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Were you surprised with so many reactions to your Foreign Affairs article, so many of them being negative?
Not
really. I wrote a hard-hitting article because it is vital to start a
debate about the future of the Balkans that gets beyond the tired
mantras about Euro-Atlantic integration. Had I wanted to play it safe, I
could have repeated what every other Western commentator says – that
the Balkans must be multiethnic, get on with reform and join the EU.
However, this position is naive at best and dishonest at worst because,
if the political crisis in the EU continues, the union won't enlarge any
further and may not even survive at all.
Resistance
to the article came from three main groups, all of which want to
maintain the status quo. The first, most obviously, are those nations in
the region that stand to lose territory to which they are sentimentally
attached if, as I forecast, the Balkans moves towards the formation of
nation states. The second are those commentators who are opposed to the
idea of nation states in the Balkans for ideological reasons. And the
third are those who accept in principle that nation states are a viable
long-term settlement in the region but think the status quo should be
preserved because of the risk of conflict involved in any transition.
My
argument is essentially a Realist one which posits that the status quo
is no longer a sustainable option because the process of EU enlargement
is deadlocked. I don’t wish to exaggerate the dangers: for the moment,
the Balkans is peaceful and there is no immediate risk of conflict.
However, if we accept the logic which has underpinned Western policy for
the last decade - that stability comes through integration with the EU -
then we must also accept that, when this integration ends, there is a
risk that instability begins.
Already,
there is some evidence of the effects which the breakdown of the EU
enlargement process is having, namely a wave of popular unrest that has
swept across the region, starting in Bosnia and then moving to
Macedonia, Kosovo, Montenegro and Serbia. It is no accident that all
these states are simultaneously experiencing political turbulence, even
if there are local factors at play in each country. People sense that
there is no miracle European remedy to the day-to-day problems which
they experience – poverty, corruption, injustice and so on. No one from
outside is coming to help them and there is no light at the end of the
tunnel, unless they create it themselves. As a result, they are now
turning on their governments who they hold responsible for the problems
in their lives.
More
importantly, the breakdown of the enlargement process is also reviving
the spectre of separatism as minorities try to take control of their
destiny in countries where the central government always seems to
prioritise the interests of the majority group. Since they cannot have
the EU and the guarantees it once offered, Bosnian Serbs, Bosnian
Croats, Macedonian Albanians, Kosovo Serbs, Serbian Albanians and
Montenegrin Albanians are all, in one way or another, demanding the
right to have an autonomous territory run by their own politicians who
can deliver the security, economic opportunity and rights which they
desire. In the past, their scope to have this was limited. But with the
controlling influence of the EU in decline, groups are now explicitly
starting to challenge the status quo in order to exert more control over
their own affairs.
So,
it is high time that those who care about the stability of the region
start to think seriously about alternatives to the existing policy. I’m
not suggesting that my proposal - a transition to nation states - is the
final word on the matter, although I do think that in the long term
this will probably happen because of the powerful hold which nationalism
has on the region. However – and I can’t stress this strongly enough –
it is vital to have a proper debate, at both the local and international
level, about the alternatives to Euro-Atlantic integration. Stability
is not served by pretending everything is fine on the ground when the
tectonic plates are shifting just below the surface.
To
this end, I’m glad to note that after an initial emotional outburst,
some people in the region are now starting to take my analysis
seriously. In the last week, I have read some thoughtful commentaries,
in the Bosnian press in particular, by writers who recognise that the
Balkans is adrift, that there is a risk of renewed instability in the
future and that there is a need for some fresh thinking about how to
prevent this from happening. So, if the article has provoked people in
both the Balkans and the West into recognising that a new approach is
required, then it has served its purpose.
How well do you understand the situation at the Balkans?
