Milan Kučan [na prvo stran]

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A VIEW OF THE BALKANS
Ljubljana, 12 april 2007

 


Text written by Milan Kucan on the Balkans for the book of essays with the working title "Europe: Shaping Our Future" :

"In our deliberations over how to seek an exit from the Balkan crisis, I favour persevering with principles. The consequences of possibly drawing up a new political map in South Eastern Europe, and of solutions that might deviate from principles, could be unpredictable or even disastrous for peace and coexistence in the Balkans.

I realise that persevering with principles does not mean an easy route to a solution. Yet it is precisely in the Balkans that Europe and the international community can affirm the principles of a modern, democratic, approach to settling the relations between nations and states of the inter-dependent human community in the globalised world. And it is right here that I see a major challenge and opportunity for Europe that is worth every effort.

The primary or fundamental dilemma that needs to be addressed, is whether Europe and the international community will assent to a changing of national borders in order to align them with ethnic territories, including those territories created through force or war, through ethnic cleansing and even genocide, with all the consequences of such a decision. Or whether they will persevere with the view that the borders in Europe are final and that they may be superseded only through a new conceptualisation of political democracy and cooperation between nations and states, including through the principles of the free flow of people.

In resolving the Balkan problem, Europe has the opportunity and duty to respond to the question of whether its south eastern part should be governed by different principles from those otherwise applied, or whether the settling of relations between the states and nations of that area are governed by the principles that apply to all. This involves in particular the principles enshrined in the Helsinki Charter. I am thinking above all of the principles of the finality of borders and their unchangeability through force, of the avoidance of force in resolving disputes and of the promotion of human individual and collective rights, within which the rights of ethnic minorities are also very important. Are the Balkans – and why – such a different or special part of our continent that different principles should apply here? And in this case, what are these principles?

The other question is, whether modern Europe can assent to the doctrine – which became the doctrine in the conflict-hit part of the Balkans – that the members of one nation can no longer, after all the mutual enmity, live together with the members of another nation, because they are different in their national, religious, cultural and societal affiliation.

It is my firm belief that Europe’s answer to both questions is in the negative. The same principles should apply to the Balkans as elsewhere, and in South Eastern Europe, too, the members of the various nations and their leaders must accept responsibility for finding ways to coexist, each with the other, and not one against the other. And that includes when they coexist with minorities. Europe, and especially the European Union, cannot afford a different response – both for its own identity and for the safety of its future.

Clear responses of principle from Europe and the international community are important. They represent the ethical foundation for governance in the globalised circumstances in which new relations in the human community are established and many hitherto valid institutions governing the social order become a thing of the past. It is therefore all the more important that principles should become the guiding force in seeking solutions for the future of each Balkan state and for all of them together. Thus far these principles have not been consistently observed. Priority has been given to pragmatic solutions.

Defining the principles that should provide a balance in intergovernmental and international relations between states and nations, involves defining and affirming the values inherent in the EU identity. And equally important to the definition of principles is a consistency in the commitment to their observance and an acceptance of common responsibility, which will provide adopted views with the necessary credibility and thereby feasibility.

It is only where there is a unified approach from European countries that the political elites in the Balkans will believe that principles cannot be sidelined and cannot be toyed with. They will be faced with the fact that the common will of Europe must be respected, and that there are simply no other solutions; that they cannot speculate with the differences in the interests and views of individual states and they cannot count on their support for solutions that run counter to these principles; and that the time of dividing up spheres of interest in the Balkans is in the past.

I support a conference of European countries which would weigh up the political future of the Balkans and the principles upon which that future should be established. It should aim to secure an agreement on more permanent, and not simply short-term albeit urgent, solutions than those currently in place in Bosnia-Herzegovina and in Kosovo. I have in mind long-term solutions, which alone can bring stability, democracy, peace, security and prosperity to this part of Europe. The current short-term solutions enable that kind of profound deliberation, and their effects may provide a beneficial prop to such deliberation.

The international community has to date invested enormous effort and money in calming the situation in the crisis area of the former Yugoslavia. Yet it has not found any satisfactory answer to resolve the crisis. This has not even been made possible by the Dayton Agreement, which halted the war in Bosnia-Herzegovina, an extraordinary achievement, nor is it inherent in the proposal from the UN Secretary General’s special envoy, Matti Ahtisaari. His response regarding the status of Kosovo and settling the issue of its internal life brings with it major expectations, but at the same time it opens up certain new and far-reaching questions regarding the future arrangement of international relations, especially in respect of the principles and values upon which those relations have thus far been based, such as protecting the sovereignty and territorial integrity of states, non-recognition of facts achieved through war or aggression, the equality of nations and their right to self-determination.

