Category: Balkans

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Amexica and other reflections on border wars

There was a time not long ago when pro-globalization authors argued that the forces of international economic integration would soon make national boundaries redundant. Recently, others have suggested the opposite: that globalization is making national boundaries, at least those between rich and poor societies, all the more impenetrable. In fact, reality is more complex and more interesting than any of the latest grand theories would suggest. When it comes to policing their borders, rich societies face real choices; these choices can produce very different outcomes. Comparing the choices made in recent years by the member states of the EU with those made by the US has been the topic of a seminar held this week at the Harvard Kennedy School of Government. The seminar, co-organised by ESI, featured Europeans, Americans and Mexicans, lecturers on Mexican politics at Harvard, experts in border management and technologies, columnists, officials working for Mexican institutions, and private sector representatives. Our opening question was: can anything be learned from comparing the EU and the US approaches to border management? Our hypothesis, based on our work in Southeast and Eastern Europe, is that there is plenty that the EU and the US can learn from each other. Joseph Nevi - Operation Gatekeeper Let me start with the conventional wisdom embraced by many of those who study trends along the US-Mexican border since the early 1990s. In a world without strong boundaries, migration pressures cannot be contained, the argument goes. In response to illegal migration pressures and the threat of organised crime, the militarisation of boundaries between rich and poor countries becomes the natural political response to popular feelings of insecurity. As Joseph Nevi writes in Operation Gatekeeper – The Rise of the “Illegal Alien” and the Making of the US-Mexico Boundary,

“Intensified policing efforts are taking place along a variety of international boundaries between South Africa and Mozambique, Spain (Ceuta and Melilla) and Morocco, and Germany and Poland. Such efforts are parts of a war of sorts by relatively wealthy countries against ‘illegal’ or unauthorized immigrants. Yet at the same time, these same countries are increasingly opening their boundaries to the flows of capital, finance, manufactured goods and services.”

This is only an apparent contradiction, Nevin argues. It is natural that rich states seek to increase the benefits and limit the costs of transnational integration. This then leads to the creation of fortresses (‘Fortress America’ or ‘Fortress Europe’) and ‘gated communities’ of wealthy societies. A good illustration of this trend is, of course, the increase in the number of border agents in the US, which has gone from 450 in 1925 to 1,110 in 1950, 1,803 in 1975 and 9,212 in 2000 (Operation Gatekeeper, p. 197). Edward Schumacher Matos estimates that today it is close to 20,000. What these numbers show is that the effort to control the southern boundary of the US is a relatively recent phenomenon. One hundred years ago there was no serious concern about unauthorized entry across the US-Mexican border. Along the Arizona-Mexico border in 1900, one expert notes, “there was no need for coyotes, guides to sneak illegals through the border; there was no border markings (save a few stone pillars here and there), no immigration control and thus no illegals.” (OG, p.26) Today, the situation has changed considerably. The stretch of boundary between San Diego and Tijuana, writes Nevins, “is perhaps the world’s most policed international divide between two nonbelligerent countries.” For unauthorized migrants, the US-Mexican border is harder to cross now than at any point in history. At the same time, trade between the US and Mexico has grown sharply. Increasing commerce and more militarised boundaries – in an age of global insecurity, claims Nevins, such is the global trend. Except, of course, that this is not the case. Not only is there no militarised border between Germany and Poland; today, there is no physical boundary at all. When Poland joined the EU’s Schengen zone in 2007, border installations were dismantled. When Romania joins Schengen sometime in 2011, Germany’s external boundary will de facto shift from Poland’s Eastern border to the Prut River between Romania and Moldova. (To be admitted into Schengen, Romania has had to make significant investments in its ability to control its Eastern boundary.) Having crossed the Prut, you will be able to travel all the way to Gibraltar in southern Spain. One of the most interesting trends in the past year has been the acceleration of reforms in small and poor Moldova (the poorest country in Europe), carried out in response to a European promise of increasing freedom of movement for Moldovan passport holders. The promise is simple, and it has been made to other countries before: if Moldova carries out reforms that enhance the ability of Moldovan institutions (police, border guard, the ministries of justice and interior) to partner with EU institutions in fighting common threats, the EU will lift its visa requirements. Turn yourself into a partner, the logic goes, and your citizens can travel to the EU much more easily. It is important to underline that every one of these steps has been controversial, debated, and held up by concerns about security (this includes the next big step, the expansion of the Schengen area to Romania and Bulgaria, currently put into question by France). Likewise, the debate on visa free travel for Turkish citizens promises to be intense. At every stage, Europe’s border revolution has been contested; and at no stage can further progress simply be taken for granted. However, those who focus on the political debate of the moment would do well to look at the trajectory of Europe’s border revolution. Very soon after Schengen was created by five European countries in 1985, concerns increased in France. The fact that the idea of a borderless EU core (which led to Schengen) had been a Franco-German brainchild did not stop France from delaying implementation of the Schengen convention for many years even after it officially entered into force in September 1993, with French leaders citing concerns about the security implications of letting people enter France from Belgium or the Netherlands as late as in 1996. The fact that Italy had been a founding member of the EU did not make it any easier for it to join Schengen: the process actually lasted for over a decade, from Italy’s application in 1987 to its eventual entry in 1997. It is also useful to reflect on what has happened in Albania in the past two decades. At our seminar at Harvard, I began my presentation with a video clip of Albania’s collapse into chaos in 1997:

Anarchy in 1997. © 2008 pre tv. All rights reserved.

Remember, I told participants, until recently Albania was known throughout Europe only for its total collapse in the 1990s, the illegal migration of hundreds of thousands of its people within a few years to neighbouring Italy and Greece, and the vast profits made by organised crime syndicates, which controlled the speedboats that crossed the Adriatic by night. Now, however, many Albanian smugglers are out of a job: at the end of 2010 Albanian citizens will have obtained the right to travel to the EU visa free.

To qualify, Albanians had to carry out far-reaching reforms, however. And which country threatened to vote against Albania receiving visa free travel at the very end? You might have guessed it: France. And yet, after registering its concerns, France went along in the end.

It is not only Albanians but also the citizens of Bosnia-Herzegovina who will enjoy the right to visa free travel in coming days for the first time in almost two decades. Bosnia-Herzegovina? In the early 1990s Ed Vulliamy was a reporter there, covering the country’s collapse into war, and then writing up his experiences in Seasons in Hell. At the time, Bosnia was the scene of massive ethnic cleansing, genocidal violence and collapsing institutions, and Ed’s book captured the sheer horror of it in Central Bosnia:

“By the middle of the Saturday afternoon, more than 30,000 escapees from the bloody mayhem left behind in Jajce – and the pitiful ramshackle remnants of an army, some 7,000 soldiers -had crossed the new, retreated Bosnian front at Karaula and now jammed every square of Travnik … The soldiers wandered aimlessly among them and their beasts and wagons, as lost and destitute as the civilians. It was like some woeful landscape from Tolstoy, or a war from another time: the life of a country town and its surrounding villages uprooted and driven out by war, with all its flotsam and jetsam. And another 15,000 were still out there, trapped by gunfire on the front … “

Since then Bosniaks have returned in significant numbers to Jajce; Travnik has a multiethnic police; and Bosnia’s crises are political and non-violent. Bosnia’s crime rate is below that of the Baltic states (which joined the EU in 2004); its police forces work; and its citizens feel safe crossing the former frontlines. These lines – which many had expected in 1995 to harden into Cyprus-style militarised internal boundaries – have since become basically invisible to the traveller. A decade ago, Bosnia did not control its own boundaries. Since then it has received ample praise (including by the US State Department) for its record on fighting human trafficking.

Seasons in Hell Amexica – War Along the Borderline

Ed Vulliamy: from Bosnia to Amexica

I mention Ed Vulliamy not only because his book is a useful reminder how far Bosnia (and the Balkans) have come since the 1990s, but also because Ed has since moved to the US and written a book about a very different war. As he tells his readers in Amexica – War Along the Borderline (2010), “I have been a reporter on many battlefields, yet nowhere has violence been so strange and commanded such revulsion and compulsion as it does along the borderline.” The borderline Ed writes about is that between the US and Mexico; the war he refers to is the “narco war” wreaking havoc on communities from the Pacific to the Gulf of Mexico.

While Europe has dismantled and made more porous thousands of kilometres of borders (by taking apart the Iron Curtain and the Berlin Wall, abolishing border controls within the Schengen system, lifting visa requirements for Central Europeans, extending Schengen to the East, and, most recently, lifting visa requirements for the Balkans), the US has done the opposite. As Ed writes,

“In 1994 the United States initiated Operation Gatekeeper in San Diego, Operation Hold the Line in El Paso, and another similar operation in the Rio Grande Valley. Since then … the border has become, and continues to become, a military front line, along which run more than six hundred miles of fence enhanced by guard posts, searchlights, and heavily armed patrols. In places where there is no fence, there are infrared cameras, sensors, National Guard soldiers and SWAT teams from other, specialist law enforcement columns, like the Drug Enforcement Administration … from the other side, apart from the tidal wave of drugs and migrants smuggled across the border, there are the killings …”

Vulliamy takes his readers to Ciudad Juarez, “the world’s most murderous city”, on the Mexican side of the border opposite El Paso. Juarez saw 2,657 people killed in 2009 (the total number of people killed in Mexico since President Calderon launched a military offensive against the drug cartels in December 2006 has now exceeded 23,000).

Vulliamy notes that one in five Mexicans either visits, or works in, the US at one time in his life. He describes the economy that has developed around the narco-trade and the gun shows in Arizona and Texas. He estimates that there are more than 6,700 arms dealers within a half day’s drive from the border in the US (three dealers per mile of frontier) and that between 90-95 percent of weapons seized in Mexico’s narco war originate from the US. As a June 2009 report by the US Government Accountability Office notes, although the violence in Mexico “has raised concern, there has not been a coordinated US government effort to combat the illicit arms trafficking to Mexico that US and Mexican government officials agree is fueling much of the drug-related violence.” Ed also writes about the paradoxical effect of the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA), which has seen business ties increase and the border harden.

Death in North America

Not long ago every book or article about the Balkans started with references to killings and cults of irrational violence. The same is true today in descriptions of the US-Mexican border. One book Operation Gatekeeper starts with a description of the owner of a gas station/cafe in Ocotilio Wells, 90 miles east of San Diego in California:

“On one bulletin board he had tacked up photographs of seven or eight cadavers: all of them young Mexican men he had discovered in the arroyos between Ocotillo Wells and the nearby Border. … “They was all shot. In the back.”

Dead in their Tracks - Crossing America's Desert Borderlands in the New Era

Another book by John Annerino, Dead in their Tracks – Crossing America’s Desert Borderlands in the New Era (2009) includes a “comprehensive border death toll” (2003: 336 people died trying to cross the US-Mexico border; 2004: 214; 2005: 241; … 2007: 237). It opens with a glossary of key terms for the border:

“I have used the terms bajadores (bandits, take-down crews or kidnappers), bandidos (border bandits), burreros(drug mules), caza-migrantes (migrant hunters), contrabandistas (smugglers), coyotes (people smugglers), narcotraficantes (drug traffickers), pistoleros (gunmen), polleros (“chicken dealers” or people smugglers) and raiteros (drivers who shuttle imigrants from pickup points).”

