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Intermarium
Damming Troubled Waters: Conflict over the Danube, 1950-2000
by Ronnie D. Lipschutz
This paper was prepared for the 10/24/97 conference on Environment and Security, at the Institute of War and Peace Studies, Columbia University. It is a draft, subject to change and revision. Comments, criticism and suggestions are welcome by the author. My thanks to Chairmaine Hughes for research assistance.
The study of history may be the ultimate in the art of conjuring tricks. We look into the past as if through a window, and we may then realize that beyond what we see of the past, the window-pane, mirror-like, reflects our own image as well. Therefore, our descriptions and judgments about the past say as much about ourselves as they do about the past itself. 1
I. Introduction
This is a (hi)story of dogs that have growled and barked but have not bitten, of an environmental conflict in Eastern Europe that has gone on for more than 10 years but has not turned violent. This, even though many of the hypothesized elements contributing to both "scarcity and civil strife" and ethnic conflict appear to be, or have been, present. In this paper, I tell about the attempt to build and operate the Gabcikovo-Nagymaros Barrage System (GNBS) on the middle part of the Danube River, a project that, in proposing to provide power, navigation and water to Slovakia and Hungary, also pitted country against country, ethnic group against ethnic group, and activists against politicians, bureaucrats and engineers. I argue here that the absence of civil strife or interstate violence in this particular case can illuminate broader questions regarding environment and security, and I claim that this story suggests that institutions—both intrastate and interstate—do matter. 2
I begin this paper with an analytical framework. I argue that "scarcity" is meaningful only within the context of institutions—political, economic and social—and that any effort otherwise to assess environmental conditions for their conflictual potential will be incomplete or misleading. I then provide the historical background to the Gabcikovo-Nagymaros project and discuss the environmental damage that has/has not resulted from Slovakia's operation of a portion of the project known as "Variant C." In the third part of the paper, I describe the three levels of conflict that have taken place around the project—intrastate, ethnic and interstate—and recent attempts to address them in a case presented to the International Court of Justice. Finally, I discuss why and how institutions have mattered, and what this suggests for environmental policymaking and conflict in those parts of the world that are institution-poor.
II. An analytical framework
In the overview paper for the Columbia University Institute of War and Peace Studies Environment and Security Project, 3 Colin Kahl provides an articulate and sophisticated model for predicting the outbreak of civil strife in response to demographic and environmental stress (Figure 3, p. 44). According to Kahl's primary hypothesis, Civil strife is more likely if DES [Demographic and Environmental Stress] or the process of state disintegration or state exploitation significantly change the value of groupness or institutional inclusivity (Footnote, p. 44). DES is posited as a set of "independent and dependent variables," state disintegration and exploitation as "first and second order effects," and groupness and institutional inclusivity as "intervening variables." Kahl's model suggests that DES is largely determinate of outcomes, inasmuch as it leads either to state disintegration or the exploitation of conditions of stress by elites who mobilize those inside their own "group" against those outside of that "group."
The difficulty with this model is that it appears to take DES as largely exogenous to state and society—although clearly caused by structures and actions within state and society—and, therefore, not a function of processes within the larger state/society institutional context. To be sure, there are important exogenous factors involved: physiology sets an absolute minimum of food and water for individual survival, although as Amartya Sen and Jeane Dreze have pointed out, 4 those who die in famines often do so amidst plenty, and the hungry rarely, if ever, rise up in revolt against those who deny them food or other resources. This suggests that environmental and demographic stress are not absolute conditions; rather, the concept is meaningful only within an institutional context that, itself, establishes expectations about supply and provides the mechanisms for meeting demand. 5 Or, as Bill Nichols has pointed out, in a very different context, "[S]ocial events have multiple causes and must be analyzed as webs of interconnecting influences and patterns." 6 How else can we account for pastoral societies that thrive under conditions of severe resource limits while Americans stuck in rush-hour traffic complain bitterly about the scarcity of open highway space?
Institutions provide the framework within which people, policymakers and politicians act, and institutions provide the conditions within which some actors, in positions of power, can manipulate others. 7 But institutions can also help to dampen situations that might otherwise incite violence and institutions can establish expectations that maintain social peace. People are an integral part of institutions, providing agency within a structure of rules, roles and relations that impose constraints, offer opportunities, and is maintained by both social and material inputs (see Figure 1). Or, as Bill Nichols argues, "[A]gents carry out functions determined by the institutional structure in which they are embedded. . . The institution imposes certain functions and excludes others. . . " 8 Working through a society's institutions, people produce both social and material outputs and, in doing so, reproduce themselves and their society. Institutions are relatively stable but not static; adaptability is critical to reproduction; change in either social and material conditions requires adaptation, but change in either social or material inputs can also provide the means for adaptation.
An example: Americans expect to be able to purchase gasoline at what they consider a "reasonable" price (which other societies regard as unreasonably low) in order to facilitate their automotive "freedom." This price is maintained through a complex arrangement of rules (regional balance of power in the Persian Gulf, national sovereignty, oil markets, competition among distributing companies, production quotas, price competition at the station level), roles (regional dominance, patron-client, "rogue states") and relations (between consuming and producing countries, protectors and threats, in spot and futures markets, among highway builders, auto companies, Congress). This institutional framework helps, in turn, to reproduce U.S. society in a particular form that fosters social quiescence, maintains the status quos and shapes individual expectations.
Let us now posit a political event in the Middle East that violates these rules (invasion of Kuwait by Iraq violates sovereignty and alters regional balance of power), roles (country turns hostile) and relations (former "allies" go to war), thereby changing expectations about future gasoline supply (not actual flows now or in the future). The price of oil rises to an "unreasonable" level in futures markets, gasoline at the pump threatens to become more expensive, voters scream loudly, policymakers become skittish and the country goes to war. 9 The status quo ante is subsequently restored (although not quite to its former "metastable" state) and everyone goes on as before, more or less. In this instance, social relations rather than actual material scarcity have generated interstate violence, although the material consequences for Iraq are all too clear. We know, however, that this is not an inevitable outcome. The technological options for reducing U.S. dependence on Persian Gulf oil are well-developed and proved; it is the failure to internalize the costs of military deployments and various subsidies to energy that contribute to the relative cheapness of gasoline. There are also a wide range of social changes that could accomplish the same end, albeit at some cost in dollars and convenience. These would require change in social structures and individual expectations regarding the relationship between gasoline prices and freedom, among other things, and relative to these new social structures, gasoline might or might not be more costly than it is now. But it would not be "scarce" in any absolute sense. 10
Neo-classical economists argue that substitution will occur when the relative scarcity of a good or commodity is indicated by a rise in price (i.e., in cases of DES); they assume that market institutions are functioning so as to reflect an accurate price and that the technological and social capabilities exist to shift to substitutes. Thomas Homer-Dixon goes so far as to ask whether "ingenuity"—in his view, this seems to mean technological innovation —is in sufficient supply so that developing countries might be able adapt to scarcity? 11 His conclusion is a pessimistic one: Such countries are in a poor position to find material ways of responding to DES and are more likely, therefore, to suffer in consequence. But Homer-Dixon, too, fails to acknowledge fully the role of social structure in both causing DES and adapting to it. Hardware is helpful only insofar as it allows societies to change their material base with minimal or no change to the social base. There is, however, much that can be done, without hardware, in terms of the social base. More generally, the role of the social in so-called environmental conflicts is minimized and the critical importance of institutions is ignored.
Markets, as I have argued elsewhere, are not enough in the way of institutions; more is needed. 12 If Palestinians finally gain control of their water resources, they may find it to their benefit to sell the water to Tel Aviv. A relationship based only on exchange at an equilibrium price will serve to produce an illusory equality between parties while reproducing conditions of injustice and hierarchy that were the primary cause of violence in the first place. In the case of the conflict between Hungary and Slovakia over the Middle Danube, as we shall see, it is the very density of linked and overlapping institutions that has, again and again, dampened tendencies towards an anarchic and violent relationship between contending parties. When a paucity of institutions linking Hungary and Slovakia led to deteriorating relations over both ethnicity and the Danube, recourse to the European Commission and Communities and the International Court of Justice in The Hague provided a social structure that could dampen the conflict and allow for the exploration of alternative social arrangements. At this writing, the Court has not yet come to a decision and, once it does, the two countries will have to re-enter negotiations. The barking dogs may yet bite.
