By Metta Spencer. Chapter 18 of The Lessons of Yugoslavia: Research on Russia and Eastern Europe, Vol. 3, Metta Spencer, ed. (Amsterdam, London: JAI, Elsevier, 2000.)
This book was originally conceived as the report of a Science for Peace conference on ‘the lessons of Yugoslavia’, held in March 1997. The war in Bosnia had ended by that time and the Dayton Accords were being implemented. It seemed reasonable to suppose that the worst or the catastrophe was over and that the world would not be required to learn additional lessons from yet more new mistakes in the former Yugoslavia. Unfortunately, that was not the case. Surprising events continue to unfold even today, and there can never be any real ‘last chapter’ to this story. I have continued to collect articles for this book, and to pay attention when each additional scholar, diplomat, humanitarian worker, or war crimes prosecutor has commented on ongoing events in the Balkans. The content of this book is now unlike what had been planned at the time of the conference. Some invited speakers never presented papers for publication, and their places were filled by other authors. With the passage of time and the emergence or new struggles in the former Yugoslavia, new articles were required and some of the articles that had arrived on time required revisions. In any case, now is the time to sum up the lessons that should be taken from all these observations.
I shall pry loose and list some lessons from the various chapters or this book, as well as from other papers and conferences on the same topic. Not every reader will accept my whole list, though most of you probably do share the key values of these authors, at least in regretting the breakup of Yugoslavia and deploring the violence that it brought. My objective is to identify crucial turning points or decisions that made the breakup more likely or made it harder to bring the fighting to a halt.
This book, and the lessons that it proposes, represent only a limited array of interpretations, all of which are grounded on particular values that can be — and, during a time of nationalistic warfare, inevitably are — contested. Some members of the audience at the 1997 conference saw the program as ideologically biased against their own group’s views. They had internalized a rule from Tito’s society: that every conference must invite speakers approximately in proportion to the size of the constituent ethnic groups. These papers are by no means a representative sample of the opinions of ex-Yugoslavs. Instead of selecting speakers and authors by the traditional quota system or for any other ascribed attributes, we invited contributors on the basis of professional or academic standards. Nevertheless, it is true that when we invited people to contribute, I could usually guess what they were likely to conclude and, although there are significant differences of opinion among them on several topics, none of their papers reflect ethno-nationalism, nor do any of them celebrate the break-up of Yugoslavia or the wars through which the new sovereign countries emerged from that break-up. If the papers seem here consistently to derogate separatism, this can be attributed to a biased process or selection only to this extent: We did not invite any contributors whose conclusions were based on ethnic loyalty.
For whose benefit are our so-called ‘lessons’ compiled? Who is supposed to learn them and live by them? Answer: the lessons are meant primarily for official policy-makers and activists functioning in the international arena, not for the ex-Yugoslavs who occupy leadership roles in the successor states. Regrettably, most of the politicians in the former Yugoslavia remain partial to particularistic interests and continue their fights against old enemies; they will hardly be attracted to the recommendations of this book. Our purpose is to avoid precisely the kinds of disasters that arose from the misguided policies of the political figures who, all too often, remain in power in the year 2000. However, the lessons derived from the south Slavs’ experience may perhaps be learned profitably by political leaders in other countries facing fissiparous tendencies similar to those preceding Yugoslavia’s downfall — at least if those politicians seek to avert the perils of separatism. (A politician reading this book to learn how to support secession will find no help here.)
When we attempt to extract lessons from the historical record and to learn those lessons, we must generalize about the outcomes of crucial events. However, generalization is not always warranted, for under different circumstances, a given course of action might turn out quite differently. Only insofar as generalizations do hold up can researchers warn decision-makers of the problems with which a particular course of action is typically fraught — but when such warnings are well they may be exceedingly useful.
PARTITIONING STATES. Let me illustrate the usefulness of a valid generalization that had previously been unrecognized. There is a popular principle that the right to ´self-determination’ is fundamental to democracy, and that every ‘people’ is entitled to secede from the state where its members live, to found a sovereign country of its own. This doctrine can be challenged on a variety of logical and theoretical grounds, but the most important challenge arises from two empirical facts: (a) that almost all secessions result in warfare, and (b) when those conflicts tend to persist for several generations, offsetting the advantages that the separatists had expected to gain. This empirical generalization, which is overwhelmingly supported by historical evidence, is not widely recognized.1 It is a perfect example of a lesson that the world desperately needs to learn, for only when it is fully recognized can many disastrous decisions be averted. Thus this illustration suggests
Lesson 1: Unless all legitimate stakeholders and minorities within a state agree to do so, avoid dividing a state into two or more sovereign entities as a way of resolving a clash of ethno-nationalistic claims.
This recommendation is, in practice, gradually becoming the prevailing principle in international relations, although officially there are numerous documents that seemingly contradict it by assuring peoples that they are entitled lo self-determination. Even now, populists typically assure separatists that they can expect recognition for their claims of national sovereignty, but in reality such claims have rarely been accepted in recent years by the United Nations or by powerful states.
Nevertheless, as with many other rules, Lesson Number One cannot always be applied straightforwardly, for one runs into a dilemma. For example, as we have just noted, the international community justifiably tends to discourage separatists. However, separatists nevertheless are inclined to declare independence unilaterally, over the objections of the larger state, and of minorities and other stakeholders. They may then be victimized by those who reject their secessionist aspirations (Bosnian Muslims and Kosovar Albanians are examples of such separatist victims). If the international community (UN peacekeepers, say, or NATO) intervenes to protect them as victims of aggression, the intervention will de facto constitute a military action in support of the separatists, whether or not it is intended to advance their cause. This happened most conspicuously in Kosova; although there was no international recognition of the Kosovars’ claim to sovereignty, by defending their human rights against the attacks of their Serbian enemies, NATO unintentionally established Kosova as a virtually independent state under the control of the Albanian inhabitants.
International decision-makers in such a situation find themselves in a dilemma, in effect unable to avoid taking sides in the dispute. They may defend the weak, thereby lighting on behalf of separatism. Alternatively, they may coldly warn separatists against declaring independence unilaterally (i.e. without the consent of all minorities and legitimate stakeholders) on penalty of Forfeiting any intervention on their behalf, even if they become victims of aggression or war crimes. UNPROFOR and NATO faced this dilemma during the wars in Croatia, Bosnia, and especially Kosovo, where they eventually became de facto allies of the KLA, even while opposing that group’s separatist goals. Thus certain ‘lessons of Yugoslavia’ cannot always be applied in a completely consistent way, for each principle has to be considered in the context of the other, possibly contradictory, principles and values to which decision-makers are committed.
