The Foreign Policies of Post-Yugoslav States

From Yugoslavia to Europe

S. Keil, B. Stahl, S. Keil, B. Stahl

• Publisher: Palgrave Macmillan
• Year: 2014
• Print ISBN:
  9781137384126
• eBook ISBN:
  9781137384133
• Topic: Politics & International Relations
• Subtopic: Diplomacy & Treaties
• Index: Politics & International Relations

The post-Yugoslav states have developed very differently since Yugoslavia dissolved in the early 1990s. This book analyzes the foreign policies of the post-Yugoslav states, thereby focusing on the main goals, actors, decision-making processes and influences on the foreign policies of these countries.

Part I

Point of Departure

1

Introduction: The Foreign Policies of the Post-Yugoslav States

Soeren Keil and Bernhard Stahl

The integration of the post-Yugoslav states into the European Union (EU) is a prominent topic in the academic literature (Rupnik 2011; Radeljic 2013; Elbasani 2013). The focus of these debates has been on the role of the EU in the transformation of the post-Yugoslav countries, and the successes and failures of the EU’s enlargement process. Too often, however, have the seven states that emerged after the break-up of Yugoslavia (Slovenia, Croatia, Bosnia and Herzegovina,¹ Montenegro, Serbia, Macedonia² and Kosovo) been treated as passive subjects of the EU’s enlargement process and as ‘playgrounds’ of different international ideas on state-building (Bosnia), self-determination (Kosovo), economic reforms (all seven) and democratization (in particular Bosnia, Kosovo, Macedonia and Serbia).

This volume starts with the assumption that the post-Yugoslav states are autonomous actors in a globalized and heavily interdependent world. They strived for sovereignty and national independence because they wanted to become respected and equal members of the international community. While they are not completely independent in their foreign policy decisions, since the local, regional and international system provides them with clear limitations and hurdles (be it their limited capabilities in terms of material and institutional provisions, be it the fact that Kosovo is not recognized by a large number of other states, be it their generally limited impact beyond the European region on global affairs), they nevertheless participate in important regional and inter-national forums and they all have developed an active foreign policy, which prioritizes EU integration, but by no means limits their foreign policy to this one issue. In other words, it can be argued that all of the post-Yugoslav states are ‘active participants’ in regional and global affairs. They are not just passive recipients of EU conditionality that follow the demands of the EU and other key actors in the region (such as NATO, the USA and Russia) immediately or consistently. As the contributions in this volume demonstrate, they are instead autonomous in their foreign policy to the extent that sometimes they will act consistently and coherently, sometimes they will act illogically and sometimes they will prioritize a certain foreign policy choice over another because of ideational-historical reasons. It is, for example, difficult to explain why Macedonia chooses not to progress in its EU integration process and to stay out of NATO because of the ongoing name dispute with Greece. As Cvete Koneska argues, this can only be explained when the identity dimension of foreign policy is taken into account. It is furthermore difficult to see how elites in Bosnia, who at least rhetorically support EU integration, have failed to agree on any major reform in recent years that would bring their country closer to the EU. Yet, as Adnan Huskić demonstrates, once we understand the complex history and decision-making processes in Bosnia, we can see why any kind of reform is such a problematic issue in the country. The picture that the contributions in this volume draw is a mixed one. There are many success stories, including the dialogue between Serbia and Kosovo, which Mladen Mladenov in the Serbia chapter and Gëzim Krasniqi in the Kosovo chapter highlight. Slovenia and Croatia have been able to join the EU and have since become lobbyists for the EU prospects of the other post-Yugoslav states. But even their foreign policies, as Ana Bojinović Fenko and Zlatko Šabič for Slovenia and Senada Šelo Šabić for Croatia demonstrate, remain limited and incoherent at times. Other countries have been more obvious success stories in recent years; for example, Montenegro’s high-speed integration into the EU is correctly praised as one of the remarkable developments in the post-Yugoslav states. Nevertheless, as the argument presented by Jelena Džankić points out, a lot remains to be done and foreign policy remains dominated by a small number of political elites without consultation and discussion either in parliament or among the wider public. What will become obvious to the reader of this volume is that the countries of the post-Yugoslav states remain transition countries. This can also be applied to their foreign policies. These remain in transition, focused on EU integration and Western orientation, yet influenced by historical experiences and their own identity. A region in change, then, with countries which are still looking for their own identity and their international role, is probably the best way to describe the post-Yugoslav space at the moment.