III. A Short Political Economy of the Danube
The Danube River is 2,888 kilometers long and serves as an international border in a number of places (Figure 2). 13 It rises in southwestern Germany, at Donaueschingen in the Black Forest, and passes eastwards through Austria, into Slovakia and along its border with Hungary. The river then turns south through Hungary and Croatia and eastward into Serbia. Past Belgrade, the Danube flows between Serbia and Rumania, and then Bulgaria and Rumania. Finally, the river turns northward into the latter and, just short of its delta on the Black Sea, runs between Rumania and Ukraine (see Figure 2). Some 76 million people live in the Danube's drainage catchment and, as a result, the river has been heavily modified and industrialized throughout its length over the past 200 years. It is monitored by the International Danube Commission, a regime whose earliest predecessor was the result of the 1856 Danube Convention, signed following the Crimean War. With the exception of a period during the 1930s and 1940s, the river has been internationalized ever since. 14
Prior to the loss of two-thirds of its territory as a result of the 1920 Treaty of Trianon, the Hungarian part of the Danube ran through the Carpathian Basin from the Austrian border at Pozony (i.e., Bratislava) to Vojvodina in what is now Serbia. Along that stretch of river lived not only Magyars (Hungarians), but also Germans, Slovaks, Croats and Serbs, plus a mix of other ethnic and religious groups. The complex pattern of ethnicity was largely the result of the geopolitics of empires, as the Habsburg and Ottoman competed for dominance throughout the region. 15 Both before and since 1920, this pattern has been the source of continuing conflict. 16 Trianon led to the establishment of Czechoslovakia and Yugoslavia, the expansion of Romania and Ukraine, and the transfer of substantial numbers of Hungarians and others to each of these countries; at the same time, more than 500,000 Slovaks remained within the new borders of the country. The population of Hungary declined from some 15 million to about 6 million as a result of the loss of territory. The loss of several million Hungarians from the body politic was a source of particular bitterness and revanchism until the full incorporation of the country into the Soviet Bloc in the later 1940s. A minority of Hungarians continue to regard Trianon as both unjust and illegal, although very few seem truly interested in annexing heavily-Hungarian areas from their neighbors.
The area of focus of this paper is a small one by comparison to the river as a whole: a 200 kilometer portion between the capitals of the two countries, Bratislava and Budapest (Figure 3). This is a stretch that, for a number of reasons, has not been intensively developed for hydroelectric power and whose relative shallowness and seasonal variability have posed continual problems for navigability. 17 In the upper part of this area, we find a kind of inland delta, where the Danube has meandered historically through a series of shifting channels. 18 While proposals to channel the river through this area date back as far as the reign of Charlemagne, in fact, it was only in the mid-1800s that the river even acquired a main (and artificial) channel in the delta. Although normal seasonal variability leads to low water levels in summer and fall, the region has also been subject to unpredictable and very serious flooding (a problem endemic to such river bottom areas). Proposals to dam the Middle Danube for flood control and power generation were first made in the late 19th century; at that time, Hungary exercised control over all of this stretch. Subsequent to Trianon, Czechoslovakia claimed unilateral rights to the hydroelectric resources of the Danube, although it never succeeded in actually exploiting them. 19
According to Mih·lyy ErdÈli, an Hungarian geologist, contemporary plans for hydro-electric power generation were first raised in 1946, while the first public mention of modification of this part of the river appeared in 1947, in the S¸ddeutsche Zeitung. 20 Beginning in 1948, the Danube Committee, dominated by the Soviet Union, urged that a barrage system be constructed in the delta region in order to improve navigation and, according to ErdÈli, make Austria and Germany accessible to a Soviet Bloc Danube war fleet. 21 While this argument is ridiculed by some, Stephen Gorove reports that as late as 1950, the Soviet Union conducted military maneuvers in the Austrian sector of the waterway, to which Yugoslavia strongly objected 22 (convieniently, such a fleet would also be able to gain access to Yugoslavia, whose relations with the USSR deteriorated seriously after the 1948 split).
Joint planning for modification of the delta region began during the 1950s and was approved by COMECON in the early 1960s. 23 Nonetheless, the GNBS project was only finalized through a 1977 bilateral treaty, signed at the presidential level by Hungary and Czechoslovakia. According to this "Treaty Concerning the Construction and Operation of the Gabcikovo System of Locks," the upper part of the project was to be completed by 1986, and the Nagymaros dam by the end of 1989. 24 On the Hungarian side, however, the starting date was subsequently postponed to 1990, due to a growing economic crisis that began in the early 1980s. Eventually, the project received Austrian financing with the stipulation that repayment of loans would take place through transfer to Austria of 66% of Hungary's share of the electricity generated between 1996 and 2010. 25 The GNBS itself was described by Judit Galambos as follows:
The Danube ws to be dammed at Hrusov/Dunakiliti to flood an area of 60 square kilometers, ending in Bratislava. . . . The water level of the reservoir would then rise 6.5 m above the ground at Dunakiliti. The water was to be routed downstream from the dam to a hydroelectric plant, the second dam and lock at Gab?ikovo via a 17 km-long canal running parallel to the Danube 5 km within the borders of Slovakia. The walls of the 300-650 m wide canal were to be build to a height of 9-18 m above the surrounding gravel and sandy terrain and the canal was to be lined with asphalt and special plastic to prevent seepage. The Gab?ikovo plant was planned to have 8 turbines and a capacity of 720 megawatts. . . . The whole canal was to be on Slovakian territory and. . . [in the] 31 km-long section of the "old" river-bed,. . . only 50-200 cubic meters per second would flow instead of the present 2,000 average.
One hundred miles downstream, at the Danube Bend near Nagymaros, another dam with a capacity of 158 megawatts would be built. The Gabcikovo dam would operate only during hours of peak demand; the Nagymaros installation would generate continuously. A weir built at Nagymaros would halt the surge of water that would result from the peak operation of the upstream facility. 26
At its inception, supporters of the project—of which there were many—argued that its electricity would substitute for air-polluting soft brown coal, help to meet the energy needs of both countries, provide flood control and agricultural irrigation, improve navigability and facilitate completion of the Danube-Rhine-Main Canal. Although there was skepticism from the project's very inception in the 1950s, on economic, environmental, ethnic and other grounds, the governments and water management lobbies of both Hungary and Czechoslovakia were enthusiastically in favor of the project, committed as they were to socialist "gigantism." 27 GBNS was always meant to be a political project, aimed at, as the Treaty's preamble put it, "significantly contribut[ing] to bringing about socialist integration of the member states of COMECOM," and so other considerations took a back seat. 28 Some 400 environmental studies were conducted prior to 1977, according to Fitzmaurice, and many more between 1977 and 1989. These hardly made a difference. 29 The energy and water lobbies argued about its costs and benefits, inasmuch as the high up-front costs of hydro made it unviable relative to other energy sources, such as nuclear power and coal, which were heavily subsidized by both countries' governments and the Soviet Union. Finally, the precise purpose of the project changed over time, altering cost/benefit ratios, environmental impacts, and other concerns. Nonetheless, the history of serious floods in 1954 in Hungary and 1965 in Czechoslovakia (as well as in 1996), the gradual worsening of navigation in the Middle Danube region as the upper reaches of the river in Germany and Austria were further developed, with consequent increases in water velocity downstream eroding the river bottom below Bratislava, and the rise in world oil prices in the 1970s, all seemed to militated continued movement on the project. Both governments were committed.
And there matters might have stood, had it not been for changing domestic politics in Hungary. Beginning in 1981, the entire project began to come under the scrutiny of J·nos Vargha, a plant geneticist employed as a writer and research by the Hungarian Ministry of Environment and Water Management. Based on his research and assessment, Vargha tried to publish an article detailing some of the ecological impacts of "managing" the Middle Danube through the GNBS. This, and his subsequent efforts, were banned from publication. Vargha nevertheless undertook to speak at various semi-public meetings about his findings, and to present them through samizdat during the following three years. 30 He was not the only person to point out the potential environmental impacts of the system as designed, but he is usually lionized with being the starting point of the movement—the Duna K–r (Danube Circle)—that emerged in opposition to it during the 1980s.
IV. Level 1: Domestic conflict in Hungary
Whether the GBNS would, under other circumstances, have resulted in the creation of a public dissident movement in a socialist country is impossible to say, 31 but by the mid-1980s the political waters in Hungary had already become quite turbulent. 32 For several reasons, both domestic and international, the Hungarian Socialist Workers' Party (HSWP) was no longer the Leninist monolith of either theory or earlier post-War practice. The 1956 Revolution, in which both Party members and opposition had played central roles, erupted largely in response to the hard-line regime and party policies of the early 1950s. 33 This made the new post-Revolution leadership, installed by the Soviet Union, extremely cautious about reasserting total control. As Party leader J·nos K·dar put it at the time, "He who is not against us is with us." The long-term result was what came to be called "Goulash Communism." 34
Goulash Communism combined material incentives with opportunities for greater intellectual activities as a means of defusing social tensions and managing elites. The economy shifted away from a singular focus on industrial and capital goods production toward a greater output of consumer products that, it was hoped, would satisfy the "masses." Moreover, in order to avoid the disillusionment that lead to the earlier catastrophe, the HSWP tried to bring within its purview all social tendencies that might, if left alone, raise political challenges. Paradoxically, perhaps, this did not mean narrowing the scope of intellectual activity but, rather, allowing it to grow in breadth and depth, under the benevolent eye and discipline of the Party. To this end, the Party established a number of affiliated organizations, such as the Young Communist League (YCL), the National Patriotic Front (NPF), the People's Popular Front (PPF), and nature and science clubs affiliated with universities and schools. Within and under these groups, a certain degree of critical discussion of the regime was permitted. In this way, dissidence could be monitored even as dissidents—whether Party members or not—were allowed to vent their anger and propound their alternatives. On occasion, independent groups were established, sometimes around issues that appeared to have nothing to do with politics (e.g., astronomy). These were tolerated up to a point, and then offered protection and financing if they agreed to become part of the party-affiliated system. Such groups were especially prominent among intellectual circles in Budapest; they were not often permitted elsewhere (for example, an astronomy club, G–nc–l was established in V·c in the late 1970s; it eventually received funding from the municipality, offering a certain degree of political protection that allowed it to broaden its activities and refuse the government's offers of money). 35
It was under these circumstances that Duna K–r emerged as a movement in opposition to the GBNS. The organization was established in early 1984, following a meeting of the PPF-affiliated Embankment Club in Budapest, at which Vargha spoke about the project. 36 While this is often celebrated as the founding of the Green movement in Hungary, and the beginning of the end for the communist regime, the "real" story is a bit more complicated. Vargha was somewhat reluctant to broaden the scope of his work beyond a fairly narrow environmentalist perspective, but a number of his colleagues in the Duna K–r were already working with what would eventually become full-blown opposition political parties. For them, the fledgling movement offered an opportunity to attack the regime on what they hoped would appear to be non-political grounds. In this way, an environmental protest could play the role of a political "Trojan Horse" 37 During the following five years, this alliance of environmentalists and dissidents became quite visible, even though any mention of its activities was officially banned from mention in the press. Duna K–r managed to collect the signatures of tens of thousands of Hungarians on petitions protesting the project; it published a regular samizdat newsletter; it organized protests, some of which were disrupted by the police; and it acquired international attention, in 1985 receiving the Right Livelihood Award (an honor that the Hungarian press was forbidden to mention).
