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The World and Yugoslavia's Wars, Edited by Richard H. Ullman
Stanley Hoffmann
This chapter describes, first, what European institutions and powers did to cope with the disintegration of Yugoslavia; second, it discusses some of the key issues involved; third, it examines the implications of and reasons for the European fiasco. It covers events up to the Western reaction—in the form of the bombing campaign of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO)—to the murderous shelling of Sarajevo on August 28, 1995. Once the bombing started, leadership of the external effort, military and diplomatic, shifted decisively to the United States. While European actors continued to perform on the stage, they read from a largely American script (lifted from earlier European drafts).
European Actions
Far more detailed accounts of European actions in the Yugoslav crisis can be found elsewhere. 1 Here, only the main points will be mentioned.
Early Offers of Agreement and Aid
Before the Slovenian and Croatian declarations of independence on June 25, 1991, Western statesmen (the American secretary of state as well as the British foreign minister and French officials) proclaimed their support for the territorial integrity of Yugoslavia, in accordance with the Helsinki Principles included in the 1975 Final Act of the Conference on Security and Cooperation in Europe (CSCE). In May 1991 the president of the European Community (EC) Commission, Jacques Delors, and the prime minister of Luxembourg had gone to Belgrade offering an association agreement and aid ($4 billion) if a peaceful solution of Yugoslavia's internal conflicts could be found, and "asserting that the Community would refuse to recognize breakaway republics or offer them benefits." 2 The mission failed.
CSCE and EC Involvement
After June 25, both the CSCE and the EC got involved quickly. The CSCE summoned the Consultative Committee of the Conflict Prevention Center, which was created in July, and its equally recent Committee of Senior Officials, whose mission is to deal with serious emergencies; the latter, which met in Prague on July 3–4, condemned any use of force, offered to send a good offices mission if "Yugoslavia" was willing, and called for a cease–fire.
The EC jumped into action, with Luxembourg's foreign minister claiming: "this is the hour of Europe." 3 It moved on several fronts. First, the Yugoslav federal government asked the Community to take part in its negotiations with Slovenia and Croatia; on July 8, at Brioni, a common declaration was drafted, in which Slovenia and Croatia accepted a three–month moratorium on independence, and all parties accepted a cease–fire, negotiations on Yugoslavia's future, and EC observers to monitor compliance. Second, after the war in Slovenia ended but the conflict in Croatia got worse, the EC foreign ministers discussed (inconclusively) the French idea of sending a force of interposition, agreed on the principle of the inviolability of the internal borders of Yugoslavia (on July 29), increased the number of cease–fire monitors in Croatia to 300, decided (on August 27) to summon a conference on Yugoslavia's future because of the failure of the parties to do so, set up an Arbitration Commission of five members (two appointed by the Federal Presidency of Yugoslavia, three by the EC), and threatened sanctions if no cease–fire was achieved by September 1. Such a cease–fire was obtained after a "laborious compromise" among the 12 EC members. 4 The EC sent its observers even though several of the conditions listed in the cease–fire agreement of September 1, concerning the demobilization of Croat and irregular forces and the withdrawal of the Yugoslav army, were not met. As a result, the cease–fire did not hold. Yugoslavia, Austria, France, and several other countries then asked the U.N. Security Council to deal with the issue; the Council adopted unanimously a draft resolutionintroduced by four European countries (Austria, Belgium, France, and the United Kingdom) plus the Soviet Union and, under chapter VII of the U.N. Charter, on September 25, 1991, called for a complete arms embargo. On the basis of that resolution, the U.N. secretary–general appointed Cyrus Vance as his envoy, and it was Vance who finally succeeded in obtaining a lasting cease–fire on February 11, 1992. Thereafter the Council established and sent to the parts of Croatia occupied by the Serbs the peacekeeping United Nations Protection Force (UNPROFOR).
Having, so to speak, dumped the military aspects of the conflict in the lap of the United Nations, the EC concentrated on the peace conference, summoned by its envoy, Lord Peter Carrington. The principles that he tried to get the parties to accept, and that the EC endorsed, linked the future recognition of the secessionist republics to the acceptance of a settlement that would entail a loose association among the republics, adequate arrangements for the protection of minorities, and the acceptance of the principle of the inviolability of borders. Even though the most elaborate version of Lord Carrington's plan, presented on October 18, 1992, contained provisions for a "special statute" for regions dominated by an ethnic minority as well as for a Human Rights Court, Serbia rejected the draft. This led the EC to denounce its trade and cooperation agreement with Yugoslavia and to suspend the peace conference on November 8.
When Vance and the secretary–general of the United Nations decided to summon a new international conference on the future of Yugoslavia in August 1992, Lord Carrington resigned. This intractable issue thus became a joint U.N.–EC responsibility, but the new conference led nowhere. As an American participant later remarked, it "resulted in a package of useful agreements among the parties," but "in the days and weeks that followed, the Serbs willfully ignored every accord reached and commitment made." 5
On December 16, 1991, five days after the Maastricht Treaty on European Union was signed, the 12 nations gave up the idea of linking recognition of the new republics to an overall agreement and decided to recognize, collectively, on January 15, 1992, all the republics that sought recognition and met a long list of conditions drawn from Lord Carrington's plan, including respect for the inviolability of borders and guarantees for the rights of ethnic groups and minorities. On the issue of borders, the Arbitration Commission had already been asked to give an opinion, at Yugoslavia's request. On January 11, 1992, it extended the U.N. Charter's protection of international borders to internal borders, because the Yugoslav Republic was breaking up. On the issue of minorities, Yugoslavia asked the commission whether Serb minorities in Croatia and Bosnia–Herzegovina were entitled to the right of self–determination; the commission restricted it to "minorities and entities established as territorially defined administrative units of a federal nature." 6 On December 18, after several months of domestic debate and diplomatic exhortation favoring such a move, Germany recognized Slovenia and Croatia, before the commission could report on whether those republics had met the conditions set on December 16. The commission subsequently declared that Slovenia and Macedonia had met these conditions. However, Greece blocked Macedonia's recognition by the EC, and the EC recognized Croatia on January 15 even though Croatia had failed to amend its constitution so as to incorporate the Carrington plan's notion of a "special status" for minorities, which figured in the EC list of conditions of December 16 and in the commission's judgment on Croatia's demand for recognition.
The Fate of Bosnia–Herzegovina
Subsequently, the key issue became the fate of Bosnia–Herzegovina. On October 1, 1991, EC delegates had succeeded in getting the federal foreign minister and the prime minister of Bosnia–Herzegovina to accept the stationing of European observers in Bosnia–Herzegovina. After the EC decisions of December 16, Bosnia–Herzegovina asked for recognition; the Arbitration Commission based itself "on the human right of minorities and ethnic groups to equal participation in government" and declared on January 11, 1992, that in the absence of a referendum on independence, "the popular will for an independent state had not been `clearly established.'" 7 Such a referendum was held on March 1, 1992; 63 percent of the electorate voted for independence (but the Serbs boycotted the vote); the EC recognized Bosnia–Herzegovina on April 6.
