Goldsnow,
Before you end up totally liquored drinking Yaacov's fine wines please read the following thought-provoking paper on Europe's bungling in the Yugoslav mess....
cas.umn.edu
Excerpt:
¸ 1999 This paper may not be reproduced in any form without the express permission of the Center for Austrian Studies or the author
Vanessa Pupavac, School of Politics, University of Nottingham, UK
Fortress Europe and Ethnic Nationalism in Yugoslavia
Abstract
The rise of ethnic nationalism in Yugoslavia has been contrasted to processes towards European integration. This paper argues that the nationalist discourse in Yugoslavia represents an internalisation of the theories and practise underpinning the construction of Fortress Europe.
Introduction
The collapse of Yugoslavia into ethnic conflict occurred at a time when the borders and differences in Europe appeared to be less significant with the fall of the Berlin Wall and the demise of Communism. The phenomena of ethnic nationalism and war in Yugoslavia were highlighted as counter to or a reaction against trends towards globalisation and European integration (Gow, 1997, p. 3; Magas, 1993, p. xi; Smith, 1995).
Since European integration processes suggested that Western Europe was overcoming narrow nationalist politics, Eastern Europe were exhorted to follow Western models as a solution to nationalism (Hupchick, 1994, p. 170; Smith, 1995, p. 4; Nodia, 1994, p. 21).
However when one examines the aspirations in 1990 of East European nationalists and non-nationalists alike, they all expressed a wish to be part of Europe. 'Europe Now!' was the rallying cry in the Slovenian campaign for secession in the 1990s, but the slogan encapsulates the outlook of the country in general. Federally-sponsored publications, such as Ekonomska politika, was a key proponent of market reforms and membership of European institutions. Even Narodna armija, the paper of the Yugoslav National Army (JNA), whose constitutional role included the defence of the socialist character of Yugoslavia, contained pro-European articles. As the Yugoslav expert, Bogdan Denitsch, points out, the Yugoslav republics 'had set out toward the European Community', but 'painfully rejoined Eastern Europe' (Denitsch, 1994, p. 36). Hence the rise of ethnic nationalism in Yugoslavia has to be studied in the context of European Union and the failure to integrate East European states.
'Europe Now!'
From 1948, following its expulsion from the Soviet bloc for taking an independent line from Moscow, Yugoslavia had been considered the most liberal of states in Eastern Europe. Yugoslavia had already developed considerable links with the West. In 1970, Yugoslavia concluded a non-preferential trade agreement, extended in 1980 to a special cooperation agreement giving Yugoslavia preferential trade terms, and could apply for loans from the European Investment Bank (European Communities, 1990, p. 28). It seemed the most likely country to reform and be integrated into Western Europe (Blum, 1987). Exports to the European Community increased in the 1980s (Yugoslav Survey, 1987) and in December 1988, the Central Committee of the League of Communists stated that Yugoslavia should seek associate membership of the Community.
Regionalism and Exclusionary politics
However, the European Community deprioritised Yugoslavia at the end of the Cold War, when Yugoslavia's position became irrelevant strategically. It was by-passed for Czechoslovakia, Hungary and Poland, because its reform process appeared to be floundering in comparison to the strides being made in the former Eastern bloc.
Unlike the situation in the 1970s, when the former dictatorships of Greece, Portugal and Spain were readily admitted into the European Community, the doors were not opened to Yugoslavia and the former Eastern European countries, despite there being comparable circumstances (Ash, 1994, p. 391; Burgess, 1997). It was quickly made clear that, 'early membership of the Community is excluded for a number of reasons, both political and economic' (European Communities, 1990, p. 10).
The conditions, which East European states were required to fulfil before they could be considered for membership of the European Union, ignored the fact that member states in various respects did not meet these same criteria. A key stumbling block raised against the extension of membership to East European states was minority rights' legislation, yet their provision for minorities, particularly in Yugoslavia (Pajic, 1994), was far more extensive than Western European states (Burgess, 1997).
Both Left-wing and Right-wing writers have commented upon the hypocrisy of the West's insistence that the Eastern Europeans open up their markets to competition in view of the failure of the West to remove trade barriers (Burgess, 1997; Gowan, 1990; Skidelsky, 1995, p. 97). The European Union's use of subsidies, tariffs, quotas and other protectionist measures to shelter Western European economies from competition and the effects of recession continue to exclude East European goods, whilst at the same time enjoying a trade surplus with Eastern Europe.
The vagueness and continual expansion of the criteria for membership disguise the European Union's own need to explain its failure to integrate the former Communist states and its policies to exclude Eastern Europeans. Continuing debates in Brussels over deepening versus widening membership reflect the slowness of the European Union to reform itself, rather than Eastern Europe. In short, it was problems in Western Europe in the 1990s that represented the major obstacle to the integration of Eastern Europe into the European Union.
Although the collapse of Communism meant that new regions were opened up to the market, only pockets in Eastern Europe were developed and integrated into Western markets, despite Eastern Europe's liberalisation. Uneven development spontaneously recreated and recreates divisions in Europe, encouraging regionalism.
