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The EU in the Balkans: Promoting an Elite Security Community
Emilian Kavalski
The European Union has developed a rather effective mechanism for gradually coopting the countries of the troubled Balkan region by offering them rules and rewards for complying with communitarian norms and practices. Thus the EU fosters peaceful interactions and socio-economic integration, primarily by including the elites of those countries in its regulatory process.
Over the last ten years, the Union has gone through many changes and is reaching the third phase in its geopolitical re-definition. The first stage was the 1989 fall of the Berlin Wall, which led to German re-unification and the start of the enlargement process to the east. The second phase came in 1992 with the disintegration of the Soviet Union, thereby fundamentally changing the dynamics within the European continent. We are now entering the third phase, which is the stabilisation of the Balkans and their integration into the process of European Union enlargement.
— Hans van den Broek, June 23, 1999
In the wake of 2004 enlargement of both the European Union (EU) and the North Atlantic Treaty Organisation (NATO) this article focuses on the process of projecting appropriateness in the Balkans. For the purposes of this article the term "Balkans" encompasses Bulgaria, Romania and the countries of the Western Balkans: Albania, Bosnia-Herzegovina, Croatia, Macedonia and Serbia/Montenegro/Kosovo. As the above statement by the then External Relations Commissioner, Hans van den Broek reveals, the Kosovo crisis marks a turning point both for the EU as well as its approaches to the region. Whereas previously, the EU was involved in more or less ad hoc humanitarian aid-type of measures, its post-1999 initiatives are marked by the distinct role-identity of its own agency in the region. In effect, the EU shifted its approaches to the Balkans from its incremental Common Foreign and Security Policy (CFSP) instruments (hampered by divergent interests of the Member States) to its more convincing enlargement mechanisms. This shift is indicated (i) by reinforcing Bulgaria's and Romania's accession through the offer of "opening negotiations with all countries, which meet the Copenhagen political criteria" (emphasis added); and (ii) by offering membership perspectives to the Western Balkans through the Stabilisation and Association Process (SAP) which aims "to replicate the successful transition by the countries of Central and Eastern Europe (CEE)" (EC, Community Projects in Croatia, 2002). Although the Stability Pact for Southeast Europe was also officially launched at the same time, very soon it became evident that the SAP is the "centrepiece" of the EU's policy in the Western Balkans. Thus, on the one hand, the EU increases its socialising effectiveness in Bulgaria and Romania by rewarding their efforts, while at the same time it maintains their commitment to (and compliance with) the process of accession. On the other hand, the SAP makes possible the realisation of EU's order-promotion in the Western Balkans by engaging (through the prospect of membership) regional elites in the dynamics of accession, which ensure the establishment of appropriate (non-belligerent) decision-making.
Therefore, it was not until 1999 that the EU realised its "normative power" in the Balkans, which allowed it to launch its framework of order in the region. Nearly fifty years ago, Karl Deutsch (Political Community and the North Atlantic Area, Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1957) and his associates outlined this order as a "security community", meaning "the attainment within a (transnational) territory of a sense of community and of institutions and practices strong enough and widespread enough to assure, for a 'long' time dependable expectations of peaceful change". Currently, the EU is involved in promoting its pattern of inter-state relations through a process of two-fold socialisation: (i) conditioning and (ii) educating Balkan elites to comply (Emilian Kavalski in Review of International Affairs 2(4), 2003). The incentives deriving from the prospect of membership create a dynamic, which makes regional elites look unfavourably at the possibility of non-participation in this process. The threat of exclusion comes not only from the possible negative effects of international condemnation (and isolation), but also from the censure of domestic public opinion. Such understanding of the current EU approaches to the Balkans furthers the explanation of regional security dilemmas provided recently by Nizar Messari (in Security Dialogue, 33(4), 2002). This article concurs with Messari's premises: namely, that states can pose threats both to their own citizens, as well as the citizens of other states. However, it contends that the state itself needs to be problematised. Messari intuits, but fails to emphasise that those populations both within and outside the state are threatened not by the abstract entity of the state, per se, but rather by its concrete institutional culture as represented by state-elites. It is through elite decision-making, rhetorical practice and policy-behaviour that the state (and its sovereignty) become objectified and ultimately politicised. The arena of the political, or Messari's diction can be referred to as the territoriality of securitisation, is embodied in the whole gamut of "subjects of security" from warriors to philosopher-kings. In other words, the state could be perceived as the stage of the personified (and politicised through elites) presence of power and ideas. Therefore, it is the state elites that are at the centre of production and re-articulation of the meaning of security.
Consequently, the concept of security is understood as a process of continuous sanction (in the sense of guarantee) that the system of order protects the participants from adverse contingencies. In an applied sense, security indicates "a low probability of damage to acquired values" (David Baldwin, Review of International Studies, 23 (1), 1997). Thus, the normative culture among actors in the international arena becomes objectified as a base that buttresses individual confidence in the potentiality of the mutual control over the system's checks and balances.
In other words, the EU's post-1999 approaches to the Balkans arguably indicate the means for introducing such a framework of normative appropriateness in the Balkans. The "power of attraction" of membership provides it with the ability to redefine "what can be 'normal' in international relations" (Ian Manners in Journal of Common Market Studies, 40(2), 2002). Srdjan Vucetic (in Southeast European Politics, 2(2), 2001) asserts that the essential aspect for the promotion of EU's security community-type of relationship in the Balkans is the guaranteeing presence and normative authority of the external agency, because this allows the "interpreting, deepening and extending of the ongoing exchange". Thus, Vucetic intuits that even in their nascent stage, security communities are characterised by a "practice" of dependable expectations of peaceful change (Emanuel Adler in Review of International Studies, 24(5), 1998).
