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POST-BERLIN EUROPE AND THE BALKAN WAR
Speech by the President of the Republic of Slovenia Milan Kucan in the Parliament of the Republic of Lithuania
Vilnius (Lithuania), 5 May 1999
"Full responsibility lies with the countries which today are economically strongest. The new circumstances mean that these countries will have to supplement their legitimate national interests with interests which in a globalised world are founded on a corresponding global responsibility. This also applies to European powers and their responsibility for Europe as a whole," president Kucan pointed out.
"A new world political and security system, based on the rule of human rights as the highest universal value, requires us to go beyond the traditional nation-state built on the principle of Blut und Boden which protects itself from others through absolute sovereignty. The new world order calls for a citizen state"
"Every country is responsible both for internal conditions and for the security and stability of the whole. Anyone who destroys the human foundations of his own country also creates destructive shocks for others. International and world organisations, with the UN in the front rank, are therefore acquiring new dimensions and, with them, standards on which it will be necessary to build effective mechanisms to judge events and to enable the world community to intervene. "
"We need to ask ourselves why it is that the peaceful dissolution of Czechoslovakia was possible, and likewise the relatively peaceful break-up of the Soviet Union, and why the territory of former Yugoslavia has ended up facing the horrors of war" said President Kucan and continued his deliberation on the reasons for the Kosovo crisis.
Esteemed participants of today’s meeting,
You will perhaps note in my views on post-Berlin Europe and the war in the Balkans, certain emphases which are different from yours. I would ask you in advance, then, to understand them merely as one view of today’s world, its dilemmas and its opportunities.
My views are based in part on Slovenia’s Balkan experience, which lasted seventy years. They are also based on Slovenia’s ambitions, and on my own personal ambitions to see my country become compatible in every way with the way of life in the traditionally democratic countries and, more than this, to see it as a member of the European Union and Nato. The reason for this ambition is simple. The EU is the central integration for the development of a modern, common European home for all nations and countries, while Nato is gradually becoming the common security and defence organisation of the entire continent. There is a long way to go before we reach this goal, but what would be the use of a policy which had no ambitions, visions or strategy?
Slovenia, as an independent country, is just eight years old. Before independence it formed part of the old Yugoslav federation, within which, like the other republics, it enjoyed the status of a sovereign federal unit founded on the sovereignty of its people.
As a result of the increasingly hegemonist and totalitarian behaviour of the Belgrade regime which, primarily because of Serbian opposition, could not be democratised, at the end of the eighties the Slovenes’ existence as a nation and our need for modern Europe-orientated development were threatened in the Yugoslav federation. We Slovenes desired a democratic and competitive country of social welfare. We therefore decided to go our own way, and to create our own state, albeit one that was placed firmly in the modern European and Euro-Atlantic integrations. We are carefully following events in south-eastern Europe, since they are in our vicinity and threaten the security of both Europe and ourselves.
Current conditions in the heart of the Balkans, with all the horrors of war, from the brutal slaughter of people just because they are different, to rape and the cataclysmic expulsion or flight of the inhabitants, present a moment of truth for European politicians which needs to be confronted without prejudice and hesitation. It is in many ways on the recognition of this reality, like a belated echo of pre-Berlin Europe which clashes completely with fundamental thinking on the future of Europe, and on the response to it, that the image of the European continent in the new millennium depends, as well as its place and role in the global context of competing world centres and civilisations. The tragedy of the Balkans eloquently confirms the experience that key questions need to be asked again and again about the world, the European continent, and about possible outcomes in the future. I raise these questions as a Slovene, a person who is heir to the spiritual tradition of central Europe, and as a citizen of a country which also has long experience of the Balkans.
