosecutor, Louise Arbour, had been given to SRT withorders to broadcast it in its entirety. SRT edited the tape, however,and added editorial comments equating SFOR to the Nazi occupa-tion during World War II and charging that the war crimes tribunalwas a biased political instrument directed against the Serbs. Thataction was considered intolerable by the high representative’s office.SRT apologized and promptly rebroadcast an unedited version ofthe press conference. High representative Carlos Westendorpspurned the compliance as ‘‘too little, too late’’ and ordered the Palebroadcasts closed down entirely. NATO troops immediately movedin and seized the transmitters.15 When the stations were reopened,the operation was placed under the full control of a Serb factionfavored by the United States and its NATO allies—the so-calledBanja Luka faction headed by Bosnian Serb president Biljana Plavsic.That step was taken only after Plavsic agreed that all broadcastersbrought in as replacements would first be ‘‘retrained’’ by foreignprofessionals and that a foreign official would temporarily supervisethe broadcasts.16 The degree of arrogance now infecting the interna-tional authorities can be gauged by the comment of Duncan Bulli-vant, the spokesman for the Office of the High Representative. ‘‘Weare in a position where we can do what we want with the transmit-ter sites.’’17

Even the change of management to Serbs loyal to Plavsic didnot fully reassure Westendorp and his colleagues. The followingFebruary, an international administrator was appointed to overseeeditorial content.18 In the spring of 1998, the occupying powers cre-ated a permanent tribunal to oversee the media. The charter creatingthat agency institutionalized the rules that had been promulgatedby the MEC—in particular the authority to impose fines, require amedia outlet to publicly apologize for news stories or editorialsdeemed inflammatory or inaccurate, and to revoke licenses. The newentity, the Independent Media Commission, was also empowered tolicense (or deny applications) for all radio and television stations inBosnia and to ensure that they operated according to ‘‘internationallyaccepted standards.’’19

Westendorp’s action against SRT belied the arguments that thegoal of the international authorities has been to promote greater

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media diversity in Bosnia. The comments of Western officials at thetime suggested a very different motive. The seizure of the transmit-ters ‘‘shows we are willing to take tough, hard measures to makesure there is no mucking around with the Dayton peace process,’’said then British defense secretary (later NATO Secretary General)George Robertson.20 NATO’s action certainly sent a message thatany criticism of the Dayton Agreement within Bosnia was likely tobe silenced.

Shutting down a media outlet for airing critical—even unsavory—views is troubling enough, but the subsequent steps were evenworse. The high representative did not open the process to biddingby private organizations that might have wanted to operate one ormore of the transmitters. Instead, control was merely passed to acompeting political faction favored by the West. (How committedthat faction was to a diversity of viewpoints became apparent inJuly 1998 when the government fired en masse the editorial staffsof 16 local broadcast stations.)21 Westendorp’s maneuver stronglysuggests that he and other international officials were not interestedin fostering a free press; they merely wanted a tame press. Theappointment of an international administrator provided additionalevidence of that motive as did the subsequent creation of the Inde-pendent Media Commission.

The rationale of the nation builders is that steps had to be takento weaken the alleged stranglehold of the nationalist parties on themedia. In defending the seizure of the SRT transmitters, RichardHolbrooke noted, ‘‘Some argued that this action was a violation ofthe Serb right to freedom of expression. This argument was back-ward: in fact, the Bosnian Serbs had ruthlessly suppressed all mediaexcept their own.’’22 Holbrooke’s argument does not stand up toscrutiny. There was little evidence of media sources being hamperedby the Bosnian authorities. Merely because the media outlets thatwere opposed to the main nationalist parties generally remainedmarginal did not prove that they were being restricted. In fact, itwould appear that Bosnian citizens had a wide and varied choiceof media sources.

The data confirm this analysis. In mid-1998, at a time when theinternational authorities were tightening their media controlsbecause of an alleged lack of information diversity, there were some270 media organizations in the Muslim-Croat federation and an

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additional 220 in the Republika Srpska—virtually double the num-bers that existed at the end of the war. Those outlets included 156radio stations, 52 television stations, 5 daily newspapers, and 20periodicals. That is an extraordinary saturation for a country thesize of Bosnia. Indeed, some media experts have argued that ratherthan an inadequate range of views, ‘‘there are more media thanthe market can realistically sustain.’’23 Even the International CrisisGroup, one of the loudest proponents of the nation-building missionin Bosnia, concedes, ‘‘The scale of the alternative [non-nationalist]media and the number of journalists is out of proportion to the sizeof the population.’’24 What the International Crisis Group did notsay was that many of the media outlets that lacked significant audi-ences had been generously funded by the high representative’s officeand other Western sources, both public and private. Those outletswere widely viewed by the people of Bosnia as nothing more thanpaid mouthpieces for the international authorities.25

At the time the Independent Media Commission was created,OSCE spokesman Simon Haselock asserted, ‘‘What we’re trying todo is put in place a regime that offers a legal framework thatimproves and guarantees press freedom. It is not about censor-ship.’’26 Yet, less than a year later the Commission ordered a BosnianSerb television station off the air because its coverage of the Kosovocrisis was deemed inflammatory and unbalanced. Charges includedthat the station failed to mention that the forces of Serbia’s presidentSlobodan Milosevic had driven Albanian Kosovars from their homesand that the station portrayed Serbia as a victim of NATO aggres-sion.27 That was a troubling escalation of the campaign to restrictthe Bosnian media. The previous acts of censorship had dealt withallegedly inappropriate coverage of developments inside Bosnia,using the rationale that such coverage threatened to underminethe Dayton Agreement. This latest action sought to dictate mediacoverage of events outside Bosnia. Nor was the April closure of thetelevision station an isolated episode. Earlier that month, NATOspokesman Lt. Col. J. David Scanlon stated that the alliance wasvery concerned about the quality of some media reports in theBosnian Serb republic. The Independent Media Commissionexpressed frustration that an address by Secretary of State MadeleineAlbright, translated into Serbian, appeared on Bosnian Serb televi-sion ‘‘only under direct order’’ of the Commission.28 Apparently

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freedom of the press in Bosnia now means that media outlets canbe ordered by international bureaucrats to transmit statements bya foreign official dealing with events in a neighboring country. Onedoubts seriously whether James Madison and other architects of theFirst Amendment in the U.S. Constitution would recognize such aperverted concept of press freedoms. Indeed, the restrictions on theBosnia media go far beyond those found even in West Europeancountries, whose standards on freedom of the press tend to be signifi-cantly less libertarian than those in the United States.

One of the more depressing aspects of the stifling of freedom ofexpression in Bosnia is the dearth of criticism from alleged defendersof that freedom in the United States and other Western countries.The New York Times did accuse Washington of taking ‘‘dangerousshort cuts’’ in pursuit of its Bosnia policy. One example cited wasthe Clinton administration’s approval of ‘‘military force to driveultranationalist broadcasters from the airwaves.’’ A better approach,according to the Times, and one ‘‘more consistent with free speechvalues, would be to adopt more effective programs to help indepen-dent local media compete for audience attention.’’29 On another occa-sion the Times criticized the portion of the draft charter of the Inde-pendent Media Commission that empowered the agency to fine orshut down media outlets that violated vague standards of coverage.The licensing provision, however, the editors found acceptable, andthey added that licensing requirements should ‘‘include the airingof competing viewpoints.’’30 In other words, the Times wanted abroadcast regulatory system with a strong ‘‘equal time’’ require-ment—the requirement the United States abandoned nearly a decadeearlier because of its inherent chilling effect on the airing of contro-versial views.

Unfortunately, that tepid and conditional defense of media rightsin Bosnia was typical of the response among the U.S. media. Adistressing number of American journalists actually defended thecensorship regime in Bosnia. Columnist Anthony Lewis, who rou-tinely portrays himself as a staunch defender of the First Amend-ment, urged NATO to shut down the Bosnian Serb radio and televi-sion stations more than a month before that action occurred. ‘‘Thatis a hard thing for a believer in the First Amendment to say. Butwe have no more obligation there [in Bosnia] than we would havehad in post-war Germany to let Goebbels stay on the air.’’31

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That same rationale—that any media outlet that expresses racistor ‘‘intolerant nationalist’’ views should be silenced—has gained analarming foothold not only among officials in Western governmentsbut even among journalists. Columnist Georgie Anne Geyer, likeLewis, compared the Bosnian Serb media to that of Nazi Germany.She added that in Bosnia, ‘‘as in so many other areas, the UnitedStates had the power to change the media story. The Western militar-ies have the technical means to fly over a country and knock outtheir TV and radio—and even replace the original programming.’’Geyer clearly thinks that is a splendid idea, but bemoans that ‘‘thereis still no resolve’’ to embrace such a tactic.32

It is more than a little distressing to see journalists advocatingthe forcible suppression of views they dislike. Nor is that attitudeconfined to questions about how to deal with Bosnia. The rationalethat media outlets that transmit inappropriate views are merelyinstruments of propaganda that can and should be silenced was therationale for the NATO bombing strikes against radio and televisionstations in Serbia during the 1999 Balkan war. And again, the levelof criticism of that action within the Western journalistic communityranged from tepid to barely discernable. Even worse, the enthusiasmfor politically correct censorship has become a growth industrythroughout the circles that embrace nation-building missions byNATO, OSCE, and the United Nations. Jamie F. Metzl, a former UNhuman rights officer, published a major article in Foreign Affairsopenly advocating a campaign of ‘‘media intervention.’’33 The goalof such a campaign would be to ‘‘monitor, counter, and block radioand television broadcasts that incite widespread violence in crisiszones around the world.’’34 And who would decide what broadcastswere guilty of such offenses? Apparently, the judges would be thesame international officials who would carry out the countermea-sures. Such countermeasures would include jamming the offendingtransmissions and replacing them with ‘‘peace broadcasting’’ ofunbiased—or at least more responsible news and information into crisiszones.35 Not surprisingly, Metzl is an admirer of the measures takento suppress obstreperous media in Bosnia. Also not surprisingly, oneof the admirers of Metzl’s broader concept was Richard Holbrooke—although he bemoaned the fact that such an ambitious objective ona global basis was probably not practical at the moment.36

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In other words, there is more than a slight danger that the Bosniamodel of media control may become the norm in future nation-building enterprises. One can hardly imagine a better way of engen-dering cynicism and anger toward the West among the populationsof target countries. The lesson being conveyed is that the West’s realdefinition of freedom of the press is the freedom to air views favoredby Western authorities. After watching NATO troops occupy theSRT stations, one peasant woman in Pale said to a reporter that thestation spoke for her and many other Bosnian Serbs. ‘‘I thought thatin the West everyone has a right to be heard,’’ she said, ‘‘What aboutpeople like me?’’37 To those in the West who aren’t hypocrites onthe issue of freedom of expression, it is a very good question.

Rigging Elections

In addition to manipulating and stifling the media in Bosnia, theinternational authorities have used questionable tactics with regardto a core component of any democratic political system: the holdingof elections. Candidates for public office have been threatened withremoval from the ballot repeatedly by the high representative orthe PEC. That tactic gained prominence as early as the period leadingto national and entity (the Republika Srpska and the Muslim-CroatFederation) elections in September 1996, barely nine months after thesigning of the Dayton Agreement. In July the PEC amended its rulesto specify that any political party that allowed a person indicted bythe war crimes tribunal to hold ‘‘a party position or function’’ wouldbe ‘‘deemed ineligible to participate in the elections.’’38 (The DaytonAgreement has merely specified that no one under indictment couldhold any appointive or elective public office.) The PEC amendmentwas clearly directed against former Bosnian Serb president RadovanKaradzic’s continuing influence over the SDS. It soon became appar-ent that the international authorities were not content with barringKaradzic from a party post. Just four days before the election, theauthorities warned the SDS that even displaying Karadzic’s likenesson posters would lead to the party’s disqualification.39

The extent and arbitrary nature of the disqualification processgrew worse in the lead-up to the September 1997 municipal elections.A month before the balloting, the OSCE had removed more than 50candidates, the overwhelming majority of them from the SDS andother nationalist parties such as the Croatian Democratic Union

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(HDZ). Even when the international officials retreated from the mostoutrageous examples of interference, it was solely because of tacticalconsiderations, not any newfound respect for democratic norms. Forexample, OSCE head ambassador Robert Frowick overturned an11th-hour attempt by the election commission to disqualify the SDSfrom fielding candidates in its stronghold in and around Pale. Buthe stated that he did so out of concern for the safety of internationalelection supervisors throughout the Republika Srpska, not becausehe believed the decision was wrong.40 Whenever the internationalauthorities thought they could safely get away with mass disqualifi-cations, they did so. For example, they removed all nine candidatesof the HDZ from the ballot in the city of Zepce. Such tactics turnedthe elections into something of a farce.41

Matters did not improve the following year in the national andentity elections. Election commissioners disqualified 9 Bosnian Serband 15 Bosnian Croat candidates in the final stages of the electioncampaign. Four of the latter were disqualified because of allegedlybiased television coverage in their favor by television stations in theneighboring country of Croatia.42 The authorities even toyed with theidea of disqualifying Radical Party presidential candidate (and ultimatewinner) Nikola Poplasen for a television appearance in Serbia on theeve of the election. Such an appearance, some election watchdogsargued, violated the 24-hour ‘‘media blackout period’’ imposed inBosnia.43 (One wonders just how far the international bureaucrats inBosnia thought their writ extended. Would a Poplasen appearance ona program in Russia or Britain have put his candidacy in jeopardy?)

The habit of disqualifying candidates disliked by the internationaladministrators reached its apogee (at least thus far) in the periodleading up to the April 2000 municipal elections. On that occasion,the authorities disqualified the entire Radical Party slate from theballot in the Republika Srpska. Since that party’s candidate had wonthe presidency in the previous national elections, the action wasanalogous to disqualifying all the candidates of the Republican orDemocratic Party in an American election.

Routinely harassing and disqualifying candidates they dislike isnot the only method international authorities have used to attemptto manipulate election results. Indeed, skewing the voter registrationlists has been an even more pervasive tactic. Instead of requiringvoters to vote in the district where they currently reside, the process

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in Bosnia allowed voters to vote in the place where they resided in1991 before the civil war erupted, in the place of their current resi-dency, or in the place they wished to live in the future. The OSCEstrongly encouraged displaced persons (nearly 37 percent of thoseeligible to vote) to register in their prewar locales. To discouragevoters from choosing the ‘‘future locality’’ option, the OSCE tight-ened the registration rules going into the 1997 municipal elections.Displaced persons within Bosnia (some 18 percent of the electorate)had that option taken away entirely. Refugees abroad (some 19percent of the electorate) could choose the option only by providing‘‘clear and convincing documentary evidence’’ that the voter had a‘‘preexisting’’ connection with that locale.44

The result was that most voters cast ballots in their current placeof residence, but a sizable minority—including virtually all of thoseresiding abroad—voted for candidates in their prewar places ofresidence. Votes by the latter contingent amounted to the creationof ‘‘rotten boroughs,’’ since most of the refugees had little prospectof ever returning to their prewar homes.45 Their votes, however,greatly altered election results in several places. In the 1997 munici-pal elections, six municipalities actually elected displaced-persongovernments.46 More than a fifth of the parliament in the BosnianSerb republic consisted of delegates of Muslim parties ‘‘elected’’ byvoters unlikely ever to set foot in the territory of their district. Indeed,the victory of the West’s favored candidate for the Serb seat onBosnia’s three-member presidency over his nationalist rival was duealmost entirely to the votes cast by some 200,000 displaced (primarilyMuslim) voters.

Allowing voters to cast ballots in that fashion helped preserve thefiction that more than a million refugees would someday return totheir prewar homes and that Bosnia will become a tolerant multieth-nic state. But it was also seen by many in Bosnia as a cynical ployby the West to dilute the power of the nationalist parties. Whetherintended or not, enabling massive numbers of nonresidents to castballots delegitimizes the democratic process. Imagine, for example,the potential effect of such a rule were it applied to other countriesthat experienced civil wars and large refugee flows. If the Palestin-ians who fled their homes in what is now Israel during the 1948war could cast ballots in Israeli elections, the face of Israel’s politics(and the nature of Israel itself) would be very different. The same

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could be said of the Hindus who had to flee Pakistan (and theMuslims who had to flee India) to escape the bloodletting that fol-lowed the partition of the Indian subcontinent in 1947. If Greek-Cypriots who were expelled from northern Cyprus by invadingTurkish troops in 1974 could cast ballots for candidates in theirprewar home districts, the so-called Turkish Republic of NorthernCyprus would likely have a Greek-Cypriot majority parliament. Onecould cite several other examples.

The refugees in all of those situations undoubtedly suffered griev-ous injustices, and in an ideal world their property would be restoredand they would be able to return safely to their homes and enjoyfull political rights. But the reality is that they are rarely able to doso. It merely compounds the problem to pretend otherwise andcreate a political system that is based on a convenient fantasy ratherthan reality. That is what the international authorities have done inBosnia, and it has a profoundly corrosive effect on the concept ofdemocracy.

Those authorities have shown contempt for the political process inBosnia in other ways as well. When Bosnian Serb president Plavsicbroke with hard-line Serb nationalists in the summer of 1997, theinternational organizations operating in Bosnia did not maintain adiscreet neutrality but instead openly displayed favoritism. When shedissolved the parliament and called for new elections, the Serb repub-lic’s constitutional court ruled that her actions were illegal. The OSCEsimply overruled the court and proceeded to organize the elections.When the parliament supported the court decision and declared herdissolution of the legislative body illegal, OSCE ignored that measureas well.47 NATO forces in essence became her palace guard, helpingher faction gain control of radio and television stations, military out-posts, and police stations. It was clear from the outset that Plavsic’spolitical support was shaky at best and her actions of dubious legality.It was equally clear that the Western governments cared little aboutany of those matters; she was their client—a ‘‘reasonable’’ Serb whowas prepared to implement the Dayton Agreement—and they wereprepared to lavish financial aid on her government and support herby fair means or foul. Some of the nation-building personnel weresurprisingly candid in expressing their cynicism. ‘‘She is a creatureof our creation,’’ admitted one United Nations official. A Westerndiplomat stated, ‘‘We have to help her build a base of support’’—

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implying that she didn’t have one of her own.48 The transparenteffort of the Western powers to support Plavsic regardless of thewishes of the Bosnian Serb population led veteran New York Timescorrespondent Chris Hedges to observe, ‘‘President Plavsic, essen-tially a figurehead, is always accompanied by her bodyguards, neverstrays more than a few blocks from her heavily guarded office, hasno budget, and is propped up by NATO troops who seized thiscity’s [Banja Luka’s] police station last week.’’49

When the RS parliament sought to resolve the crisis by authorizingnew parliamentary and presidential elections, NATO and OSCEbalked, fearing that Plavsic would lose such a contest. Once again,the international authorities intervened in the republic’s internalpolitics, supporting Plavsic’s position that only elections for parlia-ment should take place. OSCE’s explanation for its stance was thatfor ‘‘practical reasons’’ a presidential election before the onslaughtof the usually brutal Balkan winter was simply not feasible.50 OSCEspokesmen did not explain why it would have been more difficultfor voters to mark two places on the ballot instead of one underdifficult weather conditions.

Even with the promises of Western aid if the Bosnian Serbs voted‘‘correctly,’’ and a significant contingent of Muslim delegates electedby displaced voters, the election left control of the new RS parliamentin doubt. Candidates endorsed by Plavsic won only 15 of the 83seats, but her Western allies worked diligently to line up additionalsupport and to block the nationalists from regaining control of theparliament. At one point, when it looked as though milder measuresmight fail, the high representative threatened to remove ‘‘obstruc-tionist deputies,’’ an action that would have guaranteed the pro-Plavsic forces a comfortable victory.51 The combination of threatsand the lure of Western aid finally prevailed. Plavsic’s choice forprime minister, Milorad Dodik, and a new cabinet were approved,albeit by the narrowest of margins.

Western aid began to flow in impressive amounts as soon as thenew government was in place. By the time the presidential electionwas held in September 1998, the United States alone had pledged$75 million in aid—approximately one-third of the entire budget ofthe Republika Srpska.52 Tens of millions of additional dollars camefrom Western European governments and the OSCE. WashingtonTimes correspondent Philip Smucker described the nature and extentof the support for Plavsic and her faction:

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Mrs. Plavsic’s party was inundated with Western help, bothdirect and indirect. Funding came from the OSCE, the U.S.government and the European Union to provide jobs andinfrastructure. . . . NATO’s Stabilization Force also providedsatellite links for a pro-Plavsic TV station and beamed televi-sion pictures from a special U.S. airplane.53

The assistance was not enough to keep Plavsic in power. Indeed,there were some indications that it may have backfired, angeringBosnian Serbs and consolidating her image as a Western puppet.Whatever the reason, she was defeated by Radical Party candidateNikola Poplasen. But anyone who expected the Western powersand the international officials to accept gracefully the verdict of theelectorate was in for a rude awakening. An indication of troublecame just days after the balloting when Westendorp warned thathe could simply remove Poplasen if he proved to be uncooperative.Robert Gelbard, the U.S. special envoy to Bosnia, added, ‘‘This man,in our view, is on probation and has to prove himself as a democraticleader.’’54 The disdain that Westendorp, Gelbard, and other Westernofficials displayed for the democratic process had reached breathtak-ing proportions. If voters had the temerity to elect someone theinternational nation builders didn’t like, they would simply overrulethe voters.

Ousting Elected Officials and Ruling by DecreePoplasen discovered that the threat of removal was not an idle

one. Western leaders made it apparent from the beginning that hehad better choose a prime minister and a cabinet acceptable to them.When Poplasen defied that warning and nominated Dragan Kalinicof the SDS, Washington made its extreme displeasure known andwarned that Bosnian Serbs would suffer a cutoff of aid and otherunspecified penalties if the parliament ratified that choice.55 Indeed,Western policymakers dropped less than subtle hints that the onlyacceptable candidate would be the incumbent, Milorad Dodik.56

Poplasen took the position that the results of the election indicatedthat the population of the RS wanted a different set of leaders anda different set of policies. His defiance proved politically fatal. OnMarch 5, 1998, High Representative Westendorp removed Poplasenfrom office for obstructing the peace process and ‘‘ignoring thewill of the people.’’57 The West’s democratic mission in Bosnia had

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reached sufficiently Orwellian levels that an unelected bureaucratcould oust a duly elected office holder and accuse the latter ofoperating contrary to the will of the people.

Poplasen was not the first elected official to be removed by Bos-nia’s increasingly intrusive nation builders, but he was the mostprominent up to that point. The temptation to remove insufficientlycooperative office holders has only grown with time. The urge topurge reached another peak in November 1999 when the new highrepresentative, Wolfgang Petritsch, fired 22 elected officials, includ-ing two leading figures in the principal Croat and Muslim parties.Not only were the offending politicians removed from office, theywere prohibited from running in the 2000 municipal elections. Alex-andra Stiglmayer, spokesperson for the high representative, told anews conference, ‘‘The dismissed officials are not the officials thatBosnia needs.’’58 The fact that the voters believed differently, sheimplicitly regarded as irrelevant. Petritsch himself displayed thesame patronizing attitude. ‘‘I hope that you will agree that youdeserve politicians who will serve you and not only their own inter-ests,’’ he said in a statement to the Bosnian people. He added thatthe removed officials ‘‘had blocked your road leading to a betterfuture.’’59 Apparently, the voters were too obtuse to recognize thatpoint, since Petritsch decided they had to be protected from thetemptation to vote again for such politicians in the upcomingelection.

As with the disqualification of candidates from the ballot, thearbitrary removal of elected officials has grown more pervasiveover time. In March 2001, Petritsch fired Ante Jelavic—the Croatianmember of Bosnia’s three-member presidency—as well as othersenior officials.60 Their principal offense was to advocate modifyingthe Muslim-Croat Federation so that predominantly Croat areaswould have a status comparable to that of the Republika Srpska.As in the case of his earlier dismissals of elected officials, Petritschalso banned Jelavic from running for elected office in the future,including the presidency.61

The reality is that Bosnia’s international guardians seem congeni-tally uncomfortable with the messy give-and-take of a democraticpolitical system. Petritsch has complained: ‘‘Politics here is too slow,too inefficient. It has not achieved what the country and the peopleneed.’’62 Petritsch and other international officials certainly have not

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shown much respect for even the most basic democratic norms.When Croat nationalists sought to hold a referendum on their pro-posal to divide the Muslim–Croat Federation and create a new politi-cal subentity for their people, not only was it banned from the ballotbut election authorities subsequently took away 10 seats in regionalassemblies that the HDZ had won. That action also had the effectof greatly enhancing the political strength of the more moderateparties favored by the West. An HDZ spokesman aptly termed theploy ‘‘electoral engineering.’’63

When the Croat nationalists continued to push their agenda tocreate a new subentity, Petritsch and his colleagues struck back hard.They ordered the seizure of a leading bank affiliated with the HDZand froze all the accounts. That action punished not only the HDZbut also thousands of pensioners and other small account holderswho needed the money for living expenses. Their plight did notseem to bother Petritsch unduly.64

At the time of the 1998 elections, one prominent Western diplomatstated privately that it might be time for the high representative todispense with all pretense about democracy and turn Bosnia into aprotectorate.65 Other diplomats and representatives of nongovern-mental organizations active in Bosnia had been whispering similardesires for some time. Yet, in terms of substance, it could be arguedthat the international authorities had been running Bosnia as a protec-torate with an increasingly tattered democratic facade. The highrepresentative’s dictatorial tendencies have extended to matterslarge and small. He imposed his own choice for the country’s cur-rency—with a close convertible link to the deutsche mark—and hispreference for the design of new coins. He threatened to impose hischoice of a design for a national automobile license plate. His officeeven controlled the choice of a new Bosnian national anthem,selected by a handpicked commission of academics.66

Bosnia’s Potemkin Democracy

The West’s nation-building enterprise in Bosnia may be calledmany things, but a model of fostering democracy is not one ofthem. Today, Bosnia is a Potemkin state run by legions of autocraticinternational bureaucrats. Wall Street Journal correspondent NeilKing Jr. aptly summarized the situation: ‘‘Thousands of international

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diplomats, human-rights workers and soldiers now run this country-in-the-making as a virtual protectorate, with the Americans by far theweightiest presence. Together, they write the laws, provide security,determine monetary policy and broker deals on everything frommosque construction to the colors of the national flag.’’67 Even Chris-topher Bennett, the International Crisis Group’s Balkans projectdirector, conceded that Bosnia’s so-called democracy was a charadeand admitted that international officials ‘‘rode roughshod over Bos-nia’s democratic institutions.’’68

Little consideration seems to have been given to what lessons thepeople of Bosnia—and, indeed, people throughout the Balkans whohave been watching the process—may draw from witnessing thischarade. The unintended lesson may well be that Western rhetoricabout the virtues of democracy is nothing more than cynical cant.What is seen in Bosnia today is not the evolution of a democraticsystem, but the ugly face of new-style colonialism. The officialswho implement this new, multilateral colonialism may have bettermotives than their predecessors in the now dead European colonialempires that once dominated Asia and Africa, but their charges donot enjoy political rights any more meaningful.

Worst of all, ambitious would-be nation builders throughout theWest apparently see the Bosnia intervention as a template for similarmissions in the Balkans and beyond. The same pattern of mediacontrol, for example, is already emerging in Kosovo. NATO forcesshut down one Albanian-language newspaper in Pristina for pub-lishing a story with the headline ‘‘KFOR Tolerant with Serb Crimi-nals and Tough with Albanians.’’69 The OSCE has also set up aKosovo media board, patterned after its Bosnia counterpart. In fact,the Kosovo media board would appear to have at least as muchcensorship authority over radio and television as does the Bosniaregulatory agency and even more authority over print journalism.70

The micromanagement of the electoral process is also evident. Inter-national officials decreed that one-third of all the candidates forKosovo’s municipal elections in the autumn of 2000 had to bewomen. This was Western-style political correctness and quota poli-tics run amok.

The nation-building effort in Bosnia may have begun as a well-meaning attempt by Western leaders to help construct a pluralistic,democratic society from the ruins of civil war. The results, however,

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confirm Lord Acton’s memorable observation that power corruptsand absolute power corrupts absolutely. And regardless of the initialmotives, the international mission in Bosnia has turned into a mock-ery of every significant democratic principle. It is an experimentthat should be terminated immediately, before it becomes even moreof a symbol of Western hypocrisy and shame.

Notes1. An earlier version of this essay appeared in Mediterranean Quarterly 11, no. 2

(Spring 2000): 1–22.2. R. Jeffrey Smith, ‘‘Outside Efforts Do Little to Mend Fractured Bosnia,’’ Washing-

ton Post, January 23, 2000, p. A25.3. High Representative Carlos Westendorp, quoted in David Chandler, Bosnia:

Faking Democracy after Dayton (London: Pluto Press, 1999), p. 113.4. OSCE Media Development Office, Media Development: Strategies and Activities

for 1997, Sarajevo, Media Development Office, February 12, 1997, p. 4.5. Chandler, p. 116.6. OSCE Provisional Elections Commission, 1997 Rules and Regulations as Amended

and Recompiled from the 1996 Rules, Sarajevo, May 1997, Article 130.7. Ibid. Article 133.8. Ibid. Article 149.9. Ibid. Article 149.