The suggestion of this article is that in its post-1999 involvement, the EU initiated stable and predictable relations in the Balkans among decision-making elites. The acknowledgement of its "normative power" allows the EU to introduce its "code of peace" (Adler, ibid.) in the Balkans—the "acquis communautaire". Consequently, the practice of its rules and standards facilitates the development of weness—an "encompassing social identity" (Adler, ibid.)—among regional elites. This triple dynamic operationalises the functional differentiation of the Balkans into: (a) candidates: Bulgaria and Romania; (b) prospective candidates: the Western Balkan countries. This differentiation takes into account the existing instruments of regionality and conditionality and aims at exporting the EU's zone of peace into the Southeastern corner of Europe by engaging regional governments in its initiatives. The EU objectives are: (i) "to project stability ... beyond its own borders" (EC, Communication on Conflict Prevention, 2001); and (ii) by engaging Balkan state elites to "give a clear public signal of the special and inclusive nature of the privileged relationship" with the EU (EC, SAP - First Annual Report, 2002).
In their totality, these developments intimate the emergence of a Balkan elite security community. In order to facilitate its understanding the study looks at the cases of Bulgaria and Croatia. Two caveats are associated with this approach. First, these countries have been selected as examples of the elite-socialisation dynamics from the two groupings of states in the Balkans: (i) candidates and (ii) prospective candidates. Since it is not the object of this research to provide an exhaustive account of the respective post-communist transitions in the two countries, it is focusing mainly on the post-1999 EU-maintained processes. Second, Bulgaria and Croatia have also been selected because they provide examples of elites (i) who are willing to comply, and (ii) who lack alternative sources of ideational and material attraction, which permits a better explanation and understanding of EU's "power of attraction" in the region. In other words, this study is in agreement with the suggestion that EU "actorness" is a variable "conditioned by circumstances as well as by formal grants of authority" (Brigid Laffan et al., Europe's Experimental Union, London: Routledge, 1999). Consequently, the selected states provide an enhanced environment for teasing out the conceptual framework of the suggested elite security community.
EU Socializatoin of Bulgarian Elites
Kyril Drezov (in Pridham and Gallagher, eds, Experimenting with Democracy: Regime Change in the Balkans, London: Routledge, 2000) makes a convincing case for the symbolic division of the post-communist development of Bulgaria into two periods: (i) from November 1989 up to February 1997 and (ii) post February 1997. As he contends, the former one was dominated by the "decisive" presence of ambivalence as to the direction of transition (due to the normative vacillation of elites), while the latter confirms Bulgaria's direction towards Euro-Atlantic integration, economic reform and political restructuring (due to the external recognition of the appropriateness of decision-making practice). In other words EU's powers to acknowledge Bulgaria's candidacy status provides it with the legitimacy to discipline elite identity-construction (Michael Williams in European Journal of International Relations, 7(4), 2001).
Such understanding seems to underpin the EU's Accession Partnership with Bulgaria adopted in March 1998 (and substantially revised in December 1999), which aimed at engaging its decision-making with "a number of policy instruments that will be used to help [Bulgaria] in its preparations for membership" (EC, Accession Partnership: Bulgaria, 1999). Nevertheless, Romano Prodi in a speech in 1999 spelled out that the normative recognition of Bulgaria and Romania (by softening the Copenhagen criteria) had the prime objective of preventing "the countries concerned, having already made great efforts and sacrifices [to become] disillusioned and turn their backs on us". The instrumental implementation of this objective is achieved through: (i) administrative capacity-building and (ii) establishment of management facilities. The aim of the former, as Commissioner Verheugen explained, "is to ensure compliance with European standards, especially in the areas of political and economic management, or more generally in public administration . . . in order to convince us that the country is capable of adopting the responsibilities of membership" (Focus, July 10, 2003). At the same time, the latter, facilitates the adoption of "the practice of EU Member-States" (EC, Progress Report on Bulgria, 2001). Thus, regardless of the particular area of involvement, the EU promotes Bulgarian elite-socialisation both via direct conditioning and by teaching elites to comply.
From the EU's point of view, its elite-socialisation procedures initiated in Bulgaria seem to be providing the expected results: stable institutions of governance, macroeconomic stability and predictability of foreign policy. This is an acknowledgement to the EU's normative power whose commitment to Bulgaria's accession makes it impossible for the country's decision-making elites to opt out for other strategies (Aaron Hoffman in European Journal of International Relations, 8(3), 2002). The stability of institutions has been achieved through a promotion of decision-making premised on the "rule of law". It is underpinned by the lack of alternative centres of normative attraction. As the former Head of the Bulgarian Mission to the EU, Antoinette Primatarova attests, "the EU has already proven that it can deliver in terms of prosperity through enforcing the principles of democracy, rule of law and a market economy" (Open Society News, 2002).
The achievement of macroeconomic stability has been of paramount significance to the EU. Having recognised Bulgaria's progress in the adoption of the political criteria for membership at the signing of the Accession Partnership, the majority of institution-building and management capacities promoted by the EU are aimed at facilitating Bulgaria's economic restructuring. Therefore, a recognition of the considerable progress made in the adoption of the economic criteria for membership has been the assessment that "Bulgaria is a functioning market economy. It should be able to cope with competitive pressure and market forces within the Union in the medium term, provided that it continues implementing its reform programme to remove remaining difficulties" (EC, Progress Report on Bulgaria, 2002).
Perhaps, the best evidence of the EU's elite-socialisation is the conditioning of Bulgaria's foreign policy within a framework of predictable international relations. As the Bulgarian Minister of Foreign Affairs, Solomon Passi quite emphatically declared, "The European Union is our promised land!" (Focus, July 9, 2003). The significance of Bulgarian relations with Brussels is demonstrated by the establishment in 1998 of a mechanism for European integration within the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, which in 2002 was "strengthened by the creation of a post of a full Minister of European Integration" (EC, ibid.). In an attempt to reinforce Bulgaria's commitment to the accession process, in 2003, the government introduced the position of a Deputy Prime Minister of EU Integration (Focus, July 18, 2003). At the same time the National Assembly increased the visibility of its EU priorities with the creation of a new Directorate for Legislation and European Law to assist the work of its Committee on European Integration.