I shall discuss the lessons of Yugoslavia by classifying them within the following four headings, which roughly represent the temporal phases of that country’s painful drama: (1) structural conduciveness; (2) interventions during the crisis; (3) Dayton and its aftermath; and (4) the Kosovo war.
STRUCTURAL CONDUCIVENESS TO SECESSION AND WAR
When we discuss the ‘causes’ of any phenomenon, we may refer to any number of antecedent or concurrent conditions that made it more likely or even inevitable. In this section we shall consider some circumstances predating, but increasing the likelihood of the wars over the break-up of Yugoslavia.
Possibly the most contentious issue of the 1997 Lessons of Yugoslavia conference was whether the country’s crisis had been caused more by domestic or Foreign policy-makers. Ironically, a few Western speakers blamed the West, whereas all the ex-Yugoslavs attributed most of the blame to the political leaders of their own country. Regardless of which position is right, there is plenty of blame to go around. Our purpose is to learn from both the domestic and foreign errors, so as to avoid their recurrence in other countries. I shall consider the factors that were internal to Yugoslav society first, and only later those circumstances that were created predominantly by foreign decision-makers.
Reducing Internal Conditions Conducive To Secession And War
TRUTH-TELLING AND RECONCILIATION. It would be a mistake to conclude that the Balkans are a uniquely violent region in which ancient ethnic hatreds inevitably flare up again and again. During the Tito years, there was little evidence of ethno-nationalistic hatred; on the other hand, the conditions remained latent for the renewal of old enmities dating back to World War II or earlier. Tito had attempted to suppress these conflicts by declaring a new era of ‘brotherhood and unity’ without allowing people to discuss or even Find out what had actually happened during that period, when the conflict had constituted a civil war more than an international one. If there had been a public airing of facts and of culpability instead of a fiat imposing reconciliation by edict, the bitter past might indeed have been surmounted.2
Lesson 2: After a war, reconciliation between the former antagonists should be undertaken only in conjunction with a fair judicial inquiry in which culpability is publicly determined for war crimes and crimes against humanity.
DEMOCRATIZATION. According to Sonja Licht, Yugoslavia was in 1990 the only society in which the old issues of World War II remained alive, and this was because the country had not yet seriously begun its democratization. This observation, combined with the many other reasons for promoting democracy, yields the following.
Lesson 3: In order to complete the unfinished business of a war so that a society genuinely reconciles and moves forward, institutionalize the structures of a democratic society, including systems safeguarding the rights of minorities.
CULTURE OF PEACE. One legacy of World War II was that the Partisan victors continued to celebrate their military accomplishments for decades afterward. Moreover, in successfully standing up to the Soviets, the Yugoslavs confirmed a political culture that emphasized the value of military strength. Yugoslavia maintained one of the ten largest armies in Europe, along with a major military-industrial complex. Though understandable, this emphasis on military values was counterproductive when conflicts arose that threatened the viability of the federal government. The leaders of the republics turned immediately to military measures instead of alternative systems of dispute resolution.
Moreover, all multi-ethnic societies need to maintain value systems that foster respect for diversity — especially ethnic diversity. This does not necessarily happen automatically, but may require that conscious attention be paid, especially to the education and media systems. Hence:
Lesson 4: Cultivate a political culture that fosters reconciliation, civic cooperation, and other benign ways of managing conflicts rather than glorifying war or preparing for it. Institutionally, this system should support formal mechanisms for addressing ethnic disputes, as well as educational and media programs fostering respect for diversity.
SPATIAL DISTRIBUTION OF ETHNIC POPULATIONS. Some of the former Yugoslavia’s structural problems do date back centuries. Especially problematic was the spatial distribution of ethnic-national groups within the entire country. In certain places (especially Sarajevo) multiple ethnic populations lived side by side in an integrated fashion. In other places, there were ethnic concentrations, and indeed the republics had been designed to give a special territory to each of these ethnic communities. As Dusko Sekulic, Randy Hodson, and Garth Massey have established, intolerance was generally highest among ethnic populations that constituted a local majority within an enclave, surrounded by people predominantly of a different ethnic group. This was the case, for example, in the Krajina, where Serbs were locally a majority within a generally Croatian republic, and in Kosovo, an enclave where the local Albanian majority were surrounded by Serbs.
‘Ethnic cleansing’ often resulted in the creation of new enclaves instead of mixed, integrated populations. As a policy, the expulsion or internal migration or groups can create new enclaves, exacerbating the inter-group tensions that had caused the problems in the first place. Yet ethnic segregation was not an incidental outcome of the war, but the very raison d’être for the lighting. Insofar as political leaders can influence the population distributions within their countries in the future, they should become familiar with the results or the research, and be guided by
Lesson 5: Avoid creating ethnic enclaves.
CONSTITUTIONAL AMENDMENTS. The most serious problems for Yugoslavia’s survival resulted from constitutional provisions dating back several years. In 1974 the republics were guaranteed the right to secede, though no Procedures were spelled out by which this might take place. With the decline of communism world-wide, the demands increased for more democracy. However, there was no built-in amending formula by which constitutional reforms might be accomplished. By the end of the 1980s, political pressures in some republics increased the demand for decentralization,3 whereas other republics and international financial institutions called for a more centralized and accountable federal government. In the minds of many Croatians and Slovenians, democracy itself seemed logically to entail de-centralization. Accordingly, no new federal constitution could be adopted allowing federal leaders to be elected directly by the citizenry. Only a confederal system would be acceptable to the proponents of decentralization. There existed no constitutional mechanism for resolving this impasse. When a Croatian separatist, Stipe Mesic, was elected to the rotating presidency of the federal government, the proponents of a strong central state kept him from being seated. It was at this point that the break-up of the country became almost inevitable, and all sides began to prepare to fight. This short historical summation points us toward two important conclusions.
Lesson 6: Whenever constitutional changes are introduced, practicable measures should always be specified for amending it in the future and resolving any impasses.
POLITICAL INCENTIVES AND CENTRALIZATION. However, as Timothy Donais has pointed Out, every move toward decentrazation tends to put a country on a ‘slippery slope’ toward further decentralization or separatism which can be exceedingly hard to reverse. Hence,
Lesson 7: Constitutional reform of a federal system should therefore attempt to offset any increased incentives to politicians who favor local control by creating ways in which they can benefit from a strong central government.