Annerino also points out just how lucrative smuggling people across the border has become, describing the scene in the Mexican border town of Altar:

“This afternoon I count roughly 500 people walking the streets and church plaza, so I start running the numbers … If the crossing fee is closer to $ 2,500 per person, or the coyote increases the $ 1,500 fee to $ 2,500 or more during the border crossing which I am told is common, get out your calculator and do the new border math. A recent Associated Press report put Arizona’s human smuggling revenues at $ 2.5 billion a year.”

Across the Wire - Life and Hard Times on the Mexican Border

And as another author, Luis Alberto Urrea, describes in Across the Wire – Life and Hard Times on the Mexican Border, focusing on the Tijuana region, paying this amount does not guarantee safe passage:

“If the coyote does not turn on you suddenly with a gun and take everything from you himself, you might still be attacked by the rateros. If the rateros don’t get you, there are roving zombies that can smell you from fifty yards downwind – these are the junkies who hunt in shambling packs. If the junkies somehow miss you there are the pandilleros – gang-bangers from either side of the border who are looking for some bloody fun. They adore “tacking off” illegals because it is the perfect crime: there is no way they can ever be caught”

Now, beyond the sheer human tragedy in all these descriptions, there is a poignant policy question raised by all these accounts: is this border regime, are these changes – the militarisation that has taken place in recent decades – actually in the interests of those in the US who are concerned about security? Just take a look at a recent article in the New York Times from summer 2010 for another horrific description of trends along the border (The Mexican Border’s Lost World):

“Never a particularly pretty place, the border is at its ugliest right now, with violence, tensions and temperatures all… on high. Once thought of by Americans as just a naughty playland, the divide between the United States and Mexico is now most associated with the awful things that happen here. In towns from the Pacific to the Gulf of Mexico, drug gangs brutalize each other, tourists risk getting caught in the cross-fire, and Mexican laborers crossing the desert northward brave both the bullets and the heat. Last week, a federal judge in Arizona blocked portions of new far-reaching immigration restrictions that she said went way too far in ousting Mexicans. Meanwhile, National Guard troops are preparing to fill in as border sentries. All these developments are unfolding in what used to be a meeting place between two countries, a zone of escape where cultures merged, albeit often amid copious amounts of tequila. The potential casualties at the border now include a way of life, generations old, well-documented but decaying by the day.”

After all, European citizens are as concerned about illegal migrants as those in the US. There are right wing parties in many European countries. The amount of illegal drugs entering the EU is comparable (in fact, according to UN figures, even higher) to those that enter the US.

And yet, in a process driven by interior ministers and focused on increasing security, the EU’s response to concerns about events on the other side of its Eastern border has been very different from that pursued by their US counterparts. This has been the European border revolution of the past three decades, which ESI has set out to analyse and understand.

This was not a project of humanitarians … it was a conscious decision that new thinking was required to ensure security in an age of globalisation. It was a process controlled by interior ministers, in which critical questions were asked at every stage. As French Foreign Minister, Herve de Charette, put it in September 1995, explaining France’s unwillingness to lift its controls at the Belgian (!) frontier:

“If it seems, as it is the case, that our citizens’ security depends also on the border controls, it is understood that we have to keep them.”

In the end, however, the dramatic transformation of Europe’s border regimes continued.

Is any of it relevant to debates in North America? Certainly the consensus at the Harvard seminar was that it is worth exploring in more depth. At the very least it suggests that even under conditions of globalisation policy makers have choices – and that there is more than one way in which to think about creating secure borders.

PS: Next steps forward

The Harvard seminar turned into a very informative meeting, and out of it emerged an agenda for further steps.

First, it is necessary to establish a network of scholars and policymakers in the US and in Mexico who had worked on the border issues, including those who had done any comparative work. (If you read this and if you are interested in becoming part of such a network please write to mary_hilderbrand@harvard.edu and Gerald_Knaus@hks.harvard.edu)

Alexander Schellong, Rodrigo Garza Zorrilla, Edward Schumacher-Matos, Mary Hilderbrand, Omar del Valle Colosio, Philipp Mueller, Gerald Knaus, Pedro Lichtle, Jose Luis Mendez, Javier Lichtle, Adriana Villasenor
Alexander Schellong, Rodrigo Garza Zorrilla, Edward Schumacher-Matos, Mary Hilderbrand, Omar del Valle Colosio, Philipp Mueller, Gerald Knaus, Pedro Lichtle, Jose Luis Mendez, Javier Lichtle, Adriana Villasenor

Second, there is a need to present the complex politics and security logic behind the recent EU border revolution; this was not after all a humanitarian transformation, nor was it at any moment easy. In fact, the revolution is far from over, as the dramatic events in recent months along the Greek-Turkish border have made clear (not to mention the EU’s Southern border). How will the EU respond to the challenge of Turkey when it comes to freedom of movement and travel?

Third, there is a need to better understand the US policy process, the politics as well as the technocratic arguments which most shape the debate.

Fourth and most importantly there is a need to understand how the current status quo along the US-Mexican border is working and how it is failing; and for whom it is working and who is losing.

Particularly the comparison in relations between the US and Mexico and the EU and Turkey promises to be revealing in what it tells us about US and European soft power, about the choices facing rich countries and about the politics behind border management. For more, watch this space; and stay tuned to the ESI “Border Revolution website”.

A few facts as background to inform a serious debate on comparative border experiences. Look at GDP per capita (in PPP) in 2009 according to the IMF. On the one side of the border wealthy countries:

USA (46,000 USD per capita)
Germany (34,000 USD per capita)

On the other side poorer countries:

Poland (18,000 USD pc), which has joined the EU in 2004
Mexico (14,000 USD pc)
Turkey (12,000 USD pc)
Romania (12,000 USD pc), which has joined the EU in 2007
Albania (7,000) USD pc), which has visa free travel since end 2010

As for the relative size of the populations concerned:

USA: 311 million vs. Mexico: 112 million
EU 15: 398 million
EU 27: 500 million
Poland: 38 million (visa free access since the early 1990s)
Eastern Balkans (Romania/Bulgaria): 30 million (members of the EU since 2007)
Western Balkans: 25 million (visa free travel since late 2009 and 2010)
Turkey: 73 million

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Minna Jarvenpaa: Interventions from Bosnia to Afghanistan

Later this week – on Friday at 3 pm in Haus der Musik in Vienna – ESI and Erste Stiftung will organise a public debate on lessons from internationnal interventions.

One of the panelists, Minna Jarvenpaa,  is an ESI founding member who was already present at our creation in 1999 in Sarajevo.  She is also both a previous and future ESI senior analyst – but managed to squeeze in between time advising Martti Ahtisaari, Carl Bildt (in Bosnia), Michael Steiner (in Bosnia and Kosovo), the British ream preparing their Afghanistan operations and most recently UNAMA in Kabul.  Few people know more about state building efforts in the past two decades than Minna does, having worked on the issue in Bosnia, Kosovo and Afghanistan.

This summer I was happy that Minna joined me –  busy drafting the outlines of a book on the subject of intervention that I am writing together with my friend Rory Stewart –  for a few days of brainstorming on the shores of the Bosporus.  In the end we hardly left the cafes along the sahilyolu, the coastal road, in Rumeli Hisari as we tried to make sense of our various experiences.  There and then we also refined ideas for a future ESI project on the subject with Minna back on board – how to learn some of the right lessons from the big interventions of the past 20 years relevant for the future EU foreign policy.

To participate in this exchange – in particular if you are unable to join us in Vienna later this week – please find below some thoughts which Minna prepared in anticipation of our panel.

MINNA JARVENPAA: INTERVENTIONS FROM BOSNIA TO AFGHANISTAN

Special contribution for Vienna Seminar, November 2010

The story from Bosnia to Afghanistan, over the last fifteen years, is of increasingly complex international interventions. The initial aims were simply to halt ethnic cleansing, remove abusive regimes and stop wars. But since the mid-90s the international community has struggled to build up state institutions and spread democracy and development in places like Afghanistan, Bosnia, Congo, East Timor, Iraq, Kosovo, Sierra Leone, Somalia and Sudan. Now, with the Afghanistan strategy in a quagmire, questions are being raised about the limits of international power. Calls to avoid foreign entanglements are growing louder, and the pendulum has started swinging back to a more isolationist position.

Despite good intentions – seeking to safeguard human rights and promote state structures that will serve the populations in war-torn countries – the international community has often made things worse. But not intervening can in some cases also be disastrous, as the dismal failure to stop genocide in Rwanda and Srebrenica in the mid-1990s demonstrated. Future foreign policies will need to strike a delicate balance, weighing the morality of preserving human rights against the unintended consequences of intervention. How are we to navigate a course between disastrous inaction and misconceived and sometimes equally disastrous action? What are the moral and ethical guideposts to follow? What can the experiences of intervention and state-building over the past fifteen years, from Bosnia to Afghanistan, tell us about how to act in the future?

The era of intervention

When the bipolar world of the Cold War collapsed, the majority of nations found themselves in agreement on a set of universal human rights. Yet the end of the Cold War also meant the end of simple answers, a lack of order and predictability in international relations. Who was responsible for protecting the human rights we all now claimed to value? How were these rights to be enforced? There was a need for a new narrative. This is when the narrative of humanitarian intervention was born, as well as the idea that the international community could keep countries from descending back into violence and launch them onto a path of stability through some form of trusteeship – or through what has come to be called state-building.

Some interventions in the 1990s succeeded beyond original expectations. After much hesitation in Washington and European capitals, the internationally brokered peace deal in Bosnia ended a brutal war, and the presence of international military forces restored a multi-ethnic democracy, without a single soldier being killed. In Kosovo, ethnic cleansing was reversed through a war that was fought solely from the air. In Afghanistan the original aim of toppling the Taliban regime was achieved within two months with small numbers of US special forces working together with the Northern Alliance, a loose union of Afghan commanders. In Sierra Leone, a limited British intervention led to the resumption of the peace process. These successes, coming after the paralysis in decision making in the face of genocides in Rwanda and Srebrenica, led to the articulation of a doctrine of humanitarian intervention: the ‘responsibility to protect’. It was morally imperative and practically possible to intervene.

Fixing failed states

However, because of the ease with which these interventions in Bosnia, Kosovo, Afghanistan and Sierra Leone fulfilled the original aim of ending war, it appeared to Western policy makers and thinkers that it was possible to do much more. There was a growing conviction that intervention should be followed by an all-inclusive state-building effort to transform the social, political and economic circumstances that had led to violent conflict. After 9/11 this view was reinforced. The fact that the Taliban government in Afghanistan had hosted Osama bin Laden was taken to suggest that failed and fragile states posed a direct threat to national and global security. To protect its own vital national security interests, the West needed to contend with state weakness far away from home

While ‘nation-building’ was initially mocked by the neo-conservatives in the US administration, an all-encompassing counter-insurgency doctrine that incorporated these ambitions was developed already under President Bush for Iraq and Afghanistan. The current strategy for Afghanistan, led by President Obama, requires tackling everything from building efficient institutions to upholding women’s rights to fighting the narcotics economy and supporting agriculture.

The rush to fix failed states has led to problematic ways of thinking about social change. It is assumed that countries are a tabula rasa where institutions can be built as a technical exercise on the basis of organisational charts and laws copied from other countries. Superficial lessons have been transferred across from one country to another. When Bosnians voted in nationalist parties in their first post-war elections, a general lesson was taken that the holding of elections should be delayed for some years after conflict. When the Kosovo Police School has hailed as a success the same curriculum was applied to Afghanistan. With General Petraeus at the helm, the military surge in Iraq is being replicated in Afghanistan, as is the search for tribal deals to turn the tide against the insurgency.