It is appropriate here after so many years to pose the question, why thus far all the efforts of the international community have not brought a more lasting stability to the situation in the Balkans and found a method of promoting and establishing the principle of reconciliation among the nations living there, so that instead of trying to settle scores for actions in the past they might turn their attention to seeking ways of living together productively in the future.

I am firmly convinced that the basic reason lies in overlooking the fact that the Balkan conflicts have common historical roots and they therefore need to be resolved comprehensively, taking account of their connectedness and mutual influences. In other words, you cannot resolve one problem without envisaging the possible consequences for resolving other problems, for instance that of Kosovo for Bosnia-Herzegovina, Serbia and Macedonia. Instead of a comprehensive approach, there was a pragmatic one – and in the period of the horrific wars this was even justified – or rather merely an extinguishing at individual crisis points without any safety valves that would prevent the resurgence of conflicts or the triggering of new ones. This of course was not sufficient to ensure that after the cessation of hostilities, the rearranged situation might create a new basis for long-term peace and political and social stability in this part of Europe, and thereby throughout Europe.

Clearly a different approach should be attempted in resolving the Balkan conflict. An approach that would identify the causes of the repeated conflicts, define ways of eliminating them and respond comprehensively to the issue of the political future in the Balkans, or rather in this case particularly in the western Balkans.

The core of instability is represented by the prevalent understanding of and method of dealing with the national question in the Balkans (especially of the Serbs and Albanians), which is entirely out of step with the modern concept of the civil state and an understanding of the rule of human rights. The violence that followed the collapse of the former Yugoslavia is merely a modern outbreak of the volcano of Balkan conflicts. The wars and peace conferences of the past 150 years have shifted the national borders, which are therefore seriously out of alignment with the ethnic borders. They suited the momentary balance of interests of the victors and the might of the major powers, and continually recreated large ethnic minorities within the states of majority nations. The latent tension and conflict relations that such a situation causes result in pressures to create ethnically pure states on the principle of “blood and soil”, which is used to justify the right to living space or a nation state, and are applied to justify ethnic cleansing and even genocide. We have witnessed this in Bosnia-Herzegovina, Serbia and Kosovo, and in the first half of the nineties also in Croatia. Only an understanding of the integrated and interlinked nature of these issues would make it possible in resolving them not to return to the past in which they were created, and to using the methods of those times.

I am convinced that a long-term solution to the present complicated situation in the Balkans is possible only with a consistent strategy for conceptualising political democracy in a postmodern way, in other words the rule of law and the exercising of human and minority rights, and for understanding the modern state as a civil society constructed on the principles of civil equality, multiethnicity, multiple religions, structural pluralism, a free economy and openness; and constructed also on adherence to the principles on which are founded peace, security and cooperation in modern Europe.

The means that would be used to bring into force decisions adopted at such a conference must be only those that are in line with the values and norms of the postmodern world. To begin with, we would need today to render the firmly entrenched, now almost autistic political awareness in the Balkans open to democratic impulses. This would reduce the power of the current political nomenclature that thrives on the exclusive power of the national idea as the supreme value, and on the impoverishment of people in the name of that idea. Development, too, is stifled in its name. Development will only be possible with free people involved in the free flow of ideas and goods and with strictly controlled and expertly guided projects of assistance with the participation of the people for whom it is intended. The path leads to the autonomy of people, social subsystems and the civil society.

Peace and cooperation cannot be achieved by setting up new walls on new borders. The European countries cannot wash their hands of responsibility for the possible new erection of walls in South Eastern Europe. I am convinced that a European conference would also be able to offer the Balkans a solution that would affirm the importance of the rule of human rights, protection of ethnic minorities, personal dignity and freedom of the citizen, and states of plural citizenship that respect diversity, multiethnicity and multiple religions, and especially tolerance and dialogue. And add to this the productive cooperation of countries that are founded on such principles, for reason of the common responsibility for the global world, which begins with responsibility for peace and stability in one’s own home and neighbourhood.