1. A globalised world - an indisputable reality
The end of the twentieth century has been marked by the formation of an interconnected and interdependent human world, processes of globalisation - in particular of the economy - along with the simultaneous processes of its individuation. Seven months before New Year 2000 it is possible to say that the human world is showing signs of globalisation as the prevailing state of life of continents, countries, nations and people. A key role has been played in this by the economy, which has finally crossed the borders of nation-states, human, spiritual and cultural worlds closed into themselves. The information society has become the driving force of universality. At this moment it is likewise possible to say that politics is barely and only partially keeping pace with economic universalisation. We have the UN, its specialist organisations, world banks and financial institutions and other mechanisms for regulating international relations. But it has to be said that in most cases it is only after the outbreak of financial, economic and political crises that these deal, with varying success, with rectifying the consequences and emergency measures designed to prevent the worst evils. However it may happen that we will enter the new millennium with such burdens of the recent past and such tangled international relations that all that remains of the hopes of a new, democratic, human civilisation of freedom, peace, equality, respect for differences, moral justice and solidarity, will be unfulfilled dreams transposed far off into the future. Fortunately new information and communications mechanisms have laid bare all the contradictions of our times to the eyes of humankind and prompted a consciousness of the necessity of human relations of a different kind in a globalised world.
I see a way out from the present situation, which is simultaneously promising and worrying, in the fulfilment of four concepts which serve almost as an ultimatum.
The first concept concerns the formulation of a new economic and financial regulation which, in part through the redistribution of profits, should enable both the full assertion of the social function of the state and positive changes in countries which for various reasons have lagged behind in terms of economic growth, or which in the new impetus of development are unable to help themselves. Full responsibility lies here with the countries which today are economically strongest. The new circumstances mean that these countries will have to supplement their legitimate national interests with interests which in a globalised world are founded on a corresponding global responsibility. This also applies to European powers and their responsibility for Europe as a whole. The long-term strategic goal should be universal observation of the rules of a market economy, which links the market profits of prosperity to protection from serious social problems. It would thus be clear that today’s often unchecked global market economy, which increases the poverty of a large part of humanity, threatens the environmental balance and impoverishes natural resources, is not the only possibility and choice of humankind. And that freedom does not begin and end with the freedom of the market, but with the possibility of the democratic cooperation of the human being in civil society and in the management of public affairs, and with his participation in the material, intellectual and cultural development of humankind.
The second concept concerns the establishing of a new universal world policy which could be adopted on a consensus basis by both large and small nation states. The enticing possibility of an agreement among political superpowers to form, because of their political strength and presumed privileged responsibility, a kind of world government to decide the internal and foreign policies of all existing and future nation-states, is no solution. The final result of this would be a new division of political and economic interest spheres with a built-in possibility of conflicts and enmities. What is needed, therefore, is a new, responsible deliberation of the character, role and meaning of the nation-state, large or small, that appeared in political thought and practice in the 19th century and with which for the most part we are still familiar, and a comparison with the idea of an open state of citizens. The human being as a citizen in his various national, religious and political affiliations to such communities, the institutions of civil society, becomes a universal value. A new world political and security system, based on the rule of human rights as the highest universal value, requires us to go beyond the traditional nation-state built on the principle of Blut und Boden which protects itself from others through absolute sovereignty. The new world order calls for a citizen state. The state of the 21st century, open to cooperation and global responsibility, should be in favour of transferring some of its sovereignty to democratically agreed supra-national and trans-national institutions common to all, both in individual continents and in the world framework. By means of the use and enrichment of instruments of international and interregional cooperation, in which international policy, including security policy, would be determined, a policy taking into account modern factors which threaten security and peace: terrorism, genocide and war crimes, trade in arms, drugs, human beings and human organs, and the causing of environmental disasters. Traditional foreign policy, or rather international policy, as the policy of nation-states towards other nation-states, must broaden its substance and its instruments and adapt itself to the process of globalisation and global responsibility.
I call the third concept the global expansion of political, economic and cultural democracy as a new strategy of peace, security and cooperation. All available historical experience tells us that the great advances in human development have been achieved when and where a historically determined and agreed rule of human rights has prevailed. Or to put it another way: the individual and collective rights of the human being have always been worst affected, and the human being has always suffered most, when authority and power have been seized - regardless of the methods, which might even be democratic - by a small group of powerful people, who in their lust for their own glory have relentlessly trampled and crushed the majority. In their own country and in their external aggression in other countries.