But Hungary was, in any event, already in a political transition by the mid-1980s, to no small degree because of the economic problems that had developed earlier in the decade. In an effort to absorb internal opposition and defuse the formation of a strong dissident movement, reform tendencies were permitted much more political space than was the case in Czechoslovakia, where the regime remained hard-line and intolerant until its final days. Even loyal intellectuals, technocrats and economists began to criticize the HSWP and its policies. In the 1985 elections for Parliament, some 10% of the 780-odd candidates ran as independents, and 25 were elected. In 1987, K·roly GrÛsz, considered a moderate, was made Prime Minister and Imre Poszgay, considered a supporter of Gorbachev, sponsored a report calling for radical political reform, including separation of party and state. Toward the end of the year, the Hungarian Democratic Forum (MDF) was legally established as a centrist movement (not a party), and other groups followed soon after. In 1988, J·nos K·d·r, who had been Party chair since the suppression of the 1956 Revolution, was removed from office and replaced by GrÛsz. A Harvard-educated economist, MiklÛs NÈmeth, became the new Prime Minister. By mid-1989, months before the opening of the Berlin Wall, Hungary was already on the road to pluralism and democratization.
Did the Duna K–r affect the eventual process of democratization in Hungary? By 1988, as the political climate changed, it became possible for Duna K–r and other environmental groups to register as an official organizations (something they had been denied in 1985), to establish national coalitions in alliance with foreign organizations such as the World Widllife Fund/Worldwide Fund for Nature and to petition the government to hold a referendum on GBNS. 38
In 1988, the Danube Circle was able to turn out 40,000 people to protest before the Parliament Building in Budapest. Not long after, the organization was able to hand to the government the signatures of 140,000 people against the project. This groundswell of opposition was not, by itself, enough to halt the project, although it was threatening enough that the petitions disappeared, apparently stolen by regime insiders. Moreover, while it is generally agreed that the demonstration and petition were important in the eventual decision by party and Parliament to oppose the project in 1989, most believe that is was the political/technical struggle within the Hungarian Academy of Sciences that ultimately determined the project's fact. 39
The movement never came to play the role in Hungary filled by Charter 77 in Czechoslovakia or Solidarity in Poland. This "failure" was attributable, in part, to Duna K–r's curious political status. During this same period, Hungarian peace and human rights groups were treated harshly because of their overt anti-regime and state objectives; while the environmental movements activities were challenged and its members, at times, arrested or threatened with criminal charges, it never directly attacked the regime's power. More to the point, some environmentalists collaborated with individuals in Party organizations and government, or were Party members themselves, a point that became a subsequent matter of conflict within the movement. 40
Finally, although the story to here could certainly be characterized as "environmental conflict" within Hungary, the activities of the Duna K–r and affiliated groups never led to civil violence, either sporadic or organized; the conflict was always a peaceful one. We can posit several alternative explanations for this:
"Groupness" in the ethnic sense was hardly a consideration in the domestic context and was irrelevant even in 1956; Hungary is better than 90% Magyar and Party members played central roles in the Revolution. While some material goods were "scarce" because of the economic crisis of the early 1980s, the political conflict that subsequently developed took place between those firmly wedded to K·d·rism and those who were, like the members of Duna K–r, outside the regime but collaborating with insiders who wanted reform from within. The latter coalition was central to the disintegration of the ruling regime but even it broke apart by 1989 as movements transformed themselves into political parties. By then, every party had a Green fraction, which contributed to the weakness and decline of the Hungarian environmental movement in the early 1990s. 41
V. Level II: Ethnic conflict along the Danube
At a second level, the relationship between Slovaks and Magyars in the Middle Danube region suggests a potential source of conflict exacerbated by resource and environmental factors. To what degree the ethnic tension is a result of "Jaws on the Danube," as Fleischer puts it, or friction over GBNS is a result of ethnic factors, is not so clear. But the two have, certainly, become intertwined, especially since the separation of Slovakia from the old Czecho-Slovak Federal Republic (CSFR). From the late 1940s until the early 1990s, the ethnic factor played a relatively minor role in Danube and regional politics, in part because of the way in which ethnicity (aka "nationality") was regarded and treated under socialism. While both Marx and Lenin regard nationalism as bourgeois and reactionary, the necessities of coalition building and stability in the new Soviet Union of the 1920s required considerable concessions to national rights. Moreover, this led to the administrative division of the Union into nationally-defined units, at many levels of the federal system. 42 Administrative autonomy gave each titular nationality a role in government, a cut of the material resources, and a place in the sun that dampened inter-ethnic struggles outside of this institutionalized framework. After World War II, this system was applied in Eastern and Central Europe and, for the most part, worked reasonably well until after 1989, when it collapsed in Yugoslavia with catastrophic results.
As I noted above, Hungary is almost wholly Magyar. The Slovak Republic, however, lacks such ethnic homogenity. After Trianon, and because of ethnic mixing throughout the Carpathian Basin during the previous thousand years, many Hungarians found themselves outside of their much-shrunken homeland in "new" nation-states ruled by non-Magyar titular nationalities (e.g., Slovaks in Czechoslovakia, Croats and Serbs in Yugoslavia, Romanians in Transylvania, etc.). In particular, about one million ethnic Hungarians were "relocated" in that part of Slovakia lying within the Danube Basin, a number that declined to some 600,000 by 1991 (about 11% of the population of Slovakia) as a result of forced transfer and emigration after World Wars I and II. 43 A Czechoslovak Republic repatriation commission surveying northwestern Hungary in 1946 concluded that some 400,000 Slovaks remained within Hungary, a number that has since greatly diminished. The 1990 Hungarian census found some 10,500 residents who claimed Slovak nationality and 12,750 who reported that Slovak was their mother tongue. 44 Whether the other 390,000 "Slovaks" were Magyarized, quietly emigrated, or never existed is unclear.
After the end of World War II, Czechoslovakia nevertheless instituted a number of discriminatory policies against its ethnic minorities, some of which were carried into the communist era after 1948 although, as members of the fraternal communist bloc, neither Hungary nor Czechoslovakia were supposed to play the nationalist/ethnic card in their mutual relations. While the latter's 1960 constitution guaranteed cultural and language rights for the country's minorities, these were largely ignored following the 1968 Russian invasion for fear of the political consequences that might result. It was not until after 1989 that the status of the Hungarian minority in Slovakia became, once again, a politically incendiary issue. In 1990, following national elections, the Slovak National Council passed a republic-level law that limited the use of non-Slovak languages for official business to those areas where other ethnic groups constituted 20% or more of the population. 45
Following the separation of the Czech Republic and Slovakia in 1993, neither the new Slovak regime nor the new Slovak constitution were very liberal where minorities were concerned. The opening lines of the constitution adopted by the Slovak National Council in September 1992 were changed from an earlier draft's "We the citizens of the Slovak Republic" to
We the Slovak nation, bearing in mind the political and cultural heritage of our predecessors and the experience gained throughout centuries of struggle for our national existence and our own statehood, in the sense of the spiritual heritage of Cyril and Methodius and the historical bequest of Great Moravia, deriving from the natural rights of peoples to self-determination, together with members of national minorities and ethnic groups living on the territory of the Slovak Republic, that is, we, the citizens of the Slovak republic, adopt through our representative this Constitution. 46
The Constitution further defined the country as a "national state of Slovaks," whose "state" language is Slovak, and within which minorities were not to "endanger the sovereignty and territorial integrity of the Slovak Republic or cause discrimination against the rest of the population." 47 The government of Vladimir Meciar, whose Democratic Slovakia Movement (HZDS) dominated the ruling coalition at independence, was poorly disposed towards the Hungarian minority which cast most, if not all, of its votes for Hungarian or multi-ethnic parties; 48 indeed, in 1994, the political parties of the Hungarian Slovaks supported the censure vote against Meciar that threw him out of office until the subsequent election. Meciar's government then attempted to restrict Hungarian cultural rights and autonomy and to replace Magyar place names with Slovak ones, a move that has led to growing and continuing friction within Slovakia and with Hungary. 49
In Hungary, the nationalist/ethnic card was also played by certain individuals, groups and parties as a way of demonstrating anti-socialist "purity." The 1990 election was won by the Hungarian Democratic Forum (MDF), a right-of-center nationalist party, which formed a coalition government with several other smaller parties. Josef Antall, Prime Minister and head of the MDF, subsequently declared himself Prime Minister of all Hungarians, including the several million who remained outside the Trianon borders. This raised the specter of revanchism aimed at Hungary's neighbors and encouraged some Magyar politicians and officials in neighboring countries to look for political and economic assistance from Budapest. 50 Moreover, in the context of nationalist and ethnic rumblings throughout Central and Eastern Europe, such claims made many very nervous. They were not calmed by the activities of Istvan Csurka, a radical nationalist MDF member who had the habit of making public appearances in front of borderless maps of the Carpathian Basin criss-crossed by "Hungarian" rivers. Csurka was, eventually, expelled from the MDF. He went on to establish a new political party, but failed in his bid for Parliamentary office in the 1994 elections. The entry into office of a new governing coalition of the Socialist Party (a portion of the former HWSP) under Gyula Horn, and the Liberal Party, signalled a shift away from nationalist politics to a more ecumenical approach to ethnic questions and relations with Slovakia.