10. Ibid. Article 150.11. Peace Implementation Council, Communique: Political Declaration from the Minis-

terial Meeting of the Peace Implementation Council, Sintra, Portugal, May 30, 1997,www.ohr.int/docu/d970530a.htm. Emphasis added.

12. Quoted in Chandler, p. 122.13. Chandler, p. 124.14. Office of the High Representative Bulletin 59 (September 5, 1997), www.ohr.int/

bulletins/b970905.htm.15. Office of the High Representative Bulletin 61 (October 1, 1997), www.ohr.int/

bulletins/b971001.htm.16. Mike O’Connor, ‘‘NATO Says It Shut Down Serb Radio to Silence Propaganda,’’

New York Times, October 21, 1997, p. A3.17. Quoted in Chris Hedges, ‘‘NATO Troops in Bosnia Silence Karadzic’s Television

Station,’’ New York Times, October 2, 1997, p. A3.18. Office of the High Representative Bulletin 66 (February 23, 1998), ohr.int/bulle-

tins/b980223.19. Philip Shenon, ‘‘Allies Creating Agency to Rule Press in Bosnia,’’ New York

Times, April 24, 1998, p. A1.20. Quoted in Srecko Latal, ‘‘NATO Pulls Plug on Serbs’ TV,’’ Washington Times,

October 2, 1997, p. A11.21. ‘‘Bosnian Serb Government Fires Journalists,’’ Washington Post, July 28, 1998,

p. A16.22. Richard Holbrooke, letter to the editor, Foreign Affairs 77, no.1 (January–

February 1998): 158.

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23. Safax Agency (Sarajevo), ‘‘Media in Bosnia and Herzegovina: SpreadingDemocracy,’’ Media News, March 9, 1998.

24. International Crisis Group, Media in Bosnia and Herzegovina: How InternationalSupport Can Be More Effective, ICG Report, March 7, 1997.

25. Chandler, pp. 129–132.26. Quoted in Shenon, p. A1.27. Aida Cerkez-Robinson, ‘‘Bosnian Serb TV Station Banned,’’ Associated Press,

April 15, 1999.28. Quoted in R. Jeffrey Smith, ‘‘Serbs Get One Side of News,’’ Washington Post,

April 5, 1999, p. A14.29. ‘‘A Flawed Achievement in Bosnia,’’ editorial, New York Times, September 12,

1998, p. A20.30. ‘‘Creating Professional Bosnia Media,’’ editorial, New York Times, April 30, 1998,

p. A36.31. Anthony Lewis, ‘‘Confront the Gangsters,’’ New York Times, August 22, 1997,

p. A27.32. Georgie Anne Geyer, ‘‘Media Controls Role in Bosnia,’’ Washington Times,

November 29, 1997, p. C3.33. Jamie F. Metzl, ‘‘Information Intervention: When Switching Channels Isn’t

Enough,’’ Foreign Affairs 76, no. 6 (November–December 1997): 15–20.34. Ibid., p. 15.35. Ibid., p. 17. Emphasis added.36. Holbrooke. See also Stephen S. Rosenfeld, ‘‘Free to Incite Genocide,’’ Washington

Post, May 1, 1998, p. A15.37. Quoted in O’Connor, ‘‘NATO Says It Shut Down Serb Radio.’’38. Office of the High Representative Bulletin 11, July 22, 1996, www.ohr.int/bulle-

tins/b960722.htm.39. Chandler, p. 120.40. Guy Dinmore, ‘‘Poll Highlights Serb Divisions,’’ Financial Times, 17 September

1997, p. 3; and Lee Hockstader, ‘‘American Voids Order Barring Serb Candidates,’’Washington Post, September 17, 1997, p. A1.

41. Chandler, p. 124.42. Radul Radovanovic, ‘‘Serb Official Banned from Elections,’’ Associated Press,

September 7, 1998.43. Katarina Kratovac, ‘‘Bosnian President Concedes Defeat,’’ Washington Times,

September 22, 1998, p. A19.44. Chandler, pp. 116–17.45. Indeed, Bosnia has become more ethnically segregated in the years since the

approval of the Dayton Accords. See Gary Dempsey, ‘‘Rethinking the Dayton Agree-ment: Bosnia Three Years Later,’’ Cato Institute Policy Analysis no. 327, December14, 1998. Moreover, the pace of refugee returns to their prewar homes slowed in1999 from its already anemic level. International Crisis Group, ‘‘Is Dayton Failing?Bosnia Four Years after the Peace Agreement,’’ October 28, 1999, Annex 7, Part 1,www.crisisweb.org.projects/bosnia/reports/bh51main.htm.

46. International Crisis Group, ICG Analysis of 1997 Municipal Election Results, PressRelease, October 14, 1997.

47. Edward Cody, ‘‘Serb Military Gives Boost to President,’’ Washington Post,August 27, 1997, p. A21; Chris Hedges, ‘‘Bosnia’s Latest Power Struggle Puts Serb

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against Serb,’’ New York Times, August 27, 1997, p. A3; and Raymond Bonner, ‘‘Bel-grade and Moscow Stall Bosnia Vote Desired by U.S.,’’ New York Times, October 16,1997, p. A5.

48. Quoted in Hedges, ‘‘Bosnia’s Latest Power Struggle,’’ p. A3.49. Ibid.50. Raymond Bonner, ‘‘Russia Fails to Block Bosnian Serb Vote,’’ New York Times,

October 20, 1997, p. A3.51. Chris Hedges, ‘‘With West’s Help, Bosnian Serb President May Form Cabinet,’’

New York Times, January 13, 1998, p. A3.52. Mike O’Connor, ‘‘Bosnian Election Tests Western Resolve,’’ New York Times,

September 13, 1998, p. A8.53. Philip Smucker, ‘‘Left Hand Hinders Right on Bosnia,’’ Washington Times,

December 6, 1998, p. A1.54. Quoted in Mike O’Connor, ‘‘Bosnia Results Confirm Serb Hard-Liner’s Victory,

and Gains by Moderates,’’ New York Times, September 26, 1998, p. A6.55. ‘‘U.S. Says Kalinic Approval Would Hurt Bosnian Serbs,’’ Reuters, November

17, 1998.56. ‘‘West Slams Bosnia Serb PM Nomination,’’ Reuters, November 14, 1998.57. ‘‘Envoy Sacks Hardline Bosnian Serb President,’’ Reuters, March 5, 1999.58. Quoted in Darla Sito-Sucic, ‘‘Bosnia Officials Sacked for Obstructing Peace,’’

Reuters, November 29, 1999.59. Quoted in Aida Cerkez-Robinson, ‘‘22 Bosnian Politicians Fired,’’ Associated

Press, November 29, 1999.60. Aida Cerkez-Robinson, ‘‘Croatian Officials Fired for Violating Peace Pact,’’

Washington Times, March 8, 2001, p. A13.61. For Petritsch’s explanation for his action, see Wolfgang Petritsch, ‘‘Why Jelavic

Had to Go,’’ Financial Times, March 8, 2001, p. 11.62. Quoted in Carlotta Gall, ‘‘Bosnian Election Returns Point to Little Change,’’

New York Times, November 20, 2000.63. Quoted in Phillipa Fletcher, ‘‘Serbian, Croatian Nationalists Punished,’’ Wash-

ington Times, November 11, 2000, p. C10.64. ‘‘Bosnian Croats Accuse West, Croatian Prime Minister Worried,’’ Reuters,

April 20, 2001. See also, Daniel McAdams, ‘‘The Great NATO Bank Robbery,’’ Ameri-can Spectator Online, May 7, 2001.

65. Tom Walker, ‘‘Triumph for Radicals Imperils Peace,’’ Times (London), Septem-ber 17, 1998.

66. ‘‘Bosnians Get a Common Denominator: Banknotes,’’ New York Times, January22, 1998; ‘‘Bosnian Mediator Imposes New Coin Design,’’ Agence France-Presse,September 29, 1998; and ‘‘License Plates,’’ Balkan Watch, January 27, 1998.

67. Neil King Jr., ‘‘In Latter Day Bosnia, Foreigners Try to Piece It All BackTogether,’’ Wall Street Journal, August 26, 1998, p. A1.

68. Quoted in ‘‘Report: Bosnian Democracy a Charade,’’ United Press International,September 9, 1998.

69. ‘‘KFOR Shuts Down Albanian Newspaper, Arrests Publisher,’’ Kosovapress,August 9, 1999. Obtained from www.antiwar.com/rep/kosovapress1.html.

70. Garentina Kraja, ‘‘Kosovo Board Planned to Oversee Media,’’ Washington Times,October 18, 1999, p. A15; and ‘‘Kosovo’s Incipient Media Ministry,’’ editorial, NewYork Times, August 30, 1999, p. A22.

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2. Making the World Safe for HumanRights: A Closer Look at Kosovo

David Chandler

Leading international commentators today assert that there is aradical moral shift going on in international affairs: Human rightsis the language of victims and the dispossessed and it cannot bestressed too much that the idea of human rights is a defense againstabuse of power everywhere.1 Similarly, advocates of the new practiceof humanitarian intervention argue that in an increasingly globalizedworld, people need to be seen as human beings first and as citizenssecond, and that human rights should therefore transcend and subor-dinate national governments. In this context, international law basedon state sovereignty and principles of nonintervention is increas-ingly seen as an impediment to human rights and as a cover forstates to deny rights to their citizens.2 Interventions, on the otherhand, are portrayed as efforts to empower vulnerable if not victim-ized peoples, thereby challenging traditional notions of governmentand authority. As human rights advocate Hugo Slim sums up:

At a personal level, rights dignify rather than victimize orpatronize people. They make people more powerful as claim-ants rather than beggars. They reveal them as moral, political,and legal equals. Using [human] rights-talk together with,and on behalf of, those civilians who endure the suffering,atrocity, and impoverishment of war puts them center stagein the prosecution of the war and international response toit. Explicitly recognizing people’s equal rights makes it moredifficult to marginalize their violation as a somehow collat-eral, accidental, or unfortunate outcome of the violence andpolitics of the conflict.3

The international intervention and war over Kosovo, widelygreeted as the first war initiated in the name of human rights, is theleading example of this approach.4 The NATO powers argued theywere morally impelled to intervene in order to protect the human

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rights of Kosovar Albanians, rights that trumped those of Yugoslavterritorial sovereignty.5 Following the end of the conflict, it wasfurther argued, international administration of the province wasnecessary to safeguard the human rights that were reclaimed. Twoyears of international involvement later, there is now an opportunityto test whether the international regime of human rights promotionhas matched its original empowering promise. On a more practicallevel, the Kosovo effort provides the Bush administration with aprototype as it decides whether or not to continue the interventionistapproach of the Clinton years.

What follows is a brief analysis of the extent to which the peopleof Kosovo have actually been empowered by having their humanrights safeguarded by the world’s most powerful states and interna-tional institutions, including NATO, the United Nations, and theOrganization for Security and Cooperation in Europe. The line ofanalysis will begin by clarifying the problem of communal violencein Kosovo, followed by a discussion of democratic accountabilitythere and the likely scenario for the province’s future if the level ofoutside intervention is not changed.

Clarifying the Problem of Violence

Today there are more refugees from Kosovo than there were priorto the 1999 NATO human rights bombing campaign. The provinceis now virtually mono-ethnic, with more than 90 percent of itsnon–ethnic-Albanian population forced to leave out of fear of mur-der, arson, and intimidation.6 At the end of 2000, UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan estimated that around 200,000 Kosovo Serbsand 30,000–40,000 other ethnic minorities had fled.7 The UN HighCommission for Refugees estimates that those figures will remainconstant, at around a quarter-of-a-million people. Few were expectedto return in 2001, due to the inhospitable security situation in theprovince.8 For those minorities that do remain in Kosovo, violenceand attacks are almost a daily occurrence. In February 2001, theUNHCR reported that the situation was still so bad that Serb andRoma live in a virtual state of siege in mono-ethnic enclaves underthe heavy guard of the NATO-led Kosovo Force. The UN Missionin Kosovo, UNHCR, and other humanitarian agencies sustain theseisolated communities with food and other basic assistance.9

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Making the World Safe for Human Rights

The ongoing violence aimed at Serbs and other minorities andthe apparent general lawlessness in Kosovo, however, has done littleto discredit the international administration of the province. That isdespite the fact that the international administrators have taken onresponsibility for law and order by removing the Yugoslav policeand armed forces on one hand, and preventing Kosovo’s majorityethnic Albanians from establishing their own police control on theother. Still, international administrators speak out against interethnicviolence and speak of crime as if it were not occurring under whatis essentially their watch. Indeed, the head of the OSCE Mission inKosovo, Daan Everts, says that the international community hasspent the last two years working hard to create a more democraticand tolerant climate and that the violence is undermining allthose efforts.10

For some commentators the ethnic bloodletting and criminalityare evidence that the international administrators have an anti-Serbagenda and therefore tacitly condone the situation. Other analystsconclude that the levels of interethnic violence indicate the interna-tional administration lacks the political will and resources to imposeits agenda for multiethnic coexistence and human rights in Kosovo.The recommendation that usually follows from both critiques is thatthe international community should have more troops and policeon the ground to keep order in the province. That approach assumesthat the people of Kosovo are the problem and that the internationalcommunity is responsible for the solution. But that ignores twoimportant factors: the impact of NATO’s war on the political calcula-tions of many Kosovar Albanians and the consequences of the ongo-ing failure to develop a postwar constitutional solution in Kosovo.Both those factors have created barriers to improved ethnic-Albanianand Serb relations.

NATO’s 78-day bombing campaign helped destroy the basis ofcooperation and coexistence among ethnic Albanians and Serbs inKosovo. Indeed, as long as the independence cause lacked powerfulexternal backers, the rebel Kosovo Liberation Army had difficultypersuading potential recruits that arms could achieve more thannegotiation. Once leading international powers offered politicalbacking and material support, with NATO powers publicly commit-ting themselves to the withdrawal of Serb police and troops andthreatening military intervention, it became far easier to convincepeople they had little to lose by breaking inter-ethnic communal ties.

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In addition to bearing a large responsibility for rising conflict inthe province prior to and during the NATO bombing, the postconflictinternational regime has subsequently done little to provide securityor facilitate interethnic coexistence. There is no constitutional frame-work in Kosovo and no certainty over the future status of the prov-ince. As Mary Kaldor, director of the Program on Global Civil Societyat the London School of Economics, notes, it is very difficult tonormalize everyday life when Kosovo has no constitution or basiclaw that could guide decisions on a whole range of issues, includingsecurity, currency, and even planing regulations.11 There have beenprotests over the high-handed international regulation in the legalsystem and in health, education, and the media, with KosovarAlbanians finding it hard to understand why the departure of Serbmanagers and administrators has meant that the UN, rather thanethnic-Albanian management teams, has taken over.12 While Koso-var Albanians have seen international officials take over Serb posi-tions of authority, albeit with the aim of eventually handing overpolicy and management responsibilities to Kosovars, the only visiblegain from the war after two years of international regulation is thatthe Serbs lost.13 Accepting Serb refugee returns right now, therefore,would make the wartime sacrifices of many Kosovar Albaniansappear pointless. Indeed, without a constitutional settlement firstor any significant role in the management of the province, Serbreturns would simply be viewed as a revival of Yugoslav influence.There is thus little incentive for Kosovar Albanians to participate ininterethnic cooperation.14

Bearing in mind these realities, education programs establishedby international bodies to promote nonviolent conflict resolutionare somewhat disingenuous. One example of such a program isthe conflict resolution project Training for Trainers on InterethnicDialogue and Reconciliation, which is supported by the OSCE andseveral European nongovernmental organizations (NGOs). The proj-ect organizes workshops on Interethnic Dialogue and Conflict Reso-lution, bringing together individuals representing Albanian, Serbian,Bosniak, Roma, and Gorani ethnic communities, coming from bothKosovo and Serbia.15 Its sessions introduce the participants to thebasic principles of understanding conflict and nonviolent methods ofconflict resolution. With the aid of Western facilitators and attractivelocations, such as Florence, Italy, it is hoped that these forums can

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provide a true and unique platform for interethnic dialogue.16 LocalNGO activists have all-expenses-paid holidays in exchange forpledging that they will return equipped with new capacities to dealwith situations of oppression and conflict and practical ways toutilize dialogue, and attempt to convert other members of theircommunity to Western values of peace and nonviolence.

While the attraction of such peace projects to the individual partici-pants is obvious, it is the Western sponsors that grow and expandthrough the public confirmation of their essential civilizing role.Indeed, the people of Kosovo are seen to be no longer in need ofsaving from the Serbs but from their own inability to contain theirviolent urges. The OSCE-run Kosovo Law Center is another examplethat illustrates a patronizing mind-set. It promotes seminars onAlternative Dispute Resolution in Family Issues. Funded by Euro-pean NGOs and the UN’s Development Fund for Women, the semi-nars focus on interrelated subjects such as cross-cultural and tradi-tional aspects of dispute resolution and resolving conflict betweenspouses using both practical psychology and the legal system.17

Although in many countries family disputes are considered privateissues, explain supporters of the program, the seminars are justifiedbecause of an apparent lack of awareness of alternative ways tosettle family disputes within Kosovo.18

Again and again, the problem of violence in Kosovo is character-ized by Kosovo’s caretakers as a psychological or cultural problem ofthe citizens of Kosovo, not as a political consequence of internationalintervention and pervasive foreign administration. But in fact, it wasthe NATO powers that encouraged and emboldened the KLA, andNATO that carried out a three-month high-altitude bombing cam-paign that provoked more conflict, triggered massive refugee flows,and killed many civilians.19 The fact is that the international powers,now encouraging ‘‘tribal coexistence’’ in Kosovo, themselvesensured that there would be little coexistence in the region.20 Toignore that reality misreads the practical consequences of the inter-vention and portrays the problem as being with the people ofKosovo—be they ethnic Albanian, Serb, or otherwise.

Teaching Democracy

The treatment of the people of Kosovo as helpless victims ofatavistic culture and psychological dysfunction is demeaning. The

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international community began the process by filling the vacuumleft by the expulsion of all Serbian and Yugoslav authorities.21 It isclaimed that foreign administration was necessary because the peo-ple of Kosovo were not ready for the pressures of self-government,and that they are still learning about democracy. In February 2001,the head of the OSCE mission in Kosovo urged the people in Kosovoand their political leaders to show that they are serious about embrac-ing democracy and civil society.22 That was the same message heardwhen Kosovo was taken over by foreign administrators 18 monthsearlier. In October 2000, the OSCE held municipal elections andclaimed that the occasion presented a historic opportunity for theunready Kosovar Albanians to show the international communitythat the people of Kosovo were committed to a democratic future.23

The influential policy organization International Crisis Group simi-larly argued that the significance of the October elections lay inwhat they revealed about the commitment of Kosovo Albanians todemocracy.24

If there is a question about commitment to democracy, however,it is one that is better asked of the international administrators of theprovince than its citizens. The international community is virtuallyautonomous in Kosovo, with no legal or political standing assentedto by local parties. In fact, there are fewer limitations on internationalaction in Kosovo, nominally still a province under Yugoslav andSerbian sovereignty, than there are in Bosnia. In Bosnia the interna-tional community is bound by the Dayton Agreement, which at leaston paper establishes a political framework of state and entity bodiesas well as elected bodies at canton and provincial levels.25 In Kosovothere has been no such settlement. UN Resolution 1244, which endedthe war, promised substantial autonomy for Kosovo while respectingthe sovereignty and integrity of the Federal Republic of Yugoslaviabut provided no constitutional framework.26

However, the UN administrative structures in place in Kosovowere drawn up by a select group of Western powers with no inputfrom Kosovar or Serbian representatives.27 No Kosovar Albaniansor Serbs were consulted when representatives of the G7 powersand 11 other Western states, meeting under UN auspices, selectedBernard Kouchner, former French health minister and leading advo-cate of human rights intervention, to head the Kosovo administrationas the Special Representative of the United Nations in Kosovo.

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Kouchner was replaced, again without any input from KosovarAlbanians or Serbs, in January 2001, by Hans Haekkerup, the formerDanish defense minister. The special representative is supportedby four deputies, principal deputy Gary L. Mathews, from the UnitedStates, and one deputy each from France, the Netherlands, and theUK. The deputies were all selected by the lead international agenciesoperating in Kosovo: the United Nations, which is in charge of civiladministration; the European Union, which is in charge of economicreconstruction; and the OSCE, which is responsible for democratiza-tion and institution building.28 Additionally, the head of the CentralFinancial Authority, which is responsible for managing the prov-ince’s $260 million annual budget (mostly funded by internationaldonors), is Australian Alan Pearson, formerly a director of theBarents Group of KPMG, a global consulting and accountancy firm.29

The vast foreign administration is divided into 20 departments,such as those for education, health, social services, labor and employ-ment, trade and industry, transport, agriculture, and public utilities.Each department is run by international appointees from outsidethe region, with UN-appointed Kosovar co-heads who have purelytitular positions and are not even allowed access to internal memosto department heads.30 These departments even include the Adminis-trative Department for Democratic Governance and Civil Society,which, without any hint of irony, was established by edict of thespecial representative.31

Below the administrative departmental structure there is also aregional structure with five UN-run regional authorities based inPristina, Pec, Prizen, Mitrovica, and Gnjilane, and beneath them, afurther layer of international management, the thirty UN-adminis-trated municipalities.

The extensive international bureaucracy leaves little space for anyKosovar governance. There is some involvement of Kosovar repre-sentatives in the UN administration, but only in an ad hoc consulta-tive capacity. Four representatives from the province have beenappointed by the special representative to sit in on the meetings ofthe UN-created Interim Administrative Council, which serves as anadvisory discussion forum. The special representative has the rightto veto decisions adopted by the IAC, or to impose his own, and isunder no obligation to consult with the IAC over decision-making.Below that level there is another discussion forum, the Kosovo Tran-sitional Council, made up of 36 UN appointees from political parties,

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religious communities, and nongovernmental organizations.32 TheKTC is merely a sounding board for the special representative, asKouchner explained at its first meeting: ‘‘There will be no voting. . . .We will work together to reach agreement, but if we fail to do it, Iwill have to make a decision.’’33

At present, there is no time limit or clear benchmark for interna-tional withdrawal despite the fact that province-level elections wereheld in November 2001. Even after the provincial elections, however,it is not expected that the elected body will hold a decision-makingpower superior to that of the international administrators now run-ning Kosovo. Indeed, there were municipal council elections in Octo-ber 2000, but the elected representatives still do not have policymak-ing responsibilities. Instead, they work under a UN municipaladministrator in charge of the local municipal administrative boards,each responsible for the day-to-day running of a municipality.34 Thelocal municipal administrative board is actually the executive bodyat the local level. The municipal councils are merely consultativebodies representing a spectrum of local opinion.35 The UN MunicipalAdministrative Board’s administrator not only has responsibilityfor all municipal property, budgets and financial decisions, andappointments, but he or she also convenes and attends meetings ofthe local municipal council and its committees and can overrulecouncil decisions without any right of appeal. In two-thirds of themunicipalities, the UN special representative chose to appoint addi-tional municipal council members, and three municipal councilsconsist entirely of UN appointees.36 In addition to these powers, thespecial representative can dismiss elected representatives or dissolvethe municipal councils if its members are seen to be obstructing theimplementation of international policies.37

The attitude of Kosovo’s international administrators to electionsis also remarkable. In most countries, elections are held as a referen-dum on the government and its policies. In Kosovo, elections arenot a test of government policy but a test of the people, and if theyfail the test—regardless of which political parties achieve the mostvotes—government policy will be decided by internationalappointees. That attitude reflects one similar to that outlined byBertolt Brecht in the anti-Stalinist poem The Solution:

The Secretary of the Writers UnionHad leaflets distributed in the Stalinallee

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Stating that the peopleHad forfeited the confidence of the governmentAnd could win it back onlyBy redoubled efforts. Would it not be easierIn that case for the governmentTo dissolve the peopleAnd elect another?38

In the October 2000 municipal-level elections, the people ofKosovo did not have much of a chance at winning the confidenceof the government. Prior to the election all the parties had alreadybeen characterized as lacking democratic principles. In fact, accord-ing to the head of the OSCE mission, the political parties’ unanimoussupport for independence was undemocratic because it failed toprovide voters with a substantive choice at the ballot box.39

The OSCE sought to lecture the political parties by bringing outits own view of what voters should want. It produced Voters’ Voices:Community Concerns, which was based on questionnaires of policyoptions that excluded any mention of the province’s future status.40

The OSCE then accused the parties of being out of touch with theelectorate and of following their own agendas, and took it uponitself to provide guidance to bring the agendas of the electorate andpoliticians together.41 The OSCE attempted to do that by assistingin the writing of election programs and deciding who the candidatesfrom the smaller political parties would be.42 On election day,Kosovo’s administrators were very impressed with the high turnoutand patient queuing: They considered the election a huge success,fully justifying their continued international regulation, but not thea transference of powers.43

The Future

The fact that both Belgrade and the Kosovar Albanian leadershipare reliant on U.S. and international support has meant that theNATO powers have been quite open about ignoring major aspectsof UN Resolution 1244. In de facto if not de jure terms, the provinceis no longer part of Serbia or Yugoslavia. There is no independentSerbo-Croat–language television or radio in the province, the Yugo-slav dinar has been replaced by the German mark, postal links havebeen cut, and the new cellular network no longer retains the 38Yugoslav country code.44 The legal system has also been changed

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without any Yugoslav input; the UN Mission in Kosovo has assumedcontrol of the administration of identity cards and internationaltravel documents; and all Yugoslav government property has beentaken over by the UN.45 There are no Yugoslav flags at the border,and there were none on display outside the municipal polling sta-tions, which were instead draped in Albanian and U.S. flags.46

Despite the fact that the municipal elections went smoothly, and thatevery party (including the Green Party) stood on an independenceplatform, and that there has been no serious attempt to return Serbrefugees, there is little chance that Kosovo will see real self-govern-ment anytime soon.47

The international community is under scant pressure to draw upa constitutional framework for the province, and elections for aprovincial government have been consistently delayed. The UN spe-cial representative is reluctant to grant any real authority to anelected provincial assembly and is unwilling to allow Kosovar Alba-nian leaders to negotiate directly with Belgrade. The favored positionat present is to grant policymaking authority neither to Kosovarrepresentatives nor to the Yugoslav or Serb government. A UN-commissioned independent panel headed by Justice Richard Gold-stone has recommended for Kosovo something it calls conditionalindependence.48 In practice, this would reproduce in Kosovo thesituation of Bosnia, where the international powers have decidedthat their regulation of the nominally independent state will continuein open-ended fashion. Bosnian independence is conditional untilthe major powers are convinced that the political leadership of Bos-nia can take over in a suitably constructive fashion, whatever thatis, and until then it is simply beside the point to apply the traditionalconcept of noninterference in internal affairs in Bosnia.49

Former special representative for Kosovo Bernard Kouchnerargues that it is important to back the Kosovar Albanians because‘‘they were and they are still the victims.’’ But this support appar-ently does not extend to acceding to their demand for self-govern-ment.50 It seems that those whose human rights are violated enjoythe right to have international institutions act on their behalf, butdo not have the right to actually decide things for themselves.

At this time, there are no concrete plans to constrain the interna-tional regulatory powers in Kosovo within formal limits, despitegrowing demands for accountability from Kosovar political parties

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and elected representatives.51 In reality, moreover, conditional inde-pendence within an international framework means internationalregulation of both Kosovo’s internal affairs and its external relationswith other states.52 For the foreseeable future, therefore, the UNspecial representative will have legislative and executive powersover the province and attend regional forums as the internationalrepresentative of the people of Kosovo.

Conclusion

The lesson of Kosovo is that the new international regime ofhuman rights can be contradictory. It certainly weakens state sover-eignty; there is no sovereign power or authority in Kosovo, eitherethnic-Albanian or Serbian. However, the lack of sovereignty doesnot necessarily mean more power or rights for the formerly perse-cuted individuals living there. Kosovars are far from being empow-ered through the new regime, despite having their human rightsenforced by the most powerful states and international institutionsin the world. In fact, the experience of Kosovo serves to demonstratethat individual rights are intimately tied to sovereignty. It is sover-eignty—within a framework of self-government—that enables theestablishment of a constitutional system with rights and legitimacy.53

The former victims in Kosovo do not live under a framework ofrights. There is no sphere of political autonomy in which they candevelop or articulate claims, either individually or collectively. Theyare unable to elect a democratically accountable government or tochallenge the dictats of the UN special representative. Althoughgeographically located in Europe, the Kosovo protectorate even fallsoutside the jurisdiction of the European Court of Human Rights—because decisions made there are not the responsibility of any indi-vidual state.54

It would appear that, far from empowering victims and allowingvulnerable people to set their own international agenda, the humanrights regime has had the opposite effect, empowering the dominantinternational institutions and world powers, who have acquired anovel set of rights of interference in the affairs of other states. Farfrom institutionalizing expanded rights, the human rights frame-work has politically legitimized a new hierarchy in internationalaffairs, reinforcing economic and military inequalities between thepowerful and the powerless.55

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Under Belgrade’s rule Kosovar Albanians may have been deniedregional government when the special status of the province wasdissolved in 1989, but they were formally treated as equal rights-bearing citizens. Today the people of Kosovo are treated not ascitizens but as childlike dependants, incapable of dealing with con-flict nonviolently, incapable of managing the most intimate of per-sonal relationships, and incapable of making a rational decision atthe ballot box.

