Last month, the EU announced a major troop reduction for the Bosnian peacekeeping force and extended the Office of the High Representative (OHR) until June 2008. But despite the extension of the OHR, the EU seems increasingly squeamish about exercising its authority, favoring instead less invasive forms of soft power.
Former High Representative, Paddy Ashdown, responded to the recent political anemia with a cautionary message. Though Ashdown supports the troop reduction — a return to large scale conflict is unlikely — he is critical of Brussels' weak resolve:
Below the level of state institutions, the bureaucratic monster created by the Dayton Agreement to govern a country of 3.5 million people still exists. The U.S.-led attempt to reform this dysfunctional muddle of interlocking bureaucracies failed last year, chiefly because the European Union was not prepared to make constitutional reform a condition for EU membership.
Western policymakers are still too often bewitched by the fantasies of the early post-cold war.
In the early 1990s, communism imploded and liberal democracy was pronounced the victorious ideology (e.g. Fukuyama's The End of History and the Last Man). The future looked bright. Moscow was just a quaint Eastern European backwater sitting on a pile of nukes and nothing stood in the way democracy and stable government sweeping the globe. All we have to do is let them vote, right?
Of course, we have learned — most painfully in Iraq — that democracy does not appear at the wave of a magic wand. Democracy depends on institutions, and building them from scratch takes time — gobs of it. But contrary to the cynics, the task is not beyond the reach of the undeveloped world. It's not that nation-building is impossible, its just that we rarely have the attention span or conviction to see it through. It should be no surprise that Bosnia has not developed in leaps and bounds in a decade, on the contrary, it would be more shocking if a country marred by centuries of conflict and misgovernment morphed into a western democracy as soon as we built them a post office.
It may be counterintuitive to idealists, but the road to a stable democracy may be anything but democratic. Watching fledgling African democracies repeatedly cannibalize themselves should have taught us that much.
In Bosnia's case, the EU just doesn't have the guts to go Hobbesian, even though a lapse in order could have dire consequences. Ashdown writes:
Bosnia is held on the road to reform by the magnetic pull of the European Union and NATO and the tough push of the power of sanctions vested in the High Representative by the Dayton Agreement. In the last year, the pull of the EU has visibly weakened as European capitals have become more skeptical about further enlargement. The push of threatened sanctions has all but vanished. In consequence, local politicians have felt free to return to old habits rather than grasp new opportunities. The forces of radical Islam are showing renewed interest in the country, having been comprehensively rebuffed by the determined moderation of Bosnian Muslims in the past.
There are still opportunities to be had, however. Even when the OHR expires in 2008, the EU will not lose all of its coercive power. There are plenty of carrots along the road to EU membership (A very, very long road for Bosnia), but there is little precedent to expect that they will be used wisely. During the accession processes in Romania and Bulgaria, the EU wielded great influence over government reform; post-accession, Brussels' leverage all but vanished. Doling out too many carrots too quickly will only encourage backsliding. The EU has the power to foment meaningful change now, but they have to resolve to use it.
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Apr 17th, 2007
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The solution for the problems in Bosnia remains the same today as it was in the mid-1990s, i.e., partition and unification of the predominantly Serb and Croat regions with their respective countries. One of the foreseeable yet unseen consequences of granting Independence for Kosovo on the basis of national self-determination is renewed agitation by the Bosnian Serb and Croat populations for equal treatment. Bosnia will never be a multi-ethnic state and violence and the potential for civil war will remain just below the surface. You cannot create a national identity by fiat. The irony of the entire conflict is that Serbia remains the only multi-ethnic society in the territory of the former Yugoslavia.
As far the so-called moderate Muslims of Bosnia goes they will become far less moderate if and when constraints on their behavior disappear. IzetbegoviÄ? was far less moderate in his writings then the face that he put on for the western world.
I think Jerry is correct that Bosnia will not be able to develop as a truly multi-ethnic state — one border crossing between Bosnia and Srpska was enough to convince me of that.
Partition certainly has its benefits and may be inevitable. For better or worse, we are going to see a worldwide trend of states breaking apart into nation-states over the next several decade (A point more thoroughly explored in Kaplan’s ‘The Coming Anarchy’).
But we have to be extremely careful how we allow the process of partition to unfold. Despite the official administrative division of Bosnia, many areas are ethnically diverse. Dividing the country could spur mass migration and possibly incite conflict. We only have to look at the 1947 partition of India, which resulted in 500,000 to 1,000,000 deaths, to see how devastating dividing territories can be.
If Bosnia is to be partitioned, we will need a much higher level of international involvement/intervention. That, of course, is not happening. Instead, the EU is running for the door.
P.S. I’ll give my two cents on the radical Muslim threat in an upcoming post.
In addition to your point about democracy not appearing with the wave of a magic wand, one might also consider Afghanistan. After less than one year in command even NATO is having difficulty getting more troop commitments from member countries, with the exception of Australia.
Good post though.
When discussing the prospects of democracy in Bosnia, one must consider why elections were included in the peace settlement signed at Dayton in 1995.
In fact, there was never debate whether or not elections would occur in BiH and had been assumed in all previous peace plans. What was fought for fiercely in negotiations was the format and timing of the expected elections. Indeed, Milosevic sought elections hoping to oust the difficult Bosnian Serb leaders, expecting Bosnian Serb refugees in Belgrade (equipped with a vote) could be convinced to elect a Bosnian Serb leadership willing to toe the Serbian line. Izetbegovic also saw an instrumental use for democracy, and pushed hard for refugees to be allowed to vote in their 1991 census locations. He envisioned democracy largely within the context of ethnic voting blocks, and assumed that the Muslim majority would give the Bosniak government more legitimate claim to more land.
With the Croats satiated by progress on Eastern Slavonia, the debate over elections à€“ and the shape of democracy à€“ was primarily between the Serb and Bosniak negotiators. It is telling of the prospects for democracy in Bosnia that elections were implemented with an expectation by either side that electoral democracy was to be a continuation of war by other means.