Worried by the attitude of Serbs and Croats in Bosnia–Herzegovina, Lord Carrington had asked, in January 1992, a Portuguese diplomat, José Cutileiro—Portugal having now the presidency of the European Community—to run a conference on the future of Bosnia–Herzegovina. On March 18 the representatives of the Serbs and of the Croats and the Muslim prime minister agreed that Bosnia–Herzegovina would be a state composed of three "constitutive units," each one entitled to a veto; but a week later the Serbs proclaimed the "Serb Republic of Bosnia–Herzegovina," which was to be an integral part of the new Yugoslavia. In April and May, war spread all over Bosnia–Herzegovina. The U.N. Security Council imposed a trade embargo on the new Federal Republic of Yugoslavia (Serbia plus Montenegro) on May 27 and, on June 7, endorsed Secretary–General Boutros Boutros–Ghali's proposal to extend UNPROFOR's mandate so as to have it keep the Sarajevo airport open for humanitarian assistance. The contingents began to arrive only after French President François Mitterrand's surprise visit to Sarajevo on June 29, and Europeans have since provided the majority of the U.N. forces in Bosnia–Herzegovina. But the EC as such did not play a major part: the negotiations led by Cutileiro failed, and the EC observers were withdrawn after one was murdered on May 3. As for the CSCE (now the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe, or OSCE), which, in the summer of 1992, with Yugoslavia's consent, sent human rights monitors to Kosovo and Vojvodina, it had earlier urged Serbia, on April 15, to cease supporting the violation of Bosnia–Herzegovina's integrity and later followed a recommendation of its Committee of Senior Officials to suspend Yugoslavia's participation.
From the summer of 1992 until the NATO bombing campaign three years later, attention centered on the efforts of the U.N. envoys (Vance, later Thorvald Stoltenberg) and of the EC representative (Lord David Owen) to find a political solution for Bosnia–Herzegovina; the U.N. Security Council, which extended sanctions several times and established a "no–fly" area and "security zones" in Bosnia–Herzegovina; the United States; and NATO, as a kind of sword protecting the shield (UNPROFOR) from Serbian attacks in Bosnia. Britain and France effectively vetoed the Clinton administration's proposal to lift the embargo on arms to the Bosnian government and to resort to air strikes against Serbian forces in Bosnia–Herzegovina, after Serbs in that country rejected the Vance–Owen plan in the spring of 1993. Only in the fall of 1993 did the EC take a new initiative, aimed at persuading the Serbs and the Croats of Bosnia–Herzegovina to make territorial concessions to the Muslims in order to get the Owen–Stoltenberg partition plan (which the latter had rejected in September) accepted, in exchange for a gradual lifting of sanctions. This, again, failed.
The Ambiguous Roles of Britain and France
In 1994 the EC (by then transformed into the European Union, or EU) practically vanished as an actor, except for its endorsement of one more plan in the summer: the plan conceded 49 percent of Bosnian territory to the Bosnian Serbs and gave the rest to the Croat–Muslim federation that had emerged under American pressure. But this plan—a later version of which was enshrined in the Dayton accords—resulted mainly from the efforts of the "contact group" consisting of the United States, Britain, France, Germany, and Russia. The key European actors have been Britain and France; both consistently stressed the need to reach a peaceful settlement of the Bosnian war and showed considerable reluctance to use military force either to stop Serbian attacks on Muslim areas or to pressure the Bosnian Serbs into accepting a settlement. They supported NATO air raids after the market massacre in Sarajevo in February 1994. But until August–September 1995 these raids were never more than pinpricks. Britain and France continued to resist American suggestions for getting the Security Council to lift the arms embargo on Bosnia—a suggestion first made by George Bush, shortly before he left office. At various moments, British and French officials suggested that in the absence of a settlement, or should violence escalate, they would pull their men out of UNPROFOR.
In the spring and early summer of 1995, it became even clearer that the presence of UNPROFOR, far from deterring the Bosnian Serbs from attacking the "safe areas" the Security Council had designated in May 1993, allowed them to intimidate the states whose soldiers served in the U.N. force, and to deter them from any military riposte in order not to compromise the military personnel's safety. A few bombs dropped, without adequate consideration of consequences, around the Bosnian Serb headquarters in Pale in May 1995, resulted in hundreds of U.N. soldiers' being taken as hostages. Two "safe areas" fell to the Serbs without any international reaction other than verbal indignation. In London, on July 21, 1995, an international conference once more threatened the Serbs with air strikes should new assaults on safe areas occur. Those strikes—for the first time carried out with persuasive force—began some six weeks later. Ten weeks later still came the agreement reached at Dayton.
European Issues
The Europeans faced four main issues: preventive action, a choice of principles, the problem of recognition, and the problem of coercion.
Preventive Action
The breakup of Yugoslavia been easy to predict. In September 1989 the Slovenian parliament voted for a "Declaration of Sovereignty," and in December 1990, in a referendum, 95 percent of the Slovenes voted for independence should an agreement on a new, looser Yugoslav Federation not be concluded within six months. In December 1990 a new Croatian constitution contained a similar provision. In Bosnia–Herzegovina, in November 1990, the election winners were the parties representing each of the three ethnic groups. In Croatia, the new constitution of December 1990 defined Croatia as the "national state of the Croatian people," and President Franjo Tudjman later took a number of anti–Serb measures; in reply, the Serbs in the Krajina and Slavonia, in a referendum, expressed their determination to remain in Yugoslavia. 8
There was very little preventive diplomacy. Except for the belated Delors mission, neither the EC nor the CSCE tried to find a peaceful solution for the reconstruction of Yugoslavia. This was partly, as one author has written, because any move that entailed accepting the idea of a possible breakup of Yugoslavia might become a self–fulfilling prophecy—at a time when the United States, the Soviet Union, Britain, and France were supporting Yugoslavia's territorial integrity. 9 But this is not a convincing explanation: since the parties were evidently incapable of agreeing on a new common structure, outside good offices would have provided the best chance for saving Yugoslavia. The real explanations are elsewhere.
The CSCE, after its solemn conference in November 1990 in Paris, was still in the process of establishing its new institutions, and no one tried to activate the new conflict prevention machinery until after the Slovenian and Croat declarations of independence. As for the EC, it suffered from two handicaps. First, foreign policy cooperation and coordination among the 12 members was not yet a Community function, carried out under the Treaty of Rome and the Single Act of 1987 that had amended the treaty. This meant that except for external trade policy, the supranational Commission, which is not the legislator of the EC (the Council of Ministers is the legislative arm) but is both the initiator and the enforcer of policy, could not play its customary planning and prodding role. Foreign policy was entirely an intergovernmental exercise among the foreign ministers of the member nations. Called "European Political Cooperation," it had started in the 1970s and had rarely gone beyond common declarations of approval or disapproval. Second, in the first half of 1991, attention among EC members was focused on the negotiations of the Maastricht Treaty—the details of the planned monetary union and the reshaping of the EC's institutions to allow them to cope with the new functions that would be entrusted to the EC, including defense and diplomacy. The plate was too full for preventive foresight. Third, when, in 1990, the United States suggested that NATO discuss the coming crisis in Yugoslavia, France rejected the idea because of its opposition to American notions about the continuing predominance of NATO in post–Cold War European security issues. Indeed, in 1991, when EC efforts at peacemaking failed, the French turned to the United Nations, not NATO, and it was not until 1994 that a more flexible French government and an American administration less dogmatic than Bush's about NATO's supremacy and American domination of it could agree on a NATO mission in Yugoslavia.