As
well as any outsider is likely to. I have worked on the region
professionally for over fifteen years. I have lived in three of the
countries: Albania, Macedonia and Bosnia, the last two as a diplomat. I
have studied Balkan history to PhD level. I know two of the local
languages – Serbian and Albanian. And I have thought hard about the
politics for many years, especially when I was in Bosnia where things
were obviously not going to plan.
As
a foreigner, what I cannot claim is to feel the emotions felt by the
locals – their sense of history and collective identity, their likes and
hates, their fears and hopes for the future, and so on. However, in one
respect, that is an advantage when trying to understand the region
because it gives me a detachment that, I hope, allows me to see things
more dispassionately than those involved in the drama.
Your
thesis states that in order to bring peace and introduce stability in
the Balkans, Great Serbia, Croatia and Albania would have to be founded.
I presume you know that similar ideas led to 1991-1995 wars?
Yes,
I’m well aware of what drove the wars of the 1990s which led to
appalling violence and brutality. However, I would argue that the
failure to establish properly-constituted nation states is the reason
why the region is still at risk of instability.
I
do not see the basic conditions in place in the Balkans for
establishing successful multi-ethnic states, the test of which is that
all citizens, regardless of their nationality, enjoy security, equal
rights and economic opportunity. The region lacks a strong tradition of
democracy and constitutional liberalism, which might otherwise give
minorities confidence in shared institutions. A history of violence and
atrocities has destroyed trust between the various national groups. And
poverty and endemic corruption conspire to keep the people on edge.
From
what I have observed in multi-ethnic states such as Bosnia, Kosovo and
Macedonia, the lot of the minority is not a happy one. At a grassroots
level, minorities face an uphill struggle to find work outside their own
community, and risk insults, intimidation and even physical attack if
they reside in the wrong areas. And the political institutions are
dominated by the majority national group which discriminates against
minorities when making policy and allocating resources. Underlying this
daily reality, minorities express real fears that, if circumstances take
a turn for the worse, the majority population will send its army into
their villages, destroying property and murdering the inhabitants, as
has happened repeatedly in the past.
Unsurprisingly,
minorities have resisted multi-ethnicity from the moment Yugoslavia
collapsed, taking up arms to avoid becoming trapped in what they see as
someone else’s state. Subsequently, wherever these attempts at
separation failed, minorities have struggled to secure as much autonomy
as they can within their adopted state, in the form of a separate
territory and separate political institutions. Unfortunately, since this
aspiration runs contrary to the wishes of the majority population, the
effect has been to build tension, dysfunctionality and the omnipresent
risk of organised violence into the very structure of these multi-ethnic
states.
For
the last twenty years, the West has tried to contain the risk of a
relapse into violence by imposing itself on fragile states such as
Bosnia and Kosovo, while promising the locals membership of the EU and
NATO and all the attendant benefits this brings - work, prosperity, good
governance, and so on – providing they accept the current political
arrangements. However, the West’s ability to discharge this role has
started to decline markedly this decade because of the effective end of
enlargement, as I mentioned, and the increasing hollowness of the EU’s
claims to be the bearer of peace and prosperity. At the same time, new
external powers, such as Russia, Turkey and China are pushing their own
self-interested agendas in the region. As a result, separatist groups
which never accepted their place as minorities in someone else’s state,
are starting to revive their demands for greater separation in the form
of decentralisation or even, in the case of Republika Srpska, threats of
full independence.
In
my view, the West cannot stop minority groups from cutting their links
with the rest of the state, if they are determined to do so. Last
September, the Bosnian Serbs successfully held a referendum on a Dayton
issue which was endorsed by Russia and met no effective resistance from
the West. Now, we see Bosnian Serbs and Croats demanding the expulsion
of foreign judges from Bosnia’s Constitutional Court on pain of
withdrawing their personnel from the state institutions within six
months. Events are moving in a consistent direction, and seem to be
accelerating
Elsewhere
in the region, Albanians in Macedonia are talking more vocally about
the idea of a binational state and Albanian parties in Montenegro, which
have just entered the new government, have demanded that Tuzi becomes a
separate municipality. Meanwhile, in Kosovo, Serbs are threatening to
establish a community of self-governing municipalities without the
agreement of the Kosovo parliament.
