Serbia and the international community
Dr. George Voskopoulos
July 26, 2008
The arrest of former Bosnian Serb leader Radovan Karadzic and his imminent extradition to the Hague Tribunal heralds a new era in Serbia´s orientation and EU membership course. The arrest was one of the prerequisites for the country to become a candidate for EU membership. Domestically it has triggered a heated debate over the conditions of arrest, the involvement or not of outsiders and the future of the current coalition government in Serbia.
There are a number of facts that should be scrutinized before making any judgements on the future of Serbia, its status as EU candidate country, its territorial integrity and its role in establishing a stable security environment in the region.
The first should be a clear official encouragement to the Serbian government to go on with reforms. Serbia´s isolation has established a black hole in regional security. This is the first time the country has taken a politically costly decision to bring Serbia closer to the EU. The merits of this policy should be made obvious to Belgrade in a tangible way. This is of paramount importance if the political stability and reforms are the targets of European policies. Under this spectrum, the insistence of the Netherlands and Belgium to link EU candidate status with the arrest of Ratko Mladic is a non-productive policy. Eventually it exposes the Serbian government and annuls the expected gains of cooperating with the international community.
Serbia has long been accused of not cooperating with the international community, a policy that bore great cost to the country and its people. Actually conventional wisdom equalled the actions of a small number of leaders and militia warlords with the fate of a whole nation. The Serbian people were punished for the crimes of a certain military or paramilitary milieu. Applying the same logic would demand punishment of the American people simply because a number of senseless military tortured prisoners in Guantanamo and A. Ghraib. This kind of thinking should be discarded if we really wish to provide carrots to the Serbian political elite and the Serbs.
The EU should approve the implementation of the transient agreement with Serbia thus showing the Serbs that their policy deserves credit. As reported in ´Blic´, "Bernard Kouchner said the decision over possible implementation of the transient agreement should be made until the end of July". A positive decision would encourage the Serbian government to further cooperate. Already the EU enlargement commissioner Olli Rehn stated that, "the EC would speak in favor of the beginning of implementation of the Stabilisation and Association Agreement".
Javier Solana stressed the importance of further advancing reforms if Serbia is to acquire EU membership status. As he stated in the Blic ´this is a turning point in fulfilment of well-known conditions set to Serbia on its path to integration with Europe. The EU shall immediately consider what conclusions are to be made from this positive development of events and I am sure we shall move ahead together with Serbia. I very much hope that this shall make possible for the chief prosecutor of the Hague Tribunal to say that the cooperation is developing in good direction".
At this crucial stage promises is the last thing Serbian leaders and people would like to hear. Institutional encouragement of Serbia´s EU course is the only way forward. Any other decision is bound to politically destabilise the country. This should be taken into consideration by Serge Brammertz, the ICTY prosecutor. In an interview in "Vreme" in June President Tadic made it clear that Serbia is ready to make sacrifices to join the EU. Yet, these sacrifices should be acknowledged by Brussels. Under this spectrum continuation of a revanchist policy on the part of Brussels will annul the efforts of President Tadic and his ruling coalition. In a recent interview the Deputy Prime Minister Bozidar Djelic clearly set Serbian priorities, among other things, on the implementation of Stabilization and Association Agreement and the need to acquire structural funds from the EU.
A number of facts should be included in the process of evaluating Serbia´s future. They refer to parameters outside the politically correct argumentation of those who have long focused on punishing the country and a whole nation for the crimes of a handful of people.
First Serbia is a territorially mutilated country. Kosovo´s recognition took place outside UN standard practices and institutional framework, a policy that assists the argumentation of Serb nationalists.Eventually Kosovo´s recognition outside the normative, regulatory UN framework is a dangerous act supported by those who envisage and openly support a post-UN world order.
Second, Serbia is a country counting human losses in terms of civilian population due to NATO´s air raids in 1999. This constitutes a crime for which the perpetrators were not brought to justice. The dialogues between the pilots involved in the raids and their officers published by The Time magazine in the recent past illustrated the degree of guilt many should feel about a criminal behaviour towards civilians. Pilots reported that there were no military targets but were ordered to proceed with bombing, an action pointing to the application of double standards. In 1991 a leading academic in the UK commented on the application of double standards suggesting that, "this is not just an issue of ethics. Those who apply double standards eventually support the continuation of a situation they nominally wish to change, that is the lack of rules and law in the jungle" [1]. NATO´s air offensive in 1999 took place outside or at the margins of international law and UN mandates. Very few have the courage to acknowledge this.
