American Foreign Policy on the Kosovo Issue and the Balkans: Past, Present and Future Prospects

American Foreign Policy on the Kosovo Issue and the Balkans: Past, Present and Future Prospects

by Gregory P. Macris

First Secretary, Embassy of the United States of America, Cyprus

Thank you friends for coming out tonight.

As long as I can remember, geography fascinated me. I knew the capitals of the 50 states by age 6, and the tallest mountains in the world by age 9. Frankly, it was what attracted me to my chosen career of diplomacy.

But I must admit I was as ignorant as 270 million other Americans the first time I heard the word Bosnia. That must have been 1991, read by a somber voiced newscaster, and of course it overlayed grisly video image of wartime destructions and scenes that the West had not seen in its own backyard since 1945. Where was this place?

Then the cameras flashed to downtown Sarajevo, where thousands had sought refuge from the violent countryside…only to find more bloodshed.

And images I remembered from 1984 came flooding back. From the Yugoslav Winter Olympics of that year. A great Olympics, to most Americans, for the memorable performances of two of our finest winter athletes ever, figure skater Scott Hamilton and skier Bill Johnson.

I remember U.S. TV coverage of the Games being heavy with praise of Yugoslavia. How its authorities had resisted Soviet domination and crafted a “third way” between heartless capitalism and stifling communism.

A year later, while I was still in school, my older brother took off for a summer in Europe.

In his letters and postcards, it was easy to see that his favorite country wasn’t France, Italy, or Spain. It was Yugolsavia, in which he spent ten days on backroute buses and trains. He couldn’t stop writing about the Southern Alps of Slovenia, the beauty of Split and Dubrovnik, and the warmth of the people the length of the country.

How, then, had this place given birth to the worst bloodshed in Europe in fifty years? In his first dispatch from Sarajevo, probably filed from that Holiday Inn which dominated US newscasts for years, my favorite political satirist, PJ O’Rourke, claimed that he’d been in violent places before, but it was always easy to find out what they were fighting about, and to pick sides.

In Sarajevo, everyone fired at everyone, no one seemed to know why, and absolutely all were free of blame.

In comments in 2001, Richard Holbrook laid some blame. The architect of Dayton Accords which brought an end to most fighting in Bosnia, Holbrook pounced on idealistic former US President Woodrow Wilson.

Wilson, Holbrook said, had given the green light to numerous nationalistic movements Europe wide at the end of WWI, and then helped place lines on the map in south-central Europe that did not correspond to ethnic geographical divisions.

And nationalism is like cheap homemade liquor. First it makes you drunk, then it makes you blind, and then it makes you dead. The worst kind of addiction.

I’m not sure I agree with him totally, but the Balkans were to become a tinderbox for ten years, with a half-million or more dead, and four million displaced.

And it became a major foreign policy issue for the United States. And to be frank, for a long time – longer that it should have taken – we, the U.S. government, didn’t know how to act.

Get involved, or stay on the sidelines? Military intervention? Humanitarian intervention? Or let the Europeans deal with Bosnia. It was there back yard, after all.

I remember the isolationist tack quite clearly. They used an expression from the deep US south – we simply don’t have a dog in this fight. Fatigue was also a factor; the US had just led an expensive multi-nation coalition war in Kuwait, and was not apt to intervene again so soon.

And let’s not forget Somalia. As some pundits claim, with the benefit of hindsight – we forgot the Hippocratic oath there -- “First, do no harm.” Somalia may in fact have been worse when we left, a factor that was clearly on the minds of many US policymakers.

But those images of war, and later, or Auschwitz-like concentration camps, didn’t cease, and they had a cumulative effect. And then came Ruanda. Where an intrastate, inter-communal conflict took a million lives in a hundred days, while the West mainly, could not, or would not act.

On the continuum we moved from the isolationism to intervention poles. Intervening to stop the fighting in Bosnia and forcing the parties into compromise at Dayton. Four years later, an even more active, NATO-led intervention in Kosovo and Serbia itself.

The United States now has a very large dog in the Balkan fight. We’ve spent billions there trying to build stability, and will spend millions more to help fortify democracy.

Let me fast forward to the present, laying our US goals and summarizing hard-won successes.

Our vision for the Balkans is to see it become a region of one of peace and stability, where its nations are full members of a modern European community.

A region that embraces all its populations -- protection of minority right is in fact a linchpin of our policies in the region, whether we are talking about Albanians in Macedonia, Hungarians in Serbia, or Serbs in Kosovo.

We are proud of the efforts of the Int’l Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia. With last week’s arrest of a key suspect, all but five of the more than 150 ICTY indicted criminals have been apprehended. The US has supported the ICTY with over 15 million, and will continue to help it function.

Refugee returns in the region are another bright spot, with the majority of Balkan displaced returning home – over a million to Bosnia alone. Via the State Departments Bureau of Refugees and Migration, the US will continue to plan, finance, and implement programs to ensure IDPs can and do leave camps and settle permanently

Countries are becoming better at fighting crime, taking on the mafias that took root during the wartime years. We are particularly encouraged by the success fighting trafficking in persons, a major commitment of the USA and its overseas embassies. We have supported governments from Slovenia in the north to Albania in the south, with nearly a hundred million in US funds aimed at the three Ps – prosecution, prevention, and protection.