All
this points to a situation, perhaps early next decade, in which
territories such as Republika Srpska have broken some, if not most, of
their links from the centre and done so against the wishes of the
majority population, risking a combustible situation on the ground. That
is why I argued in Foreign Affairs that the West should take pre-emptive action to steer the region towards a stable outcome.
I
suggested there were three approaches which the West could adopt –
increasing the rewards to disaffected minorities to abandon their
demands for decentralisation; sanctioning politicians who threaten
separation; and overseeing a process that gives minorities some of what
they demand. I suggested that, in fact, only the third approach was
viable because there is not much the West can offer the region and it
has limited coercive power. Accordingly, I suggested that the West
should put diplomatic pressure on majority groups such as Bosniaks,
Macedonians and Kosovo Albanians to reach a new settlement with their
minority populations that recognises not only their desire for greater
separation but also their ability to seize it unilaterally if there is
no negotiated solution. This would constitute a significant shift in
policy, particularly in Bosnia, where talk of constitutional reform has
always been about centralising the state, rather than decentralising it.
If
all this happens, and it proves acceptable to minorities on the ground,
then matters could rest there. However, if minorities decided that, for
reasons of security or economic opportunity, they wished to establish
shared institutions and common citizenship with their kin states across
the border, I do not believe that the West should stand in their way
simply for the sake of upholding the ideal of multi-ethnicity.
I
also talked about a potential third and final stage, in which ethnic
regions broke with their notional state. This is obviously a radical
step, and there is no immediate calling for it anywhere in the region,
because it seems such an elusive goal. However, it would be foolish to
rule out such an outcome in principle because, for reasons I have
already stated, nation states are the only form of polity in the Balkans
which can genuinely uphold the long-term security and rights of their
inhabitants. There are also practical limits to how far the Balkans can
fragment before it needs to be reassembled in accordance with the nation
state model, which still forms the basic organising paradigm in Europe.
I
should emphasise that, nowhere in this framework am I suggesting that
the emergent states need to be pure ethnic states. If Bosniaks have
chosen to live in Republika Srpska because they have ancestral roots
there, or Macedonians have chosen to remain in the Albanian-dominated
parts of the country, then of course they should be allowed to stay and
all efforts should be made to ensure their security and rights. Balkan
states such as Serbia, Albania, Montenegro and Croatia have all
demonstrated their ability to accommodate small numbers of another
national group because these do not threaten the territorial integrity
or identity of the state. However, this is a completely different
proposition to the situation which exists in Bosnia, Macedonia and
Kosovo today where large, disaffected minorities living in compact
territories adjacent to their titular state harbour separatist
ambitions, generating a state of a permanent tension and political
dysfunctionality.
In
essence, you believe that because the Balkans nations do not wish to
live in multinational states, the international community is conducting a
wrong sort of politics?
Yes,
that is basically my position. I think that the West’s intentions
towards the Balkans are benevolent but are based on an unrealistic
premise, namely that different national groups with divergent interests
and identities can be moulded against their will into a single political
community if the West, as the hegemonic power in the region, can
construct the right balance of rewards and sanctions.
To
my mind, the West’s approach to the Balkans took a wrong step at the
start of the 1990s when it chose to recognise the republics of the
former Yugoslavia within their existing borders, regardless of their
ethnic composition.
The
reasons for this are well known. Western policymakers believed that
recognising the Yugoslav-era borders would end the fighting that broke
out in 1991. They were averse to rewarding the Yugoslav People’s Army
for murder and ethnic cleansing. Recognition of states within their
Yugoslav-era boundaries was consistent with the Badinter Committee’s
interpretation of international law. And there was the practical problem
of how to draw international boundaries in a region without clear
ethnic boundaries. Alongside all this, the creation of multi-ethnic
states was consistent with the prevailing ideology of the time, namely
that nationalism was the source of instability in Europe and that the
future lay in transnational citizenship – a sentiment embodied in the
parallel creation of the European Union. This combination of factors set
the stage for the Post-Yugoslav settlement that exists today: seven
states, each occupying the territory they possessed in the former
Yugoslavia.