Background

The EU’s engagement with the post-Yugoslav states started as a massive failure. When the ‘Hour of Europe’ was announced by Jacques Poos as an indication that the European Community was – nolens volens – meant to deal with the break-up of Yugoslavia, the violent clashes in Croatia and Bosnia in the early 1990s quickly brought the Community to her limits (Glaurdic 2011). The EU was neither capable of intervention, nor was it politically willing to demonstrate a strong and united front against those who committed war crimes, genocide and ethnic cleansing on the territory of the former Yugoslavia. It is this policy failure, and the recognition that the EU is unable to deal with violent conflict directly without the military support of the United States and NATO, that resulted in a new approach in the late 1990s. This approach, born out of the Kosovo crisis and the recognition that a political dialogue and integration of the post-Yugoslav states into the EU are the best strategies for peacebuilding and long-term stability, became known as the Stabilization and Association Process. It is linked to the EU’s Thessaloniki Agenda, which provided all former Yugoslav states with a clear prospect of membership in the EU. This policy framework, formulated between 1999 and 2003, has also been developed in light of democratic changes in Croatia and Serbia, where semi-authoritarian leaders (Franjo Tuđman in Croatia and Slobodan Milošević in Serbia) long dominated the political scene, before democratic opposition parties were able to come to power in the year 2000.

Since then, all post-Yugoslav states have been engaged with the European Union in one way or another. While Slovenia managed to join the EU in 2004 as part of the Eastern enlargement, Croatia followed in 2013, despite more rocky negotiations. Macedonia became a front-runner after Slovenia joined and received EU candidate status in 2005, after the implementation of the Ohrid Agreement, which ended the brief period of unrest between Albanians and Macedonians in 2001, was seen as successful. After its independence in 2006, Montenegro quickly turned into the new front-runner, receiving candidate status in 2009 and starting negotiations on membership in the EU in 2011. Macedonia in the meantime was stuck in its integration process because of the unresolved name dispute with Greece, which has used its veto numerous times in order to deny Macedonia the start of membership negotiations (and NATO membership). Serbia, which was still dealing with the consequences of Montenegro’s and Kosovo’s independence, became an official candidate country in March 2012, and started its negotiations in early 2014. Bosnia and Herzegovina signed a Stabilization and Association Agreement (SAA) with the EU in 2009, which, however, was not implemented, and so Bosnia, too, remains stuck in the integration process. In contrast to Macedonia, Bosnia does not proceed because of internal divisions between leading Bosniak, Serb and Croat parties, which are unable to agree on any major policy reform. Kosovo, too, has a rather uncertain European future. Five EU member states (Greece, Cyprus, Romania, Slovakia and Spain) do not recognize Kosovo as an independent country. Yet, since the Belgrade Agreement between Kosovo and Serbia in April 2013, there is an obvious link between the EU integration of Serbia and the European future of Kosovo.

Therefore, it can be argued that formally all post-Yugoslav states are engaged in the process of EU integration, which has become their main foreign policy objective. However, this integration process is neither similar nor comparable, and it demonstrates more divergence than convergence. This is one of the fascinating topics of this volume: all countries started from the same point of departure, namely the heritage of Yugoslavia. All countries want to join the EU and have identified EU integration as their number one foreign policy objective. Yet, some countries have been able to arrive in the EU relatively quickly (Slovenia and Croatia), while others will arrive at a much later point (Bosnia and Macedonia). Serbia, Kosovo and Montenegro remained united in one country until 2006 (when Montenegro became independent; Kosovo followed in 2008), yet in terms of their journey towards membership in the EU it can be expected that they will arrive at different points.

Map 1.1 Map of the post-Yugoslav and neighboring states

Source: http://d-maps.com/carte.php?num_car=69052&lang=en.