Nevertheless, one result of these nationalist activities in both countries was to raise somewhat the stakes in the conflict over the GBNS. Prior to 1989, there was little friction over the project between Hungary and Czechoslovakia; indeed, numerous agreements and addenda to the 1977 Treaty were signed without any controversy. Between 1989 and 1992, the two countries engaged in extensive negotiations over GBNS and agreed to postpone activation of those parts of the project that had been completed. But the Czecho-Slovak Federal Republic (CSFR) leadership in Prague had always considered the GBNS to be largely a Slovakian endeavor, and was loathe to commit to the Hungarian desire that the project be abandoned. Once the Czechs and Slovaks decided to separate, the latter came to regard operation of the project as essential to energy supply, flood control and national sovereignty. From this perspective, Hungary's stance was irrelevant; the Slovak part of the project ("Variant C," described in Section VI, below) would be put into operation and would continue to operate after independence, no matter what. 51
The ethnic factor consequently came into play in two aspects. First, because a substantial number of Hungarian Slovaks lived in and around the Danube on the Slovak side, damage to the landscape resulting from implementation of Variant C—and especially its effects on nature and agriculture—could be re-interpreted as being directed against the Hungarian nation. Indeed, to the extent that diversion of the river lowered the local water table and water supplies, the livelihoods of the Hungarian minority in the delta region could be deleteriously affected, with the result that they might find it necessary to move elsewhere in Slovakia or even emigrate to Hungary. Along these lines, according to some in the region, a policy of "industrial expulsion" of the Hungarian minority dates back to the early 1980s, and continues to be a goal of the Slovakian government. 52
At the same time, the impacts of Slovakia's diversion of the Danube on the wetlands, delta and riverbed within Hungary could also be construed in nationalist terms, directed against the Hungarian state. As Judit Galambos wrote in 1990, the environmental impacts of the entire project would
result in the disappearance or dramatic transformation of a historic and natural landscaep and ruin valuable archeological remains—these last two points would mean particularly serious losses for the Hungarians, since the region has played a special role in Hungarian history. 53
With the initiation of Variant C, there were, indeed, a number of regional impacts, although their magnitude and import were the subject of rather serious disagreement between the two countries. Hungary and its supporters insist that the damage was substantial and would become irreversible in short order; Slovakia asserts that the project has already reversed decades of damage to the Danube delta and will improve environmental conditions (see Section VII, below). 54
While the potential for greater friction over the treatment of minorities in Slovakia and damage to the Hungarian "nation's" environment appears considerable, this conflict has waxed and waned. In 1993, Slovakia applied for membership on the Council of Europe and was accepted only on condition that it respect minority rights. In July 1993, a Slovak law that had abolished bilingual place names and required individual names to be Slovakized was repealed, although in January 1997, another somewhat restrictive and controversial language law came into force. 55 In March 1995, Prime Ministers Horn and Meciar signed a Basic Treaty, subsequently ratified by both countries' parliaments, protecting the rights of national minorities living in the two countries. This agreement has not eliminated ethnic concerns; it is clear, however, that the Hungarian government is interested in putting an end to ethnically-based friction between the two countries, whereas opposition parties in Parliament are not. In April 1997, for example, an agreement was signed "adjusting the [Slovakia-Hungary] border as a consequence of waterways of the Ipoly, Sajo, and Ronyva border rivers." In a preliminary vote on the agreement in the Parliament's Foreign Affairs Committee, the Christian Democratic People's party, the Hungarian Democratic Foreum, the Federation of Young Democrats-Hungarian Civic Party, and the Hungarian Democratic People's Party all abstained, "insisting on having the Hungarian names of the villages that have a Hungarian name version featured on signs alongside Slovak names." 56
Why has this ethnic conflict so far not escalated into civil or interstate conflict? Certainly, the history of Magyar-Slovak relations has not been a happy one. Although the treatment and fate of ethnic Hungarians and Slovaks living outside the borders of their post-Trianon national states have been of concern since the 1920s, the issue was largely suppressed during the 40 years of communist rule. After 1989, ethnic questions re-emerged throughout Central and Eastern Europe, as post-communist governments used nationalist ideologies to legitimate newly-democratized states as well as their right to rule them. In both Slovakia and Hungary, politicians tried to play the nationalist card, with limited success in the former and almost none in the latter. Then, Yugoslavia fell apart, illustrating to all the danger associated with nationalism and revanchism. That catastrophe also made clear that any country with an "excess" of nationalist fervor would have a difficult time joining Western Europe. By now, there is little, if any, enthusiasm for crusades on behalf of "stranded" minorities (except among those living in ethnic diasporas). State borders cannot be changed; repatriation is too costly; war is out of the question. Integration into "Europe" will require civil norms and behavior—Slovakia's have not, so far, been regarded as fully meeting these standards—and so frictions must be handled through negotiations and institutional mechanisms. The end result is that, in this instance at least, ethnicity and environment remain largely separated issues.
VI. Level III: Interstate conflict on the Danube
Strictly speaking, the GNBS has been an "interstate" projects since its inception. The original 1977 Treaty was negotiated and signed at the Presidential level by the Hungarian and Czechoslovakian governments; subsequent negotiations over changes to the original plan and its future throughout the subsequent 20 years have taken place between national governments; the case before the International Court of Justice is being presented by the two states, rather than by domestic, ethnic or other groups. 57 But, at various times throughout this two-decades long story, each country has found itself, essentially, to be caught in a more complex version of Robert Putnam's "two level game." 58 On the one hand, the interests and demands of domestic actors, such as political parties, environmentalists, the water management "cliques," and ethnic organizations have had to be taken into consideration. On the other hand, concerns about environmental degradation and ethnicity have championed by transnational organizations and interests while, at the same time being managed or suppressed by "European" institutions and interests. Finally, the IJC case revolves around supposed violations of international environmental and treaty law, and challenges by each country to the "good citizenship" of the other.
As noted earlier, from 1977 to the late 1980s, interstate (or inter-Party and regime) conflict was minimal. With the collapse of COMECON and Soviet Bloc in 1989, the institutional infrastructure mediating relations between Hungary and Czecho-Slovakia—that is, Soviet power and authority—disappeared. 59 Some observers predicted that relations among Central and Eastern European countries would now become anarchic and violent and, for a period of time, as war developed in and between the former Yugoslav republics, it appeared that they might be correct. 60 In the region of the Middle Danube, the conflation of environmental degradation and ethnic discrimination threatened to get out of hand. Yet, within a short time, the potential for even low-level civil violence had been put to rest through the good offices of European institutions based outside of the disputed region. As we shall see, beginning in 1992, the matter of the GBNS project was elevated from a bilateral level to a European one, thereby shifting it from an institution-poor context to an institution-rich one.
The interstate conflict over the project falls into four somewhat distinct phases. During the first, from 1977 to about 1989, decisions regarding the project were left largely to appropriate offices, ministries and state corporations operating at the direction of the two countries' respective communist parties. During the second phase, from 1990 to 1992, the Hungarian government attempted to convince the new authorities heading the Czecho-Slovak Federal Republic (CSFR) to halt work on the upper part of the project (from below Bratislava to below Gab?ikovo Bos), to no avail. The third phase, beginning in October 1992 and ending in early 1997, followed the diversion of the Danube by Slovakia, accompanied by continuing efforts of the European Union to mediate. Finally, the fourth phase, starting in March 1997, involved presentation of the case to the IJC, whose decision is expected in the fall of 1997 and which will, in any event, require further negotiations between the two countries.