Even more worrying are the unintended consequences of deploying militaries and spending aid dollars that are also becoming increasingly apparent. In Iraq a brutal dictator has been removed at the cost of thousands upon thousands of civilian lives. Damaging war economies have developed around military deployments and aid flows, whereby Afghan, Congolese, Sudanese and other elites operate in a political marketplace where conflict is a lucrative business. To supply the NATO military bases in Afghanistan, trucking companies and private security contractors compete for patronage to gain access to multi-billion dollar contracts. Competition for access to foreign assistance projects and mineral resources fuels further conflict, as in the case of blood diamonds in Congo or inter-tribal skirmishes spurred by unequal shares in aid.

Lessons for future interventions?

As the international community stumbles along responding to crises, we have made some situations better and some much worse. Careful, prudent and limited missions to stop or contain conflict have worked, especially when carried out on the basis of political settlements or peace agreements. In other cases, with the best intentions, we have ended up supplying the resources that fuel the conflict, and have been manipulated by local power-holders who have pursued their own goals. Rather than focusing on the technical aspects of state-building, we would do well to increase our understanding of local politics. Democratisation is about power relations and about how the abuse of power can be prevented. Institutional reform can only take place if there is political will.

Instead of reaching for generic lessons, like those in “The Beginner’s Guide to Nation-Building”, published by the Rand Corporation in 2007, more time needs to be spent learning about the local context and thinking through the consequences of specific actions in that context. There is an argument that needs to be made for upholding democracy and human rights and containing conflicts, but with a realistic assessment of the opportunities and limits of international power.

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Reflections on Interventions and the EU. Short guide to a big debate

Slide presentation, discussion and public debate

Friday 26 November Haus der Musik (Vienna), 15:00

The future of liberal imperialism and European foreign policy

Minna Jarvenpää Gerald Knaus Miroslav Lajcak Rory Stewart
Minna Jarvenpaa Gerald Knaus Miroslav Lajcak Rory Stewart

ESI picture story: Liberal imperialism (2003)

In early 2010 Rory Stewart, then professor at the Harvard Kennedy School and director of the Carr Center for Human Rights Policy, and myself, a visiting fellow at the Carr Center, taught a joint weekly seminar on state building and intervention. Out of this grew an ambitious book project on the future of international interventions and an abiding interest in comparing experiences and possible lessons from the big interventions of the past two decades: Bosnia-Herzegovina, Kosovo, Iraq and Afghanistan.

On Friday, 26 November 2010, Rory will come to Vienna. We will present at a public event jointly organised by Erste Stiftung and ESI, in the context of a debate on future visions for European foreign policy.

In Vienna we will be joined by two other panelists, experienced practitioners in the field of these ambitious state building missions.

One is Minna Jarvenpaa, who worked in senior positions for OHR (Bosnia), UNMIK (Kosovo), UNAMA (Afghanistan) as well as for former Finnish president Martti Ahtisaari. The other is Miroslav Lajcak, one of the most experienced European diplomats of his generation, former Foreign Minister of Slovakia, former High Representative in Bosnia-Herzegovina, and former Special Envoy in charge of dealing with the complex issue of Montenegrin independence.

For those who want to come to this event, please check out the official invitation here.

Also, if you are interested in doing some background reading on the topic, here are five of the most interesting background texts on the subject, capturing some of the debate in the past years.


Kofi Annan

1. Kofi Annan’s “Reflections on Intervention”

Against the background of a worsening crisis in Kosovo, UN General Secretary Kofi Annan gave a visionary speech on the future of intervention in 1998.  He started out by presenting a traditional view in which “intervention” is seen as the enemy of state sovereignty and international law:

“Our century has seen many examples of the strong “intervening” – or interfering – in the affairs of the weak, from the allied intervention in the Russian civil war in 1918 to the Soviet “interventions” in Hungary, Czechoslovakia and Afghanistan. Others might refer to the American intervention in Vietnam, or even the Turkish intervention in Cyprus in 1974. The motives, and the legal justification, may be better in some cases than others, but the word “intervention” has come to be used almost as a synonym for “invasion”. Article 2.7 of the [United Nations] Charter protects national sovereignty even from intervention by the UN itself. “

And yet, he continued:

“… in other contexts the word “intervention” has a more benign meaning. We all applaud the policeman who intervenes to stop a fight, or the teacher who prevents big boys from bullying a smaller one… a doctor who never intervened would have few admirers, and probably even fewer patients. So it is in international affairs. Why was the United Nations established, if not to act as a benign policeman or doctor? Our job is to intervene…”

What is the problem of the age? Annan described a new post-cold war world of collapsing, fragile and failing states, of warlords and ethnic warfare. In such as world the biggest challenge to security is no longer states fighting each other (a danger for which forms of containment offered a traditional strategy) but fighting their own citizens; and in which states collapse from within rather than being toppled from without. And thus he proceeds to assert a new doctrine, based on the notion that the suffering that is the result of civil wars and state failure cannot leave either the UN or other state’s indifferent: and that even the UN Charter protects the sovereignty of “peoples”, not “states”:

“This year we celebrate the 50th anniversary of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights… the General Assembly had adopted the Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide, which puts all states under an obligation to “prevent and punish” this most heinous of crimes. It also allows them to “call upon the competent organs of the United Nations” to take action for this purpose. As for punishment, a very important attempt is now being made to fulfil this obligation through the ad hoc Tribunals for the Former Yugoslavia and Rwanda. And ten days ago in Rome I had the honour to open the Conference which is to establish a permanent International Criminal Court.”

The trauma of Rwanda is evoked as concrete illustration of the horrors of non-intervention: he refered to himself as “haunted” by the memory of actions for which he – as head of UN peacekeeping – was also responsible at the time:

“Personally I am haunted by the experience of Rwanda in 1994: a terrible demonstration of what can happen when there is no intervention, or at least none in the crucial early weeks of a crisis. General Dallaire, the commander of the UN mission, has indicated that with a force of even modest size and means he could have prevented much of the killing. Indeed he has said that 5,000 peacekeepers could have saved 500,000 lives. How tragic it is that at the crucial moment the opposite course was chosen, and the size of the force reduced.”

And then he made the immediate transition to the humanitarian crisis in Kosovo unfolding at that very moment:

“The last few months’ events in Kosovo present the international community with what may be its severest challenge in Europe since the Dayton agreement was concluded in 1995. As in Bosnia, we have witnessed the shelling of towns and villages, indiscriminate attacks on civilians in the name of security, the separation of men from women and children and their summary execution, and the flight of thousands from their homes, many of them across an international border. In short, events reminiscent of the whole ghastly scenario of “ethnic cleansing” again – as yet on a small scale than in Bosnia, but for how long? how can we not conclude that this crisis is indeed a threat to international peace and security?

This time, ladies and gentlemen, no one will be able to say that they were taken by surprise – neither by the means employed, nor by the ends pursued.

A great deal is at stake in Kosovo today — for the people of Kosovo themselves; for the overall stability of the Balkans; and for the credibility and legitimacy of all our words and deeds in pursuit of collective security. All our professions of regret; all our expressions of detemination to never again permit another Bosnia; all our hopes for a peaceful future for the Balkans will be cruelly mocked if we allow Kosovo to become another killing-field.”


Tony Blair – Gareth Evans

2. Tony Blair and Gareth Evans on the responsibility to protect

Less than a year later the theme of righteous intervention was defended in a speech of a British prime minister, Tony Blair, at the Chicago Economic Club in April 1999. The humanitarian crisis in Kosovo had given way to the first war ever fought by the North Atlantic Treaty Organisation. As Nato planes bombed Serb forces, Blair said:

“Unspeakable things are happening in Europe. Awful crimes that we never thought we would see again have reappeared – ethnic cleansing. systematic rape, mass murder.… This is a just war, based not on any territorial ambitions but on values. We cannot let the evil of ethnic cleansing stand. We must not rest until it is reversed. We have learned twice before in this century that appeasement does not work. If we let an evil dictator range unchallenged, we will have to spill infinitely more blood and treasure to stop him later.”

He addressed the same dilemma which Kofi Annan had highlighted:

“The most pressing foreign policy problem we face is to identify the circumstances in which we should get actively involved in other people’s conflicts. Non-interference has long been considered an important principle of international order. And it is not one we would want to jettison too readily. One state should not feel it has the right to change the political system of another or foment subversion or seize pieces of territory to which it feels it should have some claim. But the principle of non-interference must be qualified in important respects. Acts of genocide can never be a purely internal matter. When oppression produces massive flows of refugees which unsettle neighbouring countries then they can properly be described as “threats to international peace and security”.

He then put the doctrine of intervention in the context of an emerging, interdependent, global community:

“We are witnessing the beginnings of a new doctrine of international community …”

Tony Blair thus outlined a “doctrine of the international community” based on the idea of a “just war”: a war to halt and prevent humanitarian disasters such as genocide or ethnic cleansing. United Nations secretary-general Kofi Annan raised the issue of humanitarian intervention in his speeches to the UN General Assembly in 1999 and 2000. And as a way to help forge a new international consensus the Canadian government established the International Commission on Intervention and State Sovereignty in autumn 2000.

The report it published in December 2001 held that states have a “Responsibility to Protect”: where a population is suffering from mass atrocities, and the state is unwilling or unable to stop them, the principle of non-intervention is replaced by the international responsibility to protect. As one of the leading members of the Commission, former Australian foreign minister Gareth Evans, put it, the ambition was bold indeed: it was to “end mass atrocity crimes once and for all.” However, Evans was also careful to warn that this was not a doctrine legitimising any form of intervention:

“The responsibility to protect is not about conflict generally, or human rights generally, let alone human security generally, but rather about a small subset of cases where atrocity crimes are occuring, imminent or likely to occur in the foreseeable future if preventive strategies are not adopted.”

How many such cases might one anticipate? Evans notes that while there are at any given time hundreds of countries “subject of reasonable human rights concern” there are “only a dozen or so countries that can properly be regarded at any given time as being of responsibility-to-protect concern.”


Robert Cooper

3. Robert Cooper and liberal imperialism

Robert Cooper was one of the leading strategic thinkers in the UK government at the time of Blair’s 1999 speech on intervention as an advisor to the prime minister. He then moved to Brussels to become the leading EU foreign policy civil servant as Director-General for External and Politico-Military Affairs in the European Council under Javier Solana.  Today he is again at the heart of efforts of building up a new European machinery (the External Action Service) for a common foreign policy.

Cooper also published  in 2002 a widely discussed article “The new liberal imperialism”. This was followed by the book “The Breaking of Nations – Order and Chaos in the 21st Century”.  These texts reflect both the Balkan experience and the new atmosphere of global crisis after the attacks on 11 September 2001. Cooper’s book begins with a warning in the very first sentences:

“The worst times in European history were in the fourteenth century, during and after the Hundred Years War, in the seventeenth century at the time of the Thiry Years War, and in the first half of the twentieth century. The twenty-first century may be worse than any of these.”

How could the 21st century be more dangerous than the period of two world wars or the utter devastation of the Thiry Years War, when one third of the population of Central Europe perished? The reason is the “spread of terrorism and of weapons of mass destruction”:

“Henceforth, comparatively small groups will be able to do the sort of damage which before only state armies or major revolutionary movements could achieve. A few fanatics with a “dirty bomb” (one which sprays out radiological material) or biological weapons will be able to cause death on a scale not previously envisaged.”