Thus, the post-1999 EU engagement in Bulgaria ensures that the country regularly "aligns its positions with that of the Union and whenever invited, it has adhered to the Union's statements" (EC, Regular Report on Bulgaria, 1998). The extent of Bulgaria's alignment, (i.e. internalisation of the EU's norms) can be deciphered from the statements of the Minister for European Integration, Meglena Kuneva. Speaking on the accession negotiations, Ms Kuneva recognised that the challenging part is not transferring the acquis, "but changing the way we think". She elaborated that Bulgarians should "stop calculating the benefits of membership only from the point of view of individual self-interest. Instead they should not forget what the Bulgarian state, per se, gains from this process . . . In this context", Ms Kuneva declared, "everything that benefits the [Balkan] region, benefits the Bulgarian state as well" (Focus, April 29, 2003). The Deputy Minister of Foreign Affairs, Ivan Petkov echoed similar sentiments in the build-up to the Thessaloniki Summit in June 2003 by declaring that "it is in the interest of all Balkan countries, regardless of their current stage in the accession process, to maintain our accession perspective through cooperation for the achievement of our common goals. This would also assist us in overcoming our differences and would help to bring together divergent positions in a manner that is more appropriate for the relations between neighbouring European states" (Focus, June 8, 2003).
In such decision-making attitudes, the EU has regularly indicated that the country is a contributor to Balkan stability not only through its participation in the Kosovo Force (KFOR), the Stabilisation Force (SFOR), the International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) and the Organisation for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE) peacekeeping missions, but also through the regional dialogue that it has initiated within the framework of "trilateral relations with Greece and Romania, Romania and Turkey, the Former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia (FYROM) and Albania, and Greece and Turkey" (EC, Progress Report on Bulgaria, 2001). In other words, this suggests a normative power relationship, in which the EU exercises substantial influence upon the elites of states who are not members of its security community. Even though Bulgaria is not a EU member-state, its decision making is recognised as belonging within the framework of democratic policy-behaviour (Williams, ibid.). Günter Verheugen recently delivered one such reinforcing acknowledgement of Bulgaria's elite-socialisation (Focus, July 10, 2003):
Bulgaria is not part of the Balkan problems—it is part of their solution! It is in our [EU's] interest that Bulgaria develops a strong economy and maintains a stable democracy. You should not consider that European taxpayers are so affluent as to afford such large sums for charity to non-member states . . . Instead you should perceive EU socialisation as an investment. Bulgaria has already began repaying for this support by developing the foundations of a strong economy and a strong market, and also, one should not forget, by its political stability which is a major factor for the stability of the Balkan region.
Thus, the socialisation of Bulgarian elites seems to have produced the intended results—capacities, institutions and policies in line with EU practice and norms. Such policy practice can be interpreted as an indication of the (successful) promotion of an appropriate pattern of relations in the Balkans, in which the positive feedback (often indicated by availability of additional funding or resources) from the EU ensures the maintenance of path-dependent policy behaviour.
EU Socialization of Croatian Elites
The conditions for the EU's involvement in Croatia (and in the Western Balkans generally) have been significantly different from those in Bulgaria. The EU-Croatia relations became possible only in the aftermath of (i) the Kosovo crisis and (ii) Tudjman's death at the end of 1999. The latter event, in particular, lifted the formal obstacles for the EU's involvement in the country. As it has acknowledged, Croatia "suffered increasing international isolation as a result of the nationalist regime of President Tudjman" (EC, Country Strategy Paper for Croatia: CARDS 2002-2006, 2002). This acknowledgement indicates the raison d'être for the EU's engagement of Croatian state elites—forestalling the possibility for a relapse into nationalistic regime politics. In itself this attitude indicates the significance of elites for the state's inclusion or exclusion from the EU-socialisation process.
The parliamentary (January 2000) and presidential (February 2000) elections were interpreted both domestically and internationally as the introduction of a new political climate in Croatia. After the official results from the parliamentary elections were announced, the External Relations Commissioner, Chris Patten in a speech in 2000 proclaimed that,
The people of Croatia delivered a clear message . . . they want Croatia to take its rightful place in the family of European democracies and to develop a closer and more constructive relationship with the European Union . . . Croatia has demonstrated clearly that democratic change is possible in a region where many had doubted it. It is a message of hope and optimism for the new century and one which will, I hope, be heard clearly throughout the region.
Both the government of Prime Minister Ivica Racan and the President Stjepan Mesic were elected on a platform to get the country out of its European isolation. The EU acknowledged the significance of these "developments . . . which have fundamentally changed the political scenario in Croatia" (EC, Community Projects in Croatia, 2000). Owing to the specificity of the country's development in the 1990s as well as taking into account the instruments, which the EU could implement in Croatia, its objectives were (i) to socialise the country's decision-making according to internationally accepted practices, in order to ensure its (ii) predictable (peaceful) foreign policy. The EU went about these tasks by utilising its experience with candidate countries and focused on the promotion of appropriate administrative capacity in Croatia and ensuring policy compliance through the establishment of regulatory management facilities. Thus, on the one hand, the EU establishes the visibility of its presence in Croatia, while, on the other, it sets the framework for the country's policy-direction.
In other words, the EU's engagement is premised on a recognition of a "code of democratic conduct" in Croatian decision-making, which provides EU conditionality with its legitimacy. In an applied sense, in order to guarantee policy alignment with promoted standards, the EU involved state elites in enhancing their capacity to follow promoted standards and, also, provided them with concrete incentives to facilitate their compliance. Such dynamic of capacity-building and provision of incentives has ensured the implementation of necessary reforms and, at the same time, has maintained governmental commitment to this process. Commissioner Patten has remarked that the momentum and achievements of Croatia's socialisation are "setting an example to its neighbours, demonstrating how rapidly it is possible to turn a country's political fortunes around, given sufficient vision and political courage". The conviction of Croatian elites in the appropriateness of adaptation to the EU norms can be inferred from the statement made by the Minister for European Integration, Neven Mimica in 2002: "Clearly, we are not meeting the membership conditions for their own sake, but rather because in doing so we will also give impetus to a comprehensive process of reforms that will, with some unavoidable sacrifice, lead to the advancement of our entire society."