Phase 1 (1977-89)
For much of the period between the signing of the 1977 treaty in September of that year, and the collapse of the two communist governments of Hungary and Czechoslovakia in late 1989, there was little if any interstate conflict over the project. Concerns about design changes, financing and environmental impacts were handled in relatively low-level discussions, and most of the recorded dissension took place within Hungary because, as discussed earlier, such opposition provided a means for domestic political action. In any event, the Czechoslovak regime fully expected its Hungarian counterpart to suppress or overrule any real political opposition. Not until June 1989, when the Hungarian Parliament agreed to the suspension of work at Nagymaros and to enter into negotiations with Prague to terminate the project and treaty, was the issue raised to high visibility in the bilateral setting. 61 On July 20, 1989, the Prime Ministers of the two countries met, and the Hungarian Prime Minister, MiklÛs NÈmeth, announced the suspension of construction at Nagymaros and Dunakiliti until October 31, 1989 and proposed to halt all work for three to five years during which alternatives would be evaluated. The Czechoslovak government agreed to jointly investigate Hungarian concerns over the project, yet only five days later, the Czechoslovakia informed Hungary that it might unilaterally put "Variant C" into operation.
Over the following months, several meetings of experts from Hungary and Czechoslovakia were held. While both agreed that the project would have impacts on the regional environment, the latter believed that there were means of avoiding significant ecological damage while continuing construction, while the former thought these would not work. At the end of October, the Hungarian Parliament adopted a resolution calling for abandonment of peak operation mode at Gabcikovo and all construction at Nagymaros. Hungary then terminated all contracts with private parties and agreed to compensate them for losses. Hungary asked Czechoslovakia to amend the 1977 Treaty, although this request that was never discussed. The events of late 1989 did not, of course, put an end to the issue, but subsequent negotiations were conducted under somewhat different political conditions.
Phase 2 (1990-92)
With free elections in both countries in early 1990, new governments took over, offering some prospect of a resolution of the project's future. In Hungary, as noted earlier, a right-of-center nationalist coalition took power; in Czechoslovakia—now the Czecho-Slovak Federal Republic (CSFR), a coalition of the Czech Civic Forum and the Slovak Public Against Violence, both of which had opposed the GBNS project, came into control of the federal government. There was, however, less resulting change in the status of the GBNS conflict than might have been expected. On the one hand, the Hungarians waited to see what Prague would offer by way of changing or abandoning it; Prague, on the other had, recognized that the elections in June 1990 suggested that Slovak nationalism was on the rise—Public Against Violence had received a much smaller percentage of the vote in the Slovak Republic than the Civic Forum had gotten in the Czech Republic—and was reluctant to act precipitously. While the new federal government was generally opposed to the project, it had no great desire to further antagonize those Slovaks who had not voted for the new government. There were also other matters to be taken into account. In both Hungary and Czechoslovakia, as one observer wrote,
Many who, as dissidents, had formerly expressed their their solidarity with the Danube Circle, did a U-turn once they found themselves in positions of authority. Gabcikovo, they said, while undoubtedly it had some negative consequences, was still less of an environmental menace than lignite fumes. And with the Austrians pressing for the closure of Slovakia's nuclear power stations, there was no other option. 62
Finally, the same water and energy lobbies remained in control of the bureaucracies of both countries; they were the experts and there were no new ones available. The same economic actors continued to support the project; their interests had not changed, either. To both groups, whether socialist or capitalist, the project retained its virtues.
Negotiations between 1990 and 1992 were largely fruitless. Soon after the 1990 elections, Prague proposed that the two countries ask the European Community to launch a study of possible impacts of the project on groundwater stocks, within the framework of the PHARE program, 63 but this was rejected by Hungary. 64 In April 1991, the Hungarian Parliament asked for repeal of the 1977 Treaty and a new agreement that would protect the environment in the affected area; the CSFR government resolutely refused to consider any changes, including even a temporary suspension of the project. Toward the end of July 1991, the Slovak and federal governments both approved resumption of the work required to put Variant C into effect, but in such a way as to limit construction to Slovak territory; actual work began in November 1991. During the next six months, the Hungarian government issued a number of demands that construction be suspended; in late February 1992, it warned Prague that if work were not halted within a month, Hungary would unilaterally renounce the 1977 Treaty; in early May, Budapest proposed talks on the modification of the treaty if construction on Variant C were suspended. There was no response and, on May 19, 1992, Hungary notified that the termination of the treaty would come into force six days later, an action ratified by the Hungarian Parliament on June 9, 1992.
Actual European Union involvement in the dispute began in April 1992, when the EU proposed a trilateral commission of experts to examine the matter, subject to the condition that the parties accept the conclusions of the committee as a basis for further negotiations, and that neither party engage in any actions that might prejudice possible measures to be taken on the basis of the committee's findings. Hungary claimed that the second condition required a halt to construction of Variant C; Czechoslovakia disagreed and announced that the project would begin to operate during the coming October. In September 1992, Hungarian Prime Minister Antall and Slovak Prime Minister Meciar met in Budapest and agreed to negotiate with EU assistance and, on October 15, delegations from the two countries met in Bratislava to establish the expert commission. The same difficulties led to an acrimonious end to the meeting and a further deterioration of relations, culminating in the Hungarian announcement, on October 23, that it would take the case to the International Court of Justice in The Hague. On October 24-25, the river was dammed and Variant C went into operation, with the curious statement by the Deputy Prime Minister of the CSFR that, although it was internationally responsible for the problem, it was unable to prevent the Slovak government from acting. 65
Variant C (see Figure 4) involved operation of only the portion of GBNS located on Slovak territory, including:
a. the bypass weir with 4 taintor gates;
b. the inundation weir with 20 taintor gates;
c. intake and canal into the Mosoni Danube;
d. with a connection canal and dams connecting the structures with the right side dam;
a. hydro-power system with a capacity of 24.2 MW;
b. which can serve to discharge a sanitary flow of up to 400 m3/sec. into the old Danube channel;
c. a central weir with 3 taintor gates enabling the emptying of the reservoir and passing of sediments and ice-blocks;
d. an auxiliary lock for sport ships, divisible into two sections. 66
Phase 3: (1993-1997)
At the beginning of 1993, Slovakia declared itself to be successor to the CSFR in all matters relating to international law and contracts, with specific reference to the 1977 Treaty and its disposition. It also announced that it viewed Hungary's unilateral termination of the agreement as invalid under the terms of the treaty. While this brought the dispute closer to home, it also meant a change in the dynamics of the negotiation. Whereas the party and regime during socialism, and the CSFR government during the 1990-92 interregnum, had tended to defer to Slovakia's desires on the GBNS, there was at least some marginal acknowledgment of Hungary's concerns about the environmental impacts of the project and residual sympathy with fellow dissidents-in-arms in Budapest. After the dissolution of Czechoslovakia, even this minimal concern disappeared, with the Slovaks now regarding both Hungary and the Czech Republic with some antagonism, as well as proclaiming that Variant C had actually improved environmental conditions in the region in question. Variant C was now no longer simply a matter of flood control, shipping and power generation; for Slovakia, operation became a sign of its new independent status. Moreover, because the barrage and canal were wholly on Slovak territory, to yield to Hungarian demands would be regarded as an unlawful infringement on Slovakia's sovereignty.