At this moment it is the experience of European political and social democracy which for us serves as the most successful model of coexistence and cooperation both within individual communities and among them. In such conditions internal and external political peace prevails. The global expansion of this type of democracy, creatively linked to the cultural traditions of different parts of the human world, is the most reliable way to ensure local and world peace, and thus to ensure conditions for a new flourishing of humankind. This also means the full enjoyment of the multi-cultural, multi-ethnic, multi-religious and plural world community and local societies. In a global, ever more uniform world, the violation of individual and collective human rights can no longer be the ‘internal affair’ of a nation-state protected by its sovereignty. The global political community is bound to prevent such violations and to see that genocidal actions are punished. Through human freedoms and rights as universal values of the globalised world, the responsibility of every country becomes indivisible. Every country is responsible both for internal conditions and for the security and stability of the whole. Anyone who destroys the human foundations of his own country also creates destructive shocks for others. International and world organisations, with the UN in the front rank, are therefore acquiring new dimensions and, with them, standards on which it will be necessary to build effective mechanisms to judge events and to enable the world community to intervene. The sovereignty of national territory can no longer be an obstacle to intervention. The world is no longer what it used to be until even quite recently.
The fourth concept of a functioning global society consists in the promotion of dialogue and cooperation among the very different civilisations of the human world. History tells us much about the collapse of civilisations as a result of their own internal decay. We are familiar with cases of civilisations destroyed by violence, and we are also the living witnesses to the ideological confrontations after the Second World War which assumed the appearance of a conflict of civilisations. We are also aware of modern phobias, especially with regard to Islamic culture and civilisation, while anti-Semitism remains permanently near the surface. At this moment we are witnessing fundamentalist violence in Kosovo which is seeking to justify itself as a defence of Christian civilisation, culture and faith. At the same time awareness is growing of the value of still-living cultures and civilisations, which modern media bring closer to us every day.
If the global community is really to start to live, it must have a soul. And this soul is provided by the common riches of the cultural and spiritual experiences of the great and small nations of the world. The vacated space of ideological and political confrontations in a world divided into two blocs must not be filled by cultural wars and confrontations of civilisations, or fundamentalist violence which justifies itself on the grounds of culture and religion. Even if we disregard the fact that these conflicts have always turned against their own culture and civilisation, we need to prevent these conflicts from determining our life. A good way out of this danger is inter-cultural dialogue which prevents differences in tradition, culture and religion from being used as instruments in the interests of political power or economic competition. The goal cannot of course be a global culture which would deprive people and nations of identity and security, since we all need a safe rootedness in our own history and culture. The goal of inter-cultural dialogue is the creation of mutual trust on the basis of knowledge of and respect for one another, which gives the human society an internal stability, solidity and solidarity.
2. European divisions as an obstacle to development
Within the contradictions and great possibilities of a globalised world, there is also the European economic, political and cultural reality which can be identified ten years after the fall of the Berlin Wall and the euphoric enthusiasm on both sides of the collapsed ruins of bricks and concrete. The enthusiasm was genuine, and the expectations and hopes were justified, but for some European states and nations at least, they appear not to have been fulfilled. The old European divisions have remained in the form of mental and material consequences, while new divisions are appearing and appeals to them are making themselves heard. There are of course naturally, historically and ethnically grounded divisions among people and social groups which we accept as given and get used to living with. There are also however divisions which have appeared as a result of human will, in particular of political will, and these can be abolished. Ideas of a European homeland as the homeland of homelands, and in particular of the EU, its currently most tangible form, are again growing more distant from year to year and may even retreat to some indefinite point in the new millennium. This as an unwanted but very powerful truth for the Baltic states and the countries of central, eastern and south-eastern Europe which are ‘in the waiting room’ or have yet to enter it, which have signed association agreements or have yet to do so. This will have negative rather than positive effects both for ‘included’ Europe and for ‘excluded’ Europe. The strategy of expanding democracy is a necessity for Europe, and this strategy is made considerably more feasible by the accelerated expansion of the EU than through delayed expansion.
These processes will never run smoothly. Decades of life in pre-Berlin Europe have left deep traces in the spiritual structures of the nations on both sides of the wall. Only true coexistence can eliminate them. Differences have remained in the political strength and international participation and influence of large and small states. The dynamics of development are affected by differences in economic development which cannot be eradicated merely by talking about a market economy. Even in recent months a border has once again been defiantly drawn between the politically stable part and the politically unstable part of the European continent, a border which is announced every day by the maelstrom of war and by brutal violations of human rights. The security demarcation of Europe under the Treaty of Schengen is finding a response in the existing south-eastern border with the unstable part of Europe. Slovenia lives near this border and feels all the unpleasant economic, political and social consequences of the situation. The spiritual consequences, too! Once again, with increasing frequency, there is talk of a division into Western Christian and Eastern Christian Europe, and of Christian countries as a bulwark against the dangers of Islamic civilisation. Islamophobia is once again on the march. New divisions are also reviving within the countries of Europe in the sense of nationalist fundamentalism, anti-Semitism and ideological exclusivity.