The
problem is that the states created by this settlement lack legitimacy
in the eyes of most of their minority populations, who have resisted
their belonging ever since. As a result, the West has struggled to
realise its basic goals in the region, above all a permanent end to
conflict. At first, it was compelled to take a coercive approach,
deploying troops on the ground and establishing intrusive civilian
missions in Bosnia and Kosovo that exercised authoritarian power over
the locals. Subsequently, it has chosen to adopt a policy of enticement
by offering the region membership of the EU and NATO.
Diplomats
make a rational case for this: if disaffected minorities can park their
grievances about security and territory long enough to address
second-order issues such as political and economic reform, then these
first-order issues will, theoretically, become irrelevant. NATO will
provide the security they desire and the EU will allow disaffected
minorities to unite with their ethnic kin inside a borderless union.
Unfortunately,
this theory makes little sense on the ground where minorities remain
fixated on unresolved issues of security and territory for the simple
reason that these are the precondition for their survival as a
community. By insisting that the locals focus on political and economic
reform while ignoring the issues of territory and security, the EU is
effectively asking them to construct the walls and the roof of their
house while deliberately ignoring the foundations.
Unsurprisingly,
things have not worked out as the bureaucrats in Brussels intended.
Instead of reform, the political institutions in places like Bosnia have
been gridlocked by intractable questions about the nature and identity
of the state, and the division of power between the centre and the
regions. Meanwhile, the normal development of the state has been
seriously retarded. Democracy is stifled since the West has vetoed the
most basic political demand of the various minority groups, namely their
physical security. And this is turn has retarded the development of the
economy since unresolved fears about security crowd out virtually every
other political issue, allowing nationalists and strongmen who promise
to protect their populations to run the economy corruptly in their own
interests.
So,
a quarter of a century on from the establishment of these multiethnic
states, the West can take credit for having preserved the peace in the
Balkans. There has not been any wide-scale organised violence in the
region since the end of the conflict in Macedonia in 2001. However, the
West has failed to resolve the underlying source of tension, namely, the
mismatch of national and political boundaries, meaning the peace the
West has created rests on shaky foundations. All this calls for an open
discussion and radical rethink of Western policy towards the region
which is the reason why I wrote the article.
Still,
if your ideas were realized, that would mean the division of Bosnia and
Herzegovina, Kosovo and Macedonia. In my opinion, such a scenario might
cause more negative than positive consequences?
Well, the first thing to say is that these states are already de facto
divided, so the division that you talk of is not conditional on
realising my ideas. But I sense your question is really about the
dangers implicit in moving from the current settlement based on
multi-ethnicity to the formation of nation states. And to answer your
question, we have to distinguish between processes and outcomes.
To
take outcomes first, I think that the eventual emergence of nation
states would be more positive than negative because, in the Balkan
context, a territorially-defined nation state is the only form of polity
than can properly guarantee the rights and security of its inhabitants.
I explained earlier the reasons why I think this is the case: the weak
tradition of liberal democracy, the lack of trust between different
national groups and the tension created by poverty and social injustice,
all of which work against the interests of minorities.
I
also think that, at the international level, the creation of recognised
nation states would end the territorial competition that blights the
region. Diplomatic relations between Croatia and Serbia, or Serbia and
Albania, or Albania and Greece are basically functional because, except
for minor border disputes, none of them makes a formal claim on the
territory of any of the others, and the inhabitants generally feel
secure from external interference behind hard international borders.