During the first few months of 1993, Hungary and Slovakia continued to negotiate within the triparties group over the terms of the Special Agreement. In April 1993, the two countries signed an agreement that would increase flows in the main river channel and committed themselves to establishing a temporary water management regime to supervise this activity. Nevertheless, Slovakia refused, at this point, to agree to increase the discharge into the old main channel, arguing that there was no problem. In January 1994, experts appointed by the European Commission proposed the terms of such a regime, recommending that:
Hungary agreed to this, Slovakia did not. Finally, in April 1995, after further negotiations, Slovakia assented to increase the discharge into the old channel to 400m3/second and Hungary acquiesced to building the weir near Dunakiliti, although this agreement would terminate 14 days after the IJC's judgement. Since then, however, the two countries are in conflict over whether or not this agreement actually constitutes the "temporary water management regime" proposed in the London and 1993 Special Agreements. Hungary views it as an agreement on "temporary mitigation measures" which, in any event, Slovakia has not fully adhered to, whereas Slovakia claims that it fulfills the terms of the 1993 Special Agreement. 69
During 1996, prior to presentation of the case to the IJC, the two parties continued to discuss the issue at the expert level and to explore whether an out-of-court compromise might be possible. According to claims made by Janos Vargha, the Duna K–r and others in early 1997, Hungarian experts had accepted the notion of a "twin-dam project," similar to the original version, which would require construction of a dam and power plant in the region of Esztergom, near Nagymaros. 70 This would, in effect, settle the dispute in Slovakia's favor. In a television interview, the Foreign Minister of Hungary, Laszlo Kovacs, argued that such an agreement had not been made, but that
It would be good because it would be quicker than the lawsuit in The Hague, whose first decision will take at least six to seven months. Time is not on our side on the issue of Gab?ikovo, and the soonest possible settlement would be in our interest. . . . [A] separate agreement would be more advantageous financially, because it would be cheaper than a lawsuit in The Hague. 71
The existence of such an agreement was also denied by Prime Minister Gyula Horn who acknowledged that the two countries were discussing an out-of-court settlement that would, nevertheless, have to be ratified by the Hungarian Parliament. 72
1997: The Case before the IJC In March and April 1997, the International Court of Justice heard presentations from both Hungary and Slovakia. The Court's decision is expected in the Fall of 1997. This decision will not, in any event, bring the dispute to a close, inasmuch as the two parties will still have to implement it. Whether they will remains to be seen. While the presentations were lengthy and voluminous, the gist of the arguments are as follows:
Hungary's case: The Hungarian arguments rest largely on the claim that Czechoslovakia and Slovakia have breached international law as a result of implementation of Variant C in October 1992. These violations include not only the 1977 Treaty between the two countries, but also the 1976 Boundary Waters Convention, the 1992 Convention on Biological Diversity, and various rules governing protection of the environment. In terms of the first convention, Hungary claims that, by diverting the bulk of the Danube's water into a bypass canal on its territory, Slovakia has unilaterally and illegally changed the border between the two countries. With respect to the Biodiversity Convention, the Hungarian case is that the diversion had already has serious ecological impacts on the delta region, and can be expected to have many more in the future (these are discussed in Section VII, below). Finally, as far as other environmental conventions are concerned, especially the 1972 Stockholm Convention, Hungary claims that the diversion is already causing serious degradation of water supplies downstream, within Hungary and will continue to do so. 73
Legal counsel for Hungary also questions whether Slovakia is, in fact, the legal successor state to Czeckoslovakia with respect to the 1977 Treaty. The Treaty was signed under very different political conditions and the GBNS as originally proposed is not, in any event, economically viable. Moreover, according to Hungary, the construction and operation of Variant C is a blatant violation of the Treaty, which justified its termination in 1992. As James Crawford, one of Hungary's counsels, argues
[T]he Treaty had never been enforced between Hungary and Czechoslovakia. First, both Czechoslovakia and Hungary had, by their actions, repudiated the Treaty by mid-1992. Second, Hungary had lawfully terminated the 1977 Treaty in May 1992, invoking, inter alia, Czechoslovakia's material breach through the construction of Variant C, fundamental change in environmental, economic, and political circumstances, and that in any event Slovakia had not succeeded to the Treaty. 74
This, and "environmental necessity," is why Hungary only suspended work on the project in 1989, but waited to terminate the Treaty until Czechoslovakia began to operate Variant C without giving satisfaction to Hungarian concerns.
Slovakia's case: The case presented by Slovakia rests on quite different premises. Slovakia's primary claim is that Hungary's termination of the 1977 Treaty and other documents regarding the original Gabcikovo-Nagymaros project, and its consequent obstruction of full implementation, are illegal. The entire GBNS project constitutes mutually-owned property, regardless of on whose territory it is located. Inasmuch as Hungary halted work on its portion of the Gabcikovo-Nagymaros project and, in 1992, repudiated the treaty unilaterally and without consultation with the CSFR, its actions can have no legal force and Slovakia is in no way bound by them. 75 Slovakia has thus asked the IJC to rule that
All this is to say, as Fleischer has written, that the Slovak government claims that
the construction of `variant C," the alteration of the frontier river, and the unilateral diversion of the water, even if the construction did not conform to the agreement, are all intended to realize the original idea and hence are legal. 77
Assessment. In essence, the two parties have chosen to contest the dispute on grounds that give favor to the particular case argued by each. Hungary claims a right to terminate the Treaty, and demands that operation cease, because Variant C has no relationship to the original project, Slovakia is not successor to the Treaty, and operation of Variant C is causing illegal and continuing environmental degradation which must be halted. Slovakia claims to be the legal successor where the Treaty is concerned, Variant C is simply a portion of the full project as originally planned and, consequently, Hungary's actions are not permitted under the terms of the Treaty and its amendments. Moreover, environmental impact assessments conducted between 1977 and 1992 indicated that the damage caused by GNBS would be limited and remediable, as demonstrated by operation since 1992. Whatever the ruling of the IJC, the dispute will continue because (1) the two parties must negotiate how to implement the Court's verdict; and (2) there is, of course, no enforcement mechanism as such, except such pressures or actions as might be taken by the European Commission with respect to financial aid and future accession to the European Union.
VII. Environmental impacts
And what of scarcity? What have been the environmental consequences of the diversion? On this point there is, not to anyone's surprise, considerable disagreement. According to the Hungarian position, Variant C has negatively affected flood control and flow regimes, biodiversity and water supply; the Slovaks argue that such impacts as there are are temporary and that remedial measures can address most of the rest. As Professor G·bor Vida, representing Hungary, put it in testimony before the IJC,
In assessing the importance of the functioning floodplain we have to keep in mind the multitude of services provided by the system. These include reducing the effects of floods, purifying the river, storing and regenerating groundwater, providing a continuous supply of drinking water, increasing crop and timber productivity, storing and actively maintaining high biodiversity, and providing unique recreational areas. 78
Slovak representatives argue that Variant C has in no way obstructed any of these services. Still, by the end of October 1992, the water level in the old river bed had declined to two meters below its historically low level. Despite Slovak promises to maintain a flow of 600 cubic meters per second (compared to 2,000 m3/sec. before the diversion), Hungarian authorities measured only 200-350 m3/sec. And the flood management capabilities of Variant C are questionable: Four weeks after the diversion, a flood flow only slightly greater than the highest flood in an average year was discharged, eroding some 3 million cubic meters of sand and gravel from the floodplain downstream of the weir. 79
According to those representing Hungary at the IJC, most of the river's sidearms and oxbows in the delta area have been drained, as even the highest flows discharged into the old riverbed fail to reach their levels. Efforts by Slovakia to raise water levels by constructing downstream weirs that collect water in the bed also slow down the flow and contribute to stagnation. Such waters as do flow past the diversion tend to lack the sand and gravel that normally maintain the level of the old riverbed, but do contain large quantities of silt that disrupt the drinking water supply, drawn from bank-filtered wells sunk into the local aquifer, for towns and cities below Nagymaros, including Budapest. This has led one of Hungary's lawyers before the IJC to argue, perhaps with some overstatement, that "Any threat to this supply is a threat to a vital national resource." 80
The affected region is particularly rich in biodiversity, at least by the standards of Europe. G·bor Vida, another Hungarian representative, argues that,
Higher plants are represented by over a thousand species in this region. That is more than two thirds of the flora of the Netherlands, despite being only a fraction of the size. There are 206 bird species, 65 fish species, over 1100 butterfly and moth species, 45 species of dragon fly and nearly 2000 kinds of beetle. 81
According to studies conducted after the diversion, fish spawning habitats were covered with fine silt, water conditions deteriorated, various parts of Variant C posed barriers to migrating fish, and temporary habitats for many fish species in side-channels became inaccessible. The composition of fish species had changed considerably, potential sites for flooded-forest and acquatic marsh vegetation disappeared, and major reductions in the leaf areas in riparian forest stands were measured. 82
All of this would seem to militate against continued operation, except that the Slovak assessment of and response to Hungarian claims concerning environmental damage have been quite the opposite. Although Slovakia argues that remedial measures are more than adequate to address such environmental problems as might develop, there has been a general refusal to acknowledge that any such problems exist. Miroslav Lisk· argues that
The impounding of the Danube water and slowing down the high velocity of its current has definitely stopped the erosion of the river bed with all its detrimental consequences. The harbor of Bratislava is again fully accessible and the live branches of the Maly and Mosoni Danube were salvaged from a sewer-like state into rivers with permanent flow, gradually improving their environment. . . . The old Danube channel is also safe from continuing erosion, providing that higher flows will not be allowed to pass before the necessary measures will be implemented. 83
A group of Slovak agricultural specialists have responded to the admittedly chauvinistic attacks on Slovakia by Dr. Bela Liptak of Connecticut, an emigrÈ and ardent advocate of Hungarian causes (and, it appears, an enemy of Trianon), writing that the bilateral Slovak-Hungarian annual report on environmental monitoring from the year 1995 testifies that:
as a result of rising water levels in the old riverbed of the Danube by the Dunakiliti weir the branch arms on the Hungarian side are permanently supplied with water at a flow rate of between 40-130 cubic meters/second.
the Mosoni Danube is permanently provided with water, from the Cunove reservoir, at a rate of 40 cubic m/s.
the water levels in the main branches on the Hungarian side of the inundation on average have risen by one meter, and some secondary branches, formerly dry, are now inundated. the rising water levels in the old arms of the Danube have resulted in higher ground water levels as well [see Figures 5a & 5b].
Furthermore, a report made by Hungarian experts visiting the dikes in the old riverbed of the Danube by the Dunakiliti weir states that 18 species of fish have migrated upstream. Expert monitoring further testifies that in the old (original) riverbed are found 45 species of fish, in the inland delta branches 31 species of fish and in the discharge channels of the Barrage System more than 28 species. Among these are found species which formerly were rare to the Danube. The Gabcikovo-Nagymaros reservoir system, the old riverbed of the Danube and seepage canals have become a refuge and wintering area for thousands of different waterfowl and aquatic birds. This year's harsh winter confirmed the ability of the Barrage system to release ice floes without the slightest damage to the hydropower structures. 84
How are we to account for such disparate conclusions regarding environmental damage? There are several points to recall in evaluating these arguments and claims. First, the monitoring, measurement and assessment of ecological conditions and impacts under changing conditions is not a precise science. The Slovaks claim that the Middle Danube had been suffering severe degradation and erosion for decades as a result of activities upstream in Germany and Austria. These had been responsible for the gradual desiccation of the delta area, the annual drying out of various side branches, and the decline in navigability of the main channel. Exactly what environmental conditions, what ecosystems, what species had been extent throughout the period from 1950 to 1980 is also not completely clear. Finally, they claim that returning water to various parts of the delta should enhance both ecology and species viability. Whether this has the predicted effects remains to be seen.