Third, the reliability and politically unbiased nature of the Hague Tribunal is heavily contested. It has given the impression that it was set up to judge only Serb war criminals. Slavenka Drakulic of The Guardian rightly pinpointed the "political controversies about the international criminal tribunal for the former Yugoslavia", yet very few journalists and academics have dared to challenge issues concerning the covert political expediencies of the Hague international court. Under this spectrum, a fair trial is a must if Serbs are to be persuaded that our only aim is to provide justice and reveal the truth.
Justice is supposedly blind but it should use its other senses in approaching the Serb people. For years, our evaluating judgements have been constructed on Serb collective guilt, that is the assumption that all Serbs are criminals disposing evil minds like those of the perpetrators who committed hideous crimes during the 1991-1995 Bosnian war. This provides wrong, distorted motives in judging Serbs. There are evil people not evil peoples and this is what the international community should have in mind. Generalizations might be useful when it comes to theorizing but at the same time they might have distorting effects when judging peoples.
Moreover, the application of international law should be uniformed without exceptions. As suggested, "the use of double standards when it comes to identify aggressors in the international political arena and the lack of a single application of rules" is indeed a malpractice of justice. The murders of civilians, rapes of women and mass extermination of whole villages should not and must not go unpunished. It constitutes a shame to our western civilization. But at the same time we should have the courage to judge ourselves without leniency in exactly the same way we are going to judge R. Karadzic. This is by no means an easy task but rather a test of values and ethics.
The 1995 UN war crimes tribunal indictment charging R. Karadzic and Ratko Mladic states that "thousands of Bosnian Muslim and Bosnian Croat civilians…were detained ... for protracted periods of time. They were not afforded judicial process and their internment was not justified by military necessity. They were detained, in large measure, because of their national, religious and political identity. The conditions in the detention facilities were inhumane and brutal ...". There is no doubt whatsoever about the degree the indictment portrays reality. But oddly enough we have done the same in Guantanamo and elsewhere thus breaking the very same rules we wish to impose. We have illegally detained, tortured and humiliated defenseless people imposing the least accorded punishments to perpetrators. At the same time we have allowed mercenaries to act at will in Iraq without punishment due to international law loopholes. These deficiencies send wrong signals to Serbs and in part demoralize our valiant crusade for justice and righteous punishment.
Serbs do not "live in denial" as suggested by a columnist of The Guardian. They are open to criticism and accept their responsibility, individually and collectively. Yet, they find it hard to accept criticism from those who apply double standards and international law a la carte. Those who have tried to turn Serbia into a minor state, into a scapegoat for all the wrongdoings of the Balkan Hobbesian world and tribalist tendencies of the region externalized through the worst aspects of Balkanism.
We should hold ourselves co-responsible for not facilitating resolution of disputes due to political expediency [2]. In November 1993, in the middle of the conflict the two co-chairmen of the mediating initiative D. Owen and D. Stoltenberg failed "to engage the US fully in their consultative exercise" [3], a policy that gradually annulled the European Union Action Plan. D. Owen estimation then was that "Washington was skeptical or even hostile towards the Franco-German initiative (the EU Action Plan) and the EU activity generally" [4]. This is an indicative only case of how the international community became part of the conflict equation.
In the more recent past we have blatantly failed to approach post-Milosevic Serbian national psychology through a causational pattern. To look into this particular Serbian nationalism as, inter allia, a sign of humiliation, despair, an undesired to us expression of national pride on the part of nation who suffered the effects of semi-legal or illegal NATO bombing in 1999 and a decisive blow to its territorial integrity. If we are to persuade the Serbs that they should not set any claims to a part of their country then we should do the same with those who unrightfully envisage territorial changes in the region. Again this is a provocative case of applying double standards. In any case it is easier and more convenient to operate and judge in a descriptive rather than a prescriptive way when it comes to judge post-Milosevic and Seselj´s Serbian nationalism. However, in this way we do not get answers to several critical why-questions.
A Janus, two-faced policy does not justify the ethical and motivational basis of the term "international community". In the past there has been severe criticism on the term. One I really found extremely provoking was expressed by a British academic who suggested that the term international community is "a term of propaganda…a platitude, trotted out by the powerful when they want to legitimize a particular action…The cozy phrase international community often represents the diplomatic equivalent of honor among thieves" [5]. Adopted policies, hindsight and history will determine the extent to which it depicts our motives.
1] Booth Ken (ed.), New Thinking about Strategy and International Security, Harper Collins, London, 1991, p.xiv
2] See indicatively "Balkans entangle big powers again, Germany, US accused of manipulating rivalry for their own gain", Washington Post, 24-12-1991.
3] David Owen, The Balkan Odyssey, Indigo, London, 1996, p. 239.
4] ibid, pp. 245, 249. See the full analysis in George Voskopoulos, "Greece, Common Foreign and Security Policy and the EU: interaction within and between a zone of peace and a zone of turmoil as an explanatory factor", PhD Thesis, Exeter University (UK), Centre for European Studies, 2001.