After the wars in Slovenia and Croatia started, the 12 EC members had fewer excuses for passivity regarding the next chapter in the book of disasters—Bosnia–Herzegovina. Its government called for European observers in July 1991, but the foreign ministers of the EC nations replied that they had to concentrate on "the Serbo–Croat problem which is the heart of the Yugoslav crisis." 10 Only in September did the Dutch president (the Netherlands held the Community presidency for the last half of 1991) begin to worry and act so as to enable the EC to send observers. But other EC actions, to be discussed, contributed to the crisis in Bosnia–Herzegovina.
A Choice of Principles
From the beginning, the Europeans' effort to mitigate the crisis had to face a conflict of principles. The federal presidency of Yugoslavia wanted to maintain the territorial integrity of the federation, while the secessionist forces that dominated several of its member states invoked the right of self–determination. At first, the CSCE and the EC tried to avoid a clear–cut choice. The CSCE concentrated on condemning the use of force, while, in accord with the Helsinki principles of respect for sovereignty and nonintervention, seeking the consent of the federal Yugoslav government to the sending of a good offices mission. The EC also emphasized the need for a halt to the use of force and tilted somewhat in the direction of the federal government, both in the composition of the Arbitration Commission and in the language of the cease–fire agreement of September 1. 11
Once it became clear that the secession of Slovenia and Croatia was irreversible and that condemning it would only encourage the Serbs' resort to force, a new choice confronted the Europeans. The Slovenes and the Croats asserted that the right of self–determination belonged to their states as geographic entities; the Serbs argued that it belonged not to artificial multiethnic units but to "peoples" (referring thus to the language of the U.N. Charter and the Helsinki Declaration), and specifically to the Serbian people, who refused to accept Croatian rule in Croatia and Muslim rule in Bosnia–Herzegovina. The use of force by the Serbian army "was essential to protect the Serbian people from extermination." 12
Thus confronted with the fatal indeterminacy of the principle of self–determination, the EC opted for the approach that was deemed the least conducive to endless trouble and fragmentation in disintegrating empires: the ministers and the Arbitration Commission endorsed, in effect, the Slovenian and Croatian position, by proclaiming the inviolability of internal borders. As an observer who is generally very critical of the EC nevertheless put it, "a shift towards endorsing the principle of self–determination [for peoples] would have opened up a Pandora's box throughout Yugoslavia and incidentally implied that the EC was condoning the use of force." 13 This explains why it did not appear to the EC member nations that they were inconsistent in, on the one hand, acknowledging the disintegration of the multiethnic state of Yugoslavia and endorsing, on the other hand, the possibility of independence for the multiethnic state of Bosnia–Herzegovina.
To the Serbs' argument that this formalistic limitation of the right of self–determination to establish "administrative units of a federal nature" was unfair, because it submitted Serb minorities to the will of hostile ethnic majorities, the EC replied, in effect, by granting to the Serbs extensive rights as minorities and ethnic groups, including, said the Arbitration Commission, "the right to choose their nationality." The Commission in this case, however, "defined the right to self–determination not as a people's right to independence but as a human right of minorities and groups," who "were not entitled" to territorial secession. 14 This was unacceptable to the Serbs, as was shown by the fate of Lord Carrington's plan, which had gone extremely far toward accommodating President Slobodan Milosevic, by recommending an association of states with a status of its own under international law and a "special statute" for regions dominated by an ethnic minority. The Serbs clearly put the right of self–determination, conceived as a people's collective right to secession, above the principle of the sanctity of borders—except (some exception!) insofar as Serbia itself was concerned: Kosovo was clearly not entitled to the people's right of self–determination. The EC's position, to quote Lord Owen, was that "self–determination is a qualified right...there are other international criteria as well: sovereignty, territorial integrity and human rights, to name only three." 15
The Problem of Recognition
Recognition is certainly one of the messiest aspects of the EC's action. From July 1991 on, the 12 member nations were split—Germany and Italy (as well as Austria, a candidate for EC membership) argued for prompt recognition of Croatia and Slovenia, which were seen as exercising their right to self–determination; the United States, the U.N. secretary–general, and his envoy, Cyrus Vance, supported the position of the Dutch foreign minister, the French, the British, and Lord Carrington against immediate recognition: such a move "would not incite these republics to moderation; and also, who would defend their independence, after it had been recognized?" 16 Germany seems to have believed that recognition would deter the Serbs from further military action; those who opposed early recognition thought it would make the situation worse.
The French foreign minister later argued that the Europeans' decision, "under German pressure," to recognize Croatia and Slovenia had been a mistake, and that it would have been wiser to preserve a confederal framework for Yugoslavia. 17 Certainly Belgrade viewed the EC's decision of December 16 as hostile, and it would have been better if recognition could have accompanied or followed an agreement on such a framework; this is exactly what Lord Carrington had wanted. But by December 16 it had become clear that Milosevic did not accept that plan's point of departure—the dissolution of the old Yugoslavia and the need to rebuild it on the basis of the new republics—nor was he willing to accept that the idea of a special statute for minorities be applied within Serbia or, indeed, to Bosnia–Herzegovina, which he saw not as a Muslim nation with Serb and Croat minorities (as had been Bosnia–Herzegovina's official definition in the last years of the old Yugoslavia) but as a reunion of three equal communities. The problem for the EC was whether to postpone recognition until the Slovenes, Croats, Macedonians, and so on accepted the principle of Yugoslav continuity, demanded by Serbia—a most unlikely event—or until Milosevic had a change of mind so that a new framework could be agreed upon. But would denying recognition to the new their right to serepublics have encouraged Milosevic to be more flexible? 18 In fact, throughout November and December 1991, the Serbs devastated Vukovar and bombed Dubrovnik. We will never know whether a delay in recognition would have facilitated a compromise on a settlement—especially while war or the prospect of war hardened every party's attitude. But it seems most unlikely.
In evaluating the effects of the EC's moves, we need to separate the different cases. In that of Slovenia, recognition came when the country was at peace, the government exerted full control over the state's territory, and the republic had met all of the EC's conditions for recognition. The latter did not incite any new violence.