The "success" of the EU-promoted elite-socialisation can be surmised from Croatia's speedy advance along the SAP. In November 2000, the country opened negotiations for Stabilisation and Association Agreement (SAA), which also marked the beginning of the first contractual relations between the EU and Croatia since the dissolution of former Yugoslavia. All preceding EU initiatives in the country have been "autonomous measures" granted on unilateral basis. Thus, on October 29, 2000, Croatia became the second SAP country to have signed the SAA.
Such a development indicates the significant shift on behalf of Croatian decision-makers to comply with the requirements set up by the EU. This inference is reinforced by the establishment of a mechanism for regular bi-monthly joint sessions of all cabinet departments, solely devoted to European integration issues. As minister Mimica suggested in 2002, this "mechanism provides an opportunity to discuss and resolve some key issues at the minister or deputy minister level under the Prime Minister's chairmanship and thus, enhance the existing system of coordinating the affairs related to European integration". In a way, the SAA indicates the EU's recognition of the tangible commitment and reforms initiated by the authorities in Zagreb since 2000, as well as "their serious work in finding appropriate solutions to earlier political shortcomings". The work, which the government has embarked upon included: (i) conclusion of a Free Trade Agreement (FTA) with Macedonia; (ii) conclusion of similar agreements with Serbia/Montenegro, Bosnia and Herzegovina; as well as (iii) with Slovenia, Hungary, Romania, Bulgaria and Turkey. Moreover, it has (i) established a transparent policy towards Bosnia and Herzegovina by recognising their territorial integrity and independence; and (ii) has issued joint statements with representatives of Republica Srpska and Serbia/Montenegro on the issue of reintegration and return of refugees.
In this way, Croatia has fulfilled the three formal requirements set up in the SAA for its consideration for EU membership: (i) cooperation with other countries having signed SAA; (ii) cooperation with other countries concerned by the SAP; and (iii) cooperation with countries candidate to EU accession, which, as Commissioner Patten has noted is "not a bad record for a year". Thus, on February 20, 2003, Croatia filed its official application for consideration for EU membership. Such swift development recognises the EU's potential to condition foreign policy-making and has also, in the words of Romano Prodi (2003), "reaffirmed Croatia's European vocation". This reaffirmation is (to an extent) the result from the internalisation of the promoted norms and values by Croatian elites as a result of the post-Kosovo engagement of the EU in the Western Balkans. Five days after the country applied for EU membership, Foreign Minister Picula declared that "it is in Croatia's vital national interest that its neighbours are flourishing democratic societies. We have every reason to be fully engaged in assisting our eastern neighbourhood to move closer to the same standards that Croatia wants to be in compliance with . . . Standards create predictability, predictability generates trust and trust enables cooperation." (Emphasis added)
In the wake of its accelerated progress along the SAP, the Croatian government maintained its commitment to applying EU standards in its policy-behaviour with the intention of generating predictability in the broader Balkan framework of relations. In June 2003, the Croatian Cabinet adopted a series of measures aimed at facilitating the return of refugees to the country. On the occasion, Prime Minister Racan called "on all Croatian citizens to return to their homeland and make use of the opportunities provided" (Radio Free Europe/RL, June 12, 2003). At the same time, in order to reinforce its commitment to regional cooperation, the Croatian cabinet indicated its desire to ratify the treaty with Bosnia and Herzegovina on the joint use of the Croatian port of Ploce; as well as its "interest in the realisation in the shortest time possible of Transport Corridor 5" linking Croatia with Bosnia and Herzegovina (Focus, July 15, 2003). The extent of normative transformation due to elite socialisation can also be inferred from the improved relations between Zagreb and Belgrade, which seem to reflect foreign minister Picula's conviction that Croatia "can be a positive influence on its neighbours through regional and cross-border cooperation". On June 12, 2003 both Croatia and Serbia took steps to begin the demilitarisation of their common border. The Serbian Prime Minister Jovanovic explained that the objective of this measure was "to send a message to the European Union that Croatia and Serbia are ready to resolve all open questions" (Radio Free Europe/RL, June 12, 2003).
However, the maintenance of the process depends largely on the EU's ability to provide consistent incentives. Prior to the Thessaloniki Summit, the Croatian Minister of European Integration, Mimica, argued in 2003 that "the process of rapprochement of the Southeast European region has to be strengthened and accelerated through the implementation of certain elements from the enlargement process [which] would convey a message that the SAP is capable of creating new EU candidates". In the context of Croatia's application for membership, foreign minister Picula indicated the instrumental benefits from EU conditioning for maintaining the process of socialisation:
The membership application became more a question of physics than a question of politics: the reform process has a certain velocity, and in order to move forward that acceleration needs more space. After twelve years of hard history and tough transitions, citizens of Croatia do not perceive membership in the EU either as an abstract ideal or an outside pressure—it is simply our strategic reality . . . In order to achieve compatibility we have to reform and the candidate status offers the most comprehensive of instruments for the process. (Croatia—A New Candidate', European Political Centre, February 26, 2003)
Arguably, the pace of the association process has been accelerated by the European Integration Partnerships and other instruments of accession incorporated into the SAP at the Thessaloniki Summit. Moreover, the space for which minister Picula was lobbying in February 2003 was given concrete ramifications in July of the same year, when the Croatian government was granted three months to respond to a "questionnaire" of over 2500 queries on the political, economic and administrative affairs of the country. When Commission President, Prodi spoke at Zagreb in 2003, he noted that, "Our journey together starts today and in some years' time it will take Croatia into the European Union . . . in the coming months we will discover more about each other. We will learn more about each other's systems and we will see how compatible they are. We will adapt our instruments and procedures, and this harmonisation process will mean we will soon share the same rules."