5] Ken Booth, "Human wrongs and international relations", International Affairs 71, I, 1995, p. 121.
There are a number of facts that should be scrutinized before making any judgements on the future of Serbia, its status as EU candidate country, its territorial integrity and its role in establishing a stable security environment in the region.
The first should be a clear official encouragement to the Serbian government to go on with reforms. Serbia´s isolation has established a black hole in regional security. This is the first time the country has taken a politically costly decision to bring Serbia closer to the EU. The merits of this policy should be made obvious to Belgrade in a tangible way. This is of paramount importance if the political stability and reforms are the targets of European policies. Under this spectrum, the insistence of the Netherlands and Belgium to link EU candidate status with the arrest of Ratko Mladic is a non-productive policy. Eventually it exposes the Serbian government and annuls the expected gains of cooperating with the international community.
Serbia has long been accused of not cooperating with the international community, a policy that bore great cost to the country and its people. Actually conventional wisdom equalled the actions of a small number of leaders and militia warlords with the fate of a whole nation. The Serbian people were punished for the crimes of a certain military or paramilitary milieu. Applying the same logic would demand punishment of the American people simply because a number of senseless military tortured prisoners in Guantanamo and A. Ghraib. This kind of thinking should be discarded if we really wish to provide carrots to the Serbian political elite and the Serbs.
The EU should approve the implementation of the transient agreement with Serbia thus showing the Serbs that their policy deserves credit. As reported in ´Blic´, "Bernard Kouchner said the decision over possible implementation of the transient agreement should be made until the end of July". A positive decision would encourage the Serbian government to further cooperate. Already the EU enlargement commissioner Olli Rehn stated that, "the EC would speak in favor of the beginning of implementation of the Stabilisation and Association Agreement".
Javier Solana stressed the importance of further advancing reforms if Serbia is to acquire EU membership status. As he stated in the Blic ´this is a turning point in fulfilment of well-known conditions set to Serbia on its path to integration with Europe. The EU shall immediately consider what conclusions are to be made from this positive development of events and I am sure we shall move ahead together with Serbia. I very much hope that this shall make possible for the chief prosecutor of the Hague Tribunal to say that the cooperation is developing in good direction".
At this crucial stage promises is the last thing Serbian leaders and people would like to hear. Institutional encouragement of Serbia´s EU course is the only way forward. Any other decision is bound to politically destabilise the country. This should be taken into consideration by Serge Brammertz, the ICTY prosecutor. In an interview in "Vreme" in June President Tadic made it clear that Serbia is ready to make sacrifices to join the EU. Yet, these sacrifices should be acknowledged by Brussels. Under this spectrum continuation of a revanchist policy on the part of Brussels will annul the efforts of President Tadic and his ruling coalition. In a recent interview the Deputy Prime Minister Bozidar Djelic clearly set Serbian priorities, among other things, on the implementation of Stabilization and Association Agreement and the need to acquire structural funds from the EU.
A number of facts should be included in the process of evaluating Serbia´s future. They refer to parameters outside the politically correct argumentation of those who have long focused on punishing the country and a whole nation for the crimes of a handful of people.
First Serbia is a territorially mutilated country. Kosovo´s recognition took place outside UN standard practices and institutional framework, a policy that assists the argumentation of Serb nationalists.Eventually Kosovo´s recognition outside the normative, regulatory UN framework is a dangerous act supported by those who envisage and openly support a post-UN world order.
Second, Serbia is a country counting human losses in terms of civilian population due to NATO´s air raids in 1999. This constitutes a crime for which the perpetrators were not brought to justice. The dialogues between the pilots involved in the raids and their officers published by The Time magazine in the recent past illustrated the degree of guilt many should feel about a criminal behaviour towards civilians. Pilots reported that there were no military targets but were ordered to proceed with bombing, an action pointing to the application of double standards. In 1991 a leading academic in the UK commented on the application of double standards suggesting that, "this is not just an issue of ethics. Those who apply double standards eventually support the continuation of a situation they nominally wish to change, that is the lack of rules and law in the jungle" [1]. NATO´s air offensive in 1999 took place outside or at the margins of international law and UN mandates. Very few have the courage to acknowledge this.
Third, the reliability and politically unbiased nature of the Hague Tribunal is heavily contested. It has given the impression that it was set up to judge only Serb war criminals. Slavenka Drakulic of The Guardian rightly pinpointed the "political controversies about the international criminal tribunal for the former Yugoslavia", yet very few journalists and academics have dared to challenge issues concerning the covert political expediencies of the Hague international court. Under this spectrum, a fair trial is a must if Serbs are to be persuaded that our only aim is to provide justice and reveal the truth.