We should be especially concerned about the rise of a ‘third-world Europe’ or an ‘anti-Europe’ if I may call it that. This is the direction in which some of the new post-socialist societies are headed - societies which reject the European democratic political tradition and system of values in order to preserve, in a new form, the old social order and the rule of the nomenklatura, societies which, joined in a political association, would together clash with Western ‘intruders’ in the name of Slavism, the Orthodox Church and a ‘genuine’ home. This division plays on the possibility of a renewal of the old strength and authority of the Stalinist Soviet Union, and enters the open territory of the uncertain and splintered political and social conditions in the Russian Federation. Let us not close our eyes to the truth that the democratic and stable part of Europe has not yet been able to find real communication and relations with present-day Russia, which has clearly not yet been able to overcome all the political, economic, spiritual and emotional consequences arising from the collapse of the Soviet state and the loss of position of one of the two superpowers in the ideologically bipolar world.
The increasing preoccupation of one part of Europe with its former power and way of life is another reason that Europe needs a new impetus for development. This could be brought about by the acceleration of the incorporation of new countries into Euro-Atlantic associations and by an agreement on the special status of the Commonwealth of Independent States with Russia in a common European home. There is a difficulty involved in defining this special status, but it is more easily resolved than the problems of a precarious life with a powerful neighbour excluded from European events and surrounded only by anxiety over its internal development and renewed strengthening of its military and other power.
3. The drama of Kosovo - possible outcomes
There is no longer any doubt that on 24 March 1999, when the Atlantic Alliance commenced air and missile attacks on Yugoslavia, qualitatively new conditions arose in Europe. Though this military intervention was necessary, and the logical consequence of the arrogant rejection of all peaceful and political solutions designed to halt the serious violation of human rights by the Belgrade regime of President Milošević, it speaks at the same time of the consequences of missed opportunities by Western countries when an alternative solution was still possible in the territory of the collapsed former Yugoslavia and in the neighbouring region.
We need to ask ourselves here why it is that the peaceful dissolution of Czechoslovakia was possible, and likewise the relatively peaceful break-up of the Soviet Union, and why the territory of former Yugoslavia has ended up facing the horrors of war. It is my belief that two key reasons exist for this situation. The first concerns the inability or unwillingness of the leading Western countries to recognise the key causes of the Yugoslav crisis in the second half of the 1980s, i.e. after the death of Tito and before the fall of the Berlin Wall. In this period a conflict between two social concepts developed in Yugoslavia. The first saw a way out of the socio-economic crisis in the establishment of a plural political democracy, a market economy and in equal inter-nation relations and relatively high autonomy for federal units including the two autonomous provinces of Kosovo and Vojvodina as parts of Serbia. The second reason lies in the blind eye that has been turned to the aggressive nationalism of the Serbian political elite which by doing away with the Federal Constitution wished to unify and centralise the country according to the principle of ‘one person, one vote’ and ‘Serbify’ it according to the principle ‘where there is a Serbian grave, there is Serbia’. Milošević, together with the Yugoslav Army, did not want to give way. Dissolution began with Slovenia’s choice of self-determination in June 1991 and the attempt to forcibly interrupt this process by the attack of the Yugoslav Army. With the help of the EU we Slovenes wrested ourselves from the grip of Yugoslavia, but the aggression, lack of democracy and violence of the Belgrade regime remained unrecognised. It therefore continued its campaign in Croatia and against Bosnia-Herzegovina, with well-known outcomes. Though one of the results of this campaign was the exodus of Serbs from Croatia in 1995, in Bosnia, with the help of brutal ethnic cleansing, it gained, instead of a punishment, a prize – the Republika Srpska. In the conditions that then prevailed it set about the homogenisation of the rest of Yugoslavia and chose Kosovo, the unifying symbolic myth of Serbism, as a new Lebensraum for an alternative colonisation by the Serbian state. It crushed the free media, stifled real political opposition and through autocratic government shaped a new image of a nationalist Yugoslavia or Serbia which, in the name of the national idea, claims subservience and loyalty from its citizens towards the despotic leader. In his courts, doors were opened to him day after day by high emissaries and representatives of Western countries. These were frequently at odds with each other in their judgements and proposals, and convinced that a compromise was possible with Milošević. He understood this and exploited it as a weakness. Only when he literally challenged the United States of America, did what we are now witnessing take place.