The phenomena of ethnic nationalism in Eastern Europe paralleled the escalation of regional movements in the rest of Europe: the Catalonians and Basques in Spain, the Lombardy League in Italy, Cornish, Scottish and Welsh nationalism in Britain and elsewhere. Indeed the Slovene election campaign in 1990 borrowed ideas from the Lombardy League. Denitsch, observed, 'Local economic nationalism [...] was by no means a peculiar Yugoslav disease' (Denitsch, 1994, p. 11), but it was the particular circumstances of Yugoslavia in the new international context and its exclusion from European institutions and markets, and the European Community's response to the crisis, which turned regionalism into ethnic conflict.
Relations between the republics had already become strained by the failures of the communist regional policies to overcome uneven development. It was difficult to implement a uniform reform policy because of regional disparities. Analogous to the difficulties of the European Union to introduce reforms due to opposition from member states, the federal authorities found it impossible to introduce the reforms required by international creditors, because of obstruction by the republics (Burg, 1988; Woodward, 1995; Woodward, 1996). A report of the 1980s in the London Financial Times stated, 'Most Yugoslavs seem to agree about the seriousness of the crisis and over possible remedies, but here consensus ends as particularist and regional interests have so far combined to stall effective reforms and moves to open the internal market and liberalise the economy' (Blum, p. I).
The differential impact of the market exacerbated differences. The more developed republics of Slovenia, with its proximity to Western markets, and Croatia, with tourism along the Adriatic coast, were in a more favourable position than the other less developed republic to attract Western investment. There was great resentment in Slovenia and Croatia about their contributions to the federal budget, and funding for the underdeveloped regions. Slovenia contributed over 25 per cent to the federal budget, although it was only 8 per cent of the population whilst most of Kosovo's budget and investment was from federal funds (cited in Cohen, 1993, p. 59). The lowering of living standards in the 1980s, due to both the worldwide and domestic economic crisis were blamed by politicians in Slovenia and Croatia on having to subsidise the poorer regions. On the other hand, the less developed republics complained about pricing policies by which goods were sold more cheaply abroad than on the Yugoslav market in order to be competitive internationally. This resentment culminated in a Serbian boycott of Slovenian goods.
Loyalty to the Yugoslav federation plummeted sharply in Slovenia and Croatia, as the other, less developed republics appeared to be hindering membership of Europe. The lack of identity with the Yugoslav state in the two wealthiest republics came out in a survey of 4,230 adults in 1990, which found that only 17 per cent of the respondents in Slovenia and 38 per cent in Croatia (28 per cent if the Croatian Serbs are excluded) agreed that the Federal Constitution should be paramount, whilst 83 per cent agreed in Serbia, 84 per cent in Montenegro, 70 per cent in Bosnia and Herzegovina, 68 per cent in Macedonia, 87 per cent in Vojvodina and 56 per cent in Kosovo (cited in Cohen, 1993, p. 174). Secession was a temptation when there were indications from Western Europe that their chances of membership of European institutions and their ability to attract foreign investment would be enhanced. [The author recalls, at a meeting of the British-Yugoslav Law Association in Autumn 1990, conversations with Croatian and Slovenian policy-makers, businessmen and lawyers who openly sought advice about whether they should remain part of Yugoslavia or secede.]
Divisions in Yugoslavia would not have been fatal if European initiatives had been able to transcend divisions between the republics, rather than giving incentives to separatism and legitimising ethnic nationalism.
Western Europe's policy towards Eastern Europe during the Cold War aimed to fragment the Eastern bloc and welcomed any signs of nationalism as anti-Soviet. Peter Gowan noted how it negotiated separate agreements with individual states in the region, discriminating 'between the East European countries according to the responsiveness of each to Western political objectives in the region' (Gowan, 1990, p. 65). The consequence of such a policy was to make East European states compete for Western patronage, promoting rivalry between them and undermining cooperation. This approach was applied to the republics of Yugoslavia in 1990. The European Community departed from its previous approach of promoting centralism, which had aided Milosevic's rise to power, and increasingly by-passed the federal institutions. It began negotiating with the republics of Slovenia and Croatia separately, treating them as sovereign states, long before official recognition (Woodward, 1996, p. 164). The European Community and European Free Trade Association avoided renewing the association agreements, and the Council of Europe did not consider Yugoslavia's application for membership (ibid.). However European institutions were to become intimately involved in the Yugoslav crisis, greeting it, 'as a test of their collective capacity for security policy-making independent of the United States' (ibid., p. 165).
There is not the space to discuss the failures of the numerous European and other peace initiatives in former Yugoslavia, to observe that conflict was prolonged and intensified by the various peace negotiators who would undermine rival peace plans, because of 'national competition to define the institutions and mechanisms for guaranteeing European security after the Cold War' (ibid.). This indicates how nationalism has not been abandoned in the European project. [snip] |