This
contrasts with the current reality in states such as Bosnia, Macedonia
and Kosovo where the territory occupied by the minority group is
implicitly, and sometimes explicitly, claimed by the majority group,
leaving the minority group feeling profoundly uneasy. So, in arguing for
the creation of nation states in the Balkans, I am responding to the
desire of minorities on the ground for the kind of security that only
comes with living behind an internationally-recognised border. In this
respect, I am confident that, if those Serbs, Albanians and Croats who
currently live in a state of vulnerability in someone else’s country
were able to live securely in a properly-constituted nation state, the
main source of tension afflicting the region would end.
However,
I am not naïve about the difficulties involved in achieving this
outcome, which I have traced back to the decision by the West to
recognise the former Yugoslav republics within their existing borders. A
great deal has happened since then: peoples have been ethnically
cleansed from their homelands, raising profound moral questions about
the right of Bosnian Serbs, in particular, to any kind of independence
from the rest of Bosnia. And majority groups such as Bosniaks and
Macedonians have obtained a right under international law to prevent the
secession of their disaffected minorities.
That
is why, as one of the possible solutions, I have suggested a graduated
approach to the formation of nation states, which involves both minority
populations, majority populations and various international partners in
discussions, and which can be halted at any time if minorities express
their content with the status quo.
I
don’t claim to have all the answers. Far from it. These issues are
profoundly difficult and policymakers have not even begun to think them
through. But the point that must be kept firmly in mind is that, with
the effective end of the policy of EU enlargement, the West’s existing
approach is no longer viable and there is a growing risk of a breakdown
in security. In this respect, the challenge for Western policymakers is
no longer to work out how to make a success of multi-ethnicity. Rather,
it is to decide whether to let the Balkans fragment in an improvised and
uncontrolled manner; or to work with the locals to address the
unresolved grievances of minorities and prevent a return to violence. It
is vitally important to begin this discussion, based on realism not
idealism.
How would a new Balkans reality look like? West Herzegovina in Croatia, Kosovo in Albania with Serbia stretching to Banja Luka?
If
the region was reorganised on the basis of nation states in which the
international political boundaries corresponded with the national
boundaries, then the new map of the region would be as you describe.
However, there is certainly scope for adjustments to the existing
administrative boundaries, especially in Bosnia, with parts of Republika
Srpska and the ‘Croat' cantons potentially included in a reconstituted
Bosnian state. And, I will emphasise, you are taking the long view here.
I am not proposing that the Balkans passes from the existing
arrangements to the creation of consolidated nation states in a single
leap.
I have a feeling this plan might suit Russia and Putin best?
I
agree that the West needs to be cautious about Russian involvement in
the Balkans although I don’t agree with your conclusion that Russia
would automatically gain from any transition to nation states.
At
the moment, Russia is able to exert influence in the region by
exploiting ambiguity and discontent with the current political
settlement. The Kremlin has managed to establish itself in Serbia
because of its endorsement of Belgrade’s campaign to prevent
international recognition of Kosovo. Since this endorsement can be
withdrawn at any time, Serbia finds itself in a dependent relationship
with Russia that gives Moscow significant leverage over Serbia’s
internal affairs. That suits Russia well.
Similarly,
Russia has managed to gain a foothold in Republika Srpska because it
has backed the Bosnian Serbs’ attempts to distance RS from the rest of
Bosnia. For what it’s worth, my reading is that Russia is content to
keep Bosnia on edge to increase its room for manouevre in Ukraine. If
the West ratchets up the pressure, Moscow can trigger a crisis in the
Balkans that distracts the West and consumes its energy simply by
promising the Bosnian Serb leadership Russian support for any
independence bid it might make. In this respect, anything which can be
done to reduce the underlying source of tension would diminish Russian
influence in the region.
But
there is another way to answer your question, which is to recognise
that Russia sees the Balkans as a region of strategic interest, that it
is not going to disappear and that the task is to try and harness
Russian influence, especially over the Serbs, in a constructive rather a
destructive way. If, as I suspect, the Bosnian Serbs continue to push
for greater autonomy from the rest of Bosnia, then it is important to
have Russia sitting at the negotiating table.
