HVK Archives: Electoral travesty in Bosnia
Electoral travesty in Bosnia - The Financial Express
Henry Kissinger
()
11 September 1996
Title : Electoral Travesty in Bosnia
Author : Henry Kissinger
Publication : The Financial Express
Date : September 11, 1996
America's political campaign has had the strange effect
of tranquilising discuss ion of foreign policy. But the
pace of international events has its own momentum. By the
end of the year we shall be facing a moment of truth in
Bosnia: it will no longer be possible to gloss over the
incompatibility between the military and political
provisions of the Dayton Accords, which brought about the
cease-fire.
There are pressures to use NATO (and American) troops to
enforce the political provisions, and there is a
presidential commitment to withdraw US troops by December
29. The looming crisis has four components:
1. The political provisions of the Dayton Accords require
free elections, a unified Bosnia-Herzegovina, free
movement within Bosnia and the right of refugees to
return to their homes. None of these goals is achievable
without the massive use of force.
2. At the same time, by establishing cease-fire lines
patrolled by NATO, the military provisions of the
agreement have the practical consequence of protecting
ethnic enclaves and are, therefore, an obstacle to the
proclaimed goal of unification.
3. Normally, elections presuppose the existence of a
country. In Bosnia, elections are projected to create a
country from among three deeply hostile ethnic groups.
Not surprisingly, each of those groups is manipulating
the electoral process, not to encourage pluralism not to
unify itself for a showdown with the hated neighbor.
4. Amid this turmoil, the stated policy of the US
President remains that American troops will be withdrawn
by December 29. The other NATO nations have declared
that they will follow suit.
If these contradictions are not remedied before the
scheduled American withdrawal, Bosnia is likely to blow
up again. Twenty thousand American soldiers find
themselves at the vortex of this looming crisis. At the
moment, things seem calm because we are in the eye of the
Hurricane. But as the various deadlines approach. the
success of the American military deployment-and, indeed,
the safety of our forces-will depend on answers to these
questions: What will be the ultimate balance between our
military and political objectives? What will be the role
of our forces in bringing about a political settlement?
What, indeed, are we trying to accomplish?
Bosnian policy has reached this impasse because of a
tendency to pursue immediate goals without assessing
their long-range consequences. In 1991 the Bush
Administration aborted a plan nearly agreed on between
the Bosnian ethnic groups that would have created a loose
confederation amounting to partition. The reason for
quashing the plan was the fear that de facto partition of
Bosnia might become a model for the break-up of the
Soviet Union, endangering Gorbachev's reforms. In 1993
the new Clinton Administration rejected a similar plan
devised by former Secretary of State Cyrus Vance and
former British Foreign Secretary David Owen. The
administration did not want to ratify the ethic cleaning
conducted by the Serbs. But this decision triggered a new
and more serious round of ethnic cleansing - this time by
all the parties.
Bosnia had never been an independent state. Though
Bosnian nationalists claim that there existed a
flourishing state around Sarajevo in the 12th and 13th
centuries, it surely did not have its present-day ethnic
mix. And it is the ethnic, or rather the religious,
conflict (since ethnically there are few differences)
that has made the search for political unity so
intractable and so bloody. For at least 500 years Bosnia
has been a province at the frontier among the Muslim,
Catholic and Serbian Orthodox religions, and between the
Austrian and Turkish empires. None of its three
religious groups-the Serb, Croat and Muslim-has ever
accepted domination by one of the others. Occasionally
obliged to yield to superior outside forces Turkish,
Austrian or Communist-they have never submitted to each
other.
The recognition by NATO in 1992 of an independent
sovereign state of Bosnia called into being a civil war,
not a country. The three ethnic groups whose rivalries
had broken up Yugoslavia fought each other in the much
smaller Bosnia with the savagery characteristic of Balkan
wars, the vast majority of the atrocities in the early
stages being committed by the Serbs. Crimes such as the
Serb slaughter of Muslim prisoners in Serbrenica are
despicable and justly the subject of an international war
crimes tribunal. But the parties are driven by long
memories. In almost every decade of this century, each
group has logged enough crimes against the others so
that, in effect, there are no innocent parties in Bosnia.
Given that past, a multi-ethnic state runs counter to the
principle of self determination-a defining cause of
America's foreign policy since the days of Woodrow
Wilson. It will be achieved only if imposed by massive
force, not at the ballot box. The Dayton Agreement
continues the pattern of short-term fixes that produce
vast long-term consequences. Its pursuit of a multi-
ethnic Bosnia has driven us to bring about (or, more
accurately, to impose) the so-called Bosnian Federation,
which is a shotgun marriage of Croats and Muslims.
Together with its Serbian counterpart, the Bosnian
Federation is to constitute one of the two components of
united Bosnia-Herzegovina. Not surprisingly, the
projected Bosnian elections are turning into a travesty.
The present electoral travesty in Bosnia should therefore
be abandoned. The only sensible election process and one
most compatible with America's historic commitment to
self-determination would be a plebiscite in each ethnic
region on the simple choice between a multi-ethnic Bosnia
or some form of participation. If there were a majority
in each region in favour of a unified Bosnia, the current
electoral process could be restarted. Realistically,
separate Muslim entity may be the best achievable
outcome. It would be the solution most compatible with
the principle of self-determination and most conducive to
long-term stability. The other ethnic groups should have
the same option or joint their mother countries.
Since the Muslim entity will be weaker than its neighbors
and given the historic hatreds, it should be given some
form of NATO guarantee, provided the Muslim state can be
stripped of its Iranian connection. Once ethnic dividing
lines are given international status, the cease-fire will
be much easier to enforce and some of the incentives to
resume military operations will diminish.
The desire to avoid a foreign policy debate in the middle
of an election campaign is understandable. But the
penalty for continued evasion is stark. We must not
drift into participation in a civil war in Bosnia in
order to tranquilise domestic debate for a few weeks.
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