In his book Cooper divides the world into a post-modern world (the inter-dependent West), the modern world of traditional nation states and a pre-modern world. It is the pre-modern world, “the pre-state, post-imperial chaos”, a terra nullius, that poses, when allied to weapons of mass destruction, such a serious threat that it might even necessitate an armed intervention:

“The existence of such a zone of chaos is nothing new; but previously such areas, precisely because of their chaos, were isolated from the rest of the world. Not so today when a country without much law and order can still have an international airport.”

And:

“where the state is too weak to be dangerous, non-state acros might become too strong. If they become too dangerous for the established states to tolerate, it is possible to image a defensive imperialism. If non-state actors, notably drug, crime and terrorist syndicates take to using non-state (that is pre-modern) bases for attacks on the more orderly parts of the world, then the organised states will eventually have to respond.”

This is a major change in the international debate in security since the early 1990s. Then,Cooper noted,

“the chaos in Somalia and the breakdown of the state in parts of the former Yugoslavia excited pity, anger and shame, but they did not represent a direct threat to the lives or livelihoods of those living in safer, better organised territories … thus the initial Western response to the situation in the Balkans, in Somalia or Afghanistan was a combination of neglect, half-hearted peace efforts, plus a humanitarian attempt to deal with the symptoms, while steering clear of the (possibly infectious) disease.”

The lesson of 9/11, however, was that chaos in critical parts of the world matters and must be watched. It was not rival empires which brought down Rome, but the barbarian invasions.

What should be done when a zone of chaos turns into a major threat? Cooper presents no easy answer:

“The difficulty, however, is in knowing what form intervention should take: the most logical way to deal with chaos is by colonisation. If a nation state has failed why not go back to an older form – empire?”

Cooper sees clear problems with this, however:

“No Western country believes enough in their civilizing mission to impose their own rules permanently by force; nor could this be done, since the Western ideology is democratic and democracy cannot be achieved by coercion …Nor would traditional imperialism be acceptable to the peoples of failed states – except perhaps in an initial phase when they are rescued from chaos or tyrants.”

Here Cooper was much more cautious than many others who would come to accept a similar diagnosis of the threats posed by weak states . He noted that

“empire is expensive, especially in its postmodern voluntary form. Nation-building is a long and difficult task: it is by no means certain that any of the recent attempts are going to be successful. Great caution is required for anyone contemplating intervention in the pre-modern chaos.”

But at times a new, liberal imperialism may nonetheless be necessary.


James Dobbins – RAND Corporation building in Washington DC

4. Rand studies on Nation-building

Starting in 2002 ever more ambitious ideas emerged in the corridors of power in Washington DC.  At the same time new thinking about “nation-building” (as Americans called it) was pushed forward by the world’s biggest think tank, the RAND corporation.  A series of studies were produced which were soon widely quoted by practitioners involved in state building efforts. These studies, based on the case study method, expressed a simple core idea: that nation building interventions were above all a matter of organisation and resources. They were a managerial challenge above all.

The key argument is expressed in the aptly-titled “The Beginner’s Guide to Nation-Building”.  Nation building is not only the inescapable responsibility of the world’s only super-power but it is also doable, if only the right lessons are learned from history. The authors of these Rand studies, under  the leadership of former State Department  intervention expert James Dobbins (who worked in senior positions on the Balkans as well as on Afghanistan), positioned different interventions on a spectrum from “co-option” (under which the intervening authorities “try to work within existing institutions”) to “deconstruction” (where the intervening authorities “first dismantle an existing state apparatus and then build a new one”):

“Where to position any given intervention along this spectrum from deconstruction to co-option depends not just on the needs of the society being refashioned, but on the resources the intervening authorities have to commit to that task. The more sweeping a mission’s objectives, the more resistance it is likely to inspire. Resistance can be overcome, but only through a well-considered application of personnel and money over extended periods of time.”

There are few references to the complexity of such missions, or to the serious possibility of failure, as Cooper had warned. There is little concern that interveeners might simply not know how to do nation building under certain conditions.  For the Rand authors this takes becomes above all a matter of inputs and outputs:

“Mismatches between inputs, as measured in personnel and money, and desired outcomes, as measured in imposed social transformation, are the most common cause for failure of nation-building efforts.”

In a study of eight US-led nation building missions the authors underline:

“What principally distinguishes Germany, Japan, Bosnia and Kosovo from Somalia, Haiti and Afghanistan are not their levels of Western culture, economic development, or cultural homogeneity. Rather it is the level of effort the United States and the international community put into their democratic transformations.”

Putting in sufficient resources is the key to ultimate success. This is also important for another reason, as the authors of another Rand paper noted:

“There appears to be an inverse correlation between the size of the stabilization force and the level of risk. The higher the proportion of stabilizing troops, the lower the number of casualties suffered and inflicted. Indeed, most adequately manned post-conflict operations suffered no casualties whatsoever.”

Thus, with the right inputs, not only can almost all resistance be overcome; but this might also happened without any casualties!

If you are interested in these Rand studies:


Ted Galen Carpenter

5. Cato’s critique of nation building

As a leading libertarian think-tank in the United States, Cato favors limited government planning and is openly skeptical about “foreign military adventurism.” As such, the organization’s foreign policy department has worked hard to promote movement away from American imperialism.  Scholars such as  ed Galen Carpenter, vice president for defense and foreign policy studies at Cato, write extensively on nation-building.  A typical argument is made in a short recent text Learning from our Mistakes: Nation-Building Follies and Afghanistan (Ted Galen Carpenter).

The author warns that all nation building missions are more or less doomed to failure:

“Afghanistan is an extremely unpromising candidate for such a mission, given its pervasive poverty, its fractured clan–based and tribal–based social structure, and its weak national identity. Furthermore, U.S. and NATO officials should be sobered by the disappointing outcomes of other recent nation–building ventures. The two most prominent missions, Bosnia and Iraq, ought to inoculate Americans against pursuing the same fool’s errand in Afghanistan.”

“The Dayton Accords ended the Bosnian civil war, but Bosnia is no closer to being a viable country than it was in 1995. It still lacks a meaningful sense of nationhood or even the basic political cohesion and ethnic reconciliation to be an effective state. If secession were allowed, the overwhelming majority of Bosnian Serbs would vote to detach their self–governing region (the Republika Srpska) from Bosnia and form an independent country or merge with Serbia. Most of the remaining Croats—who are already deserting the country in droves—would choose to secede and join with Croatia. Bosnian Muslims constitute the only faction wishing to maintain Bosnia in its current incarnation.

The economic situation is equally bad. Indeed, without the financial inputs from international aid agencies and the spending by the swarms of international bureaucrats in the country, there would scarcely be a functioning economy at all.

Although Bosnia is a nation–building fiasco, it eventually may be less of a disaster than Iraq. Americans who cheered the success of the surge strategy, and now swoon at the prospect of General Petraeus achieving a repeat performance in Afghanistan, were premature in their elation. Tensions are again simmering, both between Sunnis and Shiite Arabs and between Arabs and Kurds, and there have been numerous violent incidents. Months after national elections, the political squabbling is so bad that Iraqis have been unable to form a new government.

Moreover, Iraq has already ceased to be a unified state. Baghdad exercises no meaningful power in the Kurdish region in the north. Indeed, Iraqi Arabs who enter the territory are treated as foreigners—and not especially welcome foreigners. Although the Kurds have not proclaimed an independent country, the Kurdistan Regional Government rules a de facto state with its own flag, currency, and army.”

And he continues:

“Despite a 15–year effort and the expenditure of billions of dollars, the Bosnian nation-building mission is a flop. Despite a seven–year effort (and counting), the expenditure of at least $800 billion, and the sacrifice of more than 4,300 American lives, the Iraq nation-building mission is, at best, a disappointment Yet, instead of learning from those experiences, U.S. leaders seem intent on pursuing the same chimera in Afghanistan.

Foreign policy, like domestic politics, is the art of the possible. Containing and weakening al Qaeda may be possible, but building Afghanistan into a modern, democratic country is not. The increasingly evident failures of nation–building in Bosnia and Iraq—both of which were more promising candidates than Afghanistan—should have taught us that lesson.”

Some of the CATO studies that make this argument are the following:


Gerald Knaus – Rory Stewart

6. Finally, if you are interested in arguments made by Rory and myself, here are two short pieces on the same topic:

The European Raj (Gerald Knaus and Felix Martin) – 2003 / media reactions

and

The Irresistible Illusion (an essay Rory Stewart) – 2009 :

Here Rory argues:

“The fundamental assumptions remain that an ungoverned or hostile Afghanistan is a threat to global security; that the West has the ability to address the threat and bring prosperity and security; that this is justified and a moral obligation; that economic development and order in Afghanistan will contribute to global stability; that these different objectives reinforce each other; and that there is no real alternative. One indication of the enduring strength of such assumptions is that they are exactly those made in 1868 by Sir Henry Rawlinson, a celebrated and experienced member of the council of India, concerning the threat of a Russian presence in Afghanistan:

In the interests, then, of peace; in the interests of commerce; in the interests of moral and material improvement, it may be asserted that interference in Afghanistan has now become a duty, and that any moderate outlay or responsibility we may incur in restoring order at Kabul will prove in the sequel to be true economy.

The new UK strategy for Afghanistan is described as International … regional … joint civilian-military … co-ordinated … long-term … focused on developing capacity … an approach that combines respect for sovereignty and local values with respect for international standards of democracy, legitimate and accountable government, and human rights; a hard-headed approach: setting clear and realistic objectives with clear metrics of success.

This is not a plan: it is a description of what we have not got. Our approach is short-term; it has struggled to develop Afghan capacity, resolve regional issues or overcome civilian-military divisions; it has struggled to respect Afghan sovereignty or local values; it has failed to implement international standards of democracy, government and human rights; and it has failed to set clear and realistic objectives with clear metrics of success. Why do we believe that describing what we do not have should constitute a plan on how to get it? (Similarly, we do not notice the tautology in claiming to ‘overcome corruption through transparent, predictable and accountable financial processes’.)”

And Rory notes:

“We claim to be engaged in a neutral, technocratic, universal project of ‘state-building’ but we don’t know exactly what that means. Those who see Afghanistan as reverting to the Taliban or becoming a traditional autocratic state are referring to situations that existed there in 1972 and 1994. But the international community’s ambition appears to be to create something that has not existed before. Obama calls it ‘a more capable and accountable Afghan government’. The US White Paper calls it ‘effective local governance’ and speaks of ‘legitimacy’. The US, the UK and their allies agreed unanimously at the Nato 60th anniversary summit in April to create ‘a stronger democratic state’ in Afghanistan. In the new UK strategy for Afghanistan, certain combinations of adjective and noun appear again and again in the 32 pages: separated by a few pages, you will find ‘legitimate, accountable state’, ‘legitimate and accountable government’, ‘effective and accountable state’ and ‘effective and accountable governance’. Gordon Brown says that ‘just as the Afghans need to take control of their own security, they need to build legitimate governance.’

What is this thing ‘governance’, which Afghans (or we) need to build, and which can also be transparent, stable, regulated, competent, representative, coercive? A fact of nationhood, a moral good, a cure for corruption, a process? At times, ‘state’ and ‘government’ and ‘governance’ seem to be different words for the same thing. Sometimes ‘governance’ seems to be part of a duo, ‘governance and the rule of law’; sometimes part of a triad, ‘security, economic development and governance’, to be addressed through a comprehensive approach to ‘the 3 ds’, ‘defence, development and diplomacy’ – which implies ‘governance’ is something to do with a foreign service.”

For more: we look forward to see you at the Vienna event!