Russia’s
greatest yearning in international affairs is to be treated seriously
as a Great Power, and I suspect that, if the West were willing to
involve Russia, it could turn out to be a helpful partner. There are
precedents for this, especially in 1999 when Russia played a vital role
in bringing the Kosovo conflict to an end. This, it would seem to me, is
much better than engaging in a forlorn power struggle with Russia for
influence in the Balkans in which it encourages the Bosnian Serbs to
pursue its campaign for greater separation outside of any negotiating
forum.
Do you believe the international community will change its policies towards the region in the next few years?
In
the short term, I think it is unlikely. Foreign policy is impervious to
revision once it has been made and only really changes when a serious
and dramatic event renders the existing approach untenable. I don’t
therefore expect a decisive shift in Western policy towards the Balkans
in the absence of some major disruptive development, either in the
Balkans or the EU. Instead, I expect that Western diplomats will
continue to implore regional governments to prepare their countries for
membership of the EU while engaging in ad hoc
interventions to contain any crises that do break out. The one caveat
to this is that, in private, the new administration in the United States
may start to think through some different scenarios and policy
approaches - at least, I hope it does.
However,
in the medium term, I think events will force the West to change its
approach because the policy of ‘stabilisation through integration’ is
rapidly running out of road. If the West is to stay true to its
long-standing goal of maintaining peace in the region, it must modify
its policy.
Ideally,
this would involve some recognition that the root cause of conflict is
the mismatch of national and political boundaries in the region, and the
formulation of some solution that addresses this. I have offered
various suggestions, which can be quite subtle at first – above all,
putting diplomatic pressure on reluctant majority groups to reach an
accommodation with their disaffected minorities. Initially, this can be
done without abandoning the underlying commitment to multi-ethnicity and
the inviolability of borders. In time, the West could pursue a more
explicit policy of nation state formation, ideally by means of an
international conference on the Balkans that works out a new settlement
for the region.
But
the question of the West’s approach to the Balkans is not only about
the policy it formulates but its willingness and ability to pursue it.
And here the situation is very unclear. The Balkans has not been a
policy priority for the US since last decade and its long-standing view
is that the Europeans should take the lead in the region. Even though I
have called on the new administration in the US to re-engage with the
Balkans in a new way, I don’t see any immediate prospect of this
happening. At the same time, the EU as an organisation is too weak,
divided and distracted to play any kind of decisive leading role.
This
points to a number of broad scenarios. The first and best-case scenario
is that a coalition of powerful European states, working outside the
structures of the EU, pursues a new policy in a more vigorous way. The
most obvious candidates are the old Contact Group members – the UK,
France, Germany and Italy, plus Russia and Turkey, with the US playing a
supportive external role.
The
second is that the US and the Europeans abandon the Balkans to Russia
and Turkey, who treat the region as a proxy battlefield in a strategic
dispute over the future of the Middle East and the Black Sea region,
once their current marriage of convenience ends. This could happen if
the EU starts to collapse, distracting Europeans from events in their
backyard. And the third, and most worrying, is that the Great Powers all
leave the field, creating the kind of void that existed at the end of
the 1980s when the United States and the Soviet Union lost interest in
Yugoslavia. This would cede all power to local separatists who would
effectively be free to pursue their goal of separation, constrained only
by the willingness of majority populations, and whatever external
allies they can find, to prevent them from doing so.
I
hope that neither of these latter two scenarios comes to pass. But the
possibility should serve to focus attention on the need to reduce
tensions in the short term, while the region is stable and the West
retains some authority. It is high time for fresh thinking in the West
and for majority populations in the region to start talking to their
respective minorities in order to get beyond the current political
impasse.
This interview with the director appeared in an abridged form in the Croatian newspaper Jutarnji list on 8th January 2017
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