Far from empowering or dignifying victims, the emerging humanrights regime in international relations has facilitated a modern ana-log to the ‘‘white man’s burden.’’56 The experience of Kosovo pro-vides a strong argument against the claim that Western interventionsto protect human rights have promoted individual rights or empow-ered and elevated victims of human rights abuses. It also providesthe Bush administration with a strong argument for beginning seri-ous efforts to reverse course in Kosovo and to encourage less outsideinterference there, not more.

Notes1. See, for example, David P. Forsythe, Human Rights in International Relations

(Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2000), p. 219; and Jack Donnelly, Interna-tional Human Rights, 2d ed. (Colorado: Westview, 1998), p. 20.

2. Geoffrey Robertson, Crimes against Humanity: The Struggle for Global Justice(London: Allen Lane/Penguin Press, 1999), p. 372; Max Boot, ‘‘Paving the Road toHell: The Failure of UN Peacekeeping,’’ Foreign Affairs 79, no. 2 (March–April 2000):143–148; Brian Urquhart, ‘‘In the Name of Humanity,’’ New York Review of Books,April 27, 2000.

3. Hugo Slim, ‘‘Not Philanthropy but Rights: Rights-Based Humanitarianism andthe Proper Politicization of Humanitarian Philosophy.’’ Paper presented at A Seminaron Politics and Humanitarian Aid: Debates, Dilemmas and Dissension. Common-wealth Institute, London, February 1, 2001.

4. Francesca Klug, Values for a Godless Age (London: Penguin, 2000), p. 2; see alsoLord Robertson, Secretary-General of NATO, Kosovo One Year On: Achievement andChallenge, p. 22, www.kforonline.com.

5. R. C. Longworth, ‘‘Human Rights Now May Trump Sovereignty,’’ ChicagoTribune, December 9, 1999; Louis Henkin, ‘‘Kosovo and the Law of HumanitarianIntervention,’’ American Journal of International Law 93 (1999): pp. 824–28; AntonioCassese, ‘‘Ex Inuria Ius Oritur: Are We Moving Towards International Legitimationof Forcible Humanitarian Countermeasures in the World Community?’’ EuropeanJournal of International Law 10 (1999): pp. 23–30; Mary Ellen O’Connell, ‘‘The UN,NATO, and International Law after Kosovo,’’ Human Rights Quarterly 22 (2000):pp. 57–98.

6. See ‘‘Assessment of the Situation of Ethnic Minorities in Kosovo’’ (coveringJune through September 2000), UNHCR/OSCE, www.unhcr.ch/world/euro/seo/protect/0010min.pdf.

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7. Letter dated December 28, 2000, from the Secretary-General addressed to thePresident of the Security Council, United Nations Security Council, S/2000/1246,www.un.org/Docs/sc/letters/2000/1246e.pdf.

8. UNHCR 2001 Global Appeal, UNHCR, p. 199, www.unhcr.ch/fdrs/ga2001/yug.pdf.

9. Ibid.10. OSCE Mission in Kosovo, Press Release, ‘‘Violence Undermining Democracy,’’

February 16, 2001.11. Mary Kaldor, ‘‘Time to Be Constructive,’’ Guardian, October 24, 2000.12. Jonathon Steele, ‘‘UN Forces Fight to Make Old Foes Work Together,’’ Guardian,

July 11, 1999; ‘‘Reversals in the Workplace Leave Albanians on Top,’’ Guardian, July8, 1999. See also David Chandler, ‘‘Bosnia: Prototype of a NATO Protectorate,’’ ed.Tariq Ali, Masters of the Universe? NATO’s Balkan Crusade (New York: Verso, 2000),pp. 271–84.

13. OSCE Mission in Kosovo, Press Release, ‘‘Ambassador Everts Outlines OSCEPriorities for Kosovo in 2001,’’ January 11, 2001.

14. International Crisis Group, Kosovo Report Card, Balkans Report no. 100 (August28, 2000), www.intl-crisis-group.org/projects/balkans/kosovo/reports/A400011_28082000.pdf.

15. OSCE Mission in Kosovo, Press Release, ‘‘Conflict Resolution Project Createsa Way Forward,’’ February 20, 2001.

16. Ibid.17. OSCE Mission in Kosovo Press Release, ‘‘Kosovo Law Centre Sponsors Seminar

on Alternative Dispute Resolution in Family Issues,’’ February 8, 2001.18. Ibid.19. United Kingdom House of Commons Foreign Affairs Committee, Session

1999–2000, Fourth Report, May 23, 2000, www.publications.parliament.uk/pa/cm199900/cmselect/cmfaff/28/2802; Noam Chomsky, The New Military Humanism:Lessons from Kosovo (London: Pluto Press, 1999); Christopher Layne, ‘‘Miscalculationsand Blunders Lead to War,’’ in NATO’s Empty Victory: A Postmortem on the BalkanWar, ed. Ted Galen Carpenter (Washington: Cato Institute, 2000); Robert M. Hayden,‘‘Biased ‘Justice’: Humanrightism and the International Criminal Tribunal for theFormer Yugoslavia,’’ Cleveland State Law Review 47 (2001): pp. 3–25; and Peter Beau-mont, Ed Vulliamy, and Paul Beaver, ‘‘CIA’s Bastard Army Ran Riot in Balkans,’’Observer, March 11, 2001.

20. A Future for Kosovo, The Economist, November 4, 2000, p. 21.21. Slavoj Zizek, The Fragile Absolute or, Why Is the Christian Legacy Worth Fighting

For? (London: Verso, 2000), p. 59.22. OSCE Mission in Kosovo, Press Release, ‘‘Violence Undermining Democracy,’’

February 16, 2001.23. OSCE Mission in Kosovo, Press Release, ‘‘Statement of the OSCE Chairperson-

in-Office Benita Ferrero-Waldner on the Eve of the Municipal Elections in Kosovo,’’October 27, 2000.

24. International Crisis Group, ‘‘Elections in Kosovo: Moving Toward Democracy,’’Balkans Report 97 (July 7, 2000).

25. The General Framework Agreement for Peace in Bosnia and Herzegovina,www.ohr.int/gfa/gfa-home.htm. Also see David Chandler, Bosnia: Faking Democracyafter Dayton (London: Pluto Press, 1999).

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26. UN Security Council Resolution 1244, June 10, 1999, www.un.org/Docs/scres/1999/9sc1244.htm.

27. Report of the Secretary-General Pursuant to Paragraph 10 of Security Council Resolu-tion 1244, June 12, 1999, un.org/Docs/sc/reports/1999/s1999672.htm; Report of theSecretary-General on the United Nations Interim Administration Mission in Kosovo, July12, 1999, un.org/Docs/sc/reports/1999/s1999779.htm.

28. United Nations Interim Administrative Mission in Kosovo, http://www.un.org/peace/kosovo/pages/kosovo9.htm.

29. UNMIK-JIAS Fact Sheet: Central Fiscal Authority, www.un.org/peace/kosovo/pages/twelvemonths/cfa.htm; and UNMIK-JIAS Fact Sheet: Kosovo Consol-idated Budget, www.un.org/peace/kosovo/pages/twelvemonths/kcb.htm.

30. International Crisis Group, Kosovo Report Card, Balkans Report no. 100 (August28, 2000), www.intl-crisis-group.org/projects/balkans/kosovo/reports/A400011_28082000.pdf, p. 29.

31. ‘‘On the Establishment of the Administrative Department for Democratic Gov-ernance and Civil Society,’’ UNMIK Regulation no. 2000/40, July 10, 2000,www.un.org/peace/kosovo/pages/regulations/reg04.htm.

32. UNMIK-JIAS Fact Sheet: Joint Interim Administrative Structure, www.un.org/peace/kosovo/pages/twelvemonths/jias.html.

33. UNMIK Press Release, ‘‘UNMIK Convenes First Meeting of Kosovo TransitionalCouncil,’’ July 16, 1999, www.un.org/peace/kosovo/unmikpr12.htm.

34. UNMIK-JIAS Fact Sheet: Joint Interim Administrative Structure.35. On the Appointment of Regional and Municipal Administrators, UNMIK

Regulation no. 1999/14, October 21, 1999, www.un.org/peace/kosovo/pages/regulations/reg14.html.

36. Report of the Secretary-General on the United Nations Interim AdministrationMission in Kosovo, UN Security Council, S/2000/1196, December 15, 2000,www.un.org/Depts/dhl/docs/s20001196.pdf.

37. On Self-Government of Municipalities in Kosovo, UNMIK Regulation no. 2000/45, August 11, 2000, www.un.org/peace/kosovo/pages/regulations/reg045.html.

38. Bertolt Brecht, ‘‘The Solution,’’ in J. Willett and R. Mannheim (eds.) BertoltBrecht Poems (London: Methuen, 1979), p. 440.

39. Daan Everts, Foreword, Voters’ Voices: Community Concerns, OSCE Democratisa-tion Department, Pristina, Kosovo, September 2000.

40. Voters’ Voices: Community Concerns, OSCE Democratisation Department, Pris-tina, Kosovo, September 2000.

41. OSCE Publishes Voters’ Voices: Community Concerns, OSCE Mission in KosovoPress Release, October 3, 2000.

42. Political Party Guide, Municipal Elections, Kosovo, 2000, OSCE Mission in Kosovo,Department of Democratisation.

43. Daan Everts, Kosovo Joins World’s Democracies, OSCE Mission in KosovoPress Release, October 28, 2000; for further details see David Chandler, ‘‘KosovoElections: Failing the Test of Democracy?’’ www.bhhrg.org.

44. Eve-Ann Prentice, ‘‘Kosovo Links with Belgrade ‘Severed,’’’ Times (London),July 5, 1999.

45. Second Phase of Identity Card Distribution Begins in Kosovo, News Archive,UN Interim Administration in Kosovo, www.un.org/peace/kosovo/pages/koso-vo2.htm; Report of the Secretary-General on the United Nations Interim AdministrationMission in Kosovo, July 12, 1999.

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46. R. Jeffrey Smith, ‘‘U.S. Officials Expect Kosovo Independence,’’ WashingtonPost, September 24, 1999.

47. Paul Currion, ‘‘Dialogue in Jeopardy,’’ Institute for War and Peace Reporting,Balkan Crisis Report No. 190 (Kosovo Local Elections Special Issue), October 27, 2000;and Steven Erlanger, ‘‘Self-Determination in Kosovo Will Take Much Determination,’’New York Times, February 1, 2001.

48. Report of the Independent International Commission on Kosovo, October 2000,www.kosovocommission.org.

49. OHR Press Release, ‘‘The Role of Peace Implementation Council Steering BoardAmbassadors in Bosnia and Herzegovina,’’ February 8, 2001.

50. Cited in ‘‘Back Albanian Kosovars but Not for Independence: Kouchner,’’Agence France Presse, Paris, February 16, 2001, listserv.acsu.buffalo.edu/archives/twatch-l.html.

51. Currion, ‘‘Reaction in Kosovo to Kostunica’s Victory,’’ International CrisisGroup, Balkans Briefing, October 10, 2000.

52. Report of the Independent International Commission on Kosovo.53. See also Hannah Arendt, The Origins of Totalitarianism (New York: Harcourt

Brace & Co., 1973), pp. 290–302.54. This also applies to The Hague War Crimes Tribunal; see Robertson, p. 284.55. See also David Chandler, From Kosovo to Kabul: Human Rights and International

Intervention (London: Pluto Press, 2002), forthcoming.56. Vanessa Pupavac, ‘‘Pathologising Populations and Colonising Minds: Interna-

tional Psychosocial Programmes in Kosovo.’’ Paper presented to the Political StudiesAssociation, 51st Annual Conference, Manchester, United Kingdom, April 10–12,2001.

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3. Daytonia and the UNMIKistas: MyOdyssey of Disillusion

Stephen Schwartz

On November 7, 1987, three years before the outbreak of opencombat in Yugoslavia, I wrote in the San Francisco Chronicle:

For the past two years, scholars of East-West politics havenoted rising tensions in Yugoslavia, and a crisis now loomswith chilling parallels to another conflict that began there,World War I. Yugoslavia is exploding with what was calledduring the 1930s ‘‘the dynamite of minority nationalism.’’This is not surprising in a country that was ‘‘designed’’ atthe close of the 1914–1918 war. . . . The cultural gaps separat-ing the Yugoslavian nationalities are wide and the politicalgrudges are bitter. . . . A sinister phrase has already comeinto play in discussions of the region: ‘‘Lebanonization.’’What would ‘‘Lebanonization’’ of Yugoslavia mean? Well,it could mean . . . war between the Serbians and Yugoslav-Albanians. The Soviet Union might very well intervene; theconventional wisdom is that NATO and the U.S. woulddeplore such an action, but not obstruct it—that Moscowcan play a stabilizing role in such an outbreak. But what if‘‘Lebanonization’’ of Yugoslavia should prove, as in Beirut,not amenable to the stabilizing actions of outside powers?Might it not touch off other brushfire conflicts in the region?The possible ramifications are both many and grim. . . . WorldWar I began with a Serbian terrorist’s assassination of anAustrian prince as a protest over the failure of Serbia to gainfull dominion over Bosnia. Prior to the beginning of that warin 1914, the Balkan Wars in 1912–1913 saw bloody fightingand terrorism. . . . [C]ommunism is rather a secondary issuefor the various disgruntled minorities. The belief that thebrotherhood of the workers would overcome national feel-ings and prejudices has proved a cruel hoax, for the Yugoslavnationalities no less than for the Central Asians in the SovietUnion or the Tibetans in China. The political labels growdistorted or fade away; ethnic realities remain.

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The opinion page editor of the Chronicle titled the article fromwhich this is quoted, ‘‘Birth Pangs of World War III?’’ Well, a thirdworld war it wasn’t, but the breakup of Yugoslavia and the ensuingBalkan conflicts were still awful indeed. Certainly, they saw someof the worst aspects of the Second World War: ethnic atrocities,bombing of civilians, and terrorism by irregular forces. The wars inYugoslavia would provoke in the West a yoked pair of politicalphenomena: among conservatives, a ‘‘realist’’ opposition to interven-tion in the conflict, and on the surviving ideological left, the enthusi-astic defense of an otherwise fascist dictator, Slobodan Milosevic ofSerbia. Finally, the post-Yugoslavia agony would produce its mostsignificant parallel with World War II: military action by the West,culminating in the first war NATO has ever fought.

The first question that springs to mind about this decade-longnightmare is: Why was the world so blind to its coming, and thenso helpless to respond appropriately?

Until 1990, nobody in the West, except for a handful of expertsand other interested parties who followed the Yugoslav media, hadthe slightest idea how fragile the Yugoslav state was or how rapidlyand brutally its dissolution might occur. Those who spoke up in theWest, alarmed at the rise of ethnic demagoguery after the 1986‘‘leaking’’ of the Serbian Academy Memorandum, a manifesto of nation-alist-communist incitement, were either ignored or subjected toattacks from comfortably ensconced experts in academia and thinktanks. The Yugoslav national conflicts had been resolved, it wasexplained; the society was fundamentally stable and faced nothingother than the economic challenge of cooling excessive growth,spending, and inflation in its uniquely liberal form of state socialism.Yugoslavia’s form of economics had, by the way, been analyzed bymany Western academics, including Laura d’Andrea Tyson, whowould become a leading adviser to President Bill Clinton.

Here, however, lay the nub of Western incomprehension of Yugo-slavia, which led to democratic leaders being taken completely bysurprise when serious fighting began, first between Serbia and Slo-venia, in 1991. To begin with, notwithstanding four and a half decadesof the Cold War, preceded by another 20 years or so of Stalinism,very few in the West had seriously studied, or really understood,how the internal dynamics of communist societies might lead tocrises within them, and how they might collapse or be overthrown,

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Daytonia and the UNMIKistas

transformed, or otherwise replaced. Indeed, the dismaying realityis that nobody in the West has begun to understand this even today.A vast field of inquiry has been left completely fallow. Here arethe essential issues that have yet to be seriously examined or evenaddressed: the functional relationship of the party, the state, andproperty; the sociology of the party elite or nomenklatura as a prop-erty-holding class; the relationship between the party elite and thenonparty professional classes; the competition of ethnic groups in theparty-state; how economies work in the absence of entrepreneurship,free markets, and efficient management; how an entrepreneurialclass may or may not develop in such a society or after its collapse;how an entrepreneurial class may overthrow or otherwise supplanta party elite as the dominant class in society.

In other words, nobody had asked basic questions about how andwhy communist societies would break down as in Yugoslavia, andhow bourgeois societies would be erected on their ruins. Everybodyhoped for the best and theorized in the dark on the details. Forexample, nearly every post-communist society formulated privatiza-tion schemes (some of them notably successful) with advice fromWesterners, but without anybody asking, among other things, whatthe business psychology of the formerly communist managers, whowould retain control over enterprises, would be. Few asked howsocialist accounting and other business practices would differ fromnormal commercial habits; how decades of party-based, often ethniccronyism was to be overcome; how media, even if freed from directcensorship, would liberate itself from the habits of servility; how anew social conflict of all against all was to be avoided. There remainsno manual of ‘‘party-state sociology,’’ much less a handbook forrevolution against it, in print anywhere today. The truth was thatvery nearly everybody in the West expected communism to lastforever. The fraudulent normality of the system duped much ofthe world.

Yugoslavia was the most unfortunate victim of this obliviousnessbecause the Belgrade regime was favored by a particular compla-cency on the part of foreign observers. Westerners simply did notworry about Yugoslavia and did not think they had to. It wasn’t justthat it lacked natural resources like oil; foreigners believed Yugosla-via, with ‘‘self-managed socialism,’’ had succeeded where other com-munist states had not; its people had the freedom to read Orwell,

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Trotsky, and Friedman, as well as the right to travel the world.Yugoslavs ate and dressed well, owned cars, worked abroad, andwelcomed foreigners to relax on their spectacular beaches. This viewof the Titoite era persists today among many Western observers,and nostalgia for the Titoite past is powerful among the foreignersresponsible for the future of de facto protectorates like Bosnia andKosovo.

Unfortunately, however, as every Yugoslav knew in his or herheart, the Titoite illusion was belied by a gruesome reality. Howeverpleasant the face it turned to the West, however well it seemed tosatisfy the immediate needs of its citizens, within the Titoite universethere lurked a seething mass of ethnic discontent. Indeed, Yugoslaviarepresented the most reckless, dangerous, and ultimately unsustain-able example of a practice visible throughout the communist world:favoring a single ethnic group in the state bureaucracy and concen-trating state power into its hands.

In Yugoslavia there was a natural backlash against this. After1971, Slovenes openly turned to integration of their economy withcapitalist Italy and Austria, increasing their average income dramati-cally. Croatia in 1971 had rebelled in the name of cultural autonomy.But the tax and major economic policy power—administration ofthe hallowed socialist ‘‘plan’’—in communist Yugoslavia remainedconcentrated in Belgrade, the federal and Serbian capital. Efforts atconstitutional reform by Tito, in his last years, in which politicalpower was devolved to six republics and two autonomous entities,left much of Belgrade’s predominance untouched.

But none of this had been reported in the West; nor is it seentoday. Westerners judge the conflicts between Serbs and others inex-Yugoslavia exclusively in terms of one group’s virtues and theiradversaries’ historic evil. Few look at Yugoslavia in terms of a classic‘‘rent seeking’’ relationship in which state and party bureaucratswere threatened in 1991 with being dislodged from their positionsof economic advantage.

Avoidable Wars

Could the Balkan wars of the 1990s and first decade of the 21stcentury have been avoided? Of course, and without the outlay ofmilitary force. But first the West would have had to understandYugoslavia, and it would have needed a vision of how to replace a

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lopsided, unjust communist system with one based on entrepreneur-ship. Yugoslavia could probably have ‘‘survived’’ as a customs unionor very loose confederation. Given that Yugoslavia had preeneditself as the success story of the communist states, this should havebeen the logical and successful progression of events. But none ofthe necessary factors were present in the West, and so Yugoslaviaexploded. The violence of the Yugoslav breakup would reflect, muchless than pure ethnic rivalries, the desperation of an all-out fight forthe spoils in an economic environment that had been marked byundeniable but artificial prosperity, and the artificial but undeniableethnic monopolization of power.

Even after the crisis became especially bloody, in Croatia in 1991,I did not support direct Western military intervention. As a journal-ist, I attempted to follow a line of strict neutrality. But, in a parallelI think has clear precedent in World War II, I came to reject theargument that journalistic accuracy and objectivity required neutral-ity. Having been present in the Serb Krajina region or zone withinCroatia when the war began, it was clear to me that the aggressionhad originated in Belgrade, and I sympathized with the Croats, thenopenly supported the Muslim Bosnians in response to the horrorsthat began the following year. But while I wrote and spoke in defenseof the Bosnian cause and called for the end to the arms embargoagainst them, I never argued for U.S. or Western troops to be sent there.

This position reflected several concerns. As a veteran of the Viet-nam antiwar movement with 4F draft status, I did not consider itmoral for me to urge others to risk their lives in war when I hadnot. But also, I experienced a holdover of a romantic ideal I hadknown, in the past, as a leftist—I believed that if the ragged andunderarmed Bosnian Muslims defeated the superior forces of theYugoslav army, it would serve a fine lesson on the world powers,and would inspire other oppressed populations to adopt the practiceof semi-anarchist citizen self-defense. (Indeed, this model hadworked spectacularly in Slovenia, but only because there were fewSerbs there to support Belgrade’s objectives.) Finally, I feared thatif the powers did intervene they would do so incompetently; we,especially the United States, would just mess it up more. The corruptand criminal activities of various British and French politicians andmilitary officers, in their involvement with Bosnia prior to the Day-ton Agreement in 1995, reinforced my doubts about the efficacy offoreign intervention.

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By 1995, however, the dreadful character of the Sarajevo siegeand the horror of the Srebrenica massacre made me welcome theDayton Agreement and the arrival of U.S. troops in Bosnia. SomeBosnian Muslims insisted that the Dayton Agreement ceasefire hadcome only when their forces had turned the military situation aroundand had begun to defeat the Serbs; in other words, intervention,held in abeyance so long as Muslims were being slaughtered, becameunavoidable once Muslims gained the opportunity to prevail. Butas a foreigner, I was chiefly concerned to see an end to the violence.In 1997, I began going to Sarajevo on humanitarian missions, as ajournalist and expert on ‘‘media development.’’

It was then that my education began in just how badly interventioncould be botched. Even though Western observers, experts, andadvocates for the various ex-Yugoslav interest groups continueobsessively to debate the correctness or incorrectness of the DaytonAgreement and of armed intervention in general, I learned on theground in Bosnia and later in Kosovo that that issue has been mootfor a long time. The real problem in the Balkans today is how the‘‘international community’’ has mismanaged the reconstruction ofits de facto protectorates.

Coming Clean on the Balkans

To begin with Bosnia, three essential lies purveyed by the foreignauthorities must be addressed: The first is that ethnic conflict inBosnia originated there; the second is that Western troops mustremain in Bosnia to prevent a new outbreak of violence; the thirdis that a return to some kind of previously existing Bosnian ethniccomity is the prerequisite to the departure of foreign troops.

Ethnic violence did not originate in Bosnia; it was imported intothe country by the Yugoslav Army with the withdrawal of largedetachments of the latter from Croatia. This elementary fact becameobvious upon reading the day-to-day reports in newspapers pub-lished throughout the world—that is, if one ignored the lengthytheorizing that usually accompanied and often overshadowed suchbulletins. It must be said that the world press was disastrously badwhen it came to reporting background, motivations, and trends inex-Yugoslavia, even though it normally reported the details of eventsquite accurately.

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The will to avoid war on the part of ordinary Bosnians was fullyvisible in the Bosnian media, which unlike its Croatian and Serbiancounterparts did not beat the drums for the warriors. Bosnian jour-nalists understood very well that expanding the Serbo-Croatian warinto Bosnia would greatly intensify its horror. They went out of theirway to promote tranquility, defuse rumors, and support the idea ofethnic coexistence. The prewar Bosnian media were also defensiveabout Yugoslavism, but without the edge of conspiratorialism, para-noia, and demagoguery visible when the Serbian press addressedthe issue of the state’s breakup.

Proof that the ‘‘issues’’ in the Bosnian war had originated outsideBosnia was reflected even in the discourse of Bosnian Serb advocatesand their Western supporters. Neither articulated any grievanceshaving to do with Bosnia itself, but, rather, protested that becauseBosnia had ‘‘hurriedly’’ seceded from Yugoslavia, the Serbs wereafraid of what might happen if they fell under Muslim control. Ser-bian propaganda against the Bosnian Muslims and Croats simplyrecycled the more simplistic and crude Yugoslav-defensive argu-ments coming out of Belgrade.

Anybody who was in Bosnia in the period immediately precedingthe war, as I was, knows that the Muslim political leadership inSarajevo were not avid for a premature declaration of independence,and began to organize a referendum on the topic only when itbecame clear that the Yugoslav forces were inclined to withdrawfrom Croatia through Bosnia in a provocative fashion. Given theconduct of these forces in Croatia, which had included vandalismand looting but also mass murder, the Bosnian Muslims had everyreason to be concerned. It became clear that the Bosnian Serbs wereprepared to launch a subversive movement intended to take advan-tage of the movement of the Yugoslav troops through Bosnia. TheBosnian Muslims saw independence and foreign diplomatic recogni-tion as their only means to defend themselves.

It was even more instructive to observe Bosnia with open eyesafter the war. Because fighting in Bosnia originated in Belgrade, oncethe role of Belgrade in Bosnia was nullified by Slobodan Milosevic’ssignature at Dayton, and even more so after the fall of Milosevicfrom power, there was no basis for a renewed conflict inside Bosnia.

The most interesting untold story about Bosnia is the absence ofreal strife once American troops arrived. Serbs have rioted here and

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there against the return of Muslim refugees and the reconstructionof mosques; Croats have rioted against the activities of foreign police;and Muslims have grumbled. But in reality, these are protests againstmeddling by the foreign authorities; there has not been one seriousviolation of the Dayton Agreement since it was imposed—not asingle uprising, battle, formation of a new militia, arms scandal,or massacre.

The reason for this is simple but has gone completely unperceivedby the foreign authorities in Bosnia: Bosnians, whether Serb, Croat,or Muslim, did not want war, and once a means of ending hostilitieswas introduced, they readily agreed to it. Regardless of the rhetoricemployed by foreigners in Sarajevo anxious to keep their high-paying jobs as peace administrators, nobody among the domesticBosnian population—at least since I began observing the situationin 1997—has shown either the desire or the will to restart a war.

Does this mean the Dayton Agreement and all that came after itwas justified? Not at all. What would have been justified wouldhave been a truce, perhaps (but only perhaps) with the importationof a foreign police body to enforce it. The continuing presence oflarge numbers of regular foreign troops over the past six years hasbeen unnecessary. Foreign administrators needed to understand thatthe probability of renewed fighting after 1995 was and is virtuallynonexistent; they needed to perceive that Bosnians of all ethnicitieswere exhausted and disgusted with war. Yet the foreign authoritiescould not see such a thing because to do so would invalidate lietwo—that Western troops in Bosnia are necessary to prevent a newoutbreak of violence. Thus lie three was formulated: that a returnto some kind of previously existing Bosnian ethnic comity is theprerequisite to the departure of foreign troops. Thus the standardfor withdrawal was set absurdly high. Bosnians were not merelyrequired to abstain from new clashes; they were to be forced to actas if no quarrel had ever taken place. A vast bureaucratic effort wouldbe employed to further that clearly utopian goal. This experimentin compulsory political correctness would never be attempted inNorthern Ireland, the Basque country, or the Middle East—certainlynot by foreigners. In Bosnia, billions of dollars would be spent forthousands of consultants, experts, and administrators.

Just as the West had walked into the Yugoslav wars without anunderstanding of Yugoslav history, the reconstruction of Bosnia has

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been attempted in the absence, on the part of the foreign overlords,of any plan or vision except for nostalgia for the Titoite past andsuspicion of any form of private entrepreneurship as criminal orcorrupt. The foreign rulers of Bosnia, the Office of the High Represen-tative, and the local ambassador of the Organization for Securityand Cooperation in Europe, would have absolute power to censorand suppress media, ban political candidates and parties, dictatethe content of educational curricula, and remove and install localgovernments. The idea was to cajole Bosnians into public demonstra-tions of mutual love and affection for one another.

‘‘Minor’’ issues like employment, labor law, restitution of privateproperty seized by Nazis and Communists, rehabilitation of highereducation, and pension reform would wait. Before the Bosnianscould eat, they had to kiss and make up. And before they wouldkiss, all the war criminals had to be punished. But since the warcriminals benefited from the vagaries of the Dayton Agreement,there would be no improvement in the lives of the Bosnians them-selves. And that is how it has been in the six years since the DaytonAgreement was signed, with the expenditure of more than $5 billionin reconstruction aid.