This strategic instrumentalisation of Croatia's accession prospects aims at creating a "locking in" environment, which ensures decision-making compliance with the promoted socialisation requirements. As the Croatian President Stjepan Mesic explained, "the questionnaire is neither a graduation exam nor a hurdle. Instead, it should be perceived as the first step in a process of setting the framework of relations between us and the EU, according to the appropriate standards of international behaviour. Its rules ensure the direction of the harmonisation between Croatia and the EU" (Focus, July 14, 2003).
Elite Security Community
Both the Bulgarian and the Croatian examples indicate the substantial role which the EU has been playing in introducing the normative and material basis for a security community arrangement in the post-Kosovo Balkans. The (arguably) successful socialisation of these two countries evinces the potential effectiveness of the EU's normative power realised through the mechanisms of the enlargement approach to the region. More importantly, these developments do not indicate individual phenomena, (i.e. only in Bulgaria and Croatia), but refer to the emergence of a regional framework of elite cooperation.
In order to bring Balkan decision-making in line with promoted standards, the EU is convincing regional elites of the desirability of maintaining prescribed foreign-policy instruments, by including them in accession programmes. For that purpose the EU has advanced the Zagreb Process, which takes its name from the November 2000 Zagreb Summit with the objective of promoting interactions that would allow the articulation (and solution) of security issues within the EU promoted rules and norms. Another instance of this dynamic is the Athens Process launched in November 2002 with the Memorandum of Understanding on the Regional Electricity Market in Southeast Europe and its integration into the EU Internal Electricity Market. In this way, "a high degree of trust between the leaders of the region" (EC, SAP—First Annual Report, 2002) becomes a functional reality, resulting from the EU's normative power. Javier Solana in 2002 was quick to stress at the London Conference on Defeating Organised Crime in Southeastern Europe that such meetings attest to the "enormous amount [of progress] that has been achieved in the last couple of years: democracy is now prevailing and the logic of political disintegration has been replaced by the logic of integration".
Such initiatives and the transactions among Balkan elites that they have generated suggest the emergence of common meanings among regional decision-makers, and is the result of the socialisation activities and the interactions between them. Balkan elites have become involved in bargaining "not only over the issues on the table but also about the concepts and norms that constitute their social reality" (Adler, ibid.). Said otherwise, their contacts are structured around the norms and standards promoted by the EU, and therefore they develop a degree of predictability about each other's behaviour. In this way, they begin to perceive each other as trustworthy, which facilitates the emergence of shared weness—being part of the same normative group.
A confirmation of this new regional elite identity is the unprecedented (for the Balkans) and unimaginable (prior to 1999) gesture of unanimity among the Presidents of Croatia and Macedonia, and the Prime Ministers of Serbia and Albania, who issued a joint statement indicating that "We know that integration into EU structures requires much effort on our part and the process, depending on our achievements will take time" (International Herald Tribune, May 22, 2003). This new weness was displayed by Western Balkan leaders at the June 2, 2003 summit in Ohrid, Macedonia with the purpose of coordinating a joint strategy for the upcoming Thessaloniki Summit. Elite coordination in the Balkans was furthered at the Informal Meeting of Prime Ministers from Southeast Europe (July 21-31, 2003) in Salzburg, where the heads of government of Bosnia, Bulgaria, Croatia, Romania, Montenegro and Serbia discussed common initiatives for their EU accession (Southeast European Times, July 31, 2003). Prior to that meeting the Presidents of Albania, Bulgaria and Macedonia met in the Albanian town of Pogradec (July 13-14, 2003) to consider joint efforts for attracting funding for the construction of Transport Corridor VIII linking their countries (Focus, July 13, 2003).
It is these post-1999 developments that suggest the emergence of an elite security community in the Balkans. It is a type of a nascent security community that promotes a framework for strategic interaction between the EU and Balkan state elites, through which the EU advances its interests and values, while building regional consensus on the objectives of policy-making. In other words, to paraphrase the classic definition of security communities, it is a pluralistic community of decision-making elites, who have dependable (peaceful) expectations of each other's policy behaviour. The EU's power of attraction (i.e. normative coercion) maintains a broad agreement on the fundamental rules of such contractual relations. The interaction among elites within this context promotes the transfer of "European" standards to their policy-making. The rationale seems to be that in this way the "countries of the region...play their part in explaining to their populations the realities and mechanics of a closer association with the European Union. This would also foster the necessary sense of ownership of the process" (EC, SAP—Second Annual Report, 2003; emphasis added). In such a pattern of relations, the Balkan state elites are bound by the norms of prescribed behaviour (which includes regional cooperation) or risk exclusion. Thus, the experiences from following prescribed patterns of behaviour inform the decision-making process and modify its framework towards expected habits and policy outcomes.
In a nutshell (as Figure 1 indicates), the elite security community framework establishes the institutions and procedures, which frame the decision-making of state elites. In this way, by socialising the policy-process of the Balkan states to prescribed standards, the EU expects to obviate the possibility of a relapse into ethnic strife. The socialisation process acquaints elites not only with the priority areas and standards of prospective membership, but also with one another, which facilitates the development of predictable policy-making. The EU's assumption is that in both applicant states as well as those preparing for candidacy, the "major role in explaining enlargement...should come from the national government" (EC, Explaining Europe's Enlargement, 2002). The socialising presence of the EU ensures a degree of reciprocity, (i.e. predictability) of the policy-making of neighbouring states—i.e. they are also going through a similar process. Thus, the issue of mistrust is being pre-empted by the dynamics of EU conditionality, which promotes consensus-building among state elites and indicates the first step towards establishing trust-like behaviour among regional elites, (i.e. elite security community).