ECONOMIC DISPARITIES. There were several other internal factors that predisposed the populace toward breaking up Yugoslavia. For example, wide disparities existed between the standards of living of different republics. Despite its commitment to communist ideology, the government had done little to minimize regional economic gaps, the magnitude of which would have been shocking even in a capitalist society. Yet as the federal government became weakened and less able to transfer funds from one republic to another it became even more difficult to overcome those inequalities.
Lesson 8: Economic disparities must be minimized to reduce friction between regions or the country.
INTEGRATION OF INFRASTRUCTURE. As decentralization gathered support, the republics began to prepare for Yugoslavia’s break-up by dividing up the infrastructure. Each republic came to expect to own a complete and self-sufficient industrial system, whether or not it was economically supportable. This trend should- have been opposed.
Lesson 9: Do not permit the infrastructure of the federal state to be fragmented and reallocated among the various territorial entities that constitute it.
ELECTORAL LEGITIMATION. Finally, as democracy became an international norm accepted by Yugoslavs, pressures increased for elections to be held at both the federal and republican levels. For the sake of establishing the government’s legitimacy, it was urgently necessary for the first free federal elections to be held before the elections in the republics, yet politicians in the separatist-oriented republics kept this from happening.
Lesson 10: Do not hold separate elections at the level of provinces or republics before the federal elections have been held.
To some extent, this mistake in Yugoslavia resulted from foreign pressures, and it is to those international influences that we now turn.
Reducing External Conditions Conducive to Secession and War
During the period preceding the violent break-up of Yugoslavia, a number of unfavorable circumstances were created inadvertently by decisions of international financial institutions, foreign states, and foreign activists. At least, one can reasonably suppose that the harm was done inadvertently, though some participants in the Lessons of Yugoslavia conference seemed to believe that it was a deliberate policy of the U.S. State Department to promote Yugoslavia’s dissolution. We need not adopt any such Machiavellian theory here in order to recognize that negative effects sometimes did take place as a result of foreign — or even specifically Western — policies.
DIVERSE SOURCES OF INFORMATION. One such unfortunate effect has been pointed out by George Urban, who long headed Radio Free Europe (RFE).4 Throughout the cold war, RFE broadcast news and analyses to the socialist countries of Central and Eastern Europe. The Soviet Union sometimes tried to jam those short-wave broadcasts, but in general the messages got through and were heard by audiences of millions, despite the dangers that they incurred by listening. Political dissidents usually tried to convey their messages to RFE or to one of the other Western radio systems, which spread the word back to their own countries.5 In this way, a significant portion of each socialist society became familiar with the ideological debates of the day and, when the time came, were ready and eager to adopt democratic practices.
However, because the Western countries long courted Tito’s favor, they did not permit any RFE broadcasts to be directed into Yugoslavia. According to Urban, this meant that the populace had no access to a free press or to opinions contrary to the official governmental analyses. When communism began to crumble, the Yugoslavs were seriously unfamiliar with democratic politics or with the very notion of pluralistic governance. Even since the wars in Croatia, Bosnia, and Kosova, the mass media throughout the former Yugoslavia tend to be controlled by particular political organs, and in Serbia by the regime itself. Journalism as a profession has been underdeveloped in Yugoslavia, with a few unusual exceptions, and the content is grossly biased, while the mass audiences have not acquired sufficiently critical attitudes to claim freedom of expression as a right.
Lesson 11: When dealing with a government that manipulates the press, democratic states and non-governmental organizations should foster the diversity of news sources and political debates and provide extensive support and technical assistance to the mass media. If the government prohibits such support of a free press within the country, alternative sources of information should be broadcast into the country from outside, as for example by Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty. In the current period, access to the Internet can also be supported.
FOREIGN ECONOMIC INFLUENCES. Some Western participants in the Lessons of Yugoslavia conference blamed the United States in particular for Yugoslavia’s demise. Thus Margarita Papandreou maintained that it was the U.S. Congress that required free elections to be held within six months in six Yugoslav republics; this was before the federal elections could be held. Along the same lines, Michel Chossudovsky attributed the worst of Yugoslavia’s problems to the macroeconomic reforms imposed by the U.S.-controlled International Monetary Fund. He also claimed that Yugoslavia’s federal government, led by Premier Ante Marković, had been prevented by President George Bush from transferring funds to the republics and autonomous provinces — a change that exacerbated the political fracturing of the federal state. Most Yugoslav analysts, on the other hand, expressed great admiration for Marković’s reforms, which they say were generally accepted throughout the country as bitter, but necessary, medicine. They noted that the main problem with the transfer of funds was that some republics stopped transferring money to the federal government rather than the other way around. Moreover, the republics had been spending money on a lavish scale without even informing the federal government. The international monetary institutions began to insist on greater accountability.
Mihailo Crnobrnja, who had been Yugoslavia’s ambassador to the European Community (which I will abbreviate as EU, since it is now the European Union), argued that it was Europeans who made the most serious mistakes affecting his country.6 By the end of the 1980s more than two-thirds of Yugoslavia’s economic relations were with the EU, making it Yugoslavia’s most important economic partner — one capable of exerting powerful leverage. Since 1988, Yugoslavia had been moving away from non-alignment and had applied for an association agreement with the EU. The EU responded cautiously, requiring Yugoslavia to go through the same formal process as the other applicants. In 1990, Prime Minister Marković requested support for his economic program. Although the EU praised his economic reforms, they turned his request down because political conditions had not been met. These political shortcomings were the worrisome human rights conditions in Kosovo and Slovenia’s refusal to allow multi-party federal elections to be held. According to Crnobrnja,
The EU let Marković go back to Yugoslavia empty-handed, much to the delight of particularistic ethno-nationalist elites who saw him as a clear danger to their divisive plans and strategies. The federal government’s economic program soon collapsed and with it the last realistic rallying point to hold Yugoslavia together. The EU had lost a golden opportunity to influence more decisively the evolution of internal politics, before war broke out.
Marković was expected to deal successfully with rising ethno-nationalism first, and the EU would ‘reward’ Yugoslavia after he had dealt with the problem. It was not seen clearly that Marković needed the economic and political support of the EU to battle the rising nationalistic tide and proceed with reforms which, without the aid of the EU, were doomed.