Haus der Musik – 26 November – 15:00

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Paradise Lost? From Smyrna to Skopje to Berlin (part 1)

I have spent the past month travelling through the Balkans (Skopje, Tirana, Pristina, Belgrade) and visiting Sweden, Bratislava and Chisinau. I presented on and drafted texts about a lot of different issues: debates in Greece and Macedonia about identities; debates in Turkey about Turkish Christians and their rights; debates in Germany about Islam and Turks; Swedish, Slovak and European debates on the future of Balkan and Turkish enlargement. In all these seemingly unrelated debates there was one common thread, however, always leading back to the question of what is at stake in the future of EU enlargement today: why enlargement matters.

For some time I have wondered whether the current discourse on the importance of South East European enlargement, its significance for the European project (and not just for the 20 some million people of the Western Balkans) has not become stale, unconvincing, full of wooden language and cliches.

If EU enlargement is to go ahead and not to turn into an agonizing technocratic exercise, in which very few people actually believe, a different narrative is needed. European leaders and thinkers have lost the vision of enlargement, and it is vital to recapture it (on the charge that this might be too elitist a way to think about this political project more later).

To try to explain this let me start from where I sit at this moment: in a cafe on the pier of Izmir, looking out at at the Aegean Sea and Mount Pagus.

Gerald Knaus

The Destruction of Smyrna

If you arrive today in Izmir, the leading city of Aegean Turkey with 2 million inhabitants, the standard guidebooks tell you little. To quote what I first read, arriving here three days ago: “despite a long and illustrious history, most of the city is relentlessly modern – even enthusiasts will concede that a couple of days here as a tourist are plenty”; this is a city “not entirely without interest” due to its natural setting and ethnological museum. No wonder most of the tourists who flock to the Aegean coast do not pause here on their way to Ephesus or the coastal resorts.

However, there is one way to make any visit to Izmir unforgetable. Chose a day like this Sunday, when sun sets gloriously over the mountains of the Bay of Izmir. Then pick up Giles Milton’s gripping account of the fate of this city in the early 20th century: Paradise Lost – Smyrna 1922 – The Destruction of Islam’s City of Tolerance.

One century ago Izmir, then known as Smyrna, boasted 11 Greek, 7 Turkish, 4 French and 5 Hebrew local daily newspapers; it had a Greek population of some 320,000, at least twice that of Athens at the time; it was famous for its large Jewish, Armenian, European and Turkish quarters; and it was reknown for a cosmopolitan business elite which included multilingual Levantine families (to find out more about who these go here: www.levantineheritage.com) ; a city which had

“long been celebrated as a beacon of tolerance – home to scores of nationalities with a shared outlook and intertwined lives. It was little wonder that the Americans living in the metropolis had named their colony Paradise; life here was remarkably free form prejudice and many found it ironic that they had to come to the Islamic world to find a place that had none of the bigotry so omnipresent at home.” (Giles Milton)

Even skeptics, of which even then there were many in Europe, were vulnerable to the appeal of Smyrna:

“Visiting European intellectuals were fascinated to observe such a racially mixed city at close quarters. When the Austrian savant, Charles de Scherzer, had visited Smyrna in 1874, he brought with him a most negative image of the Turks, yet he went away with all his preconceptions shattered. “In matters of religion”, he wrote, “they are – contrary to their reputation – the most tolerant people of the Orient.”

And yet, as we all know, one century ago cities like these – fin-de-siecle Czernowitz or Vilnius, Wraclaw, Vienna or Prague, late Ottoman Thessaloniki or Istanbul – lived under a dark shadow, cast by the dominant ideology of the age: romantic nationalism.

Early 20th century Smyrna was a majority-Christian city located in majority Muslim Anatolia, a land increasingly torn by religious and ethnic hatreds. At that time European leaders were about to “turn off the lights” for a century and allow a descent into collective madness. Those decisions were taken in Berlin, Vienna, Moscow and Paris, but they directly impacted on Istanbul, Athens and the people of Smyrna

In today’s terms Smyrna was “multicultural”: many communities living side by side, interacting, mingling, while preserving with some pride their own identities. It was multicultural at a moment in European history when the future belonged to nationalists, promising ethnic purity, the creation of nation states, and the need to assimilate or expel minorities, not to tolerate differences and live with them. It was an age which looked at pluralism with suspicion, where minorities were increasingly looking nervously to their mother countries for protection, and were simultaneously viewed by their co-citizens as fifth columns and security threats.

All of this was already clearly apparent in Anatolia at the time, where hatreds were fueled by the military defeats of the Ottomans in the Balkan wars in the early 20th century.

When the Ottomans lost control of all of Macedonia during the six-week long Balkan war in autumn 1912, a large number of Muslim refugees was expelled from the Balkans. This led the leaders of the Ottoman Empire to cast aside all ideas they might have had as late as 1908 about creating an Ottoman citizenship, and to embrace instead an increasingly racist and exclusivist vision of their state as a land of the Turks.

Anatolia’s hatreds erupted again during World War I. And they exploded into a savage war with the 1919 Greek invasion to annex Western Anatolia and the atrocities committed by the Greek invading army, dreaming of recreating a Byzantine Empire. This is a complex, but familiar story with one key theme: the idea that brutalities were permitted to destroy multiethnic life in order to create modern nation-states.

And thus it came that in September 1922 multicultural Smyrna literally went up in flames. 70 percent of the city burnt down following the reconquest by Turkish soldiers. The entire Christian population fled in terror. The destruction of Smyrna coincided with the uprooting of all of Anatolia’s Greek population.

And just as many of the Muslim refugees who had streamed into the Ottoman Empire following the Balkan wars had come from Macedonia, so many of Anatolia’s (and Smyrna’s) Greeks were directed to settle in Greek Macedonia following the tragic loss of their homeland.

More on that, and on the relationship between the debate on multicultural democracies and enlargement in Europe today, in my next entry.

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"Multikulti is dead" and other ideas which are bad for the Balkans


Multikulti is dead – or is it not? Shop window in Berlin-Neukoelln.
Photo: flickr/Schockwellenreiter, Gabriele Kantel

This is not promising.

A few weeks ago Angela Merkel’s reaction was to reject the anti-Muslim populism of former Bundesbanker Thilo Sarrazin; later she defended the observation by German president Wulff on German national day that “Islam is part of German reality”.

Now, however, German Chancellor Angela Merkel apparently feels that it is time to make some rhetorical concession to the wave of anti-Muslim sentiment washing across Germany. Speaking to young members of the CDU, one reporter noted, she explained that

“the so-called “multikulti” concept – where people would “live side-by-side” happily – did not work. Mrs Merkel’s comments come amid recent outpourings of strong anti-immigrant feeling from mainstream politicians. A recent survey showed that more than 30% of Germans believed Germany was “overrun by foreigners”.”

This follows statements by Horst Seehofer, the leader of the CDU’s Bavarian sister party, CSU, that it was “obvious that immigrants from different cultures like Turkey and Arab countries, all in all, find it harder”. Or Thilo Sarrazin’s statement that “no immigrant group other than Muslims is so strongly connected with claims on the welfare state and crime”.

There are many things that can be said about this debate, which is rapidly emerging as one of the most important for the future of a number of European societies. ESI has in fact put together a picture story with some facts and figures about Turks in Germany in 2008, which you find HERE (which we are going to update soon in light of the current debate).

But let me concentrate for one moment on two aspects of this debate which have not yet been discussed much.

1. What does all this mean for the future of EU policy towards Turkey and the Balkans? I put the question also to Carl Bildt, Sweden’s foreign minister, today at a gathering of East European leaders and thinkers in Visby (since the meeting was off the record you have to infer the answer from Carl Bildt’s general positive attitude towards enlargement – as he often puts it, in Europe “Muslims are our neighbours – European neighbours and literally neighbours where we live in our homes”)

When countries like Germany, the Netherlands, Austria or France appear to witness rising islamophobia (defined as the sentiment, apparently shared by almost half of all Germans, that “Germany would be better off without Islam”), it seems natural to expect that this could affect perceptions of applicant countries with significant Muslim populations. Or that it might also have an impact on the German debate on Turkey that (German) Turks are rapidly becoming the least popular group of foreigners; all the appreciation for the successful multicultural national football team – and its new star Mesut Ozil – notwithstanding?

According to one recent survey of 1,600 young German Turks and 20.000 young Germans, a total of only 9 percent of German Turks said they felt uncomfortable with the idea of having German neighbours. At the same time, 38 percent of young Germans said that they felt uncomfortable with Turkish neighbours. This makes Turks the least popular group of foreigners, as one article in Sueddeutsche Zeitung notes:

“Damit rangieren Türken auf dem letzten Rang der Beliebtheitsskala, hinter Schweden, Italienern, Schwarzafrikanern, Juden und Osteuropäern. “Die Türken wünschen sich mehr Kontakt zu den Deutschen, aber die Deutschen zeigen ihnen die kalte Schulter”, sagte Pfeiffer.”

(“This makes Turks come in at the very end of the popularity scale, well after Swedes, Italians, Africans, Jews, and East Europeans. “Turks want more contact with Germans but the Germans show them a cold shoulder”, Pfeiffer says [Christian Pfeiffer is the head of a research centre for criminal sciences that carried out this survey].)

Ironically, at the same time, German newspapers in recent days have been full of concern about the phenomenon of “anti-German” racism on the part of these very same young German Turks. (If you read German then read this: “Racism – the silence of schools towards hostility against Germans”)

Now clearly this phenomenon – Deutschenfeindlichkeit – exists. It is a visible problem in certain schools and urban areas in Germany; anybody who has lived in some parts of Berlin, particularly Neukoellkn, knows this. At the same time, suggesting, as some have done recently, that this issue has until now been a “taboo”, not noted or discussed before for reasons of political correctness, seems bizzare, if one only recalls the heated debate which took place in 2006 when the film Knallhart – about Arab and Turkish gangs dealing with drugs mistreating a young German in Neukoelln – came into German cinemas:

“David Kross stars as 15-year-old Michael Polischka, who’s forced to move from posh Zehlendorf to run-down Berlin-Neukolln after his mother, Miriam splits from her wealthy lover, Doctor Peters. Though he quickly makes friends at his new school, Michael also finds himself the target of a gang of vicious bullies, led by the sadistic Erroll.”

Erroll, of course, is a Turk and the debate about the film focused on the aggressiveness and macho-culture of young German Turkish gangs. And yet, the survey data suggests that Deutschenfeindlichkeit is less prevalent than the opposite reaction: widespread anti-Turkish prejudice of young Germans. This excuses neither form of prejudice or racism – but it puts the current debate in some perspective.

However, if a growing number of young Germans (and perhaps Austrians or Dutch?) do not want to have a Turkish or Muslim neighbour, will this not also affect attitudes towards the EU accession of Balkan countries or Turkey?

2. At the same time, there is the question how European debates of this kind will influence inter-religious relations and debates in the Balkans itself. It seems only a question of time before some Balkan leaders appropriate this kind of discourse: for now, it seems easier to build a mosque in Republika Srpska than in Switzerland, which is quite a striking turn of events in light of the 1990s.

Is anybody in the EU aware what the impact of making this kind of talk acceptable would be in the Balkans? If “multikulti” is dead, what does this suggest for the future of multicultural or multiethnic and multireligious societies in the Balkans? There, these kinds of arguments were advanced not long ago by a very different (and sinister) crop of politicians.