The Hungarians, on the other hand, seem to be measuring impacts from the beginning of operation of Variant C. Certainly, the greatest consequences can be seen in the flows of the main channel of the Danube where it runs parallel to the navigation and power canal. Moreover, the effects catalogued on the Hungarian side of the project impact Hungarian land and water resources. The database of plant and animal species may not reflect a sufficiently long timespan to accurately assess impacts. Variations in individual species numbers are often somewhat stochastic, and not always attributable to immediate conditions (although it is clear that, in the absence of water, fish will die). It should also be recognized that the Hungarians have an interest in restricting access to their portions of the delta region to Slovak investigations as well as slowing restoration in order to buttress their case.
VIII. Conclusions
Here ends our story—for the time being. What are we to conclude about these barking dogs? Will they continue to circle? Will they fight? Will Europe throw them some bones and force them to become friends? What we have here is surely an "environmental conflict," but the history suggests that not all such confrontations turn violent. The dispute over GBNS is almost an entirely political one, at all three levels, and has been manipulated for political ends, rather than strict material ends or needs. More is happening here, however. I have argued in this paper that, while some of the necessary conditions laid out in Kahl's model might be present, but they are not sufficient. Moreover, I claim that the institutional infrastructure in which this particular conflict is embedded has provided the means for minimizing whatever potential for violence might exist. At all three levels—domestic, ethnic and interstate—these institutions constrain action as well as offer certain possible opportunities for contestation over the project. We could imagine a time in the future when either Bratislava or Budapest feels a need for political mobilization, perhaps in a run-up to an election, and incites some kind of violence against its neighbor (a strategy that has been used all too often in recent history). Or, if one government or the other should decide to abandon Europe, so to speak, and concentrate on its own, very specific interests, either domestic or foreign, violent conflict could develop. For the moment, however, this seems unlikely; there is much to keep both parties busy, and few rewards to be seen in defection. All of which leads me to reiterate the importance of institutions, domestic, regional and transnational, even where environment and resources are concerned. They cannot solve all problems, but they offer alternatives other than fight or flee. Barking dogs attract much attention; we would do well to see why so few of them bite.
Endnotes
Note 1 Gabor Vermes, "Szechenyi and Posterity: Changing Perceptions about Szechenyi in the 19th and 20th Centuries," East European Quarterly 29, #2 (Summer 1995):157-67.Back
Note 2 This is contrary to the arguments of John J. Measheimer, "The False Promise of International Institutions," International Security 19, #3 (Winter 1994):5-49.Back
Note 3 Colin H. Kahl, "States, Scarcity, and Civil Strife in the Developing World," April 1997.Back
Note 4 Jean Dreze & Amartya Sen, Hunger and Public Action (New York: Oxford University Press, 1989); Amartya Sen, "Population: delusion and reality," New York Review of Books, Sept. 22, 1994, pp. 62-71.Back
Note 5 I explore this point in greater detail in Ronnie D. Lipschutz, "The Nature of Sovereignty and the Sovereignty of Nature: Problematizing the Boundaries between Self, Society, State and System," in: Karen D. Litfin (ed.), Sovereignty Moves (Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press, forthcoming 1998); Ronnie D. Lipschutz, "Environmental Security and Environmental Determinism: The Relative Importance of Social and Natural Factors," pp. 35-50, in: Nils Petter Gleditsch (ed.), Conflict and the Environment (Dordrecht: Kluwer, 1997).Back
Note 6 Bill Nichols, Ideology and the Image (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1981), p. 212.Back
Note 7 See Ronnie D. Lipschutz, "Seeking a State of One's Own: An Analytical Framework for Assessing "Ethnic & Sectarian Conflicts," ch. 2 in: Beverly Crawford & Ronnie D. Lipschutz (eds.), The Political Economy of Cultural Conflict (Berkeley: Institute of Area Studies, UC-Berkeley, forthcoming 1997).Back
Note 8 Ideology and the Image, p. 213. I have also made a similar argument in When Nations Clash: Raw Materials, Ideology and Foreign Policy (New York: Ballinger/Harper & Row, 1989), ch. 8.Back
Note 9 This is discussed in detail in Ronnie D. Lipschutz, "Strategic Insecurity: Putting the Pieces Back Together in the Middle East," pp. 113-26, in: Harry Kreisler (ed.), Confrontation in the Gulf (Berkeley: IIS, UC-Berkeley, 1992).Back
Note 10 Germany might have wanted for oil in order to launch World War II, thereby motivating it to occupy Romania and invade the Soviet Union. But Germany presumably had a choice whether or not to pursue the path to war and the need for oil.Back
Note 11 Thomas F. Homer-Dixon, "The Ingenuity Gap: Can Poor Countries Adapt to Resource Scarcity," Population and Development Review 21, #3 (Sept. 1995):587-612.Back
Note 12 "The Nature of Sovereignty and the Sovereignty of Nature."Back
Note 13 Much of this information comes from John Fitzmaurice, Damming the Danube—Gab?ikovo and Post-Communist Politics in Europe (Boulder: Westview Press, 1996).Back
Note 14. For a history of international management of the Danube until the 1950s, see Stephen Gorove, Law and Politics of the Danube (The Hague: Martinus Nijhoff, 1964).Back
Note 15 Peter F. Sugar, et al, (eds.), Modern Hungarian Society in the Making—The Unfinished Experience (Budapest: CEU Press, 1995; trans. James Patterson & Eniko Koncz).Back
Note 16 See, for example, AugustÌn Marko & Pavol Martinicky, Slovak-Magyar Relations—History and Present Day in Figures (Bratislava: Slovak Society for the Protection of Democracy and Humanity, Publishing House Signum, 1995); and "Slovak-Hungarian Relations—History and the Present in Facts," Slovak Society for the Protection of Democracy and Humanity, Publishing House Signum, Bratislava, on the official Slovak Information Agency/government web site at www.sia.gov.sk/other/smv.htm.Back
Note 17 Judit Galambos, "Political Aspects of an Environmental Conflict," pp. 72-95, in: Jyrki K”k–nen (ed.), Perspectives on Environmental Conflict and International Relations (London: Pinter, 1992), p. 72. Back
Note 18 See "The Creation of an Inland Delta along the Danube's Central Stretch," at www.savba.sk/gabcikovo/new/gabe02.html Back
Note 19 Fitzmaurice, Damming the Danube, p, 74Back
Note 20 Mih·ly ErdÈlyi, Hydrogeology of the Hungarian upper Danube section (Budapest: Hungarian Natural History Museum, 1994), p. 9; Fitzmaurice, Damming the Danube, p. 75.Back
Note 21 Author's interview with ErdÈlyi, July 1, 1994, Budapest. Back
Note 22 Miroslav Liska and Pavel Petrovic of the Water Research Institute in Bratislava regard this as nonsense; see: "Summary of technical and scientific questions," here. See also Law and Politics of the Danube, (fn. 25, p. 139).Back
Note 23 For more details about discussions during the 1950s and 1960s, see Fitzmaurice, Damming the Danube, pp. 75-77.Back
Note 24 Fitzmaurice, Damming the Danube, pp. 76-79.Back
Note 25. Fitzmaurice, Damming the Danube, p. 78, 82.Back
Note 26 Galambos, "Political Aspects," pp. 72-74. A more detailed description can be found in Fitzmaurice, Damming the Danube, pp. 79-80 as well as in the documents submitted to the International Court of Justice.Back
Note 27 Tam·s Fleischer, "Jaws on the Danube: Water Management, Regime Change and the Movement Against the Middle Danube Hydroelectric Dam," International Journal of Urban and Regional Research 17, #3 (1993):429-52.Back
Note 28 L·szlÛ Valki, presentation to the IJC, "Outline of the history and Current Status of the project," March 3, 1997, in: Gabcikovo-Nagymaros Case of Hungary and Slovakia before the World Court in the Hague.Back
Note 29 Indeed, it was not until 1992, prior to the breakup of Czechoslovakia, that the Czech and Slovak leaderships came to open disagreement over the priority and economic viability of the project.back
Note 30 Mark Schapiro, "The New Danube," Mother Jones 15, #3 (April-May 1990):50-52, 72-76; Judit V·s·rhelyi, "Hungarian Greens were Blue," pp. 205-15, in: Craig L. LaMay & Everette E. Dennis, Media and the Environment (Washington, D.C.: Island Press, 1991).Back