A Rude Awakening

I learned about these things the hard way, by making myself anuisance to the foreign authorities in ‘‘Daytonia.’’ I decided, at thebeginning of the Kosovo bombing, to leave my job at the Chronicleand move to the Balkans. I had completed a couple of media consult-ing contracts and thought I could make a contribution by continuingto work for the occupation authorities. But I was wrong. It was allin line with Orwell’s Homage to Catalonia: the foreigners I thoughtwere helping get Bosnia back on its feet were doing everythingpossible to keep it dependent, in order to justify their high salaries,many amenities, and weekends on the Adriatic coast. My personalcrunch came when I attempted to defend First Amendment princi-ples, arguing that the domestic Bosnian media, if left alone, mightoccasionally emit nationalist noises, but that renewal of fighting wasvirtually impossible and ethnic incitement would go without echo.This ultraradical view got me labeled ‘‘enemy number one of theinternational community in Bosnia-Herzegovina,’’ in the words ofRegan McCarthy, an American woman and ‘‘senior media expert’’

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for the OSCE. Denunciation via gossip was supplemented by printedattacks on me placed in Bosnian media by the foreign authorities.

I learned, to my shock, that I was virtually alone as a foreign criticof the ‘‘international community.’’ Asking basic, reporterly questionswasn’t allowed in Daytonia. Foreign journalists visited briefly andreported home whatever the OSCE and OHR representatives toldthem. They were the angels. Why would anyone doubt what theysaid? If the Serb media had to be shut down, Croat politicians barredfrom the ballot, and Muslim educators forbidden to mention in theclassroom the recent destruction of mosques, who could doubt thatthe foreigners knew best, and that anyway the locals were violentsavages unfit to judge media for themselves, vote, or tell their chil-dren what had happened to 500-year-old religious monuments?Hadn’t these same people—Bosnian journalists, politicians, andintellectuals—started the problem in the first place, and weren’tthey all, by pressing their own interests, obstacles to the great andglorious Bosnian group hug?

Foreign journalists bought the occupiers’ program and resold itto their readers in London, Paris, and Washington, without everasking the most necessary questions: What disruption in Daytoniahad Serb media, Croat politicians, or Muslim educators reallycaused? Aside from a limited number of incidents obstructing refu-gee returns that were often hasty and ill-conceived, who in Daytoniahad started a major uproar, fired weapons, or seriously threatenedtheir neighbors? Was it purely by accident that no U.S. soldiers wereever injured by hostile action in Bosnia? Indeed, in the majority ofreported incidents of trouble, foreigners, not locals, complained theloudest. Croats and Muslims had their own media and didn’t carewhat was in the Serb media, which they didn’t read or watch; Serbsand Muslims had their own political leaders and didn’t care whatCroat politicians said; Serbs and Croats had their own educationalsystems and didn’t care what the Muslims taught in theirs.

Oh, but the ‘‘internationals’’ would complain—that’s horrible,that’s making ethnic separation permanent! Actually, it isn’t neces-sarily permanent. Ethnic separation was an immediate consequenceof the war, but it could perhaps be overcome—if one granted alonger period of time to achieve such an objective and did not makeit a criterion for Western disengagement. Ethnic separation had beenthe norm in Ottoman Bosnia for 400 years, but not on a countrywide,

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regionalized basis. The multiculturalism of the Tito era had beena Communist Party construct created to facilitate party rule. Thehypocrisy of the foreign authorities in attempting to force an immedi-ate return to a multiethnic Bosnia is manifest when the situationis compared with similar conditions in the Middle East, NorthernIreland, and the Basque country. Nobody would claim that a solutionin Israel would come by shutting down the Jewish and Arab press,banning all ethnic politicians, and imposing a strictly neutral schoolcurriculum. Nobody would say that peace would come to NorthernIreland by depriving both Catholics and Protestants of their rightto their own media, political organizations, and education. Nobodywould argue that terrorism could be halted in the Basque countryby shutting down the local press, banning local politicians, anddissolving local schools. Indeed, the way to peace in all these criticalareas—as well as in Croatia, Serbia, Montenegro, Kosovo, and Mace-donia—required encouragement of moderate nationalism and free-market economic incentives. But Bosnia was to be held to a differentstandard. There, no nationalism of any kind would be tolerated. Thelesson was clear: Yugoslavia had not mattered enough in 1990 forthe great powers to pay attention to it, and Bosnia did not matterenough after 1995 for the powers to develop an intelligent policyfor its reconstruction.

Instead, Bosnia’s international administrators have busied them-selves with restoring Bosnia’s former communist officials—relabeledas social democrats—to power. After all, they were multiethnic,since Titoite communism had to be multiethnic to rule. It is clearthat the international administrators felt they had the right to experi-ment on Bosnians; Bosnians had few friends, in contrast to the Jews,Arabs, Irish, and Basques, who would never tolerate crass meddlingby uninformed outsiders. So it was that foreign nostalgia for Titointersected with Bosnian nostalgia for Tito in a manner that hasforged new and heavy chains on Bosnians of all ethnicities.

Media Control

Postwar Bosnian media, which are subsidized extensively by theUnited States, have come to be dominated by the same sort of acqui-escence and conformity that has so far characterized foreign report-ing from Bosnia. Not coincidentally, this replicates the journalisticclimate under the Tito regime, and U.S.-backed media—and in some

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cases, U.S.-owned media—have supported the restoration of pseudo-social democrats, i.e. the ex-communists, to power. Nine millionU.S. dollars were frittered away to support a ‘‘multiethnic’’ televisionenterprise, the Open Broadcast Network, that never functioned asa broadcast system, but that provided immense quantities of cashto foreign consultants—as much as $1,000 per day. U.S. funds, byway of IREX ProMedia, an American NGO, were also poured intotwo weeklies, Dani (Days) and Slobodna Bosna (Free Bosnia) that distin-guished themselves by scurrilous personal attacks on any and alldissenters from Tito-nostalgia. IREX ProMedia took over and di-rected a daily newspaper in Sarajevo, Vecernje Novine (Evening News),which was turned into Jutarnje Novine (Morning News), with no per-ceptible improvement in quality or even in market share. IREX Pro-Media also became the proprietor of Nezavisne Novine (IndependentNews), a daily in Banja Luka, the capital of the Bosnian Serb zone.Incredibly, the concept of U.S. ownership of media in foreign coun-tries, especially outright neo-communist media like Dani, stimulatedno inquiry or objections by American journalists who visited Bosnia.Worse, genuinely independent Bosnian media, such as the moderateMuslim weekly Ljiljan and the daily Oslobodjenje (Liberation), thelatter of which had been hailed during the Bosnian war for its multi-ethnic stance and its heroic operation under fire, were subjected toslanderous whisper campaigns and other attempts to underminetheir work.

American media professionals contracted as consultants in Sara-jevo, including those employed by IREX ProMedia, were expectedto follow the ‘‘international community’’ line not only regarding thequestionable practice of foreign financing of local media, but alsoin minor issues.

While Americans trained local journalists in vague concepts of‘‘professionalism’’ (but suppressed the core value of independence),European media representatives in Bosnia extolled the uses of cen-sorship. When David DeVoss, the activist chief of party for IREXProMedia in Bosnia in 1999, defended a First Amendment attitudetoward journalistic expression, in opposition to European-backedpractices of media control, he was fired and forced to leave thecountry—at the instance of Regan McCarthy, who attempted thesame action against me. As DeVoss told me, ‘‘Some Americans whocome to work in Bosnia forget all about their constitutional heritage.’’

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That comment applies to most of the American international func-tionaries in the Balkans; for them personally, as well as in the pro-grams they administered, basic civic values gave way to politicalcorrectness.

I learned so many bitter lessons along these lines in Bosnia thatI came to the conclusion that those Muslims who called the DaytonAgreement a betrayal of their aspirations were correct. Then I wentto Kosovo.

From Bad to Worse

In the Kosovo crisis of 1999, I took a more stridently interventionistposition than I had on Bosnia. To begin with, I had much closerrelationships with Albanians in America than with Bosnians, whohad never had a large diaspora to this side of the Atlantic. Becauseof this, a number of aspects of the Albanian tragedy affected myjudgment. Above all, I knew the Kosovar Albanians had hewed toa line of peaceful protest in Kosovo for a decade, which I believedleft them unprepared for a direct confrontation with Serbian statepower. The Belgrade authorities and their police, military, and para-military resources greatly outweighed those available to the Alba-nians; the Army of the Bosnian Republic had much greater capacityto wage war than did the Kosovo Liberation Army. I was acutelymindful that Albanians, with their isolated language and uniquetraditional culture, and as victims of an extraordinary worldwidecampaign defaming them variously as gangsters, communists, Nazicollaborators, and Muslim extremists, had even fewer friends in theworld than the Bosnians. Thus, I considered NATO’s interventionjustified.

Critics of NATO’s Kosovo involvement have tended to concentrateon the post-1999 policy favoring Albanian control of the territory,which is viewed as a mere reversal of Serbian ethnic discrimination.Given the overwhelming Albanian demographic predominance—reaching 90 percent—such an option was an almost unarguablypredictable outcome.

But notwithstanding complaints about Western favoritism to theAlbanians, NATO and the UN Mission in Kosovo (UNMIK) wentto extraordinary lengths to assure a continued Serbian presence bothwithin the population and at the top layers of the local structurescreated by the international community. Lacking an understanding

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of economic relations in communist-era Kosovo, international func-tionaries assigned there—let us call them ‘‘UNMIKistas’’—nevergrasped that much Albanian anger at Kosovo’s Serbs reflectedresentment of Serbs as the former nomenklatura more than mereethnic hatred. When the UNMIKistas insisted on the return of Serbsto Kosovo, many Albanians believed that meant Serbs would returnto positions of command in a state economy.

Albanian anxieties about such a possibility were aggravated by thepolicies the international community adopted toward the KosovarAlbanian domestic economy. UNMIKistas directly blocked effortstoward rapid privatization. During the Milosevic era, Albanians hadbeen excluded from the Yugoslav state economy, a fact that manyAlbanians considered unintentionally to favor them: They hadresponded by establishing a highly entrepreneurial alternative econ-omy. And unlike the Bosnians, the Kosovar Albanians had theadvantage of a large and prosperous diaspora prepared to invest inthe reconstruction of Kosovo. But neither of these possibilities wasever recognized, let alone exploited, by the UNMIKistas. NATO andUNMIK let the Kosovar Albanians know from day one that theyviewed the alternative economy as nothing other than a pretext forcorruption and crime. While crime certainly exists in Kosovo, most ofit reflects malfeasance by elements of the former Kosovo LiberationArmy and its political rivals rather than by any element of theformer alternative economy. But the UNMIKistas treated any formof Albanian enterprise from a corner grocery to a travel agency asa cover for corruption, a characterization that was both inaccurateand unfair.

A similarly heedless position was adopted by UNMIK with regardto the alternative educational system that the Kosovar Albanians hadcreated in resistance to Milosevic’s repression. UNMIK educationalexperts informed the Albanians that the alternative educationalworkers would have to begin the new epoch by dismissing the busdrivers, nurses, and food workers who had served in the alternativeschools; since education would now be paid for by the UN, costswould have to be trimmed. In reality, the alternative educationworkers had traditionally been paid in services or in kind, andimposition of economies on the schools therefore made little or nosense. The main effect of discharging the transportation, medical,and food workers had been to lower the number of Albanian stu-dents in the schools, to eliminate the only health services available

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to many children, and to impose further hardship on parents in aneconomy devastated by war. Pristina, the capital of Kosovo, thusexperienced a problem unknown in Sarajevo: hordes of childrenoutside the schools during the day, selling cigarettes on the street.

Albanian nationalism and the bias of the international communityagainst privatization intersected in a paradoxical phenomenon com-pletely invisible to foreign journalists and other outside observers,but oppressive and menacing to Albanians themselves. Denied theopportunity of expansion and transformation of the alternative econ-omy by the UNMIKistas, certain Albanian political and economicleaders, some of whom had been members of the Titoite nomenkla-tura, held out to Albanians expelled from positions in the stateeconomy by Milosevic the mirage of their restoration to positionsin a revived state economy. The pernicious nature of this fantasywas especially visible in the Albanian discourse over the Trepcamining complex. The minerals extracted at Trepca were all subjectto world oversupply and the technology of the complex was danger-ously obsolete. Thanks to Trepca, Kosovo was the worst environmen-tal black hole outside the former U.S.S.R. Yet numerous Albanianswere gulled by their leaders into believing Kosovo could becomefabulously rich if Albanians were to resume the state jobs they hadhad in the mining industries a decade before.

Similar illusions were fostered by the worst and by far most repre-hensible element in the ex-nomenklatura—the Titoite labor bureau-cracy. In Yugoslav ‘‘self-managed socialism,’’ the state trade unionstructure all communist countries used to control the working class,was paired, in the interest of a false ‘‘autonomy,’’ with a vast networkof ‘‘workers’ councils’’ and ‘‘self-management bodies’’ from whicha stratum of rent-seekers, including a quota of Kosovar Albanians,derived income. With UNMIK governance in Kosovo, former statistmanagers sought to gain positions in the new command economy.An army of parasitical labor and ‘‘self-managing’’ functionariesbegan maneuvering to regain their income supplements, chauf-feured cars, and other perks, this time subsidized by the West.

Given the incentives to economic revanchism present in such asituation, it was small wonder that Kosovar Albanian politics wassoon plagued by gangsterism, as the former cadres of the KLA beganto fight for place in the incipient ‘‘economy.’’

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The Economic RealityIf I have derived a single insight from my Balkan experiences it

is the following: Ethnic conflict in Yugoslavia represented a resortto violence on the basis of competing economic interests as, in theaftermath of the communist system’s fall, each group struck out forits own advantage. International support for communist economicrestoration, with the pretext of Titoist-style multiethnicity, perpetu-ates and envenoms the situation even more. In the absence of mean-ingful free market reforms, entrepreneurial efforts by Bosnian Serbs,Croats, and Muslims, as well as by Kosovar Albanians and, in theirenclaves, Kosovo Serbs, must turn in illegal directions—a develop-ment that further aggravates the desperate struggle over the share-out of a ravaged economy, reinforces ethnic divisions, and discour-ages entrepreneurs from moving from the informal economy to anefficient market system. Domestic markets thus labeled ‘‘criminalenterprises’’ become targets of new reproaches and confused experi-ments by the international community. Until Balkan entrepreneursand the international community comprehend the region’s economicreality, intervention will only make matters worse, and the transitionto capitalism and democracy in the war-torn Balkans will remain acruel and brutal hoax.

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PART II

EXITING THE THICKET



4. Let Dayton Be DaytonRobert M. Hayden

In April 2001, Bosnia became less peaceful when the internationaldiplomat overseeing the peace, high representative Wolfgang Petrit-sch, began dismantling the constitutional system created by the 1995Dayton Agreement. The political party that received more than 80percent of Croat votes cast in the 2000 elections withdrew fromthe governing bodies of Bosnia’s Muslim-Croat Federation1 afterPetritsch summarily removed the Croat member elected to the three-member state presidency and replaced him with a rival who hadlost the election.2 Most Croat soldiers withdrew from the federation’sarmed forces, creating the prospect of a militia in opposition to theBosnian Muslims and to NATO forces. Most Croat police withdrewfrom the federation police force. An armed raid sanctioned by Pet-ritsch on Bosnia’s leading Croat bank led to massive protests andthe withdrawal of international civil servants after some of themwere assaulted.3 In Serb-populated areas of Bosnia, arrests by NATOtroops of people secretly indicted by the International Criminal Tri-bunal for the former Yugoslavia provoked mass demonstrations, asdid an arbitration decision to transfer jurisdiction of a Bosnian Serbneighborhood in Sarajevo to Muslim control.4 Meanwhile, attemptsby Petritsch to rebuild mosques in the Bosnian Serb cities of Trebinjeand Banja Luka produced riots and injuries.5

Petritsch appointed individuals who had lost the elections as theofficial Croat representatives in the Bosnian government, while dis-missing those who had the support of the majority of voters as‘‘extremists.’’6 At the same time, he demanded that a long list of hisdecrees be codified as laws, without discussion or amendment, bythe elected parliament.7 In violation of the rule of law, he seemedintent on increasing inter-group tensions by ordering jurisdictionover criminal investigations of certain Croat leaders to be transferredto local courts controlled by Bosnian Muslims.8

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In short, Bosnia has become a territory in which an unelectedWestern diplomat exercises nearly plenary powers over the electedleaders of Bosnia’s constituent peoples. Petritsch’s stated goal inruling by fiat is to overcome ‘‘obstruction’’ by ‘‘nationalists,’’ andhis actions have been praised by activist nongovernmental organiza-tions such as the Washington and Brussels-based International CrisisGroup.9 Yet as even the ICG acknowledges, these ‘‘nationalists’’ haveconsistently won elections that have been pronounced free and fairby international observers. Thus Petritsch’s Office of the High Repre-sentative is acting not only without the consent of the governed,but very much against their expressed will. For their part, NATOforces, which were sent to Bosnia in early 1996 to enforce a cessationof hostilities, have been employed to impose Petritsch’s dictates onthe population.10

Today the international community is engaged in a contradictoryexercise in Bosnia: frustrating the will of voters in the name ofdemocracy.11 Denying self-rule to people under the guise of protect-ing democracy deprives them of the basic protections of the rule oflaw, and thus of their ability to act as rights-bearing citizens. It isdifficult, to say the least, to see how the increasing exercise of dictato-rial powers by unelected noncitizens of Bosnia will prepare thecitizens there for the kind of stable self-rule that the internationalcommunity claims to be its ultimate goal. It is also difficult to seehow constantly provoking tensions between the communities liv-ing in Bosnia can lead to the stability that would allow NATO towithdraw without leading to a new round of warfare and populationdisplacements.

In the end, stability in Bosnia will likely be achieved only whenmost of the people living there accept the polity in which they live.Since the 1995 Dayton Agreement was effective in stopping theconflict in Bosnia and in providing the conditions in which free andfair elections could be held, a return to stability may be possible byreturning to those parts of the Dayton Agreement that worked tostop the conflict. But these are precisely the parts of the DaytonAgreement being dismantled by Petritsch today. To understand theerror of Petritsch’s approach, it is necessary to go back to the funda-mental realities of Bosnian politics and recall the unreality of therhetoric that has surrounded Bosnia since 1991.

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Let Dayton Be Dayton

Bosnia: The ‘‘State’’ That Never WasState socialism in Yugoslavia was premised on the theory that the

Yugoslav state would serve the interests of the collective ‘‘workingclass,’’ rather than the population as a body of individual citizens.With state socialism’s collapse in 1989, the link between state andgroup continued but was transformed: The state was now to servethe collective interests of ethnically defined groups, or ‘‘nations,’’rather than a body of undifferentiated individual citizens.12 Thisideology of nationalism, envisioning both territory and governmentas belonging to an ethnic group, was what elicited the most votesamong a populace used to viewing politics in collectivist terms. AsBosnian Muslim politician Alija Izetbegovic put it, if he had basedhis political party on the principles of civil society he would haveattracted a few intellectuals, but once he invoked the idea of a Muslimnation, they came to him by the tens of thousands.13

Bosnia’s problem was that there was no single group that couldclaim Bosnia as theirs: Muslims constituted 43.7 percent of the popu-lation, Serbs 31.3 percent, and Croats 17.5, according to the 1991census.14 The political divisions among them were not a new orsimply post-socialist phenomenon. Ethnic fighting, complete withmassacres and mass movements of populations, occurred whenOttoman imperial rule was exchanged for that of Austria in 1878,when the Austrian rule ended in 1918, and when the first Yugoslavstate collapsed during World War II. Moreover, at no time after itsincorporation into the Ottoman Empire in the 15th century wasBosnia ruled by an indigenous government. And whenever the pop-ulation was asked to vote in the 20th century (1910, 1914, the 1920s,1990, 1996, 1997, and 2000), it always voted in blocs that corres-ponded to the percentages of Muslims, Serbs, and Croats in thepopulation.15

By the early 1990s, as Yugoslavia was disintegrating, BosnianSerbs and Herzegovinian Croats were clearly in favor of partitioningBosnia, the Serbs wanting to remain part of Yugoslavia and theCroats wanting to join their motherland, Croatia.16 But the Serb andCroat plans to divide Bosnia could only be realized at the expenseof the Bosnian Muslims, who favored the preservation of Bosnia asa unitary state in which they would be the largest group. Over-whelmingly, however, Serbs and Croats—slightly more than 50 per-cent of the population before the war—rejected inclusion in a Bos-nian state.

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Since it was clear that the partition of Bosnia would be very bloody,international diplomacy was aimed at preventing the division thatthe Bosnian Serbs and Bosnian Croats were determined to bringabout. Specifically, Western recognition of Bosnia’s independencefrom Yugoslavia was an attempt to prevent partition by forcingSerbs and Croats to remain part of an officially recognized unitarystate. The effort failed. As U.S. Ambassador Warren Zimmermanput it later, ‘‘Our view was that we might be able to stave off aSerbian power grab by internationalizing the problem. . . . It turnedout we were wrong.’’17 Bosnia was thus recognized not because amajority of Bosnian people really wished to establish a state, butrather because half of the population rejected such a state.18

The Muslim-dominated Bosnian government that was given inter-national recognition in April 1992 thereby gained a seat in the UnitedNations but never controlled more than about 30 percent of theterritory of the putative state that it supposedly ruled, or could claimthe allegiance of even half of its putative citizens. Serb militarycampaigns in 1992–93 and Croat ones in 1993 brought about theforced movement of populations, so that by summer 1993 Bosniawas effectively partitioned into Serb, Croat, and Muslim regions:This was what ‘‘ethnic cleansing’’ was about. While Muslim victimswere most numerous, Muslim forces massacred Serbs and Croats,and most members of those groups who could do so fled Muslim-controlled areas.19 Thus, if we view a state as ‘‘a community whichconsists of a territory and a population subject to an organizedpolitical authority,’’ as did the European Union when consideringthe status of Yugoslavia in 1991,20 Bosnia was not actually a ‘‘state’’when it was granted recognition, and since the central authoritiesof Bosnia still have neither formal power nor political acceptance ineither Croat or Serb areas, it still is not, in fact, a state.

The Dayton Agreement: Pronouncing a House Divided aCondominium

The Dayton Agreement, negotiated in November 1995, recognizedthe realities of Bosnia’s divisions by creating a nominal Bosnian statewith virtually no central authority of any kind. This nominal statewas patterned after the Muslim-Croat Federation of Bosnia that wasinvented by the United States and imposed on the Croats in March1994.21 The Muslim-Croat Federation gave almost all governmental

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powers to ‘‘cantons,’’ leaving the central government in essence onlya coordinating role, with little authority to execute decisions. Thefederation constitution also permitted separate Croat and Muslimmilitary forces. The Croats accepted this arrangement because itlegitimated their own local control over parts of western Herzego-vina, while affording no governmental power to central governmentauthorities.

Post-Dayton Bosnia is much like the Muslim-Croat Federationin its (dys)function. According to Bosnia’s constitution, which wasadopted as part of the Dayton Agreement, the country is formed oftwo ‘‘entities,’’ the Republika Srpska and the Muslim-Croat Federa-tion. According to Article III of the constitution, ‘‘All governmentalfunctions and powers not expressly assigned to the common institu-tions of Bosnia and Herzegovina shall be those of the Entities.’’ Thepowers expressly assigned the central government involve foreignpolicy and foreign trade, customs, and common and inter-entitysystems and communications. There is no provision for commondefense. Indeed, not only did the Dayton Agreement recognize theexistence of two armies, but it also specified in Article V that ‘‘underno circumstances shall any armed forces of either Entity enter intoor stay within the territory of the other Entity without the consentof the government of the latter.’’ Essentially, then, Bosnia under theDayton constitution is a common market with a foreign ministryand an international legal personality, composed of two entities thathave all powers of internal government and are armed against eachother.22 Within the Muslim-Croat ‘‘entity,’’ moreover, the govern-ment is divided, so that the Croats have governmental authority inthe regions they control. Thus Bosnia is officially a country of twoentities boasting three separate armies.

This political architecture was necessitated by the unwillingnessof either Serbs or Croats to consent to inclusion within a state thatwould have any control over them of whatever kind. Thus in orderto gain Serb and Croat consent to inclusion within Bosnia, the DaytonAgreement had to provide that there would be no real Bosniangovernment. Put another way, the Dayton Agreement gained thenominal consent of the governed by providing that the proposedgovernment would be only nominal.

This de facto partition of Bosnia worked to stop the war becauseit gave the Croats and the Serbs most of what they wanted: assurance

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that they would not come under the authority of a Muslim-domi-nated regime, or of a coalition of the Muslims with either Serbs orCroats, respectively. At the same time, it gave the Muslims almostall of Sarajevo and the rest of central Bosnia, along with Bihac inthe northwest. The demarcation of the inter-entity boundary waslargely peaceful, albeit locally disruptive. In the Serb-controlledareas turned over to the Muslim-Croat Federation, Serbs left, encour-aged both by their own political leadership and by the Muslimsthemselves.23 Muslim forces, for example, burned Serb houses on Mt.Ozren so that Serbs could not return.24 Thus the Dayton Agreementdisplaced people, but they were largely going into areas that theyregarded as safe, where they would no longer be members of aminority. Petritsch claims that since Dayton, about 100,000 ‘‘minorityreturns’’ have taken place.25 However, it is common knowledge thatmany of these ‘‘returns’’ are only nominal, done in order to layclaim to property that the owners had been forced to abandon inorder to enable the supposed returnees to sell it. As a partition plan,then, the Dayton Agreement worked well, by dividing the Bosnian‘‘state’’ into three ‘‘statelets,’’ each with its own nation, its ownterritory, its own government, and its own army.

The High Representative’s Dismantling of Dayton

The Dayton Agreement was unable to create a Bosnian statebecause there was no Bosnian nation and about half of the populationcontinued to reject the concept. If this political fact was not clearenough during the war or when the Dayton Agreement was signed,it was incontestable shortly thereafter. Internationally supervisedelections in 1996 returned the three antagonistic nationalist partiesto power in their respective territories. The central institutions ofBosnia had been given very limited powers by the Dayton constitu-tion, and even those required consensus for the very practical reasonthat trying to impose a decision on a people who rejected it couldhave led to a resumption of war.

To be sure, the Dayton Agreement was inconsistent in that itmandated the return of refugees and displaced persons to the placesthey had lived before the war began in 1992. The Dayton Agreementthus created political entities based on the principle of the ethnicstate while proclaiming a right to return that would make such statesunstable by recreating the demographic distributions of the prewar

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period. By 1997, however, with the supposed central institutions ofBosnia clearly nonviable, and minority returns blocked by all parties(Muslims, Serbs, and Croats), the international community couldhave resolved matters by recognizing the obvious: that howeverdesirable a common Bosnian state might have been in the abstract,it was rejected by at least half of the population. Instead of usingthe Dayton Agreement’s divisions as the basis for a formal partitionof the country, however, the international body charged with over-seeing the implementation of the Dayton Agreement, the PeaceImplementation Council, gave the high representative the power to:

make binding decisions, as he judges necessary, on . . .interim measures to take effect when the parties are unableto reach agreement . . . [and on] other measures to ensure. . . the smooth running of the common institutions. Suchmeasures may include actions against persons holding publicoffice or officials . . . who are found by the High Representa-tive to be in violation of legal commitments made under the[Dayton] Peace Agreement.26

The scope of authority granted to the high representative was breath-taking, literally unreviewable in any court and not subject to controlby any elected authorities in Bosnia. Thus the high representativewas given broad autocratic powers to impose democracy in a highlyundemocratic fashion.

But can democracy be imposed on Bosnia? Perhaps the mostrevealing indication of the answer is given by the high representa-tive’s handling of the symbol of Bosnian statehood, the official flag.One of the few powers clearly given to the Bosnian parliament atDayton was to decide on such symbols (Article I, Section 6). Sinceboth the Serb and Croat representatives in the parliament spoke forconstituents who did not want to be included in Bosnia in the firstplace, it is not surprising that they did not agree on a common flag.The high representative, using the powers granted to him by thePeace Implementation Council, created a commission to design a‘‘neutral’’ flag that did not incorporate the iconography of any ofBosnia’s national groups. He then chose a design of a gold triangleon a blue background with a row of white stars, in which ‘‘thetriangle represents the three constituent peoples of Bosnia and Her-zegovina, the gold color represents the sun, as a symbol of hope,the blue and the stars stand for Europe.’’27 At the press conference

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introducing the flag, the high representative’s press officer admittedthat it looked like a box for breakfast cereal. At a more basic level,however, the high representative chose as a symbol of Bosnia a flagthat had no emotional meaning whatsoever to the people it wasmeant to symbolize.