In the case of Croatia, two issues arose. One was the failure of the government to meet the very strict EC request for a constitutional commitment to the notion of a special status of autonomy for the Serb minority. Having demanded such a commitment, the EC should have insisted on its being met before granting recognition. The other issue is the fact that the Croatian government was clearly not in full control of its territory, since the Serbs had established their own rule in roughly one third of Croatia. But to apply, in this instance, the traditional criteria for recognition would have condoned the Serbs' use of force and given them a precious reward for having occupied the Krajina and detached it from the rest of Croatia. It is a fact that the recognition of Croatia encouraged President Tudjman to be more intransigent during the negotiations on the Vance plan that led to a cease–fire and to the deployment of UNPROFOR in February 1992. But it is also a fact that this agreement was reached partly because of Croatian exhaustion, partly because the three U.N. "protected areas" in which UNPROFOR was stationed remained outside the jurisdiction of Croatian laws and institutions. Recognition did not affect the situation on the ground.
Far more serious appears the brief against the recognition of Bosnia–Herzegovina. The risk of its disintegration was so high that President Alija Izetbegovic had, in vain, asked Vance for a preventive deployment of U.N. peacekeepers. 19 When the EC decided, on December 16, 1991, no longer to link recognition of the new republics to a global political settlement and stated it would recognize those republics that asked for recognition (and met EC conditions), a fatal engrenage was set in motion. For Bosnia–Herzegovina (whose parliament had voted a statement of "sovereignty" in October) not to ask for recognition as an independent state would have meant remaining tied to and dependent on a "Yugoslavia" dominated by Serbia. And for the EC not to recognize Bosnia–Herzegovina after the republic had met all of the Community's conditions would again have appeared to encourage Serbian hostility and would have been in contradiction with the "declaration of principles" the leaders of the three ethnic groups of Bosnia–Herzegovina had signed on March 18, 1992, under Cutileiro's pressure; this declaration stated that Bosnia–Herzegovina would be a single state. But the failure of the parties to agree on the meaning of the declaration and the EC's recognition were followed by a war that is still going on.
The EC was in a catch–22 situation: if it had postponed the recognition of Bosnia–Herzegovina because of the failure of the Izetbegovic government to control the Serb and Croatian parts of the country, it would have rewarded, and in no way prevented, a Serbian resort to force—unless, in this case at least, recognition was once again linked to an agreement on Bosnia–Herzegovina's future. But this would have given the Serbs a strong incentive to delay any agreement that did not meet their demand for, in effect, a partition along ethnic lines—a demand the Muslims would have resisted even if Bosnia–Herzegovina had not been recognized. The critics of the premature "recognition" of Bosnia–Herzegovina need to prove that there would have been no war in Bosnia–Herzegovina if recognition had been denied or postponed. The gap between the Serbs' position and the Muslims' insistence on a multiethnic state was such that it is hard to see how war could have been avoided.
The Problem of Coercion
The EC (as well as the CSCE) came out strongly against the use of force in Yugoslavia; the EC endorsed the inviolability of internal borders and rejected the Serb interpretation of the principle of self–determination. It sought a political settlement, first for the whole country, later and more specifically for Bosnia–Herzegovina. But it became clear quickly that the Serbs were using force, both in Croatia and (later) in Bosnia–Herzegovina, in order to enforce their interpretation. (Croatia's role in Bosnia–Herzegovina was more ambiguous, since the local Croats supported independence from Serbia, but with the help of Croatia's army carved out their own area and resorted to their own "ethnic cleansing.") The EC, which had seen the Yugoslav crisis as an opportunity, now faced an unwelcome challenge. It could decide and declare that the behavior of the parties made any further good offices futile and that it would wash its hands of the whole mess; but this would have been seen as a cowardly retreat. Or else it could decide that what was at stake was nothing less than the future of the post–Cold War European order. Just as those who had, in early 1991, argued against any encouragement to secession within Yugoslavia had in mind the precedent this would have created for the tottering Soviet Union, those who, in the summer of 1991 and later, argued against condoning ethnic cleansing and Serbian behavior had in mind the chaos that could result all over eastern Europe and the former Soviet Union if the Serbs' thesis about the self–determination of "peoples" and Serbia's use of force became the model. But to prevent this from happening meant a willingness to threaten and, if necessary, to fight the Serbs. It meant, in effect, being willing to declare that they were aggressors and to put in motion collective security or collective self–defense on the side of the Muslims in Bosnia, just as had been done against Iraq a few months earlier.
In the case of Croatia, the French, in July–August 1991, argued for a "force of interposition," aimed at making a cease–fire stick—at a time when each new one was collapsing at once. But this scheme to send Western European Union (WEU) forces to Yugoslavia would have required an invitation by the parties, which did not come, and unanimity among the 12 member nations, which was not present. The United Kingdom opposed the idea uncompromisingly (hence the French decision to turn to the Security Council). The EC did not go beyond a vague threat of "international action" against uncooperative parties and the imposition of economic sanctions on—at first—Yugoslavia (November 8, 1991) and later only Serbia and Montenegro (December 2). As indicated before, a lasting cease–fire was established finally in February 1992, and it is hard to argue that EC sanctions contributed to the Serbs' acceptance of a deal that left them, in effect, in control of much of Croatia and left Croatia's future in suspense.
The issue of coercion became much more crucial in the case of Bosnia–Herzegovina. But as of the summer of 1992 it became a U.N. issue, and none of the permanent members of the Security Council was willing either to allow openly outside arms to reach the Muslims in Bosnia or to threaten force against Serbia, except to protect humanitarian efforts from attack and except for President Clinton's suggestions, which France and the United Kingdom turned down. Britain and France insisted on presenting international action on the ground as purely humanitarian (supplemented by sanctions and by the efforts at a Vance–Owen settlement, later a Stoltenberg–Owen settlement, and still later by the "contact group" settlement). The presence of U.N. forces in Bosnia–Herzegovina, protecting relief operations, became an argument against letting the soldiers be endangered by a resort to military action, and the nonparticipation of Americans in the U.N. force became an additional reason for resisting American arguments for the use of force. Vance and Owen insisted that a resort to threats of force would compromise their efforts, which failed anyhow.
Thus, the pursuit of diplomacy and of humanitarian intervention became obstacles to military coercion—even though throughout history (and as Lord Owen belatedly acknowledged), "if there is no international will to take arms, it reduces... diplomatic room for maneuver"; even though it has been argued that humanitarian action puts one almost inevitably on a slippery slope toward military action—and even though it can be argued that U.N. humanitarian efforts have kept alive men, women, and children only so that they would remain the hapless targets of Serbian atrocities. 20 Even when a little bit of force was used, in 1994 around Goradze, to punish the Serbs for having seized a tank that was under UNPROFOR's guard, and in the spring of 1995 around Pale and Srebrenica, the action was minimal, in intensity and in scope. (It was meant to protect the U.N. personnel, not the Muslims, and no effort was made to get the siege of Sarajevo lifted.) When, at the end of 1994, Bosnian Serbs and Serbs from the Krajina largely overran the "safe zone" of Bihac, British and French opposition to any effective use of force seemed on the verge of provoking a major crisis in NATO; however, rather than opposing its chief allies, the United States chose to align with them, and the United Nations and NATO even agreed to reduce their surveillance flights. After the disastrous air raid near Pale in May 1995, when hundreds of UNPROFOR soldiers were seized by the Bosnian Serbs, the United Nations and NATO ceased to enforce the heavy weapons exclusion around Sarajevo.