ESI is currently writing a report on prejudice and discrimination against Christian Turks in Turkey. It is encouraging that in this area some bad practices and deep prejudices in Turkey are now being challenged. It would be tragic if the discourse about hostile civilisations and the impossibility of living together are now coming no longer just from intolerant Turkish (or Balkan) nationalists, but are the result of a wave of Islamophobia in Western societies.

There is some hope, however: for this debate shows that in some sense today BOTH Turkey and Germany, Europe and the Western Balkans, are struggling with similar problems. Coping with integration, which has both a domestic and a foreign policy (enlargement) component, is in fact crucial for the future of Europe. Coming to terms with the reality of different religions and groups coexisting is not just a challenge for societies in South East Europe today; and perhaps one day soon Germans and other Europeans might even learn something from Macedonians or Montenegrins about tolerance and living together? If Turkey and the Western Balkans would be members by 2020, then the EU will have some 600 million inhabitants, of which 100 million would be Muslims!

All this makes the recent constructive statement of Germany’s president – and previous similar statements by leading Christian Democrats such as Wolfgang Schauble – about Islam in Germany all the more encouraging.

Next week German President Wulff will travel to Turkey. It might be too much to hope, but would it not be wonderful if this would be also be an occasion for Turkey’s leaders to announce some initiative to show that in Turkey efforts are made to overcome prejudices against other religions? For instance a promise to make life easier for Christian churches or for the Orthodox Patriarchate? Would it not be best if leaders in Berlin and Ankara shame each other with their efforts to reach out to minorities and build bridges?

Prejudice is a clear problem; addressing it openly and then looking for solutions is the only way for progress. It is obvious that in this matter, as in many others, a more open, European and democratic Turkey is going to be a huge benefit not only for its own citizens but also for the current EU – and the same holds true for Bosnia, Albania, Kosovo and the rest of the Western Balkans.

What is no less true, however, is that the struggle for tolerance and successful integration is just as crucial in Western societies. As Wolfgang Schäuble defined the goal in 2006, opening the German Islam Conference: “We want enlightened Muslims in an enlightened country.” One might add: “in an enlightened Europe.”

Further reading: in this context see also these earlier ESI publications:

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The march of Balkan history? – Gerald Knaus 5th October presentation

On 5th October I was invited to the anniversary conference commemorating the overthrow of Slobodan Milosevic in Serbia one decade ago. It was a thought-provoking gathering with a wide range of speakers: Serbian president Boris Tadic, Bozidar Djelic, Mikulas Dzurinda, Vuk Jeremic, Eduard Kukan, George Papandreou, Francois Heissbourg, Goran Svilanovic, Pavol Demes and others.

I also gave a presentation, a short version of arguments my colleagues and I are developing fully for a forth-coming ESI paper on the Balkans – any feedback at this stage is very welcome!


Belgrade, 5th October 2010

Dear friends,

It is a great privilege and pleasure for me to come to Belgrade on this special occasion, to look back at an eventful decade with so many friends, to take stock, to take heart, and to share ideas about the lessons the recent past holds for all of us, interested in democratisation in general and in South East Europe in particular.

At the same time this event is more than a celebration of the breakthrough in October 2000. It finds many of us impatient; it is not merely, or even mainly, an occasion to rejoice in what has been achieved, but more importantly a chance to assess what still needs to be done. In recent months we have all come across symptoms of “Balkan fatigue” in many quarters, a sense of frustration that things are not moving along faster.

So let me take a closer look today at some causes behind the impatience many of us feel; at some specific challenges the Balkan region faces in realising the vision of a “return to Europe” that president Tadic outlined at the opening of today’s event; and in particular at the role, policies and responsibilities of the European Union.

Battle of ideas

There are different ways to convey how far the region, and Europe as a whole, has come since the 1990s. One is to focus on the battle of ideas. So here are two prominent European thinkers looking at the Balkans in the first half of the 1990s. One is French philosopher Jean Baudrillard. In 1994 he published an article in the Belgrade paper Borba, under the titel “Without Pity”. There he argued, against the background of the war in Bosnia, that “all European countries are going the way of ethnic cleansing. That is the real Europe … Bosnia is only its new frontier.” Two years earlier an Irish writer, Conor Cruise o’Brien, had offered an equally glommy take on the Balkans. He wrote in 1992:

“There are places where a lot of men prefer war, and the looting and raping and domineering that go with it, to any sort of peace time occupation. One such place is Afghanistan. Another is Yugoslavia …”

These deeply pessimistic visions, arguing either that the whole edifice of post-World War II European civilisation was brittle, and all of Europe was doomer to a “normality” of clashes of civilisation and ethnic hatred OR that, at the very least, Balkan people and societies belonged to a different, pre-modern world distinct from the “civilised” rest of Europe, were actually widely shared in the 1990s … not only in Belgrade or Zagreb, but also in Paris, London, Athens and elsewhere in the EU. This also explains how it was possible for a UN general, Canadian Major General Louis MacKenzie, head of the UN peacekeepers in Bosnia, to tell the US congress in May 1993 that the law of the jungle was the true law of humanity: “Force has been rewarded since the first caveman picked up a club, occupied his neighbour’s cave, and ran off with his wife.” This explains how it was possible for Karadzic and Mladic to be welcomed as heros in Athens in the early 1990s. It explains why some leaders thought that the most “realistic” response to the Balkan tragedy was to let events run its “natural” course. If soft power is the ability to get others to want what you want, then European soft power in the 1990s suffered from the obvious: that it was not clear what Europe wanted.

Ideas matter. Nationalist ideas. Ideas of Balkan exceptionalism. Erik Hobsbawm has underlined that intellectuals are to national movements what”poppy growers in Pakistan are to heroin addicts – the suppliers of the raw material for the market.” There were many such poppy growers, mainly but not only, in the Balkans. They prepared the ground, first for the disastrous wars of the 90s, then for the failures to stop them.

At the same time during the 1990s the notion of a “return to Europe” was a complex one. There was a time, not long ago, when “Europe” did not stand for values of democratic governance and peaceful interdependence: when, as historian Mark Mazower reminds us in Dark Continent, European civilisation was not actually tending towards democracy. Mazower writes that “though we may like to think democracy’s victory in the cold war proves its deep roots in Europe’s soil, history tells us otherwise. Triumphant in 1918, it was virtually extinct twenty years on.” There is a strong non-democratic, nationalist, militaristic and authoritarian 20th century European tradition, and it is one that Balkan leaders such as Slobodan Milosevic could refer to when they stressed the supposed debt Europe owed to Serbia. As he put it in his infamous 1989 speech in Kosovo Polje, he too was in favour of a “return to Europe”:

“Six centuries ago, here on Kosovo field, Serbia defended herself. But she defended also Europe. She stood then on the rampart of Europe, defending European culture, religion, European society as a whole. That is why today it seems no only unjustified, but also unhistorical and completely absurd to question Serbia’s belonging to Europe.”

Of course, after world war II Western Europe embraced other values. The question in the 1990s was in which European tradition Serbia and other Balkan countries saw themselves: the first or the second half of the 20th century. The Central Europeans made a clear choice in 1989. The results were dramatic. In 1990 the number of Poles who feared Germany was above 80 percent. By 2009 it had fallen to 14 percent. After 1989 the goal of joining an integrating democratic continent spread across the whole of Central Europe. And in October 2000, on the day we remember today, it finally became realistic to imagine that the same ideas would be embraced across the whole of the Western Balkans as well. It was also a major breakthrough in the battle of ideas.

October 2000 was followed by the EU Balkan Zagreb summit in 2000. There and then the EU stated that it “reaffirms the European perspective of the countries” of the Western Balkans. This was an interesting way of bracketing the disastrous 1990s, in which few people – in the region and in the EU – had spent much time to think about this vision. This was in turn re-reaffirmed in the Thessaloniki Agenda for the Western Balkans in 2003 when the European Council “reiterated that the future of the Western Balkans is within the European Union”. Then the 2006 EU Salzburg Declaration noted: “the EU confirms that the future of the Western Balkans lies in the European Union.” Affirmed, reaffirmed, confirmed … the story of EU-Balkan relations in the decade since 2000 is the story of an increasingly dominant narrative, in which, officially, the future of the whole region is clear and settled. There would only be one Europe, and the Balkans were destined to be part of it.

The advantage of this kind of vision is that it leaves little space for alternative, and often dangerous, ideas. To be able to predict the future of a whole region reduces uncertainty and fear. French Foreign Minister Bernard Kouchner and Sweden’s Carl Bildt wrote in Le Figaro in 2008, for instance, that: “it is certain that Serbia will soon be a member of the EU, because there is no alternative. This is in tune with the march of history.” Lady Ashton, the EU High Representative for Foreign Affairs and Security Policy, told civil society representatives in Belgrade in February this year that “the EU is determined that the future of the whole region lies in eventual accession to the EU.”

Malaise

So far, so good. However, if the direction of the “march of history” is clear, why is there such a feeling of unease across the whole region today? Is it really only because leaders in the region are not doing enough to reform their countries, which is a herculean task that will take more time? Or are there deeper reasons for concern?

In a recent book on Europe 2030, former German foreign minister Joschka Fischer, a big supporter of enlargement when in office, presented his personal view that the future of enlargement is grim: “while almost all of the EU’s neighbours wish to join, its own citizens increasingly oppose not only further expansion but also deeper political integration.” Fischer sees no happy end soon: instead, the spectre is of a Balkan accession process which will never end. He concludes:

“I doubt that Europe’s malaise can be overcome before 2030 … While the partial creation of a common defense system, along with a European army, is possible by 2030, a common foreign policy is not. Expansion of the EU to include the Balkan states, Turkey and Ukraine should also be ruled out.”

Fischer’s expectations echo and reflect the general debate in political circles in Berlin. We all remember the statement in the CDU election programme of 2009, which called for a “enlargement pause”:

“The enlargement of the EU from 15 to 27 members within a few years … has required great efforts. As a result the CDU prefers a phase of consolidation, during which a consolidation of the European Union’s values and institutions should take priority over further EU enlargement. The only exception to the rule can be for Croatia.”

Unfortunately, even at the time these were not just words: in March 2009 Germany – backed by Belgium and the Netherlands – blocked forwarding the application of Montenegro to the European Commission for an opinion. This had in the past been a mere technical step. And this, once established as a precedent, has now been repeated in the case of Serbia. Signals from Berlin today are that this could be overcome soon … but what to expect from the next government in The Hague, now dependend on the a good will of a politician, Geert Wilders, who told Euronews in 2009 that “no other country should join Europe. I’m even in favour of Romania and Bulgaria to leave [sic] the EU” ?

In the 1990s, in the streets of Belgrade in 2000, it was clear what supporters of a European democratic Balkans had to struggle against. Today the alternative ideologies inspired by early 20th century Europe have largely been defeated; the region has dramatically demobilised, cutting defense spending and ending conscription; key political actors everywhere have embraced the rhetoric of a European future for the Balkans. So has the EU, its leaders repeating the mantra at every gathering for a decade.

And yet, enormous uncertainties persists. As a very senior European official working on the Balkans told me just a few weeks ago:

“I do not know if the EU perspective is 10 or 100 years. I am selling 10, but in my heart of hearts I do not know if it is not in fact 100.”

If this is what people in the EU, working on the region, feel, one cannot blame people in the Balkans for wondering how certain their European future really is. This is the current EU-Balkan problem in a nutshell: few question the “perspective”. And nobody knows if it will be realised by 2020, 2030 or 2050.