The high representative’s imposition of laws and removal of dulyelected officials from office have caused deep resentment, and thereis no sign that he intends ever to devolve power to the people ofBosnia. In fact, the opposite is happening. The high representativehas more power today, nearly six years after the Dayton Agreementwas signed, than ever. In 2000, the high representative began revisingthe Dayton constitution while piously proclaiming to be upholdingit. In July 2000, Petritsch granted himself the power to engage in‘‘constitutional interpretation’’ in order to annul actions of the elec-ted parliament, a power clearly not found in the Dayton constitu-tion.28 More importantly, however, Petritsch has revised the constitu-tional provisions that provide for the constituent peoples of Bosniaeach to have representatives of their own choosing, and to be ableto protect their own vital interests. These provisions are meant toand do threaten the ability of the Croats and Serbs to maintain theirindependence, and are thus highly destabilizing as they annul theprimary condition under which Serbs and Croats ended the war.

The dismantling of the Dayton constitutional structure has takentwo forms. The first was a decision by the Constitutional Court ofBosnia, declaring that the provisions in the entity constitutions thatproclaimed Croats and Muslims to be ‘‘constituent peoples’’ of theMuslim-Croat Federation, and Serbs of the Republika Srpska, arecontrary to the Dayton constitution’s provisions for equality of peo-ples.29 Yet Article IV of the Dayton constitution creates a House ofPeoples, composed specifically of five Muslims and five Croats fromthe territory of the Muslim-Croat Federation and five Serbs from theRepublika Srpska, and also provides means for the representatives ofthe constituent peoples to challenge legislation that is contrary tothe interests of that people. Thus the constitutional recognition ofthese peoples as constituent in their respective entities is an essentialelement of Bosnia’s constitution. The Constitutional Court of Bosniaseems to have taken the curious position that the most basic structureof Bosnia’s constitution is unconstitutional. The five-to-four case wasdecided by a majority composed of two Muslim judges and three

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international ones, over the dissents of both Serb judges and bothCroat judges.

High representative Petritsch then used this decision as the pretextto impose constitutional commissions in both entities, with membersand chairs appointed by himself, to prepare laws and constitutionalchanges in order to comply with the decision of the ConstitutionalCourt. The structure of the commissions is such that three memberscan block any actions by the commission, in which case the highrepresentative can impose his own decision.30 Thus Petritsch hasgiven himself carte blanche to revise the entity constitutions, despitethe wishes of the voters and their elected representatives, and despitethe provisions of the constitution itself.

Petritsch also changed the federation constitution by issuing elec-tion rules in 2000 that were clearly contrary to the document, andthat deprived Croats of their right to elect their own representativesin the Federation House of Peoples, the chamber that can blocklegislation that it feels is contrary to the vital interests of a constituentnation.31 While the federation’s constitution calls for members of theHouse of Peoples to be elected by the Croat and Muslim membersvoting separately for the members from their respective nations,Petritsch issued orders allowing all members to vote for candidatesfrom both groups. Since there were more Muslim representativesthan Croat ones, this meant that Muslims selected some Croat repre-sentatives, not the Croats themselves. It is this effective disenfran-chisement that led the major, and by far the most popular, Croatianpolitical party to withdraw from federation government, producingcrisis and violence.

Democratic constitutions are amended all over the world, butby legislative means, not court or administrative edicts. The highrepresentative, however, is changing Bosnia’s constitution by judi-cial and administrative actions precisely because he knows that hecannot do it democratically.

Confronted with the contradiction between the Dayton Agree-ment’s mandate of returning people to the places where they hadlived before the war, and the Bosnian constitution’s formal struc-ture of institutionalizing and legitimizing separate ethnic polities,Petritsch simply deconstructed the constitution created in Dayton.However useful his actions might seem in theory, they ignore the factthat the people of Bosnia, like most Europeans historically, see their

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own security in ethnically defined polities. Dayton’s constitutionalstructures may have met the wishes of the majority of Bosnia’speople when the war ended, but Petritsch is now trying to imposeon them a kind of Bosnia that many, perhaps most, of those peo-ple reject.

Structuring a Bosnian (Con)Federation to Avoid FurtherConflict

The likely consequences of continuing to forcibly impose a Bosniancentral government on Croats and Serbs who reject it are not pleas-ant. Such an imposition might lead to war and certainly meansfurther occupation; and if the imposition succeeded, many Serbs andCroats would probably leave Bosnia rather than endure occupation.Their departure would be yet another ethnically driven populationmovement, this time directly provoked by the actions of the supposedpeacemakers. While the large-scale departure of Serbs and Croatsmight stabilize a unified Muslim state, it would predictably lead tolong-term instability based on the refusal of the expatriates to accepttheir fate, likes Greeks from Northern Cyprus or Palestinians in Israel.Another possibility is that forcibly imposing a unified Bosnian stateon Serbs and Croats could draw Serbia and/or Croatia back into theconflict, especially if either were to be confronted with new waves ofrefugees. Of course, an attempt to forcibly impose Bosnia might alsofail, leading to long-term civil strife and, again, refugees.

A more promising alternative would be to strive to create statestructures that people in Bosnia will accept, and where they feelthemselves protected. For Serbs and Croats, this means a return tothe de facto partition of the Dayton structure. While this plan isobviously less attractive to Muslims, they, too, would then controltheir own territory, and could then build links with the other statesof the former Yugoslavia, and beyond.

Indeed, it is just this division into national territories that mightfinally permit the creation of a Bosnian state that is more than nomi-nal. If the various peoples of Bosnia are convinced that their controlover their territories—thus over homes and holdings—is secure,they may become willing to enter into real alliances with each otheron a federal basis.

The model would be Switzerland, formally a confederation butactually a federation of cantons that are defined by association with

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(and control by) a particular national group.32 In this model, Bosniacould actually serve as a link between Serbia and Croatia, maintain-ing the ‘‘special relations’’ with them allowed by the Dayton constitu-tion while also maintaining an internal market. This possibility wasrecognized by U.S. ambassador to Croatia Peter Galbraith in his1997 farewell speech. Croatia’s special relationship with Bosnia,authorized by the Dayton Agreement, he said, is actually a ‘‘de factoplan for economic union with the Republika Srpska and the FederalRepublic of Yugoslavia.’’33 As the United States was still insistingon sanctions on Yugoslavia at that time, however, Galbraith thoughtsuch a union would be ‘‘premature.’’ With the recent reincorporationof Yugoslavia into the world community, however, perhaps the timehas come for Bosnia to serve this linking function, through the‘‘special relations’’ between Croatia and the Muslim-Croat Federa-tion, on the one hand, and the Republika Srpska and Yugoslavia,on the other.

What is needed, then, is a return to the Dayton Agreement asoriginally understood, as a partition plan, de facto legitimating theseparate Muslim, Serb, and Croat polities within Bosnia, but continu-ing to deny them separate international legal personalities. The roleof the international community would then not be that of trying toimpose a state on the half of the population that rejects it, but ratheron assisting the separate polities in building their own democraticsystems and links to each other. That task is doable, and it wouldallow NATO to reduce its role to deterring cross-border aggressionand to create the conditions for a timely withdrawal.

Notes1. Under the Constitution adopted as part of the Dayton Agreement, Bosnia is

divided into two ‘‘entities,’’ a Muslim-Croat Federation of Bosnia and Herzegovinaand the Republika Srpska. Each entity has its own army (while in practice, thesupposed federation army is divided into separate Croat and Muslim forces). Theterm Bosniak has been adopted by Bosnian Muslims as a name for themselves. Until1994 they were known politically and constitutionally simply as Muslims. In Serbo-Bosno-Croatian, ‘‘Bosniak’’ (Bosnjak) means exclusively a Bosnian Muslim, while‘‘Bosnian’’ (Bosanac) could mean any person from Bosnia.

2. European Stability Initiative, ‘‘The End of the Nationalist Regimes and theFuture of the Bosnian State,’’ www.esiweb.org/reports8-2001.html, contains the bestconcise account of the conflict between the Office of the High Representative (OHR)and the leading Serb and Croat political parties in Bosnia; hereafter ESI Report.

3. See ‘‘Nationalist Fires, Fanned by Croats, Singe Sarajevo Again,’’ New YorkTimes, April 16, 2001, p. A3; ‘‘Bomba i Hercegovina,’’ Feral Tribune, April 14, 2001;‘‘Novac za Hercegovinu,’’ Globus, April 6, 2001.

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4. See ‘‘Seridanova Presuda Konacna,’’ Oslobodjenje (Internet edition), April 26,2001, www.oslobadjenje.com.ba/asp/frame.asp.

5. ‘‘Serbs Halt Bosnia Mosque Building,’’ BBC News Online: World: Europe, Mon-day, May 7, 2001, 18:32 GMT, news.bbc.co.uk/low/english/world/europe/newsid_1317000/1317366.stm.

6. See Hrvatski Narodni Sabor of Bosnia and Hercegovina, ‘‘‘Alijansa’: Illegaland Illegitimate Authority in Bosna and Herzegovina,’’ www.hns-bih.org/elections_indicators.htm.

7. ‘‘Petricevi Zakoni Skinuti s Dnevnog Reda,’’ Oslobodjenje, April 25, 2001,www.oslobdjenje.com.ba/asp/frame.asp.

8. High Representative’s Decision allocating jurisdiction for the investigation,prosecution, and trials of incidents of violence and intimidation in the Federationduring the past month to the Cantonal Prosecutor and Cantonal Court of Sarajevo,April 27, 2001, www.ohr.int/decisions/20010427a.htm.

9. See International Crisis Group, After Milosevic: A Practical Agenda for LastingBalkans Peace, April 2001, pp. 138ff.

10. Dayton Agreement, Annex 1A, Art. I(2). When the mandate of the originalNATO force, IFOR, ended on December 20, 1996, a new 18-month mandate wasgiven to a new force, SFOR (see ‘‘Letter dated December 23, 1996 from the Secretary-General of NATO addressed to the Secretary-General [of the UN],’’ UN SecretaryGeneral S/1996/1066, December 24, 1996. SFOR, of course, is still operating in Bosniaalmost five years after the expiration of its original 12-month mandate.

11. David Chandler, Bosnia: Faking Democracy after Dayton (London: Pluto Press,1999) is a brilliant analysis of the self-defeating, and antidemocratic, efforts to imposedemocracy in Bosnia in the six years after Dayton.

12. See generally Robert Hayden, Blueprints for a House Divided: The ConstitutionalLogic of the Yugoslav Conflicts (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1999).

13. J. F. Brown, Nationalism, Democracy and Security in the Balkans (1995), epigraphquoted from Izetbegovic interview in Die Welt, November 23, 1990.

14. That ethnicity is defined by religious heritage in Bosnia is confusing to Ameri-cans but should not be—think of Jews, for example, or Muslims and Hindus in India(the reason for the formation of Pakistan).

15. Hayden, Blueprints for a House Divided: The Constitutional Logic of the YugoslavConflicts (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 2001,) p. 92. This phenomenonis hardly limited to Bosnia; see generally Jack Snyder, Democratization and NationalistConflict (New York: W.W. Norton, 2000).

16. See Xavier Bougarel, ‘‘Bosnia and Hercegovina: State and Communitarianism,’’in Yugoslavia and After, edited by Ivan Vejvoda and David Dykers (London: Longman,1996). That the major Croatian party, the HDZ, was overwhelmingly for secessionis shown in Igor Lasic and Boris Raseta, ‘‘Herceg Bojna,’’ Feral Tribune, February2001; there were moderate Croats, but they were powerless. See Steven Burg andPaul Shoup, The War in Bosnia-Herzegovina (New York: M.E. Sharpe, 2000), p. 66.There is no doubt at all that the main Serb party, the SDS, favored secession, andthat this position was held overwhelmingly by Serbs in Bosnia.

17. Quoted in David Binder, ‘‘U.S. Policymakers on Bosnia Admit Errors in Oppos-ing Partition in 1992,’’ New York Times, August 29, 1993, p. 8.

18. A referendum on independence in early March 1992 showed clearly the rejectionof independence by a large portion of the population; it was also both unconstitutionalby the then-valid Bosnian constitution, and illegal, having been mandated by a

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parliament that was, by proclamation of its president, in recess for the night (seeHayden, pp. 95–97). Since the referendum was illegally mandated against the wishesof those who rejected it, its divisive nature was ensured.

19. Burg and Shoup, The War in Bosnia-Herzegovina, pp. 178–80.20. ‘‘Opinion of the Arbitration Committee of the Conference on Yugoslavia,’’

Yugoslav Survey 23, no. 4 (1991): 17.21. See Hayden, chapter 7.22. See generally Hayden, chapter 8.23. See Carl Bildt, Peace Journey (London: Weidenfeld and Nicolson, 1998), pp.

193–99.24. S. Latal, ‘‘Bosnian Army Destroys as It Exits,’’ Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, January

18, 1996, p. A6.25. ‘‘Report by the High Representative to the Secretary-General of the United

Nations,’’ March 12, 2001, www.ohr.int/reports/r20010312a.htm.26. Bonn Peace Implementation Conference 1997: Conclusions, XI.2, www.ohr.int.27. OHR Bulletin 65 (Feb. 6, 1998), www.ohr.int.28. Joint OHR/OSCE Press Release, ‘‘OHR and OSCE Are Forced to Review Pro-

posed Law on Presidential Succession,’’ July 28, 2000, www.ohr.int/press/p20000728a.htm.

29. Ustavni Sud Bosne i Hercegovine, Delimicna Odluka, July 1, 2000, SluzbeniGlasnik B i H 23, p. 472ff. (September 14, 2000). This decision was taken before reasonsfor it were adopted by the court, which may explain why its publication was delayedfor more than two months.

30. High Representative’s Decision Establishing Interim Procedures to Protect VitalInterests of Constituent Peoples and Others, Including Freedom from Discrimination,January 11, 2001.

31. See ESI Report, Part B.32. See Lidija Basta Fleiner and Thomas Fleiner, eds., Federalism and Multiethnic

States: The Case of Switzerland, 2d ed. (Bale, Geneva, and Munich: Helbing & Lichten-hahn, 2000).

33. United States Information Service, text of Ambassador Galbraith’s FarewellSpeech on Leaving Croatia, December 19, 1997.

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5. Drawing Lines in Shifting Sands: TheTerritorial Question in the FormerYugoslavia

Raju G. C. Thomas

During a visit to Belgrade and Pristina in April 2001, British foreignsecretary Robin Cook declared that the era of redrawing the bordersof the Balkans in blood was over, and that if either Kosovo orMontenegro wanted to seek a new relationship with Belgrade, eachmust not do it through any plan to unilaterally secede from Yugosla-via.1 Cook urged Albanians and Montenegrins to instead pursuedialogue with Belgrade and reminded them that the internationalwill that brought NATO troops to the Balkan region was not amandate for their independence. No doubt, these are words of wis-dom, but they come about 10 years too late. Indeed, Cook’s positionis a radical turnaround from Western policies during the previousdecade: the hasty and reckless recognition of new states carved outof the former Yugoslavia.

So what is an appropriate territorial solution now, given all thecontradictions and inconsistencies of Western policies toward thesuccessor states and former Yugoslav territories during the 1990s?For the answer to that question, we must understand that Westernpolicymakers during the 1990s repeatedly ignored longstanding his-torical and legal precedents, and that the consequences of thosedecisions have fundamentally shaped the political reality in theBalkans today.

Unilateral Declaration of Independence

The West played an instrumental role in the breakup of Yugoslaviain 1991–92 by encouraging and then recognizing the unilateral decla-ration of independence (UDI) of Slovenia, then Croatia, and thenBosnia. Normally UDIs are considered a violation of internationallaw because they are typically carried out against the wishes of

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the majority of a country’s population and/or the objections of acountry’s standing federal-level government.2 In 1965, for instance,Britain refused to recognize a UDI by Prime Minister Ian Smith’swhite minority government in Southern Rhodesia, declaring the actof breaking away from the Federation of Rhodesia and Nyasalandillegal under international law. Supporting the British position, theUnited Nations proceeded to impose economic sanctions on Rhode-sia as punishment for its illegal UDI. In 1983, when Turkish Cypriotsunilaterally proclaimed the Turkish-populated area of northernCyprus an independent state, the United Nations declared the move‘‘legally invalid.’’3

In August 1998, the Canadian Supreme Court, while acknowledg-ing that Canada is not indivisible, declared that Quebec could notsecede through a simple majority vote among its residents.4 Theterms of secession would have to be negotiated with the rest ofCanada as an amendment to the Canadian constitution. The nineCanadian justices indicated that while such a secession would betheoretically feasible, it would be difficult, painful, and costly, andnot likely to be accepted in practice. More importantly, the CanadianSupreme Court (including three judges from Quebec) declared thatunder international law, there is no right of unilateral secessionexcept for territories judged to be colonies and especially oppressedpeoples. Quebec fulfills neither category. The court warned thatunilateral secession by French Canadians would likely be rejectedas illegitimate by the ‘‘international community,’’ presumably thesame international community, including Canada, that rushed torecognize the unilateral declarations of secession by Slovenia andCroatia.

If the Canadian Supreme Court’s determination of internationallaw is correct, then French Canadians—and, for that matter, Sloveni-ans, Croatians, and Bosnian Muslims, all of whom were economicallybetter off than Serbians and hardly oppressed or backward coloni-als—had no right to secede. Their UDIs should have been deemedillegal and their demands for recognition rejected. Note, too, thatthe unilateral declarations of independence by Slovenia and Croatiain June 1991 were probably a violation of the Helsinki AgreementFinal Act of 1975, which guaranteed the boundaries of the states ofEurope. In any case, these UDIs were not carried out because therewere widespread human rights violations. Rather, they provoked

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Drawing Lines in Shifting Sands

subsequent wars in which human rights violations and violenceoccurred on a massive scale.

Accepting UDIs Inconsistently

Having recognized Slovenia, Croatia, and Bosnia, the West thenrefused to concede the same right of self-determination and secessionto the Serb minority in Croatia or the Serb and Croat minorities inBosnia. Indeed, the UDIs of the Serb Republic of Krajina in Croatia,and the Republika Srpska and the Croat Republic of Herzeg-Bosnain Bosnia were all rejected by the West. The Helsinki principles wereinvoked to support the territorial integrity of the new states of Croatiaand Bosnia, the latter of which had never before existed as an inde-pendent state. Having rejected the earlier claims to statehood of theSerb Republic of Krajina in Croatia and those of the Republika Srpskaand Croat Republic of Herzeg-Bosna in Bosnia, the West now seemsprepared to recognize the independence of Kosovo, historically asmuch a part of Serbia as Dalmatia is a part of Croatia. And whileprepared to allow the Albanians of Kosovo to secede from Serbia,the West will not tolerate secession by the Serbs from Kosovo. Thus,all the nationalities of the former Yugoslavia have been effectivelyadjudged to have the right of self-determination and secession, exceptthe Serbs.

The Irish, Indian, and Russian Experiences

One significant principle established in two earlier cases was thatwhen new states are forged through secession from an existing state,the former internal boundaries of the state cannot automaticallybecome the external boundaries of new states.5 Thus, when Catholicmajority Ireland seceded from Britain in 1921, the Protestant majorityareas of Northern Ireland were dislodged from Ireland and retainedby Britain despite the protests of Ireland and the Catholics of North-ern Ireland. When Pakistan seceded from India in 1947, Punjab andBengal were divided between India and Pakistan despite protestsby Pakistan that the majority of the population in these two formerlyBritish provinces were Muslim.

In the breakup of the Soviet Union in 1991, however, no territorialand boundary changes of the former internal ‘‘republics’’ wereallowed by the international community. The preservation of theSoviet boundaries was particularly puzzling because the boundaries

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of Russia and its neighbors had fluctuated over the centuries. Onepost-disintegration analysis of the Soviet Union stated: ‘‘BecauseRussia became an empire before the Russians consolidated as anation, the psychological limits of the state and of the Russian iden-tity have always been problematic. Russia has always been a pre-modern empire with a center and a periphery.’’6 Another analystpointed out: ‘‘The Russian state has never existed within its currentborders.’’7 The origins of the Russian state are found in Kiev, thecapital of Ukraine, around the ninth century. The distinctions amongthe Orthodox Christian peoples of Russia, Ukraine, and Byelorussia(now Belarus) are relatively minor. Certainly, the differences aremuch less than those of various ethnic groups, such as Chechensand Tatars, which are now seeking secession from Russia.

The rationale for the emergence of 15 independent states after1991 was that there existed no more than 15 ‘‘republics’’ within theformer Soviet Union, regardless of whether or not the boundariesmade sense. Today, Russian-majority Crimea is a part of indepen-dent Ukraine because Khrushchev decided to transfer Crimea tothe Ukrainian republic in 1954. The reason that Armenian majorityNagorno-Karabakh became part of independent Azerbaijan insteadof Armenia is that Josef Stalin decided to transfer it from Armeniato Azerbaijan in 1921.8 As long as the Soviet Union remained onestate, these internal boundary questions among its ‘‘republics,’’ orwhether there ought to be more than 15 ‘‘republics’’ for the USSR’smore than 100 nationalities, were not burning issues. But they canbecome matters of life and death when a state disintegrates andhistorical memories of conflict and persecution persist among thenew minorities.

New State Recognition and International Law

Under what conditions should new states be recognized?9 ArticleI of the 1933 Montevideo Convention on the rights and duties ofstates provides the basic set of guidelines for the recognition of newstates: ‘‘The State as a person of international law should possess thefollowing qualifications: (a) a permanent population; (b) a definedterritory; (c) a government; and (d) a capacity to enter into relationswith other states.’’10 A state possessing those qualities and recog-nized by other states is endowed with sovereignty, which in essencemeans that the state controls its own internal affairs and makes

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its own foreign policy. Sometimes an added requirement for therecognition of new states is the expectation that the state’s govern-ment be established consistent with the principle of self-determina-tion. According to legal scholar Hurst Hannum, however, that princi-ple ‘‘seems to be applicable only in the context of decolonization,such as the refusal of the world community to concede statehoodto Southern Rhodesia from the time of Ian Smith’s unilateral declara-tion of independence in 1965 to the establishment of majority rulein 1980.’’11

In the case of Yugoslavia, all these principles were discarded incavalier fashion by the international community. When Bosnia wasrecognized in April 1992, it fulfilled neither the narrow criteria ofan ethnic nation (race, language, religion) nor the broad criteriaof a civic nation (a commitment to common political institutions,processes, and destiny). In short, Bosnia did not fulfill the criteriaof a state as defined by the 1933 Montevideo Convention. Serbscontinue to resist common citizenship and there is little prospect ofthe country becoming a civic entity. In April 1994, Croats and Mus-lims agreed to join together into a single Bosnian state, but their tiesand commitment to the state remained superficial, enforced mostlyby the United States and the European Union through the promisesof reward and threats of punishment. Moreover, the internal andexternal boundaries of Bosnia have been contested by both the Serbsand the Croats, and following recognition and the outbreak of civilwar, Bosnia lacked a stable population, and the Bosnian governmentdid not control all of its territory. Yet the independence of the largelyMuslim-led Bosnian government was recognized by the rest ofthe world.

Michael Libal, former director of the German Foreign Ministryin charge of dealing with the problems of the former Yugoslavia,however, defends the West’s recognition of Bosnia, as well as ofSlovenia and Croatia.

Because the frontiers of Slovenia, Croatia, and Bosnia-Her-zegovina were on the whole historical frontiers, the choicewas easier to make. Nothing, therefore, is further from themark than [the] claim that ‘‘new’’ states were being createdout of Yugoslav territory. No ‘‘new’’ states had to be created.Just as there is a state of Bavaria in the Federal Republicof Germany, and as there was a state of Slovakia in the

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Czechoslovak republic and a state of Georgia in the formerUSSR, there existed states in the former Yugoslavia. . . . Andin this context, contrary to what . . . [some contend], the Serbswere granted exactly the same, albeit rather limited, right ofself-determination, as all other Yugoslav nations. They wereallowed to claim international recognition for their republic(Serbia) and respect for its territorial integrity, which meantdenying the right to secession to the Albanians in Kosovoand the Muslims in the Sanjak.12

Libal’s statement is not only wrong from the standpoint of interna-tional law and politics among sovereign states, but extremely dan-gerous. His claim that the internal ‘‘republics’’ of the former Yugosla-via were in reality states under international law is patently absurd.Their status under international law was no different from that ofKosovo or Sanjak within the Serbian republic of Yugoslavia, or thatof Dalmatia, Krajina, and Slavonia within the Croatian republic ofYugoslavia. Internal boundaries have no sanctity under internationallaw and may be changed. In many cases, internal boundaries mayhave no historical or legal justification within the state and may bethe subject of intense domestic controversy as in the case of Serbiancomplaints prior to 1991.

If Libal’s statement represents the official German position, thenit is clear that Germany invented an arbitrary international rule ofconvenience to advance the secessionist cause of its favored ethnicunits, Slovenia and Croatia. Given Libal’s official position in theGerman Foreign Ministry dealing with the crisis in Yugoslavia, hisviews are an indication that Germany contributed to the destructionof Yugoslavia by acting on such erroneous beliefs.

There are two other major problems with Libal’s arguments. First,the current political boundaries of Croatia and Bosnia are historicallydubious. Until their emergence as independent states in 1991 and1992 (with the exception of the Nazi puppet ‘‘Independent State ofCroatia’’ between 1941 and 1945), they were parts of other politicalunits. Within the Austro-Hungarian Empire, Dalmatia, Krajina, andSlavonia were not always integral parts of Croatia, which was mainlyconcentrated around Zagreb. Bosnia was switched from the OttomanEmpire to the Austrian Empire in 1878. Bosnia was not recognizedas a separate province in the unitary state of Yugoslavia under theSerbian monarchy during the interwar years. The Kingdom of Serbs,

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Croats, and Slovenes (later renamed Yugoslavia) recognized threenationalities, and no more, and did not demarcate their constituentterritories. Much of the territory of current-day Bosnia and Croatiawas collapsed into the Ustashe Croatian state by the Nazis duringthe Second World War. Macedonia and Montenegro were consideredpart of the Serb nation during the interwar years. Macedonia hadbeen part of South Serbia. Much of Vojvodina, which later becamepart of Serbia, had been under the Austro-Hungarian Empire.

While some historians may claim that Tito followed historicalboundaries of provinces that existed within the Austro-Hungarianand Ottoman Empires, Yugoslav specialists such as David Martinhave claimed that Yugoslavia’s internal borders were essentiallythe ‘‘recent inventions of a Communist dictator [Tito] and have nohistorical validity.’’13 Similarly, the British author Nora Beloff noted:‘‘The internal borders, which we treat as permanent features ofYugoslavia, were in reality drawn up secretly by Tito’s men in 1943and were designed as administrative boundaries, within a centrallyplanned Stalinist state.’’14

There are few states in the world today whose ‘‘historic’’ bound-aries have been constant. Many had no past boundaries of any kindat all. No ethnic logic prevails in the boundaries of African states,except the colonial legacy. This was the argument made by theCatholic Ibos of Biafra who had declared independence from Nigeriaand were crushed by Muslim federal forces in a brutal civil warbetween 1967 and 1970. At the time of British India’s independence,there existed several large British Indian provinces proper and morethan 580 autonomous Indian princely states ruled by maharajahs andnawabs. After independence, the new Indian government changedthose internal boundaries so that virtually none of the old historicboundaries remained.

The relevant question, therefore, is whether when provincessecede from a sovereign state, internal boundaries should automati-cally become external boundaries. From the standpoint of equityand justice, this should not be allowed to happen. No governmentof India of any political party or persuasion would tolerate Libal’sargument that internal provinces, whether they are called states orrepublics, have the right to become independent states within thoseborders. Indeed, as far as India is concerned, they have no right tobecome independent states whatever their borders. And by implication,

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unilateral declarations of independence are acts of war, which Indiawill contest by all possible means. That resolve is no different else-where in the world—including the United States, as evident in thecivil war that it fought in the 19th century.

But, whether historical or not, internal boundaries do not justifythe perpetuation of those same borders when territories secede.Indeed, there are real dangers in allowing territories to secede with-out changes to their boundaries. One is civil war, as occurred inBosnia and Croatia. Another is that the governments of states domi-nated by an ethnic majority will be motivated to set up highlycentralized political systems to prevent internal distinctions. Thatcould result in aggravating ethnic dissatisfaction and secessionistpressures rather than reducing them. Alternatively, there could bean escalation in conflict between ethnic minorities and majoritiesfor the creation of more and more ‘‘provinces,’’ ‘‘republics,’’ andother internal divisions as stepping stones to independence.

Populations, Territories, and the Proportionality Question

If the principle of the territorial integrity of existing states is tobe unwisely abandoned—as it was in Yugoslavia—then the bound-aries of the breakaway territories should be open to negotiation. Thecrucial question, of course, is whether territory should be parceledout according to a group’s numeric size or some other criteria. InBosnia, the international community was outraged that the Serbshad seized 70 percent of Bosnian territory when they constitutedonly 33 percent of the population. However, as mainly peasants andfarmers, the Serbs had owned or occupied much of the countrysidewhile the richer Muslims occupied the denser populated cities. Theurban-rural distinction was not new. The 1910 Austrian censusshowed that Christian Orthodox Serbs constituted 43.5 percent ofthe population but 74 percent of ‘‘servile tenures’’ (land occupationand tenancy). The comparable figures for Muslims were 32.4 percentand 4.6 percent, and for Catholic Croats, 22.8 percent and 21.4percent.15

The land-to-population-size principle hardly makes sense whenrural-urban distinctions are so dramatic. More appropriate criteriafor territorial renegotiation would be the location, the quality of landoccupied or to be received, and claims of historical residence thatmay have been usurped by others. Land allotted at the time of

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secession should encompass as much of the population of the seced-ing ethnic group, or conversely, retain in the old state as much ofthe population of the old majority ethnic groups that do not wishto be part of the new state.