Note 31 The obvious comparisons are Solidarity in Poland, which was very public but was suppressed, and Charter 77 in Czechoslovakia, whose members were harassed and jailed.Back
Note 32 See, e.g., Agnes Horv·th & Arp·d Szakoczai, The Dissolution of Communist Power—The Case of Hungary (London: Routledge, 1992).Back
Note 33 Sugar, et al., Modern Hungarian Society.Back
Note 34 See, e.g, Fitzmaurice, Damming the Danube, p. 37.Back
Note 35 Some of this is dicussed in Ronnie D. Lipschutz, with Judith Mayer, Global Civil Society and Global Environmental Governance (Albany: SUNY Press, 1996), ch. 5; see also Ida Miro-Kiss, "Hungary," pp. 51-74, in: Duncan Fisher, et. al. (eds.), Civil Society and the Environment in Central and Eastern Europe (London: Ecological Studies Institute, 1992).Back
Note 36. Fitzmaurice, Damming the Danube, p. 93.Back
Note 37This argument is also made with respect to the former Soviet republics by Jane I. Dawson in Eco-Nationalism (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 1996), and Barbara Jancar, "The Environmental Attractor in the Former USSR: Ecology and Regional Change," pp. 158-84, in: Ronnie D. Lipschutz & Ken Conca (eds.), The State and Social Power in Global Environmental Politics (New York: Columbia University Press, 1993).Back
Note 38 Galambos, "Political Aspects of Environmental Conflict," pp. 88-90.Back
Note 39 Lipschutz, Global Civil Society, p. 143; interview with T·m·s P·l, Social Conflicts Research Center, Hungarian Academy of Sciences, Budapest, March 14, 20, 1995; see also Fleischer, "Jaws on the Danube"; V·s·rhelyi, "Hungarian Greens were Blue".Back
Note 40 Lipschutz, Global Civil Society, ch. 5.Back
Note 41 Lipschutz, Global Civil Society, ch. 5.Back
Note 42 Ian Bremmer, "Reassessing Soviet nationalities theory," pp. 3-26, in: Ian Bremmer & Ray Taras (ed.), Nations & Politics in the Soviet Successor States (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1993).Back
Note 43 Fitzmaurice, Damming the Danube, pp. 63-64.Back
Note 44 This data comes from Marko & Martinicky, "Slovak-Hungarian Relations," but ought to be treated with care. Another article suggests that there remain some 120,000 Slovaks in Hungary, of whom 105,000 have been Magyarized; see Matthew Rhodes, "National Identity and Minority Rights in the Constitutions of the Czech Republic and Slovakia," Eastern European Quarterly 29, #3 (Fall 1995):361.Back
Note 45 Rhodes, "National Identity," p. 359.Back
Note 46 Quoted in Rhodes, "National Identity," pp. 359-60.Back
Note 47 Fitzmaurice, Damming the Danube, p. 65; Pavel Mates, "The New Slovak Constitution," RFE-RL Research Report 1, #3 (Oct. 30, 1992):39.Back
Note 48 Fitzmaurice, Damming the Danube, pp. 64-65.Back
Note 49 Mary Ann TÈtreault & Robin L. Teske, "The Struggle to Democratize the Slovak Republic," Current History 96, #608 (March 1997):135-39. A somewhat older report on these matters is Staff of the Commissions on Security and Cooperation in Europe, Human Rights and Democratization in Slovakia (Washington, DC: CSCE, Sept. 1993). There are also numerous articles from both Slovakia and Hungary reporting on various aspects of the friction between Slovaks and Hungarians in Slovakia, and between the two countries. These are available from the FBIS web site, the "World News Connection."Back
Note 50 Edit Melykuti Nagy, "Tabajdi Views Situation of Hungarian Minorities—The Dangers of Ethno-Business (interview with Csaba Tabajdi, political state secretary at the Prime Minister's Office)," Magyar Hirlap, June 18, 1997, p. 16. FBIS-EEU-97-169.Back
Note 51 Variant A includes the entire project; Variant B adds the reservoir at Dunakiliti; Variant C involves operation of a canal on the Slovak side of the border and diversion of a substantial part of the Danube's flow into the canal.Back
Note 52 Trade & Environment Database Case Studies, American University, "Hungary Dam," at this location.Back
Note 53 "Political Aspects of an Environmental Conflict," p. 79.Back
Note 54 "Hungary Dam," TED Case Studies, section 20.Back
Note 55 See, e.g., Katalin Vojtek, "Commentary on Reactions to State Language Law," Uj Szo (Bratislava, in Hungarian), Jan. 7, 1997, p. 9; FBIS-EEU-97-023; dreeu-23_d_97002; 0e55hkv025ml3m; Edit Bauer, "Effects of Language Law Detailed," Szabad Ujsag (Bratislava, in Hungarian), Jan. 15, 1997, p. 1; FBIS-EEU-97-029.Back
Note 56 "Parliament Ratifies Hungarian-Slovak Agreement," Budapest MTI in English, June 27, 1997; FBIS-EEU-97-176.Back
Note 57 In any event, the only place where such sub-national groups might have standing is the European Court of Justice, where complaints about state violation of human rights could be presented.Back
Note 58 Peter R. Evans, Harold K. Jacobson & Robert D. Putnam, Double-Edged Diplomacy—International Bargaining and Domestic Politics (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1993).Back
Note 59 To some degree, this institutional infrastructure was already being undermined by the 1975 Helsinki Accords, signed by both East and West, and which gave priority to human rights and legitimated the establishment of organizations, such as Charter 77, to monitor state observance of those rights.Back
Note 60 John J. Mearsheimer, "Back to the Future: Instability in Europe After the Cold War, " International Security 15, #1 (Summer 1990):5-56.Back
Note 61 Material in this section comes from Jaromir Sibl (ed.), Damming the Danube—What Dam Builders Don't Want You to Know (Bratislava: Slovak Union of Nature and Landscape Protectors & Slovak Rivers Network, April 1993), sec. 1; for chronologies, see L·szlo Valki, "Outline of the history and Current Status of the Project," Presentation to the IJC, The Hague, 3 March 1997, Section 2, at: http://www.meh.hu/kem/Haga. Fitzmaurice provides a detailed account in Damming the Danube, and Liska, "Development of the Slovak-Hungarian Section of the Danube" provides a Slovak perspective.Back
Note 62 Vera Rich, "Central Europe II: the battle of the Danube," The World Today (Dec. 1992):217.Back
Note 63. At this writing, I have not been able to discover for what the acronym "PHARE" actually stands.Back
Note 64 Liska, "Development," sec. 6.Back
Note 65 Sibl, Damming the Danube, section 1, p. 6.Back
Note 66 Miroslav Liska, "Development of the Slovak-Hungarian Section of the Danube," Water Resources Institute, Bratislava, April 1996, section 7, at this location.Back
Note 67 Sibl, Damming the Danube, sec. 1, pp. 6-7.Back
Note 68 Valki, "Outline of the history," sec. 37.Back
Note 69 Valki, "Outline of the history," sec. 39; Liska & Petrovic, "Summary of technical and scientific questions."Back
Note 70 "Secret Talks Allegedly Held on Danube Water Barrage," Budapest MTI in English, Jan. 17, 1997, FBIS-EEU-97-016.Back
Note 71 "Kovacs Comments on NATO, Slovak Ties, EU," Budapest Duna TV in Hungarian, "Weekly Courier" program, Feb. 2, 1997; FBIS-EEU-97-023.Back
Note 72 "Secret Talks Allegedly Held on Danube Water Barrage."Back
Note 73 The full text of Hungary's arguments can be found in Gabcikovo-Nagymaros Case of Hungary and Slovakia before the World Court in the Hague. Unfortunately, so far as I have been able to determine, the Slovak arguments are not available over the Internet.Back
Note 74 James Crawford presentation to the IJC, "Introduction," in: Gabcikovo-Nagymaros Case of Hungary and Slovakia before the World Court in the Hague, April 10-11, 1997, "The replies," at the World Court.Back
Note 75 These arguments are presented in Lisk·, "Development" and in citations, below.Back
Note 76 "Delegation Head Presents Verdict Proposal in Dam Dispute," Bratislava TASR in English, 15 April 1997; FBIS-TEN-97-105;Back
Note 77 Fleischer, "Jaws on the Danube," p. 442.Back
Note 78 G·bor Vida presentation to the IJC, "The Scientific Context," Section 4.2, 3 March 1997, in: Gabcikovo-Nagymaros Case of Hungary and Slovakia before the World Court in the Hague at the World Court.Back
Note 79 Klaus Kern presentation to the IJC, "Observed Impacts on Flood Security and Habitat Degradation," Section 12a.II, 5 March 1997, in: Gabcikovo-Nagymaros Case of Hungary and Slovakia before the World Court.Back
Note 80 Howard Wheater presentation to IJC, "Bank-filtered wells and the Budapest Water Supply," Sec. 7.II.38, 4 March 1997, in: Gabcikovo-Nagymaros Case of Hungary and Slovakia before the World Court.Back
Note 81 Vida, "The Scientific Context," Sec. II.2, 3 March 1997.Back
Note 82 Kern, "Observed Impacts," Sec. 12a.II, 5 March 1997.Back
Note 83 Lisk·, "Development," sec. 10.1.Back
Note 84 "From the Plenipotentiary of the Sloval Government for the Construction and Operation of the Gabcikovo-Nagymaros Hydropower Scheme," at the Slovak Institute of Scientific and Technical Information for Agriculture.Back