The problem of the next step

Let us break down the problem to make it more manageable. To simplify, one could say that we have today an immediate “problem of the next step”: now that all the countries in the region (who are able to) have submitted their official applications for EU accession, the ball is in the EU’s court. But finding a coherent response is proving hard. Let me look at four specific problems in turn.

Bosnia-Herzegovina:

One can speak for days about Bosnia and its problems, which are as complex as its recent history; ESI has written many reports expressing our views, from the influence of a continuing (and increasingly discredited) international protectorate to the most promising way to advance a constitutional reform debate that makes Bosnia more functional. But there is one obvious reason why EU soft power is still so ineffective in Bosnia.

To have an EU perspective a country needs to find a consensus to apply and to meet the conditions to become a candidate. Yet the formal obstacle is obvious: as enlargement commissioner Olli Rehn stated clearly less than a year ago:

“Let me put it as plainly as I can: there is no way a quasi-protectorate can join the EU. Nor will an EU membership application be considered so long as the OHR is around. Let me even repeat this, to avoid any misunderstandings: a country with a High Representative can not become a candidate country with the EU.”

Olli Rehn is no longer enlargement commissioner, but Carl Bildt, who remains Swedish foreign minister, made the very same point in October 2009, “As you know the European Union is a union of sovereign democracies, not of protectorates. So, the presence of the OHR is, of course, blocking both the EU accession process and the NATO access process.”

This is not an isolated opinion at all. On 30 June 2010 the Communiqué of the Peace Implementation Steering Board repeated for the umpteenth time that this is remains the position of the PIC as well: http://www.ohr.int/dwnld/dwnld.html?content_id=45102

“The EU Member States of the PIC Steering Board reiterated that the EU would not be in a position to consider an application for membership by BiH until the transition of the OHR to a reinforced EU presence has been decided.”

This position also makes eminent sense: a country that is, supposedly, too fragile to cope without an international overlord, that is allegedly about to collapse if there is not always the option of a decree imposed from the OHR’s White House, is not meeting the minimum standards of being a stable democracy.

Behind the notion that Bosnia cannot cope without international protectorate institutions, however, stand a number of highly damaging attitudes towards Bosnia in general. Look, for a clear illustration, to the latest controversy over visa free travel for Bosnian citizens. As French state secretary for Europe Pierre Lellouche put it on 29 September, explaining why France at first suggested to postpone this step once more:

“La position du Gouvernement est la suivante : les visas relèvent de la sécurité et doivent donc s’accompagner de garanties très sérieuses. Or vous connaissez l?état politique de la Bosnie. Et pour qu’il y ait visa, il faut un État.”

What makes this position – “for there to be visa there needs to be a state” both ironic and tragic is that this senior European politician willfully overlooks the fact that in this specific and demanding case Bosnian leaders and institutions WERE able to meet all the EU conditions.

Bosnia has carried out complex and demanding reforms, passes laws and reformed institutions – and ESI has looked into this in great detail, as have the EU experts and the Commission. However, this story does not fit into the narrative of a political class unable for a variety of reasons to respond to normal incentives.

To paraphrase Lellouche, in order to meet the visa roadmap conditions Bosnia DID have to show that it was capable of acting as a state. And indeed it did. But the real lesson is ignored: that when the EU treats Bosnia like a normal state, “strict but fair”, it also gets results.

Bosnia politics is indeed complicated, and will always be complicated; that is the fate of complex multiethnic democracies, from Belgium to Spain. At the same time, no other country in the region needs the EU pre-accession process more badly than Bosnia. To provide a clear anchor for reforms. To provide specific roadmaps. To translate a shared vision of the future into concrete tasks. This makes it all the more tragic that Bosnia is also trapped by exaggerated defeatism, which prevents outsiders from offering credible incentives.

Kosovo:

Here I can be even shorter, given the constraints of time and space. Kosovo does not at this moment have a European perspective, because, for the EU 27, it is still not a state. At the same time Kosovo does not have a credible Europeanisation process either. In legal terms and in the way its political debates develop, independent Kosovo is still a protectorate.

How long will the ICO remain the supreme legal and executive authority in Kosovo? It is unclear. How long will EULEX have an exectutive mandate? It is unclear. How long will EU member states disagree on Kosovo? For the foreseeable future.

Under these conditions Kosovo has no European perspective. This also means, however, that the EU also has very little and indeed diminishing leverage in Pristina. It is common in European capitals to blame Kosovo’s love for all things American on an irrational infatuation of the elites in Kosovo with the large power that brought about independence. However, the limited leverage of the EU is above all a reflection of the lack of any clear pre-accession process.

Unless the EU finds a way to develop a status-neutral Europeanisation process. Some in the Commission are trying to work on this, but without political commitment they will not get far.

Macedonia:

Macedonia was awarded candidate status in 2005. Four years later Macedonia received a positive assessment by the European Commission.

“The country fulfils the commitments under the Stabilisation and Association Agreement, has consolidated the functioning of its democracy and ensured the stability of institutions guaranteeing the rule of law and respect of fundamental rights and the country has substantially addressed the key priorities of the accession partnership”.

In 2009 also Macedonia signed and ratified the border demarcation agreement with Kosovo, thus solving a decade-long bilateral problem.

Finally, in October 2009 the Commission recommended Macedonia’s transition to the second stage:

“In the light of the above considerations and taking into account the European Council conclusions of December 2005 and December 2006, the Commission recommends that negotiations for accession to the European Union should be opened with the former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia”.

At the EU Council in December 2009 the matter was postponed:

“The Council notes that the Commission recommends the opening of accession negotiations with the former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia and will return to the matter during the next presidency.” …

However, at the same time the Council asserted:

“maintaining good neighbourly relations, including a negotiated and mutually acceptable solution on the name issue … remains essential.”

This did not happen. So the Council did not return to the “Macedonian matter’ during the next (Spanish) presidency. For now, and unless and until this is resolved, Macedonia is as trapped as Kosovo and Bosnia.

Serbia:

Serbia, of course, is facing its own problems. What is problematic is never the reality of EU conditionality: this is, on the contrary, a positive tool to promote reforms and modernisation, as the President put it earlier today. The problem is that it is not always clear what exactly the conditions are.

One problem is expectations regarding Kosovo. Since the EU itself is divided over Kosovo, it is not always clear what it wants Serbia to do.

As the Belgian ambassador to Serbia noted recently Belgrade “must improve its relations with Kosovo” if it wants to join the EU and to “find a lasting modus vivendi”. French Foreign Minister Bernard Kouchner noted that “The independence of Kosovo is irreversible. The opinion of the ICJ signals an important step towards putting an end to the legal debate on this issue, which will enable all parties to devote themselves, from now on, to other pending issues.” And he went on: “Kosovo and Serbia must now also find the path of political dialogue in order to overcome, by adopting a pragmatic approach, the concrete problems that remain between Belgrade and Pristina, in the interest of everyone and, above all, the Serbian community of Kosovo.” As Beta news agency noted a few weeks ago “EU circles and the member states who have recognized Kosovo are increasing pressure on Belgrade over Kosovo”:

“Last week, top officials of Belgium, which currently holds the EU rotating presidency, made it clear to President Boris Tadic that granting Serbis the status of candidate country would depend on Belgrade’s moves concerning Kosovo … Now, the stand that Kosovo and Serbia’s accession to the EU are two separate processes is no longer mentioned in European Union circles.”

Indeed. But what does this mean in practical terms? The EU places a lot of trust in a dialogue, as Kouchner also explained:

“Such a dialogue is important for the stability of the region. It is also necessary because the two States, Serbia and Kosovo, intend to become Member States of the European Union, and because their accession will be based on the assumption that they have established normal inter-State relations with each other enabling them to work together towards European integration.”

When expectations are clear, as we have seen recently in the context of the UN debate, Serbia has in fact responded very constructively. But this needs to become the model: expectations and red lines need to be defined by the EU, based on a principled approach which envisages the whole region as future members of the EU. It often is not.

Then, however, Serbia complied and the focus of conditionality has shifted to ICTY. Again, there is a consensus in the EU on the need for Serbia to cooperate and for Ratko Mladic to end up in The Hague. However, it would be fatal if the impression gains ground, in Serbia and in the region, that general enlargement skepticism is hiding behind the argument that Serbia is not performing on this sensitive matter even if there might be evidence to the contrary. This would only help those in Serbia who do have an interest to torpedo its European perspective.

At this stage, the EU would do well to allow the technical process of integration – including the writing of an opinion on Serbia’s application – to go ahead. This must not mean abandoning the focus on ICTY, but it could mean applying a similar standard as the one which was applied to Croatia in its own accession process.

What is to be done?

In short, there is a clear need for fresh thinking. The bull needs to be taken by the horns: issues which have been left ambiguous need to be addressed.

It would be tragic if, having come so far, the EU accession of the Western Balkans now gets stuck at this stage. This calls for a proactive EU policy.

In Bosnia, the EU should move to bring the protectorate to an end, and to treat Bosnia fairly, like all other Balkan countries.

In Kosovo the EU needs – in its own, the Kosovo and even Serbia’s interest – define a way for Europeanisation and European leverage to work. This requires a credible European perspective, if need be a status-neutral accession process, as a recent ECFR paper has argued.

In Macedonia it is high time to find a creative solution – ESI has proposed one possible way forward recently, to link the entering into force of a new agreed name to the date of the countries’ actual EU accession.

And when it comes to Serbia the EU should be both “strict” and “fair”: conditionality must be transparent, based on clear principles and standards, not non-transparent and a moving target. This applies to expectations regarding Bosnia, Kosovo as well as ICTY.

Serbia, the EU and the whole region have come a long way since October 2000. But the journey is far from over, and it is not only the countries of the region which need to take a hard look at what would need to be done to ensure that in the end the destination of a Europe whole and free, integrated and including the Balkans, will be reached.

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A pledge to Zoran

It was a fascinating, deeply emotional event: a commemoration gathering in Belgrade, on the occasion of the 10th anniversary of the 5th of October, the day Serbian citizens took their country back from Slobodan Milosevic exactly 10 years ago. The most poignant moment came at the very end, when a visibly moved Greek prime minister, George Papandreou (who had come in from Brussels on the way to Athens), told his audience about a promise he had made, after Zoran Djindic, Serbia’s prime minister, was killed in 2003, in his eulogy at Djindic’s funeral:

“There and then I made a pledge, to Zoran, but also to the Serbian people. It will continue to ensure that Serbia arrives in her natural home, the European Union. The EU is not complete without the Balkans. Anyone who argues against the Balkans joining the EU is arguing against geography, against economy, against history. Do not believe those who talk about enlargement fatigue. The EU is a long-term historical project and you have to be part of it.”

Papandreou recalled the first time he met Sonja Licht, the spiritus movens behind the whole anniversary event, at the time of the creation of the Helsiniki Citizens Assembly in Prague twenty years ago in 1990, and how much has changed since then. Sonja, sitting next to him, recalled that their’s was a friendship at first sight, “because, despite everything, we both realised that we were proud to be from the Balkans.” He then took her hand, and for a moment both seemed to be glowing, like two teenagers who had just jointly discovered a great romantic poem, as he added: “we are still proud to be from the Balkans.  And the European future is the way to find unity amongst our diversity. This is what makes Europe special for the Balkans”

This vision, so often evoked in other settings, can seem banal, boring, mundane at times;  the sort of thing EU and Balkan politicians evoke because it is the polite thing to say. But here, presented against the background of memories of another, darker Europe in the 1990s, recalling a velvet revolution that marks one of the happiest days in the tragic recent past of the region, recalling leaders who paid for it with their lives, not long ago, but recently, the vision of a European Serbia in a European Balkan seemed to recapture all its sparkle.