Likewise, vast acres of agricultural or barren land cannot beequated with small territories of resource-rich or industrialized land.Sarajevo alone is worth much more than all of the 49 percent of theland allotted to the Serbs, which is mainly mountainous and lacksindustries or power plants. According to scholar and journalist PeterBrock, Bosnian Serbs were wary of early Western peace proposalsbecause they would have received only $6.1 billion of the total $31.5billion identified assets in Bosnia; none of the known deposits ofbauxite, lead, zinc, salt, or iron; none of the 10 hydroelectric plants,which would all fall under Bosnian Croat jurisdiction; 160 of the960 kilometers of railroad lines; and 200 kilometers of the improvedroadways. Moreover, the Serbs faced the loss of 24 percent of theland that they had held for generations.16

Establishing a Dangerous PrecedentIn choosing between the principle of the right of self-determination

and the principle of the territorial integrity of sovereign states, the‘‘international community’’ (i.e., those nations strong enough toenforce their will) has now established the following self-contradict-ing and dangerous precedents and principles in the Yugoslav case:(1) The internal boundaries of a sovereign state will automaticallybecome international frontiers if that sovereign state is taken apartthrough the new state-recognition policy, and (2) these newly recog-nized international frontiers of the newly created sovereign stateswill be preserved and enforced at any price, thus contradicting theearlier decision to take the international frontiers of the preexistingsovereign state apart based on the rights of self-determinationand secession.

Whether reasonable or unreasonable, practical or impractical,acceptable or unacceptable to the states involved, the following arethree basic options that may be considered in settling the territorialmess that has resulted from Yugoslavia’s disintegration:

1. Compel the different ethnic groups to live together as they didin the old Yugoslavia because multiethnic tolerance and coexis-tence is a good thing.

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2. Divide the former Yugoslavia into its basic constituent ethnicgroups, granting to all groups their ethnically pure states throughpopulation exchanges.

3. Enforce the prevailing territorial status quo as of 2001, whetherlogical or illogical, just or unjust.

Option 1: Reunite YugoslaviaIf the West believes that the territorial status quo should now be

maintained, as Foreign Secretary Robin Cook informed the KosovarAlbanians and the Montenegrins in April 2001, and that differentethnic groups must learn to live together, as Wolfgang Petritsch, theAustrian head of the international authority for Bosnia-Herzegovina,insisted, then why not turn back the clock 10 years and restore theold Yugoslavia and its multiethnicity as it existed before 1991? Inthat Yugoslavia, no single ethnic group had a clear majority. In pre-1991 Yugoslavia, Serbs constituted 35 percent of the total population,only a pluralistic majority. In Bosnia-Herzegovina, a smaller versionof the larger Yugoslav state, Muslims had only a pluralistic majorityof 42 percent.

Petritsch has insisted that the Dayton Agreement was the rightsolution instead of breaking up Bosnia into three separate puremonoethnic states: ‘‘The victory of Dayton and international engage-ment has been a lasting peace, a slow but perceptible lessening offear in Bosnia and Herzegovina and an increasing focus amongordinary citizens on issues that really matter: jobs, a decent educationfor one’s kids, a state that can do business with the outside world.Bosnian citizens are returning to their homes in increasing numbers,thanks to the imposition of strict property laws.’’ Petritsch continued:

‘‘Market reforms and the rule of law are making inroads intothe shady economic fiefdoms under the nationalists’ controland are putting Bosnians’ rights as citizens on a firm, legalfooting. To walk away now would be to throw away billionsof dollars and years of effort. It would vindicate only theproponents of ethnic cleansing. It would lead to territoriesof ever decreasing and more absurd proportions—and tocontinuing instability in Europe.’’17

Ironically, the same policies proposed by Petritsch in 2001 couldhave kept Yugoslavia together in 1991 and saved countless liveson all sides. If only Petritsch had advised his government in Vienna

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accordingly before 1991. If Western policymakers, especially in Ger-many and the United States, thought it was impractical to hold amultiethnic Yugoslavia together in early 1991 before any violencehad occurred in Slovenia, Croatia, and Bosnia, then given all thebloodshed that has occurred it is even more impractical today forthese policymakers to insist that Bosnia be made multiethnic.

Option B: Divide Further into Monoethnic States

A diametrically opposed solution would be to partition the formerYugoslavia into a series of monoethnic nation-states. Speakers ata Columbia University symposium in early March 2001 agreed,according to a report by the Institute for War and Peace Reporting,that Balkan borders should be redrawn to create ‘‘smaller, morestable monoethnic states.’’ Ethnic cleansing by Serbs in RepublikaSrpska, Croatians in Croatia and Herzegovina, Muslims in Muslim-held territories, and Albanians in much of Kosovo, has alreadyreduced these territories to de facto monoethnic nation-states. There-fore, complete the process by allowing the Serbs of the Mitrovicaregion of Kosovo and the Albanians of Macedonia to secede. Sincethere is little ethnic difference between Montenegrins of Montenegroand Serbs of Serbia except a separate historical experience before1918, Montenegro should be incorporated as part of Serbia just asDalmatia is within Croatia even though Dalmatia was not alwayshistorically a part of Croatia.

The great powers should then allow Serbs, Croats, and Albaniansto join up with their mother states into a Greater Serbia, GreaterCroatia, and Greater Albania. There is nothing evil about the objec-tive of uniting peoples of the same ethnic group into a single stateby redrawing international boundaries. It would seem more cruelto keep them apart when they wish to be together. The uniting ofSerbs, Croats, and Albanians would be no different than the unitingof Italian territories in the 1860s into a ‘‘Greater Italy’’ under theleadership of Giuseppe Garibaldi and Conte Camillo di Cavour, andthe uniting of German territories into a ‘‘Greater Germany’’ underthe leadership of Chancellor Otto von Bismarck. Parts of Krajina inCroatia and Kosovo where the Serbs were a majority should bereturned to a newly forged Greater Serbia, fulfilling the originalplan of Milosevic and other Serbian nationalists.

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Unlike Hitler’s efforts to enlarge the German state through the‘‘anschluss’’ with Germanic Austria forbidden by the 1919 VersaillesTreaty and the annexations of German majority regions of the Sude-tenland in Czechoslovakia and Silesia in Poland, the Serbian objec-tive of forging a united Serbian state did not involve annexationsof territories lying outside of the former Yugoslavia within long-standing sovereign states such as Austria, Hungary, Bulgaria, orRomania. Indeed, the Serbs could have had a greatly expandedGreater Serbia for the asking at the end of the First World Warfor having fought with the victorious Entente powers and sufferedenormously. Instead, based largely on Croatian initiatives and Wood-row Wilson’s directives, a larger South Slav state was forged.

The Serbian demand in 1991 was that, if Yugoslavia was goingto be taken apart through the policy of international recognition ofinternal provinces that had resorted to illegal unilateral declarationsof independence in defiance of Belgrade, then those Serbian majorityareas of those newly recognized states should be separated andretained within the remnant Yugoslavia. These territories were, afterall, already a part of Yugoslavia for more than 70 years. The essentialand, in my view, logical argument here is that when states fall apart,the boundaries of its internal provinces cannot automatically becomeinternational frontiers. Internal boundaries must be renegotiated asthey were in the precedents set in the cases of Northern Ireland in1921 and Punjab and Bengal in 1947.

It should be kept in mind that Europe achieved stability at theend of the Second World War when some 15 million Germans weredriven out of Silesia in Poland, the Sudetenland in Czechoslovakia,and other parts of Eastern Europe, and the relocations were con-ducted with the approval of the victorious allied powers, includingthe United States. With all of its Jews exterminated and its Germansexpelled, Poland became and is now a monoethnic Polish-speakingCatholic state. Yet there have been no cries of righteous shock andhorror by the moral advocates of multiethnicity against this ethni-cally cleansed, pure linguistic-religious nation-state. Perhaps afterall the warring ethnic groups of the former Yugoslavia are separatedinto ethnically pure nation-states, they will seek to reintegrate aspart of a united Europe. Slovenia, the only republic of the formerYugoslavia that was almost ethnically pure in terms of religionand language, is notably stable and peaceful and ready to join theEuropean Union.

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Option 3: Perpetuate the Prevailing Territorial Status Quo

A third option would be to enforce the prevailing territorial statusquo as of 2001 with all of its inconsistencies and contradictions.Thus, Serbs, Croats, and Muslims in Bosnia, and Albanians andSerbs in Kosovo, will all have to learn to live together. The DaytonAgreement will prevail in Bosnia, and Kosovo will remain an autono-mous province of Serbia as required by UN Resolution 1244. Allrefugees must be allowed to return to the homes they occupiedbefore 1991. This also means that Serbs of Krajina and Eastern Sla-vonia in Croatia must be allowed back onto the land of their ances-tors, and Krajina given an autonomous status in Croatia, similar toKosovo’s status within Serbia.

There is a tendency to forget that President Franjo Tudjman ofCroatia, and Croat nationalists, were almost as guilty as SlobodanMilosevic and Serb nationalists were for the breakup of Yugoslavia.Croatia’s UDI in June 1991 was accompanied by the firing of Serbsfrom their jobs, the expulsion of Serbs from the Zagreb region, thedenial of citizenship to Serbs, the restoration of the old symbols ofthe Nazi-Ustashe regime, and the legitimization of the old Ustasheleaders by naming streets and monuments after them. A de factoethnically pure Greater Croatia was accomplished by the mid-1990sthrough mass murder and ethnic cleansing of Serbs without objec-tions or resistance from the West, where an ethnically pure GreaterSerbia had been prevented by the West. The difference in the culpa-bility between Serbs and Croats was that less mass murder andethnic cleansing needed to be done by Croatians to achieve theirethnically pure Greater Croatia than by Serbs to achieve their ethni-cally pure Greater Serbia. Otherwise, the Croatian and Serbian objec-tives and policies were essentially the same. It is no consolation tohear now from the chief international war crimes prosecutor, Carladel Ponte, that the case for the indictment of Tudjman for war crimeswas completed only after he died—more than four years after thewar ended. Del Ponte now argues that it is not possible to prosecuteTudjman for war crimes because he is not alive to defend himself.18

Lessons and Prognosis

Ultimately, most solutions to territorial disputes and secessionistdemands would be to maintain the territorial integrity of existing

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states. Undoubtedly, the promotion of the self-determination princi-ple, and the enforcement of human rights worldwide, are noble andworthy goals. Self-determination appears to be an extension of theprinciples of democracy and freedom. And who could object tohumanitarian intervention by the international community to stopgenocide and ethnic cleansing by state authorities within theirnational borders?

However, there is a problem that is usually overlooked. Often thethreat and willingness to intervene militarily by the ‘‘internationalcommunity’’ (which usually means the United States) in the internalaffairs of sovereign states in support of the self-determination princi-ple actually provokes further bloodshed and human rights violationsthat may not otherwise occur. And, where the territorial integrityof the state is violated and territorial secession is encouraged, theresult is more demands by other ethnic or ideological groups for thesame right of self-determination and secession leading to increasedviolence, death and destruction, and human rights violations. Dis-gruntled minorities and ethnic groups seeking secession then havea vested interest in provoking the state authorities into massivehuman rights violations in order to invite ‘‘humanitarian interven-tions’’ by the international community. Where such problems wereat first restricted and localized, they now become massive andwidespread.

Indeed, the encouragement of the right of self-determination,unwillingness to respect the sovereignty of the state, and willingnessto indulge in humanitarian interventions create the conditions wheresuch an intrusive international policy posture becomes necessary.A standing or threatened policy of humanitarian intervention bythe United States and the West then in practice encourages andexacerbates human rights nightmares. Although NATO and its sup-porters now claim routinely that the alliance attacked Serbia in viola-tion of the UN Charter in order to return the one million Albaniansdriven out of Kosovo, it was the illegal assault that triggered theflight of refugees in the first place. During the previous year, some2,000 Albanians and Serbs had died, some 300,000 Albanians hadbeen internally displaced, and another 700,000 may have moved outof Kosovo to Albania and safer areas abroad, because of the overreac-tion of Serbian security forces against the Kosovo Liberation Army.

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This is not an unusual phenomenon where the insurgents and terror-ists are unknown and hidden within the civilian population, e.g.,Chechnya, Kurdistan, and Kashmir.

A policy posture encouraging the right of self-determination couldundermine the unity and stability of multiethnic states, thus contra-dicting the other noble Western goal of promoting interethnic toler-ance and coexistence within a state compromising different linguis-tic, religious, and cultural groups. Human rights violations couldthen reach epidemic proportions, keep the proposed permanent UNpeacekeeping force busy indefinitely, and create the need for evenmore peacekeepers. The rising tide of insurgency and terrorism inChechnya in Russia, Xinjiang in China, and Kashmir in India, allMuslim-majority areas no different from Kosovo in Yugoslavia, illus-trates the scope of the potential problem.

Notes1. See ‘‘UK Warns against Yugoslav Split,’’ BBC News (Online), World: Europe,

April 25, 2001.2. See Donald L. Horowitz, ‘‘Self-Determination: Politics, Philosophy and Law,’’

MacArthur Foundation Program in Transnational Security, Center for InternationalStudies, Massachusetts Institute of Technology and the Center for InternationalAffairs, Harvard University, Working Paper Series, 1995, p. 11.

3. See Gary Dempsey, ‘‘Kosovo Crossfire,’’ Mediterranean Quarterly 9, no. 3 (Sum-mer 1998): 99.

4. See Anthony DePalma, ‘‘Canadian Court Rules Quebec Cannot Secede on ItsOwn,’’ New York Times, August 21, 1998.

5. For a study on this issue, see Frederick Barth, ed., Ethnic Groups and Boundaries(Boston: Little Brown, 1976.)

6. Paul Goble, ‘‘Russian Break-Up,’’ NEFTE Compass 2, no. 2 (January 15, 1993):11. Cited in Jessica Eve Stern, ‘‘Moscow Meltdown: Can Russia Survive?’’ InternationalSecurity 18, no. 4 (Spring 1994): 42.

7. Jessica Eve Stern, ‘‘Moscow Meltdown,’’ p. 42. See also Jack Snyder, ‘‘National-ism and the Crisis of the Post-Soviet State,’’ in Survival: The IISS Quarterly 35, no. 1(Spring 1993): 5–26. For a study of the South Asian case involving similar issues, seeRaju G. C. Thomas, ‘‘Competing Nationalisms: Secessionist Movements and theState,’’ Harvard International Review 38, no. 3 (Summer 1996): 12–15, 76; and Raju G.C.Thomas, ‘‘Secessionist Movements in South Asia,’’ Survival: The IISS Quarterly 36,no. 2 (Summer 1994): 92–114.

8. For a discussion of Crimean and Nagorno-Karabakh issues, see Stephen H.Astourian, ‘‘The Nagorno-Karabakh Conflict: Dimensions, Lessons and Prospects,’’Mediterranean Quarterly 5, no. 4 (Fall 1994): 85–109; and Roman Popadiuk, ‘‘Crimeaand Ukraine’s Future,’’ Mediterranean Quarterly 5, no. 4 (Fall 1994): 30–39.

9. For two studies on this subject, see Allen Buchanan, Secession: The Morality ofPolitical Divorce from Fort Sumter to Lithuania and Quebec (Boulder, Colo.: Westview

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Press, 1991); and Lee C. Buchheit, Secession: The Legitimacy of Self-Determination (NewHaven: Yale University Press, 1978).

10. From Hurst Hannum, Autonomy, Sovereignty, and Self-Determination: The Accom-modation of Conflicting Rights (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1990),p. 16.

11. Ibid.12. Michael Libal, Harvard International Review 18, no. 2 (Spring 1996): 87. See my

article in the following issue where I proposed in the case of South Asia that, whilethe states in this region may seek to move toward confederal arrangements, theyshould recognize for the sake of avoiding tragedy that ‘‘the existing internationalborders, whether good or bad, legal or illegal, are inviolable; and that none of thestates in the region will aid and abet each other’s separatist movements.’’ Raju G. C.Thomas, ‘‘Competing Nationalisms,’’ p. 76.

13. See David Martin, ‘‘Croatia’s Borders: Over the Edge,’’ New York Times, Novem-ber 22, 1991.

14. Nora Beloff, ‘‘Hope and History in Yugoslavia,’’ The Overseas Guardian Weekly,December 1, 1991.

15. From Stephen Clissold, H. C. Darby, R. W. Seton-Watson, Phyllis Auty, andR. G. D. Laffan, A Short History of Yugoslavia: From Early Times to 1966 (Cambridge:Cambridge University Press, 1966), p. 71. These figures were obtained from L. vonSudland, Die Jugoslaviche Frage (Vienna: 1918), p. 211.

16. See Peter Brock, ‘‘Dateline Yugoslavia: The Partisan Press,’’ Foreign Policy,Winter 1993–94, pp. 168–69.

17. Wolfgang Petritsch, ‘‘Don’t Abandon the Balkans,’’ New York Times, March 25,2001, p. WK15.

18. The following is the relevant segment of an interview she granted the Bosnianweekly, Dani:Dani: Were you preparing an indictment against Franjo Tudjman and did his deathsave him from the interests [sic] of the prosecution?Del Ponte: Yes, we were carrying out an investigation against Franjo Tudjman. It wasalmost completed/finalized and we were ready to issue an indictment when he died.Had he not died, today he would have been one of The Hague indictees.‘‘Exclusive: Carla Del Ponte, Prosecutor Says Tudjman’s Death Saved Him from TheHague!’’ (translated), Dani (Sarajevo) 20, no. 202, 20. April 2001.

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6. America Should Escape Its BalkansImperium

John C. Hulsman

As I would not be a slave, so I would not be a master. This expressesmy idea of democracy. Whatever differs from this, to the extent ofthe difference, is no democracy.

Abraham Lincoln, 1858

In assessing where the United States should go from here regard-ing its Balkans policy, and looking beyond the public relations pyro-technics of the Clinton administration, a simple but essential startingpoint must be recognized: Western policy in the region has beenan abject failure. In Bosnia, after more than five years of militaryinvolvement, $5 billion in reconstruction aid, and $1 billion in stolenpublic funds, the country is run as a Western colony and a majorityof voters there still elect nationalist parties that are not committedto the notion that Bosnia should be a multiethnic, unitary state. InKosovo, due to the persistent ambiguities surrounding the finalstatus of the province embedded in United Nations resolution 1244,the patience of Albanian nationalists has been fraying. Moreover, aprime indicator of the geopolitical miscalculation the Clinton admin-istration bequeathed to the Bush team is that veterans of Washing-ton’s erstwhile allies, the guerrilla Kosovo Liberation Army, haveexported their weaponry and separatist agenda across the porousKosovo border to the heretofore peaceful country of Macedonia.Former leaders of the KLA also continue running one of the mostlucrative organized crime rings in Europe.

The Problem of Imposing DemocracyThat nation-building from the top down has failed in the Balkans

can best be illustrated by the five-year effort to ‘‘teach the peopleof Bosnia to elect good men.’’ Efforts to impose democracy therehave led to a predictable outcome—repression of the democratic

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rights of the very people who are supposed to be learning aboutdemocracy. A recent example: In March 2001, high representativeWolfgang Petritsch, the West’s ‘‘viceroy’’ of Bosnia, dismissed theduly elected Bosnian Croat representative to the country’s three-man presidency, Ante Jelavic. Jelavic was the leader of the mainBosnian Croat party, the Croatian Democratic Union, which enjoysthe support of around 80 percent of all Bosnian Croats. His crimehad been to challenge the cornerstone of the West’s nation-buildingefforts in Bosnia, the Dayton Peace Agreement. According to Dayton,Petritsch can remove anyone from office whom he sees as an obstacleto peace. Jelavic wanted to create a Croat entity within Bosnia onpar with what Bosnian Serbs already have in the Republika Srpska.He threatened to go ahead with secession unless Western officialsrunning the country withdrew a new election law they had promul-gated that was designed to promote largely unpopular multiethnicparties by excluding parties that draw their support from a singleethnic group.

Rigging election laws, stifling self-determination, and removingdemocratically elected officials from office do far more than under-line the implacable politics of Bosnia; they call into question themethods the West has utilized in ‘‘promoting’’ democracy there. Isit really morally correct and practical policy to try to mold othersocieties and cultures? As Samuel Huntington has noted, ‘‘To intrudefrom outside is either imperialism or colonialism, each of whichviolates American values.’’1 By its methods in the Balkans, the UnitedStates and its Western allies have nullified the principles for whichthey stand. Using authoritarian tactics, coercion, and other undemo-cratic means of ‘‘persuading’’ others to become more democraticmisses the forest for the trees. Successful democratic development,in the Balkans or elsewhere, is largely an organic political develop-ment that cannot be dictated or crudely transplanted. This funda-mental analytical flaw explains the ongoing failure of nation-buildingin the Balkans.

Time to Reevaluate

It’s time to reevaluate the entire Balkans deployment by explodingthe myths put forward by America’s nation builders. Anyoneremotely acquainted with geopolitics recognizes that the Balkansare not a primary American interest. The United States has no treaty

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obligations with the countries of the region, no major commercialinvolvement, and no deep historical ties. These facts raise the ques-tion: Why expend billions of U.S. taxpayer dollars and risk significantnumbers of American servicemen there? America’s global credibilityshould not rest on the outcome of predictably doomed missions,even though Washington sometimes foolishly takes on such mis-sions. The countries of Central and Eastern Europe, moreover, arenot lining up to join NATO so they can participate in peacekeepingoperations in the Balkans. They seem more focused on the NATOtreaty’s Article V provision that guarantees that America will defendthem against foreign attack.

NATO’s credibility also suffers by tying it to doomed missions.There is substantial evidence that Western attempts at nation-build-ing in the Balkans have been counterproductive. Public opinion inthe three Bosnian communities has been studied systematically bythe United States Information Agency and the Department of State’sOffice of Research in semiannual surveys. Contrary to conventionalWashington wisdom, the results of the surveys illustrate that seces-sionist forces in Bosnia are primarily internally motivated, and tothe extent that Western efforts at nation building have affected publicattitudes, the effect has been primarily negative. What’s more, it isdecentralized governance that has proven to be integrative, ratherthan Western attempts at increased centralization. Indeed, accordingto the USIA, between 1995 and 1999, support for a unified Bosniadecreased dramatically among Bosnian Croats, who do not have agoverning entity within Bosnia, and increased among Bosnian Serbs,who do have an entity within Bosnia.2

The reason behind this shift in public opinion is obvious. Daytongave the Serbs a stake in Bosnia, in the form of institutions builtaround the Republika Srpska entity. The same institutional structurewas not granted to Bosnian Croats, who, as a result, feel increasinglyalienated from the idea of a unified Bosnian state. Until Bosniareflects the indigenous facts on the ground—that is, that the Croatsdo not wish to be engulfed in a Bosniak-dominated federation—and until the requisite decentralization occurs, Bosnia will remainan artificial Western construct. Ivo Daalder, a Clinton appointee tothe National Security Council and long-time supporter of the Clintonadministration’s approach to the region, now admits, ‘‘Bosnia is award of the international community. That is not a recipe for a

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lasting, self-sustaining peace.’’3 How very true. As the formerdefense minister of the Muslim-Croatian federation, Miroslav Prce,put it, international policymakers ‘‘look to discredit nationalism andexpect the subject peoples to simply outgrow it, a policy of wishfulthinking that inevitably ends in failure.’’4 The West’s imposed solu-tions, as they are not linked to basic Balkan realities, are doomed.

A Parting of the Ways?

Considering the Balkan quagmire the Clinton administration leftfor the Bush administration, the United States must determine howto adjust its strategy toward the region. The foundation of a newstrategy should begin with a shift from nation building to facilitatingindigenous regional solutions while drawing down American mili-tary forces committed to the Balkans. Such an approach reflects thecampaign pledges of George W. Bush and the long-standing aversionto the Clinton approach for which his staff is known. However,America’s European allies may not be as quick to desire a militarywithdrawal from the region, which seems to put two Americanpriorities at odds: revising how the United States addresses regionalcontingencies and cultivating strong alliance links.

Fortunately this apparent disconnect is an illusion. The UnitedStates and Europe have been building new mechanisms, particularlythe European Union’s European Security and Defense Policy andNATO’s Combined Joint Task Force, to avert just such a disasterwhen American and European interests are not in lockstep. As aresult, Europe can exercise its right to remain in the Balkans if it sochooses, and the United States can decide to draw down, withouthurting alliance cohesion.

Despite the transatlantic unity behind the Clinton Doctrine, Europeoriginally envisioned playing a greater role in the Balkans than itdoes today. For the Europeans, the Kosovo air campaign and thepeacekeeping mission that followed were originally viewed as anopportunity to play the leading role in stabilizing the continent. Afterbeing supplanted by the United States in Bosnia in the first half ofthe 90s, the EU created the European Security and Defense Initiative(ESDI) in December 1998 at the Saint Malo summit to ensure thatEurope could handle the next Bosnia. This vision was also in accordwith the Clinton administration’s early view toward the Balkans. AsSecretary of Defense William Cohen described the arrangement prior

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to the talks at Rambouillet, ‘‘Our European allies must bear a substan-tial burden in terms of dealing with Kosovo and . . . any participationby the United States should be as small as it could be.’’5

But military necessities forced the United States to take the domi-nant role during the Kosovo air campaign, which made it abundantlyclear that Europe is not on par with the United States when itcomes to war-fighting capabilities. The day after bombing began theFinancial Times noted how the balance of forces came into being:‘‘The military argued in Britain and France that they simply did nothave the kit. . . . If it came to air strikes, the U.S. would have to takethe lead.’’ 6 The Europeans’ acquiescence seemed to validate the ideathat the United States would do what it had to—fight an air war—and Europe would do all it could—pay for reconstruction and con-tribute the majority of peacekeepers. As one European official atNATO stated, ‘‘Peacekeeping operations the Europeans can do, butnot war-fighting.’’7 Europe’s rhetoric after the bombing endedseemed to be driven by this statement. Kosovo reinvigorated Eu-rope’s efforts to create an ESDI, but it would focus on ‘‘PetersburgTasks’’ including the kind of armed peacekeeping force beingdeployed in Kosovo. The EU would try to show it was serious byappointing recently retired NATO Secretary General Javier Solanaas its chief for policy planning. At the Helsinki Summit in December1999, the EU set a goal of being able to rapidly deploy 60,000 troopsby 2003, turning ESDI from an initiative into the European Securityand Defense Policy (ESDP).

Like the ESDP, NATO’s Combined Joint Task Force is a responseto the changed security environment of the post–Cold War world.The CJTF was first proposed at the informal meeting of NATOdefense ministers at Travemunde, Germany, in 1993 and wasendorsed during the 1994 NATO summit. From those early days,the CJTF was designed to embrace a European mission, at the timeheaded by the Western European Union.8 The 1994 summit’s finaldeclaration directed the Council in Permanent Session ‘‘to examinehow the alliance’s political and military structures and proceduresmight be developed and adapted to conduct more efficiently andflexibly the alliance’s missions, including peacekeeping, as well asto improve cooperation with the WEU and to reflect the emergingEuropean Security and Defense Identity.’’9 Since 1994, the CJTF hasbeen constantly refined. Not only did NATO undertake exercises to

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test the mechanism’s viability, but it also looked at the Bosnia mis-sion, which, according to a former NATO assistant secretary generalfor defense planning and policy, Anthony Cragg, bore many of thecharacteristics of a CJTF.10 The CJTF was finally institutionalized atthe NATO Washington Summit in 1999. It, like ESDP, was not bornout of Western involvement in the wars of Yugoslav succession butis very much a child of these missions and represents the future ofhow the alliance should react to regional contingencies.

Stepping Forward

With these new institutions in place, the only thing keeping Europefrom taking a greater role in the Balkans is its own Balkan ghost,the fear of responsibility after its involvement in the Balkans inthe early 1990s was undermined by Washington’s backseat driving.However, both the ESDP and the CJTF were created to dispel thisEuropean fear, and American policy should be geared to seeing thatthese mutually reinforcing institutions succeed.

Just as Europe has long sought a greater role in providing for thecontinent’s security, the senior members of the Bush administrationhave historically been against the kind of foreign policy embodiedby the Kosovo campaign. For many in the administration, this philo-sophical difference comes from lessons learned during earlier admin-istrations, particularly for those officials who served as junior staffersduring the Vietnam War. Secretary of State Colin Powell is probablythe best examplar of this viewpoint. Powell, who served as a juniorArmy officer during Vietnam, learned early on about the flaws ofnation building and the dangers of undertaking open-ended militarycommitments without a strategic rationale. Powell’s conceptual dif-ferences with the previous administration’s mindset surfaced duringan exchange between him, when he was serving as chairman of theJoint Chiefs of Staff, and then–UN ambassador Madeleine Albright,regarding the wisdom of using the U.S. military in Bosnia. In hisautobiography, Secretary Powell recounts the incident: ‘‘What’s thepoint of having this superb military if we can’t use it?’’ Albrightasked Powell. ‘‘I thought I would have an aneurysm’’ he recalled.‘‘American GI’s were not toy soldiers to be moved around on somesort of global game board’’ without regard for any underlyingnational interest.11

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As the Bush administration’s secretary of state, Powell’s strategyfor the deployment of American forces is likely to follow the logicof what has come to be called the ‘‘Powell Doctrine,’’ which sets sixstrict criteria for when the United States should commit militarypower. The Powell Doctrine asserts that: 1) America must have vitalnational interests at stake; 2) have a clear goal; 3) have the supportof U.S. public opinion; 4) have a plan for victory; 5) be able to achieveoverwhelming force to guarantee such a victory; and 6) have an exitstrategy. Neither the Bosnia mission nor the Kosovo mission meetsPowell’s criteria.