Justice is supposedly blind but it should use its other senses in approaching the Serb people. For years, our evaluating judgements have been constructed on Serb collective guilt, that is the assumption that all Serbs are criminals disposing evil minds like those of the perpetrators who committed hideous crimes during the 1991-1995 Bosnian war. This provides wrong, distorted motives in judging Serbs. There are evil people not evil peoples and this is what the international community should have in mind. Generalizations might be useful when it comes to theorizing but at the same time they might have distorting effects when judging peoples.
Moreover, the application of international law should be uniformed without exceptions. As suggested, "the use of double standards when it comes to identify aggressors in the international political arena and the lack of a single application of rules" is indeed a malpractice of justice. The murders of civilians, rapes of women and mass extermination of whole villages should not and must not go unpunished. It constitutes a shame to our western civilization. But at the same time we should have the courage to judge ourselves without leniency in exactly the same way we are going to judge R. Karadzic. This is by no means an easy task but rather a test of values and ethics.
The 1995 UN war crimes tribunal indictment charging R. Karadzic and Ratko Mladic states that "thousands of Bosnian Muslim and Bosnian Croat civilians…were detained ... for protracted periods of time. They were not afforded judicial process and their internment was not justified by military necessity. They were detained, in large measure, because of their national, religious and political identity. The conditions in the detention facilities were inhumane and brutal ...". There is no doubt whatsoever about the degree the indictment portrays reality. But oddly enough we have done the same in Guantanamo and elsewhere thus breaking the very same rules we wish to impose. We have illegally detained, tortured and humiliated defenseless people imposing the least accorded punishments to perpetrators. At the same time we have allowed mercenaries to act at will in Iraq without punishment due to international law loopholes. These deficiencies send wrong signals to Serbs and in part demoralize our valiant crusade for justice and righteous punishment.
Serbs do not "live in denial" as suggested by a columnist of The Guardian. They are open to criticism and accept their responsibility, individually and collectively. Yet, they find it hard to accept criticism from those who apply double standards and international law a la carte. Those who have tried to turn Serbia into a minor state, into a scapegoat for all the wrongdoings of the Balkan Hobbesian world and tribalist tendencies of the region externalized through the worst aspects of Balkanism.
We should hold ourselves co-responsible for not facilitating resolution of disputes due to political expediency [2]. In November 1993, in the middle of the conflict the two co-chairmen of the mediating initiative D. Owen and D. Stoltenberg failed "to engage the US fully in their consultative exercise" [3], a policy that gradually annulled the European Union Action Plan. D. Owen estimation then was that "Washington was skeptical or even hostile towards the Franco-German initiative (the EU Action Plan) and the EU activity generally" [4]. This is an indicative only case of how the international community became part of the conflict equation.
In the more recent past we have blatantly failed to approach post-Milosevic Serbian national psychology through a causational pattern. To look into this particular Serbian nationalism as, inter allia, a sign of humiliation, despair, an undesired to us expression of national pride on the part of nation who suffered the effects of semi-legal or illegal NATO bombing in 1999 and a decisive blow to its territorial integrity. If we are to persuade the Serbs that they should not set any claims to a part of their country then we should do the same with those who unrightfully envisage territorial changes in the region. Again this is a provocative case of applying double standards. In any case it is easier and more convenient to operate and judge in a descriptive rather than a prescriptive way when it comes to judge post-Milosevic and Seselj´s Serbian nationalism. However, in this way we do not get answers to several critical why-questions.
A Janus, two-faced policy does not justify the ethical and motivational basis of the term "international community". In the past there has been severe criticism on the term. One I really found extremely provoking was expressed by a British academic who suggested that the term international community is "a term of propaganda…a platitude, trotted out by the powerful when they want to legitimize a particular action…The cozy phrase international community often represents the diplomatic equivalent of honor among thieves" [5]. Adopted policies, hindsight and history will determine the extent to which it depicts our motives.
1] Booth Ken (ed.), New Thinking about Strategy and International Security, Harper Collins, London, 1991, p.xiv
2] See indicatively "Balkans entangle big powers again, Germany, US accused of manipulating rivalry for their own gain", Washington Post, 24-12-1991.
3] David Owen, The Balkan Odyssey, Indigo, London, 1996, p. 239.
4] ibid, pp. 245, 249. See the full analysis in George Voskopoulos, "Greece, Common Foreign and Security Policy and the EU: interaction within and between a zone of peace and a zone of turmoil as an explanatory factor", PhD Thesis, Exeter University (UK), Centre for European Studies, 2001.
5] Ken Booth, "Human wrongs and international relations", International Affairs 71, I, 1995, p. 121.
Print
Email