Why a conference of all European countries? The problem of the stability and future of the Balkans is a European problem, since stability in Europe depends to a large extent on the stability of its south eastern region. For this reason all European countries have the right and duty to participate in the process of adopting decisions, and also to bear responsibility together for adopted decisions. Within the region alone there are clearly no solutions, so initiatives cannot be confined to a regional dimension, by promoting economic and other cooperation between states within that not entirely clearly defined, historically and civilisationally heterogeneous and politically undefined region, which in a simplified form more or less corresponds to the territory of the former Yugoslavia.

For this reason it is so important that at the same time as principles are defined, positions are adopted that will support the realistic prospect of including the countries of that region in European integrations. And this should not be merely promises, but a firm commitment from the EU Member States and specific commitments in offering assistance, so that these countries might successfully fulfil the requirements for inclusion and later live successfully and responsibly within the integrations. These economic, political and value conditions must of course be the same for all. Empty promises or even trading in principles, bribery through individual projects, granting privileges to some at the expense of others in line with the interests of the big countries, have brought more harm than benefit to the western Balkan countries. The people in that region need a realistic development prospect, without the fear of grudges and without false hopes. A false perspective can also be given by promises, even made without adherence to the valid principles of international relations, regarding new states which might formally and otherwise be independent and sovereign, but in actual fact are not capable of functioning and taking responsibility for their independence.

I regard precisely the creation of a realistic prospect of inclusion in European integrations – which will ensure for the people of these countries not just greater prosperity and security, but also a life that accords with democratic standards and values, which are the essence of the European idea – as a very important conclusion of the kind of European meeting or conference about which I am speaking.

No matter how numerous the criticisms of the EU are, especially following the referendums in France and the Netherlands, the fact remains that expanding the area of the European idea after the collapse of the communist sphere and especially the Warsaw Pact, has protected Europe from exploding. This is a fact and it cannot be changed, not even by certain perhaps insufficiently considered decisions in favour of enlargement or overlooking the criteria for certain new Member States, which have thus multiplied the number of problems in the EU and the principle of the efficiency of its functioning. The price of including the countries of the western Balkans, whatever the political map of the area, will certainly be high. But it will be lower than other prices, and lower than the material and especially the moral price paid to date in that region by Europe and the entire committed international community.

Of course the question remains whether the idea of of such a conference of European countries on the political future of the Balkans and its political map is realistic. I am aware of the possible objections, including that a conference is redundant, that it could last a long time, and that during this time the conflicts would simply grow. The Helsinki conference also lasted a long time. But it brought a good result for Europe, one that has lasted to the present day, even though the conference took place during the deep division of the world and Europe into blocs. Alongside the position on the unchangeability of borders by force, the Helsinki Charter’s “third basket” served as an instrument with which the modern, democratic European political idea of the validity of human dignity and human rights entered into the ideological bloc of the communist east, and from within destroyed its ideology of collectivism and totalitarianism. I am convinced that today after the fall of the Milošević regime a part of the Western Balkans is also in this respect politically still to a large extent a “different bloc”, and from the aspect of undserstanding the rule of human rights and a willingness to live with differences it is almost a different civilisation. A common future would require the eradication of such thinking and, more importantly, practices. It would also require that we take time to pursue carefully considered action.

Of course the idea of a pan-European agreement is possible when there are no more armed clashes and inter-ethnic violence. The current solutions have ensured these conditions. I am convinced that it is also in the interest of the political elites in all those countries to replace short-term and unstable solutions with long-term solutions that have a clear perspective.

Firmly established outlines of principles and values may possibly provide longer-term solutions to the Balkan conflicts, and their consistent use can enable this. Reference and adherence to the principles of what is today now the distant, yet no less relevant Helsinki Charter, will provide the moral and political legitimacy for Europe to place requirements on and propose solutions for the western Balkans. This will also serve as a foundation for the responsibility which in addition to the affected nations must be assumed above all by Europe, for it is Europe’s internal issue. It is time, partly for its own credibility and prestige, for Europe to stop burdening other parts of the world and the UN with this. South Eastern Europe is a challenge in which it can prove that the EU is not just an important economic player on the global level, but is also a global political and moral factor. Of course this does not mean excluding the USA and Russia. Their cooperation and signature under adopted decisions on the political future of the Balkans would provide additional credibility and a significant dimension of feasibility. And most importantly it would prevent the Balkans becoming the means of a new confrontation and division of the world, as is already happening with the Ahtisaari plan."

 

 

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