While it is by no means certain that the support for Prime Minister Marković’s program would have avoided the breakup of Yugoslavia and the bloody confrontations that ensued, it is, in retrospect, absolutely certain that the type of conditionality imposed by the EU on Yugoslavia at the time that this program was rejected was ineffective, to say the least.7
The EU implicitly admitted as much only 11 months later. When the EU presidents, the two Jacques — Sauter and Delors — paid a visit to Yugoslavia on the eve of its implosion. they had on offer a substantial economic package, if only the belligerents would calm down their divisive rhetoric and sit down to discuss outstanding issues in a rational and democratic way. The political situation in Yugoslavia, which prevented EU’s assistance to Marković only a year earlier, was infinitely worse at this time and yet the offer was made…
Crnobrnja maintained that the EU had simply used the wrong instruments for influencing Yugoslavia. “The EU,” he said, “is an economic giant and a political pygmy. It tried to build up its political strength. Its economic strength probably would have been more effective as an instrument to pacify.” From the EU’s mistake we can derive
Lesson 12: and when conditions are attached to the disbursement of Foreign financial aid, the donor country should do so only from a well-informed position involving considerable knowledge of the context and implications of the conditions being stipulated. More specifically, when a country is lacing internal separatist movements, its federal government should usually continue to be supported while it deals with that internal crisis, unless there are compelling reasons for doing otherwise.
ECONOMIC SANCTIONS. On the other hand, Lesson Twelve is a troubling and controversial admonition that requires at least a second thought. Whereas most people would agree in theory to the use of conditionalities and other economic pressures to induce reforms and prevent the break-up of a country, there is little agreement about the circumstances — if any — when such pressures may appropriately he applied. In 1992, after Milošević’s Serbia had incurred widespread opprobrium, economic sanctions were applied to the country, and were tightened during the wars over Bosnia and Kosovo. These sanctions were not observed by all countries (Russia, for example, continued to supply oil to Serbia) but some limited success can be attributed to them in terms of changes in Milošević’s policies. Nevertheless, in most cases, economic sanctions injure innocent civilians at random, while the political leaders are barely affected. Milica Bookman wrote that the sanctions
caused the sudden closing of an otherwise internationally oriented economy. Sanctions resulted in the loss of foreign markets and rapidly outmoded the existing technology. Thin translated into decreased production, unemployment and poverty. Sanctions also decreased personal income and thus decreased the demand for goods and services. At the same time, sanctions decreased the supply of goods and service, especially basics such as food, heating, housing, transportation…. [T]he jobs that were cut have been from the sectors in which women are highly represented. Under conditions of economic and financial crises, the social policies that women have come to depend on were negatively affected (policies such as maternity leave, child supplements, free education, social help, etc.).
Thus one must question the ethics of economic sanctions as a weapon. There have been occasions — as in South Africa during apartheid — when the very population that will suffer most from sanctions nevertheless requests that they be imposed. On other occasions, however — notably in Iraq after the Gulf War — most ordinary people complain and plead for the sanctions to be lifted. Sometimes they are counterproductive, stimulating the populace to support the dictator who rules them instead of rising up against him. Thus if we can formulate any conclusion on this subject, it will have to be a guarded one such as this:
Lesson 13: If economic sanctions are to be imposed on a state to penalize the policies of an irresponsible or aggressive government, those sanctions must be chosen carefully to minimize the harm done to ordinary citizens.
In any case, economic sanctions are not normally imposed before the crisis and hence are not a matter of structural conduciveness but rather are one of the interventions attempted during the crisis. Let us consider that crisis phase now.
INTERVENTIONS DURING THE FIGHTING
As soon as organized fighting begins, the options available for resolving the crisis change markedly. At the same time, more outsiders may attempt to intervene, hoping to reduce the bloodshed and bring the antagonists to some kind of resolution. In this section we shall consider lessons that can be gained from the Yugoslav experiences of four different groups: (1) diplomats and officials conducting international relations and making decisions about military aid; (2) the United Nations peacekeepers; (3) non-governmental peace organizations; and (4) victims and displaced persons. Each of these categories of actors attempted to manage the catastrophe with the specific resources available to them. None was conspicuously successful.
Arms Transfers
Wars cannot be fought without weapons. A simplistic corollary of this fact is that all wars might be ended simply by abolishing all weapons everywhere. However desirable this proposal may appear, it is of course not achievable within any foreseeable time, for a variety of reasons that are worth considering.
First, in the case of Yugoslavia, considerable weaponry had been manufactured domestically, so that the JNA had access to supplies for much of the war without appealing to foreign powers to sell or donate weapons.
Second, even in principle most people would agree that a sovereign state is legitimately entitled to maintain an army or militia, whereas other political groups within the country are not entitled to do so. Indeed, a familiar definition of the state is: that organization within a territory that has a monopoly over the legitimate use of force. By and large such a monopoly of violence is beneficial, reducing the occasion for people to react with dangerous vigilante justice. However, such a definition calls attention to the problematic aspect of concentrating power: that the monopoly or violence may too easily be used against the citizenry, since they cannot defend themselves effectively. Hence even the Romans posed the question: “Who will guard the guards?”
In the Yugoslav case, in view of the dangers involved in having a unified JNA, the army was divided into seven units — one for each republic. Still, the JNA was disproportionately controlled by Serbs, and the seceding republics sometimes had to procure weapons from other sources so as to defend their citizens from the JNA. In some cases they were able to do so; in other cases not.
There is a third reason why the arms trade cannot easily be abolished: It is a generally accepted principle that sovereign states may legitimately determine their own foreign relations, including their in support or opposition to other specific governments abroad. Although the United Nations Charter restricts arms transfers, this is not closely observed, since each country actually remains jealous of its sovereign right to supply arms to friendly foreign powers. The arming of dissident factions within a foreign country is quite a different matter; the legitimacy of actively undermining a another government is more questionable in terms of the rules of international relations, but, nevertheless such interference happens frequently and cannot be prevented.
Fourth, the transfer of arms is by no means under the exclusive control of any single state or any group of states. Private weapons manufacturers necessarily seek profits and therefore usually sell their products without much regard for the legitimacy of the buyers’ political aspirations. Moreover, under certain circumstances a supply of arms may be seized or otherwise appropriated without payment. For example, when the Albanian government was in virtual collapse, its arms depots were raided and a huge supply of machine guns were stolen, then sold to the KLA in Kosovo.
