CIAO DATE: 08/07

Georgetown Journal of International Affairs

Georgetown Journal of International Affairs, Volume 7, Number 2, Summer/Fall 2006

 

Nationalism and Policymaking in the Balkans
Nicholas J. Miller

 

Excerpt

Nicholas J. Miller is the graduate director of the Department of History at Boise State University, where he teaches courses on Central and Eastern European history.

The recent death of Slobodan Miloševic has renewed interest in the Balkan nationalism of the 1990s. There is no better place to start a discussion of nationalism in the Balkans than with the architect of Yugoslavia’s violent collapse. Were the tragedies of the Balkan conflict the malevolent work of evil politicians or a logical and continuous—perhaps even inevitable—product of culture? Policymakers and theorists rarely interact, yet they have used the same template in their attempts to understand Balkan nationalism. Some have argued that nationalism in the Balkans was ancient or even organic (the “perennialist” approach), while others have seen nationalism as an entirely modern, even artificial, product of manipulation by political elites. There are both policymakers and theorists in each camp, but most journalists and policymakers have put forth a tautological version of the perennialist position: “they are violent and nationalistic because they have always been violent and nationalistic.” Scholars rarely make this sort of claim.

Today, the most influential scholars of nationalism see national identity as an invented phenomenon, the result of conscious state policy designed to mobilize otherwise disinterested masses.1 This vision of national identity is equally problematic. This paper will argue, as do a growing number of nationalism theorists, that national identity is neither wholly ancient nor wholly modern: it is fluid, but not endlessly so. On the one hand, it draws upon a large but finite reservoir of cultural images and symbols and historical facts and interpretations. On the other hand, conditions that prevail when nationalism rears up determine the nature of the nationalist event. Policymakers must shed their preconceptions and spend more time understanding the context of nationalism. Theory, in this case, has a lot to teach policymakers.

Divergent Theories of Violent Nationalism.

In the context of the warring Balkans of the 1990s, the policymakers’ choice is easy to understand: something “ancient” is something virtually impossible to confront. That which is ancient becomes too tough a nut to crack and therefore its own argument for inaction. However, among scholars, the dominant, modernist school is a product of theories about social construction and historical memory, according to which people are incapable of resisting the pernicious influence of the state and its charismatic leaders. These debates, while they can be arcane, are hardly abstract. The divide between the perennialist and the modernist schools became a source of friction as the war in Bosnia raged. While the intellectual communities in Europe and the United States advocated intervention during the wars of the 1990s, the transatlantic policymaking community just as strenuously argued against such action. Most of the interventionist intellectuals believed the Balkans were merely beset by bad politicians who needed to be overthrown.

Intervention would return proper balance to their societies, which would have suffered mightily, but only temporarily, from the plague of politically manipulated nationalism. Policymakers were more likely to believe that the Balkan wars were the product of intrinsic tribalism. The Balkan people, overwhelmed by the violence of their own history and the revenge fantasies that history bred, could not be turned from their course until they had exhausted themselves. Both approaches bore rotten fruit. While the pessimistic perennialist view led to international inactivity during the early years of the Croatian and Bosnian wars, the optimistic modern approach encouraged quick-fix interventionist fantasies. It was common in 1992 or 1993 to hear something like Radovan Karadzic’s infamous statement that “Serbs and Muslims are like cats and dogs. They cannot live together in peace. It is impossible.”2 Likewise, President Bill Clinton shrank from active intervention after reading a charmingly inaccurate popular travelogue that claimed the Balkans were seething with ancient hatreds.3 Some critics of U.S. policy argued passionately that if enough attention and money were lavished on the Serbian “opposition” to Miloševic, he would be overthrown and all would return to normal in Serbia. Another example of the modernist approach was the Dayton Peace Agreement, which would have (re)invented the allegedly multicultural Bosnia that existed before it was ripped apart by toxic nationalism. The general sentiment invigorating the interventionist side was that violent nationalism was foreign to the region, brought in and brought on by megalomaniacs who recognized the mobilizing power of ethnic solidarity.

1 For examples of the approaches discussed here, see Nicholas J. Miller, “Postwar Serbian Nationalism and the Limits of Intervention,” Contemporary European History 13, no. 2 (2004): 163–169. For a thorough analysis of the varieties of nationalism theory, see Anthony D. Smith, Nationalism and Modernism: A Critical Survey of Recent Theories of Nations and Nationalism (New York: Routledge, 1998).
2 Often cited. I most recently saw it on “The History Place: Genocide in the 20th Century,” Internet, http://www.historyplace.com/worldhistory/genocide/ bosnia.htm (Date accessed: 2 February 2006).
3 The book Clinton read was Balkan Ghosts by Robert D. Kaplan. The story is recounted in Laura Silber and Alan Little, Yugoslavia: Death of a Nation (New York: TV Books, Inc., 1995/1996), 287–289.