In Lieu of a Conclusion
It has been suggested, the aim of this article is to tease out the effect of the order-promoting normative power of the EU in its post-1999 involvement in the Balkans. The instances of Bulgaria and Croatia suggest that the EU's power of attraction facilitates the development of peaceful and cooperative relations in the Balkans. It is corroborated by its ability to maintain predictable, and (mostly) peaceful policy-making in the region. Therefore, the article concludes that the current EU measures encourage the institution of a security community-type of relations in the Balkans.
In spite of the apparent benefits and achievements of the EU's post-1999 approach to the Balkans, it has some shortcomings: mainly the sidelining (as Figure 1 suggests) of public opinion. The main objective of the EU was (and still is) the maintenance of predictable patterns of regional decision-making. However, such practice has significantly hampered the socialisation of regional societies along the prescribed norms. Nevertheless, this study contends that such normative discrepancy is not inconsistent (in the short-to medium-term) with the objective of order-promotion in the region. The EU-maintained elite-socialisation introduces processes and institutions that lock decision-making in to predictable (non-belligerent) patterns. In other words, the establishment of security community patterns ensures the direction (regardless of the speed) of policy-practice.
At the same time, this study would also like to draw attention to the inference that perhaps the only significant impact that the EU has on policy-making within the framework of a wider Europe is through the power of attraction of enlargement rather than its CFSP. The opening statement by Hans van den Broek in fact suggests such a realisation, regardless of the fact that the DG External Relations rather than the DG Enlargement still formally administers the SAP. His words reflect a degree of "experiential learning" (Jack Levy in International Organisation, 48(2), 1994) on behalf of the EU as a result of its experience in both the Western Balkans and the CEE before 1999. As current developments in the Balkans seem to reveal, the EU has maintained the steadfastness of its agency by reinforcing that the required transformations are (i) crucial for the promotion of its framework of appropriateness, and, thence (ii) granting full inclusion into its structures. Such "actorness" was lacking in its pre-1999 approaches. As it has already been mentioned the EU's recognition of appropriate decision-making (through the inclusion in the accession process) provides it with the legitimacy to maintain the direction of the socialisation process. The examples of both Bulgaria and Croatia confirm that initially elites might comply because of rational cost-benefit analysis, but gradually, they begin internalising the required standards and procedures. Such development is also maintained by the institutional culture introduced through the EU-socialisation process, which ensures the belief of elites in the appropriateness of the promoted norms. Therefore, the expectation is that the burgeoning Balkan elite security community can mitigate the effects of regional instability deriving from the threat of violent conflict.
Kazakhstan and Uzbekistan have held parliamentary elections this year while Tajikistan will have a new parliament and Kyrgyzstan will choose a new president next year. It is, however, the geopolitical, economic and social factors present in the republics, especially in the wake of the "Revolution of Roses" in Georgia, that combine to present a tough challenge to the United States which has clearly embarked on a high-profile role designed to dominate the strategic region largely at the expense of the Russian Federation.
Ever since Washington turned its attention to the Central Asian republics and the Caucasus, which hold the largest energy reserves in the world, as its next area of dominance after the Middle East following the collapse of the Soviet Union, American oil conglomerates moved in by taking up major stakes, and US diplomacy began to unfurl its wider aim of curbing Russian influence by following twin ostensible goals—the strengthening of democracy and civil society in the region, and facilitating the flow of Central Asian and Caspian Sea energy sources to the West independently of Russia and Iran. The US thrust into the region received a boost many times over with the launch of the global war against terrorism, which soon co-opted the international efforts to fight drug trafficking. All these factors proved to be handy for a steadily burgeoning US role in the region.
These developments took place against the backdrop of the internal instabilities in the Central Asian republics and in the Caucasian republics of Azerbaijan and Georgia. The breakaway republics passed through political turmoil and economic decline while undergoing the pangs of a sudden withdrawal of the traditional Soviet dominance in governance; in fact, the travails of an unfamiliar independence from the Soviet Union continue till today in more ways than one.
There is a general agreement that the Central Asian and Caucasian republics have succeeded in holding on to their territorial integrity with a relative degree of political stability despite the stupendous challenges they faced in the wake of their independence, not ignoring the five years of severe civil strife in Tajikistan, and the continuing movements for ethnic independence and autonomy. The political system the countries have adopted for ensuring political stability, that of the executive presidency, has, however, turned out to be largely a mockery of democracy sometimes verging on an undisguised form of autocracy. Besides, political power continues to be concentrated in the hands of former communists and former communist parties and the political environment, though vastly different from the Soviet era, reminds one strongly of Soviet-style manoeuvres, subterfuges and frequent subversions of the rule of law, including flagrant manipulations of the judicial system. While elections are held regularly, all the countries have been governed virtually by the same coteries led by the same heads of state. While Azerbaijan has opted for the first-ever dynastic rule with Ilham Aliyev, the son of the former President Haider Aliyev, succeeding him in a typical landslide electoral victory, there is adequate evidence to suggest that other regimes in the region are quietly pursuing similar objectives.
In such pursuits, the regimes bank with considerable confidence on their ability to sustain internal stability irrespective of the political, economic and social costs. In the dramatically changed international environment, however, the global war against terrorism and the US-led campaign for greater democracy and liberalisation of economy have served to focus increasing attention on the internal situations in Central Asia and the Caucasus for a reason which is diametrically opposite to the interest shown in Iraq.
While Washington chose to pulverise Iraq in order to get rid of the Saddam Hussein government, it used kid gloves to handle the strategically important Central Asia and the Caucasus. Clearly, the promotion of genuine democracy is not a priority for the Americans here, though there is a quiet hope that democracy will eventually come. The priorities in the region are apparently different; the oil and gas-rich and geopolitically significant countries offer the twin possibilities of ensuring a vast, virtually captive energy-supply source, supplementary to the Middle East, and a potentially effective means of restraining the resurgence of Russia as an economic power.