Elections in the region have proven free and fair. We just past the one-year anniversary of Montenegro’s referendum in favor of independence, for example. The fact it was carried out without fraud or violence shows a growing political maturity there.

The US supports such electoral efforts both multilaterally and through international organizations like the OSCE.

US leadership is vital for continued progress in the Balkans, I believe, but it’s not a unilateral form of leadership. None of the gains we’ve seen would have been possible without contributions from our European partners, intienational organizations like the UN and OSCE.

Looking forward, the international community is well-positioned to assist the Western Balkans to move beyond the conflict of the 1990s and toward broader, deeper Euro-Atlantic integration.

Stability in the Balkans is highly dependent on integration into broader Europe.

The European Council said exactly that in 2003 in Thessaloniki. It is vital the countries of south-central Europe see full EU membership as an achievable goal. 2006 saw little movement other than for Croatia. 2007 must be better.

We are not seeking shortcuts to integration. But only that their accession progress matches their enactment of reforms.

We hope to see Bosnia concluded a Stabilization and Association Agreement soon with the EU, for example, which will help that country enact greater reforms. We will work with the High Representative in Sarajevo and with our EU colleagues to see it through.

Serbia, too, must be lashed tighter to Europe. We favor renewed SAA negotiations there as well, although we accept Brussels’ reticence in the face of Belgrade’s somewhat spotty record of cooperation with the ICTY. The US strongly backed Serbia’s application for Partnership for Peace, which resulted in NATO’s December 2006 decision to grant PFP membership – we hope PFP will help anchor Serbia’s security institutions to the west.

In the country which calls itself Macedonia, the EU granted candidate status in 2005, but there is still no starting date for accession. The country has made great economic reforms, and is improving governance. The EU can and should plan to start accession talks.

Again, without clarity that the countries of south-central Europe are moving toward full admittance to Euro-Atlantic structures, nationalism demagoguery, and the ill effect they bring will find fertile ground.

Of course, no discussion on the Balkans can occur without tackling the most pressing issue there, that of the final status of Kosovo.

Following 8 years of UN administration of Kosovo, and after over a year of negotiations brokered by Special Envoy Marti Ahtisaari, the process to determine Kosovo’s status is entering its final stage.

As you well know, Ahtisaari was unable to bring the sides to agreement, and concluded that further negotiations will get them no closer.

He has proposed status arrangements that are fair, balanced, and designed to enhance regional stability.

The United States and most of its European allies support Ahtisaari’s plans, especially its provisions to protect minority rights.

And we supported the Finnish envoy’s recommendation that Kosovo become independent, subject to a period of international supervision. It is the only viable outcome because:

The tragic events of the 1990s – the violent, non-consensual breakup of Yugoslavia. Milosevic’s ethnic cleansing, Oppression. Have created a situation where Serbia simply cannot govern Kosovo effectively.

Forcing the two together would lead to dysfunction and extremism, and threaten hard-won gains in other Balkan countries.

The Security Council, through Resolution 1244 in 1999, has excluded Serbia from exercising control in Kosovo. After eight years of growth of separate institutions, it is simply not practical to merge them.

Again, the United States strongly supports President Ahtisaari's recommendations and believes the UN Security Council should now act upon them.

The UNSC has been reviewing the situation intensely, including through a late-April trip to Kosovo and Serbia by UNSC members.

We believe the UNSC should adopt now a new UNSCR for Kosovo, which would enable full implementation of Ahtisaari's recommendations.

European members of the UNSC, Germany and the United States circulated a draft UNSCR for Kosovo on May 11, and Britain tabled a revised document last week.

The UNSCR draft would endorse the Ahtisaari's Settlement, end the UN Administration and authorize Chapter VII mandates for the international presence in Kosovo (a new International Civilian Office to supervise implementation of the settlement, an EU-Ied Rule of Law Mission, and a continued KFOR peacekeeping force).

The UNSCR would pave the way for an independent Kosovo. States could then recognize Kosovo's independence, but the UNSCR would not require them to do so.

Our goal is the adoption of this UNSCR by summer. After over a year and a half of negotiations, the time has come to resolve this issue.

Of course there are rumors of dissent on the Security Council. Allegations that one permanent member opposes the Ahtisaari plan and the supervised independence of Kosovo.

But Russia has participated constructively with the Contact Group for many years, helping to find solutions to problems that plague southeast Europe.

The United States started the Kosovo Status process together with Russia, and will do what it can to finish the process with Russia.

A Foreign Ministry colleague recently asked me the ultimate “what if.” What if Russia vetoes the resolution. Will the US and its allies recognize Kosovo unilaterally?

With a Security Council Resolution – Plan A -- we’ll have a managed process leading toward Kosovo independence, using the Ahtisaari settlement that provides extensive protections to the Serb minority

Plan B – no Resolution -- we’ll have a chaotic and violent process which will also lead to Kosovo independence, but after Kosovo's moderate leadership has been undermined and the minority protections removed.

Frankly, we don’t like to dwell on this “Plan B” at all, for obvious reasons.

It’s probably best that I end right there. Thank you again for the opportunity to speak to you tonight. And I look forward to your questions. Thanks.

Research & Development Center - Intercollege