The Western democracies should have used force to halt the intensified violence of Milošević’s regime long ago. Slovenia has drawn attention to the nature of the conflict and, to violence as the means to mistaken goals, since the very beginning. For a good ten years European politics has looked at its malign Balkan tumour and believed that it could be treated with political aspirins. Instead it has grown, and only an effective surgical operation can keep the European organism alive, in peace and security. This, in my opinion, is another reason why the present unity of the EU and Nato on the use of force against hitherto unpunished violence - violence for which those responsible are ruthless political poker players all of whom can be named - is of the utmost importance. The violence has to be stopped. The worse thing would be to stop halfway. This would cripple right at the outset every project for long-term stabilisation in south-eastern Europe, no matter how well worked out. Furthermore it would question the validity of human rights as a basic and universal value, the authority of the UN as the only universal organisation, which though in need of radical reforms is nevertheless the backbone of the world security system and global responsibility, the credibility and authority of Nato and its doctrine, and also the reality and logic of European integration. In any plan of this type, the true causes of these tragic conflicts and atrocities must first be identified.
The paradigm which I have already highlighted also applies to south-eastern Europe, more precisely to the current Yugoslavia: the compulsory and unconditional prevalence of political, economic and cultural democracy and thus the rule of individual and collective rights. Agreement on this is not possible with the present ruling political nomenklatura in Serbia and the Yugoslav Federation. This has been clear to analysts and observers who know this region since 1986 and the publication of the famous Memorandum of the Serbian Academy of Arts and Sciences, which revived historical concepts of a Greater Serbia and the violent expulsion of Albanians from Kosovo. Only a clear democratic framework could enable a curing of the historical traumas of the Serbs in Kosovo, and only democratic life can eliminate the doctrine of the rule of Blut und Boden. Whatever happens, an important and responsible role will be played by Russia, which through its statements and actions clearly points to Belgrade as its field of interest. In a worst-case scenario a new ideological border could be drawn in Europe. This, however, is only one of the arguments for a conference of European countries on the political future of the Balkans and on the elimination of the danger of south-eastern Europe again destabilising Europe and threatening its security and peace. A safe and peaceful Balkans also includes the economic development of the region and its political connection with European integrations. But first of all this conference needs, in its first phase, to analyse the causes of the current war and crisis. It needs to identify causes, the unresolved national questions of the many nations in the Balkans and the methods for resolving them, and motives, among which I also include the conflict between Serbs and Albanians. The ethnic image of this conflict, which has now taken on cataclysmic proportions in the violent ethnic cleansing of Kosovo and the tide of refugees, has its deeper causes, about which I have already spoken. We also need to shake off the misapprehension that the past war in Bosnia was a religious and ethnic war. Religions play their role, but are of secondary importance. I could give further illustration with examples from the surface of the Balkan melting pot, in which nations and their spiritual and political elites are literally struggling, with armed violence and following the principle of Blut und Boden, for Lebensraum, enclosed by changed national borders. Their goal is to resolve the extremely complicated national question involving many nations in this area. A question which is also complicated by the numerous wars which have moved the borders of national and political territories. Unfortunately they are trying to resolve this perfectly legitimate issue by looking back to the traditional nation-state of the 19th century, which knew a pure national territory created by violence, ethnic cleansing and genocide, which equates state with nation, which does not recognise ethnic minorities, and which understands national sovereignty above all as the duty and right to protect its territory from others, according to the rule of hostility between countries. The goal of the modern world, however, is the citizen state ruled by individual and collective human rights. The international community, in particular the community of democratic European countries, is bound to step into this century-old breach, for the sake of the democratic future of all of us and of future generations, and to create an alternative which it is also prepared to guarantee.
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Europe is being put to the test. But the dilemmas and contradictions are clear. There is an increasingly solid political will for Europe to become a continent of peace and prosperity. It is the duty of all of us to see that we do not miss this opportunity to fulfil our responsibility.
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