While all post-Yugoslav countries share some common problems that they have had to address on their way towards membership in the EU, such as building functional states, market reform from socialist self-management to free market capitalism, establishing democratic governance and ensuring sufficient minority protection, some have been able to do this much quicker and better than others. Surely, the legacies of violence and large-scale destruction in Bosnia and Kosovo, which have resulted in highly polarized and divided societies, matter and help to explain why reforms are more difficult in these countries, but Croatia has faced large-scale violence, too. Yet, it has been able to integrate and adapt to EU rules much faster. To understand the divergence and differences between the post-Yugoslav states, we need to examine their foreign policy, focusing not only on their foreign policy objectives and mechanisms but also on their foreign policy identity and the link between domestic policy and foreign policy. Once we understand the complexities in each of the countries under consideration, we will be able to see how this can help explain why these countries take different routes on their journey from Yugoslavia to Europe.

Theoretical considerations

Foreign Policy remains a peculiar field of study. On the one hand, it belongs to the historically first (and foremost) subfields of political science in general and International Relations in particular. As a consequence, it plays a distinguished role in study programs and teaching schemes all over the world. In certain states such as the US or Germany, a vast array of literature exists focusing on the respective resources, decision-making procedures and international implications. On the other hand, most countries and foreign policies in today’s world are largely under-researched. This applies not only to African states but also the ‘new states’ which developed after the demise of Yugoslavia and the Soviet Union.

Foreign Policy knowledge comes across in two ways. The first, ‘traditional,’ way seeks to inductively garner information from the ‘reality as we see it.’ Journalists, practitioners, area specialists, historians and diplomats collect valuable data on a country’s foreign policy by offering descriptions of and assessments on a respective foreign policy. In many countries, this is the prevailing mode of studying Foreign Policy until today. This is largely because Foreign Policy specialists stem from law or history departments and used to work closely with their respective governments. Studies in this tradition deliver valuable details on practical foreign policy-making, the history of foreign policy including crucial historical events and important individuals of the political scene (e.g. De Haas 2010; Lanteigne 2010; Cox, Lynch and Bouchet 2013). For the countries examined in this volume it was not the end of the Cold War but the demise of Yugoslavia which represented the common regional juncture. Since some Yugoslav republics have been actively involved in this break-up one might reasonably argue that the common formative event was Tito’s death in 1980. This is why we decided to include the foreign policy of Yugoslavia as a common analytical benchmark for all countries to evolve from the latter’s estate.

But admittedly, traditional scholarship on Foreign Policy also has its flaws. Its reconstructions of a country’s foreign policy run the risk of being close to the government’s agenda, emphasizing the national master-narrative and stressing the idiosyncratic nature of a country’s foreign policy.

Yet, in the scientific community of the West a second way of studying Foreign Policy emerged in the 1960s.³ The newly founded Foreign Policy Analysis (FPA) was meant to significantly enhance our knowledge of foreign policy by providing us with scientific research designs which should enable us to answer ‘why-questions.’ By doing so, FPA promised to avoid the flaws of the traditional foreign policy literature, and to detect the crucial factors which determine foreign policy outcomes. Twenty years later, though, the high hopes have largely vaporized (Smith, Hadfield and Dunne 2012, 4). Despite the fact that states have remained the most significant actors in international relations and therefore their foreign policies remain crucial in understanding policy outcomes, FPA fell somewhat from grace in International Relations (IR). In the last two decades, the FPA literature moves at modest speed with decent monographs and seminal articles published every four to five years (Rosenau 1966; Smith 1986; Hudson and Vore 1995, Hill 2003; Breuning 2007; Smith, Hadfield and Dunne 2012). The reasons for this are manifold and need not be discussed here (Hudson 2012, 24–26). Mirroring the above-mentioned flaws of the traditionalist approach, one might say that FPA tends to overstate foreign policy similarities and to downplay empirical knowledge, which contributes to theory development but increasingly loses touch with reality. Suffice to say that thanks to FPA a deductive, theoretical and systematic view on foreign policy exists, which provides for definitions, analytical perspectives and models, and allowing the possibility to ask and assess good questions.

F...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title Page
• Copyright
• Contents
• List of Illustrations
• Acknowledgments
• Notes on Contributors
• List of Abbreviations
• Part I: Point of Departure
• Part II: Early Departure – Early Arrival
• Part III: Early Departure – Late Arrival?
• Part IV: Joint Departure – Different Arrivals
• Part V: On Empirical Arrivals and Theoretical Departures
• Index