For all four of these reasons, the availability of weapons cannot easily he reduced or regulated by universal standards. Each nation sells or donates arms for its own reasons without necessarily consulting its allies. In this respect, there is no ‘international community’, but only international anarchy. The United Nations has attempted to establish a degree of transparency regarding arms transfers by creating a registry, but compliance is limited.
The result is that particular states and international alliances face dilemmas that sometimes induce them to violate some of their own policies. For example, many states are, in principle, unwilling to support separatist movements. However, when a separatist group finds itself under siege and unable to defend its territory from an oppressive central government, there is considerable basis for sympathizing with the victimized group, even if their goals are not supportable. For instance, when people in Yugoslav enclaves (including Sarajevo, Srebrenica, Krajina, and Kosovo) could not defend themselves because of a lack of weaponry, many people who opposed the victims’ goals nevertheless regarded themselves as obligated to provide weapons to them. They reasoned that the victims should at least be able to defend themselves on an equal footing with their adversaries. Along the same lines, there was a widely shared sense of guilt because the world had failed to defend the vulnerable, quite apart from whether their political policies were wrong or right.
Given these realities it is hard to identify particular lessons about arms transfers to learn from the Yugoslav tragedy. The following three principles are logical but may seem almost utopian within the current world order. Nevertheless, they should be entertained seriously as long-term policies.
Lesson 14: Minimize the level of militarism, wherever possible, for the sake of: (a) reducing the risk of armed confrontations, (b) permitting each economy to develop in a socially beneficial direction, and © avoiding the grave environmental effects of producing and using weaponry.
Lesson 15: Because, Lesson 14 cannot always be put into effect without jeopardizing the security and human rights of a victimized group that lacks military defences, it must be pursued in conjunction with two other basic principles, which will be elaborated elsewhere, namely:
- International law and systems of enforcing it must be developed so that the rights and security of vulnerable populations can be protected when they are not armed.
- Voluntary civilian monitors and peacekeepers, and sometimes also lightly armed military peacekeepers under UN direction should be encouraged to enter sites of likely confrontation to prevent the outbreak of fighting.
Lesson 16: States should, whenever possible, maximize the consistency between their willingness to arm a vulnerable population and their support for, or opposition to, its political goals. Each party to a conflict (whether it be the established government or a group claiming independence for itself) should know in advance what the international responses will be to the various options that it is considering.
International Diplomatic Interventions
The outbreak of any war is evidence that political officials have failed in their most important duty: to manage a looming dispute by implementing policies acceptable to all the parties involved. As the failure of Yugoslav politicians became apparent, the officials of foreign countries and international organizations stepped in, but they were able neither to arrive at any common definition of the problem nor to apply to it any accepted rules of governance. Indeed, even alter the wars, all of the issues remain unresolved and are likely to lead to new conflicts in other countries unless the international community answers them definitively.
DIPLOMATIC RECOGNITION OF SECESSION. The most serious issues are these: Is self-determination a legitimate right that can properly be invoked to justify secession? If so, who is entitled to self-determination — a unit of a federal government (e.g. a republic or province) or a ‘people’? Since Yugoslavia was ethnically mixed (as are almost all countries) if a republic secedes, this will automatically remove numerous members of a minority ‘people’ from their homeland against their will. On the other hand, if every people is entitled to self-determination, then all enclaves where an ethnic group locally constitutes a majority may secede, and this will require that international borders be changed. There is disagreement over the legitimacy of moving borders.
To manage this conflict, the international community has generally declared that secession should not be recognized diplomatically except when carried out with full protection for the rights of minorities. It was hoped that this rule would persuade minorities to remain within the new breakaway states. However, those in Yugoslavia were not persuaded — nor indeed were the conditions generally met before the breakaway states gained recognition. Logically one might well argue that if the Croats and Bosniaks had a right to secede from Yugoslavia, then the Serbs in Eastern Slavonia, the Krajina, and Bosnia-Herzegovina should equally have the right to secede from Croatia and Bosnia. And further, when the Bosnian Serbs boycotted the referendum, they had some constitutional basis for protest, since all decisions of constitutional import were supposed to be made consensually in Bosnia-Herzegovina.
While Secretary-General Perez de Cuellar was still in office he had anticipated this impasse before his term had expired, and had proposed the following three rules: (1) Do not recognize any breakaway republic or region in Yugoslavia before making absolutely sure that the minority problem there has been solved. (2) Offer ‘symmetric recognition’ instead of recognizing your favorite groups while denying recognition to others. (3) Have a plan for Yugoslavia as a whole. His recommendations were ignored.
After having been recognized as independent states, Croatia and Bosnia-Herzegovina invoked the principle of ‘territorial integrity’ and insisted then that their borders were unchangeable. However, local pockets of minorities within each of those states demanded the right to rejoin their nationality group’s own republic. The Western countries accepted the principle of territorial integrity For Bosnia and Croatia, over the objections of the minority populations, who then fought for their own ‘self-determination’ — the right to secede from the newly independent state and, ideally, to attach their territory to the titular republic of their ethnic community.
The conference speakers in Toronto agreed that international recognition of Slovenia and Croatia had been given prematurely, if indeed it should ever have been extended at all, given the lack of commitment in those new states (especially Croatia) to the protection of internal minorities. The participants also noted that the sale of arms by all parties violated the UN Charter and contributed directly to the onset of warfare. In view of this consensus, we can propose the following principle:
Lesson 17: No separatist state should be recognized by the international community until all its constituent minorities are satisfied with the terms of the partition, or until an impartial body accountable to the United Nations has ascertained that the minorities’ human rights will be secure within the new regime. One (but not the only) way of determining this is to assure that a majority of voters from each significant ethnic population must consent in a referendum to the partition before it can be carried out, and that the partition then be supervised by the United Nations.
THE CHANGING OF BORDERS. On one related issue, it is impossible to say what lesson should have been learned, since the speakers in Toronto held diverging opinions: There was no consensus as to whether the international community should, as a principle, resist demands that borders be changed.
Possibly this question would be one of several resolved by adoption of the following recommendation.
Lesson 18: Clarification of international law is urgently needed to standardize the conditions of legitimate secession. An appropriate method of clarification might be for the General Assembly of the United Nations to request an opinion on these matters from the International Court of Justice.