As in some other cases, the effects of economic sanctions have been both slow (in the meantime, the Serbs have occupied the greatest part of Bosnia–Herzegovina) and harder on the poor and the civilians than on the rulers and the armed forces. Moreover, both the Europeans and the Russians have kept dangling a promise of reducing or lifting sanctions as a way of coaxing the Serbs into a more cooperative diplomacy. Basically, no EC nation was willing to use force—and without such a willingness or the willingness to lift the arms embargo on Bosnia, there was no way to prevent Serbian victory on the ground. The Europeans' opposition to any collective lifting of the arms embargo and to America's halfhearted inclination toward a unilateral lifting both harmed the Bosnian government's attempt to defend itself and failed to reach its stated objective—avoiding more war and helping to bring peace.
The Impact of Failure
What does the European fiasco mean for Europe and its institutions? There have been five major impacts.
First, the Yugoslav crisis has confirmed the obvious, in the case of the OSCE (the former CSCE): it is too unwieldy an organization to be either an effective diplomatic agent or a force for collective security. It was handicapped initially by the principle of unanimity, which made moves opposed by the federal government of Yugoslavia impossible. Later it developed the notion of "consensus minus one," which certainly facilitates OSCE interventions in internal conflicts; and as we have seen, it suspended Yugoslavia's membership. It also "strengthened the tools available for human rights enforcement" and for conflict prevention and crisis management; the emergency mechanism can be, and was, activated at the request of only 12 members. 21 Nevertheless, even "consensus minus one" is a slow and clumsy process in an organization of more than 50 members (several of which in the future could face ethnic conflicts comparable to Yugoslavia's and were not eager for external involvement in a domestic crisis). The OSCE is likely to be more useful as a body stating principles (and deploring their violation), as a fact–finding agency, and perhaps as a preventive alarm bell than as a major actor among international and regional organizations. The relatively modest role the OSCE has played in the Yugoslav crisis is not likely to induce states in conflict or parties locked in ethnic or religious disputes within a troubled state to turn to it for help. The major powers among its members, both European and non–European, have not shown enough enthusiasm for boosting its role to provide such an incentive to anyone.
Second, the problem of the EC was and still is to some extent an institutional one. Even after the Maastricht Treaty went into effect, the EC as an actor in foreign policy and defense remained handicapped by the rule of unanimity. It is true that the extension of the new union's functions to diplomacy and security makes it possible for the Commission to insert itself into these areas insofar as they are linked to the areas in which the Commission represents the Community abroad, such as foreign trade. However, this is a very narrow opening, and, at this stage certainly, many governments (France and Britain especially) are most unwilling to let the Commission exploit it, and the Commission is badly equipped to do so. It played an important role in shaping the foreign economic policies of the EC, but that was partly because of its considerable expertise in that domain. It has none in diplomacy and defense. Even if the Council unanimously decides to proceed in some areas of foreign and defense policy, with a qualified majority rule, as the Maastricht Treaty allows, no effectiveness can be guaranteed. Even though, since the Single European Act of 1985, foreign economic policy is a realm in which qualified majority rule now prevails in the Council, serious tensions have arisen both among members and between "minority" members and the Commission, as the 1993 drama over French adherence to the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade (GATT) showed. Inclusion of diplomacy and security in the jurisdiction of the Union may make foreign policy consultations among the members even more intense than in the past, but it is not clear that under the Maastricht Treaty the members must allow the Commission to play an autonomous role. As in the past, the alternatives remain deadlock (hence impotence) vs. compromise. The Yugoslav crisis has shown that compromises may be clumsy and ineffectual, as in the case of the common agreement of December 16, 1991, on collective recognition, which was an apparent compromise between the German push for prompt recognition and the Carrington approach. Immediately after its adoption, it was undercut by Germany's unilateral recognition of Slovenia and Croatia. The future effectiveness of the European Union in security and foreign policy matters is tied to a reform of its institutions in a more federal direction—a very "iffy" subject especially in these domains, where traditions of independence die hard or tend to revive.
Another factor, besides the rule of unanimity, turned out to be nefarious and could strike again: linkage. Often in the history of the EC/EU progress has resulted from package deals; mutual concessions across different areas resolved conflicts and broke deadlocks. In the Yugoslav case, linkage occurred—informally—over the issue of recognition. What made the compromise of December 1991 possible was a complex deal: Germany would agree not to break ranks but to wait for collective recognition, in exchange for a British and French agreement to separate the issue of recognition from that of a global settlement; and Britain and France agreed to do this in exchange for German concessions in the Maastricht negotiations (over Monetary Union, to accommodate the distrustful United Kingdom; over institutional reform, to please the reluctant French). The injection of these completely extraneous issues into the handling of the Yugoslav crisis was not a mark of wisdom.
The deal on collective recognition resulted also from another concern, which seems to have affected French diplomacy particularly (but not exclusively), in December 1991: the main consideration was not the future of Yugoslavia, or even the effectiveness of the EC in this first major postwar crisis in Europe; it was the preservation of the appearance of unity among the 12 members. A repetition of the disarray that had been so conspicuous during the Gulf crisis had to be avoided, and the only way of succeeding, given Germany's strong stand, was an agreement on collective recognition that provided a European costume for a policy made in Bonn. Later, when the war in Bosnia broke out and Germany became aware of the contradiction between its strong anti–Serbian stance and the constitutional restrictions on German military action outside the old NATO area, the same desire for surface unanimity led German diplomacy to follow, however reluctantly, those who were now the most determined (against a strong resort to force): the British and French.
Third, the French would have liked to be able to use this crisis as a lever to activate the WEU, but the latter remains a shadowy institution, despite its "operationalization" in July 1992 and its role in enforcing the arms embargo. 22 The one asset the WEU had was that, unlike NATO, it is not bound to eschew out–of–area actions (or to undertake them only when all its members agree to heed a call from the United Nations). But it could not overcome three handicaps. One—again—was the principle of unanimity, and as we have seen, the 12 member nations split over the issue of a force of "interposition." A second handicap was the lack of logistical autonomy, of an integrated command, and of readily available forces (other than the Franco–German corps, which was regarded as not usable because of Germany's constitutional restrictions on military action abroad). A third handicap explains the second: the preference of several of the WEU's members (especially the United Kingdom and the Netherlands) for NATO and their unwillingness to act without the United States. (Indeed, in 1993, in discussions about the eventual deployment of peacekeepers in Bosnia–Herzegovina after a cease–fire agreement there, even the French conceded that NATO could provide the secular arm the Security Council would request and sanctioned such a NATO role, in 1994, even before any agreement.) WEU is not likely to be an effective instrument of collective security in Europe as long as there is no coherent common foreign policy of the European Union, and the quasi–theological question of the WEU's relationship to NATO is not resolved. The recent agreement that allows future autonomous actions by the European members of NATO both removes some of the grounds for that theological quarrel and makes the WEU less, and NATO more, significant. (For the time being, NATO plays a residual "reassurance" role with respect to the countries of central and eastern Europe, although its military functions are as problematic as those of the WEU.)