To appreciate the US policy towards the region, however, it is necessary to take note of the official position. In a detailed presentation of the policy, Assistant Secretary for European and Eurasian Affairs, Beth Jones told the University of Montana on April 10, 2003, that:
We are working with several local partners—NGOs, civil society organisations, and journalists—to help build democracy from the grassroots up. Under repressive conditions—such as those existing in Turkmenistan—these efforts are mostly aimed at keeping alive hope for long-term change in other countries, though, civil society is increasingly able to act as a real counterweight to arbitrary government behaviour. We saw examples of this in Kyrgyzstan, where NGO pressure led to (the) revocation of a presidential decree limiting freedom of the press. In Tajikistan, the government approved the application of Radio One, the first non-state-run station in Dushanbe. Also in Tajikistan, the government has registered new political parties, simplified political party registration, and made it easier for civil society NGOs to register, leading to an explosion in their numbers. The issue of human rights is, however, the toughest nut to crack. For example, Uzbekistan has serious problems. In Central Asia, poor economic and social conditions are contributing to the appeal of extremist Islam in the volatile Ferghana Valley. Our battle against corruption throughout the region has begun to reap rewards. For example, the United States and the Kyrgyz Government addressed corruption in academia where Communist Party or government influence used to determine admission to universities. At the request of the Kyrgyz Ministry of Education, we developed and funded the first nationwide testing programme for university scholarships. In June 2002, the National Merit Scholarship Test was administered in three languages (Kyrgyz, Uzbek and Russian) to over 14,000 high school scholars. Nowhere else in the former Soviet Union do students receive university scholarships solely on merit. This is a remarkable achievement and has opened opportunities for young people.
Beth Jones continued that:
A thriving opposition is a problem in all the countries in the region. This has been evident even in two of the most successful countries in carrying out reforms, Kazakhstan and Kyrgyzstan. Kazakhstan has selectively charged and convicted key opposition leaders for corruption and intimidated independent media outlets and journalists associated with the political opposition. Kyrgyzstan's imprisonment of an opposition parliamentarian led to violence and great instability and recent constitutional changes have tended to concentrate even more power in the hands of the executive. We are working closely with both these governments to turn around these negative trends.
She further added that:
There are serious human rights problems throughout the countries in Central Asia and the Caucasus. For example, in Turkmenistan, we have witnessed a sharp crackdown on the political opposition and society in general since the attack on President Niyazov's motorcade in November. The Government of Turkmenistan arrested a number of political opponents of President Niyazov, all of whom he alleges were involved in the plot. The Turkmen Government did not allow an independent observer from the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe to visit Turkmenistan to investigate claims of human rights violations, including torture, associated with this crackdown. Despite this bleak picture, we firmly believe that change will come in Turkmenistan. We will not abandon the Turkmen people (Paper entitled "US Engagement in Central Asia and the Caucasus: Staying Our Course Along the Silk Road", Bureau of Public Affairs, US Department of State website, www.state.gov).
When these words are viewed against the Bush administration's harangue on the Saddam Hussein regime, continuing even in the post-Saddam Hussein period, Washington's deliberate patronisation of the Central Asian and Caucasian regimes stands out in a sharp contrast. Since the US administration, in both the Clinton and Bush Jr. periods, has chosen to champion democracy all over the world, it is this dichotomy of glossing over autocracy in the five Central Asian republics and in Azerbaijan (Georgia was included in the category but is no longer so after the ouster of the Eduard Shevardnadze government in November 2003 and the emergence of the pro-US Mikhail Saakashvili regime) that raises uncomfortable questions not only for the US and its allies but also for the larger world community. These questions are indeed being highlighted during the ongoing parliamentary and presidential elections in Central Asia.
It is important to note that in spite of political repression and governmental corruption, coupled with a very poor human rights record, in these states—now bywords in the international community—their governments continue to enjoy virtually unstinted support from all sorts of countries, including India, dictated no doubt by national interests. The all-round support for the regimes is dictated by the vast partially-explored and largely unexplored energy reserves of these countries and their strategic geopolitical locations, as also by their well-proven secularism. The latter factor ensures that these countries will continue to be counted among the strongest supporters of the global war against terrorism.
The US, however, attracts the maximum criticism for soft-pedaling the essentially anti-democratic regimes by virtue of being the solitary superpower and a self-declared champion of democracy, human rights and justice. The criticism has been further fuelled by various manifestations of the contradictions inherent in using different yardsticks for determining autocratic rule. When the reasons for such behaviour are exposed thoroughly, the cynicism of critics around the world is naturally further intensified.
Since such an unvarnished interventionist role with a clear objective of enhancing US interests is being enacted in the very backyard of Russia, in Central Asia and the Caucasus, it is but natural that Moscow has begun to respond aggressively in order to counter Washington effectively and quickly. The result, as many are saying, is a new great power rivalry in the region with unforeseeable consequences.
As Dr Mehrdad Haghayegi, a political scientist at Southwest Missouri State University, said at a conference sponsored by the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars and the Kennan Institute, held in Washington DC, on September 23, 2003, "The United States has made a significant contribution to the intensification of that rivalry. Basically, you have Russia on the offensive (in Central Asia) partly because of the US pursuit of unilateralism."
Todd Diamond, an American writer, wrote:
The Bush administration's strategic approach in Central Asia has come under criticism from regional experts. The general perception that the United States has acted solely out of self-interest since the September 11 terrorist tragedy has prompted other, regional powers in Central Asia, notably Russia, to take countermeasures, creating an unsettling dynamic. Perhaps the starkest evidence of the US-Russian rivalry in Central Asia is in Kyrgyzstan, where both Washington and Moscow have established military bases outside Bishkek (Eurasia Insight, October 1, 2003).