National security advisor Condoleezza Rice, Secretary of DefenseDonald Rumsfeld, and Vice President Dick Cheney all voice a strik-ingly similar line. In particular, Rice has criticized the fact that theKosovo deployment has no exit strategy, implicitly using the stan-dards for military intervention outlined in the Powell Doctrine. Sec-retary Rumsfeld has gone even further, directly linking the Balkanpeacekeeping missions to America’s experience in Vietnam. Whendescribing the need for a review of American deployments in theBalkans he noted, ‘‘Since 1996 NATO has reviewed troop levelsevery six months. This is how it should be. America never againwants an open-ended commitment—a quagmire, that is—such asVietnam.’’12 Cheney, Powell’s former boss as secretary of defense,wholeheartedly agrees with that point of view. The Bush admin-istration, in short, has a tremendous amount of collective experi-ence gained from careers stretching over three decades, and its viewson military intervention are not ‘‘isolationist’’ or ‘‘unilateralist’’ asits critics disparage, but based on the real-world lessons its topappointees have learned from America’s past actions.

Despite their shared aversion to the mission, however, the Bushadministration has made clear it will not abandon Washington’sNATO allies. This was most clearly articulated by Secretary Powellduring his first visit to NATO headquarters as Secretary of State.‘‘We went in together; we’ll come out together,’’ he said. But in afollow-up sentence that received less media attention, Powell added,‘‘And in the process of doing so, make sure we have the rightmixture and balance of forces at all times.’’13 Taken together, Powell’sstatements seem to leave room for an evolution in the Balkanmissions.

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Evolving a Way Out of the BalkansIn the short run, the United States should use the ESDP and the

CJTF mechanisms to provide the basis for a realistic U.S. militaryexit strategy from Bosnia. Furthermore, such an approach is entirelyconsistent with the Bush administration’s well-founded skepticismof open-ended nation-building missions and America’s strategicinterest in recalibrating NATO in such a way that the Alliance’sviability and adaptability are secured in the post–Cold War world.That goal could be achieved in four steps.

Step #1Recognize that recalibrating NATO around the twin concepts ofpower sharing and burden sharing is essential for the allianceto thrive in the post–Cold War security milieu.

During the Cold War, two hypocrisies dominated intra-alliancerelations: Europeans wanted a greater say in NATO, while contribut-ing a far smaller percentage of overall alliance capabilities than theUnited States; the United States, on the other hand, wanted Europeto do far more in terms of capability and defense spending, but itdid not want to grant the European allies a greater voice in thealliance. The uneven distribution of military capability exhibitedduring the Kosovo air campaign was a turning point in this contra-dictory relationship. The United States accounted for 85 percent ofthe military wherewithal over the skies of Serbia and Kosovo. Sucha lopsided capability distribution may have been acceptable duringthe Cold War, while confronting the expansionistic hegemon knownas the Soviet Union. However, in the post–Cold War era, Americangeopolitical calculations have changed while European defensespending has gone down. To preserve the most successful alliancein history, it is now necessary to formally link the concepts of powersharing and burden sharing; that is, Europe should be given a pro-portionally greater operational say regarding the goings-on of spe-cific NATO missions if it assumes a greater proportion of militarycapability in NATO. Such a reciprocal approach is the only long-term way to maintain the health of the alliance in a world withouta single overarching threat.

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Step #2The United States should support ESDP as a way to facilitategreater burden-sharing efforts from the Europeans.

While at present European defense spending and capabilitiesremain moribund, through economies of scale alone, ESDP couldfacilitate Europe’s possessing a greater rate of capability. Such anoutcome, if grounded in the British conception of ESDP (with NATOretaining the first right of refusal and planning being done primarilythrough NATO to prevent unnecessary duplication) should be warm-ly backed by Washington.

A Gaullist version of ESDP, which would create a security institu-tion in Europe that is independent of any American role or influence,is unlikely to emerge, as some American analysts warn, for severalreasons. (1) French elite opinion is divided on whether to pursueESDP as a means toward that end (witness the divisions between theQuai and the French Ministry of Defense). (2) The British, Germans,Dutch, Spanish, and Italians are on record as saying that they favorESDP to ameliorate burden-sharing problems and thus keepAmerica engaged in Europe. As such, they are unlikely to acceptFrench efforts to cut the American link. The Nice EU Summit out-come of December 2000 confirms this point, as French efforts atconstructing a more autonomous ESDP were derailed by British,German, and Dutch objections. (3) No European country is preparedto massively increase defense spending, which would be the require-ment to fully decouple the United States from the European securityenvironment. The potential is not that Europe does too much throughESDP, but that it does too little.14

Step #3Operational aspects of the CJTF should be adopted as a way tolimit America’s military role in Bosnia.

Until recently, the member states of NATO had only two optionsin a military crisis—either commit to a full alliance mission or vetoNATO involvement. Such a rigid decisionmaking structure waseventually bound to cause political tensions within the alliancewhenever the specific interests of member states diverged.

In April 1999, NATO ratified the new CJTF mechanism as a thirdoption that adds a needed dimension of flexibility to alliance decision-making. Through the Combined Joint Task Force mechanism, states

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opting out of a specific NATO mission (while remaining politically,economically, and diplomatically engaged) would not stop otherNATO members from using alliance assets to participate in militaryaction if they chose to do so. The CJTF initiative arose as a responseto European complaints that U.S. dominance of NATO operationaldecisionmaking limited their ability to respond to crises wheresignificant European interests were involved while U.S. interestswere present to a lesser extent. In other words, the CJTF mechanismallows European ‘‘coalitions of the willing’’ to use NATO’s assetson an ad hoc basis for specific multinational out-of-area missions.

While the decision to intervene in the Balkans through NATOwas taken long ago, the principles underlying the CJTF structure,if organizationally adopted in Bosnia, could lead to an Americanmilitary drawdown from that country. America could still offer itsEuropean allies the use of American communications, logistics, andintelligence-sharing support without requiring that thousands ofU.S. troops remain on the ground. The European states, followinga phased and coordinated American military withdrawal, wouldthen wholly command the newly reconfigured Bosnia mission underNATO auspices, but with European command and control.

Step #4The newly reconfigured Bosnia mission could be comprised ofthe proposed ESDP force and Bosnia could form the test casefor the new European pillar of the alliance.

The realities on the ground in Bosnia closely match the core compe-tencies of Europeans; the mission calls for a civil-military police roleon the light end of peacekeeping of the kind the Europeans arebetter versed in than the United States. Thus it is logical that thenew ESDP force could form the basis of a Europeanized Bosniamission. While the United States should remain politically, economi-cally, and diplomatically engaged in the region, such an outcomewould represent, at the operational level, the logical thrust of over-all American policy toward the region, and is in line with the needto recalibrate the power-sharing and burden-sharing aspects ofNATO itself.

Further, a similar transition could be applied to Kosovo once themilitary situation stabilizes. Admittedly, the situation on the groundin Kosovo today is very different than that in Bosnia. While Bosnia

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no longer faces an armed insurgency attempting to redraw politicalborders, the Kosovo insurgency has spread. In both Macedonia andthe Presevo Valley, recent rebel movements have been comprisedof veterans of the KLA’s war against Milosevic and relied on theUN-administered Kosovo province for material and logistical sup-port as well as safe haven. Placing lightly armed European troopsalone in this environment would invite dangers similar to the earlydays of the Bosnian conflict when European peacekeepers foundthemselves captured by Bosnian-Serb forces. Nonetheless, theUnited States and Europe should begin discussing a mechanismsfor withdrawing from Kosovo, something the Clinton administrationwas apt to ignore, with the recognition that the same ESDP/CJTFmechanism can, over time, be applied to Kosovo.

Taking the Evolutionary CourseThere are many advantages to pursuing such an evolutionary

policy. By saying yes to ESDP and employing it in the Balkans,Washington can shape the initiative in a manner consistent withAmerican efforts to recalibrate the alliance. By offering the Europe-ans what they are now clamoring for, and urging the use of ESDPin Bosnia, the United States can change the terms of the alliancedebate, forcing the allies to make good on their promises to alleviateburden-sharing problems within the alliance while at the same timedrawing down American forces in a region that is less than vital toU.S. interests. By reconstituting the Bosnia mission around light-end peacekeeping tasks, the West will hopefully dampen its desireto impose unsustainable outcomes on the region, and instead focuson encouraging indigenous, self-sustaining solutions.

Notes1. Samuel Huntington, ‘‘American Ideals versus American Interests,’’ Political

Science Quarterly 97, no. 1 (Spring 1982): 20.2. Miroslav Prce, ‘‘Revising Dayton Using European Solutions,’’ Fletcher Forum

of World Affairs, no. 143, winter 2000, p. 2.3. Paul Taylor, ‘‘Croat Threat Masks Bosnia Peace Process,’’ Reuters, March 6,

2001.4. Prce, pp. 2–3.5. Dana Priest, ‘‘U.S. and Allies Seek to Shape a Kosovo Peacekeeping Force,’’

The International Herald Tribune, February 3, 1999, p. 5.6. ‘‘Lessons of Kosovo,’’ Financial Times, March 25, 1999, p. 18.7. John-Thor Dahlburg, ‘‘Crisis in Yugoslavia: Battle for Kosovo Shows Europe

Still Needs the U.S.,’’ Los Angeles Times, April 20, 1999, p. A1.

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8. The WEU has since been folded into the EU.9. The North Atlantic Council, ‘‘Declaration of the Heads of State and Govern-

ment,’’ NATO Headquarters, Brussels, January 10–11, 1994.10. Anthony Cragg, ‘‘The Combined Joint Task Force Conception: A Key Compo-

nent of the Alliance’s Adaptation,’’ NATO Review 44, no. 4 (July 1996).11. Steven Thomma, ‘‘Retired General More Dovish about Force than Albright,’’

Miami Herald, December 15, 2000.12. ‘‘Staying the Course with Balkan Troops,’’ Allentown Morning Call, March 2,

2001.13. United States Department of State, ‘‘Press Availability with NATO Secretary

General Lord Robertson,’’ Brussels, Belgium, February 27, 2001.14. For a differing view of the Nice summit outcome, see Chris Layne, ‘‘Death

Knell for NATO? The Bush Administration Confronts the European Security andDefense Policy,’’ Cato Institute Policy Analysis no. 394, April 4, 2001.

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7. Passing the Baton in the Balkans:Europe May Not Be Willing, But It IsCertainly Able

E. Wayne Merry

Commentaries in Europe and the United States generally assumethat a continued large-scale American military presence is essentialto maintain the multilateral peacekeeping operations in Bosnia andKosovo. This assumption is based on the conviction that Europeanscannot do the job without Americans.

The apocalyptic expectation of renewed war and chaos throughoutthe former Yugoslavia if American forces are withdrawn does notbear close examination and is based on two fallacies. One fallacy isthat American military forces are actually good at peacekeeping,despite a very mixed record and an obvious lack of enthusiasm forthe role. The more fundamental fallacy is that the European states, adecade after the end of the Cold War and more than two generationsdistant from the last major European conflict, are incapable of man-aging regional and local disputes on Europe’s periphery rather thanjust unwilling to do so. These fallacies are useful to politicians anddiplomats in preserving the Balkan status quo, but an objectiveassessment demonstrates why this status quo need not be preserved.

Some confusion stems from loose application of the term ‘‘peace-keeping’’ to refer to everything from treaty monitoring to openconflict or to encompass tasks ranging from limited war to conflictsuppression, paramilitary police work, civic organization, publicrelations, and humanitarian relief. To employ the same word todescribe what British forces encountered in Sierra Leone or Austra-lian troops found in East Timor and the daily boredom of soldierson the dividing line of Cyprus or Russian units in the Transdniestrianregion of Moldova is to exceed practical definition, yet these are allcalled ‘‘peacekeeping.’’

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In American discourse, peacekeeping generally denotes the useof combat formations on a considerable scale, usually in a coalitionsetting, in a distant area of ethnic violence beyond the capacities oflocal law enforcement (if, indeed, local forces are not part of theproblem). The United States devotes much less attention to the non-combatant aspects of peacekeeping, which are often viewed as theslippery slope to the dreaded morass of ‘‘nation building.’’ Whilethe U.S. military has considerable experience of humanitarian reliefoperations, it has comparatively little in the broad range of peace-keeping tasks. Americans also think of peacekeeping as a new mis-sion, while our military categorizes it merely as a subset of ‘‘opera-tions other than war.’’ In contrast, some countries devote much oftheir national military activity to multinational peacekeeping andhave a very different perspective.

A Brief History of Peacekeeping

There is nothing inherently new about governments sending mili-tary forces, either individually or in coalitions, to attempt to sortout local or regional conflicts. Generally these undertakings servebroader political goals and, often enough, they end badly for allconcerned. For example, an attempt by Athens to resolve local dis-putes in western Greece was one (among several) of the proximatecauses for the Peloponnesian War. History provides innumerableother instances of what, in retrospect, could be classified as peace-keeping operations.

Modern, multilateral peacekeeping emerged in the aftermath ofthe Suez crisis of 1956. A key element of United Nations efforts toresolve the crisis was the creation of an international separationforce that helped the warring parties save a measure of face essentialto a settlement. The main author of this solution was Canadianforeign minister Lester Pearson, who was awarded the Nobel PeacePrize for his work and later commemorated in the Pearson CanadianInternational Peacekeeping Training Center in Nova Scotia, theworld’s premier institution for transmitting lessons learned frompast peacekeeping experience to those who must do the job in vari-ous parts of the world today. The UN Suez mission succeeded inits immediate goal by helping to resolve the crisis, succeeded in itsintermediate purpose of limiting tensions between Egypt and Israel,

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Passing the Baton in the Balkans

but ultimately failed in 1967 when Nasser decided to pursue hisaims without peacekeepers, a blunder on his part.1

Since Suez, peacekeeping operations have multiplied in numberand kind and have proven much harder to terminate than to initiate.Most are United Nations missions featuring the famous ‘‘blue hel-mets,’’ who were collectively honored with a Nobel Peace Prizebefore the sad UN experience in Bosnia tarnished their image. Bluehelmet operations during the Cold War generally did not involveparticipation of military units from the five permanent members ofthe Security Council (the United States, Soviet Union, China, UnitedKingdom, and France) to avoid introducing Cold War rivalries intopeacekeeping missions. The United States often provided logisticaland technical support or seconded personnel to UN missions, butdid not commit armed forces.

In consequence, when the U.S. military entered the Balkans, ithad little relevant peacekeeping experience. The same might be saidof the British and French, but their extensive experience of colonialwars generally served them in good stead. The Russian performancein Bosnia and in Eastern Slavonia has been fairly good, but on aquite modest scale. The Chinese, from either inherent conservatismor wisdom, have stayed out. U.S. armed forces, of course, have oftenintervened in the American ‘‘near abroad’’ in a form of peacekeeping,but the uses of force in the Dominican Republic, Grenada, Panama,Haiti, etc., were more acts of imperial housekeeping. U.S. operationsin Suez, Lebanon, and in Somalia comprised most of America’s on-the-ground peacekeeping experience prior to Bosnia.

U.S. Peacekeeping Experience

The ‘‘Multinational Force and Observers’’ in Suez was establishedto monitor the 1979 Camp David peace accords between Egyptand Israel. The MFO has engaged the activities of two Americanbattalions (one infantry, one support) on a rotating basis for nearlytwo decades. However, the relevance of this experience for realpeacekeeping is small. Unlike the tenuous environment for the UNoperation in Suez between 1956 and 1967, the MFO (not a UN mis-sion) has operated in the most benign of peacekeeping contexts: Theparties to the conflict had agreed to a genuine and comprehensivepeace settlement, with a wide expanse of largely uninhabited desert

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as a cordon sanitaire for the MFO to monitor. Indeed, the extraordi-nary thing about the U.S. involvement in Suez is that such a largecommitment of American troops (nearly nine hundred at a time)should have continued in only a symbolic role for so long. Onlyrecently has the Defense Department, under Secretary Donald Rums-feld, served notice that it wants out of the MFO due to the Army’sneed for the units and the lengthy time required to retrain andreintegrate them into our reduced ground forces. Perhaps the rele-vant lessons from the MFO experience are not to expect such aneasy task again and to be wary about open-ended commitments.2

Somalia left a bad taste in the mouth of almost every Americanand doubly so for our military. Rarely have we used our armedforces for so laudable a purpose—to feed the starving—with sofrustrating an outcome. There is no need to rehash the Somaliaexperience here, so familiar is it, other than to note that the missioncaused many in government and the military to take the most jaun-diced view of peacekeeping in general as an inevitably thanklesstask in which mission success is a chimera and ‘‘mission creep’’ theultimate danger. A key lesson we needed to learn is that ‘‘you gottaknow the territory,’’ as U.S. policymakers never quite understoodthat in Somalia the distribution of food was the core of the localpower structure and we, by taking on what seemed the work ofangels, acquired in the eyes of the competing Somali factions theimage of devils. If anything, Somalia taught Washington two lessonsthat have hampered our troops in the Balkans: to insist on commandrelationships far more rigid than used in many successful peacekeep-ing missions, and to give top priority to force protection—the avoid-ance of American casualties—as more important than mission goalsthemselves. In short, while Somalia was certainly a learning experi-ence, it was not a positive one for a country about to engage in itsfirst large-scale multilateral peacekeeping.

Seen in this comparative context, the achievements of U.S. forces inBosnia and Kosovo are not insubstantial (whether they should havebeen so deployed in the first place is a different issue). On forceprotection, the record is near miraculous, but at the cost of a highlyconstricted method of operations compared with those of contingentsfrom other countries. Let it be said again, if necessary, that it is notAmericans in uniform who are so risk-averse; it is their politicalleaders with one eye on the television screen and the other on the

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latest opinion poll. Indeed, many of our troops resent being cossetedlike babies in a profession they well understand is dangerous. In theirability to coordinate effectively with forces from other countries, theU.S. military record in the Balkans is also good, but we have gener-ally called the shots. Indeed, the record of American/Russian coop-eration in Bosnia is one of the few bright spots in the bilateralrelationship, and is to the credit of the Russian personnel deployed.

In broader mission implementation, however, the U.S. record ismixed, though often due to political constraints and to the inherentdifficulty of attempting to create multiethnic societies of peopleswho do not wish to live with each other.3 Force protection hascertainly proven a handicap. Unlike their British or French counter-parts in Bosnia, American troops have minimal opportunities forinformal contact with local inhabitants and cannot even take advan-tage of the obvious desire of many locals to practice their Englishwith an American over a beer.4 These limitations are not the faultof the troops, but do reflect a misconception of peacekeeping. Othercountries recognize that local fraternization can be positive and isoften important both to mission success and to force protection. U.S.forces in the Balkans stand alone among the dozens of countriesrepresented in their intentional alienation from the peoples theywere deployed to help.

The initial purpose of deploying large combat forces into theBalkans was peacemaking through intimidation, to exploit theunderstandable reluctance of a person with an assault rifle to matcharms with a battle tank. This was a transitional task and, with thepassage of time, we have changed the mix of forces to lighter, moreflexible, and less expensive units. In doing so, the Army has increas-ingly called on military police units with their experience in controlof the rear of the battle area, a function similar to peacekeeping, andthe National Guard.5 Large-scale reliance on the Guard in the Balkansis itself controversial. Many Guardsmen did not sign up for thatkind of duty, which is very disruptive of both family and profes-sional lives. There are serious concerns that frequent peacekeepingmissions will erode the Guard just when our reduced active dutyforce makes the Reserves and Guard increasingly important formobilization in a crisis.6

At the same time, the Army clearly prefers that, if repetitive peace-keeping deployments are mandated by the political leadership,

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much of the burden be on the Guard rather than on active dutyunits. It is no secret that peacekeeping deployments have a deleteri-ous impact on combat skills and on the readiness of regular Armyunits. This was most recently illustrated by the downgrading of therating of the Third Infantry Division to the second-lowest standardfor wartime readiness as a result of Balkan missions.7 The ThirdInfantry is the so-called ‘‘heavy division’’ of XVIII Airborne Corps,the first-line contingency force available for use in case of war (asit was during the Gulf conflict). That such a critical force is hobbledfor potential use due to Balkan peacekeeping operations raises seri-ous questions of whether priorities for our armed forces are outof order.

If the United States undertakes long-term peacekeeping as a nor-mal part of its military posture (a very large if), either the Armywill need to acquire more sophisticated peacekeeping skills anddoctrine than are now the case or the National Guard must adjustits basic roles and missions to include peacekeeping as a permanentcomponent. Either approach, or a combination of the two, has sig-nificant implications for resources, training and doctrine, and sus-taining enlistments in volunteer services competing for personnelwith the civilian sector. Given the widespread dislike of peacekeep-ing deployments among both active duty and Guard units and theserious concerns of military leaders about the impact of such mis-sions on warfighting skills and readiness, it is clear that any suchalteration of the existing U.S. military posture should be the resultof a systematic and high-level policy review and of a decision bythe top political leadership rather than be, as to date, the consequenceof ad hoc measures without due consideration of long-term implica-tions for our armed forces.

Comparative Advantage

There is no doubt the American military can acquire excellentpeacekeeping skills over time if necessary. There is also little doubtit does not wish to do so and has been reluctant to give prominenceto peacekeeping in the development of doctrine and training out ofconcern that such capabilities, once acquired, will tempt politicalleaders to find occasions for their use. Former secretary of stateMadeleine Albright’s comments to then-chairman of the joint chiefs

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Colin Powell about finding things for the military to do are a haunt-ing reminder that many in the Washington policy elite are inherentlydissatisfied when the armed forces are not ‘‘doing something,’’ justpreparing to fight the nation’s wars.8

While some U.S. military personnel have undergone specializedpeacekeeping training or served in comparable missions, Americanunits (with the exception of military police) do not have a compara-tive advantage over units from countries with extensive blue helmetexperience. U.S. units in the Balkans have therefore tended to learnby doing rather than executing established peacekeeping doctrine.We have relied on carefully crafted and strict rules of engagement,with excellent results in force protection but making U.S. units lessflexible than other participants. This rigidity is compounded by thefrequent rotation of units, in part due to the unpopularity of themissions. The bottom line is that the American approach has beenhalf-hearted rather than fully engaged.

In Europe the most experienced peacekeeping forces are from thesmaller neutral and Nordic states with a wide range of blue helmetoperations to their credit. While these countries applied their skillsin the Balkans, in every case they were subordinated to commandersfrom larger states lacking similar experience. Italy and Spain de-ployed their hybrid military-police units, which have frequentlyearned praise from both military and political commanders for theiradaptability and talent in using the minimum of force to achievemaximum results. Still, among the 40-odd national contingentsoperating in the Balkans, the largest non-U.S. forces come from themajor European states (Britain and France in Bosnia; Britain, France,Germany, and Italy in Kosovo). It comes as a surprise to manyAmericans that most peacekeeping in the Balkans does not involveU.S. forces at all; non-American forces are responsible for two-thirdsof Bosnia and four-fifths of Kosovo. Yet, peacekeeping in the non-American sectors proceeds day by day with a level of accomplish-ment at least comparable to our own. In addition, many units in thetwo American sectors come from other countries and are responsiblefor much of what has been achieved under U.S. command. Thus,Europeans have already tangibly demonstrated the ability to dopeacekeeping without direct American participation.9

Why should it be otherwise? The major European states (andmany of the smaller ones as well) have been in the military business

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rather longer than we and possess experience not inferior to ourown. While the current operational standards of the U.S. militaryare unequaled, combined as they are with our unique global logisticsand communications capabilities, that does not mean other countriesdo not possess high-quality operational assets. Our major Europeanallies are the world’s leading military powers if the comparison isnot with the United States. All too often the question posed is afalse one, as ‘‘Are the Europeans able to conduct operations in theAmerican style and with our level of technological sophisticationand with our global reach?’’ The answer is negative, because thequestion is a tautology. To the more relevant query, ‘‘Are the Europe-ans able to conduct operations in the European region on a scaleand with capabilities vastly superior to any regional adversary andsufficient to achieve reasonable political goals, while accepting somelevel of casualties?’’ the answer is quite different. After all, it is notnecessary to fight a war from fifteen thousand feet to prevail, asArgentina learned when British forces retook the Falklands usingoperational techniques that would have been dismissed out of handin a U.S.-conducted war. Britain still won.10

The proof of European peacekeeping capabilities lies in their per-formance to date. In addition to the established records in Bosnia andKosovo, there are two separate examples of peacekeeping conductedsuccessfully in the Balkans without any U.S. military role: the Italian-led intervention in Albania and the UN peacekeeping mission inEastern Slavonia, with military leadership from Belgium. Both mis-sions encountered major challenges on the ground, required signifi-cant operational and logistics skills, and depended for success oneffective command arrangements and coalition management. In bothcases Washington was highly skeptical that Europeans could do thejob, but the results compare very favorably with examples of theAmerican record in peacekeeping.

Operation Alba

In Albania, the collapse of financial pyramid schemes in early1997 produced domestic unrest in which much of the southern partof the country was seized by antigovernment forces after the lootingof military armories. The crisis threatened chaos in Albania and arenewed flood of refugees into Italy, Greece, and other Europeancountries. The United States, despite its previous close relationship

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with the Albanian military, quickly washed its hands of the problem.Although secretary Albright reportedly favored NATO intervention,including U.S. troops, the Pentagon argued forcefully that nonational interest was involved to justify use of American forces andexpressed little confidence that European efforts could accomplishmuch.11

Despite considerable hand-wringing and self-doubt, Italy faced upto the challenge. Rome already had considerable experience of Alba-nia, both as occupier from 1939 to 1943 and during a humanitarianintervention of 1991 with one thousand troops deployed. In 1997,after both the European Union and the Organization for Securityand Cooperation in Europe proved unwilling to exercise oversightresponsibility, the United Nations Security Council on March 24 pro-vided a mandate for what became Operation Alba, a UN-sanctionedmission that was not a blue helmet activity (i.e., not under UNsupervision and not involving UN resources). Under Italian leader-ship, a ‘‘coalition of the willing’’ assembled over 7,000 troops from11 countries (most from Italy, Greece, and other southern Europeancountries, the so-called olive coalition) for an armed interventionlasting from mid-April to mid-August. During that period, a consid-erable measure of order was restored, humanitarian assistance dis-tributed, and, most important, a credible sense of authority estab-lished to allow Albanians to express their views in elections ratherthan through violence.

What factors allowed Italy to succeed where Washington feared totread? First, Rome knew the territory; it was familiar with Albanianrealities, in contrast to the naivete which had characterized the Penta-gon’s earlier assistance programs to the Albanian military. Second,Operation Alba operated under a limited mandate and with realisticgoals, but with robust rules of engagement sufficient to establish itsauthority quickly and without dithering. Third, the coalition of thewilling was goal-oriented and practical; Albania was not a distantabstraction but a nearby pot boiling over with immediate implica-tions in terms of refugee flows. Fourth, Italy was the unambiguousleader, providing half the troops, most of the logistics, and overallmilitary and policy direction. Ironically, one advantage of not operat-ing as a NATO, EU, OSCE, or blue helmet mission was that Italyencountered no institutional veto or back-seat driving from countriesnot engaged on the ground. The critical political guidance was pro-vided by a steering committee of the foreign and defense ministries

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of the contributing states under Italian diplomatic leadership thatnot only kept the forces on the ground focused on their missionbut also coordinated the work of nongovernmental and multilateralorganizations so that all functioned as a team rather than pullingin different directions. Finally, Operation Alba succeeded becausethe participants, military and civilian, were experienced profession-als dedicated to getting the job done. They achieved more, perhaps,than they thought themselves capable of after so many years underAmerican tutelage. Although official Washington was slow andgrudging to offer praise where it was due, at least one Americanobserver quickly drew the obvious conclusions: Operation Alba‘‘demonstrated that Europe can conduct military missions withoutthe United States. There is thus no practical reason why Europecannot assume full responsibility for extended peacekeeping in theBalkans.’’12

Eastern Slavonia

Some critics may say Operation Alba was too brief and limited amission to demonstrate European capacities to deal with real crises,but no one could reasonably doubt the difficulties of peacekeepingin Eastern Slavonia. This border region of Croatia and Serbia wasamong the most fought over and ravaged pieces of territory in allthe ‘‘wars of the Yugoslav succession,’’ best known for the brutalsiege of its largest city, Vukovar. At Dayton, the warring partiesagreed to the United Nations Transitional Administration for EasternSlavonia, Baranja, and Western Sirmium. This became known asUNTAES, an example of a blue helmet mission that succeeded,in sharp contrast to the galling experience of the UN mission inneighboring Bosnia. UNTAES was initially authorized by the Secu-rity Council for one year, but was extended to complete a two-yearmandate in January 1998.