This recommendation, which should be assigned highest priority, is consistent with the proposal advanced by the International Commission on the Balkans:
The commission recommends the development of an international judicial institution to elaborate on the meaning of the right to ‘self-determination of peoples’ as expressed in the UN Charter. There is an inherent tension between that principle and the no less important international commitment to the inviolability of borders. All the Balkan protagonists have different interpretations on these matters. There is a clear need for a tribunal on the limits to self-determination. This need not be a new institution. One obvious candidate would be the present World Court; another could be the European Commission and Court on Human Rights.8
NON-MILITARY PEACEKEEPING INTERVENTIONS. As the crisis deepened and casualties began to mount, many observers came to regard as shameful the reluctance of the international community to intervene early enough to stop the warfare before it cost so many lives. On this point there was, however, no obvious consensus among the Toronto conference participants — at least as regard military intervention. On the other hand, many people agreed upon the desirability of using diplomatic and non-violent civilian interventions even before the organized violence began. some of the suggestions ran along the following lines: Act early. Combat hate speech whenever it appears. Train local citizens in civil disobedience to reduce the power of demagogues. Send in volunteer corps of social workers and peace brigades wearing white helmets and carrying camcorders to document violations of human rights. Send in astute conflict journalists who can analyze the conflicts underlying the fighting, instead of simply reporting on the progress of the war. Civilian peacebuilders should learn the local language, preferably before arriving in the conflict zone, and should commit to stay at least one or two years. Listen to both sides. Give people a voice so they can express themselves and regulate their own affairs. Early mediation costs only thousands of dollars, as compared to billions for the war that will otherwise follow.
Lesson 19: Once blood has flowed it is harder to resolve conflicts. Therefore, when there are strong indications that a conflict may result in warfare, the international community should organize diplomatic and civilian peace-building services as early as possible to forestall violence. Such teams should go into an area only with the invitation of local NGOs and activists, zind should work with grassroots members of all ethnic groups, instead of with the parties in power. Instead of apportioning blame, they should identify the nature of problems and how these can be solved, paying systematic attention to the human dimensions of conflict.
MILITARY PEACEKEEPING INTERVENTIONS. By mid-1992 the United Nations forces were assigned tasks for which resources were not available and rules of engagement were not clearly specified. The result was confusion, in which military protection was offered to civilians but then could not be effectively provided. UNPROFOR’s mission was hampered by lack of consent, lack of cooperation, and frequent mutually hostile actions by all three factions.
Lesson 20: International military peacekeepers should never be sent to an area of conflict without a clear mandate and adequate resources. If the international community is going to become involved in unsettled civil wars by sending military units to areas where there is limited consent to their presence and participation, they should either “go big or stay home.”
AFTER DAYTON
When the heads of all the contending factions of the former Yugoslavia finally met at Dayton, Ohio and agreed to terms ending the war, their breakthrough was hardly voluntary. Considerable press4e — including direct bombing campaigns — had been placed upon them, especially by the United States, to conclude the lighting. Even so, the conference succeeded only barely and at the last moment. In fact, many knowledgeable people do not call the agreement that emerged from the effort successful at all. Perhaps something is better than nothing, but only in that minimal sense can the Dayton Accords be regarded as a satisfactory conclusion to the conflict. Nevertheless, Dayton was a turning point; the problems that had to be handled after it were fundamentally political and economic in nature, in contrast to the military problems that had preceded that conference. I will not deal here with the controversial processes by which the Accord was wrought, but only with the issues that emerged later, as it was being implemented.
AMBIGUITY. The war was fought to settle one issue: whether Bosnia would remain a united, multi-ethnic country or be partitioned along ethnic lines. Unfortunately, the Dayton Accord in effect left that question unresolved. The continuing problems that followed result largely from the very ambiguity of the agreement — though there would have been no agreement at all if its terms had actually established a clear decision concerning the crucial issue. Thus we must make one important recommendation, even while we recognize that it may be unattainable.
Lesson 21. The terms established in settling a war should clearly resolve the key conflicts over which the war was fought — though this objective may in practice be waived for the sake of reaching even an ostensible agreement. Dayton contained enormous ambiguities which have not been — and apparently cannot be — settled definitively even five years later.
HUMAN SECURITY. The international community, if not all the various former Yugoslav communities, agree that the ending of a war should enable the inhabitants of the region to regain their personal security and the basic freedoms to which all human beings are entitled.
Lesson 22: Human security must be re-established in the war region. This includes the following objectives: Provide police services that are not managed by people who have themselves committed war crimes. Provide stable, but soft, borders that people can cross readily. Facilitate the return of refugees and displaced persons to their homes. Disarm the fighters instead of rearming them.
Most of these obvious principles have not been implemented at all in post-Dayton Bosnia-Herzegovina and barely more so in Croatia or Serbia.
NATIONALIST LEADERS. Some of the politicians and military officers who precipitated the war have been indicted for war crimes by the Tribunal in The Hague. Many others would be indicted if it were not so difficult to gather evidence strong enough for a criminal prosecution (i.e. ‘beyond a reasonable doubt’). All states and United Nations personnel are obliged to cooperate with the court by executing its arrest warrants, yet some of the indicted persons have not been arrested, but continue to exercise considerable political influence. Other nationalist authoritarian politicians indeed were re-elected to the same high offices they held before the war, positions in which they brought disaster upon their own citizenry. This is partly because the individuals were not held accountable for their own actions and partly because a flawed electoral structure was not improved by the Dayton Accords to create a democratic system in which ethnic divisions are not permanently divisive. Two lessons need to be recognized in this connection.
Lesson 23: Those who are indicted for war crimes or crimes against humanity should be arrested and brought to trial.
Lesson 24: Nationalist demagogues should not be allowed to run for political office during the first years of transition, and their political leadership should not be accepted as legitimate.
DEMOCRATIZATION AND POWER-SHARING. Motivated by a praiseworthy intention to establish democracy in Bosnia-Herzegovina, the international diplomats who negotiated the terns of the Dayton Accord insisted that elections be held very soon after the hostilities ceased. This hasty arrangement did not address some of the key preconditions for genuine democracy — such as the establishment or (a) a free press over a long enough period to enable an informed public opinion to take shape and express itself politically, and (b) electoral systems that do not reinforce, but instead counter, the existing nationalist political cleavages. Until such changes are made, any elections that are held may bring back to power the same demagogues who ruled throughout the war — and, worse yet, cloak them with a kind of legitimacy which would have eluded them in the absence or elections. This predictable outcome is what actually happened. We offer, then, another recommendation.