A scholar of the region, Ehsan Ahrari, wrote on January 18, 2004:
. . . despite the dismantlement of the Taliban rule, the US military campaign in Afghanistan was not finished. But this is a mere technicality for staying in Central Asia, as is now envisioned in Moscow. Fact of the matter is, even if the United States at one time wanted to pull out of Central Asia, it has now concluded to the contrary. In accordance with the grand strategy of fighting [the] global war on terrorism, the Bush administration has adopted a new policy regarding the global basing of its forces, which reflects its overall policy of force projection, transformation and global rapid reaction. The specifics of this policy [require] that a number of bases in different parts of the world would be used to deploy rapid response forces in order to deal with regional contingencies of major and minor import. Central Asia and South Caucasus figure prominently in this force positioning policy.
Examining the impact of this policy on Russia, Ahrari said, "The foremost implication . . . is that Russia must examine this US grand strategy and calculate on a continuing basis how it affects its own strategic presence and interests in its immediate neighbourhood." He underlined one significant factor that is clearly working in favour of the American strategy, namely the desire of the Central Asian and Caucasian countries to exploit the expanding American presence in order to keep Russia under reasonable check so that the optimum benefits from the rivalry between the two powers be available to them. He wrote:
The Russian leaders know only too well, that given America's substantial military and economic primacy, countries of Central Asia and South Caucasus readily prefer the presence of American forces within their borders. Russians are painfully aware of the fact that countries of those regions also prefer American force presence because it will not jeopardise their sovereignty, and it will serve as a guarantee against any potential Russian shenanigans aimed at destabilising them. (Znet/Terror War)
The author of The New Great Game: Blood and Oil in Central Asia (Grove Press, 2004), Lutz Kleveman writes:
This new "Great Game" also explains the Bush administration's intense strategic interest in Georgia, as the country lies on the route of the gigantic $3.8 billion Baku-Tbilisi-Ceyhan pipeline from the Azerbaijani capital Baku to the Turkish Mediterranean port of Ceyhan. Currently under construction by a British Petroleum-led international consortium, the pipeline is scheduled to start pumping crude in 2005. Keen to diversify America's oil supplies and to strengthen the ex-Soviet states' independence from Moscow, the Bush administration strongly supports the Baku-Ceyhan pipeline because it circumvents America's rivals Russia and Iran, which offer alternative transit routes across their territories.
Recent developments, however, indicate that the US-Russia rivalry is no longer confined only to intruding on each other's spheres of influence. American advances into the region have begun to endanger Russia's economic rejuvenation and it has clearly become essential for Moscow to confront American threats and secure its backyard with determination.
While the highly controversial arrest of Russia's richest oil magnate Mikhail Khodorkovsky was widely covered by the world press, conveying the impression that President Putin had proved to be too intolerant of a weighty critic of his policies, the background to the arrest reveals the extent of the American-Russian tussle for supremacy. It is important to remember that the arrest of the oil magnate brought about two interventions in his favour by US President George W. Bush Jr.
The world press, however, never bothered to find out the actual reason for President Bush's intervention. The intervention came because Washington realised that Mr Khodorkovsky's arrest would eventually jeopardise its carefully laid plan to reduce the Russian Government's influence on the Russian oil and gas exports. If the American plan had succeeded, Russia would have lost a substantial portion of its main revenue earnings, apart from the subsequent loss in political leverage. Mr Khodorkovsky had indeed planned to sell a 40 per cent stake in his company Yukos, Russia's biggest oil producer, to ExxonMobile or ChevronTexaco. President George Bush was so much involved personally in the forthcoming deal that he had sent his father, Bush Sr., to Moscow to ensure that the deal went through. Apart from giving a major stake to a US oil conglomerate in the largest Russian oil company, the deal would have had the effect of converting Russia into a major non-OPEC source of crude which would also have been free of government control. President Putin, therefore, opted for the democratic way of neutralising the situation by bringing in charges of fraud and tax evasion against Mr Khodorkovsky and he tasted sweet revenge when Mr Bush's two telephone calls came. While rejecting the American suggestion for releasing Mr Khodorkovsky, he pointed out that the Yukos case was no different from the Enron case, in which the Bush administration was similarly pursuing fraud and tax evasion charges. (Vladimir Radyuhin, The Hindu, February 11, 2004).
Reports from Moscow speak of a widening public suspicion of American designs, a major factor for the popularity of President Vladimir Putin, who is perceived to be matching American wiles with equal finesse. Reports indicate that President Bush could not respond effectively when President Putin told him following his intervention in the Khodorkovsky case that the Yukos affair was similar to the Enron case and that the richest Russian would certainly stand trial in open court. The champion of democracy could not obviously intervene when democracy was being observed meticulously in Russia!
This brings us back to Washington's deliberate indifference to a number of human rights abuses being perpetrated by the autocratic regimes of Central Asia and the South Caucasus. As a matter of fact, it is fair to guess what would have been the American attitude towards Georgia if the former President Shevardnadze had proved to be as pro-American and allergic to Russia as his successor is said to be. Would the "revolution of roses" have happened then? Even though little has been said on the subject, it is now conclusively established that in a remarkable repeat of the manner in which the former Yugoslav President Slobodan Milosevic fell on October 5, 2000, the shadowy American presence was also behind the toppling of Shevardnadze (Apratim Mukarji and Dr K. G. Tyagi, eds., Assertive Democracy: Transition in Yugoslavia—Selected Documents).
The fall of Shevardnadze, in fact, continues to reverberate in the region. He and Milosovic were clearly unpopular and unwanted towards the end of their respective terms. By the same token, however, there is little reason to hope that similarly autocratic and corrupt leaders will not continue to enjoy their own tenures. Judging by the deliberate dichotomy being practised by Washington and within the dynamics of the heightening American-Russian rivalry, these presidents appear to be blessed with indefinite continuity. As the parliamentary and presidential elections in the four Central Asian republics come to pass, the US in particular will be increasingly called upon to answer uncomfortable questions regarding the ultimate validity of its unbridled pursuit of self-interest, forcing Russia in the process to play an increasingly aggressive and effective role in the region.