Fourth, it may be true, as Thomas Weiss argues in chapter 3, that regional organizations are not a viable alternative to the United Nations (although his excellent critique of the United Nations suggests that the world organization is not a very effective alternative to regional organizations). The key problem is the need for better coordination between the global and the regional agencies. During the Croatian crisis, Slobodan Milosevic, the Serbian leader, played the United Nations against the EC, which he distrusted because of German and Italian hostility, whereas he thought that Yugoslavia would benefit from the sympathy of both the former nonaligned nations and the Soviet Union in the United Nations. 23 The EC envoy of the Dutch president found Vance more willing to lean toward Serbia than the EC negotiators and Lord Carrington had been. For France and the United Kingdom, U.N. involvement became both an alleged necessity, given the absence of a common foreign policy and defense system in pre–Maastricht Europe (what Delors described as the situation of "an adolescent—the Community—facing the crisis of adulthood"), and an all–too–easy way of preserving the EC's cohesion despite the splits among its members by essentially moving all the coercive aspects of the tragedy to the United Nations and sharing with it the rather unrewarding diplomatic function. 24 Boutros–Ghali at times showed his exasperation with the Security Council's preoccupation with a conflict that, to him, was only one among many, and that had been added to all the other U.N. operations mainly at the request of the Europeans.
The issue of coordination is difficult. On the one hand, "what many considered the regional organizations' comparative advantage—proximity to and interest in resolving the conflict—proved to be a serious limitation," because of the conflicting ties several of the members had with different parties in the Yugoslav breakup. 25 On the other hand, not only are members of the Security Council likely to be just as contradictorily involved, but the United Nations is not equipped to handle every crisis adequately. Suggestions have been made, but general guidelines may have to be bent to the specific features of each case. 26 In this one, the experiences of both the United Nations and the European organizations have been unedifying. Basically, there is no substitute for the common resolve of a concert of key powers operating as the leaders in the Security Council and the regional organizations. When there is such a concert, as in the Gulf War, things work. When there is not—as in Yugoslavia—they do not. What we witnessed was an unseemly mess: a string of Security Council resolutions that gave to U.N. peacekeepers, in areas where there was no peace (Bosnia) or only a shaky one (Croatia), missions without the means to carry them out; a U.N. presence in Bosnia that could use force only in self–defense (and often did not do so, out of concern for its own protection), but not in order to protect the Bosnians' "safe areas," and had to depend on NATO air power for that purpose; a chain of command so complex—going from the secretary–general of the United Nations to his delegate in the field, from the latter to the commander of UNPROFOR, and from him to NATO—as almost to ensure snags and clashes; for much of the time a military commander (General Rose) whose behavior seemed closer to the British position than to the spirit of many of the Security Council's resolutions; a U.N. secretary–general of the U.N. complaining of "micromanagement" by the members of the Security Council; a U.S. government complaining about U.N. inefficiency and timidity but obstinately unwilling to take the only decision that might have given it some leverage: contributing ground forces to UNPROFOR.
Fifth, and ultimately, the most striking and disturbing aspect of the drama was this: sensing the hesitations of and divisions among the major powers faced with the problem of Serbian moves in Croatia and in Bosnia–Herzegovina, the Serbian civilian and military leadership decided to reach its objectives by force and through murderous "ethnic cleansing" unless the European and U.N. "mediators" acquiesced in the Serbian program of dismemberment of multiethnic states in the name of the Serbian people's right to self–determination. And the major powers allowed this to happen. They did so for a number of reasons, different in each case. Here I mention only those of the Europeans.
Germany was the state that took, at the outset, the most anti–Serb stand. Domestic politics played a role: most of the Yugoslav workers in Germany were Croats, the Croats' lobby was influential with the Bavarian Christian Social Union (CSU), and the press supported the Slovenes and the Croats. However, there is no doubt that for Germany's leaders, if not always its vociferous media, the principle of self–determination was by itself a powerful motive, and sympathy for the Serbian version of it—"ethnic self–determination"—was precluded by Serbian inconsistency and behavior (perhaps also by the similarity between this Serbian version and the Nazi one). But the strong German stand proved doubly counterproductive, and this fact should also be a lesson to the new Germany. On the one hand, it only fed Serbian paranoia about Germany's sinister role in the breakup of Yugoslavia, ancient hostility to the Serbian people, sympathy for Croat "fascists," dreams of revenge against the victors of World War II, and desire for hegemony in the Balkans. On the other hand, it increased tensions within the EC, between France and Britain on the one hand and between Germany and the two of them on the other.
Moreover, Bonn's position was undercut by the constitutional restrictions on Germany's military action abroad: the most severe critic of Serbia could not take part in military operations against it. (The only exceptions until everything changed in August 1995, and even they required a big internal battle, have been the participation of German cargo aircraft in the nightly drops of supplies to beleaguered Bosnian towns and of German AWACS planes in the surveillance of the "no–fly" zone in Bosnia–Herzegovina.) It is true that Germany has accepted by far the greatest number of refugees from the former Yugoslavia—a quarter million in 1992—but this, in turn, provoked a backlash and a constitutional revision against the previous asylum policy. Germany's ambivalence is well illustrated by the writings of the gifted political analyst Josef Joffe, who forcefully criticized Serbian behavior (all the way back to Sarajevo 1914!) but who also argued that only a most unlikely and risky massive military intervention could have saved the Muslims of Bosnia–Herzegovina, given the terrain, the scope of "tribal warfare," and the likelihood of its recurrence. 27
If Germany's problem was righteous indignation without the means to enforce it, Britain's position was devoid of ambivalence. Whether the old and curious sympathy that had linked the United Kingdom and Tito under Churchill was still at work, or whether Britain's leaders had concluded that forcible outside intervention in so savage and multisided a conflict could lead only to endless frustration, escalating casualties, and exitless entrapment—as in Northern Ireland, but on a far greater scale—they decided not to listen to Lady Thatcher's (as usual) shrill advice and to let force settle the issues, with only a minimum of humanitarian intervention to bring some food and medication to the victims (and great reluctance to tighten and expand sanctions). American suggestions to "lift and strike" were invariably met with the argument that such measures would force the British to get out of UNPROFOR. The British agreement in the summer of 1995 to the setting up of a rapid reaction force appears to have been intended as a way of helping UNPROFOR withdraw eventually rather than as a means to protect the Muslims.