Despite entering a heavily militarized region with ethnic hatredscompounded by years of conflict, UNTAES sustained only threefatalities from hostile action while succeeding in reintegrating theregion into Croatia with protections for ethnic Serbian inhabitants.With an authorized strength of 5,000 troops, the core of UNTAES wasfour mechanized infantry battalions from Belgium, Russia, Pakistan,and Jordan. Efforts to include an American battalion were vigorouslyrebuffed by the Pentagon, which wanted no part of what it believed

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to be a ‘‘mission impossible.’’ The civilian boss of UNTAES was anAmerican diplomat, Jacques Klein succeeded by William Walker,but the actual force commanders were two experienced and no-nonsense Belgian major-generals, Jozef Schoups and Willy Hanset.

The factors that allowed UNTAES to succeed were, first, whatKlein characterized as ‘‘abundant firepower’’ combined with effec-tive rules of engagement to overawe local paramilitaries. Second,UNTAES had a clear and achievable mandate within a limited timeframe: to demilitarize the region, reintegrate it into Croatia, andprovide for return of displaced persons. Importantly, the mandatewas not open-ended nor did it call for maintenance of an unsatisfac-tory status quo. Third, the mission contained extensive civil affairs,police, and administrative personnel to achieve the mandate underthe benign intimidation provided by the heavily armed troops.UNTAES was not just a peacekeeping entity; it was the transitionalauthority for the region in fact as well as in name. Fourth, UNTAESgave top priority to rapid demilitarization and to purging the regionof the paramilitaries associated with the previous violence. Its suc-cess was strikingly in contrast to previous peacekeeping efforts inBosnia and later in Kosovo. This achievement was vital to mandatefulfillment and to overall mission success. Once demilitarization wascomplete, UNTAES was the sole source of coercive power in EasternSlavonia. Finally, in contrast to the organizational Tower of Babelthat is the international presence in Bosnia or Kosovo, UNTAESenjoyed unified and unambiguous chains of command for both mili-tary and political functions.

While Eastern Slavonia was in some respects an easier missionthan Bosnia (involving only two competing ethnic groups ratherthan three), the level of violence and destruction in the region borecomparison with any part of the former Yugoslavia. In addition,UNTAES supposedly suffered major deficiencies in comparison withNATO’s Stabilization Force in Bosnia in that no American forceswere engaged, there was no NATO command structure, and themuch-maligned United Nations was in charge. These ‘‘weaknesses’’(from Washington’s perspective) may, in any event, have provenassets. The work of UNTAES was not bogged down either in themorass of the inter-agency process in Washington or in the talkingshop of the North Atlantic Council. The mission had to deal withmany nongovernmental organizations and state entities, but it was

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largely spared the Rube Goldberg structure of administration per-sisting in Bosnia. Finally, while the military components of UNTAESwere definitely low-budget outfits compared with NATO deploy-ments in Bosnia, and certainly not up to U.S. logistical standards,the combat battalions and supplementary units in Eastern Slavoniagave priority to mission goals rather than to force protection; in theevent, they succeeded in both.13

Passing the Baton

Clearly, the European powers have the potential, if not alwaysthe will, to look after their own regional problems. What is mostinstructive from the examples of Operation Alba and UNTAES isthat even smaller European states can do so when properly moti-vated. How much more, then, is Europe as a whole capable of?Whether by ‘‘Europe’’ we mean the European members of NATOor the European Union, we are speaking of an aggregate economyas large as our own and a population much larger. While Europeanspending on defense is often quite low as a proportion of nationalincome, this amount still dwarfs spending anywhere else in theworld other than our own. As noted above, these countries enjoy awealth of military traditions, operational skills, and peacekeepingexperience—in some respects more than we. They certainly havemore familiarity with the Balkans. When American critics point tocurrent European deficiencies in military logistics or communica-tions, one need only look at the achievements of Airbus, Maersk,and Daimler in logistics and of Nokia, Ericsson, and Vodafone incommunications to see what the Europeans are capable of.

The problem lies not in technology, resources, or skills. The failureis of will, a failure to commit resources or to make a whole thatequals the sum of Europe’s parts. Europe has been very slow totake on its responsibilities, reflecting both a turgid decision-makingprocess in the European Union and a reluctance by many govern-ments to reduce the enormous American subsidy of European de-fense. However, some real progress has been made, beginning withthe European Security and Defense Identity, and more is on theway. The Balkans are where the overdue process of European self-sufficiency in the security field has already started as a responseto necessity.

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The better part of wisdom for the United States is to welcomeEurope’s hesitant steps at military self-reliance and to encouragethe process through a phased but firm turnover of peacekeepingresponsibilities to the Europeans, first in Bosnia and then in Kosovo,but in both within the current U.S. presidential term, which endsJanuary 2005, and let them carry the entire load in Macedonia. Thisis more than ample time. While many Europeans will wring theirhands and predict the end of NATO—one of the stalest chestnutsof European doomsayers—Washington has an opportunity to eatits cake and have it too: to remove our precious combat forces fromengagements not vital to U.S. interest and to encourage trends ofEuropean self-responsibility that are in our own interest. The majorobjections from the American side spring from vanity, hubris, andan unwillingness to adapt the transatlantic relationship to new reali-ties. The major objections from the European side reflect a rational-ization of their wasteful and redundant national militaries, a lackof self-confidence bred by too long a dependency on America, and,worst of all, a preference by European politicians that the continent’sdirty work be performed by American quasi-mercenaries. Few Euro-pean leaders want to accept responsibility for the use of force, andthey willingly pass the opprobrium to the United States. After all,they say sotte voce, America is a land of gun nuts and capital punish-ment, what else can you expect from them?

The real challenge for Washington is quite different. Removingour armed forces from the Balkans can be comparatively easy: Somediplomacy, some firm decisions, and the job will be done. The hardpart will be then to stand aside from political leadership in theBalkans. The international affairs commentator of the Financial Times,Quentin Peel, expressed it very well.

It is not so much that the U.S. forces are essential for thepeacekeeping exercise, because the Europeans are alreadyproviding more than eighty percent of the men and womenon the ground. They are in a position to provide the entireforce. But that would ignore the real reason for wanting theUnited States to be involved. The Europeans are desperatenot to have a repeat of the Bosnia peacekeeping operation,when the Europeans provided the troops, but the UnitedStates continued to pursue its own diplomatic initiatives.14

Indeed. The failure of the Clinton administration was not a delayin committing U.S. troops, but its persistent diplomatic back-seat

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driving. For years, Clinton undercut European diplomacy and costEuropean lives while dithering over U.S. involvement. If it nowgives Europe the job, will Washington be able to sit on its handsand let its allies call the shots? Does Washington have the disciplineto let the Europeans succeed or fail on their own? These are the keyquestions for the Bush administration and for the Congress. BringingU.S. troops home is easy; political self-restraint will be hard.

Notes1. There is extensive literature about the Suez crisis. A good starting point is

Hugh Thomas, Suez (New York: Harper & Row, 1967). A Canadian-centric view ofLester Pearson’s role can be found in Terence Robertson, Crisis: The Inside Story ofthe Suez Conspiracy (New York: Atheneum, 1965).

2. Jane Perlez, ‘‘Rumsfeld Seeks to Withdraw American Troops from Sinai,’’ NewYork Times, April 19, 2001, p. 1.

3. Jeffrey Simon, ‘‘Sources of Balkan Insecurity,’’ Strategic Forum 150 (October1998); and William Hagen, ‘‘Balkans’ Lethal Nationalities,’’ Foreign Affairs 78, no. 4(Fall 1999).

4. Conversations by the author with U.S. troops in Bosnia in 1998.5. Thomas Ricks, ‘‘U.S. Military Police Embrace Kosovo Role,’’ Washington Post,

March 25, 2001, p. 21.6. James Dao Currie, ‘‘Remember, They’re Not Replacements,’’ Washington Post,

March 25, 2001, p, B3.7. ‘‘Army Says Unit Is Unprepared for War Duty,’’ New York Times, March 27,

2001, p. 1.8. See Steven Thomma, ‘‘Retired General More Dovish about Force Than

Albright,’’ Miami Herald, December 15, 2000, p. A28; and Colin L. Powell with JosephE. Persico, My American Journey: An Autobiography (New York: Random House, 1995).

9. The achievements of the Europeans were evident even before the Kosovoconflicts, as in Marie-Janine Calic, ‘‘Post-SFOR: Towards Europeanization of theBosnia Peace Operation?’’ Institute for Security Studies of the Western EuropeanUnion, Chaillot Paper no. 32, May, 1998, pp. 10–22.

10. See, for example, Max Hastings and Simon Jenkins, The Battle for the Falklands(New York: W.W. Norton & Co., 1983).

11. There is a fair amount of literature about Operation Alba in English, despiteits neglect in the mass press. Among the better sources are: Joseph Codispoti, ‘‘FallenEagle: An Examination of Italy’s Contemporary Role and Relations with Albania,’’Mediterranean Quarterly 12, no. 1 (Winter 2001): 81–99; Beryl Nicholson, ‘‘The Begin-ning of the End of a Rebellion: Southern Albania, May-June 1997,’’ East EuropeanPolitics and Societies 13, no. 3 (1999): 543–65. Ettore Greco, ‘‘New Trends in Peacekeep-ing: The Experience of Operation Alba,’’ Security Dialogue 29, no. 2 (June 1998):201–12; Ted Perlmutter, ‘‘The Politics of Proximity: The Italian Response to theAlbanian Crisis,’’ International Migration Review 32, no. 1 (Spring 1998): 203–222;and Stefano Silvestri, ‘‘Albanian Test Case,’’ International Spectator 32, no. 3–4 (July-December 1997): 87–98.

12. Sean Kay, ‘‘From Operation Alba to Allied Force: Institutional Implications ofBalkan Interventions,’’ Mediterranean Quarterly 10, no.4 (Fall 1999): 72–89.

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13. Good sources on UNTAES in English are: Pjer Simunovic, ‘‘A Frameworkfor Success: Contextual Factors in the UNTAES Operation in Eastern Slavonia,’’International Peacekeeping 6, no. 1 (Spring 1999): 126–42; John McGinn, ‘‘After theExplosion: International Action in the Aftermath of Nationalist War,’’ National SecurityStudies Quarterly 4 (Winter 1998): 93–111; and Jacques Paul Klein, ‘‘Prospects forEastern Croatia,’’ Journal of the Royal United Services Institute for Defence Studies 142,no. 2 (April 1997): 19–24.

14. Quentin Peel, ‘‘A Testing Time ahead for U.S.-EU Relations,’’ European Affairs2, no. 1 (Winter 2001): 14–18.

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Contributors

Ted Galen Carpenter is the vice president for foreign policy anddefense studies at the Cato Institute. He is the author or editor of12 books, including NATO Enlargement: Illusions and Reality (1998)and NATO Enters the 21st Century (2001). Carpenter’s articles oninternational affairs have appeared in such journals as Foreign Policy,Foreign Affairs, and Mediterranean Quarterly.

David Chandler is a research fellow with the Policy Research Insti-tute at Leeds Metropolitan University. He has written widely oninternational relations, democracy, and human rights, including Bos-nia: Faking Democracy after Dayton (1999) and From Kosovo to Kabul:Human Rights and International Intervention (forthcoming).

Gary T. Dempsey is a foreign policy analyst at the Cato Institute.He is the coauthor of Fool’s Errands: America’s Recent Encounters withNation Building (2001) and the coproducer of the documentary filmCollateral Damage: The Balkans after NATO’s Air War. Dempsey’s opin-ion articles have been published in numerous American newspapers,including the Christian Science Monitor and the Journal of Commerceand in regional European newspapers such as Glas Javnosti in Yugo-slavia, Exoysia in Greece, and Sega in Bulgaria.

Robert M. Hayden is the director of the Center for Russian and EastEuropean Studies at the University of Pittsburgh and a professor ofanthropology. He is the author most recently of Blueprints for aHouse Divided: The Constitutional Logic of the Yugoslav Conflicts (1999).Hayden is a contributing editor to the East European ConstitutionalReview and has done extensive fieldwork on law and politics recon-struction in the states of the former Yugoslavia.

John C. Hulsman is a senior European analyst at the Heritage Foun-dation. He is the author of A Paradigm for the New World Order (1997)

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CONTRIBUTORS

and Globalization and Its Enemies: The World Confronts the Post–ColdWar Era (forthcoming). Prior to joining Heritage, Hulsman was afellow in European studies at the Center for Strategic and Interna-tional Studies (CSIS) in Washington. He also taught world politicsand U.S. foreign policy at the University of St. Andrews, Scotland.

E. Wayne Merry, a former State Department and Pentagon official,is a senior fellow at the Lester B. Pearson Canadian InternationalPeacekeeping Training Center in Cornwallis Park, Nova Scotia, andsenior associate at the American Foreign Policy Council in Washing-ton, D.C. His writings have appeared in the National Interest, Time,and the Washington Post.

Stephen Schwartz is the author of Kosovo: Background to a War (2000).He is a board member of the Daniel Dajani, S.J., Albanian CatholicInstitute and has consulted in the Balkans for the Council of Europe,the International Federation of Journalists, IREX ProMedia, the U.S.Agency for International Development, the Soros Fund for an OpenSociety, the International Crisis Group, and the Friedrich Ebert Stif-tung. He is a frequent contributor to independent media in theBalkans.

Raju G. C. Thomas is the Allis Chalmers Professor of InternationalAffairs at Marquette University. Among his dozen books and editedbooks, he is the coeditor of The South Slav Conflict: History, Religion,Ethnicity, and Nationalism (1996), and editor of Yugoslavia Unraveled:Sovereignty, Self-Determination, and Intervention (forthcoming).

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Index

Acton, John (lord), 30Afghanistan, 4Albania

Italian-led peacekeeping mission in,116–18

Albanians in Kosovoalternative educational system of,

62–63diaspora of, 62entrepreneurial economy of, 62–63human rights issue, 33–44, 61–64as majority ethnic group, 35–36NATO intervention to help, 61resentment against Serbs, 62restraints of UNMIK on, 62–63

Albright, Madeleine, 18, 102, 114–15,117

Annan, Kofi, 34Arbour, Louise, 16Armenia, 84Austro-Hungarian Empire, 86–87Azerbaijan, 84

BalkansBush administration position on, 1–3failure of nation building in, 28–30,

97–99minimal U.S. interest in, 98–99mismanagement by international

community, 54–64peacekeeping by forces other than

U.S., 115–16security situation in, 3U.S. military exit from, 104U.S. peacekeeping in, 111–15

Beloff, Nora, 87Bennett, Christopher, 29Bihac, 72Bosnia

American/Russian cooperation in,113

American troops in, 55–56conditional independence of, 42current political boundaries of, 86–87

127

68886$CIDX 09-08-04 13:16:16

under Dayton constitution, 67–68,70–72

de facto partition of, 69–72, 76–77economic and political conditions in,

3ethnic conflict in, 54–55federation in, 71international administrators in, 11,

38, 56–59, 68motivation of secessionist forces in,

99Muslim-Croat Federation in, 17–18,

67, 70–72NATO forces in, 68, 119–20Open Broadcast Network, 60under OSCE Provisional Election

Commission’s rules, 13–14peacekeeping forces in, 112–13,

115–16as a protectorate, 28–29, 88, 97,

99–100public opinion in, 99recognition of Muslim-led

government of, 85–86reconstruction plan and spending in,

56–57separate armies in, 71Serbs and Muslims in pre-war, 55UDI of (1991), 81–82unfulfilled criteria of a state, 85See also Croats in Bosnia; High

representative to Bosnia; Media inBosnia; Muslim-Croat Federation;Muslims in Bosnia; RepublikaSrpska; Serbs in Bosnia

Bosnians. See Croats; Muslims; SerbsBrecht, Bertolt, 40–41Brock, Peter, 89Bulllivant, Duncan, 16Bush, George W.

campaign pledges of, 10on idea of American

internationalism, 5on peacekeeping in the Balkans, 2

Bush administration

INDEX

experience of top appointees, 103position on U.S. role in Balkans, 1–3

Chechnya, 95Cheney, Dick, 1–2, 103CJTF (Combined Joint Task Force). See

NATOClinton administration

Balkan quagmire left by, 100diplomatic back-seat driving of,

121–22early view toward Balkans, 100–101geopolitical miscalculations of, 97position on media in Bosnia, 19promises for Bosnia and Kosovo, 3

Clinton Doctrine, 100Cohen, William, 100Cook, Robin, 81, 90Crimea, 84Croatia

current political boundaries of, 86–87ethnically pure Greater Croatia, 93as Germany’s favorite, 86integration of Eastern Slavonia

region into, 118–20Nazi-Ustashe regime, 86, 93recognition by the West, 85–86relationship with Bosnia, 77UDI of (1991), 81–82, 93See also Serbs in Croatia

Croatian Democratic Union (HDZ),21–22, 28, 98

Croat Republic of Herzeg-Bosna, 83Croats in Bosnia, 54–56, 69–70, 76–77,

83, 85–88areas of control, 72, 88–89media of, 58nationalists, 27–28pressure to partition, 69–70as victims of ethnic cleansing, 70

Daalder, Ivo, 99Dalmatia, 83, 86, 91Dayton Agreement

absence of violations of, 56binds international community in

Bosnia, 38Bosnia as nominal state under, 70Bosnia-Croatia relationship under, 77commitment of Western powers

under, 11–12constitutional system created by, 67,

70–72

128

68886$CIDX 09-08-04 13:16:16

dismantled by high representative,67, 72–76

effect in Bosnia of, 68original understanding of, 6OSCE authority under, 13–15Provisional Election Commission of,

21Serbs stake in Bosnia under, 99UN Transitional Administration

(UNTAES) under, 118–20Defense spending

disparity in U.S.-European, 4–5of European countries, 4–5, 104–5,

120of United States, 5

del Ponte, Carla, 93DeVoss, David, 60Dodik, Milorad, 25, 26

Electoral system, Bosniadisqualification of candidates, 22election rules promulgated by high

representative, 75, 98intervention of international

administrators in, 21–27OSCE supervision of, 13, 15

Electoral system, Kosovo, 29ESDP. See European Security and

Defense Policy (ESDP)Ethnic cleansing

of Croats in Bosnia, 70of Muslims in Bosnia, 70of Serbs in Bosnia, 70of Serbs in Croatia, 93

Ethnic groupsAlbanians in Kosovo, 35–36conflict in Bosnia among, 54–55in Greater Croatia, 93mono-ethnic enclaves in Kosovo, 34separation in Bosnia, 58–59in Slovenia, 92in Yugoslavia, 64, 90–91

European countriesdefense spending of, 4–5, 104–5, 120greater role in Balkans, 102–4peacekeeping experience and

capabilities of, 115–21peacekeeping role in the Balkans,

100–102proposed civil-military police role in

Bosnia, 106–7request to undertake more

peacekeeping duties, 2–3

INDEX

European Security and Defense Policy(ESDP), 4, 100–107, 120

European Union (EU)decision-making process in, 120European Security and Defense

Policy, 4, 100–107, 120rapid reaction force (RRF) of, 4

Everts, Daan, 35

Frowick, Robert, 13, 22

Galbraith, Peter, 77Gelbard, Robert, 26Geoana, Mircea, 2–3Geyer, Georgie Anne, 20Goldstone, Richard, 42

Hannum, Hurst, 85Hanset, Willy, 119Haselock, Simon, 18HDZ. See Croatian Democratic Union

(HDZ)Hedges, Chris, 25Helsinki Agreement Final Act (1975),

82–83High representative to Bosnia

authority related to media actions,15–17

dictatorial tendencies of, 28dismisses Bosnian Croat

representative, 98intervention in electoral system, 21power granted by Peace

Implementation Council, 73–74removal of elected officials by, 27, 74revision of Bosnian constitution by,

74–76Hitler, Adolf, 92Holbrooke, Richard, 11, 17, 20Human rights

enforcement in Kosovo, 43–44enforcement worldwide, 94international law seen as impediment

to, 33–34as rationale for intervention, 33

Huntington, Samuel, 98

Independenceconditional in Bosnia and Kosovo,

42–43pre-war notions in Bosnia of, 55recognition of Bosnian, 70See also Unilateral declaration of

independence (UDI)

129

68886$CIDX 09-08-04 13:16:16

Independent Media Commission,Bosnia, 16–19

India, 83, 87International Crisis Group, 18, 29, 38,

68Ireland, 83IREX ProMedia, 60Izetbegovic, Alija, 69

Jelavic, Ante, 27, 98

Kaldor, Mary, 36Kalinic, Dragan, 26Karadzic, Radovan, 21Kashmir, 95Khrushchev, Nikita, 84King, Neil, Jr., 28–29Klein, Jacques, 119Kosovo

absence of postwar constitutionalsolution, 35–36

autonomy of internationalcommunity in, 38–40

Central Financial Authority in, 39control of media in, 29economic and political conditions in,

3elections in, 40–41EU role in, 39Interim Administrative Council, 39international administrators in, 35–44mono-ethnic enclaves in, 34OSCE role in, 39–41peacekeeping forces in, 111–13, 115post-1999 population composition, 34recommended conditional

independence for, 42–43refugees from, 34spread of insurgency, 107Training for Trainers in, 36–37Transitional Council, 39–40UN administrative structures in,

38–41UNMIK governance in, 61–63UN Municipal Administrative Board,

40U.S.-led air war over, 4, 5U.S. occupation of, 5–6violence aimed at Serbs and

minorities in, 34–35See also Albanians in Kosovo;

Political system, Kosovo; Serbs inKosovo

Kosovo Law Center, 37

INDEX

Kosovo Liberation Army (KLA), 35, 61,97

Kostunica, Vojislav, 5Kouchner, Bernard, 38–40, 42Krajina, 86, 91, 93Kurdistan, 95

Law, internationalstate’s internal boundaries under, 86status of republics of former

Yugoslavia under, 81–90unilateral declaration of

independence interpreted by,81–82

Lewis, Anthony, 19Libal, Michael, 85–87Lincoln, Abraham, 97

McCarthy, Regan, 57, 60Macedonia, 87, 97, 107Martin, David, 87MEC. See Media Experts Commission

(MEC), OSCEMedia Experts Commission (MEC),

OSCE, 13–15Media in Bosnia

effect of harassment and suppressionof, 12

enforcement of OSCE standards,14–15

OSCE standards of conduct for,13–15

postwar restrictions on, 18–19, 59–61prewar defensiveness of, 55proposals to censor, 20Serb radio and television, 19–20

Media in Kosovo, 29Metzl, Jamie F., 20Milosevic, Slobodan, 50, 55, 93Montenegro, 81, 87, 91Montevideo Convention (1933), 84–85Multinational Force and Observers

(MFO), 111–12Muslim-Croat Federation, Bosnia

Croatians withdraw from (2001), 67divided government within, 71–72media organizations in, 17–18nominal Bosnian state patterned

after, 70Muslims in Bosnia, 54–56, 69–70,

76–77, 85–88areas of control, 72, 88media of, 58post-war, 55–56

130

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pre-war notions of independence, 55as victims of ethnic cleansing, 70

Nagorno-Karabakh, 84Nationalism

Albanian, 63idea in Bosnia of, 59, 69

Nation building in Balkans, 28–30,97–99

NATOArticle V provision, 99Combined Joint Task Force, 100–102forces in Bosnia, 68inequitable burden-sharing among

members of, 5, 104–5move against Serb Radio and

Television, 16–17, 21operations in Kosovo, 34–35, 37rationale for intervention in Kosovo,

33–34shut down of Albanian-language

newspaper, 29Stabilization Force (SFOR), 15,

119–20

Organization for Security andCooperation in Europe (OSCE)

authority under Dayton Agreement,13

intervention in Bosnian elections,21–24

Kosovo media board of, 29Media Branch, 12Provisional Election Commission,

13–15role in Kosovo, 35, 39–41See also Media Experts Commission

(MEC)Orwell, George, 57

Pakistan, 83Peace Implementation Council, 73Peacekeeping operations

in Albania, 116–18Bush administration position on U.S.,

1–3definitions of, 109–10forces from European countries,

114–16modern, multilateral, 110–11in Somalia, 112U.S. experience, 111–15

Pearson, Lester, 110

INDEX

PEC. See Provisional ElectionCommission (PEC), OSCE

Peel, Quentin, 121Petritsch, Wolfgang, 27–28, 67–68, 72,

74–76, 90, 98Plavsic, Biljana, 16, 24–26Political system, Bosnia

under Dayton Agreement, 72–76nationalist bias of, 97role of international authorities in,

21–27separate Serb, Croat and Muslim, 58

Political system, Kosovorole of UN and OSCE in, 37–41under UNMIK governance, 63

Poplasen, Nikola, 22, 26–27Powell, Colin, 1–2, 102–3Powell Doctrine, 103Prce, Miroslav, 100Presevo Valley, 107Provisional Election Commission

(PEC), OSCE, 13–15, 21

Radical Party, Republika Srpska, 22Rapid reaction force (RRF), 4Republika Srpska (RS)

under Bosnian constitution, 71election-related parliamentary

actions, 25media organizations in, 17–18rejection of UDI of, 83

Rice, Condoleeza, 1–2, 103Robertson, George, 17RRF. See Rapid reaction force (RRF)RS. See Republika SrpskaRumsfeld, Donald, 103, 112Russia, 84

Sanjak, 86Sarajevo, 54–55, 72, 89Scanlon, J. David, 18Schoups, Jozef, 119Self-determination principle, 83, 89,

94–95Serbian Democratic Party (SDS)

attempt to disqualify, 22MEC criticism of, 15threats from international agencies in

Bosnia, 21Serbia/Slovenia conflict (1991), 50Serb Radio and Television (SRT)

defiant act of, 16NATO actions against, 16–17reporting-related agreement by, 15

131

68886$CIDX 09-08-04 13:16:16

Serb Republic of Krajina, 83Serbs

as former nomenklatura, 62Serbs in Bosnia, 54–56, 69–70, 76–77,

83, 85–88areas of control, 72, 88–89media in Bosnia, 58post-war, 55–56pressure to partition Bosnia, 69–70pre-war actions, 55as victims of ethnic cleansing, 70

Serbs in Croatia, 83Serbs in Kosovo

international support for, 61–62violence against, 34–35

Silesia, Poland, 92Slavonia, 86, 93, 116, 118–20Slim, Hugo, 33Slovenia

economic policies of, 52ethnic purity of, 92fighting between Serbia and (1991),

50Germany’s favorite, 86recognition by the West, 85–86UDI of (1991), 81–82

Smith, Ian, 82, 85Smucker, Philip, 25Solana, Javier, 101Somalia, 112Soviet Union, 83–84Srebenica, 54Stalin, Josef, 84Stiglmayer, Alexandra, 27Sudentenland, Czechoslovakia, 92Suez crisis, 110–11

Tito, Josip, 52, 87Training for Trainers on Interethnic

Dialogue and Reconciliation, 36–37Trepca mining complex, 63Tudjman, Franjo, 93Tyson, Laura d’Andrea, 50

UNHCR. See United Nations HighCommission for Refugees(UNHCR)

Unilateral declaration of independence(UDI)

international law interpretations of,81–82

rejection of Serb and Croatminorities’, 83

INDEX

related to breakup of Yugoslavia,81–82

United NationsBosnia’s seat in, 70Development Fund for Women, 37high representative in Bosnia, 12,

14–15intervention in Albanian educational

system, 62–63Mission in Kosovo (UNMIK), 34,

41–42peacekeeping in Suez crisis, 110–11Resolution 1244 requirements, 38, 41,

93, 97Special Representative in Kosovo,

38–39Transitional Administration for

Eastern Slavonia, Baranja, andWestern Sirmium (UNTAES),118–20

United Nations High Commission forRefugees (UNHCR), 34

United Statesaid to Bosnia (1998), 25–26exit from Balkans, 104intervention in the Balkans, 98peacekeeping lessons learned, 111–14Powell’s criteria for military

commitment, 103role in Kosovo air campaign, 101–2

Vojvodina, 87

132

68886$CIDX 09-08-04 13:16:16

Walker, William, 119Warner, John W., 3Westendorp, Carlos, 16–17, 26Wilson, Woodrow, 92

Xinjiang, 95

Yugoslaviaafter collapse of state socialism in, 69breakup of, 53, 81design of internal borders of, 87ethnic conflict in, 64Kostunica government of, 5–6mistrust of United States by, 5–6multiculturalism of Tito era in, 59post-communist society in, 51–53post-Milosevic transition, 5–6pre-1991 ethnic groups in, 90–91proposal to reunite, 90–91proposed further division of, 91–92proposed options to settle

disintegration issues, 89–93secession of territories from, 81–90status of states under former, 85–86UDIs of Slovenia, Croatia, and

Bosnia in breakup of, 81–82Western lack of understanding of,

49–53

Zimmerman, Warren, 70

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The Precautionary Principle: A Critical Appraisal of Environmental Risk Assessment