Lesson 25: Elections should not be held until the preconditions for democracy have been well established. In particular, a free press should be established for a period of time in which political controversies are exposed to open and extensive debate and in which journalists force politicians to account publicly for their actions.
In ethnically diverse states, the transition to democratic governance magnifies the political relevance of ethnic difference. Minority ethnic groups living in a state dominated by another ethnic group may feel anxious and attempt to defend themselves by concentrating their communities geographically and mobilizing them to vote for parties that will seek their own nationalistic advantages. These tendencies should be anticipated and the electoral system should be restructured so as to foster power-sharing, along the following lines.9
Lesson 26: At the executive level, no significant group should be completely excluded from power.
Lesson 27: On all issues of common concern, decisions should be made jointly by the different groups or their representatives; on all other issues, decisions should be made by and for each separate group. Federalism is one embodiment of this principle but other non-territorially based forms of constituencies can also be created.
Lesson 28: Where a minority group is included within a power-sharing government, it could be outvoted on all major issues. Hence a minority veto is an institutional arrangement that minorities may need to protect their vital interests.
Lesson 29: Political appointments, public funds, and political representation should be divided among major groups according to their share or the overall population. This suggests that proportional representation electoral systems are superior to plurality or ‘first-past-the-post’ systems.
Lesson 30: Rather than the current system (in which candidates can be elected solely on the support of their own ethnic group) the electoral system should require successful candidates to appeal to voters of all ethnicities, thereby rewarding moderation and discouraging ethnic extremism. For example, since the joint presidency is made up of one member from each of Bosnia’s main ethnic groups, it would be an improvement to allow all Bosnians a vote for each of the three presidency positions. Thus Bosniaks would be able to choose not only among the Bosniak presidential candidates, but among the Serb and Croat candidates as well.
Theoretically, this last proposal, which was advanced by the International Crisis Group, could be implemented quite easily. In reality, however, the Dayton constitution has entrenched some of the very principles that most need to be eliminated by reforming the electoral system. Moreover, the nationalists, having been elected to office, gained sufficient power to prevent any changes that would threaten their own hold over the Bosnian political system. For these reasons, disappointed reformers have concluded that the Only realistic way in which nationalism may be soon curtailed is not through electoral reforms, but rather through building up the institutions of civil society: unions, an independent media, and other non-state organizations.
POST-WAR FAMILIES AND ECONOMIC RECONSTRUCTION. In the aftermath of the fighting, large numbers of families are now headed by women. Refugee and displaced Families are particularly likely to constitute women and children, yet many of these women have few skills or tools. The economic reconstruction is aimed predominantly at the demobilized soldiers, at the expense of households headed by women. The stringent circumstances of the economy generally tend to load extra burdens on mothers by cutting back support for children’s schooling, day care, health services, and related social benefits. Women’s educational opportunities have been reduced, while infant mortality has increased, along with death due to complications in childbirth.
Lesson 31: During the economic reconstruction following a war, the needs of women and children in female-headed families should be particularly noted, for they increase in numbers and face grave disadvantages.
THE KOSOVO WAR
It was Kosovo’s problems that launched the events resulting in the breakup of Yugoslavia and the accompanying wars of secession. Kosovo’s problems were not resolved at all during those conflicts, yet the international community persisted in ignoring those problems until war finally became inevitable. An earlier and well-coordinated international policy might have prevented the whole catastrophe by vigorously recognizing and supporting the Kosovars’ elected Gandhian leader, Ibrahim Rugova. Instead, Rugova and his LDK party were never treated as full participants in any of the conferences designed to resolve the ongoing crisis. The London conference of 1992 relegated all these elected LDK personnel to an outer room instead of seating them as delegates. Rugova was not invited to Dayton or to Rambouillet. Had he been treated as a legitimate statesman from the beginning — truly a party to the negotiations — the KLA would not have emerged and there would have been no war in Kosovo. Instead, the behavior of the great powers gave resentful Kosovars ample grounds for concluding that nonviolence does not work, and that violence pays. Clearly this was a mistake.
Lesson 32: If a non-violent, indigenous, legitimately representative leadership (such as Rugova’s) exists within a group that is at odds with an oppressive regime (such as Milošević’s pro-Serbian nationalistic regime in Belgrade), foreign governments should include the nonviolent movement in all negotiations involving its interests. Moral support and encouragement should be accorded, and, when appropriate, material assistance should be provided as well.
On the other hand, one must acknowledge certain circumstances that made it difficult for Western countries to apply Lesson 32 to Rugova’s movement, as one can see in retrospect that they should have done. For one thing, ii Clinton had invited Rugova to Dayton, Milošević would not have attended and the war in Bosnia would have proceeded.
Other inhibiting circumstances resulted from flaws in the LDK itself. The chief problem is that the Kosovar group indicated early in the conflict that its goal was independence. If Rugova had been willing to consider some greater measure of autonomy, short of sovereignty, the friendly foreign states might have been less apprehensive about acknowledging his authority. Instead, for someone who was so remarkably committed to nonviolence, Rugova’s political approach was incongruously inflexible. Even within civil society, he discouraged contact between Kosovars and moderate Serbs. Kosovars at the grass-roots level sometimes regarded his methods of reaching decisions as undemocratic. He avoided taking serious risks with confrontational tactics such as street demonstrations, but chose instead to appeal to foreign governments for support. When no such support was manifested — but only humiliating exclusion from the locus of real negotiations — his timidity outraged bolder Kosovars, who deserted the LDK in favor of armed struggle, further diminishing Rugova’s authority. During the lighting, the KLA may have wielded more authority within the Kosovar population than the LDK, though most people recognized the criminal links and excessively violent methods of the guerrilla army. Thus there is a lesson here for the leadership of a resistance movement.
Lesson 33: Leaders of non-violent movements seeking independence or autonomy will benefit from keeping in good contact with the more radical members of their constituencies, employing confrontational methods upon occasion so as never to seem craven, and to encourage dialogue and negotiation at all levels of society with minority groups and moderate members of the adversary’s community. Even if the leader’s ultimate goal remains that. of complete independence, he or she can probably win greater support from foreign statesmen by displaying willingness to discuss other options short of the ultimate goal.
If we turn now to examine the opportunities missed by the world’s leaders, the failures on their part seem almost limitless, beginning in the early 1990s. The instances of short-sightedness are too numerous to name here, but it is easy to see what they all had in common: a lack of thoroughness in the analysis that informed the decisions of the international community.