This was a defensible policy if one is willing to close one's eyes to the precedent thus established in a world full of ethnic powder kegs, if one considers that the Yugoslav crisis is a self–contained drama with no serious risk of overflowing (for instance, through an explosion in Kosovo), if one believes that no amount or threat of punishment could have deterred Serb aggression (especially in Bosnia), and if one is absolutely convinced that, even at first, only a massive use of air power and ground forces had any chance of stopping Serbia. However, if one is disturbed both about the precedent and about the potential for a broader Balkan crisis, and if one believes that, as a good Leninist, Milosevic kept pushing because he met only mush but might have moderated his demands and his acts if he had met steel far short of a colossal military action by European or U.N. powers, Britain's policy appears deplorable (and sadly reminiscent of the 1930s, although, of course, Milosevic is not as mighty as Hitler). It condones an often atrocious use of force to change borders recognized by the international community and huge violations of human rights aimed at destroying the very possibility of a multiethnic state. It quietly proclaims that such occurrences, in an important part of Europe, do not gravely matter.
It is to Mitterrand's France that Joffe's verdict on the European peace–making effort applies particularly: "good will without the will to power." 28 "Good will" may not have been universal; many French diplomats and military men have "historic" sympathies for Serbia and its army, or show themselves receptive to Serbian arguments about the "danger" of a "Muslim state" in Europe. But these were not the factors that shaped official policy. French priorities, set by President Mitterrand, were the end of war—through a combination of economic sanctions and diplomacy—and humanitarian assistance. When the first of these objectives appeared beyond the reach of the divided EC, the French turned to the United Nations. They played an important role in the sharpening of sanctions in the spring of 1993 and in the establishment of security zones. For many months, one of Mitterrand's ministers, Bernard Kouchner, the apostle of the droit d'ingérence, pleaded for a tougher approach to humanitarian intervention, and much of the French intelligentsia mobilized itself in favor of the Muslims in Bosnia. But when it came to the use of force for any goal other than protecting the humanitarian efforts from direct attack, Mitterrand remained aloof; his daring visit to Sarajevo in the summer of 1992 was, characteristically, both a demonstration of concern and a substitute for more forceful action. He remained, in this respect, close to the British position (and the "cohabitation" government that took over in March 1993 did not try to modify this stand). As in the 1930s, France, in effect, followed Britain into spinelessness.
Did Mitterrand feel, in 1991–92, that given the United Kingdom's position and Germany's paradoxical paralysis, France could not in any case move without the United States? But when the United States, under Clinton, finally recommended lifting the arms embargo on Bosnia and resorting to air strikes against Serbia, the French said no, arguing that the first of these measures would only prolong the war and that the second would jeopardize the humanitarian effort and the lives of those who protected it. They repeatedly warned about taking their contingents back if the war were not settled or if it escalated through measures taken by the United Nations or Western powers. The contradiction between Mitterrand's enthusiasm for the principles of collective security in 1990–91, during the Gulf crisis, and his failure to invoke them in 1991–93, over Yugoslavia, is striking and hard to explain, except in terms of the domestic priorities (especially the issue of unemployment), of the shabby state of France's conventional forces, and of the concentration, in 1991–92, on Maastricht and its ratification. Preserving the chances for a European Union and thus avoiding obviously divisive issues was understandable, but the price was a demonstration of European impotence and futility—a boon for all those who argue that in the absence of American leadership, Europe, now habituated to dependence, cannot act.
French policy changed considerably after the election of Jacques Chirac to the presidency in May 1995. His position remained somewhat acrobatic, insofar as his (and his government's) endorsement of a diplomatic solution led him to insist that he did not support any one side in the conflict. But he came out repeatedly in favor of a far more militant, or military, approach by NATO and by the rapid reaction force Lon–don and Paris have been establishing. His attitude has been described as "on tire ou on se tire"—we fire or else we flee. 29 (As a result, the threat of a withdrawal of UNPROFOR in case of demonstrated impotence was added to the threat of withdrawal should the arms embargo on Bosnia be lifted and a bigger war ensue.)
The reasons for this change were, in part, Chirac's own character, which is highly activist, in part a sense of shame at the humiliation of French soldiers in UNPROFOR by the Bosnian Serbs—the honor of French soldiers is as important to him as the lives of American soldiers are to Clinton—in part indignation at the new atrocities committed by the Bosnian Serbs in Srebrenica in July 1995 and in Sarajevo in August. On July 14, 1995, Chirac compared the international handling of the conflict to Chamberlain's and Daladier's handling of the Sudeten crisis of 1938. This new stance led to serious cracks in the previous entente cordiale between London and Paris. However, France does not have the military means to act alone, and as was shown at the international conference in London in July 1995, its proposals for ground action (which would have required extensive American logistical support and therefore were opposed by Washington) were shelved in favor of the strategy traditionally preferred by the Americans: bombardment from the air.
Reckoning the Costs
I can only conclude that the British and French preference for "sustained negotiations" without deterrence or uses of force—and without even the lifting of an unfair arms embargo that mainly helped the aggressor—was both a political and a moral mistake. 30 Are the Europeans willing to threaten or to resort to force only when their oil supplies or the physical safety of their own people are in danger? The treatment of the breakup of Yugoslavia by the west Europeans was a tragic and blatant example of their ambivalence about those central and eastern European countries that had remained outside the Community and the European Free Trade Area and under communist rule—even though, in Yugoslavia's case, it was a dissident communism, and hundreds of thousands of its citizens had found work in western Europe. Rhetorically, west European intellectuals and politicians always viewed these countries as part of Europe—temporarily alienated brothers, whose future lay in a reunion with their more fortunate kin in the West. This explains not only the moments of enthusiasm for the liberation of the former Soviet satellites in 1989 but also the rush of the EC, eager to show its capacity to act on the world stage, into the Yugoslav labyrinth in the summer of 1991. On the other hand, this enthusiasm has waned whenever the risks and costs have begun to be visible: witness the niggardliness of the EC's economic association agreement with the eastern countries, the EC's and EU's hesitation to offer full membership to them, and the contortions over Yugoslavia described here. European responsibility for Yugoslavia, proclaimed in the summer and fall of 1991, was partly shed and dumped on the United Nations (and the United States), partly resented insofar as involvement on the ground in Croatia and Bosnia became increasingly seen as a trap (and an excuse for not doing more). Given America's reluctance, both under Bush (at the time of the Serb attack on Dubrovnik in 1991 and throughout 1992) and under Clinton, to take the lead in this case as it had in the Gulf crisis in 1991, given the inability of the United Nations to be effective when its key members are both divided and reluctant to act, the Yugoslav tragedy became a kind of orphan of world politics—a blot on Western consciences, but just a blip on the diplomatic screen.
Indeed, there is a lesson that goes beyond the Europeans' responsibility and applies to the United States, Russia, and the United Nations as well. Yugoslavia's crisis has been handled in a way that reminds one of the Italo–Ethiopian conflict and of the way in which it was handled by Britain, France, and the League of Nations. In both cases, the international "community" had to deal with two issues: the settlement of the crisis (which in the Yugoslav case must include both the fate of Bosnia and the borders and composition of Croatia) and the issue of force—of the means used by one of the parties to impose its solution. In the case of Yugoslavia, the means used by Serbia were doubly unacceptable: because of their brutality—they amount to a massive violation of human rights as well as to a violent attempt at preventing acts of secession recognized by the international "community"—and because they prejudged the outcome of international efforts at a settlement.