Papandreou managed to express, with a few, heartfelt words, the sense that our generation of leaders and activists are privileged, not only to watch, and also to try to contribute, to the writing of the next chapter in a book that might well be called in a hundred years the “book of European miracles”: that after the miracle on the Rhine (Franco-German reconciliation), the miracle on the Vistula (Germano-Polish reconciliation), the miracle on the Bosporus (the ongoing Europeanisation of Turkey) we are now in the middle of the miracle on the Sava and the Drina.  And then the ghosts of that past, the Balkans of the 1990s, will be banished to their graves, never to return to haunt us.

(I could not help thinking of the day when, in the very same hotel this meeting took place, the mafia-paramilitary leader Arkan was shot in the lobby. The former Intercontinental has its own ghosts hanging around its corners).

But there was a more that made this event fascinating, and inspiring.  It is also a reality that the transformation that received such a boost in 2000 is still incomplete.  There are still enormous problems to be solved. The story of the past decade is one of many false starts, delays, failures to accept the new realities; of clashing visions, also and particularly in Serbia, as Goran Svilanovic recalled: of false priorities, and of denying realities when it came to ICTY, Serbia- Montenegro, and Serbian-Kosovo relations.

On the other hand, there is today real change in the air. Compared to previous meetings I attended in Belgrade, just slightly more than a year ago, the fact that the president himself could speak for 30 minutes without once mentioning the word “Kosovo”, talking about Serbia and the lessons from the past decade, reflects a new ordering of priorities. The fact that the foreign minister only mentions Kosovo in passing, as one of many challenges, without elaborating, is no less striking.  There was also a remarkable intervention by the foreign minister of Slovakia, Dzurinda, calling on Serbia to embrace the “tough choices” lying ahead, and lauding the day the EU and Serbia had passed the joint UN resolution a few days back as the day Serbia’s leaders embraced reality and a European future.  This obviously remains mined territory, and the fact that Serbia’s leaders are moving carefully, and not – as so often in recent years – recklessly does not mean that the problems are solved. Nor, and this was the key message of my presentation here, are all European leaders as clear about their vision of a European Balkans as Papandreou or Dzurinda are. It would indeed be tragic if shortsightedness leads some governments now to delay what used to be a mere bureaucratic step in the past, forwarding the Serbian membership application to the Commission to write its opinion. What is worse, most European and Serbian diplomats here seem to expect just this to happen, and whoever works on EU integration in Belgrade is not only exhausted but permanently on the verge of giving up …

But those practical concerns are for tomorrow, when we must descend from the mountain peak that offers a wider view of the distant lands that we try to reach, back to the planes where it is so easy to get lost.  It is still good to rejoice, just for one instance: the past decade, for all its false starts, has led us to a moment where the vision of a European Balkans remains more alive than ever. As inspiring. And as vital.

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A name compromise now. Or perhaps never? (Interview in Dnevnik)

Here is the most recent interview on the ESI proposal on the name dispute between Macedonia and Greece which I just gave to the Macedonian daily Paper Dnevnik. The Macedonian version is online as well.

Previous press coverage and reactions to the proposal you find here.

Your proposal was discussed in Macedonia but not in Greece. Do you think that Greece could accept such an arrangement?

Yes, I do. There is a simple reason why both Macedonia and Greece could accept this: it is better than the status quo for both. At this moment EU Balkan enlargement is completely blocked. Serbia is blocked because of Kosovo; it is simply inconceivable that the EU will admit another country with an unsolved territorial dispute, as it has done in the case of Cyprus, and this is slowly becoming clear to Belgrade. Bosnia and Kosovo are blocked because they are still protectorates. Turkey is negotiating but moving at snail’s pace because of the Cyprus issue. And Macedonia, the frontrunner among the Balkan states so often in the past, is blocked because of the name. Some EU member states, eager to postpone the next wave of accession for another generation, hide behind these unresolved issues. The current government in Athens does not like this. Remember, Papandreou has taken political risks before to promote the EU integration of the region: in 1999 he changed decades of Greek foreign policy to support, rather than to oppose, Turkey becoming a candidate for EU accession. He put a lot of energy behind the Thessaloniki summit in 2003 to persuade a skeptical EU to give the Balkans a clear perspective.  The same team in Athens is now trying to create new momentum in favour of Balkan enlargement again, which they see as a matter of Greek national interest.

Why would your proposal be acceptable for Greece?

Here is what could happen.  First Macedonia and Greece agree on a name, such as “Republic of Macedonia Vardar”, or something similar, to replace Former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia wherever FYROM is used now: in the EU, in the UN and in other international organizations. Macedonia changes its constitution to say that from the moment it becomes an EU member its international name will be, for instance, “Republic of Macedonia Vardar”. In the Macedonian language the country would remain “Republika Makedonija”. Next, Macedonia joins Nato and EU accession talks begin still in 2010. So what would happen in Athens? The Greek government would be attacked, of course. That is what oppositions do, and Samaras is not famous for his moderation in this particular matter. They could complain: “You allow Macedonia to join NATO and unblock the EU accession talks without a solution of the name entering into force now.” But Papandreou could say that this compromise is still better than what any other Greek government, including those in which Samaras served, have achieved in two decades. First, to have Macedonia join Nato and to see EU enlargement continue is in Athen’s vital interest. Second, he can point to the constitutional amendment and he could warn that those in Greece who want to press for further concessions from Skopje would risk losing everything. And third, he can ask what the policy of the past two decades has really achieved even for the most radical Greek nationalist? This compromise makes it unattractive for any future Greek government to use its veto at any stage in the accession process. Objectively it then becomes a Greek interest to see Macedonia join the EU rather sooner, whoever is in power in Athens.

Diplomatic sources in Athens say that the last deadline for Papandreou to find a solution for the name issue is end of August or mid September because the autumn will be difficult for the Greek government. How credible is this in your opinion?

I think it is credible. Papandreou is still popular in Greece, but the hardest economic and social reforms are yet to come. No unpopular Greek government would be able to make any compromise, which still has to be sold to the public. This promises to be a hot autumn in Greece, and managing the economic reforms and likely protests will absorb all the government’s attention. At this moment there are two strong governments, both in Skopje and in Athens.  There will not be a better opportunity to resolve this than exists in the next few weeks. Perhaps not for another decade or more. Perhaps never.

How much the Greek crisis influences the search for the name solution?

I believe that this government in Athens would have wanted to solve the problem even without a crisis, but the economic crisis has given it additional arguments. First, it can argue that Greece needs to have good relations with all of its neighbours for economic reasons. It cannot afford to alienate either potential tourists or potential markets if it wants to get out of its economic hole. If South East Europe develops, it will also help Greek companies. Second, Greece has seen its European reputation undermined due to economic mismanagement. Any success in foreign policy would restore it as a credible actor in Brussels.

Have you had some contacts in the Macedonian government and do you believe that they could accept your proposal?

Yes and yes. Of course, some will say that there should never ever be a compromise. Some still believe – ignoring what the European Council hast now stated repeatedly – that perhaps the EU will not demand a compromise before opening accession talks. But even if you are opposed to ever changing to name you might like this particular proposal! Here is what the government could tell those who want no concession at all, ever: “First, we get Macedonia into Nato.  At a moment when there is growing uncertainty again about the future of the Balkans this is good for investors, for interethnic relations and for Macedonia’s position in the world. Second, we start EU accession talks. This is also good in itself, even if in the end we decide that we do not want to join. Since Turkey started accession talks, it has seen its economy grow faster than ever before. The same has been the experience of other countries. Third, when our EU accession talks are completed the Macedonian public can decide in a referendum whether it actually wants to join the EU and change its international name or whether it does not want to join and keep the current name. This is a decision that will be taken then, and it is one that the people will make directly once they have a real choice. In the meantime, Macedonia reasserts its position as a frontrunner in the Balkans. In the very worst case, if a future Greek government or another EU government blocks Macedonia’s EU accession, nothing is lost. It is a win-win situation. So, even if you live in Australia and do not care much about Macedonia joining the EU, you might think that this is, at least, a tactical gain. If you live in Stip or Kumanovo or Ohrid or Skopje, you certainly do.”

If you have to say who is more credible saying that they want a compromise on the name issue, who would you choose between Skopje and Athens?

Both say that they want a compromise. What I do not know is whether the leaders will have the courage to take any decision, because clearly previous generations of leaders did not on this matter.  As I said before, Papandreou has proven in the past, most spectacularly with Turkey, that he is capable of taking unpopular decisions if he believes they are in Greece’s long-term interest. In the context of implementing the Ohrid Agreement leaders in Macedonia have also shown courage and determination, which is why Skopje is now quite far ahead of Belgrade. At the same time both countries have red lines. No Macedonian leader will be able to change the name simply in return for the opening of talks, with no guarantee that there will not be more demands later, once a concession is made. And no Greek leader can give up totally on the idea of a change in the name. This means simply that both Skopje and Athens need a compromise they can defend, because in both countries, whatever is agreed, it will be attacked by some.

Do you believe in fast solution that would allow Macedonia to get into NATO and start EU talks?

If a solution is found in the next weeks, both NATO and the start of EU talks will happen very soon. This would be a very encouraging signal, benefiting Athens, Skopje and the whole Balkans. What makes me nervous is the alternative. If there is no solution now, when circumstances are better than they have ever been before, then there might not be another breakthrough for the next two decades. The name issue would become a truly frozen bilateral conflict, like Spain and the UK’s disagreement over Gibraltar, which nobody believes will ever be resolved. This is a very realistic danger.

You were recently in Brussels. How would you qualify the mood concerning the name issue? Are people there impatient or become more and more indifferent?

You have both. Those who work on enlargement are cautiously hopeful, but in a sense they have to be: the future of their job depends in part on finding a solution.  People who work on enlargement believe that a solution has never been closer: this is what they have been told by the parties involved as well.  As a result there would be tremendous disappointment if this fails. On the other hand there are people less keen on enlargement, which is a large number.  They have become indifferent a long time ago. They think that this is simply another irrational Balkan dispute, which shows why it was a mistake to admit any Balkan countries to the EU in the first place. They fear the day when even more Balkan countries might join and welcome any reason for delay. They read the German paper Frankfurter Allgemeine a few weeks ago, which wrote that our proposal has only one problem: “it is too reasonable.” They do not believe that reasonable solutions ever work in the Balkans.

Does Brussels still believe that the name issue could be solved rapidly?

Few people believe in a rapid solution after 19 years without one, but some people certainly hope that it will be solved soon.  This is particularly true for those who work in DG enlargement. They know that the credibility of an EU perspective cannot be stretched out forever. They want an end to this conflict almost as badly as people in the region.  But I did not find many people in Brussels willing to put their own money on a breakthrough. When it will happen, it will still be a tremendous surprise to everyone. As one of the most optimistic officials told me: “While I believe that this time a breakthrough could happen, and ought to happen, and would be in everybody’s objective interest to happen, I still cannot believe that it will happen.”

EC is not satisfied with the reform process in Macedonia. Can Macedonia expect more critical remarks from Brussels in the following months?

Yes. The problem is, however, that without a credible enlargement perspective any critical remarks from Brussels, however justified, are unlikely to achieve much. If a country does not believe it will ever join, whatever the state of reforms, why worry about a critical report from Brussels? The next weeks will also decide about the future of the EU’s leverage and influence, not only in Skopje but in the whole Western Balkans.

Dnevnik, Monday 16 August 2010