The war in Kosovo illustrates the regularity of this shortcoming. The great powers developed no long-range strategy for dealing with Milošević and eventually announced that they had exhausted all options except bombing. In fact, there had been many non-violent (or less violent) alternatives earlier that had not even been considered. (I will mention only three examples: The opposition movement in Serbia in the winter of 1997 could have been supported. Radio and television coverage could have been broadcast from abroad to inform rural Serbians about the atrocities being committed in their name. The foreign bank accounts of Serbia’s corrupt leaders — especially in Cyprus — might have been impounded.)
Moreover, the international community failed to anticipate the consequences of their own policies, and even failed to carry out a rational analysis of the relative costs and benefits of the options available to them. A wise strategy with long vision would have recognized, for example, that the bombing of Serbia and Kosovo would, at least temporarily: (a) solidify Milošević’s support among the Serbian people and undermine the credibility of the movements that had been opposing his regime, and (h) give Milošević a method of disguising his plan for ethnic cleansing, whereby most Kosovars would be expelled from their country after the bombing began. That is, he could plausibly claim that they were not being forced out hut rather were fleeing from NATO’s bombs.
If NATO leaders had used the information readily available to them that pointed to Milošević’s probable expulsion of a whole nation of people, they might have reached a different conclusion about the relative costs and benefits of carrying out their bombing campaign. When a war is fought to protect a group of people, but it actually inflicts far more harm on those people than they would have experienced otherwise, it is irrational to launch such a war. The intention of the bombing was to protect Kosovars (and to be fair, most Kosovars are glad that it was waged because the they have a better chance now to win independence since the Serbs have mostly fled from Kosovo, leaving it in their control) but in no sense were they ‘protected’ by the bombing. A large peacekeeping force on the ground might have been able to offer some protection, but even this is questionable.
Finally, as an example of short-sightedness, one must recognize the counterproductive effects for ethnic diversity and tolerance of the bombing. After the cease-fire, the peacekeepers could not keep the Albanian population from exacting retribution on the remaining Serbs upon their return to Kosovo. Most of the Serbs fled, so that the country is now overwhelmingly Albanian. The outcome ran completely counter to NATO’s original intention to prevent ‘ethnic cleansing’ and to create ethnic harmony between the Kosovars and Serbs.
The leaders of the NATO countries continue to argue that the bombing took place because “something had to be done,” and there was “no alternative.” This is largely true. By the time the Western countries had made all the errors and miscalculations that they had reached throughout a whole decade or more, there were indeed very few feasible alternatives that would have protected the human rights of the Kosovar population. Nevertheless, that does not mean that the bombing was a sound policy. By then, all of NATO’s options were bad; bombing was probably the worst one of all. It was counterproductive, yielding results that were more harmful than beneficial to the Kosovar people themselves, not to mention the Serbs.
What is the lesson here? Simply this: think before acting! Think hard. Think long. Think far, far ahead.
Lesson 34: World leaders confronting nationalistic demagogues should cultivate long-range vision, look for non-violent alternatives that may not be obvious, and constantly think reasonably about the relative costs and benefits of various courses of action. The fact that all other options besides force have seemingly been exhausted does not make war a rational choice. Sometimes doing something is counterproductive — even worse than doing nothing. But leaders who look beyond the momentary situation to consider
Future possibilities can usually identify numerous promising options far ahead of time. This kind of strategic planning would have prevented the bungling that resulted in the catastrophe that befell the former Yugoslavia.
NOTES
1 Having edited a sizeable book that compares empirically the outcomes of numerous separatist movements, I am not inclined to repeat much of that evidence here, but will only cite it: Metta Spencer, ed. Separatism: Democracy and Disintegration (Lanham, Md: Rowman and Littlefield, 1998). See also Robert K Schaeffer, Warpaths: The Politics of Partition (New York: Hill and Wang, 1990).
2 In 2000 the same kind of situation exists as Forty years before: the recently guilty have not been brought to justice and the historical record remains cloudy concerning the wars of the 1990s. Indeed, most citizens of the former Yugoslavia generally remain skeptical and uncooperative toward the International War Crimes Tribunal that is still going on in The Hague. Probably such cynical attitudes will continue until it is demonstrated to these people that war criminals will indeed be brought to justice within the framework of a fair rule of law. There is a debate as to whether this is best handled through procedures similar to South Africa’s Truth and Reconciliation Commission (in which amnesty is granted to perpetrators who confess fully) or whether the only adequate approach is the tribunal system, which will be institutionalized in the new International Criminal Court. See ‘Prosecuting War Criminals’, an interview with Madam Justice Louise Arbour of the Canadian Supreme Court, shortly after she left her position as chief prosecutor of the War Crimes Tribunal of Yugoslavia and Rwanda. Justice Norman Dyson and Metta Spencer, Peace Magazine, Spring 2000. Madam Justice Arbour favors the stronger system, which is based on international standards of criminal justice.
3 For their part, many citizens of Western democracies also believed that democracy was strengthened by decentralization. If this was true of the Soviet Union, it was not true of Yugoslavia, which was already too decentralized to be politically and economically coordinated well.
4 George R. Urban, Radio Free Europe and the Pursuit of Democracy: My War Within the Cold War (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1997).
5 In an interview, the dissident physicist Yuri Orlov, who had been confined in Siberia, told me that even there villagers managed to get the news from RFE/RL by going fishing on a lake, taking their short-wave radio along. He mentioned meeting a woman in the village who recognized his name and who told him that when she was in secondary school in Irkutsk, she and other girls had listened to RFE/RL in the washroom, where she became familiar with Orlov’s dissident activities.
6 My account here is a much-abbreviated version of Crnobrnja’s paper, delivered at the Lessons of Yugoslavia conference but not published in this collection.
7 However, this negative result may be contrasted to a comparable situation in which the EU has attached conditions on Turkey’s admission to the EU, evidently with results that are constructive for human rights.
8 Leo Tindemans et al. Unfinished Peace: Report of the International Commission on the Balkans (Aspen Institute Berlin, Carnegie Endowment for International Peace), p. 162.
9 The power-sharing arrangements proposed in lessons 23-26 are directly adopted from Arend Lipthart, “The Power-Sharing Approach”, in Joseph V. Montville (ed.) Conflict and Peacemaking in Multiethnic Societies (Lexington: Lexington Books, I 990), pp. 493-94. See the extensive discussion by Timothy Donais in this volume.