In both cases, the major powers and the international organization in charge tried to cope with both issues at once, and each of these attempts interfered with the other. Punishing Serbia (even only mildly) did not make it more accommodating in the discussions on consecutive "plans." But the continuing negotiations aimed at resolving the crisis served as an alibi for "moderation" in the imposition of sanctions, as a pretext for suggesting that they could become a bargaining chip, and as a reason for not "enlarging the conflict" by resorting to force or by lifting the arms embargo on Serbia. It was a mistake to negotiate with Serbia as if all the parties to the dispute had the same moral standing; this left the negotiations at the mercy of the most intransigent—Serbia—while justifying the reluctance of the outside powers to create the incentives that might have obliged Serbia to negotiate fairly and to accept a morally just deal—economic pressure has not been sufficient to do so and military pressure has, on the whole and until very late, been missing. As a result, each new "plan" became a capitulation to the realities that the Serbs had imposed on the ground, except for the plan of the "contact group," which would have imposed a partial Serb retreat but still ratified ethnic cleansing and recognized a huge chunk of the Bosnian Serbs' land grab. In any case, the Bosnian Serbs' intransigence has paid off. As in the process that ended in Munich in September 1938, the major powers gradually increased their concessions to Bosnian Serb demands, in the name of "realism."
A case should have been made for giving priority to stopping Serbian violations first and negotiating the best possible solution afterward. What was done instead was a dreadful mix: negotiations were altogether toothless (when the use of force was finally threatened by the United Nations and NATO, it was unrelated to any negotiating process) and in constant retreat. The reluctance to use the model of collective security resulted in the failure to send UNPROFOR preventively to Bosnia, the long delay in enforcing the ban on Serbian air flights, the delay in protecting the "safe havens" (and the minimalist interpretation given it as well as, in several cases, the failure to attempt that protection), the maintenance of the arms embargo on Bosnia despite the charter's recognition of the individual and collective right of self–defense. The Western powers have walked only a few inches toward resorting to this model. The most striking move, the creation of an international tribunal on war crimes, may turn out to be the least effective, as Abram and Antonia Chayes suggest in chapter 8. While the West hesitated, the Russians reentered the picture, reinforcing the Europeans' fatal attraction to crippled diplomacy and making any further progress toward collective security even less likely. As for UNPROFOR, sent to Bosnia for a primarily humanitarian mission, its civilian and military leaders have, of course, been reluctant throughout to engage in forceful moves against Serbian or Bosnian Serb attacks—out of the conviction that this could only jeopardize its primary task. But it thus became the hostage of the Serbs, even in the performance of that task.
It is true that, as Pierre Hassner has suggested, the United Nations (and the European Union) need to establish a clear set of guidelines on self–determination and secession, indicating the conditions in which the latter will be accepted internationally; but, as he also states, there is also a need to treat explicitly as acts of aggression attempts at crushing by force secessions that meet such conditions. 31 The precedent set by the treatment of the Yugoslav crisis—the massive brutalization of international relations and the destruction through ethnic cleansing of a multinational state—is as shocking as it is disastrous.
Endnotes
Note 1: See especially James B. Steinberg, "International Involvement in the Yugoslavia Conflict," in Lori Fisler Damrosch, ed., Enforcing Restraint (New York: Council on Foreign Relations Press, 1993), pp. 27–76. Back.
Note 3: See John Zametica, The Yugoslav Conflict, Adelphi Paper, no. 270 (London: International Institute for Strategic Studies, 1992), p. 59. Back.
Note 4: Wynaendts, L'engrenage, Paris, Denoël (1993), p. 34. Back.
Note 5: David Gompert, "How to Defeat Serbia," Foreign Affairs, vol. 73, no. 4 (July–August 1994), p. 38. Back.
Note 6: Weller, "International Response to the Dissolution of the Socialist Federal Republic of Yugoslavia," American Journal of International Law, vol. 36, no. 3 (July 1992), p. 591. Back.
Note 7: Ibid., pp. 592–93. Back.
Note 8: See also Dusko Doder, "Yugoslavia: New War, Old Hatreds," Foreign Policy, no. 91 (Summer 1993), p. 18. Back.
Note 9: Zametica, Yugoslav Conflict, pp. 76–77. Back.
Note 10: Wynaendts, L'engrenage, p. 63. Back.
Note 11: Weller, "International Response to the Dissolution of the Socialist Federal Republic of Yugoslavia," pp. 576–77. Back.
Note 13: Zametica, Yugoslav Conflict, p. 62. Back.
Note 14: Weller, "International Response to the Dissolution of the Socialist Federal Republic of Yugoslavia," p. 592. Back.
Note 15: David Owen, "The Future of the Balkans," Foreign Affairs vol. 72, no. 2 (Spring 1993), p. 8. Back.
Note 16: Wynaendts, L'engrenage, p. 100. Back.
Note 17: "Entretien avec Alain Juppé," Politique Internationale, no. 61 (Fall 1993), p. 16. Back.
Note 18: Aleksa Djilas, in his "Profile," Foreign Affairs vol. 72, no. 3 (Summer 1993), pp. 81–96, argues that Milosevic counted on war to unify the Serbs around him. Back.
Note 19: Wynaendts, L'engrenage, p. 141. Back.
Note 20: Owen, "The Future of the Balkans," p. 5. For arguments against intervention, see Adam Roberts "Humanitarian War: Military Intervention and Human Rights," International Affairs, vol. 69, no. 3 (1993) pp. 429–49; and Ernst Haas, "Beware of the Slippery Slope," in Carl Keyser, ed., Emerging Norms of Justified Intervention (Cambridge: American Academy of Arts and Sciences, 1993), pp. 63–87. Back.
Note 21: Steinberg, "International Involvement in the Yugoslavia Conflict," p. 57. Back.
Note 23: Wynaendts, L'engrenage, p. 136. Back.
Note 24: Quoted in Zametica, Yugoslav Conflict, p. 66. Back.
Note 25: Steinberg, "International Involvement in the Yugoslavia Conflict," p. 57. Back.
Note 26: See the prudent suggestions of Tom Farer, "A Paradigm of Legitimate Intervention," in Damrosch, Enforcing Restraint, ch. 8. Back.
Note 27: Josef Joffe,"The New Europe: Yesterday's Ghosts," Foreign Affairs: America and the World 1992–93, vol. 72, no. 1, pp. 29–43. Back.
Note 29: Le Monde, July 27, 1995, p. 1. Back.
Note 30: Zametica, Yugoslav Conflict, p. 63. Back.
Note 31: See Hassner's "Les impuissances de la communauté internationale," in Véronique Nahoum–Grappe, ed., Vukovar, Sarajevo . . . (Paris: Esprit, 1993), pp. 83–118. See also Jacques Julliard, Ce fascisme qui vient (Paris: Ed. du Seuil, 1994), esp. pp. 161–62. Back.
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